#that and theres a whole nuance to what he likely already expected to happen as soon as he left wwx at the foot of the mountain | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

favouritefi · 6 months

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I love your Terror catboy AU, it’s a funky combination of adorable drawings and Victorianesque pseudoscientific hierarchies. However, it made me wonder about catgirls/doggirls; if you’re happy to answer, how do you see the intersection of gender and hybridity playing out in this universe?

I LOVE THIS QUESTION THANK YOU FOR THIS QUESTION i have a lot of thots on this bc the whole "angel in the house" image of the ideal (middle class) victorian woman is such a fun concept to play with more under cut

ok so what im about to say rn really only applies to middle class and upper class women in this au as those are the main characters in the terror if we get into the lower classes its a more complicated and nuanced story.

anyway in victorian times women were expected to be chaperoned everywhere by an older woman such as a female relative or female servant lest she be corrupted by the ills of the world and by men etc. this is where cat/doggirls come in. its expected that if you have a daughter then you goooootta adopt a companion or two for her both to show off your status and to ensure that your daughter has a friend / chaperone / mentor / moral compass for life. so in cat/dogpeople households the cat/dogboys usually go off to whatever institution their bloodline is associated with and cat/doggirls usually become companions for the wives and daughters of the men employed by those institutions. its very different from human family structures because the expectation here is that your child will not stay with your household, youre making children knowing that they will likely not belong to you regardless of whether they are male or female and that you might never see them again once theyre adopted and they need to be adopted or else its a failure on you and your bloodline. (grim i know) this system is also why each generation of cat/dogpeople tends to be fairly large, little and hodgson and irving all have an overabundance of siblings and cousins many of whom theyve never met in their life.

interestingly, cat/doggirls are actually more valued amongst these families than cat/dogboys because cat/dogboys can only be sent off to the institution the bloodline is associated with whereas cat/doggirls can be sent off to any upper/middle class household regardless of association and it would still be considered respectable AND it creates new relationships between human families that the human owners might find beneficial (kind of like how marriage was historically the exchange of women to strengthen political ties between families). this means that excess cat/dogboy sons are often disappointing to the parents - edward little is one of these. all 3 of his elder brothers had already left for the navy so he grew up playing w his sisters and getting dolled up in their dresses and being told that oh he'd make such a pretty girl and pretty bride oh if only he'd been born a girl etc. totally doesnt fuck him up.

speaking of fucked up theres hickey and his whole situation w sophia. having a catboy as a companion for an upper class girl is a big no-no and only happened because [insert hickey backstory here that is too long and really should have its own post]. no body approves of this but sophia loves him so very much and they were inseparable up until they were separated when sophia went to tasmania with the franklins and hickey was abandoned to the streets against both his and sophias will. sophia refused to adopt a new more appropriate companion in tasmania and after the franklins returned to england she tried to find him but couldnt and assumed he died. then when it seems like the ships are lost and jane starts campaigning for a rescue mission suddenly hickey shows up and for a few blissful years they are together again. he is older and quieter and has scars he wont explain, but hes still hickey and sophia still loves him. and then sir john comes back and fucks all of that up again.

sorry this was meant to be about gender dynamics in my deranged catboy au but i got distracted by hickey (as per usual)

#hope this answers some things #it might also raise more questions #which i probably have answers to #bc i think way too much about this au #Purror and Erebark

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viktoriakomova · 1 year

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Sorry for being dense but can you elaborate on your post about Norah?

tldr the call is coming from inside the house and the house is the UC Fayetteville sorority house and the den mother is miss val :)

we know from several former gymnasts' accounts that miss val had a pattern* of treating some gymnasts (most, even!) on the team very VERY well, and a select few (or notably and most sadly, sometimes just one) like total garbage. the trouble maker, the scapegoat, the designated whipping post.

we also know from obvious developments and patterns therein that ucla gym in the last 4 years has metastasized onto arkansas. and that miss val was influential in getting jordyn the HC position in the first place when you look at her and her husband's connections to the arkansas athletics dept.

waller was miss val's AC for like ~15 years. hiring him as a HC and her successor was a formality more than anything. nothing significantly changed when he replaced her, other than the absence of her mystique and cult of personality. which, granted, i can imagine sucked all the air out of the room. she is, after all, miss val.

we know that the environment was pretty toxic in norahs senior year. there is nuance to the exact details of a lot of what happened but it was indisputably a tense training environment. we can assume, based on how literally anything like this works, that the groundwork for that tension and toxicity was laid gradually before that year had even started.

so anyway, shifting focus back to ark. jordyns experience prior to landing a head coaching position at the age of 24 was ENTIRELY under miss val's tutelage. not just that but at the same program, within the same university's athletics admin, for only a few years. and on top of THAT, she hired her besties from ucla, including her then-bf now-fiancé (lol), onto her coaching staff. this is already not a great situation obviously.

at the beginning of this year, norah comes to ark as a 5th year transfer. supposedly to be closer to her bf in atlanta (.....😐) but also because she has an established relationship with the whole coaching staff. bc theyre basically all ucla transplants who have known her for years (jordyn and kyla for literally a whole decade going back to norahs junior elite days, long long history there). shes also a huge fan favorite and an amazing gymnast who deservedly gets very high scores.

i hope you can see where im going with this but bottom line is: looking at some of the eyebrow-raising stuff we've seen gymnasts and their families/friends say or hint at, putting all those things on a timeline, comparing that to gymnasts' arrivals, departures, injuries, underperformance compared to potential and expectations, etc. it seems a lot to me like things were not going great before this year, but it has really come to a head this season. and taking all of the above into account, i think norah's transfer was a catalyst for all that to really get going

jordyns mentor as a coach, basically the only coach she has ever studied under AND all within the only program she had ever worked for, is someone we know to be extraordinarily toxic and manipulative. and she remains a constant (predominant) presence in jordyn's career and the arkansas program as a whole. like deadass she moved to fayetteville and lives there at least part time jfkdjkfdjfk.

so no its not an unfortunate apparent coincidence imho and i dont think its all that crazy of me to suggest that theres a common thread here and not just "aw darn she transferred from one toxic team to another one that turned out to ALSO be toxic. :(" and for the record i certainly dont think that norah is one of the people suffering from the status quo within that program rn lmao.

there's also a lot about norahs last season at ucla and the team dynamics that i wont get into, primarily bc much of it is unconfirmed and based on rumors, ones that i realistically have no way of verifying, but also bc i feel like the above paints a decent picture of what is going on in a general sense without it... :)

*it also seems that this only happened in a few key years when the team was, for whatever reason(s), extremely polarized. other years the team was much more balanced. im not a fly on the wall so i wont speculate as to why that necessarily was but if you go back thru her seasons as a coach the Vibes are apparent

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bloodbenderz · 4 years

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Can I ask what your season 1 Lok reboot looks like?

this is about 3k words i checked lmfao dont say i didnt warn u

a key part of the whole thing is that korra gets way more perspectives and more experiences representative of like, normal people in republic city bc i think something that really defined what a good avatar aang was was how many people he met and got to know and how he didnt exclusively or even mostly associate w cops and bureaucrats and leaders. so mako and bolin. well first of all their backstories are a little more fleshed out and we get a less black and white view of the “triads” (lol) and mako and bolin’s experiences w them. cuz the show very much does the whole thing of like Criminals Bad but dont worry even tho mako and bolin did commit crimes theyre not Criminals!! so just a little more nuance on the alleged gang problem and the poverty in the city

korra does start out very naive w very black and white ideas (ex. “you guys are CRIMINALS?”) i think a really good way of developing her away from her sheltered naive worldview is putting her in whats clearly an incredibly complicated city w an absolute cesspool of political conflicts, ethnic tensions, the lasting effects of colonization, etc and having her try and understand the needs of “the people” in a more complicated way than “i have to save the good guys from the bad guys” ykwim? and i think the absolute WORST way to do that is what they did. bc we get mako and bolin who could contribute genuinely compelling thematic elements to the story: one parent who was indigenous and one who was from a colonizer background in the decades directly following the end of the war, kids who grew up in poverty apparently without any familial support, and who now are trying to be “respectable” members of society (especially mako). and then most of that is pretty much tossed aside bc asami swoops in w her capitalist dad and her piles of money and the class issue is just never talked about again.

so the way i’d fix all that is like. introducing more, like, normal people. some nonbenders, more workers, more immigrants, etc, to show what daily life is actually like for people. because. we dont know! we dont have any context about whether the nonbender oppression thing is actually an issue bc we dont KNOW any nonbenders with normal lives! and spoiler: the nonbender oppression thing is not an issue. bc it doesnt make historical sense. lok is set 7 decades after the end of the war. that is not by ANY stretch of the imagination long enough to heal from the scars of imperialism, ESPECIALLY not when lok is also set in a settler colonial state. like that fact should have featured PROMINENTLY in the political and social setting! realistically, nonbenders arent an oppressed class, earth and water nation people are, regardless of bending status! as in all settler colonial states, the colonizers and their descendants (in this case fire nation people) retain most of the financial and political capital, leaving the colonized and racialized immigrants (in this case earth kingdom and water tribe people respectively) generally impoverished and politically suppressed. like aside from the fact that theres no way toph would have become a cop, it’s so ridiculous to think that an established privileged class of fire nation colonizers would EVER accept being policed by earthbenders!

imagine how much more nuanced and interesting it would be to set republic city as a remnant of a colonial past still fraught w the violence and tension that colonialism and the associated ideology imposed?? instead of some vague ideas of criminal who wear 1920s outfits and harass shopkeepers think about why extralegal and violent groups like that might form! earth kingdom people trying to push for the reclamation of their land? ethnic groups protecting themselves against corrupt cops? ESPECIALLY w the history that the fire nation has of SPECIFICALLY jailing and killing earthbenders and waterbenders BECAUSE of the potential they have to resist against fire nation imperialism like it just makes no sense at all that earthbenders would be privileged on land that, 70 years ago, they would have been imprisoned on! like these various paramilitary groups falling along these different ideological or ethnic lines, fire nation or earth kingdom or water tribe, pro colonization or anti colonization, pro cop or anti cop, pro immigrant or anti immigrant, and then you juxtapose that w depictions of a govt thats failing to keep this all under control w tenzin trying desperately to keep it together despite the fact that it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the state has no interest in taking the conflicts seriously and would rather just point vague fingers at criminals and gangs? and THEN you bring in korra, who has no idea about any of this and thinks that all its gonna take is kicking some ass every couple days, meeting normal people who offer all kinds of different opinions abt the efficacy of the state and the different violent or nonviolent groups and ideologies clashing in the city and the way all this shit is affecting people’s lives and livelihoods and relationships w other citizens??

theres so much good shit there so many incredible things u could do w that like Where do we go after colonial atrocities? is it possible for a settler colonial state to take revolutionary or indigenous ideas seriously? is liberal reform enough in a state like this? and then all the growth that korra could do going from a simple black and white life about mastering the elements to this messy complicated sociopolitical knot of a city? and all the different kinds of characters u could introduce in this city? like why would u EVER think that the most interesting characters that this story has to offer is a police chief a congressman and a billionaire????

but anyways. that’s what the Setting of my idealized version of lok is. as for the actual plot, it is as follows

it starts out similarly as the show. republic city is MUCH more fraught w political tension and violence and korra knows this but assumes that it’s just a matter of throwing a few gang leaders and corrupt officials in jail. tenzin manages to come see them in the south pole and intends give korra real lessons while he’s there but they receive news of a terrorist attack in republic city only a few days after he gets there so his family has to pack up and leave again.

korra stows away to republic city (katara catches her leaving and gives her blessing im a SUCKER for that moment). she does have a hard time adjusting but she doesn’t do what she did in the show lol the first person she meets in the city is this older woman who works on the docks, directs her to a place where she can eat and gives her a roof to sleep under for the first night. so korra’s first exposure to republic city is just about forming connections w ordinary people like ship workers and a family owned restaurant and people practicing their bending in the park. and by the time she reaches air temple island a day or so later her head is spinning w all this new information and the way that nothing is really what she expected it to be. tenzin gives her his own perspective on everything and pema gives her her own perspective on everything and even those two seem wildly different from all the people she’s already met. and so korra starts to get a kind of outline of the conflicts plaguing the city as extremely complex and a lot more influenced by older ideas of fire nation imperialism and earth kingdom land reclamation than she had any idea about.

mako and bolin are still pro benders but not like. super famous like they are in the show. korra’s picked up a couple friends by now and one of them takes her to a gym where a lot of amateur pro bending (is that an oxymoron? lol) matches happen and thats how she meets mako and bolin and joins their pro bending team. Unfortunately for korra, this gym is run by lin beifong, and also has the distinction of being one of the most notoriously anti settler state organizations in the country. lin beifong is NOT a cop but she runs this gym (and the pro bending league) as a way to offer support to local earth kingdom/water tribe youth, teach self defense skills, a center of community organizing, and sometimes to act as a front to hide revolutionary/combat organizing against the pro fire nation paramilitaries/police force. tenzin is DISTRAUGHT that korra does this and this is where the friction btwn them comes from bc (from tenzin’s perspective) she does things like this without thinking or even fully understanding the context behind them and tenzin will have to deal w the political fallout of the avatar openly aligning herself w a very divisive figure in the community and (from korra’s perspective) tenzin is too unwilling to take sides in a conflict that’s claiming lives and when the state is clearly not taking sufficient steps to protect people well then why the hell shouldnt she align herself w lin beifong, who IS taking steps to protect and support people?

as korra more fully integrates herself into the city and learns more abt how different people think abt everything going on this is where the real exposition abt the equalists begins. they’re a paramilitary group w an ideology thats gaining increasing support among middle/upper class fire nation people, esp nonbenders. on the face theyre abt putting checks on “bender oppression” but really it’s an excuse to persecute and surveil earthbenders waterbenders and airbenders, bc fire nation people have all this leftover fear about benders who arent fire nation Rising Up Against them and these people who r using their Savage Excuse for Bending to terrorize good innocent (fire nation) people. theres all too frequent terrorist attacks that the equalists claim credit for mostly against monuments to earth/water/air nation people and earth/water nation community centers (one like it was the event that forced tenzin back to republic city) but also like the govt doesnt take a lot of these seriously or if they do only a couple people are charged without doing damage to the entire organization

this is also around the time that they meet asami and she becomes part of their friend group. asami likes pro bending but her dad HATES it so she sneaks out to watch matches at lin beifong’s gym (korra says ironically like don’t u know how ~divisive~ that is and asami answers that the only reason its Not divisive is that gyms like beifongs are the only place where nobody recognizes her). and asami alongside korra is also kind of developing a more nuanced perspective on the city that she lives in cuz obviously the only worldview she’s ever been exposed to is her father’s right? and she keeps pushing it off making excuses not to bring mako and bolin and korra around to her house or even not to be seen w them in certain neighborhoods until they call her on it and she’s like Well honestly my dad might do something awful to u! and i dont wanna risk it!

and as time goes on we see more abt asami’s home life like her father’s hyper conservative politics and asami keeps these secrets abt her hobbies and her friends from him but she’s still clearly under his influence and mako bolin and korra r getting increasingly worried abt it cuz like...asami seems to tend to make excuses for him so that she wont have to be drawn into conflict and originally they think its just her being privileged and thats def part of it but the more they find out abt it the more they realize what a tight fucking grip he has on her and the way that like. asami sneaking out once or twice a week is the Only thing she does for herself. and it really starts freaking them out how influential this billionaire is and all the information theyre getting from asami abt what a piece of shit he clearly is. and so that whole plot thing comes about and shows us how deeply embedded these “equalist” ideas are in conservative republic city politics and how much influence theyre actually having in policy making and law enforcement.

asami suffers in the aftermath of this like being forced to truly confront the harm her father is doing both to the city and to herself. and she ends up leaving home when this discovery really breaks. but bc of the deep corruption in govt and police sato isn’t really....dealt with? like this big story breaks and everyones like Oh, My God! Hiroshi Sato Is Funding An Illegal Paramilitary Group! and theres all kinds of inane political discourse about it and he’s arrested but he bails himself out immediately and his finances are examined but he maintains control over them and after a few weeks the gang (bc they Have become close among all this w much less interpersonal drama lol) has to admit that this news story hasnt done what they thought it was going to it hasn’t dealt the equalists a real hit its just given them a very high profile ally

and this is when things really start to ramp up in terms of action like up until now korra’s daily activities are mostly like hanging around in the city w her friends (which in part entails doing little avatar stuff that people dont feel comfortable going to police with, like Can you help me my ex husband wont pay child support or Please help i got robbed and i really needed that money for rent next month or Help my son keeps skipping school can you talk to him cuz im worried abt him being safe and doing well in school) and pro bending and airbending lessons (which i know ive neglected this part of the story in terms of her whole spiritual/physical conflict but it’s more of a subtle thing like it’s one of tenzin and korra’s more frequent arguments like tenzin says she needs to focus on spirituality and korra asks why she even needs to bc republic city is a sociopolitical problem not a spiritual one) but now the equalist threat seems to really be looming on every level of society like the storyline of equalists preventing pro bending matches happens here and everyones just at a total loss of what to do next. plus increasing and scary rhetoric about tenzin and his family that destroying the last airbenders is necessary to preserving the integrity of the united republic

and so theres the equalist takeover of the city. the people who are mostly resisting this are lin and ragtag group of people who have been resisting colonial rule for a long time (including suyin, who is part of a communist anti colonial community outside the city, because i said so and i think it would be fun), people who have been visiting her gym for years, members of her amateur pro bending league, plus asami and korra and tenzin. korra and tenzin have a sweet moment (bc they do genuinely care abt each other a lot even if their relationship has been marked w a lot of tension and arguing) where tenzin says like you know i think that ive lost focus on the kind of spirituality that might actually help you. korra says what do you mean? and tenzin kind of gestures to where theyre sitting with people buzzing around organizing to take care of innocents and civilians and to fight the equalists and he says this is a kind of spiritual too, isnt it?

and something something plot plot blah blah i havent decided on the details of the plot climax yet but that’s the climax of korra’s character development and what helps her connect w her spiritual side in order to protect the city: the realization that community is its own kind of spirituality. and it kind of represents the real development that i want her to have going from somebody who thinks that the world is divided into criminals and victims and she has to save the victims Into the kind of avatar who understands the people that she’s bound to serve. she becomes an avatar of the people!

and then happy ending lol korra and asami get together lin and tenzin reconcile after years of being at odds the show ends on a hopeful note that the inhabitants of republic city and the united republic as a whole Can move on from the scars of colonialism by reckoning w the remnants of fire nation colonial ideology and reparations to the earth kingdom people whose land this is and destruction of colonial systems that have maintained and enforced colonial violence all these years

#the ending of this isnt as detailed as the beginning and middle bc ive drafted the first couple chapters but i havent thought out the #logistics and details of the climax lol #asks #lok

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tragicomedys · 4 years

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uhmmm gentan

WEOWOEOOOWOOIIEOIFPOPLP

>:) . i love gentan a lot. now im not gonna be able to give a sexy ass nuanced essay like my fellow mutuals do about their pairings but listen . i just think theyre great. i think they complement each other i think they could potentially have been rlly fucking good i think they couldve really been essential figures to the other’s development. notice the word COULDVE because yeah i admit a lot of the pairings i like come from my own perception on how they couldve developed bc like admittedly genya had way more potential and tanjirou as great and fun as he is he literally just stays static thru out the whole manga. except for a couple of small moments. but like other than that hes mr perfect BUT ANYWAY

i think for genyas part its kinda obvious. tanjirou helped him Tremendously through his relationship with his brother & overall was pretty protective over genya n shit. i think tanjirou helps/would help genya gain more confidence overall, especially thinking back to his last moments where he thought of tanjirou and his words to gain, like, the confidence and strength to go through with the mission even tho he was doubting himself. in that way, tanjirou sorta completes genya, like he reminds genya to be kinder to himself and be more confident in himself and etc etc. pretty common tanjirou behavior.

for tanjirous part... their backstories are similar in how they both experienced the deaths of their entire family (in contrast to zenitsu and inosuke, and kinda kanao because her original family’s deaths arent expanded on), but the way each of them took it provided like a backdrop to their characterizations. i know tanjirous own experience with coping and grieving isnt expanded on too much, considering how its shown that he sorta “accepted” the death of his family from the beginning (thinking back to the scene where he held that guys hand & smiled, and even if that wasnt necessarily acceptance we dont REALLY see tanjirou process his past trauma in depth ig), but i think tanjirou in general is someone that would be closed off abt his own grief and pain cuz hes the “older brother” and would naturally hide away anything he thinks would worry and upset others. i mean we already see that in how he didnt tell that little nurse butterfly girl that he had a fever for his sun breathing (self-sacrifical too) and how he was basically kinda like. not expecting to be alive by the time nezuko would become human/theyd defeat muzan (essentially accepted dying when his face got FUCKED up until zenitsu said ur not dead yet buddy; overall he doesnt accept other ppls help easily as he noted how if he were the demon in their situation nobody would help him (i forgot what manga ch that was but he said smth like that) amongst other situations). theres also one of the first demons he fought where he was talking about how as the oldest brother he needs to endure more stuff and pain and whatever whatever u know. so what the fuck im getting at by the end of all of this is that i just think as genya could develop into being more confident n sortaaaa pushy (i feel like hes naturally pushy with basically anybody except his brother and tanjirou LMFAO) and could like, help tanjirou express his feelings in its entirety more freely yknow, like both the good and the bad. like i mentioned with why im not really into inotan / zentan (like that i feel like tanjirou would always feel the need to look over them n honestly can u blame him ? theyre Crazy) but i like gentan bc i feel like they could naturally become more equal in a sense when it comes to how they balance each other out. genya could've possibly been a character to help tanjirou through his own grief that he’s internalizing and couldve been someone tanjirou could relax around and not feel the need to look over... IFFFFF AND ONLY IF his character was expanded on/didnt die that quickly n early or whatever.

I think that kinda dynamic would also work out bc of how genya couldve possibly been feeling towards his brother growing up, just watching him from a distance and wanting to help him but not being able to do anything. and his guilt when he accused sanemi would just be insurmountable. so what im getting at is that i feel like genya wouldnt want that to happen, like, again, and thats why i think he’d actually take action when he grew to be more of a risk-taker and would try 2 actually make tanjirou open up yknow. bc again tanjirou upholding his “oldest bro” title wouldve taken a toll on him if u ask me. that whole vision of himself would logically lead to a lot of bottling up of emotions. i know genya tried making that right and tried helping his bro by like, becoming a demon slayer, but again i just can see genya and tanjirou having that sorta relationship.

ANYWAY. again i do acknowledge that like, for the most part ive probably filled up parts of their personalities bc i think the both of them had more potential/couldve been developed more like i just view it sorta as a flaw how static tanjirou is and how short genya’s time was. it’s definitely possible and likely that i interpreted some scenes in a very diff way compared to others, and i mightve interpreted their characterizations differently than watever other people. but like in my big dumbo brain theyre gay theyre fun they would love eahc other 2 death they would have a lotta fun together and BLAH BLAH ! but besides the “analysis” i jusyt gave on them i just thikn theyd be awesome. mr “i thought he’d talk to me since we were both in the nude” tanjirou kamado. the way genya and tanjirou have blushed @ each other many times WOUGJOUIHJ. the way they give each other strenght . the way genya protected him in battle and thought of him during his last moments . the way tanjirou is easily impressed (u remember when he was like WOAH SO COOL about mitsuri n stuff and genya was just like ... :| ) so i just think its funny if tanjirou thought genya was cool like . .it’s genya LFMREI9WODJFSLK. i know every other person tanjirous age is like in love with him but whatevrr tanjirou would crush on my homeboy genya 🙄 . iwas gonna say something else but i totally just forgot

in conclusion they should kiss just cuz i said so or what ever idk

#oh gentan ? ummmm yeah theyre like whatever 🙄#theyre ummmm 😒 okkkkkk.#anyway please i ju ts i ghfu gyfcvu9grei9fdijklj welocme 2 my fuckign nightmare.#why is this gif so fucking large im so sorry. but thats me like i jump out of my little fish tank and flop flop flop #THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING KING IM SORRY IT TOOK A WHILE TO GET TO I JUST THINK WITH MY HEAD A LOT BUT THEN FORGET.#TY!!!#im on laptop ill tag later #mutuals #kny #(:<#nezukoz #kny manga spoilers

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juunshua · 6 years

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thoughts on junhui and yanan's performance? i do kind of agree with hao when he said that there could be a tendency where yanan could be overpowered by jun and his role. and it did show in the performance... but god the concept of the stage in general? is so galaxy brain to me jkshafkjds its interesting that we see a lot of what goes on in junhui's brain junhui is so much more than a pretty face,,, tho i really do feel that yanan was overshadowed dsajhkjfd but the high note he belted out? legend

ahh did hao say that? i do agree that yanan was overshadowed, it was kind of already obvious from the previews though from their body language: junnie was obviously taking on a more leadership role. i must admit, as a jun stan, that definitely excited me. i dont recall a single moment where junnie has taken the lead in a musical endeavor, he was always passive for whatever reason. this might sound kinda...rough...but i think something about svt holds him back. back to the performance, though...same! i thought the stage was absolutely beautiful. to me this is what id call a ‘performance’. the way he combined acting with the music and singing was great. nothing was overbearing or felt unnecessary or out of place, which is something that i definitely felt with my i (it was ironic to me how a song that is about continuity felt so..discontinuous and truncated through that rearrangement). the composition itself was so bare at points! like not much is happening really its the same four chords more or less and the vocal melody itself is repetitive and predictive. thats how much the performance lied in the hands of the performance to make it interesting and i think junnie definitely pulled through. im not sure what the mission exactly was but two teams had to take one piece of music and incorporate it into another song? something along those lines im not sure about the exact nuances behind it but junnie and yanan did not really ‘weave it into the music’ perse? like i think the idea was to use that simple melody as a motif when u combined it with another song but junnie and yanan only had it playing from the record player. to me, i dont think that was a bad choice, maybe not what the show was expecting, but it wasnt a bad choice at all. it was interesting to see how they would tackle the ‘problem’ of that song and its interesting because the way that the melody was actually put into the song was as a plot point, almost something ud expect from musical theater. junnie is an actor through and through like the way his mind works is to see things as a story which i think is wonderful. if the mission was to incorporate two songs together and combine it into one, they definitely didnt fulfill that goal, but if it was just to use two songs for one performance then i dont see anything wrong with what they did. one song was used as the main melodic push and the other song was used as a plot point to enhance the performance aspect of it.tl;dr this stage was GORGEOUS and i loved seeing what sort of things are going on inside junnies brain. as u said, hes not just a pretty face, and hes not just a silly person who plays jokes all the time. he is both but hes a lot more than that too and as a jun stan its been a struggle to get anything from him past those two things that he always pushes in svt. i was very very very thankful for this stage. it might be a rare once in a lifetime thing but i hope to god it isnt i need to hear his artistic voice in svt more please its absolutely wonderful. and although yanans artistic voice could have been overshadowed, i do think theres something to be said about the person who can properly execute the vision of another artist like that is not easy either. must be something magical about the boy ahaha two of my fav stages have involved him (my fav from last weeks was his duet with jc). i cant wait for him to also unlease his magic and show the world what he can do! laksjdf under the cut is my interpretation of the stage and performance because i wanted to note it down somewhere ahaha

i think i read some translation somewhere that junnie meant for the performance to be like yanan as a spectator and jun as someone, i dont know how else to express this , but as someone who is 'losing their mind' per se? but to me it kinda seemed like two halves of a whole. perhaps yanan did start off as a spectator, and thats why the performance starts off with them either separated with a barrier or by space, distance, and direction. its right after junnie touches yanan that the record player starts playing again after yanan had stopped it at the beginning of the performance, and thats when he breaks it too. when yanan unmasks junnie its almost as if hes uncovered the other part of himself? like this mysterious masked figure just turns out to be himself in the end? its also after that part where they start singing to each other and gradually closing the space between them and even musically like did u notice their parts switched? the lines that junnie was singing in the first part of the song, yanan now sings and vice versa. they start becoming more and more unified as the song progresses, performance wise and musically as well. even the calm yanan gets a bit ‘riled up’ by the end of the song, you can see junnies persona seep into his own. but thats how i saw it. the wonderful thing about music is how open to interpretation it is. i think its these kinds of performances that are so open to interpretation that are even more musical imo laksdj idk how to explain,

#that g5 ? hmm idk thats kinda too high for tenors to mix in general idk why they gotta do that ngl #what i liked about it though was how the tone of that note basically was the same as the guitar that came in as soon as that note finished #thats my favorite kind of thing #to like akin the human voice to actual musical instruements makes me so happy asldkfj idk why #also junnie placed out of his nose for like the majority of this song #he sounded so nice why cant he always do this #this song wasnt also too high for junnie thank god and the higher notes went to yanan in general bless #also @hao...take notes laksdjf #hmm comparing haos and vins performance to this though #their use of twinkle twinkle little star wasnt as permeated as i thought?#it was only there in the beginning and the end #more or less what jn and yn did #hmm #replies #anon

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flakandforay · 6 years

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뱁새 Silver Spoon Analysis

this is the analysis for 뱁새 - the 6th track of bangtan’s 4th mini album, 화양연화 pt. 2

i will be analysing several components - music, lyrics and choreography.

disclaimer: this is just my personal opinion, feel free to disagree. do let me know your thoughts in my ask box

overall: talk about a really hyped song that could easily be on par or even overtake dope. the heavy bass and lit song is what we all need once in a while to let loose.

music: the song already starts off with some heavy bass and synths that are so intense - one could already sense that this song is going to be hardcore without any lyrics yet; it’s just how it is. for some reason, the synths kinda sound really creepy and this underlying muffled bass complements the whole beat. not to mention this creepy keyboard melody that just seals the deal. it’s a full 10 seconds worth of soaking in the beat and ive never felt so hyped for it. then at 0:10, here comes the impending crescendo percussion that would lead to the chorus.

the chorus drops already with namjoon and one could hear how there is doubling already to enhance the sound of the song especially songs like this where people could easily sing along to etc. not to mention how namjoon’s style of doing this chorus with his volume of the voice only complements the song even more. not to mention that short adlib of ‘whoo’ at 0:19 and that part before yoongi continues at 0:22-0:23 to hype up the chorus even more ( who knew one could hype the chorus even more than it should !!!! ) also i love how the impending percussion comes around to signal the end of the chorus as well.

then hoseok starts off with his rap at 0:35 with a more relaxed tone to complement the beat that is less intense now. yet even at hoseok’s rap, there’s a lot of adlibs as well inside such as at 0:42 and 0:46. then it transitions quickly to namjoon taking over at 0:47, but the way he raps here is more enunciated to go with the beat now and interestingly namjoon’s part can be seen as a link between the rap and the prechorus especially since it’ll be repeated later on. then this quick synth comes in at 0:57 to signal taehyung’s part for the prechorus.

interestingly this prechorus is not driven so much by the percussion but rather driven by the brasses and synth that gives it a unique sound together with how taehyung does his part slightly differently as well. then there’s this percussion rhythm at 1:03 that becomes quite important as signal markers throughout the song. there’s this quick line at 1:12 before taehyung continues his prechorus again but with a voice slightly lighter; yet it still sounds full because of jungkook doubling for him.

the song then quickly transitions to 1:21 with the vocal line but more on jimin and taehyung as their voices stand out more here. oh, and that riff at 1:30 by jungkook and jimin that leads into the chorus by hoseok this time round- yet keeping the same intensity as the first chorus as though it hadn’t even changed. unexpectedly, there is no synth or percussion that builds in the intensity unlike other songs where one could easily predict the drop but for this case, it seemed as though one would already know when the drop would happen honestly- really interesting if you asked me. namjoon then come back to take over the second part of the chorus and one could hear the more prominent creepy synths being used.

then it moves on to yoongi’s part at 1:55 with namjoon doing a bit of doubling as well. but here the beat is less intense again, pushing the emphasis this time round to the lyrics of yoongi much like hoseok earlier on. then at 2:05, there is that quick hype before it moves on to namjoon again being the link of the rap verses to the prechorus. interesting how namjoon has no actual rap verses here but rather does the links between the verses and the prechorus.

taehyung then comes in swiftly at 2:18 and talk about the use of brasses right here and it suits taehyung’s timbre of voice as well. not to mention the percussion inside is great as well and then short line at 2:29 before taehyung resumes again together with the creepy synth back again.

then there is this nice switch in which the bridge comes around with jungkook singing it at 2:42 and there’s his slight breakdown as well in the beat without the synth but more on percussion. then namjoon comes in at 2:48 with ‘you must be kidding me’ before taehyung comes in again at 2.51. interestingly at 3:06, one could hear jungkook singing this time round and taehyung doing the doubling for this one. then at 3:17 with jimin and seokjin wrapping it up with that nice riff at 3:27 before the last chorus comes in at 3:28.

the last chorus starts off with yoongi as he goes with the beat that is heavily driven on the percussion before at 3:38, the beat slightly changes as hoseok does this part with the beat being more focused on his voice rather than the beat. then the song ends with this synth from 3:49-3:51.

lyrics: okay so honestly i am in love with the lyrics because theres so many underlying nuances inside; it’s like a subtle diss.

but anyway, for some general information, 뱁새 = crow-tit is a type of bird that is found in Korea, it’s a really cute bird with long legs

but it also has another meaning which is ‘try-hard’; the meaning that bangtan is using for this song.

There's a phrase in Korean "뱁새가 황새 걸음을 걸으면 가랑이가 찢어진다", which means "if a crow-tit walks like a stork, it will break its legs." The meaning is that you’ll ruin yourself if you try to imitate someone better than you. ( Reference )

so this is the meaning that bangtan brought across, sort of dissing the older generation etc since many looked down on the current generation - the millennials

They call me 뱁새 욕봤지 이 세대

They call me a try-hard. Our generation has had it hard.

here namjoon already talks about how the current generation is already under pressure from the older generation by being different etc especially now with the different way of thinking and a lot of technology being infused in the current generation.

알바 가면 열정페이 학교 가면 선생님 상사들은 행패 언론에선 맨날 몇 포 세대

At my part time job, it’s “all for experience”.* At school, there’s the teachers. My superiors use violence. In the media they go on about “the generation that’s given up.”

i really love hoseok’s verse because it’s something that many of us can relate to. in korea, it is commonly known that this current generation are ones who give up too easily, similar to the strawberry generation where we are so called ‘easily-bruised’. really love how hoseok literally brought the fact that last time teachers used violence as punishment etc, last time the popular, hitting the hand with the ruler etc, but of course, now it’s different. love how he made comparisons that feels really nostalgic to me.

룰 바꿔 change change 황새들은 원해 원해 maintain 그렇게는 안 되지 BANG BANG 이건 정상이 아냐

Change the rules, change change. The ones who came before us want to, want to maintain. But we can’t do that, bang bang. This ain’t normal.

this verse by namjoon that could somehow be considered as a pre chorus or possibly a hook ( now that i think about it, the structure of this song is a bit different and is more repetitive )

namjoon brings up how we change the rules yet those in the older generations wants to keep them, clear polar opposites. he even talks about how the current generation cant do what we want and it’s abnormal.

아 노력노력 타령 좀 그만둬 아 오그라들어 내 두 손발도 아 노력 노력 아 노력 노력 아 노랗구나 싹수가 역시 황새!

Ah, stop going on about ‘effort’ and more ‘effort’. Ah it makes my hands and feet cringe. Ah, try harder, ah, try harder. Ah, you really don’t have a chance. As expected of the ones before us!

okay this pre chorus lyrics are amazing because look at this diss!!! literally bangtan talks about how the older generations mostly talk about putting in effort so much that the younger generations just gets annoyed, hence the ‘cringe’ line. yet the younger generations already know that they dont have a chance to stand out, hence the older generations could easily talk about effort.

(역시 황새야) 실망 안 시켜 (역시 황새야) 이름 값 하네 (역시 황새야) 다 해먹어라 (역시 황새야) 황새야

(As expected of them*), they meet your expectations. (As expected of them), they’ve earned their name. (As expected of them), they can just take it all. (As expected of them), those that came before us.

the ‘them’ here refers to the older generations, saying how being the older generations, they could say all this but they should have known that generations change.

난 뱁새다리 넌 황새다리 걔넨 말하지 ‘내 다린 백만 불짜리’ 내 게 짧은데 어찌 같은 종목 하니? They say ‘똑같은 초원이면 괜찮잖니!’ Never Never Never

I’ve got a crow-tit’s legs, and you have a stork’s legs. They all say their legs are worth a million bucks. My legs are shorter, so how do you expect me to keep up? They say it shouldn’t matter since we’re coming from the same place. Never, never, never.

in yoongi’s lyrics, he already makes the stark comparison in terms of their legs and already saying how the current generation is already at a disadvantage, though people say it shouldnt matter, but of course in reality, it does matter, some just have it better than others when they were born.

hence this line in the chorus, 금수저로 태어난 내 선생님 = My teachers were born with it all.

내 탓이라니 너 농��이지 공평하다니 oh are you crazy 이게 정의라니 you mu be kiddin’ me! You mu be kiddin’ me you you mu be kiddin’ me!

It’s my fault? You’re joking, right? This is fair? Oh, are you crazy? This is right? You must be kiddin’ me! You must be kiddin’ me, you you must be kiddin’ me!

then this bridge is the final mockery that bangtan has for them, more like subtle mockery because it is known that the older generation literally blames the younger generation for everything and making comparisons that aren't even having the same base to be compared. hence in reality, it is not fair to the younger generation.

but this line as well in the chorus, 황새 덕에 내 가랑인 탱탱 = thanks to those that came before us I’m spread too thin - in which they talk about how before the younger generation does anything, they are already pressured by the older generation etc.

i really love the witty lyrics that bangtan delivers here, truly remarkable, especially when seen in context as bangtan talks about the current problems of the youths.

Reference: Colour Coded ©

choreography: so the choreography was actually released on their 3rd muster 22920, in early Jan where the world of hip thrusts was introduced and we are all deceased ( let’s be real ), no one saw it coming, no one could even prepare themselves emotionally and mentally, let alone spiritually.

but anyway, i really like how this choreography is just really intense to go with the beat of the song and using hip thrusts to actually relay this out.

like these hip thrusts are even amplified in hoseok’s rap apart from the chorus ( why more?? )

but i love how this dance already starts off, talk about some big movements and when they all do it together, it is more pleasing to look at

love how bangtan does this move too in which they gather together in sync, for some reason it looks as though they are going to gang up on you with all these powerful moves, coupled with their facial expressions; talk about an impact to the audience

also, one could see that throughout this choreography, they found some spaces in between the song to actually just groove to the song without having to actually have full dance steps every step of the way ( for eg. in dope )

such as here

but what’s interesting is also the pre chorus where namjoon is getting it and showing his great leg proportions with everyone behind him, especially when he does this move when he raps a more elongated part ( if you know what i mean )

also, this iconic dance move that hoseok created ( the horse dance in 2014 during their promotions for war of hormone ) and to think they incorporated it in this dance in Jan 2016 !!! ( a legend !! ) a nostalgic dance move!!! somehow i guess hoseok was inspired by the iconic nae nae.

i really like how they included something to goof around ( a true trait of bangtan ) by even having them kinda hi-five their hands before they do the move, clearly seen by the maknae line

last thoughts: really love this hyped song because it never gets old despite it possibly being on repeat.

[Photo Source] Bighit Entertainment Credits: maxine ☕️ DO NOT REPOST ©

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afroggyfrog · 3 years

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Political compass

To some people a political compass is just a “fun” quiz like “what type of bread are you?” and if you’re that kind of person then don’t waste your breath telling me I’m overthinking. There’s people that take it seriously, maybe they live in a 2d world with simple, 2d beliefs that always be plotted on a 2d grid, or maybe they just want that to be true, because it’s more comfortable than to think “I really don’t understand politics”.

A political compass of political compasses.

One axis can’t be used for more than one question

Let’s say we have a political compass of 1 axis, lets say, it has 2 questions.(i would have added “do you prefer donkeys or elephants” but that would just make it unnecessarily complex)

https://forms.gle/gCifTpqu2hTNo7s86

Do you prefer blue or red?

If you’re in a maze and your path is split, do you go to the left or to the right?

These questions perfectly correspond to what a politics fan might call “democrat” or “republican”, and to be serious, the answers to this probably predict who you’re gonna vote for at least a little. So what’s the problem with this model? You might not think that people who prefer different colours or maze paths wouldn’t hate each other but the whole point of politics is to hate each other So imagine this was a real political test, and if someone answers differently from you, yo hate them. Now imagine that my political axis is GOP and DEM, if you select blue left youre a DEM extremist and if you select red right youre a GOP extremist, anything else and you’re a centrist.

From the point of view of an extremist (according to the american political compass), you’ve got your side, your polar opposite, and some people who are in the middle and it all seems to make some sense.

From the point of view of someone who happens to like red but also sticks to the left side of a maze your political compass results puts you in the exact same spot as your polar opposite whom you hate very much, in the same spot as someone who answered neutral to both questions, and to one side and to the other, sit people who you think as pretty much the same as eachother, since they both just agree and disagree with you in equal measures, and none of it makes any sense.

Now imagine if there was a country where the leftists wore the color red and the rightists wore blue (i think it might just be literally every country except america?) and all of a sudden the same political compass puts all the previous extremists into the middle and it splits the 3 centrists into the left, right, and center (that 1 guy who answers neutral on everything is literally the only person worth the title of centrist)

To put this into the simplest words I can, you can have extremists that are perfectly opposed to each other end up in the middle, unless the questions aren’t all just the same thing rephrased. And this is a huge flaw that you cant get rid of unless you add a new dimension to the compass, a new dimension for every single question you add, at 1 question a line, at 2 questions a 2d grid, at 3 questions a cube... So the political compass can only tell you as much info about someone as you can get frrom asking them only 2 questions, trying to cram more than 2 questions into it will only lead to misrepresentation.

Almost every political extremist sits in the center

Because the larger the number of possible policies you could use to guess someones political compass position, the more combinations of extreme stances on each policy could end up canceling each-other on the compass, but that doesn’t make them any less extreme, it just means that in order to be in one of the corners or the sides only 8 combinations of extremist opinions can be had. If you have 3 policies each with 2 extremist stances that can be had, thats already 8 combinations, for 4 policies thats 16, for 10 policies that let you be an extremist thats 1024 combinations. That means that if humans were only capable of having 10 policies then only 0.8% of the ideologies with the most extremist positions on each policy would be seen as an extremist by the political compass.

But even if it’s broken in theory, you would at least expect right wingers to be on the right side and left wingers to be on the left side of the compass, since even if your opinion isn’t represented by the political compass, neither is your opinion represented by the 2 parties, so they should at least misrepresent your opinion in the same way (it always boils down to 2 parties because our voting systems are just broken but voting systems deserve their own separate post)

Why americans are immune to noticing its defects

I’m not a historian, but I read somewhere that the popular version of the political compass cant be applied to 20th century european politics because the political compass of the time was this triangle.

It seems pretty intuitive that different cultures at different time periods would need unique and incompatible political compasses. A political compass may ask stuff about race to someone who’s never talked to someone of a different race irl, or a question about congress to someone who’s country doesn’t have a congress, it can ask “are people more divided by class than by nationality” and the answer feels like it should vary solely by the country they are in rather than by their opinion, these are all questions I randomly got by searching for political compass.

Perhaps it’s just a coincidence but every political compass I ever saw seemed like it was designed to only work on americans, this may or may not be due to the fact that american politics are the only politics that are ever talked about internationally. I also went and searched for “compas politic romanesc”, i found a study written in english that contained a political compass quiz written for romanians but the site where the quiz was hosted is just a blank page for me, you can still find the questions written in english in the link to the study at page 10) Every other result was also in english, so I wouldn’t even know political compasses existed if i didn’t know english.

So why does the compass designed for your personal culture end up feeling useful?

There’s this bias called the halo effect. To put it simply, if you are a fan of someone, or something, you’re going to convince yourself that every part of it is good, if you’re a democrat, you’ll convince yourself that everything they do is right, even if there’s no reason why ideas like open borders, climate change alarmism, additional taxes, gay marriage etc are related, you’ll convince yourself that if you like more ideas from democrats than you like from republicans, you’ll have to like ALL the ideas that come from democrats.

If you live in a world where everyone’s convinced themselves that there’s 2 sides then all of a sudden the political compass doesn’t feel like its grossly oversimplified to the point of making no sense, in fact, it even looks like it has more nuance than it needs, why do we need the authoritarian axis again? oh, theres a couple loud minorities in addition to the main parties, like communists and fascists and libertarians and hippies and because they’re all american off-brands the political compass puts each of them into their unique spots on the compass.

Sure every american who calls themselves a fascist will end up on the far right, but not Mussolini himself with his “race is a social construct” ideas, the father of fascism himself could be deemed a centrist by a modern-day political compass because hes not american.

Extremists that happen to be seen as centrists by the compass can simply be forgotten, after all, they’re probably the way they are because they’re not americans which means you’ll never have to discuss politics with them.

The silver lining

In a world where due to a broken voting system there are only 2 parties that matter, and where the halo effect makes people unnaturally aligned with the either one of the 2 dominant parties, a political compass could be helpful to someone who lived in a cave and was never corrupted by constant stream of political propaganda that is spewed online. Sure that his randomly-generated political opinion is 90% likely to be somewhere in the center, where every extremist sits, except 4 of them, but just on the off-chance that he aligns with one of the sides that america has deemed worthy of being trademarked he will know it, and can buy their branded stickers and hats.

The alternative

Just don’t talk about politics It’s a waste of time.

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unproduciblesmackdown · 7 years

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s2g that moss has even been foreshadowing that lars was gonna get briefly killed like…not that specific but since we’re shown that the moss is lars and the flowers have a bit of gem in them…………

ppl are always weird about stuff everywhere smh but like…theres been obviously weird things like being way more ok with ancient beings ready to destroy all life on the planet than lars being too ill-tempered or doing something selfish like…i see that…. like lars doesnt need to be redeemed for anything jeez. every episode where he does something crap its on a minor scale vs like endangering lives or something and he gets k.o’d for it and then makes some sincere form of apology like? theres your redemption…i guess maybe people expect him to become acceptable overnight maybe but thats how people work and then every episode is like The Lesson of the Week instead of a closer look at a character and another step in their development as people figuring themselves out

like literally every character has issues smh! in like this and everything also but like….honestly lars has been a super self conscious and anxious teen from the start and really unhappy and like sometimes he does dumbass shit but who hasnt. if you think youve never hurt people you havent been paying close enough attention

anyways one of the things i really dont like? despite general overall stuff like teenaged lars momentarily losing his patience and realizing he’s in the wrong and immediately trying to make amends = him being judged more harshly than like….every millenia-old actually murderous actual antagonist introduced…. is that overall? its like really really clear really early on that he’s always struggling with a lot of mental health issues, and a common theme is irl people who really do have disorders pointing this out. like, that point can be made for every character in su and lars isnt The Mentally Ill One who alone represents the whole of the universal mental illness experience because obviously that doesnt exist and its a very unique and personal experience, and people dont have to directly relate to lars or any other character with such problems to verify their own. but lars and the cool kids is like super upfront about anxiety and he obv has really low confidence and low self worth and i’ll fight anytime about island adventure hinting strongly at depression—in addition to having him state outright that he feels lonely and isolated all the time. and like, he hates the job he works all the time, he’s not good in school, he and sadie feel an early connection but they obviously had to do a lot of work on that and step on each other’s emotional fingers along the way to finally get to where they are now—which i’m guessing is dating but without acknowledging so or at least not to others, he isn’t very close to his parents currently, he starts the series with 1.5 friends maximum and cant even approach the cool kids besides being desperate to be friends with them

like clearly he’s unhappy and for a while sadie and steven are probably the people closest to him even tho he is a lot more annoyed by steven at the start of things when steven is more little-kiddish than he is now…..but lars still acts mostly like himself around them But at the start him and sadie have too many complications and uncertainties to be really comfortable and again steven doesnt really come across as very mature, with lars pointing it out just now how stevens changed in that way, and it being difficult anyways for lars to confide in anybody

so like lars is and has always been super super defined and restricted by his fear of everybody he encounters, specifically being afraid of being hurt by them / fear of being disliked. i like to say that i think the way he prevents himself / his image is meant to be a way of controlling the reactions he expects people to have: i.e. making people dislike him is less scary/painful than being judged badly while hoping for the opposite. but i also never like saying that anyone who consciously cultivates their Look is faker than someone who doesnt put any thought into it, or is lying to themselves or others or whatever, i just would bet thats a part of it. but moreso than that, the fact that he’s irritable and ill-tempered all the time fits really well as a result of being so unhappy and afraid and trying to deal with it solo. it’s not about him not caring about people, when on an unrelated note but related-to-the-universal-human-experience he does something thoughtless or mean or just generally crosses a line, he notices immediately when someone feels hurt, and he’s shown to immediately feel bad, arguably to a fault and going too far with how guilty he feels. but anyways clearly even though he has the capacity to hurt people’s feelings, he’s very sensitive to that, he cares deeply when it happens, and he doesn’t want to hurt people. like apologizing with any genuine depth to it right off is an incredibly difficult task even for grownass adults, and lars is already really good at it. its wild that people think of him as super cruel and selfish when it’s clear that he’s very emotionally vulnerable and doesn’t have the capacity to callously disregard other people’s hurt feelings

anyways a point i’m taking a really long time to come around to is that lars is a really good example of someone who’s young and unhappy and isolated and really struggling with a lot of things and afraid of everything and the fact is that usually when youre looking for characters who are struggling with this kind of shit you get one-dimensional, maybe even one-episode characters like the person who shows up for the very special episode where everyone has a serious talk and learns a serious lesson and the Depression Character never shows up again, having gone off to be depressed somewhere else since we already know about depressed people. or depression and anxiety is something that can be solved literally overnight if you just confront the root cause, like eliminating the life problem that made x depressed or giving y a makeover or throwing them a surprise party to show them they have friends or something. or you learn that joe the bully is actually just physically violent because he is insecure, whoa man. or the Sad Kid is a running joke and a periphery character and their parents are getting divorced etc etc etc etc

the point is that lars is a main character and even when he learns things about himself that put him in a better place than when the episode began, his issues still don’t vanish (and i wouldnt be surprised if people use that as evidence that his character doesnt “grow”). and dealing with / revealing some of his issues arent a special episode, its just an episode, and its about him. he’s developed over and over and he’s shown to be a complicated person. he’s shown to enjoy things and have interests and a life. he’s a regular character as much as anyone else is, he isnt set aside in a special category

but the thing is that maybe people expect Mentally Ill™ characters to be more of the hamfisted media clichés with zero nuance and about as much accuracy to them? because there’s always the sweet-and-soft kind of person who’s surely dealing with mental illness acceptably because they make up for it by being pure and noble and something approximately like a newborn lamb. like depression is being maybe a bit cagey and avoidant and crying a lot and writing poetry (which will later be revealed as their secret talent!!) and sighing and generally just waiting for someone to approach them, very gently because they are shy and nervous like a fawn, and that savior will cure them with love and also with showing them how beautiful life is!!! and then they will start wearing more colorful clothes and they will be happy and the depression is over now, because someone just had to show their delicate, beautifully wounded soul the light

trauma? you can tell someone has Trauma because they act very stoic and strong 1000% of the time no exceptions but it is just a façade. they will never talk about The Thing. they will finally talk about the thing because someone pries about it with pure intentions and it is a big dramafest and theyve never talked about this before and everyone cries and its super serious and heavy and the person is a bit softer after that because they could finally let it out that one time. thanks, another savior. having disorders is just having turned away from the light

the point is that irl obviously things are very different and its rare to see people with such issues being treated the same as any other character and being able to grow in a realistic way and being able to have flaws the way that everyone else does, not having to be a pure defenseless dewy-eyed baby kitten who someone strong and Normal needs to rescue and put on the right path away from these problems forever. being pissed off and frustrated and confused but trying a lot of different ways to figure things out anyways is a lot more common, the way lars reacts to and deals with his vulnerability is a lot more realistic than just being a fairy-tale in-distress type figure. his character feels a million times more like he was developed by people who understand what its like to be experiencing what he does and developed for people who can relate to him, rather than being made by and for people who cant directly relate and who tend to make content thats wholly inaccurate and treats that kind of thing like an Other issue for Others that you only need to learn bullet points about because if its going to be a part of your life it’ll be a fleeting, one-time thing, not your everyday reality

i mean, its unsurprising that lars is actually pretty comfortable with steven now, given how long theyve known each other, but also how relentless steven is in being supportive of lars and treating him like a friend. its not surprising that it took lars this long to accept that, or that it was in part forced along by being stuck in a “we might die” scenario with steven. and its important to point out that this wasn’t just lars changing that made their relationship better, but steven growing as a person as well. if you put both if them in that situation during the start of the series, they could probably get along better than usual still, but you cant say that this is the first sign of lars developing any more than you can say this is stevens first development. lars has been struggling with himself just as steven has, although not in a fate-of-the-world way till now. lars couldnt be so conscious of his own fear and frustrated with it, and steven wouldnt have the maturity to do stuff like freakin sacrifice himself for earth by separating himself from the other crystal gems, much less lend lars the emotional support needed to give lars enough confidence to protect the off-colors

lars has been developing the whole time and even if people look at individual episodes and think lars learns nothing during them, i cant see how anyone could deny that this isn’t a turning point for lars as much as its the culmination of a gradual path he’s already been on. not to mention that “turning point” has implications like “redemption arc,” as if lars was inherently bad or worthless at the start of the series. he wasn’t; none of the characters were, but each character and all of their relationships were least developed of course. we see details and different sides of the donuts right away, and they both care enough about steven to treat him more as a little brother than a customer and to humor him sometimes. theyve always been important, and the fact that lars has always been a main character in the set of protagonists and that steven has always been a friend means that he cannot be converted by a “redemption” arc. he’s already there smh he’s always been there. seriously name one episode where he’s done something shitty and didnt do anything to make up for it. the only thing unresolved rn is he couldnt fight topaz for sadie, and he said himself he felt guilty over it, and it was already at that point the boldest thing he’d done and like, its not that unreasonable for a wisp of a teen to be terrified by a giant gem warrior that he had zero chance of doing anything to anyways. it wasnt glistening heroics but if thats gonna condemn lars like throw me in the pit too i guess. then he went and died for twelve individuals and left himself defenseless in hostile unfamiliar territory so that steven can go back to earth so thats something. but before all this alien drama like, again…..he’s always directly apologizing for shit and he’s just making everyday kinds of fuckups. he beats himself up about stuff. and gets beat up. and really like doesnt ever require an apology when he’s the one to get hurt, which isnt a requirement by any means and which is probably part of him thinking too badly of himself

the point? that maybe i still havent made besides saying i was gonna make it like half a dozen times?? is that lars is a really real portrayal of a person dealing with things in a real way. and its not the “pain is transcendent” thing where if someone is Suffering from mental illness it makes them wiser and kinder and holier than us regular people. its not where all you need to help someone with mental illness is one incidence of reaching out and telling them you love them and look at the stars and isnt it lovely. its not where disorders themselves are an arc and at the end, people’s personalities will be indistinguishable from that of those who never experienced what they did. its where dealing with this shit is normal and human and everyday and its not beautiful and its not gonna make other people “inspired” or get to feel good about themselves as your savior. its about pushing people away or having them avoid you anyways because they can hurt you in ways they can’t understand as being hurtful and shits confusing and sometimes kids will lash out and i bet lars was a lot more Difficult closer to stevens age than he is now. its about characteristics that seem ugly or repulsive or otherwise don’t directly cry out for help. its about shit staying with you even while you’re trying to figure out how to work through it. its about the unpleasantness of it all but also the real humanity behind it, not just using it as some device. lars’s problems are about lars and belong to him

and yeah of course he hurts people, but literally all the characters do; it has nothing to do with having disorders or not. everyone hurts each other even though they love each other, sometimes with the best intentions or 0% knowingly because they just have to figure out more things about themselves and each other. everything is about people making mistakes. lars is no worse in that matter than any of the other characters, he just happens to have a less appealing/inviting personality, god forbid less relatable. in the recent episodes he didnt have his usual defensive abrasiveness, even his frustration with steven in “stuck together” wasn’t that significant, and wasnt even much directed at steven. after that he was just scared, without it being masked by anger. he could be brave for the other gems because he knew he wanted to be brave and he knew how it felt for them to be so afraid and he was finally told that it was an okay thing that he still felt terrified. he could be completely himself with steven because of all the ways steven has gotten to know lars and refused to stop valuing him and how steven has grown to be someone who could protect others on his own in serious situations—which in this case included supporting lars emotionally as well as protecting him physically. if lars was dropped in that situation with the kid who just learned to summon his shield and was having an ice cream crisis five minutes ago, he couldnt trust or rely on him or count on him for encouraging advice. the way lars is in the wanted arc being so different from earlier episodes is as much about stevens development as lars’s really

like the real lars is and always has been deeply sensitive to peoples feelings (to the point he feels extremely vulnerable to them e.g. afraid of being hurt by being regarded negatively) and he’s always cared about the people he feels close to and he’s always been capable of moments of bravery for the sake of others and he likes wrestling and he’s good at cooking and he’s a dumbass sometimes and he watches scary movies and plays video games and sucks at school and is grumpy and is passionate and is scared and is a huge nerd with nerd parents and he never got over feeling hurt by the explorer club incident and he doesnt like fries and he and his coworker like each other and relate to each other and he sees steven as his annoying little brother and he doesnt know what he wants and also he’s a bi icon, it must be exhausting

lars has always been good and complex and i might be willing to forgive my slight disappointment in people realizing he’s good only now if and only if they go back and acknowledge that he’s been good this whole time. like obviously he doesn’t have to be your Fave or even “liked” to just be not hated or to be recognized as a complex, solid character. lars is so, so developed, probably more than any other human. he’s always been important, even before his importance had direct cosmic significance. he’s always shown signs of being thoughtful and caring and soft, and the fact that he’s hurt people he cares about and who care about him isnt evidence that he’s bad, not only because of the fact that literally all the Good characters hurt each other, but because irl hurting people you love isnt even necessarily evidence of a failure, its just an inevitability, and what happens following the event is whats a lot more telling than the fact any negative emotions were ever a part of a good relationship

anyways what’s definitely true is that lars didnt need to die. it wasnt a necessary atonement for anything lars has ever done. he didnt and doesnt need to be redeemed. he just was willing to risk his life for gems in a situation he could immediately relate to, and that risk happened to win out momentarily. besides, what lars was overcoming in that situation was his own fear, it wasnt anything that caused the stuff in the past that people seem to think so badly of him for. he was also protecting steven, sure, but steven was pretty much fine by the end of it coz of his shield. but he also hadnt ever really Not protected steven or anything so he didnt really need to make up for that or whatever

also one more thing ive always meant to bring up is that lars doesnt think much of himself and is prone to being too hard on himself but i know there are probably plenty of people who believe him when he says he needs to “deserve” being alive again. nah!!!! lars always deserved it

#i havent rambled this long about lars in a minute sorry #as usual i lose track of the point i was saying and everything probably switches gears at some point but im just out here thinking these #essays in the back of my head so #Lars Was Always Good and is a great character #even having disappeared a lot he's been developed a ton #long post ////:

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gobbochune · 7 years

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I literally have a stage management BFA and still know next to nothing about the Heathers musical. Enlighten me on why it is The Worst.

Disclaimer: I have not seen the play live, only shitty cam recordings on youtube and anamatics of the popular songs. If there is a level of nuance to the play that I missed in modern performances, feel free to correct me. The same could be said for the film, but I have had no exposure to the film so I am not including it in this rant.

Part 1. “This situation does not exist.”

So like, I get it. you wanna have your relatable portrayal of highschool and with the cliques and drama and the petty squabbles of the popular vs unpopular kids is often magnified by inexperience and raging hormones. Everyone remembers highschool as being more intense then it actually was, so often the melodrama in these sorts of stories is amped up to eleven.

The ‘Popular Clique’ characters are never going to act like any rational person would ever act. When you’re a boring loser in highschool you will instinctively find ways to put yourself above the people who you consider to be your ‘enemy’. You’re smarter then them, they’re all druggy sluts, you’re a good person etc.

But the reason why this trope works is because its often presented from the perspective of the teenager, but by the end of the narrative has widened to a more mature point of view. We learn that everyone has their own shit going on, their own insecurities n crap, and by the end of the narrative the characters have literally and figuratively ‘graduated’ from the naive idea that there are inherently good and bad people.

But Heathers is not about that.

The popular girls are actually satan. Listen to that song “Candy Store” and think to yourself “do these characters feel like actual people? can i imagine how or why the girls act like this?”

The reason why popular girls are more popular then you is usually because they’re better then you. They’re prettier, funnier, nicer, or altogether more charismatic, and it still boggles my mind that anyone in this school would care what these Heathers bitches think of them. I actually knew girls like the Heathers in highschool myself, and everyone mutually hated them and ragged on them behind their backs because of how vapid and annoying they were. They had power over the freshmen for maybe five minutes before their targets found their own friends to hang out with those bitches are left in the fucking dust.

And its not just a misconception of the main character, no she seems to be the only girl in her whole fucking school who is like “Um, maybe its????bad to be mean???” and the story treats her like she’s some fucking martyr for it. They even sing a song parodying the fact that a decent highschool narrative you’d expect Heather to be a human being with emotions, by having main girl make up a bunch of bullshit about “Pretty girls have feelings.” the whole thing seems to be a big fuck you to highscool narrative tropes but instead of going in a more realistic direction it just spirals into a petty unrelatable hell.

Part 2: “If this situation did exist, it wouldn’t be happening to this character.”

Does anyone else find it incredibly far fetched that for some reason whenever a bunch of beautiful teenagers pick on another equally beautiful teenager its usually just because they dont like the color of her hair? I wanna know when we as a society decided that the shorthand for evil beauty is blonde hair, not because I find the trope harmful but just because it feels lazy.

Why isn’t Veronica one of the popular kids? Because she’s a brunette. Why does everyone treat the Heathers like royalty? Because they’re blonde. Does being blonde somehow make you a terrible person? I guess so. Its just a mutually agreed thing at this point.

But again the reason why the blonde vs brown thing works in other highschool dramas is because the entire thing is based on the main character being petty, and in reality the brown haired girl is just as popular and surrounded by friends she just doesnt realize it because she’s too busy being jealous of some other bitch.

Veronica is not this. For some reason, a beautiful, intelligent, kind, and generally cool girl has no friends besides The Fat One and everyone treats her like garbage. The fact that she has to seek “protection” from the Heathers at lunch because she gets bullied just for existing would be hilarious if it wasnt so pretentious.

The play lets is know in no uncertain terms that Veronica is the only decent student at her school, and that none of the ostracization she feels is in her head. Its all real. They all hate her because she’s good and they’re bad, and there is zero tongue and cheek about it. The whole thing feels like a play within another piece of media. Like maybe theres a playwrite who is trying to depict her highschool experience, and its intentionally written to be as shallow and petty as her memories there.

And even that might be okay if she is portrayed as being just a huge fucking whimp who lets people walk all over her, but nooooo she’s a strong female character! She sings a whole song about how she’s not gonna put up with their shit or let it bother her anymore and says she’s gonna fight back before they ‘come after her’.

Is anyone going to tell her that murder isn’t usually a thing that bullies do?

Like seriously. Bullying is a huge problem that can seriously damage people from the inside out, but its usually not because of any physical damage. If she’s decided that she doesnt give a shit about the Heathers, then thats it. She’s already won. They can’t touch her anymore because if she doesnt care then they’ll inevitably grow bored and do something else. she even has her own friends to hang out with now so its not like she’s being threatened in that way either. But instead she makes a big deal about how she’s a ‘dead girl walking’ like she thinks she’s gonna be shanked in the locker room or something.

But then we get to JD.

Oh Jason Dean, you poor innocent soul. Unlike Veronica this kid is actually a victim of bullying and abuse, but its not from the so called ‘popular kids’, its from fucking Veronica herself.

Part 3. “Are we not going to talk about the fact Veronica raped a dude?”

Yeah. That shit happened. Here’s the official lyrics:

J.D.(spoken) Veronica? What’re you doing in my room?

VERONICA(spoken) Shhhh.Sorry, but I really had to wake you;See, I decided I must ride you till I break you.'Cause Heather says I got to go;You’re my last meal on death row.Shut your mouth and lose them tighty-whities!Come on!Tonight I’m yours,I’m a dead girl walking!Get on all fours,Kiss this dead girl walking!Let’s go, you know the drill;I’m hot and pissed and on the pill.Bow down to the will of a dead girl walking!

Like I know later on in the song he gives consent n’ shit but its more framed like he lets her because he’s intimidated more then anything else. And whats more from this point onward in the play Veronica pretty much becomes JD’s only emotional outlet.

As someone whose known a lot of guys in this situation I can tell you that often they will do things they don’t want to to impress the people who they think are their only ally in life. More then anything these kinds of kids just want someone on their side, and will be roped into whatever toxic shit they need to keep these people with them.

Veronica goes through this guilty arc thing where she blames herself for ‘creating’ him but ultimately realizes that he was always doomed to be this way because of his shitty situation.

How fucking evil is it to perpetuate this idea? Oh no, Veronica isnt a bad person, she was just trying to help this kid by wrapping him around her finger and making him kill the people she doesn’t like but really its his fault for having a shitty childhood.

The song “Meant to be Yours” is supposed to be a picture of how twisted and evil JD has become in following revenge, but in reality its nothing like that. It wasnt his revenge, he was doing it for her. Veronica very much did break into his life and rip him to pieces for no reason other then she wanted a lackey to help her get revenge on people who shouldn’t have even bothered her in the first place.

But no, he is ‘damaged’, and the only way to redeem him is to blow himself up so the girl who destroyed him wont have to accept any of the consequences for her actions.

How the hell does Veronica ‘make things better’ at the end? She slaps a bitch and plans a sleepover. She was already doing that in the beginning. Why did JD have to die? He didnt. He fucking didnt. And the worst thing is that no even cares that he’s gone.

Not even Veronica.

She treats him like some kind of tragic monster that had to be killed for the good of mankind and everyone just fucking accepts it.

So just a recap: Blonde people are evil, everyone will hate you for being a saint, its okay to rape teenage boys if you’ve properly gaslighted them first, and if you are ‘damaged, far too damaged’ it is your responsibility to kill yourself so your abuser can be popular like she always wanted.

What a great show. 10/10. hope it runs forever.

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