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kylo-renakin · 4 years

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Death in Star Wars, and How Ben Solo Was Shafted: A Mini Meta

Something has been bothering me about Ben’s death in The Rise of Skywalker. While I’m upset that he died, I echo the sentiments of other fans that just as offensive was the way that he died and how his death was treated in the context of the film. It bothered me because death has always been a part of Star Wars, but usually handled much better.

And so this meta was born.

I will be doing a brief analysis of significant character deaths from the Star Wars movies. I don’t want to touch on all of them because there are simply too many, so I’ll focus on the ones that were either major characters (i.e. trio billing or main villain) or narratively important (i.e. Shmi Skywalker).

This list will be approached chronologically within the Star Wars universe, beginning with:

Qui-Gon Jinn; portrayed by Liam Neeson

Personal feelings: I cried like a baby. Qui-gon holds a special place in my heart. His death was both epic and sombre. It hurt to watch other main cast celebrating their victory after defeating their respective challenges and then cut to Obi-wan cradling his master’s head in his lap, crying.

Mode of death: Killed by Darth Maul at the end of The Phantom Menace. His actual death takes a few minutes of screen time, an outburst/scream from another main character (Obi-wan). He has last words to say to the person he has the closest on screen relationship with.

Aftermath: Held by a visibly devastated Obi-wan while he died. Sombre funeral pyre. Death discussed on screen by the council and Obi-wan.

Narrative purpose: To enable Anakin’s training under Obi-wan, which is pivotal to the overall arc of this trilogy. To provide a tangible loss and character growth for Obi-wan, who failed to save his master from a Sith--later mirrored by Obi-wan’s inability to save Anakin from becoming a Sith in Episode III, thereby providing a narrative ‘tail-end’ to Obi-wan’s journey in the trilogy. To cement the master/apprentice relationship as loving, emotional, familial, which then adds narrative depth to the bond between Obi-wan and Anakin. To introduce a cohesive theme of death, failure, and loss at the hands of the dark side that would pervade this trilogy.

Overall response: This death is both emotional and narratively important. It’s given the weight and time it deserves to have an impact on the characters.

Shmi Skywalker; portrayed by Pernilla August

Personal feelings: Rough acting aside, watching a person die in their family member’s arms is always sad. It’s an extremely dark moment in a film that otherwise leans heavily into romance, action, and detective-mystery storytelling.

Mode of death: Tortured by Tusken Raiders. Died from her injuries. Again, her actual death takes a couple of minutes of screen time. She is able to say some last words to her son, the most important character relationship for this character.

Aftermath: Dies in the arms of her visibly devastated son. Anakin murders the Tuskens for revenge. On screen funeral where she is mourned and memorialized by her family/loved ones.

Narrative purpose: To drive Anakin further to the dark side by taking advantage of his love and compassion and turning this into anger and hate (revenge against the Tuskens). To plant the seeds of Anakin’s inability to save the ones he love. To emphasize his failure to keep his promise to return to his mother and free her. (Despite being freed off screen, she essentially died in captivity anyway, and Anakin was not the one to free her.) To further the cohesive themes of the trilogy: death, failure, loss, the power of the dark side.

Overall response: While not as moving for me personally as Qui-gon’s death, it has a very relevant thematic purpose and furthers the story. Shmi’s death is given adequate time on screen and we are able to observe the responses and aftermath of that loss.

Padme Amidala; portrayed by Natalie Portman

Personal feelings: We make jokes about how she lost the will to live, but her funeral was beautiful and Natalie’s delivery of the line “you’re going down a path I can’t follow” feels extremely important in this story.

Mode of death: Up for debate. She has lost the will to live after giving birth to Luke and Leia in the wake of Anakin’s fall to the dark side. Some have theorized that her life force was taken (or given?) to keep Anakin alive, but this is not made explicit in the movies. She dies beside Obi-wan Kenobi, and has the time to say last words--words of hope for Anakin’s eventual redemption. Her death itself takes several minutes and is followed up with screen time for a funeral where characters acknowledge her death.

Aftermath: The gorgeous and enormous funeral, mourned as a queen and a senator and a good woman. Anakin (as Darth Vader) mourns with a devastated and poorly acted “nooooo”.

Narrative purpose: To fulfill the themes of death, loss, and failure (Anakin’s failure to keep her alive) at the hands of the dark side. To provide a character loss that mimics the loss of democracy, freedom, and goodness that has fallen to Palpatine’s control. To provide a visual and narrative parallel between the death of Anakin (through the death of his love) and the birth of Darth Vader.

Overall response: While this death was definitely poorly handled it did have narrative significance and it was arguably necessitated by having to have this trilogy line up with the original trilogy. Her short funeral was one of my favorites in the series.

Obi-wan Kenobi; portrayed by Sir Alec Guinness/Ewan McGregor

Personal feelings: I feel weird having an opinion about this one because this movie was made well before I was born, and so I didn’t feel a real connection to/nostalgia from these characters the way I did with the prequels and sequels. Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan was a huge part of my childhood, so watching A New Hope in retrospect makes this death sad for me.

Mode of death: Killed by Darth Vader/becomes one with the Force. Essentially sacrifices himself so that Luke doesn’t try to come after him.

Aftermath: Luke shouts “no!”. In a later scene, Luke further acknowledges his death--”I only wish Ben were here”. Ben is later seen as a Force ghost in Episodes V and VI, continuing to acknowledge his character’s death and ongoing influence on, importance to, and relationship with Luke.

Narrative purpose: To provide growth for Luke’s character as he grapples with losing a mentor and surrogate father figure who was also the last person (he believed) who was a link to Luke’s (supposedly) dead hero father that Luke looked up to--and setting us up for this narrative complication in VI. To demonstrate that the Jedi/good guys of the film win through self-sacrifice and not through anger, hate, or fear, which is very thematically resonant in this trilogy.

Overall response: Narratively meaningful, and the character’s death is immediately recognized. We get to see the response of the characters who he has the closest relationships with.

Yoda; portrayed by Frank Oz

(I just love The Last Jedi, okay??)

Personal feelings: It was kind of sad, in the way any person dying of old age is. It did feel more overtly spiritual than Obi-wan’s death.

Mode of death: Dies of old age, in his own home, in his own bed, with Luke beside him. His death scene lasts a few minutes and he has some last words.

Aftermath: We see Yoda again as a force ghost, which we are expecting as an audience since his body fades like Obi-wan’s did. There is sufficient closure. Luke is present for Yoda’s death and, at this point in the films, is the only character relationship Yoda has left alive--therefore this is the most significant his death can be to someone. Luke doesn’t look overly upset but this is not painted to be a sad death, as death by old age is usually more a fact of life and a nice reprieve from untimely losses.

Narrative purpose: Honestly, it’s been a long time since I watched the original trilogy so I’m kind of stretching here. I’m going to borrow from The Last Jedi and say that Yoda’s death allows Luke to grow beyond his master and stand on his own two feet as a fully autonomous agent of goodness. He no longer has the crutch of wise older men to lean on and must make his decisions on his own. Yoda’s death frees Luke to be the master of his own destiny, now knowing the truth of his parentage and no longer being guided by others to do what they think is best (kill Vader).

Overall response: One of the less impactful deaths in the series, but I do appreciate how it adds to Luke’s growth as a character and transition into Jedi Master.

Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader; portrayed by James Earl Jones, Hayden Christensen, and Jake Lloyd

Personal feelings: This is the big one™ of the trilogy, and it shows. Watching Luke trying to literally drag his father to safety is raw and heartbreaking. Seeing him unmasked for his son is chilling. The funeral pyre is beautiful. This definitely made me feel the feelings.

Mode of death: Sacrificed himself to kill Palpatine. Death lasts several minutes. Dies in Luke’s arms and Luke cries as he dies.

Aftermath: Funeral pyre. Force ghost Anakin bringing peace to Luke and cementing his redemption.

Narrative purpose: Too much to list! Reinforcing that good guys sacrifice themselves to protect the people they love. Bringing balance to the Force by killing the Emperor (thanks JJ for messing that up by the way). Finding peace with Obi-wan as a force ghost. Showing that the belief that people can be saved from themselves is validated. I’m sure there’s plenty more besides but this one is so narratively rich that it would take forever to mine.

Overall response: Extreme narrative importance. Basically ties together six movies. Emotional, beautiful, resonant.

Han Solo; portrayed by Harrison Ford

Personal feelings: Ouch, ouch, ouch! This was... this was angsty. I love angsty. I cannot possibly find adequate words to describe how well done this scene and this death was. One of my top three moments of The Force Awakens.

Mode of death: Struck through the chest with a lightsaber by his son, Ben Solo (under the alias of Kylo Ren), after an attempt to save him from the dark side and bring him home. His body falls into the pit on Starkiller Base.

Aftermath: So. Much. Rey screams “no!” Finn is visibly upset, too. Chewie roars in agony and shoots Kylo Ren with his bowcaster. Leia can be seen feeling Han’s death and cannot find the strength to keep standing. Kylo/Ben looks immediately shaken by what he has done. Rey and Leia share a sad hug at the end of the film. In The Last Jedi, reactions continue. Luke is shaken by the revelation of Han’s death and spends a quiet moment in the Falcon mourning him. Kylo/Ben’s reaction continues to spiral. Snoke, in one of my favorite lines in the film, announces that “the deed split [his] spirit to the bone”. Rey grieves Han and accuses Ben of hating him. Luke warns Kylo that he will always be with him, “just like [his] father”. Han’s shadow is felt all over The Last Jedi without him being present. Even without the further reactions in The Rise of Skywalker (Rey saying Ben is haunted by him, the literal memory scene on the Death Star), the impacts of Han Solo’s death are the most significant in the entire franchise.

Narrative purpose: To advance both internal and external character conflicts. Kylo killing Han provides an external conflict between him and the heroes--particularly between him and Rey as Rey yearns for parents who love her and Ben (seemingly) rejects/kills his that do. It also provides a meaty internal conflict for Kylo Ren/Ben Solo, who is the most nuanced villain I have ever seen in film. While Han’s death doesn’t seem to serve a main theme in The Force Awakens (it is my perspective that JJ does not have cohesive overarching themes in his two entries in the saga), it does blend in pretty well with The Last Jedi’s preoccupation with killing the past. The thematic takeaway from The Last Jedi is that you can’t and shouldn’t kill the past, you should learn from it and move on--and Kylo killing Han neatly fits into this theme by showing that Kylo tried to kill his past by killing his father, and yet he was unable to move on because of it.

Overall response: Poignant. Purposeful. Well-crafted. The effects are long lasting and felt throughout the trilogy. This is not a meaningless death. Of the entire saga, this is the death that is given the most acknowledgement.

Supreme Leader Snoke; portrayed by Andy Serkis

Personal feelings: I was on the edge of my fucking seat. This is not emotionally resonant because we don’t care about Snoke but it was huge and shocking and had these enormous narrative implications moving forward.

Mode of death: Cut in half by Kylo Ren while he narrates his own death.

Aftermath: The Praetorian guards spring into action to avenge their master. In a later scene, we see Snoke’s severed legs topple to the floor. Hux is visibly shaken and angry. Kylo Ren acknowledges the death (by blaming it on Rey) and takes Snoke’s position as Supreme Leader (”the Supreme Leader is dead”, “long live the Supreme Leader”). I’m... going to ignore how The Rise of Skywalker handled Snoke. It was unnecessary to have Snoke clones from a storytelling perspective. It added nothing to the narrative, just used as a clumsy way to justify that Palpatine was really pulling the strings all along.

Narrative purpose: To deepen the perceived conflict within Kylo Ren and showing his unwillingness to kill Rey. This further complicates their relationship moving forward as we’ve established that the new head honcho powerful villain has no real desire to hurt the hero. The narrative implications of this moving forward were so rich. Pity JJ ignored them. Additionally: To show Kylo Ren symbolically surpassing Darth Vader. In Episode III Anakin claims he will overthrow the Emperor and rule the galaxy with Padme. He never achieves this. But Kylo Ren does (minus the Empress by his side). To deepen the theme of Kylo Ren trying to kill/bury the past in order to become stronger (and ultimately failing). To add Snoke to the list of characters in the movie who embody the theme of failure. To shake up an expected narrative trajectory and provide new pathways for future storytelling. (Again, JJ, looking at you.)

Overall response: Loved it. Loved it. Not as resonant as some of the other deaths but by far to me the most shocking.

Luke Skywalker; portrayed by Mark Hamill

Personal feelings: Okay, this is a big one. Here’s the thing. I did not grow up with the original trilogy. I never really cared for Luke (didn’t dislike him either, just ‘meh’). But this movie. This movie. I went on a journey with Luke. I saw him as fallible. As human. Making mistakes. Failing. Falling into depression. And overcoming it. I cried when Luke Skywalker died. I did not think that would happen. I did not think I would ever love Luke so much.

Mode of death: Force projects himself across the galaxy to face his nephew and save the Resistance; the effort kills him. Luke’s death takes a couple of minutes of screentime, and it is gorgeous. Hamill acts his ass off. The music, the visuals, everything combines to make this the most emotional death in Star Wars--a fitting end for its first hero.

Aftermath: Leia and Rey feel his death in the Force. They speak to each other quietly about it. They know it was peaceful. Luke, knowing he was going to die, came and saw his sister first and gave them beautiful closure and a message of hope. Just before Luke dies, he warns Kylo/Ben that he’ll always be with him. Just like his father. Luke fades into the Force and we know we will see him again as a force ghost (which we do, but JJ managed to trash even that). The boy on Canto Bight and his friends are inspired by the legend of Jedi Master Luke Skywalker. He ignites hope throughout the galaxy once more.

Narrative purpose: Multiple. As above, inspiring hope throughout the galaxy once more. To serve the theme of self-sacrifice. Achieving victory without violence (pacifistic). Preventing Kylo Ren from killing more people he cares about (Rey, Leia, Luke) and thereby protecting him, at least a little, from himself. Also serves a similar purpose to Yoda’s death--with both Luke and Snoke dying, Rey and Kylo Ren are without masters, the arbiters of their own destiny (thanks again JJ for fucking that up too).

Overall response: I can’t decide if this or Han Solo’s death is more emotionally impactful to me. They are both so, so moving, and so essential to the narrative.

Leia Organa; portrayed by Carrie Fisher

Personal feelings: This is hard. I don’t think her scenes in The Rise of Skywalker worked. They were cut from The Force Awakens for a reason--and then cobbled together like some kind of Frankenstein’s Monster for this movie. As much as I love Leia and Carrie, I couldn’t feel emotion for her death because it was so wooden and artificial.

Mode of death: Uses the last of her energy to reach her son (it is unclear exactly how she is reaching him. Force projection? Did she create the Han memory? Who knows.) Even with so little to work with, they still managed to focus on her death with her lying down, her hand falling to the side--trying to give this some weight.

Aftermath: Chewie mourns. Ben and Rey both feel her death and are clearly devastated. The Resistance gather around her body in mourning. Her body fades at the same time as Ben’s (wtf, JJ) and then we see her as a force ghost with Luke (but not Ben because fuck him apparently).

Narrative purpose: To bring her son back to the light, something that has been a central struggle of this trilogy. Sacrificing yourself to save that which you love.

Overall response: It has a purpose, but I can’t help but think it wouldn’t have gone this way if Carrie hadn’t died. It doesn’t seem as organic as the deaths of Han and Luke.

NB: I’m skipping Palpatine because his death was literally nothing else than “defeat the big bad”. It wasn’t even fulfilling a prophecy, it had no significant narrative weight for Rey, it was a nothing burger.

Ben Solo/Kylo Ren; portrayed by Adam Driver

Personal feelings: Twofold. In the cinema, I felt nothing. Nothing. I actually laughed in surprise. Like, “what was that”? The next day, at home, I cried. I don’t think I cried because he died. I was open to that possibility. I cried because I was so, so angry at how poorly his arc and death was handled. Like he was a footnote in his own fucking story. I think him living was a much more interesting story, narratively and thematically, but I wasn’t necessarily opposed to his death if it was done well. And it wasn’t.

Mode of death: Uses the last of his life energy to resurrect Rey. Falls over. (Plop, there he goes.) Fades into the force.

Aftermath: Like, none? Rey looks kind of surprised and blinks for a couple of seconds. No words are exchanged. He just tips over and dies. Cool.

Narrative purpose (or failure thereof): I am fucking reaching here because all of the previously established trajectories and themes are dashed by this ending. We could argue that this is a self-sacrifice to save what you love theme point. Which is fine, but like, no one mourns. He doesn’t become a Force Ghost. No one acknowledges his death. Ben fading into the Force is a metaphor for him fading from people’s minds. It’s like he doesn’t even exist in the context of the story anymore. Which is insanely baffling because all three of the original trilogy heroes sacrificed their lives, at least in part, to save Ben Solo. So that he could in turn save Rey? So he’s just another cog in the machine? This was always about Rey and never about the love Han and Leia had for their son, or that Luke had for his nephew? If you think about it, the only other ‘main’ characters to die during the course of their trilogy were Qui-gon and Padme. And both of those characters had funerals, and people mourning, and huge narrative implications. The death of Ben Solo reads like the death of a minor character. It serves one very narrow and already over-represented theme. The death of all of the rest of the Skywalkers had huge emotional ramifications for the other characters in the films. With Ben Solo, the Skywalker legacy fades as well, as if JJ is telling us that this saga was not about this family at all, but their whole story existed only for the point of saving Palpatine’s granddaughter. How fucked up is that?

Overall response: Narratively, this just doesn’t make sense. It’s lazy and not impactful. When a character dies in films, you want the audience to feel something, so you show other characters reacting to it. Are they sad? Then we should feel sad too! Are they elated? We should be celebrating! No one reacts to Ben’s death, so we’re not sure how we’re supposed to feel, either. The people who are devastated by this death are the ones who love the character itself and are upset that he got treated this way--the death itself was hollow and emotionless.

So, there you have it. Ben Solo was shafted. Death is extremely prevalent in these movies, and yet, being the only new Skywalker of the sequels and half the protagonist (thank you Rian), Ben Solo has arguably the least emotional or narratively impactful death in the franchise.

Rian Johnson would never do this to Ben Solo.

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bredforloyalty · 2 years

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samruby, deancas, and samcas pls

sorry i went to sleep and then had to think about this lol <3 thanks for the ask, love you sil

and OOF if you're asking so nicely i'll ramble on about supernatural..... but, i'm gonna, take the can of worms that is deancas and answer an anon (later) instead of dumping it all here, i'll tag you!!

samcas: starting with this one because i'll handle it quickly. more quickly. it doesn't interest me much, because i don't feel anything in particular about cas ? :( i can see an appeal somewhere, i see the appeal in all pairings with sam! tbh! an angel and lucifer's vessel sounds nice, they would make each other better in the long run imo. kind of, less toxic than anything i'm ever interested in. that's nice, good for them for real, i like the concept, in a parallel universe i'm a samcas enthusiast. but i somehow don't care about castiel enough to be invested, maybe..... am sorry. rating is not tragic or obsessive enough

samruby: :)) sexy bc blood drinking is inherently sexual, also for other reasons (they were clearly into each other like i can see the real-life connection right there on the screen c'mon. also thematically sexy lol), and i love manipulation. love me a doomed romance type thing! actually i thought about them for a couple minutes and now i'm crying!! so that's normal. i love them, they're interesting in canon and i've never really felt the urge to fill any holes with uhh fan content. samruby feeds me well as it is 🥴 continuing beneath the cut because i can't shut the fuck up

so the tragedy, that i feel normal and not crazy about, what really gets to me is ruby, i think she loved sam as much as a demon could love. he was the path to her god, she saw his destiny and not who he really was, or wanted to be. it's heartbreaking that she gifted sam power when he felt, was powerless, when he was virtually at his lowest, alone completely, and she did what she thought was the best thing she could do for him. and it's even,, something sam had struggled with, constantly, up to that point, the demon blood, something rotten in him. he needed to believe he's not rotten, that's how this ties into the tragedy of sam's life. i think. ruby was there to mold him into the literal antichrist, the role he was meant to play, when he needed someone to depend on, and sam never recovered. the rest of his life, that addiction haunted him, the darkness of that, the impurity, she made it so sam's worst fear or maybe just one of his worst would be confirmed: he'd never be clean.

i really liked it when someone on here said ruby trapped sam in a monstrous prophecy. he didn't even get the chance to be good, to prove himself, And sam's relationship with ruby put a strain on his relationship with his brother, who's the most important to him :/ and sam lost trust in himself, his own judgment, that might be hurting me the most, he made his own choices and did the best he could in absence of dean and the consequences were like, beyond dire. i think something was permanently broken there. that depresses me because i feel for this fictional guy very deeply. ruby was at the center of this, although it wasn't quite.. her fault? like of course she didn't orchestrate all that, she was just a player and she has a background and i see where she was coming from. i can empathize

ruby thought she was building sam up, and she ruined him. but was there love? they needed each other. i think they liked each other, too? there could've been something more, in, um other circumstances... if what they wanted didn't differ so.. drastically. but that's all tragedies, isn't it?? it hurts because of what could've been. anyway, samruby is sooo compelling to me

#ask #i didn't mention communion. that aspect's sex c too i would say. like he drank her blood O_O nice #spn

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passionate-reply · 3 years

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This week on Great Albums: most 80s enthusiasts are well aware of the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” famous for being the first music video ever played on MTV. But when’s the last time you actually listened to the whole song? Chances are, it’s better than you remember. And the rest of this album is a masterpiece, too. FInd out more by watching the video, or reading the transcript, below the break:

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be looking at the 1979 debut album of the Buggles, The Age of Plastic. If you know anything about the pop landscape of the 1980s, you’ll know that MTV played a key role, codifying the “music video” format and aestheticizing the music industry like never before, not to mention introducing a plethora of British electronic acts to American audiences for the first (and sometimes only) time. The Buggles were one of the many synth-pop bands that scored a crossover hit chiefly from the exposure that heavy rotation on MTV won for them, but at the same time, their legacy is intertwined with MTV’s much more deeply. The Buggles’ clip for their single “Video Killed the Radio Star” has the distinction of being the very first ever played on MTV, during its 1981 launch.

Music: “Video Killed the Radio Star”

I’ve done my fair share of videos where I talk about artists who are brushed into the “one hit wonder” bin in America, and I usually find myself saying that their big hit isn’t that outstanding compared to the rest of their work, or the album it appears on. But in the case of “Video Killed the Radio Star,” I have to say, I think this track is a veritable masterpiece. It’s a shame that it’s become so inextricably linked with MTV, and its place in history overshadows its ability to stand on its own as a great work of art. It’s a song that feels very familiar, because it’s used so often as a sort of jingle for this era of music history, but every time I go back and listen to it in full, it blows me away. The song was, of course, not written with the intent of being about MTV--it’s about how the advent of television doomed radio dramas back in the 1950s, and was chosen by MTV in a bit of amusing irony.

But “Video Killed the Radio Star” is so much more than that post facto smug joke. It’s delicately wistful and nostalgic, with the crisp, soprano backing vocals of Linda Jardim providing a nod to 50s pop, but also very firm and powerful, once you add in that despondent piano. It’s the part that’s usually cut in the “jingle-ificiation” of the song for B-roll, but also the piece that really makes the composition tick--it’s the contrast between the brash and childlike optimism represented by Jardim, and the rest of the melody coming in to remind us of how those hopes are dashed as we come to adulthood, and we grow to see the world we lived in as children collapse upon itself. This all comes together to make the song utterly compelling to listen to in full, despite how pithy and trivial its oft-repeated hook has become.

While “Video Killed the Radio Star” was the single that managed the most mainstream success, the rest of the album features tracks that resemble it, in their sense of cinematic narrative and fascination with nostalgic retro-futurism. It’s not quite a concept album, but it still has an impressive amount of thematic consistency, and its tracks’ resonance only seems to increase when considered alongside one another.

Music: “Johnny on the Monorail”

Stark and plaintive, “Johnny on the Monorail” closes out the album on a moody, introspective note. Those bright backing vocals return, this time adding in some scatting, in a more overt reference to 50s doo-wop. Its high-tech mass transit theme calls to mind Kraftwerk’s seminal “Trans-Europe Express” from a few years earlier--but where they had used heavy, hyper-physical percussion to portray the workings of the machine itself, the Buggles’ hymn to the train focuses on the internality of its human occupants. The train is a socially-charged space here, but one filled with awkwardness and tepid, partial connections to other people. It’s a perfect microcosm of a sterilized future world that separates man from physical actions, like walking, as well as from his fellow man. This emphasis on the human, emotional toll of high technology is a constant throughout the album, even on its lone “love song.”

Music: “I Love You, Miss Robot”

In “I Love You, Miss Robot,” the age-old myth of romance between human and machine serves the role it always does: satirizing the transactional or objectifying nature of “modern” relationships, and the perversity of our attempts to fill our needs for companionship with things instead of people. The composition is, fittingly, quite hollow and languid, centered around a simple bass guitar riff while electronically-distorted vocals flit around like ghosts. Despite Trevor Horn’s reputation for orchestral, baroque pop, there’s actually a surprising amount of driving, rock guitar on this album too. It’s most prominent on the track “Clean, Clean!”, which is certainly a major sonic contrast with “I Love You, Miss Robot”! “Clean, Clean!” actually directly follows it in the tracklisting, albeit broken up by the flip to side two, if you’re listening on vinyl.

Music: “Clean, Clean!”

Despite its rough-edged aesthetics and driving rhythm, “Clean, Clean!” maintains the sense of high-concept narrative that pervades The Age of Plastic, showing us a glimpse into a brutal war. But, set against the haunting sense of distance and sterility embodied by tracks like “Johnny on the Monorail,” “Clean, Clean!” ultimately feels quite different thematically as well, with its soldiers inhaling diesel fumes and struggling to “keep the fighting clean.” Both sonically and lyrically, its feel is a bit less atompunk, and more dieselpunk--and, for once, the linguistic allusion to “punk music” is also relevant here!

The cover of The Age of Plastic features a headshot of Buggles frontman Trevor Horn, rendered in lurid primary colours. Combined with the tight horizontal lines of the background, and the digital-looking typeface used to render the name of the band, it seems to be an image culled from some futuristic display screen, fitting the album’s aforementioned science fiction themes. Looking back on it now, of course, there’s a certain retro feel to these now-outdated ideas about computer displays. It’s a reminder that for as much as this album was, in its own time, looking backward to Midcentury ideas about the future, and embracing a certain retro-futurism, it’s now aged into being “retro” itself, in a world where much of contemporary culture looks back at the 1980s with hope and wonder.

The title, “The Age of Plastic,” calls to mind not only a world of futuristic super-materials, but also the negative connotations of plastic: fakeness, disposability, and malleability to the point of having no fixed identity. In that sense, Horn’s technicolour visage can be read as the image of that plastic-age hominid, formed anew by evolving technology and an increasingly cold and alienating culture.

If you’re familiar with Western pop, the odds that you’ve already heard a lot of other work by Trevor Horn is extremely high. For as much as “Video Killed the Radio Star” has gone down in history as a gimmicky number, Horn’s fingerprints run all throughout popular music, from a stint as the frontman of progressive rock outfit Yes, to producing hit songs for artists like ABC, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, the Pet Shop Boys, and Seal. My personal favourite project of his, though, is probably his sample-heavy, avant-garde work as a member of the Art of Noise. A lot of people don’t know that there was actually also a second Buggles album, 1981’s Adventures in Modern Recording. I’ve met few people who would argue that it’s quite as good as The Age of Plastic, but if you’re interested in more of this sound, you might as well give it a shot! Lead single “I Am a Camera” even managed to chart minorly in several markets.

Music: “I Am a Camera”

My favourite track on The Age of Plastic is its opener, the pseudo-title track, “Living in the Plastic Age.” Moreso than any of the other tracks, it really draws its strength from its narrative, with clever lyricism that really rewards a close listen. It captures a day in the life of a businessman in a soulless, corporatized future, going through the motions despite a nagging notion that the corporate grind is no path to true fulfillment. The song’s frantic pacing portrays that ceaseless, hectic sense of stress, and its soaring refrain is one of the album’s highest points of drama. I can’t think of a better summation of the album’s overarching themes. That’s all for today, thanks for listening!

Music: “Living in the Plastic Age”

#music #album review #album reviews #buggles #the buggles #trevor horn #mtv

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agentrouka-blog · 3 years

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I think Sansa memory lapse will be related to being alayne. While she subconsciously knew she is Sansa but how she constantly convincing her to be alayne. It will be somewhat similar to Arya being no one. Jon also will suffer some due to his Resurrection. Also petyr constantly preying on her weakness. She see him as dual person good and bad which she did with others also. She needs to stop romanticing her abuser deeds.

Hi anon!

See, that’s a very common fanon that I don’t think is going to happen. If it were to happen, it would need to be related to an EXTREMELY traumatic event, since all of Sansa’s memory edits have been triggered by unprocessed trauma, and they all involved re-framing the behavior of other people. In order to forget something in the magnitude of her own identity, she would have to go through something absolutely horrendous, worse than Ned’s execution, and forgetting that she is Sansa would need to be to her advantage in coping with it. That’s extremely unlikely.

Next it would strand her arc and kill its momentum. Sansa, since the day Ned was executed, has been held up by her desire to go home. It has kept her going and propelled her actions. Even her marriage to Willas was only a credible plan because Robb was alive, and an advantageous marriage was always going to be her future, anyway. She has been trying to get home since Ned died, and it guides her actions in TWOW, Alayne I, still. Clinging to her identity has been her thing all this time, and her actions and her path have always pointed North.

Suddenly forgetting herself would put a harsh brake on everything she has been doing, without adding anything worthwhile to her story. What can Sansa learn by forgetting who she is that she cannot learn as Sansa? Nothing. She would simply be in a different kind of stasis until she remembers.

So, I just don’t think that Sansa forgetting her true self is going to happen. I entertained the idea for a while, but we really don’t have the time for an actual amnesia plotline, nor would it particularly fit or serve the story. There are two apocalyptic threats closing in on Westeros and only two books to go.

Sansa has other challenges to face: Just like all of her siblings, she has to detach herself from her dark mentor and her current exile. She needs to physically return North, which will be a challenge in and of itself. She needs to broaden her horizon beyond the limited information she has been given about the state of the world, specifically in relation to the smallfolk. She needs to finally start making true connections to people, outside the constrictions of being a hostage or hiding her identity. She has to confront her abusers once she finally has the power to do it. She needs to apply her strengths toward achieving her goal of reaching and rebuilding Winterfell. (Also, an on-going thematic focus on romance needs to be adressed.) That’s more than enough to do for her, no amnesia needed.

Btw...

“She needs to stop romanticing her abuser deeds.”

Sansa is a traumatized child of thirteen. This isn’t some self-indulgent choice on her part, it is how she responds to trauma and how she tries to integrate several conflicting things: her natural empathy that extends even to bad people, her powerlessness that makes her dependent on bad people, her need to block out terrible experiences in order to focus on moving forward. She cannot exist in a constant state of horrified helplessness, so she compartmentalizes or re-interprets certain situations or events. Sansa’s mind stops with this strategy when it no longer works: she never tries to excuse Cersei and Joffrey for killing Ned because there is no point. She stops blaming Arya for Lady after she no longer has a reason to excuse Joffrey’s behavior.

Sansa will stop compartmentalizing when it no longer serves her. Her agency grows with her experience and her knowledge of the world and her ability to depend on people other than her abusers. Whichever comes first, irrefutable knowledge of LF’s evil, or freedom, it will give Sansa the push to let go of her psychological defense mechanism.

#asoiaf #sansa stark #asoiaf speculation #amnesia #Memory lapse #coping mechanisms

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abigailnussbaum · 4 years

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She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, S5

Overall I’d say this was the best season since the first one, and the ending it gives the story is a satisfying and moving one. I really liked how the show gestures back at some canonical She-Ra concepts - the rebels hiding out in the Whispering Woods, for example - while at the same time doing things that are completely outside the original canon’s scope - She-Ra in Space! And I thought the ensemble was well-used, main characters, side characters, and antagonists all getting their own storylines and resolutions in a way that isn’t easy with such a wide cast of characters, but was handled with elegance.

But look, if you’ve read anything I’ve written or tweeted about this show over the last four seasons, you know I have fundamental issues with how it chooses to direct its storytelling and characterization energies. It doesn’t come as much of a surprise that the concluding season didn’t address most of those issues. A big part of that is that the show I wanted She-Ra to be clearly wasn’t the one Stevenson and her team were making, and that’s fine. But I find it genuinely strange that of the three series that are obvious thematic and emotional successors to Avatar: The Last Airbender - She-Ra, The Legend of Korra, and The Dragon Prince - none of them reach the same heights of plotting and characterization, and at least in She-Ra’s case I think this is rooted in an unwillingness to complicate a rather simplistic central theme.

(Also, at least part of the problem has to be that the show’s five-season, 52-episode run spanned only seventeen months. Even if you add in the production period for the first season, that’s a truly bonkers schedule that must have told in the depth and complexity of the final product.)

Take Catra, for example. If you’d asked me where I thought her storyline was going before watching the season, I would have said pretty confidently that she was going to get at least some level of redemption story. After all, her situation at the end of S4 perfectly positions her to switch sides by stripping her of all the things she thought she wanted and placing her in a precarious position that she might not be able to talk or manipulate her way out of. The season premiere establishes those facts even further by making Horde Prime a literal monomaniacal monster. And yeah, it’s pretty clever that in a series that places so much emphasis on the importance of friendship as the path towards moral growth, the villain is narcissism personified, a person who has no use for others except as they reflect himself, and subjugate themselves entirely to his will. So it’s not surprising that, finally cut off from any realistic path towards power and made to feel her own vulnerability, Catra would finally start doing some soul-searching and realize how badly she’d treated the people who cared about her.

(Though if you’ll allow me a snide moment, I can’t help but point out that in the Best Redemption Story Ever, Zuko actually gets all the power and approval he’d thought he wanted before realizing that it means nothing without his honor and self-respect. I think we all know that if Catra had gotten a position of power from Horde Prime, she would have felt no loyalty towards Adora and Etheria, and helped him to conquer them.)

Similarly, I think I would have given you better odds than even that the series would end with some romantic storyline between Catra and Adora. And I don’t want to downplay the importance of depicting a story like that - before the end of the season I found myself wondering why Bow and Glimmer’s romance was being depicted so chastely, before realizing that the writers wanted the first kiss on the show to be between two women. I respect that impulse and the representation the show ends up delivering - we’ve come a long way from Korra and Asami holding hands at the end of their show. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel that the way that the show arrives at this point requires a significant rewriting of Catra’s personality and character arc, not to mention the history of her relationship with Adora.

As the fifth season argues it, the root of Catra’s resentment of Adora is romantic disappointment. She complains that “Adora doesn’t want me. Not the way I want her”, and leaves the team when Adora decides to risk her life by destroying the Heart of Etheria because she takes it as a personal rejection. But this is, to say the least, a massive whitewashing of what we’ve seen of Catra and Adora’s past relationship. In flashbacks, particularly the ones from S4, it’s made clear that even when they were on the same wavelength, Catra and Adora’s friendship was toxic and dysfunctional. Catra may have always loved Adora, but it was a selfish love, one that saw Adora as an instrument for the validation of Catra’s confidence and self-image, and denied her any opportunity for pursuing her own interests and desires.

There’s room for a story about Catra growing past that selfishness and learning to love generously and openly, of course, but we don’t get that story in S5. When Catra complains that in sacrificing herself for Etheria, Adora is refusing to want things for herself, it’s not an honest character moment. Catra has never cared what Adora wants - in fact, her refusal to acknowledge Adora’s right to make her own choices and take a path in life that left Catra behind has been the crux of their enmity since the series premiere. Having her suddenly change tunes doesn’t feel organic, but like a parachuted-in personality transplant.

To put it back in ATLA terms, Catra was never Zuko. Adora is Zuko - someone raised with bad principles who nevertheless has enough innate compassion, and a powerful moral compass, that with a little support - emotional or magical - they can break through their indoctrination and become a hero. Catra is Azula - obsessed with power, possessed of very little compassion for others, and, most importantly, seriously emotionally unbalanced. I’m not saying someone like that can’t be helped and can’t become a better person, but it takes a great deal more than what the last season of She-Ra has given us.

Meanwhile, if you look at Adora’s storyline, on one level it gives us what I’ve wanted for a while. I’ve complained a lot about how Adora has remained static throughout the middle seasons of the show while other characters - Glimmer, Catra, Scorpia - got character arcs and changed meaningfully. One effect of that has been to create a strange disconnect between the show’s central themes and its main character. In a story that is supposedly all about the importance of friendship and personal connections, the heroine is someone who achieves her heroic destiny by rejecting those connections in favor of a more global morality, and who then had to struggle with balancing her sense of global responsibility with personal attachments - to Glimmer and Bow as much as to Catra.

The fifth season finally circles back to these ideas and places Adora at its center. I thought her conversation with Mara about having the right to be more than She-Ra, and to do more with her life than sacrifice it for others, was a really powerful moment. I just feel like, once again, the foundation wasn’t laid for it. First because Adora’s growth has been mostly ignored during the intervening three seasons, and second because this is a character arc that clashes with the show’s friendship-above-all message in ways that aren’t really acknowledged.

When you think about it, the moments when Adora has been the most herself are the ones when she rejects toxic friendship and stands up for herself - in her confrontations with Catra, especially over the course of the first season, and when she defies Glimmer’s decision to use the Heart of Etheria and the end of S4 and destroys the sword. So to the already complicated issue of where to draw the line between the things you want for yourself and the things you owe others, you add the thorny matter of when to detach yourself from toxic friends who see you only as a means to an end. Except that She-Ra never really grapples with this extra wrinkle - and again, Catra’s hasty personality transplant plays into this, because we get to pretend that the only problem she and Adora ever had was romantic miscommunication.

In a season that is all about putting aside differences and personal grievances to fight for a common cause, there is a refreshing number of instances that remind us that those grievances are still relevant - the fact that nobody will ever really trust Shadow Weaver, for example, or the other princesses calling Entrapta out on her seeming indifference to the consequences of her actions (though in this case, and yet again, Entrapta’s neuroatypicality is used as a get-out-of-jail-free card from taking personal responsibility). Even Glimmer gets to spend a bit of time in the dog house, at the same time that she and Bow work together and save each other’s lives. But once again, when it comes to the main character, we can’t let pesky matters like a lifetime of toxic friendship get in the way of a happy ending in which lesbian love conquers all.

There was a good story to be told here, one that could have easily ended up in the same place as the series actually did. But it required actually delving into the complexity of a character like Adora, and dealing honestly with the problems in her relationship with Catra. She-Ra ends - as it did throughout it run - by choosing to paper over those difficulties in favor of a friendship-conquers-all message that is a great deal less convincing.

(Also, am I wrong or are there a lot of loose ends still? I don’t think we ever find out who Adora was, what Greyskull is, and what She-Ra actually is.)

#she-ra and the princesses of power #season 5 #is a good season overall #and i had no reason to expect #that the show would suddenly prioritize #the things i wanted it to be #over the things it always was #but i can't help but regret #the better and more complex show we could have had #if there had been any willingness #to complicate the very simple message at its core

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wiseabsol · 5 years

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20 Mewtwo Fanfics Recs

Since I’ve been getting more Mewtwo asks recently, I thought I would make a post to promote some of the Mewtwo fics that have caught my eye over the years. Here is a round-up of the ones that were the most memorable and influential to me when I was growing up, as well as some that look promising for other fans to check out!

MEMORABLE FICS:

1. Damaged by Cheshire Kat24

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8906040/1/Damaged

Summary: Living life to its fullest is never easy. A lesson Mewtwo learns the hard way after sustaining an injury that even his abilities cannot heal without help. With his new friends, he embarks on a journey that will define not only his place in the world, but that of his entire species.

My thoughts: While I never managed to read the entire story, this is a classic and was probably the first long, multi-chapter story with Mewtwo as the lead.

2. Shadows Like You by cosmicmewtwo

Link: Not available, though you can hit her up on Tumblr for the file.

Summary: Driven by his hunger for power, Giovanni creates three new Mewtwos. The clones seem to be under control...but for how long? And how will Mewtwo himself be affected?

My thoughts: This was incredibly influential to my writing, being a huge part of the inspiration behind “TPRS.” The Mewthrees introduced here were great and I checked every day for updates until this fic was complete. As a humorous aside, when I was a wee lass with barely any fic to my name, I sent cosmicmewtwo a message asking if I could use Mewthree characters in my own story, without realizing that cosmicmewtwo didn’t own that concept. She, bless her heart, confusedly told me to go ahead with my story and supported some of my earliest fics.

3. Anomaly by Dark Magician Girl Aeris

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3173119/1/Anomaly

Summary: When Mewtwo erased his memory from the minds of Team Rocket, he overlooked the computers they used in studying him. Now a second member of the race has been created by even more unorthodox means than the first. And boy, is she mad!

My thoughts: Aeris is excellent at writing Mewtwo, to the point where this is probably the most canon-compliant depiction of him that I’ve come across. This adventure story is also well-written and has a lot of feel-good moments. I wish that she’d managed to finish it, but what she has, along with the connected one-shots, is worth digging into.

4. The Sword and Shield Series by Kayasuri-n

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3535877/1/Sword-and-Shield

Summary: Detective Brenda Johnson was looking for something suspicious when she entered the lab, not a connection between Team Rocket and gym leader Giovanni Rocketto. She certainly wasn’t expecting Mewtwo. Rated M for Murder and other subjects.

My thoughts: So if you’re looking for a super fun murder mystery ride, this one is for you! I still desperately want to see what the remake would look like. That said, there are several entries in the old series, all of which are great.

5. More Than Just Shadow by Kirlien

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3602934/1/More-Than-Just-Shadow

Summary: Amy was sitting quietly on the doublebed, watching over the wounded Pokémon. “Mewtwo…What are you?…Who are you?” she whispered faintly, her fingers brushing against his cheek slightly in a soothing motion.

My thoughts: I remember this fic for how it captured the golden feeling of innocence in the Pokemon franchise. While dark things were happening in this story, there was a sense of warmth and compassion that I’ve always admired. This is another one that I wish had been finished, but what is here is worth digging into.

6. Between Two Worlds by Leonardo Mystic

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/505048/1/Between-Two-Worlds

Summary: Ki is a teenage girl with special powers. Who one day accidentally discovers the Team Rocket project of Mewtwo.

My thoughts: This was one of the first Mewtwo fics I ever read and was the most memorable in the romance category. I’d call it one of the classics and an interesting rewrite of the original movie.

7. Forgotten by Melora Maxwell

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/926885/1/Forgotten

Summary: The humans have a most strange saying. Curiosity killed the cat. I suppose in my case, it would be curiosity killed the clone. For it is what I am.

My thoughts: This one was responsible for the genesis of “Angelic Shadows.” It’s angsty and, despite being lean in the way of descriptions, it has a strong emotional impact. It’s a shame that it never got an ending, because it seems like it was within a few chapters of being complete. Even so, if you like gritty, this is a good one to look into.

8. Eclipsed by Meriah

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4468231/1/Eclipsed

Summary: A young woman named Sutichay carries Arei, a miraculous child, whose birth will bring about a religious conflict. Later in the chaos, Arei is made the priestess of Mewtwo, and her growing attraction to him stirs the anger of Sabrina, his wife.

My thoughts: While this fic only has a few chapters, the premise is imagination, the writing is lovely, and it deserved more attention than it received. This was also the inspiration for my story “Hollow.” When Meriah discarded the original prologue for “Eclipsed,” she allowed me to use it—and the character Arei—as a jumping off point for my own story. The result was two very different tales with similar thematic cores.

9. The Incomplete Soul Saga by Miyuutsuu

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/u/888889/Miyuutsuu

Summary: What is my true purpose in life?

My thoughts: If you’re looking for more grit, we have this odd series by Miyuutsuu, who wrote his stories with the Rule of Cool. Want Mewtwo to have a sword? An angsty romance with a gym leader? Possibly some loss of limbs? Then here you go! It’s a dark action/adventure story with a different flavor than anything else on this list.

10. Of Moonlight Shadows and Echoes Past by ZeoViolet

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/620186/1/Of-Moonlight-Shadows-and-Echoes-Past

Summary: A Psychic teenager named Sharie, daughter of one of Mewtwo’s creators, finds a baby Mewtwo Giovanni forgot about…and eventually, runs into Mewtwo himself.

My thoughts: This was my favorite Mewtwo fic and one that I still think of fondly. The writing is lush, the premise is solid, and I definitely wanted to see where it would have gone. It’s another classic of the fandom.

11. If You Let Me by Byoshi

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4129309/1/If-You-Let-Me

Summary: Every Pokemon Smasher must have a master, and the rule is no different for Mewtwo. A tug-of-war begins between Peach and Ganondorf, conflicted but united in their attempt to use Mewtwo to overthrow Master Hand.

My thoughts: I don’t have much to say about this one, other than I really enjoyed it, found the premise intriguing, and wished I could have seen more of the central relationship in it. Sadly, like many of these entries, it was discontinued.

PROMISING FICS:

These are fics that I haven’t actually read, but appear to have pull in the fandom and have definitely had a lot of hard work put into them.

12. Mute, Too by FalconPain

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3931388/1/Mute-Too

Summary: After losing a battle to the dark Pokémon Darkrai, Mewtwo awakens to find that he no longer has his psychic abilities. No longer able to float, read minds, or even talk to humans or Pokémon, he must rebuild his life. But how much of this can he take?

13. Forsaken by lilpurplebird

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5842142/1/Forsaken

Summary: Being a Legendary isn’t always a good thing—they realized that too late when the world came to an end. Mercifully, they were given another chance, but at a cost: They had agreed in a previous life to become mortal should they have failed to uphold their duties. Unbeknownst to them, however, there is a dark power lying in wait, targeting Mew and Mewtwo to do its dirty work…

14. Crossing of the Paths by MMMAJ Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/1252581/1/Crossing-of-the-Paths

Summary: Mewtwo can no longer stand living with humans, so he creates a dimensional portal and randomly wanders the web of infinite universes. This is the tale of the places he sees and the people he meets.

15. Lines in the Sand by Shinymonkey8

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6847646/1/Lines-in-the-Sand

Summary: After finally escaping from Giovanni, Mewtwo has a chance to live his life free, and sadly alone… But when fate leads him to something he would have never expected, a female of his own species, his life is turned upside-down….

16. Human, Monster, Hybrid Series by TheFrogFromHell

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3082844/1/Human

Summary: When Mewtwo lured six trainers into his trap on New Island, he’d planned to begin his reign of terror on the human world. He hadn’t planned on being nearly destroyed by the battle that ensued, or on being nursed back to health by a human—a member of the species he’d despised enough to want to eradicate from the earth. Now, Mewtwo is torn between his hatred for his creators, and the new, mysterious emotions he feels for Misty, the human that saved his life. One again, his true purpose is in question: will he still choose to destroy the world, or will these unfamiliar insights change the way Mewtwo views humans, pokémon, and even himself.

17. From Dark To Light by Whozawhatcha

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7659746/1/From-Dark-To-Light

Summary: Mewtwo falls for a Gardevoir, but hesitates to reveal any of his past to her, considering the circumstances. However, his past and Team Rocket do catch up to him, and how will they manage? And with strife with this Gardevoir’s mother, how will they continue to be together? What are her true motives for keeping her daughter from this mysterious pokemon?

18. The Mewblade Series by Vaporeon Lugia Krabby

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2967855/1/Her-Beginning

Summary: Welcome to the real complexity of the Pokemon World. Here we experience the full extent of this world alongside Mewblade, a Mewthree. This prologue introduces Mewblade, following the beginnings of Mewtwo. This opens a larger plot, full of depth and death.

Note: While this isn’t a Mewtwo-centric fic, it has been a prominent work in the fandom for ages.

SOME CAUTIOUS SMUT RECS:

So looking up Mewtwo smut can be dicey, since many of the writers of said smut tend to prefer dub-con or non-con scenes, with Mewtwo being a dominant alpha male/sexually-aggressive character. This can be triggering for some readers. The following two stories are not exactly exceptions to that pattern (well, “The Mewtwo File” is, but I have different qualms about it), but the romance in them helps to mellow them out.

19. The Mewtwo File by Alisonven

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4200365/1/The-Mewtwo-File

Summary: This is the story of the young clone Mewtwo and Aiko, his only human friend, the daughter of his creator.

My thoughts: This is a well-written story and has some good Mewtwo/Ai content in it, albeit features an AU version of them. That said, I have qualms about the sex in here, thanks to the difference between Mewtwo’s and Aiko’s psychological maturities. Aiko is clearly an adult, while Mewtwo reads more like a teenager. Some readers were fine with that; I felt squicked. There is also a casual use of sexual assault in a later chapter, so be aware of that going into this.

20. Primial Instinct by Sonic Sunshine

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3486169/1/Primial-Instinct

Summary: Mewtwo tells us the story of how he found and nearly lost love through his eyes. His journey of discovery is one filled with dilemmas, and even the most powerful Pokemon is helpless to stop it. Mewtwo x Lucario.

My thoughts: There are also casual uses of sexual assault in this, including from Mewtwo, which I wasn’t keen on. That being said, this is well-written and the central relationship is interesting, so who knows, it might scratch the yaoi itch for those of you who love the genre.

#Mewtwo #fanfiction recommendation #Pokemon

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arcaneranger · 5 years

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Final Thoughts - O Maidens in Your Savage Season

Mari Okada’s finest work to date, potentially her magnum opus, and the most complete treatise on teenage sexuality I’ve seen in the medium to date. (Eat your heart out, Darling in the FRANXX.)

Here we go with a very heavy show about which I have thoughts. Very rarely is an adult able to connect with the teenage experience in such an intimate way as Okada has managed with the cast of this show, and it’s the most honest depiction I’ve ever seen. The beautifully developed and nuanced cast, in-universe a group of friends experiencing their “Spring Awakening” together in very different ways, are a vertical slice of the diverging paths that people (particularly women) take to get to a point in their lives of being comfortable with sexuality. I’m going to invoke some spoilers here, but only because I really want to do a deep dive on this in order to really do it justice.

Starting with the simplest one, we have “I’ve never thought about it, but now that I am, there’s this guy...”, our main character Kazusa, who starts the series off with a bang by encountering her best (male) friend next door masturbating in his bedroom, and is forced all at once to process the evolution of her childhood friend Izumi, from kid she grew up with, into a man with physical interest in women, even if he doesn’t really have that part figured out for himself yet. Izumi, for his part, doesn’t quite know enough about his own body to know that a physical reaction isn’t necessarily an emotional one, and spends the story grappling with what it means that he gets turned on by a girl who isn’t his girlfriend, even if he is firmly committed not to cheat on her. These two are only the beginnings of realistically-confused high schoolers who don’t understand their own bodies (and the subtext of Japan’s woefully inadequate sexual education practices).

Second, we have “trying very hard not to think about it, to the point of shunning men entirely in order to remain pure”, our Literature Club president Sonozaki is utterly ashamed of herself every time physical intimacy so much as crosses her mind, demonstrating a very firmly-rooted Madonna-whore complex that is fairly easy to understand once we see her strict parents for the first time. Outside influences, particularly family ones, can affect the way a person thinks in a very toxic and negative way, and we can tell right from the beginning that her internal (and then external) judgment and slut-shaming of her more extroverted classmates is not doing her any favors and is actively keeping her from being able to make friends. It takes a boy so innocent that he stays away from stimulating thoughts while he’s around her (because he wants to take it slow) and really put in the effort to take her walls down to finally get her to admit that she’s trapped herself in her own head.

Third, Momo, is in a particularly complicated spot as her feelings don’t really start materializing until well into the story, because she has the biggest hurdle to clear - the idea that she is not straight, which in Japan, is not particularly welcomed. Her friends are not able to catch onto her inner emotions and end up creating a pile of massive errors in judgment that lead to her nearly having a breakdown because the enigmatic girl she likes keeps talking about how much she wants to have sex with boys, and a series of miscommunications only making her feel like her sexuality is wrong and inappropriate, when the reality is that she just doesn’t have an appropriate target to point it at and basically nobody she can talk to for advice. Ultimately Momo doesn’t see quite as much of a conclusion as the others, which makes sense - not only would it be difficult for her to find closure in the environment she’s in, but her struggle with sexuality is bound to last her much longer than high school,

Said enigmatic girl, Niina, has an even more uncomfortable set of problems - she’s a former child theatre actress who was victimized by her director, a repeat-offender pedophile, and is now fighting mentally against the trauma that he inflicted on her. Her feelings are a crazy cocktail of spite towards him for putting her in a compromised position - even if he didn’t rape her - and disappointment that he doesn’t see her as interesting enough to pursue any longer, because she’s grown into “womanhood”, and she’s terrified of the idea that nobody will ever love her the way she imagines he did. The director coerces her into kindling a teenage romance in order for her to vent her emotions, and that manifests as a sexual attraction towards Izumi, a feeling she knows she shouldn’t have but can’t help but want to act on, getting herself tangled up by insisting that one can fully separate emotion and sex when she clearly isn’t able to do so herself. Her story finally culminates in her moving on from her past when she truly begins to understand just how badly her former director really hurt her.

And, most complicated and delicate of all, the girl who wants to badly to be sexually mature that she pursues an inappropriate relationship with an older man in a position of power over her. While it’s certainly not a stretch to say that Hongo’s story is an exaggeration, it’s not as much of one as we would hope, and indeed her insistence forces her teacher - a man with whom she had been anonymously roleplaying online before they discovered each other’s identities - to essentially play chicken with her in order to get it through her head that she’s not as much of an adult as she thinks she is. I want to commend Okada here for the incredibly risky balancing act she took on with this storyline, as we do understand the entire time that Milo-sensei is not willing (or able) to actually engage with his student, despite how far he’s willing to go to demonstrate the reality of the situation Hongo is pursuing. It’s uncomfortable to watch, and that’s a deliberate decision on the part of the creator of the show; she’s going so far to pursue her idea of what sex looks like that she isn’t properly registering the reality of the situation and the lasting damage she could potentially do to both of them.

All of these storylines collide in a nine-car pileup that finally forces the cast to communicate what they’ve learned about themselves with each other in a way that seems a little bit forced in the context of the story - they essentially wind up playing Symbolism: The Game - but the scene that comes out of it works well enough to salvage the situation and get most everybody on the track towards putting their hangups behind them that we’re able to end on a note of hope for the future of these characters after a long build-up of complete adolescent confusion, a violent chemical reaction that’s caused them all to spiral out of control and make rash decisions, a very Savage Season indeed.

Okada never seems to take quite the direction you expect towards her thematic conclusions, and even sometimes doesn’t present them at all when it’s appropriate - these kids are, well, kids, and they have a long walk ahead of them on this particular road - but they’ve been handled with so much care and verisimilitude so far that you can expect them to be okay someday in the future. These teens were a lot of us when we were younger, and they’re a lot of kids that are out there today - and I hope that they manage to figure things out, too.

9/10.

#arcane's hall of fame #arcaneanime #o maidens in your savage season #summer 2019 #final thoughts

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fuanteinasekai · 5 years

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Meta #3: The One Where It Gets a Little Weird

Please note: this meta is heavily focused on recent manga developments, so if you don’t want to be spoiled by it you should catch up on fan translations. Okay these aren't spoilers anymore.

Also, while I think reading my previous two metas would be useful in understanding some of this, I don’t really consider this a continuation per se, since this is purely focused on developments in the manga. I really didn’t want to get distracted by anime issues, for reasons which will perhaps becomes clear.

There are two recent stories with particular relevance to Tanuma and Natsume. (Well, three, in a way, but we’ll get to that later.)

First, “Tenjō-san,” a story that’s mostly about the four boys tracking down a mysterious, supposedly yōkai-related artifact for Himura-Sempai, a graduating senior from a different high school. Of particular note are two things:

The unusually strong theme of mortality. The story opens with Kitamoto in the hospital, having scared the boys with a bad fall. He’s fine, but Natsume and Tanuma are very worried. There’s also a subplot about an elderly man who once went on a similar mission with his own boyhood friends. He speaks wistfully of “Tetchan and the others” as if he lost contact—or they died. It's a reminder that human life is short—sometimes shorter than expected—and one cannot wait forever to figure things out.

Tanuma’s complicated feelings make a spectacular comeback. Both chapters of the story have at least one meaningful exchange between Natsume and Tanuma. In the first chapter, Tanuma encourages Natsume to be open about his doubts by telling him, “I still sometimes want to see the same world as you, but I think it’s because we see different things that we’re able to confirm things for each other.” In the second, he tells Natsume that he might need to keep Nishimura and Kitamoto in the dark just so he can have space to be normal, “Since I, out of worry, ask you if there’s a yōkai straight away.” This is framed as a self-deprecating remark and an expression of deeper insecurities, but also as something Natsume doesn’t understand (that is, doesn’t agree with).

The next arc is another long Natsume-Natori-Matoba story about the complicated lives of those who can see yōkai, and the different paths those lives can or should take. This story reinforces the image of Natori as a protective and somewhat controlling big brother, complete with another incident of Touko-san aggressively adopting Natori. It also emphasizes the difficulty of intimate relationships, implied to be romantic, when one has a connection of responsibility to the yokai world.

The story after that is where it gets… interesting. Setting aside my own personal preferences, at the same time as I’ve seen a lot of queer subtext between Natsume and Tanuma, I’ve also always [until recently] assumed Taki would be the eventual implied wife. She’s the only girl Natsume counts as a friend, much less close friend, and she’s the closest anyone gets to being on Tanuma’s level of intimacy. Having said that, I wasn’t happy about it. Compulsory heterosexuality is one of my least favorite tropes, because it always cheapens romance and I am a huge romantic. There are essentially no obstacles between Taki and Natsume—certainly none she wouldn’t share with basically any other girl—which makes the concept of a romantic arc extremely weak.

Yet not only did the opening of the next story appear to confirm our compulsory heterosexuality, it did so in such a laughably cliche way it seemed to circle right around to subversion:

It opens with a girl who acts like she has a crush on Taki (but not explicitly), squealing about how “lovely” but “difficult to approach” she is.

Nishimura-the-Projector assumes Natsume will be upset by Taki’s “boyfriend.”

Natsume claims to be upset because he was left in the dark, rather than because she has a boyfriend per se, which under cliche-logic reads as “denial” even though it’s a perfectly valid reason.

Jealousy trope-storm without actual jealousy.

The boyfriend is actually a relative! Heehee! Nobody acknowledges that this is heteronormative gossip at its finest.

Taki talks about her brother as if she’s trying to hook him up with Natsume??

Natsume notices… the brother… is “the cute type”???

No seriously, why would you do that now of all times?

In any case, this was all tremendously upsetting and frustrating. Since I would have to wait yet another four months (or longer) to see Tanuma again, I decided to temporarily skip the second Taki chapter and spend that time on a thought experiment/coping mechanism: What if it were a subversion?

At first I toyed with the idea of writing platonic Taki/Natsume and romantic Tanuma/Natsume separately, but it didn’t work out. While the idea of subverting “boys and girls can’t stay friends” in isolation is admirable, it’s not something with any basis in Natsume Yūjinchō. That is, Taki’s lack of romantic potential—if intentional—has always been illuminated by contrast with Tanuma, whether through the Furry yōkai/Ito-san pseudo-arc I described in Meta #2, or through more direct comparisons as in “The Time-Eater.” Thus, platonic Taki/Natsume and romantic Tanuma/Natsume are two sides of the same coin, and I approached my theory with this in mind.

Since this story was obviously heavily centered on Taki, with Tanuma having nothing more than a brief mental cameo, the only way to draw Tanuma in for comparison is the “pseudo-arc.” In that light, I created an outline of how the next three chapters should proceed if Midorikawa-sensei did intend a subversive, queer platonic Taki/ romantic Tanuma theme.

First, the real-world logic. There are two basic reasons why Midorikawa-sensei might write romantic Natsume/Tanuma the way it’s gone so far:

Standard editorial censorship. Natsume’s Book of Friends isn’t an international juggernaut, but it’s popular enough to be a reliable cash cow. So there’d be more pressure to stay within the heteronormative lines than in an “indie” manga. In this case, Natsume/Tanuma would never be fully canon, but consistent subtext.

Quiet natural development. That is, if Natsume/Tanuma wasn’t originally intended but grew organically out of character development, then there’d have to be a transition period from “nominally platonic” to “explicitly romantic.” Since they’re both boys and this is a mainstream manga (not BL), it would have to be handled much more delicately than M/F romance.

Some combination of 1 and 2.

The first is actually fairly common and much more likely than the second, though the second is technically a slightly better fit with how things have gone so far. Either way, we’d still be at the “subtext” level for now. With the socio-cultural context Natsume is being written in, shifting a character from “presumed straight” to “explicitly queer” is a complicated maneuver. M/M ship bait is very common, and even a sympathetic audience won’t necessarily trust build-up to be real. So if you want your audience to actually follow the romantic development, it makes sense in theory to present it as platonic emotional development (with subtext) as long as possible before moving on to romantic text. And the subtext, for the most part, can’t be the sort of thing that reads as ship-bait. Which makes “eventually canon” difficult to distinguish from “intentional, but permanently subtext.” For this reason, I won't bother to separate the two.

So, drawing on the way Midorikawa-sensei has written in the past, my theoretical pro-Natsume/Tanuma progression looked like this:

A second chapter of Taki, in which Natsume is implied to be a brother figure (consistent with my initial subversive reading—there are a lot of parallels between Natsume fretting about Taki and Taki fretting about her brother + Natsume and her brother both have complicated relationships with yokai that conflict somewhat with Taki's fangirl-glasses). This creates a sense of depth and longevity to their relationship, while at the same time pushing a more explicitly platonic reading. The “omg Taki has a boyfriend” opening subtly injects a question of romance into the entire pseudo-arc (not so subtly into Taki’s half), answering with “no, they’re like siblings” to the Natsume/Taki question, but leaving Natsume/Tanuma open in the second part. Ideally the girl with the crush on Taki from the beginning should return at the end as a nod to the queer reading, and to close the “Taki needs to talk to more girls” loop that was interrupted by the fake boyfriend.

The second part of the “pseudo-arc” would be two chapters heavily centered on Tanuma where:

There should be some sort of thematic parallel to the first (Taki) part, with a corresponding focus on Tanuma. I speculated that there might be a family theme, since we don’t know anything about Tanuma’s mom (in retrospect a poor guess—in Taki’s story the “family" was mirrored to Natsume), but it doesn’t matter what as long as it’s a definite parallel. [This is the basis for subtextually carrying the romantic question over to Tanuma.]

The parallel should be explicitly acknowledged in some way, however brief. [This acknowledges the existence of subtext and invites the reader to notice and pay attention.]

There should be other, smaller parallel moments, akin to the previous pseudo-arc’s Taki-Tanuma “lonely” mirroring. [This reinforces the existence of the parallel even though the plot is very different.]

The Tanuma story should escalate emotionally. For example, since Taki “listens to Natsume,” Tanuma should do something stronger like “take care of Natsume.” [This reinforces the romantic imagery, in contrast with something more brotherly.]

The trend of Tanuma being emotionally centered on Natsume, in contrast with Taki’s family focus, should continue. [ditto]

Tanuma’s feelings for Natsume should be more romanticized than Taki’s feelings, ideally on a level with “The Other Side of the Glass” and similar stories. [ditto]

No explicit references to romantic feelings, but a story more like a love story than Taki’s. Depth vs. surface. [ditto]

Ideally a reference to the “pond of emotional intimacy” would be super-great, but probably too much to ask. I think Midorikawa-Sensei forgot about it.

So what really did happen?

Just before returning to university, Taki’s brother says “I suppose I could leave [someone like] you in charge of my little sister,” which could be interpreted as deputizing Natsume as “older brother” in his absence. [I don’t want to make any definitive statements about translation at my level of Japanese—it can also be read as a patriarchal approval of the “presumed boyfriend,” though if Natsume is considering Taki that way, it doesn’t seem to fit Natsume and Sensei’s identical reactions.] Natsume then proceeds to explain her brother’s situation to Taki before happily allowing Girl-With-Crush to distract her with sweets. The ending feels very neat—as if their relationship issues have all been more or less dealt with. It’s essentially the opposite of what I expected from romantic Taki, in which we might see a certain ambiguous open-endedness, tension, or a sense that Natsume is reevaluating the way he sees Taki. There is none of that here.

And then there’s the next story. As predicted, it was heavily Tanuma-centered. This alone isn’t terribly meaningful, since we hadn’t seen Tanuma in a while. However, it also had a few… similarities to my outline:

It parallels Taki’s story with a “visitor” theme, and with the way the visitor arguably mirrors Natsume himself.

Natsume acknowledges the thematic parallel: “A visitor every day? I wonder if it’s family like that time with Taki.” I had to take a moment here to laugh hysterically; I wasn't expected it to be this obvious. (Taki: “boyfriend” → family | Tanuma: “family” → ??)

Several mirrored moments, mostly in the first chapter, including “what kind of person?,” Nishimura as contrast, the running, the explanation-of-the-problem, the shocked reaction to meeting, the final-bench-discussion and so on.

“I always get her to listen to me.” → “He always listens and smiles for me.”; “I too [will listen to you] the way you always listen to me.” → “You’ve kept me company so many times when I was mixed up with yōkai, so […] I will keep you company, too.” (When I initially wrote my outline, I had missed that he uses もらう for Taki’s listening, which downplays her intent. So even though his description of Tanuma is similar, this is an upgrade.)

Pretty blatant difference in romantic subtext, here. Taki is emotionally preoccupied with her brother and their grandfather. The climax is her brother giving her the gift he made with their grandfather as a small child. Tanuma is emotionally preoccupied with the gap in power between himself and Natsume and how that affects their relationship. The climax is watching their yōkai mirrors, in matching vessels, spiral together into the sky.

Tanuma clutches at his heart when Natsume calls his name. Tanuma wants to “see the same things Natsume sees, together,” Tanuma wishes he could be strong so Natsume wouldn’t “worry and [I/we could]…”. Natsume feels that Misuzu is “seeing through” him right after Tanuma calls him a friend. A lot of interruptions, unfinished sentences and unspoken feelings. Etc. Though Taki’s story opens with romantic cliche, and Natsume is very determined to be helpful, it’s Tanuma’s story that’s thick with romantic imagery. Taki’s story, by contrast, romanticizes the protective, sheltering image of the older brother, who cares for his little sister (and vice versa) even though they can't quite understand each other.

In terms of the “love story”: again, Taki’s emotions are centered on her brother. Tanuma’s are centered on Natsume, with even his desire to get to know yōkai being fundamentally tied to Natsume. Tanuma in particular is written with strong undertones of longing and trying to find a way closer, while Natsume gets little chance to think deeply or speak to Tanuma alone, distracted by the Misuzu problem and how it relates to Tanuma’s health and happiness. Tanuma’s story is also much more open-ended. While Taki’s story seems to end with a sense of satisfaction, Tanuma’s is full of tension. The question of how they come together safely (platonically or otherwise) remains unresolved.

The pond continues to play a metaphorical role as a place that symbolizes what they do or don’t share. Though Tanuma cannot see the pond itself, he can see shadows ordinary people cannot—in “Same Scenery” he referred to these shadows as something only the two of them could see. For Misuzu and Sasame, it is a literal halfway point between their marshes, and a place where they meet specifically to be together.[IMO, this is why it doesn't appear in "The Days-Eater": the symbolism of the pond is specifically tied to the two of them, so it would be inapproprate to reference it in Taki's presence.]

So… what does this mean? I don’t know. I promised myself I would let go of the queer reading if I got anything less than a Taki-Tanuma pseudo-arc—even if I got a story that heavily romanticized Tanuma without paralleling Taki’s story. Actually getting what I wanted, exactly what I wanted, is less satisfying than it might seem. Set against the overwhelming prevalence of heteronormativity, it's left me in a curious limbo of uncertainty. It’s hard to swallow the idea that my accuracy was a complete coincidence, but I may have been wrong about the reasons for this pattern.

While it’s objectively lazy, there’s a great deal of precedent in letting superficial romantic features like “cuteness” supersede features like devotion, so long as the former is opposite sex and the latter same sex. In other words, I may have the pattern backwards, with Tanuma being set up as platonic soulmate, and Taki as the romantic lead. Perhaps we are meant to draw a parallel between Tanuma and Taki’s brother as a “difficult older brother” figure (even though Tanuma is younger), given they are both “easily possessed.” If so, they have little else in common. The (simultaneous??) mirroring between Tanuma and Taki would probably be for the purpose of establishing Natsume’s most important platonic, non-family-like relationship as equally important to romance. This isn’t exactly inconsistent with the emphasis the manga places on the importance of platonic love.

Still, it’s an odd choice to make Taki’s feelings primarily about someone else if the story is meant to set a romance in motion, particularly in contrast to Tanuma. And the older brother/Natsume mirroring would have to be unintentional, since it’s a bit, um, awkward otherwise, which would mean the undeniable Misuzu/Natsume mirroring is coincidental. And so on. At its heteronormative best, “The Troublesome Two” is a story about Natsume’s crush on Taki, and Taki’s love for her brother and late grandfather. At its potential best, it’s a subversive story about how an unrelated boy and a girl can care deeply about each other without having romantic feelings—and about how girls aren’t necessarily more emotionally and socially competent than boys just because they’re girls.

In any case, Tanuma’s story is worth looking at a bit more closely.

First, a summary of the actual plot:

Tanuma receives a mysterious, persistent, explicitly gender-ambiguous “human” visitor who turns out to be Misuzu (the powerful horse yōkai) in disguise. He’s excited by the opportunity to get to know a yōkai, so Natsume decides to support him, despite his fears, by hovering like gnat and glaring at Misuzu while they go around looking at scenery. Eventually it’s revealed that Tanuma has been quietly possessed by Misuzu’s fellow marsh guardian… soulmate… friend thing, and that it’s this “Sasame” who Misuzu has been interested in, rather than Tanuma. There’s a climax where Sasame tries to escape being removed from Tanuma, and Tanuma empathizes with their relative lack of power because he sees Sasame (who is very weak) with Misuzu as being similar to himself with Natsume. Sensei confronts Sasame about their motivations, thereby leading to Sasame voluntarily leaving and joining Misuzu in their wooden-doll-possessing-competition… thing.

Though nominally platonic, the story is romantic and emotional, centering on the gap in power between Natsume and Tanuma and their mutual attempts to bridge that gap without actually talking about it.

The first thing I’d like to talk about is the imagery.

Chronologically left to right this time. Tanuma looks odd on the right because of Sasame. Friendly reminder that Midorikawa-Sensei hates drawing hands.

Japanese culture is not physically demonstrative or openly emotional in general, but young children and teen girls are allowed far more leeway than teen boys and adults. So much so that teen girls can even hold hands in a “romantic” way and still be assumed to be straight. This is not as visible in Natsume Yūjinchō as in Midorikawa-sensei’s other work, since there’s only one recurring teen girl. But it is visible in her art for Season 6 of the anime, where Sasada and Taki are holding hands in the background. It’s also apparent in the way that different characters express themselves. Female characters are more physically emotional, and more visibly vulnerable than male characters. For example, male characters do not usually hold their hands in front of their stomach or their chest—a somewhat defensive gesture—and will ball up their fists at their side instead. (Or use Sensei as a shield.) Male vulnerability is mostly expressed through facial expressions.

So even for a boy like Tanuma, this kind of emotional gesture is notable. A single example would be interesting. Two is suspicious. Three is a pattern. This fits the theory that this story is meant to break open a new arc in Natsume and Tanuma’s relationship; changing course requires far more effort than staying on the new course. It’s exactly what Taki’s story was yelling about right before it veered off into “family” territory—except Tanuma’s story stayed consistent. The hand-over-heart, standing-on-water scene was on the very first page, without even a chapter cover to get in the way. The longing, out-stretched hand is from a scene that sets the emotional context for Tanuma’s behavior. The heart-clutching is part of the climax. Every one of these is directly or implicitly linked to his feelings about Natsume.

The out-stretched hand is particularly important. This is the dialog that sets it up:

あのヒト妖だったのか… すごいものだな　普通に人間に見えているのに… ささいで小さな妖との繋がりのかけら　夏目はいつもあんなに苦労している　それを知ってるのに夏目が見ているものを一緒に見てみたいと思ってしまう　ー夏目は強い　おれもそうだったらあんなに心配させずにー　… どうしたんだ　おれらしくもない　…なんだか欲ばりだ

“[Spoken aloud to himself] That person was an ayakashi…? What an amazing thing. Even though they look like an ordinary human… [Internally] Such a tiny, insignificant fragment of a connection to ayakashi. Natsume is always going through so much trouble. I know that, but I still find myself thinking I’d like to see the things he sees, together. —Natsume is strong. If I were too, without worrying him— [it would be possible to do something]… What’s the deal? That’s not like me. …Kind of greedy.”

When Tanuma is talking to Natsume about something similar in “Tenjō-san,” his wording is vague, potentially even reading as envy though that doesn’t really suit the context. He says he’d “like to see the same world as [Natsume], sometimes.” Here in the privacy of his own mind, he’s more clear. This scene, with it’s implication that Tanuma wants to share Natsume’s world, is implicitly romantic—particularly in light of Taki’s furry yōkai story.

Though there were several moments when Natsume seemed suspicious of the nature of the furry yōkai’s feelings for Taki (never explicit), it’s reading the letter at the end that seems to convince him. In this letter, the yōkai expresses their gratitude for Taki’s help, and their desire to “see the beautiful mountains and beautiful valleys” with Taki. In fact, the wording itself is suspiciously familiar.

If we set aside the obvious differences and focus on the emotional core of the letter, we get:

[~]をともに見てみたいと思ってしまった。

“I found myself thinking I’d like to see [the beautiful mountains and beautiful valleys] together.”

Compare Tanuma:

[~]を一緒に見てみたいと思ってしまう。

“I find myself thinking I’d like to see [the things Natsume sees] together.”

There are two differences here. One, the word for “together”: the yokai’s letter uses the formal/written ともに, whereas Tanuma’s thought uses the casual/spoken 一緒に. The words are otherwise completely identical in meaning, so this difference should probably be considered functionally meaningless. The other difference is actually in Tanuma’s favor.

What I translated as “I find/found myself thinking” is the auxiliary verb しまう. This word has no real equivalent in English. It means “to finish completely” but is commonly used to add a nuance of lack of intention and probably regret to an action. For example, where an English speaker might say “Oh no, I forgot!” the Japanese speaker would say “I forgot—shimatta!” If “shimatta” sounds familiar, that’s because it’s very common and can even be used on its own (where it is frequently—and hilariously—translated as “damn”).

Here both furry yōkai and Tanuma are using しまう to express regret or even self-reproach for their seemingly futile desires as well as (in Tanuma’s case) the sense that the desire is selfish. The difference is the conjugation. Furry yōkai uses the perfective aspect—often taught as “past tense” because that’s the primary use—which indicates the completion of an action. Tanuma is using the imperfective, which indicates a lack of completion either because something is ongoing (recurring, not continuous), or because it is yet to be performed at all (future).

Grammatically there are a few different interpretations of perfective vs imperfective, but in this context only one thing makes sense. The furry yōkai is encapsulating his desire as a singular experience, something they have wrapped up and set to the side (consistent with their refusal to engage directly with Taki or allow Natsume to do so for them) and don’t expect to deal with in the future. Tanuma, on the other hand, considers this desire to be an issue he struggles with repeatedly and sees no quick end to. Even though he, like the furry yōkai, knows it to be impossible, he can’t let it go—and nor can the story.

Regardless of any potential parallels to Taki’s furry yōkai, this desire to see yōkai in order to share them with Natsume is a major theme. While we do occasionally go a few pages without being reminded, Tanuma’s motivations in this story are neither subtle nor subtext. The logic is fairly straightforward:

Knowing a yōkai ⇒ having a connection to the yōkai world ⇒ having a connection to Natsume’s world ⇒ being closer to Natsume.

The scene above lays it out all but explicitly, but this motivation is referenced multiple times (not in order):

—“I can’t let him keep worrying forever. If there’s anything that would help hurry things along even a little…” [While investigating a dream.]

—“I was happy that your ayakashi friend seemed to take an interest in me.”

––“[I miss feeling like I knew a yōkai but] I still had a good time, in the end. I got to see the same things as you.”

—“So that means I get to know a yōkai Natsume knows?”

The last one is rather telling. First, because it confirms the connection to Natsume is important to him. Second, because he says it while holding Sensei. Sensei does not “count” for this purpose because Sensei is not inaccessible. Even completely ordinary people like Nishimura and Kitamoto interact with Sensei on a regular basis, albeit without realizing he can talk. Tanuma wants more than that. But even more, he wants more than what’s available to, well, Taki—the other “ordinary” person who talks to Sensei.

Yet all of this serves only to reinforce a pre-existing theme. For Taki, the yōkai world is intrinsically emotionally bound to her grandfather. For Tanuma, it’s emotionally bound to Natsume himself. Further, he sees it as a barrier between them that he needs power to overcome. This has a long-running basis:

—When they first meet, Natsume makes it clear he wants to talk to Tanuma because he believes Tanuma can see the same things. Tanuma, likewise, wants to meet Natsume because he’s heard they’re similar. It makes sense, then, that he would see their relationship—and his worth as a friend—as being strongly tied to yōkai.

—In Tanuma’s special, his second major appearance, he frets about his weakness being the reason Natsume always lies and disappears without warning. He knows that Natsume is trying to protect him from yōkai trouble, but secretly fights the fear that Natsume is disappointed in his lack of power. The story ends with him wondering whether Natsume will ever tell him “what color the fish [in Tanuma’s yōkai pond] are” and whether he’ll ever be able to ask. Natsume talking about the yōkai pond, then, is established as a metaphor for Natsume opening up and treating Tanuma as a genuine friend.

—In the mirror arc, Tanuma borrows the yokai’s sight (i.e. power) because he wants to see what Natsume is reacting to. The yōkai later tells Natsume “It was what he wanted. […] Even though he knows [you’re trying to be kind] he doesn’t understand. Even though he’s right beside you, not knowing…” Earlier in the story, there’s a mildly comic set of exchanges where he repeatedly gushes about how “amazing” Natsume’s ability is.

—In “The Other Side of the Glass,” Tanuma’s flashback to Natsume not paying attention while he plays shogi connects the yōkai world to Tanuma’s perception of being kept at a distance. That is, Natsume is mentally drawn away from Tanuma by things that Tanuma (normally) cannot even see and therefore cannot work against. Tanuma eventually breaks down because he feels that in trying to be involved, he’s become “a burden” who “doesn’t know how far to intrude” and “doesn’t want to put up walls because of that.” At the end, he’s wistful about leaving the yōkai world and losing his sight.

—In “Distant Festival Lights” Tanuma reveals he “never even imagined” that yōkai were real until he met Natsume. Thus yōkai as something real to be wondered at must be inextricably bound to Natsume himself.

For several stories afterward, this desire is shifted to the background as the narrative focuses on what Tanuma can do: provide emotional support (as with Natsume’s story about his unwed grandmother) and run interference in the background. Tanuma’s desire to see yōkai does not come up during this calm period. However, the theme starts to creep back in with the ryokan story, along with his lack of faith in his own abilities—he assumes a real vision was “just a dream” because there’s nothing there when he wakes up, and apologizes to Natsume for reacting to it.

In Tenjō-san, he talks about how he feels about Natsume’s world:

夏目の世界はあいまいなものがいっぱいなんだな　おれは…やっぱり時々夏目と同じ世界を見てみたいなと思うけど　見えるものが違うからこそ確認しあえることもあるのかもしれないなって…

“Your [Natsume’s] world is full of ambiguous things, isn’t it? I… still think I’d like to the the same world as you, sometimes. But I also think maybe there are times when it’s because the things we see are different that we can confirm things for each other.” [Emphasis is original.]

In other words, this story is really just foregrounding something that’s always been subtext.

Which brings me to my next point: the use of mirroring. I assumed from the start that Misuzu was a mirror for Natsume in order to parallel Taki’s brother as a mirror. There seemed to be some basis for this in the first chapter—in spending so much time talking with Tanuma, Misuzu was preventing Natsume from talking to Tanuma. (Natsume frets about not getting to talk to Tanuma “at all” because the guest had been coming “for a few days.”) And in taking Tanuma around to look at various scenery, Misuzu’s actions are suspiciously similar to what Natsume worries about failing at: “Even though I have him right beside me, I keep him company with nothing but talk of scenery we cannot share.” [Emphasis mine.] The mirroring ended up being more explicit than I expected: Tanuma openly compares Sasame and Misuzu’s relationship to his with Natsume. This is an interesting narrative technique, for a couple of reasons.

Sasame—and Misuzu in particular—are not just yōkai. They are yōkai who act very differently from humans, to the point that it’s specifically highlighted. Of all the yōkai Natsume knows, Misuzu is one of the least human. They chose the form of a horse. They have a frog as a “retainer.” They once “tested" Natsume’s worthiness with a deadly curse. And in this story itself, they complain that they don’t understand why Natsume won’t just order them around, even though they specifically allowed him that power. In other words, they express themselves in ways that are not easily mapped onto human behavior. This is important because it allows the Misuzu/Sasame to Natsume/Tanuma mirroring to be opaque in many ways. For example, it’s not at all clear what the Natsume/Tanuma equivalent of possessing identical dolls and having a boisterous contest would be. This means that the story can move forward with strong emotional overtones while also refusing to define exactly what kind of relationship they’re supposed to have. It’s a convenient excuse to have two characters behave in a very romantic way without having to justify why they’re not actually in a romantic relationship. This is nearly the opposite of Taki’s story, where the use of her brother as mirror (if intentional) has strongly platonic overtones.

Another example of deliberate (and clever) muddling is in the presentation of Sasame and Tanuma’s emotions while Sasame inhabits Tanuma. Both characters are implied to be influenced by the other. Tanuma says “What’s the deal? That’s not like me. Kind of greedy.” Later, Sasame tells Sensei not to worry about Tanuma because “There was something off with me. [It’s not like me to] take advantage of the child of man this way.” Neither of them are really suggesting that the nature of emotions are strange, only more self-centered than usual. This suggests that their desires are so aligned, they effectively amplified each other, creating a stronger sense of desperation and thus greed. For example, both of them enjoyed their “daily routine” with Misuzu and Natsume, for related reasons. Sasame wanted to share Misuzu’s world, and Tanuma wanted to share Natsume’s world via Misuzu.

However, since Sasame!Tanuma’s actions are influenced by the emotions of both characters, it’s difficult to tease out exactly who is feeling what. When Tanuma is so happy to get dragged off by Misuzu, is that because—as he later tells Natsume—he was “happy that your ayakashi friend seemed to take an interest in me”—happy that part of Natsume’s world was actively trying to involve him? Or was it because Sasame was happy about Misuzu’s active involvement? To a certain extent, it’s beside the point. These characters are mirrors. What Tanuma feels about Misuzu is what Sasame feels about Misuzu is what Tanuma feels about Natsume. Both want to be closer and more involved. Both are afraid of being left behind, of being “unable to keep up.”

On a similar note, we return to the mirroring between Natsume and Misuzu. Misuzu smirks through much of the story, but shows serious vulnerability on more than one occasion—right before returning to smirking. This suggests that Misuzu is hiding just how invested they are. Though they express themselves in very yōkai-like ways, Misuzu is just as concerned about Sasame as Natsume is about Tanuma. Misuzu even uses the same phrase, 付き合う or “to keep company,” as Natsume. That is, Natsume says he will “keep [Tanuma] company” with Misuzu because Tanuma has “kept me company so many times when I was involved with yōkai.” Misuzu later explains their own behavior, saying that they only intended to “keep Sasame company in whatever it is they want to do.” Both, then, are shown to not entirely understand their companions motivations, but to want to indulge them regardless. The implication is that they mirror each other in their style of showing affection.

Further, both Misuzu and Natsume seem clueless as to their companion’s desires. Natsume shows progress in understanding, but is repeatedly distracted by Misuzu. Misuzu, for their part, claims that Sasame retains possession of Tanuma because Tanuma is “comfortable” and “easy to possess,” apparently unaware that Sasame is specifically enjoying the new type of companionship with Misuzu that having a human body offers. On the same note, Misuzu’s confusion about why they want to spend time with Sasame!Tanuma in such “odd” ways is interesting in the context of being Natsume’s mirror. It suggests that Natsume himself does not quite understand how he feels about spending time with Tanuma like this. The reveal that Misuzu was actually talking to Sasame only makes this confusion more poignant: Misuzu does not understand why they are enjoying simply walking around, looking at nostalgic places with their favorite companion, when they had come for a boisterous contest. This is another good example of how being yōkai make the parallels somewhat opaque.

Another interesting point is the way in which Natsume’s feelings balance Tanuma’s. Though we’re given somewhat more access into how Tanuma feels, due to Natsume being distracted by Misuzu, we do get a hint of the broader problem. Natsume is worried about whether Tanuma will “listen and smile” for him “forever.” Then he chides himself for only “keeping Tanuma company with nothing but talk of scenery we cannot share.” When Tanuma sympathizes with Sasame, he points out how “unbearably painful” it is to be “unable to keep up with your friend.” Both Natsume and Tanuma use いつでも “forever” in the context of trying to make their companion happy. For Tanuma, it’s because he knows he worries Natsume. For Natsume, it’s the concern about Tanuma's interest in "scenery we cannot share." Tanuma is worried about spiritual power, and how it would (in theory) facilitate being closer to Natsume. Natsume, on the other hand, is worried about his actual relationship skills. He knows that he’s not giving Tanuma as much as he should, but doesn’t seem to have any ideas about what he should give. The only thing we have to go on is “scenery we cannot share,” which suggests that moving forward might involve finding scenery they can share—exactly like they did with Misuzu. So there’s a sense that they’re both actively trying to find a way forward, but they’re not communicating well enough to do it right.

There is one way in which the story could be read as explicitly platonic. When describing the marshes that they and Sasame protect, Misuzu describes them as being “like identical twins.” If this is intended to mark them as “surrogate twins,” then obviously that would be a platonic reading. However, I don’t think this is the case. Instead, I think this more “soulmate” subtext. After all, it’s not Misuzu and Sasame who are described as “identical twins,” but the appearance of their homes. And place, in Natsume Yūjinchō, is often a stand-in for something like heart.

For example, many of Taki’s stories happen in her home, to symbolize the importance of family to her. Likewise, the Fujiwaras home is a symbol of the affection and safe boundaries they provide to Natsume. Natsume had to let go of the “Natsume” family home before he could move on from the loss of his parents. More dramatic is Reiko’s field of flowers: isolated, hidden from human and yōkai alike, a secret for Reiko alone, yet beautiful—and blue for Souko, the girl who came the closest to seeing her true self. The pond that’s so important for this story is also symbolic: it’s both the place where Natsume and Tanuma’s powers meet and the place where Misuzu and Sasame meet to be together.

But more directly relevant is the story of Gen and Sui: the gods who inhabited a “set of two” dog statues and protected a village from afar, until Sui’s statue was destroyed and she became a demon. The term 一対 implies either a perfectly matched set, or items that are nearly identical but with a twist (like male and female or silver and gold). So while the word “twin” wasn’t used in that story, it’s conceptually very similar to how the marshes were described. Misuzu is an explicitly genderless horse-person and Sasame is literally formless, but Gen and Sui were heavily anthropomorphized and explicitly gendered as male and female. And while the nature of their relationship is never explicit, Gen and Sui made much more sense as a romantic couple than as siblings. For one thing, their style of speech is consistent with an old-fashioned couple (similar to Touko-san and Shigeru-san’s). They also use similar romantic language as other couples, like wanting to “be able to be together forever” and being “happy because you were there.” So the reading that Sasame and Misuzu’s “twin” marshes are symbols of emotional compatibility—and their need to be together—is at least consistent with how Midorikawa-sensei has written in the past.

For a while I was troubled by the symbolism of Sasame’s fading marsh in this context. It’s a terrible fit for Misuzu and Sasame (and thus Natsume and Tanuma) being “like identical twins,” but didn’t seem to fit much better with the idea of their hearts being “like identical twins.” But eventually it occurred to me that the fading of Sasame’s marsh along with their powers did fit with a certain view of “heart”—just not the limited scope of love. In Japanese, “heart” has roughly the same set of metaphorical meanings as in English, but with an additional dash of “mind” depending on context. So think emotions, deep thoughts, sincere beliefs. Sort of an “inner self” thing. In this context it’s easier to understand how Sasame’s heart has been weakened. With their diminishing existence and the “widening gap” in power, Sasame is emotionally stretched thin. Fading hope, the strain of feeling left behind by someone they adore, the belief that the one thing they have no control over is the one thing that matters the most. This is Sasame’s fading heart—and this is what they have in common with Tanuma.

And in fact this fits Sasame’s dialog, as they wonder whether taking advantage of Tanuma, and focusing so much on Misuzu’s power, means their heart has grown “barren” along with their power.

This might be depressing but for the implication that it’s not actually Sasame’s or Tanuma’s power itself that has made them feel this way. It’s the fact that they have been following an old, inadequate rulebook with Misuzu (and Natsume), and need to communicate in order to adapt. Sasame frets about power, but when they comment on the “liveliness” around Misuzu, Sensei makes a point:

にぎやかから満たされているとも限るまい

“I suppose we can’t assume that lively surroundings always mean that one is fulfilled.”

This triggers Sasame’s memory of Misuzu’s “nostalgia” comments, and their realization that “It’s not as if [Misuzu] came hoping I would just be strong.” In other words, there is something about Sasame (Tanuma) that is important to Misuzu (Natsume) that cannot be replaced by all the other “lively” people and yōkai in the world. What exactly this means for them and their future is left unspoken, but it’s clearly emotional:

“I’m sorry [for what I did], child of Man. Surely, even without being able to keep up…[something they want will be possible]”

The way the story ends, as well, feels pointed. As I mentioned earlier, Taki’s story did not fit my conception of “setting a romantic arc in motion” because it felt too finished. The only thing arguably unfinished in the end is Taki’s new friendship with Girl-With-Crush. The end-cap is Natsume cheerfully affirming the importance of keeping promises to family-figures (in this case Sensei, to whom he promised an eclair for dealing with Taki). This is superimposed over an image of the gift from Taki’s brother and grandfather: a rock painted with floral designs (it's a fake yokai connection [the stonewashers], but authentic feelings). The overall feeling is that Natsume has solved all their issues. He convinced Taki she could talk to him, figured out why her brother was acting weird and helped the siblings uncover the gift that was meant to help tie them together, then finally observed Taki having positive social interaction with someone who wasn’t yōkai-adjacent. (Note that Natsume had nothing to do with Taki’s new friendship; it was the girl herself who worked up the courage to approach Taki. And she used sweets—the language Taki speaks—to do so, showing a higher level of mental compatibility than anyone else thus far.) There’s no sense that Natsume’s feelings about Taki have shifted, that he sees her any differently, or that he has any curiosity about her future romantic life.

On the other hand, the ending of Tanuma’s story does what Taki’s didn’t: it leaves a suggestive opening. Tanuma happily says goodbye “Again, tomorrow!” in much the same way as Misuzu has been, implying a return to regular close interaction—and perhaps a more deliberately “daily” interaction. Then Misuzu reappears, and smirkingly tells Natsume “Tanuma Kaname is a rather fun/interesting guy.” Choosing to use Tanuma’s full name for the first time is all but a wink, and using 中々 for “rather” suggests either they’ve begun to see Tanuma with new eyes—or they think Natsume has and they’re making a point of noticing— 中々 has a connotation of “unusually high” or “more than expected.” Natsume’s unimpressed reaction suggests he’s not pleased at the idea of Misuzu’s renewed interest or teasing, and he pointedly reminds Misuzu of Sasame, asking how their “contest” went. Misuzu’s counter that it is, essentially, private is overlaid on an image of the contest’s meeting place: the pond which, to Tanuma, symbolizes both the connection and the barrier between him and Natsume. The pond whose dripping water Natsume was distracted from when Misuzu arrived. This has a strong implication that there’s something about Natsume and Tanuma’s relationship that’s not meant to be shared outside the two of them.

This is all… more than a bit suggestive. But it’s not explicit.

It’s not clear how Misuzu and Sasame will move forward, considering they ended with the same “competition” as usual, but we know they have learned from the experience. Both Misuzu and Sasame found that they enjoyed a quieter way of being together, and Sasame began to realize that Misuzu sees them as more than just someone to play games of strength with.

Likewise it’s not clear how Natsume and Tanuma will move forward, though the fact that they spent time basically looking at scenery together is a neat counterpoint to Natsume’s lament that he “does nothing but talk about scenery we cannot share.” It’s also something they can do without Misuzu or Sasame—as they did with the fireworks so long ago. They do make explicit progress when Natsume, hurt by Tanuma’s reticence, reminds him that “it doesn’t matter whether it’s yōkai or not, if something is bothering you, you should tell me!” However, this is only a single facet of their problem. It’s the sort of thing they ought to have been taking for granted by now, but it doesn’t really answer the question of what they can actively do together to find contentment. There’s a sense that they’re making progress, but still have somewhere to go. Acknowledging that they want to talk about something other than yōkai is simply the first step in that direction.

In the end, there’s still quite a bit I haven’t gotten into: the use of suspiciously suggestive wording, and the way Misuzu is positioned as a subtextual rival. The way Tanuma’s insecurity about his powers mirrors his insecurity about his relationship with Natsume. The various connections to earlier stories. Tanuma’s romanticization of selflessness and the way this, with his insecurity, is an obstacle in their relationship. But this meta needed to end at some point, so this is as good as any.

I’m still uncertain as to the intent of this story. I still don’t know whether it meant to lay down romantic subtext or just sort of stumbled clumsily into it. But no matter what, it’s a deeply emotional story that solidifies Tanuma’s singularity and significance, and the importance of being closer to Natsume. So whatever may happen with Taki, or with Tanuma, there is some comfort to be had in that.

#meta #Tanunatsu #natsume yuujinchou #natsume's book of friends #tanuma kaname #Natsume Takashi #I know I said my other metas were kinda tanunatsu #But this one really is #anyway #spoilers #VERY spoilery #please beware if you're avoiding those #I still want to edit by I got a deadline #haha #And I'm not sure there's a really good way to write this thing.

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sometimesrosy · 5 years

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What was the lowest point for Bellarke canon that u thought oh no Jason might not actually go through with it?

The point in the show where I was worried about Bellarke never being romantic was season 3A from 3.03-3.05.

I definitely was worried. And then I sat down and did a meta on the Hakeldama argument, and I had JUST been coming to the conclusion that this was a show with a lot of symbolism and literary allusions, because not all shows are, and I hadn’t realized this one was until 3.02 and Jasper and Octavia sat in front of that William Blake Dante’s Inferno painting.

So. I started looking at the symbolism of Clarke and Bellamy and realized that Bellamy’s “Together” was more than just teamwork thing, but was in fact part of a thematic story of the dark and light, opposites, the head and the heart, enemies, coming together and unifying in order to survive and be victorious.

It was as I thought about that I realized that in order for this how to reach victory every season, Clarke and Bellamy HAD to be together. And I realized that to be whole, the dark and light had to be present. I realized that to be a good leader, you must have The Heart AND The Head. And that essentially meant that the defining symbol of The 100 and Bellarke was the yin yang black and white holistic image of bringing together the two opposites to be complete.

From then on, all the interpretations have fed into this basic thematic symbol and structure.

And it also meant that Clarke and Bellamy have to be together. That made them endgame and I stopped worrying about CL keeping Bellarke from happening.

Later on, I could go back and see that Clarke and Bellamy’s relationship development had it’s own narrative path that maintained an intensifying connection and love every season. I realized that while I don’t believe in soulmates, this story DOES believe in soulmates and that meant that Clarke and Bellamy were the soulmates of the story.

There is ONE mythic story that has made me worried and that’s the tale of the Moon and the Sun, two epic lovers who are never to meet. Every other symbolic image or myth has the lovers coming together, but that one gives the option for them never to reach romantic fulfilment. And I think I have avoided mentioning it because I knew it would cause problems, even though I knew it was very unlikely.

HOWEVER, when they brought B/E into the mix, I got really happy, because that meant that the last moon/sun symbolism no longer fit or was possible. Because they were directly bringing the romance into the picture, and basically forcing Bellamy and Clarke to acknowledge their romantic feelings for each other which will eventually lead to them choosing each other in a romantic relationship. If they didn’t want to go the romantic route for Bellarke, they wouldn’t have given him Echo as his girflriend, they would have given him Raven, or even no one.

I have been saying that Bellarke was endgame and keeping the faith when everyone else believed it was lost since season 3, after Hakeldama.

I’m not being stubborn or blind. The story keeps confirming my theories. And so, because it keeps confirming my theories, my symbolic interpretations, my structural analysis, my romantic tropes, but not my timing (I have to keep readjusting because they are telling a longer term story than I am used to and they are much more patient than I am,) that means that my interpretations are still correct.

When my interpretations are wrong I drop them or take another interpretation to follow. LIke, for instance, I originally came up with the theory that they’d use discovered cryo pods to survive through praimfaya. That those would be the life boats. HOWEVER. When it turned out that season 4 had no cryo pods showing up, (despite foreshadowing of cryo pods being possible) I adjusted my theory. When we got spoiled and told that Clarke would be left behind and there would be a time jump, I did not like it at all and at first refused to accept it, but then adjusted my theory and said that Clarke would become a mother. I said that she and Bellamy would have sex and she would get pregnant with his child, which clearly didn’t happen, and yet…. I was right about her having a child. And I was right about him being the father because he immediately adopted her. So while it didn’t confirm their sexual relationship, it did confirm their parental relationship and they were both NAMED parents. Mama Bear and Captain Daddy. Or whatever the mug said, but come on. Captain Daddy. So like even when I was wrong, I was right? By the time we got to s5, I was like, they’re going to lose the war for Eden but they’re going to win their freedom and leave the war behind in an Exodus as they travel the wastes to find a new home. And then the cryo pods ACTUALLY came into the story. And the travelling the wastes became possibly tavelling the wastes IN SPACE in the CRYO PODS. So that ended up with my crazy pre s4 crack cryotheory actually being how they ended Book 1. I mean. I’m just trying to show how these LARGER themes, mythic or symbolic or philosophical or genre or archetypal can SHAPE the entire story to where we can predict the larger movements.

What I’m saying is that Clarke and Bellamy are a symbol for what needs to happen in order for humanity to survive, be redeemed and start a new phase. They need to embrace the shadow, the enemy, join together, depend on the other’s strength and allow them to act as checks and balances, to respect each other and be committed to the relationship, and they need to love. They need to build a family. Clarke and Bellamy are the symbolic representation of the mother and father that raise the new people. And that’s a romantic couple, not platonic. It’s just not about boinking, because it is so much deeper than that. And THAT is the relationship they have been building all this time.

I feel like I’ve gone way off into theories about other things just to say “this is why I believe in bellarke,” but this is why I trust bellarke. Because it’s not about hooking up. It’s about the root symbolism and philosophy of the genre of this story. Mom and Dad are going to save their children and raise their family in a home. Bellarke are going to save their people, and create a new society free of the trauma of the past.

There was always a question of whether or not they’d get to the romance part of their story, because JR was holding it off. So it’s always been at risk. But even so, every season has been ABOUT Bellarke being together.

#the 100 #bellarke #believe in bellarke #i've been pretty certain since 3.05 #themes #symbolism #mythos #yin yang

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

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Since Cas is supposed to be spending a lot of time with Jack next season and teaching him about life and stuff, and probably being really sad about Dean while he does it, do you think Jack might notice and bring up Cas and Dean's relationship? He certainly would have no reason to avoid the topic like Sam or anyone else would. If they're really serious about focusing more on interpersonal relationships then I really don't see how they can avoid talking about Dean and Cas.

The tone of your question is making me weirdly feel like we’re verging somewhere between reality show and scripted drama, where the characters are almost out of control of the writers and all the drama is bubbling under the surface, ready to spill out at any moment :P

Like, from a writing perspective, I feel that they just do not approach it as if Dean and Cas are literally real and in love in the same way that to fans who only get the finished content, it can come across… There’s a much more mechanical approach to actually writing scenes than feeling like there is any inevitability. It depends entirely on what Dabb and/or the writer of the scene/episode wants to convey on a wider thematic level and on the closer personal level. If they wanted to emphasise that both Cas and Jack are missing Dean and Jack asks Cas about Dean, then it’s 100% in their control to script Jack’s innocence and Cas’s care with responding, based on circumstances, location, current mood, other things that happen this episode, and wider season-long factors, to be as cagey as he likes.

If Cas and Jack were having that throwing the ball back and forth moment I was dreaming of this morning, it could be cute and wholesome, and Cas regretfully says that they’re doing this because it’s the kind of human thing Dean would suggest, and Jack makes a sad inquiry about how Dean helped Cas become more human and learn to do human things, and Cas, aware that Jack is struggling to be human, answers from the POV of his own slide towards humanity that Dean’s caused, and talks about how Dean has lead him down that path with fondness and pain, and ends with assuring Jack he’s doing really well compared to Cas’s own attempt, and we just charged through a ton of serious Destiel territory without touching the sides.

Maybe Jack gets hurt on a fight that they get into in the sharp end of the dramatic search for Dean, and Cas has to heal him and laments his dumb humans always getting hurt and now Jack is one of them, but then prompted or not, starts talking about how strong Dean is regardless, and it lapses into a quiet moment of them agreeing they’ll save Dean and he’ll be okay, and again, Cas says some deep shit about Dean but it’s not romantic in the surface text, it’s prompted by his sense of protectiveness of Dean and Jack, and that linking factor is just the conversation starter.

Or Jack does some gross thing and then blames Dean, like spitting food like Dean did in front of him in 13x04 and Cas tells him off and Jack says Dean does it, defensively, and Cas gets all roll-eyes-fond-smile, and says that Dean is the best and worst teacher of humanity, and they get into the subject that way… You know, that would be a comic beats, quick answer, joke about Dean to break the tension moment and wouldn’t really get deep at all except for the implied massive fondness they both have for Dean.

Or Jack and Cas are having a quiet moment maybe driving somewhere or stopped at the side of the road and Jack asks Cas to tell him more about Dean because he seems to know him so well but they would be fully in the right to make the question innocent and to have Cas respond carefully like for a kid who doesn’t need to know all his angst, and Jack might see how Cas is handling it all but he will remember Sam and Dean acting so differently about losing Cas when he was newborn that he can only really at the most probing to maintain his innocence ask Cas about how he is feeling about Dean compared to how Sam and Mary are handling it. And as messed up as Cas might be he’s not under an obligation to tell Jack that he’s pining for Dean romantically, and their shared connection to Dean is a family one, not the extra romantic stuff that only Cas has, so talking about that is what can result in any probing directly from Jack in a calm moment if they don’t want to force a confession, which would be the writers’ hand, not Jack or Cas making it happen.

You know, those ideas just as an example of many ways of how to think about the themes and character stuff going on about how a scene is structured and why you would write it. As Jack spent so much more time with Dean than he did with Cas, and ditto Cas has of course more knowledge of Dean, AND that freakin attention hog drama llama is off being possessed by Michael and the main mytharc for them as a result, there’s so many reasons for Jack and Cas to discuss Dean or find him the common thread in a scene that will help them connect.

But there’s no actual imperative on the writing or with the characters that will FORCE them to talk about Cas’s feelings because as much as they’re so strongly implied the text is sagging and tearing and creaking around the weight of it all, the writers are using romance TROPES but they are NOT writing a romance NARRATIVE. Like, romantic things happen all the time between Dean and Cas, but of course the actual story is action/horror/drama and all of those tropes have the bigger storytelling weight. The overlap is enough you can see the ups and downs of the story as basically any narrative - it’s like horoscopes in that sense - and you need to take common sense clues on the writing to know what is actually being told.

The jokes we make that the writers keep Dean n Cas separate or whatever because they’ll just start making out are funny and true in some ways for us as the audience, our expectations and desires if we had full control of the story, especially when reading the emotional weight of their personal narrative. Like, we can identify SO MANY “just kiss him you fool!” moments in the story, obviously none of which were actually kisses despite being the opportune moment.

In the wider picture, the story is never constructed around telling itself just about Dean n Cas and making the beats of their relationship the MAIN reason anything is happening, as in, this story is first and foremost about the hunter pining for the angel and everything has been constructed to be about that from the start. It can inform major events and stuff, but it still isn’t WHY they are writing the story. I know it’s common discourse to be like NOTHING MAKES SENSE WITHOUT DESTIEL but in truth you can ALWAYS see the real line the writers mean to take and while I don’t think the Destiel is accidental, I also don’t think it’s a primary motivator to the plot or characterisation.

This is also NOT a wild hot take for a Destiel shipper or meta writer, it’s being clear about what the show’s intent actually is, and trying to understand where the Destiel reading comes from. Like, in no ways am I saying Destiel isn’t real, a solid part of the narrative and acting, and knowingly written into scenes and story arcs and that there’s always a romantic flavour to Dean n Cas stuff that lacks elsewhere. Of course there’s all this subtext to float a massive ship on. But the luxury of this sort of subtextual romantic story is that the main arc between the characters can have plausible deniability and that in no way for where the writers are working from, does that force them to make choices which they aren’t extremely knowingly doing when it comes to the give and take of making scenes read one way or another.

Like, the entire point is, no previous season has been written as if the actual pitch was canon Destiel at the highest level, because if it had been, we’d have canon Destiel right now, I can say from the luxury of a hiatus where all previous seasons are laid out before us very firmly not having canon Destiel. 13x01-6 was written to be about Dean and Cas in a way that has not ever really been so overt that the emotional arc Dean feels about Cas is the controlling interest but at the end of the day it did not go canon in that time and we moved onto the next story arc. Which is nice we GOT a story arc so much about how they feel but it was still just teasing and subtext and all.

And I am seriously, seriously, not saying this from a place of negativity, bitterness, or whatever else. It’s not a criticism!!! it’s just stating how the fact of the story is. The narrative about Destiel has got so wildly derailed by attention grabbing hype I’ve been clutching my face and wailing at recently about how the end of last season was their big moment to make it canon or they’d have irredeemably fucked up, and blah blah everything seemed to be going that way... No! It wasn’t! The story is not beholden to Destiel! It’s CLEARLY not except for 13x01-6 and that was a contained arc and honestly I still haven’t processed what it means in a bigger picture except that I have no bitterness and all the chill for now.

But the writers’ room is just plodding along through seasons and plotlines and all the different character arcs, and all their MotW and episode pitches and ridiculous ideas and they’re using Destiel as a known emotional tool we respond to and they also clearly like, while at the same time all their focus on plot stuff can very clearly be nothing to do with Destiel and in no particular hurry to do anything about it.

I need this to be really really clear because I spent last season yelling into the void it felt like, repeatedly warning about fandom hype, expectations, and so on, and a bunch of people still got all revved up then really confused and disappointed and upset that the whole thing hadn’t been a massive Destiel whatever, and that instead the episode had been about *gasp* Sam and Jack and Lucifer??? (And also Michael!Dean with no build up and out of the blue because we hadn’t been warned since 12x12 it was happening, because the only thing that happened in 12x12 was Destiel flirting and confessions and sometimes if you were looking closely Mary being an evil hag :P)

So this year I’m going full grump about fandom narratives, expectations, predictions, told-you-sos and so on. At least on my blog, if you come chat to me sounding like the narrative is locked in stone and Dean n Cas are so real they’re breaking the bounds of reality to force the writers to write them being gay together, I’ve just been in fandom too long at this point not to feel like I’ve seen it all before and the only predictions I make are about the fandom meltdowns and what do you know, of THAT I have 100% clarity >.>

PLEASE be critical of what you read; things that might be jokes are hyperbole and things that might be are serious are usually filled with disclaimers and attention to how the reader might react, such as reminders of anyone’s ability to predict canon, and so on. If I’m going around making unfounded statements about Sam ripping the sleeves off his shirts, I’ve seen a BTS pic with a sensible explanation for why we’re not seeing this on screen but it’s a hilarious detail to know when he wears a jacket indoors... But I’m going to PRETEND Sam has flipped and torn the sleeves off all his shirts until canon proves me wrong, because I know it will so I can dick around making jokes about it because no one gets hurt when it doesn’t happen. When someone is making gargantuan claims about canon, Destiel, intent etc, even if you think they’re so much smarter than you (we’re all just faking it, truly. You’re good :P) don’t take anyone’s word as gospel. Understand that meta has no secret access or understanding, there’s no certainty in what we say or do.

i mean I am flat out being hesitant to talk about things which others think are firm spoilers because I just do not think they’re at the point where we know anything about them to say anything. What is the tone, the context, the, you know, full episode surrounding it? I don’t really care about spoilers because they never mean anything, it’s just a weird collecting hobby we do on the internet, and belatedly offer interesting context but before we see the episode are just infuriating and misleading and can only ever be. Full spoiler CLIPS of episodes can be infuriating and misleading, if it’s of an early scene that is pretending to be something else before we get to the real tone/plot/reason for the episode. There’s no validation or proof from spoilers, only glimpses and PR and no storytelling context to explain why it looks the way it does.

The spoilers from SDCC were all utterly banal, empty, predictable answers that tell us nothing of any use or relevance because they’re not going to tell us anything actually interesting or useful because if they were, Dabb would start narrating his full meaning of a chunk of episode. At best we can use the common themes of the answers they gave as our starting points for interrogating the text, like I did above with my hypothesis for Cas and Jack conversations, about Jack feeling human without his powers, and we know they’re spending more time together and they’re looking for Dean. So we can construct ideas but they can go anywhere the imagination takes us... Which is, of course, not where the season is going unless we happen to roll some really lucky speculation dice. Which means, again, the spoilers are only actually relevant/matter WHEN WE HAVE THE ACTUAL EPISODES.

Speculation is ridiculous and I am more and more annoyed by it the longer I’m in fandom, because it ends up with everyone seeming to want to know the story in advance. There’s a media industry in guessing, selectively spoiling, and basically just over-analysing things only to try and work out what happens next. People on the internet being able to guess all the plot twists and secrets because tropes work in certain ways and there are inevitable conclusions sometimes, or legit detectiveing the resolution to a final book or episode or whatever, are missing the entire point, in their need to KNOW what happens next, that it’s only watching it which is actually fun. And if people struggle watching something without knowing what happens, then wait a day and spoil yourself on the real facts and then watch... Blargh.

Wanting to know the raw beats of the story and all the things that happen, usually just to look smart and like you beat the system of the mystery of storytelling, is not what we should be doing as a fandom. We should be ENJOYING ourselves in the fictional space, not stressing over what will or won’t happen. Or feeling like the story now HAS to happen one way or another.

No. It doesn’t. It never does. It can act like it does right up until the last minute and we can hope that it goes where it seems to be indicating and talk about storytelling integrity ahead of any rug pull or whatever, but the writers themselves, the people crafting the story, are under NO pressure from the characters, story, plot... not to do whatever they want with it.

Like... idk, I just feel like fandom has got so full of hyperbole that we’ve got to the point where people aren’t reading it as hyperbole any more and are legit operating on a level where demands and interpretation are on this completely wild place where everything’s just Destiel holding the writers hostage and screaming and there’s full agendas and No Homo Interns galore and I really can not tell at this point, if I whipped up the No Homo Intern from scratch now instead of 3 years ago, if people would BELIEVE it because things got so wild at the end of last season, when it came to how people were treating the text as a living, almost violent thing.

Destiel is ever-present in our lives, yes. It is NOT the writers’ top priority in a scene and they’re under no obligation to make it so despite what would be in the best interests of the show and story, and scenes written without it overtly present are not going to be bad, negligent, stupid, poorly-written, confused, forced at gunpoint by the No Homo Intern, or all written by Buckleming. It is very very possible that the show continues to be written entirely as it has been almost the entire time - which is to say, with Destiel subtextual, and not on the top priority of the agenda in every writers’ mind in every scene, up to and including when Dean and Cas interact or one of them talks about the other.

It’s just one of those things like the social contract which I tend to assume we’re all operating on until things have gone way too far and I realise I am the only one who read the terms and conditions and also someone just got stabbed??

#Asks #destiel #riverboat gambling #fandom problems #wank for ts #like... I know comments like this ask are common jokes #but seriously #I would rather let you down and write this instead of a funny ask #than fuck up and write a funny ask about that comment and leave someone truly believing what they just wrote >.>

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