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that-house · 3 years

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Viego Rant (villainy and character design and tragedy and all that jazz)

Introduction The more I think about Viego, League of Legends’ newest character, the more enamored I am with him as a villain (unrelated to his general sexiness, though that does tie in with what makes him such a good villain).

I’ve seen a lot of complaints about his design. The Ruined King, one of the greatest threats in Runeterra, the progenitor of the Shadow Isles, the lord of the undead, is finally released as a playable champion and he looks like this:

People were expecting another Mordekaiser (who is similarly an undead king with a ghost army), a lich-tyrant clad in iron, decayed flesh peeling from an aged face. What we got was an angsty anime prettyboy, and it was infinitely better than the alternatives.

Lore Viego isn’t a conquering king. While his combat abilities are indeed badass, his personality is far from it. He’s a whiny brat and that’s incredible. He isn’t bent on world domination. His character arc revolves around just how human, how fallible he really is. For those unfamiliar with his lore, I’ll paraphrase it here:

Viego was the second son of a great king. Overshadowed by his brother and with no expectations upon him and near-limitless wealth, he wandered around being an idiot fuckboy for the vast majority of his formative years. Disaster struck when his brother died in an accident, and Viego took the throne with no training, no experience, and no desire to be king. He was a shitty king. The worst king. Just all-around apathetic. Gave zero shits. Can you blame him? It’s a lot of responsibility to be thrust upon someone who isn’t much more than a child, and with no preparation. He didn’t care about anything, that is, until he met Isolde. She was a poor seamstress, but he fell in love with her upon their first meeting. Together they ruled the country but it was really just them staring longingly into each others’ eyes. His allies were kinda fucking pissed about that, and one day an assassin came from Viego. The assassin fucked up and stabbed Isolde instead, and the poison on the blade made her fall gravely ill. As she lay in her bed, slowly dying, Viego went mad seeking a cure. He ravaged the land seeking any knowledge that might help, pouring all of his money into finding an antidote. He failed. As a last resort, he brought Isolde’s body to the Blessed Isles, a place rumored to be able to resurrect the dead. It worked, to an extent. Isolde’s wraith, confused, afraid, and angry at being ripped from the peace of death, unthinkingly stabbed Viego in the chest with his own magic sword, creating basically a magic nuke that turned the Blessed Isles into the domain of the undead. Viego resurrected as the king of the Shadow Isles some time later, having totally forgotten that Isolde killed him. He controls a big-ass ghost army, could probably beat up any living thing in a fight, and has evil ghost magic. Now this stupid simp wants his wife back and if he has to kill every living thing on Runeterra, well, anything for his queen. He’s even a tier 3 sub to her Twitch.

Music His musical theme isn’t some heavy metal anthem or intense cinematic piece (unlike the Pentakill song named after his sword, Blade of the Ruined King). It’s mostly sad and slow, almost sinister, with a piano and a music box. It has its loud moments featuring violins and choral bits like any villainous music, but the song is mostly subtle. It is a banger though.

youtube

In the comments section of this video, someone pointed out that the music reflects his story from beginning to end:

Everything about this champion is so well done. Riot Games really outdid themselves on this one. Bravo, encore please.

Motivation While the Mordekaiser circlejerkers on r/LeagueofLegends won’t shut the fuck up about how powerful Mordekaiser is, Viego is the better villain. Mordekaiser may be a bigger threat to all life on Runeterra, but Viego is a better character. (There’s a guy on my League discord server who won’t shut up about Mordekaiser so forgive me for being pissed at Morde stans).

Mordekaiser is motivated by a desire for control, to rule the world. Viego is motivated by obsession and misplaced love. There aren’t a lot of Mordekaisers on Earth. Supervillains are rare in real life. But Viego’s motivations are a lot closer to home. People in positions of power that they don’t deserve can do a lot of harm (for example: Trump).

He’s a grieving husband who was never prepared to deal with anything more difficult than choosing what wine to drink with dinner, who is trying to get his wife back because the world had always complied to his every whim. He’s a funky mix between a truly hopeless romantic and a spoiled brat throwing a temper tantrum.

Obsession is scary. It’s a real-world emotional state that’s been the cause of a lot of murders over mankind’s history. In contrast, Mordekaiser’s cartoonish Genghis Khan XXL schtick isn’t something that we encounter often. Of course a superpowered ultradictator would be worse for the world, but if you give ultimate power to a random person, you’re more likely to get someone like Tighten from Megamind. Or, more relevantly, Viego.

Design His design is sexy and stupid, just like him. He wears an open shirt into battle and wields his sword like an idiot (I’ve seen all the rants about how that’s not how that sword is meant to be used) because he was never really a warrior. Even at his most violent, right before the end of his mortal life, he didn’t do much combat himself, leaving his military endeavors to his underlings. Even now that he’s essentially a god, he still has a colossal wraith army that causes far more devastation than he ever could personally.

Despite his slim build (by League of Legends standards), he easily wields his colossal sword because of the strength of his state of undeath. Like his political power when he was alive, his posthumous magical and physical powers were never something he sought out, they were just given to him by circumstance.

The big cool-ass triangle hole in his chest where Isolde stabbed him is the source of the Black Mist, which is evil ghost mist that ebbs and flows from the Shadow Isles, bringing with it hordes of the undead. The sadder Viego is, the more Mist he creates. Poetically, his invasion of the world is inspired by his sorrow at his wife’s death and enabled by his wife’s reluctance to return to him. His story is perfectly reflected by his design.

Isolde Isolde’s spirit took up residence inside a young Senna (who’s another League champion, not particularly important here). This led to some Black Mist-related shenanigans and at least for the time being, Senna uses Isolde’s power to fight off the servants of Viego which threaten all life on Runeterra.

It seems pretty clear that whatever love Isolde felt for Viego is gone by now. Whether or not she ever loved him or was just unable to say no to the king is up for debate, but I’d like to believe there was something there. In my opinion, Viego’s story hits harder if they really were a great couple at first, torn apart by circumstance and obsession.

Much like the Maiden of the Woods in that one comic that circulates around here, to whom the knight gave his heart and she was like “yo what the fuck i literally never asked you to do this,” Viego went a little too far in trying to save her. They may have once been happy, but the Ruined King ruined his own life, too.

Unless Isolde is a lot less morally decent than we’ve been led to believe, I doubt she can forgive all the massacring that her husband’s been doing lately. In the recent cinematic, she was shown to be pretty anti-Viego. Maybe she’ll get a bastardization arc, but it certainly seems unlikely.

All of Season 2021 is based around Viego, Isolde, and the Shadow Isles, so we’ll just have to see what comes next. It’s possible that we’ll get Isolde as a playable champion, which should clear a lot of things up.

Final Thoughts Unlike so many villains, he’s not fueled by rage or hatred, but rather by sorrow. He’s stuck in his past, unable to move on. He regrets the actions of his life but is set on his course now. The sunk-cost fallacy comes into play here; he’s put so much time and effort and blood into bringing back Isolde, that turning away from it would feel to him like an insult, not only to her but to the innocent lives he’s taken in her name.

His tale is a tragedy, a love story gone horrifically wrong. Viego has suffered throughout his thousand-year life. Despite this, he’s undoubtedly the villain. His permanent death would be a net positive for the world. In has rage and grief he’s destroyed multiple civilizations, and will burn down the world to get Isolde back.

His heart may be in the wrong place, but it’s in a very human place. I don’t think he’ll get the ending he’s looking for, but I hope he finds some closure in the end.

#League of Legends #viego #i swear no one's gonna read this #even if you dont care about League i tried to make this interesting #even if you don't like League as a game the lore is pretty fucking solid

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meta-squash · 3 years

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Brick Club 1.5.10 “Outcome Of The Success”

It’s long, I’m sorry. There’s just so much in this chapter!

The chapter’s first paragraph is a description of the misery of winter weather, bookended by sentences about Fantine. It’s been nearly a year since she was fired. The bit about winter is a description of Fantine’s descent as well as the weather. Winter brings short days which means less work; Fantine’s position in society means she’s finding less work as well because she is essentially freelancing rather than working for an employer with steady jobs. “No heat, no light, no noon, evening touches morning” is such a good description of the way everything is miserable and just blurs together when you’re trying to just stay alive. All the awful stuff is sharp and dull at the same time. “Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man.” Fantine is starting to harden here; we see her become more shameless, tougher.

Fantine wears a cap after cutting her hair “so she was still pretty.” And this disappears so rapidly in this chapter. Her beauty is so important. Fantine is the only character aside from Enjolras who is repeatedly described as beautiful in a way that seems to really matter. (Cosette is also beautiful, but that description is almost entirely through Marius’ POV, rather than from a more general POV with Fantine.) The slow destruction of Fantines beauty--the discarding of her pretty clothes for peasant ones, her frequent tears, the loss of her hair and teeth, the torn and threadbare clothing--mirrors her social destruction. She desperately clings to her beauty by wearing a cap, but she obviously gives up pretty soon.

What fascinates me here is that Hugo mentions that Fantine admired Madeleine, like everyone else, but he also implies that she didn’t hate him straight away for her dismissal. In the previous chapters, her reaction is to accept the dismissal as a “just” decision. She works up her hatred by repeatedly telling herself it was his fault. It seems as though she lands on the right conclusion in the wrong way. She blames herself first, and only through gradually convincing herself does she start to blame Madeleine. He and his crap system are the ones to blame, but she comes to that conclusion in a roundabout way that feels like she still blames herself but is trying not to. Fantine has been a scapegoat for everyone up until now; Madeleine has become her scapegoat to avoid (incorrectly) blaming herself.

“If she passed the factory when the workers were at the door, she would force herself to laugh and sing.” She’s trying so hard to make them think they haven’t gotten to her, but it just makes it so much more obvious. The laughter and singing is the “wrong” reaction, and it makes everyone notice her even more, and judge her even harder. It’s just so sad because I can understand that behavior of trying so hard to act the opposite way of how you think people will expect you to, only it backfires and makes your true feelings all the more apparent, which gives even more fuel to the cruel people.

Fantine takes a lover out of spite, “a man she did not love.” There are a few things here that contrast with the grisettes of 1.3. This lover is someone Fantine does not love, her first relationship since losing Tholomyes, who she was in love with. The man is also a street musician, which reminds me of Favourite’s actor/choir boy. The difference being that Favourite’s boy had at least some connections through his father, and Fantine’s lover is only a street musician. Fantine takes this lover in for the same reason that she sings and laughs outside the factory: to try and show that she’s unaffected, which really only serves to do the opposite. She has this affair “with rage in her heart,” which seems to be the only emotion left for her for anyone besides Cosette (and maybe Marguerite).

“She worshiped Cosette.” My only comment here is that this is something that Valjean will later echo. Both worship and adore Cosette as a point of light, something to cling to and love and care for.

Okay maybe I’m missing something here, but Fantine can read but she can’t write? This is probably my “been good at reading/writing my whole life” privilege talking, but wouldn’t she be able to write if she could read? I suppose maybe it’s like how I can look at numbers and understand the numbers but I can’t do math for shit? I don’t know. That just caught my eye.

Fantine is starting to lose her inhibitions as she begins to lose control of everything in her life. She’s laughing and singing and running and jumping around outside in public, she’s acting loud and brash and odd. Her reactions to her misfortune and the terrible things that keep happening express the “wrong” emotion. It’s an attempt to cope, and a courageous one, but it’s drastically different from the quiet Fantine who barely spoke that we were introduced to.

“Two Napoleons!” grumbled a toothless old hag who stood by. “She’s the lucky one!”

This line really struck me. We’ve been tunnel-visioned on Fantine’s misery this whole time. Suddenly the focus pulls back a little bit and we get a little bit of perspective. Fantine is not at rock bottom yet. She could still go so much lower. To this toothless old woman, she’s lucky because she’s pretty and because her teeth have worth. Fantine is poor, and cold, and worried about her kid, and most of the town laugh at or scorn her, and yet this old woman still thinks she’s the lucky one of the two of them. It’s a much more subtle commentary on the levels of poverty and abjectness that exist. Once you’ve fallen through the cracks in society to the level of homelessness, to the level of selling your teeth and hair and body, to complete aloneness, anyone who has even a scrap more than you seems “lucky.” And Fantine’s not too far from that existence.

The conversation between Marguerite and Fantine about military fever is so weird. Is Marguerite just saying stuff? This dialogue sounds like a conversation between two people who have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s like those scenes in comedies where one person pretends to be super confident about something to impress the other even though both of them are completely wrong. Oh okay wait! I just did some googling and I’ve realized that neither of them know what they’re talking about because Thenardier did his bad spelling thing! “Miliary fever” is an old medical term for an infection that causes fevers and bumpy skin rashes. (Mozart’s death is attributed to it; it seems to have fallen out of use as it became easier to pinpoint certain illnesses.) I think this isn’t just Marguerite not knowing what she’s talking about. This is a misunderstanding due to Thenardier’s misspelling (whether deliberate or not, I don’t know) and neither Marguerite nor Fantine know enough to realize it.

ETA: Okay wow I’m keeping that whole “miliary fever” thought journey in just to record my thought process but I’ve just double-checked against the Hapgood translation and the original French, and the mistake isn’t with the Thenardiers at all! It’s entirely the fault of the translators. The original French says “miliare” and Hapgood has translated it as “miliary”; Fahnestock and MacAfee clearly did not notice that the French was “miliare” and not “militaire,” and neither did their editors.

“During the night Fantine had grown ten years older.” Off the top of my head, I can only think of three instances of not-old people being blatantly described as looking old. This description here, Valjean when he returns from Arras, and Eponine. There are probably more I’m missing, but the connecting factor between these three is severe, prolonged trauma. Trauma and a difficult life can prematurely age people (I always think of that Dorothea Lange photo of the migrant mother who was only 32 but looks 50) and Hugo uses this fact to bolster his descriptions of what they go through. But Fantine and Valjean both age almost suddenly; Eponine is already old-looking the first time we meet her as a character with dialogue. Fantine’s sudden aging is another level of departure from her old life. In Paris, she was the youngest of the group, and now she looks far older than she is.

“Actually, the Thenardiers had lied to get her to get the money. Cosette was not sick at all.” As readers, we know this. We’ve seen the Thenardiers lie over and over and we see Fantine sacrifice with no idea. But this one hits harder than the others. Partly, I think, because Hugo puts it so bluntly in a sentence that has its own paragraph. But also because this is the first sacrifice that is truly unalterable. Fantine’s hair can grow back. There may have eventually been some slim chance of a job opportunity or something coming up somehow, or an influx of things needing mending or something. But she cannot regain her teeth. This is also the first sacrifice that physically disfigures her in a visible way. She can hide her lack of hair under a cap, she can hide her lack of money by using and reusing things. She cannot hide her missing teeth.

It’s interesting that we do not hear about Mme Victurnien here. Rather than the last chapter, this would be the one where Victurnien would be “winning.” The consequences of Victurnien’s actions have now permanently affected Fantine’s life. Except I think the reason we don’t see her here is that she wouldn’t face it. She can look out her window at Fantine walking down the street in distress with her beauty intact and feel satisfaction, but if she saw Fantine walking down the street, toothless and hairless, I don’t think she would feel satisfaction, because she wouldn’t be able to connect her actions to this Fantine. Feeling satisfaction towards this level of misery would require acknowledging her participation in causing it. It’s one thing for the townspeople to laugh at or gawk at her, but I think claiming responsibility for her condition is something else altogether that I’m not sure Mme Victurnien would do.

Fantine throwing her mirror out the window is a strange sort of contrast compared to Eponine’s reaction to a mirror. Fantine cannot face her descent. Eponine is already there, and her excitement at Marius’ mirror is a weird sort of distracted examination of herself. Fantine cannot bear to examine herself because unlike Eponine, she can remember what it was like before this. Tossing away the mirror is tossing away the thoughts of her past life and her past self; she can’t ever go back to that.

“The poor cannot go to the far end of their rooms or to the far end of their lives, except by continually bending more and more.”

God I don’t really even know what to say about this line except ouch. It’s just so poignant and intense. The older you get the harder it is to survive, to get up with each new stumble. And we can also take into account things like the cholera epidemic that will occur a few years later in the book, which mostly affected the poor. There’s so little access to any sort of help or assistance. And clearly Valjean’s few little systems of aid aren’t good enough. He may have set up a worker’s infirmary and a place for children or old workmen, but there doesn’t seem to be assistance for single, unsupported women, or the homeless and unemployed. They’re left to bend more and more under the weight of life.

“Her little rose bush dried up in the corner, forgotten.” I can’t help but read this as a parallel to the Thenardier’s treatment of Cosette. As Fantine falls apart and falls behind on her payments, Cosette is growing up which means the abuse from the Thenardiers has probably increased. It also feels like a weird sort of throwback to the spring/summertime imagery of beauty and chasteness and modesty from back in 1.3, which has now completely disappeared and dried up as Fantine loses her beauty, her modesty, and her coquetry.

I love the little detail about Fantine’s butter bell full of water and the frozen ice marks. It’s such a small detail but so evocative. It also feels like a metaphor for each of Fantine’s new hardships. Every time the butter pot freezes over, it leaves a ring of ice for a long time; each time Fantine encounters a new trauma, she hardens and becomes tougher. She keeps her dried up, long gone modesty and youth in one corner and the suffering that has hardened her in the other. On a side note, I’m wondering if there is actually butter in her butter bell or if she’s now using it only for water? I would imagine water only; butter seems like something that might be expensive. Also, would the building she’s living in have had indoor plumbing, or would she have gotten water from a well or a pump somewhere? My plumbing history knowledge is lacking.

Hugo describes Fantine’s torn and badly mended clothes. At this point she’s working as a seamstress, which means she’s at least proficient in the skills needed to sew and/or mend clothes in such a way that they stay together. This means that the repairs done for herself are likely careless and messy. I think this is partly an indication of how little time she has for herself--if she’s sewing for work for 17 hours a day, she has very little time to mend her own stuff, and definitely can’t afford better quality material--and partly an indication of the ways in which she is falling apart. She doesn’t bother mending her things properly, she goes out in dirty clothes. She doesn’t mend her stockings, she just stuffs them further down in her shoes. It seems she has only one or perhaps no good petticoats, which means she’s probably walking around in just a shift and a dress. Not only is her stuff threadbare and falling apart, she’s also probably freezing due to the lack of layers.

“A constant pain in her shoulder near the top of her left shoulder blade.” This makes me wonder if Fantine’s left-handed. If she’s sewing by hand, by candlelight, in a shitty rush chair, for seventeen hours a day, that is absolute murder on the back/shoulders/neck. Whenever I do hand-sewing I’m usually sat on the floor or my bed, and my back and upper shoulders tend to get sore if I get in the zone and I’m bent over the work for a long time. I don’t know about French dressmakers, but I know around that time the English were really big on very small, neat, almost invisible stitches. Which would hurt to do for seventeen hours a day by candlelight.

“She hated Father Madeleine profoundly, and she never complained.” The Hapgood translation of this line is better, I think. Still, I think it’s important that it’s pointed out that she never voices her opinions or her complaints. It’s only when Madeleine is in front of her that she announces them at all (despite not speaking directly to him then, either). She hates Valjean, she blames him, and yet obviously some part of her still thinks that she deserves it, or that her dismissal was right.

“She sewed seventeen hours a day, but a contractor who was using prison labor suddenly cut the price, and this reduced the day’s wages of free-laborers to nine sous.” Reading this book is always a lot because aside from the still-relevant general overarching commentary about society and poverty and mutual aid and goodness and all that, there are so many smaller details that are so painfully, strangely relevant to the present day. Even today there’s fear that employers will come up with a new policy or a new labor shortcut that means less income. Employers who pay their employees less because the workers get tipped, or outsourcing that causes layoffs. Prison labor, too (and behind that, the fact that prison labor doesn’t guarantee a job in a similar field after release if desired).

In the next two chapters, we jump ahead somewhere between a few weeks to a couple months. What happened to Marguerite in the interim? Hugo describes her as a “pious woman [...] of genuine devotion,” but I have this sad thought that maybe when Fantine made the decision to become a sex worker, Marguerite may have turned her back on her as well. As we’ve seen with Valjean, being poor but modest is Good, and being poor and desperate enough to do something improper and “immoral” is Bad. Despite Marguerite’s canonical generosity towards the poor, I wouldn’t be surprised if Fantine’s decision overstepped some moral boundaries of hers.

“But where is there a way to earn a hundred sous a day?” I’m a little stuck on this. Would she make this much money? I’m basing the following information off of Luc Sante’s The Other Paris, so the monetary info might be slightly different a for non-Parisian area. According to Sante, someone like Fantine, a poor woman working without a pimp or madame and not in a legal brothel, would basically be working for pocket change. 100 sous would equal about 5 francs. If her earnings are basically pocket change, I don’t think she’d make 5 francs a day. Just considering the fact that a loaf of bread might cost about 15 sous, which seems like pocket change, or even slightly more than pocket change. Fantine probably becomes a sex worker and finds herself in the exact same position that she was in before, not making any more money than she would have if she had continued to be a seamstress.

#les miserables #les miserables meta #brickclub #lm 1.5.10 #les mis #les mis meta

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madeofsplinters · 4 years

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Dear Creator (Star Wars Rare Pairs 2020)

Hello, Star Wars Rare Pairs partner! I'm excited to be in this gift exchange with you and I'm sure I'll like whatever you create! Please take all my prompts and likes as suggestions only and feel free to take the pairings in any direction that speaks to you. However, I've discovered how much I like it when the people I'm assigned to write very detailed letters, so I'm writing one for you in hopes that it sparks some ideas.

General likes / DNWs will be listed first, and then I'll go further into my feelings about each specific pairing.

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GENERAL SHIPPING LIKES - Power imbalances - Inappropriate use of the Force - D/s, but also dynamics that subvert standard D/s expectations: bratting, switching, topping from the bottom, submissives with strong personalities, pairs of tops with contrasting styles - Villainfucking, and/or a general "being evil is hot" vibe - Messed-up characters in messed-up situations caring deeply about each other in their messed-up way - Strong focus on the characters' desire & pleasure, on the psychology of sex at least as much as its mechanics - Consensual sadism - Possessiveness - Telepathy / psychic connections - Primal kink - Petplay or animalistic behavior - Characters who own up to their mistakes with each other - Cuddling/snuggling - Sex magic / sex rituals - Dirty talk

OTHER GENERAL LIKES - Disability, neurodivergence, trauma, and mental illness being explored in realistic ways - Angst - Hurt/comfort - Whump - Crack - Crack treated seriously - Moments of softness, hope, or levity even in dark stories - Dark characters improbably doing cute or vulnerable things - Character study - Characters being themselves in the most extra ways - Settings being themselves in the most extra ways - Settings or parts of settings being somehow alive - Spiritual topics, especially fleshing out the beliefs and practices of a fictional religion or exploring how that religion's adherents feel about it - Tense ballroom/banquet/formal scenes - Unreliable narrators, dramatic irony, and "Rashomon" structures - Playing around with structure and format in general (feel free to make me something totally off-the-wall formatwise) - Monsters - Dinosaurs - Blankies

DNW/DO NOT WANT - Scat/watersports - Explicit underage sex - Euthanasia - Onscreen major harm/death to children (offscreen or referenced is fine) - Asphyxiation with an environmental cause (e.g. air running out in a spacecraft)

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WILHUFF TARKIN / DARTH VADER

I will read almost anything to do with this ship, but here are some of the things I'd be particularly delighted to see explored.

- The ambiguous, subtle power dynamic between them and how each of them likely interprets how that works in a different way. Especially if it extends to a kink dynamic, but even when it's just their working relationship it's fun. - Working together on Imperial stuff. One of the things that separates Vader/Tarkin from many similar villain pairings, IMO, is that they're genuinely a good team despite their squabbles. - Creative explorations of how Vader's disability affects his approach to intimacy. - Tarkin and primal kink: there is *so* much low-hanging fruit here. He's literally hunted Vader for sport in canon! I love all the weird-ass hunting-related bullshit in Tarkin's canon backstory and I like explorations of how that affects his outlook on life. - Tarkin being one of the few "normal" people who get to see how some of the weird mystic Sith stuff at the heart of the Empire works, and how he feels about that, and how Vader feels about being seen that way.

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NATASI DAALA / WILHUFF TARKIN

I have developed a guilty fascination with this pairing. The power imbalance is HUGE, but that's sort of the point? My favorite approach for this pairing is stuff that acknowledges how fucked up it is, and how that affects the characters, while also showing what they desire & enjoy about it (especially what Daala desires/enjoys).

I am aware that this ship pushes up really hard against the Underage tag, and that explicit underage sex is one of my DNWs, and that can be a fine line to walk. There are various approaches you can take: you can handwave that Daala was 18-19 when they got together (since canon is vague - or at least the Wookieepedia is - and that age range honestly makes more sense given the rest of the timeline); you can set the story a little later when their relationship has been established for a few years; or you can just not write any onscreen sex. Any of these are fine. I just don't want the really graphic underage stuff.

Ship-specific prompts: - What did Daala actually learn from Tarkin while he mentored her? What were the lessons like? - Stolen moments in bizarre locations because ~*~secrecy~*~ - Both of them geeking out excitedly about objectively horrific Imperial superweapons - Entire military campaigns that are secretly also a weird D/s game (she has command of such-and-such ships; but who has command of her?) - Tarkin is a famous public figure and Daala canonically wrote an excellent analysis of the Tarkin Doctrine in school; what did she think of him before they got together? - What does Daala think about the Carrion Plateau? Did Tarkin ever secretly take her there?

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ENFYS NEST / QI'RA

The SOLO movie introduced so many awesome ladies and then didn't do enough with them! And, of the possible ships that can be imagined for them, I especially like the idea of Enfys/Qi'ra simply because of how both characters contrast. They're both very tough, accomplished leaders who play outside the bounds of the law, but in everything from their gender presentation to their methods of work to their willingness to cooperate with the Empire they are complete opposites! What kind of sparks would fly if those opposites attracted? What would one of those sets of wiles look like pitted against the other?

(Also, I like Enfys's mask... >.>)

Ship-specific prompts: - One of them captures the other! Sexual tension ensues. - Most people haven't seen Enfys's face, which means she can go incognito without her armor and not be recognized... Except by a few. Qi'ra is now one of the few. This gives her leverage. - There's a lot of room to play with Enfys and gender, given that she's a young woman who wears bulky armor and uses a voice modulator and is mistaken for a man. A trans or genderqueer reading of this character is very easy and I'm definitely up for that. But there's also a lot of room to play with a cis Enfys simply noticing the differences in how she's treated as an unarmored woman vs. an armored "man," and having feelings about that and/or skillfully taking advantage of it. - Qi'ra is very well-trained in combat herself - if they were both unarmored, how would a physical fight between the two of them go?

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bloodstarved · 5 years

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big ol’ survey (take 2)

BASICS.

FULL NAME : beaumont black NICKNAME : beau, mister AGE : early 40s BIRTHDAY : doesn’t care to remember ETHNIC GROUP : highlander NATIONALITY : ala mhigan LANGUAGE / S : eorzean & huntspeak (keeper dialect) SEXUAL ORIENTATION : bisexual RELATIONSHIP STATUS : single HOME TOWN / AREA : unknown CURRENT HOME : dimwold, gyr abania PROFESSION : witch of the wilds

PHYSICAL.

HAIR : grey EYES : one blue & one green FACE : gaunt, wide jaw covered in coarse stubble, sunken eyes; haggard LIPS : thick, bloodless, dry COMPLEXION : sallow BLEMISHES : n/a SCARS : many on his back: faded & white TATTOOS : n/a HEIGHT : 6 fulms, 10 ilms WEIGHT : 250 ponzes BUILD : tall, broad-shouldered, thick: heavily-muscled FEATURES : heterochromia; shoulders that are habitually slumped as if bearing an extraordinary weight; listless, wandering eyes; face always concealed by ornate masks; generally bedecked in gold and jewels not befitting his usual, ragged attire ALLERGIES : rolanberries USUAL HAIR STYLE : medium-length & thin; wispy; unhealthy USUAL FACE LOOK : tired & melancholy; like he’s been through hell USUAL CLOTHING : varies between worn old clothes that have been mended times immemorial & ornate, lovely surcoats and fabrics; occasionally, he can be seen dawning heavy plate armor

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR / S : the unknown; the unquantifiable ASPIRATION / S : to find a purpose; to be at peace POSITIVE TRAITS : compassionate, empathetic, & resilient NEGATIVE TRAITS : gruff, aloof, & ill-mannered MAJOR ARCANA : the hermit ZODIAC : cancer, the crab TEMPERAMENT : melancholic SOUL TYPE : the shaman ANIMAL : barn owl VICE HABIT / S : isolationism, FAITH : believes in rhalgr to some degree, but moreso he believes in the spirits of the dimwold--innumerable apparitions that are fickle and unforgiving GHOSTS ? : unfortunately AFTERLIFE ? : yes REINCARNATION ? : no POLITICAL ALIGNMENT : indifferent EDUCATION LEVEL : intelligent & educated, though somewhat lacking when it comes to social interactions--favors short responses and simple language that perhaps belittles his true intelligence

FAMILY.

FATHER : unknown, deceased MOTHER : eleanora black, deceased SIBLINGS : none EXTENDED FAMILY : unknown, presumed deceased NAME MEANING / S : beau, meaning “fair” or “lovely”; mont, meaning “hill” or “mountain”

FAVORITES.

BOOK : the autobiography of some obscure monk’s unfortunate life DEITY : rhalgr, vaguely HOLIDAY : starlight MONTH : november SEASON : autumn PLACE : his cabin: ramshackle yet quiet & quaint--homey WEATHER : overcast with a cool breeze SOUND / S: a babbling brook & a crackling fire SCENT / S : rainwater & leather TASTE / S : iron & bread FEEL / S : coarse furs & threadbare blankets NUMBER : 11 COLORS : dark grey, white, washed-out red, & soft brown

EXTRA.

TALENTS : homebrew magicks & potions, healing wounds, & general handyman skills BAD AT : socializing, expressing his emotions, & romance TURN ONS : soft-spoken individuals, long hair (especially when braided), large breasts, chubbiness, mask kisses, patience TURN OFFS : rash personalities, loudness, clumsiness, black-and-white thinking, any attempts to remove his mask, necromancy (don’t ask) HOBBIES : general survivalism, whittling, helping travelers passing through the dimwold, making offerings to the spirits, practicing witchcraft QUOTE : “Please...” spoken softly but with a lot of feeling.

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1 : If you could write your character your way in their own movie, what would it be called, what style would it be filmed in, and what would it be about? A1 : an unnamed video tape you find in the back of your grandfather’s garage, and when you put it in the VCR, it’s just a two hour long silent film of beau weaving various baskets while avoiding all eye contact with the camera.

Q2 : What would their soundtrack/score sound like? A2 : a slow, melancholy piano accompanied by a steady, thrumming bass

Q3 : Why did you start writing this character? A3 : i absolutely fell in love with his design when i saw the completed version. from there, i slowly began thinking of things i could do with him, and eventually i incorporated most (of not all) of dali’s scrapped concepts into him. perhaps, in some ways, he is a revamped version of dali: a spiritual successor or even a homage to my first ffxiv rp character. yet unlike dali, i wanted to write a character who struggled with his own tenderness--who is soft yet without the knowledge of how to express it. so instead, he is gruff and keeps to himself, avoiding long-term connections with others. but he cannot stop himself from helping those in need, because there is no real escaping his nature.

Q4 : What first attracted you to this character? A4 : honestly, after i modded his face and saw how haggard & melancholy he looks, i simply fell in love. even the original art gave me this vibe of profound loneliness & desperation for contact: his subtle expression coupled with the way he gazes down at the red thread entwined with his fingers.

Q5 : Describe the biggest thing you dislike about your muse. A5 : i wish he would wear socks more often.

Q6 : What do you have in common with your muse? A6 : i used to be extraordinarily lonely growing up. in a lot of ways, beau is reminiscent of my early teenage self--without all of the outright destructive traits i had.

Q7 : How does your muse feel about you? A7 : you know, i think we would actually get along. i can be persistent without being pushy when it comes to making friends, and i think that’s exactly what he needs to help him open up a bit.

Q8 : What characters does your muse have interesting interactions with? A8 : i’m not sure yet! i think it would be interesting to see him interact with someone very high-energy, to contrast his low-energy. like a yuffie kisaragi to his vincent valentine (no i do not mean that in a romantic sense).

Q9 : What gives you inspiration to write your muse? A9 : dali himself is a big inspiration, along with sten from dragon age, eileen from bloodborne, auron from ffx, nier from nier: gestalt (NOT replicant), hopper from stranger things, giyu from demon slayer/kny, & dracula from netflix’s castlevania

Q10 : How long did this take you to complete? A10 : let’s just say im really gonna hate myself when i have to get up for work in the morning. (:

#rp meme #beau

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taww · 4 years

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Class A Amps Explained & Compared: Valvet A4 Mk.II vs. Pass Labs XA30.5

After years of hearing about the benefits of Class A amplifiers, I finally got a taste in my system when the Valvet A4 Mk.II monoblocks arrived. Despite its cost and inefficiency, Class A operation has long been held as a gold standard of amplification by many in the high-end, Krell and Nelson Pass among its better-known evangelists. Different Class A amps have their distinct sonic character like any other amps, and no, Class A isn’t a guarantee of great sound. But one commonality I’ve heard from many of these big hot amps is a lovely naturalness and liquidity that came closer to tubes in capturing music’s tonal colors... as if all that bias current helped burn away the ills of solid state. Once I heard good Class A, many otherwise excellent Class AB amps seemed a bit bland and mechanical by comparison. This was borne out when the Valvet arrived while the excellent Bryston 4B Cubed was also in-house. While the powerhouse Bryston was a great amp in its own right, the Valvet just seems to have less electronic artifact and more musical blood flowing through its veins, to paraphrase an old colleague. I was hooked and craving more Class A, so I jumped at the opportunity to give the Pass Labs XA30.5 a try. Replaced by the XA30.8 a few years back, it’s an older design that became a bit of an icon as one of the more attainable ways (MSRP $5500) to achieve Class A nirvana. It makes for a fascinating design contrast with the Valvet - big American muscle vs. tidy German simplicity.

What is Class A again? 🤓

First, a quick refresher. “Class A” operation means the devices (in this case the output transistors of the amp, commonly MOSFET or bipolar [BJT] devices) have enough bias current applied to them to ensure they always stay conductive (“on”) throughout the entire voltage swing of the musical signal. Remember that transistors tend to behave like on-off switches that require a certain threshold current to become conductive. This non-linear behavior is called the transconductance curve, and the idea with Class A is you always have enough juice flowing to keep the device in the conductive, most linear part of the curve.

Non-linear transconductance (current vs. voltage) curve of a bipolar transistor (BJT). Amazing we can get good sound of of these things, eh? (Source: stackexchange.com)

In contrast, Class AB amplifiers utilize “push-pull” complementary (NPN/n-channel and PNP/p-channel) pairs of transistors taking turns handling the positive and negative swings of the musical signal. They will only apply enough current to keep both devices on for smaller signals, and as power increases one side of the push-pull will cease conducting while the other side takes care of business. This is a clearly a more efficient setup - no wasted power for a device that doesn’t need to be on - but one that does have one device always transitioning in or out of its ideal operating region. Even if it’s not doing the heavy lifting, it’s contributing non-linearity and this leads to distortion that typically requires some form of negative feedback to mitigate. (If you’d like to go a level deeper on the theory of all this, check out this tutorial.)

A couple observations that are obvious from a circuit perspective, but perhaps clouded by all the marketing speak in the audio biz. Firstly, virtually all single-ended audio amplifiers are Class A by definition, and all Class AB amplifiers are push-pull. There would be no point in designing a non-Class A single-ended amp for audio because it would distort massively whenever the signal exceeded its Class A bias range. Class A for push-pull means both devices are conducting all the time, but there is an interesting catch - if the output signal exceeds the amount of bias current to keep one side of the push-pull pair in its linear region, the amp still keeps working because the other device is conducting - it’s being pushed in the opposite direction on its transconductance curve, towards saturation (overload). This means unlike single-ended Class A, push-pull Class AB will simply start acting like Class B at high power levels. Secondly, not all Class A biasing is the same - yes, the device might be fully on, but how far into its operating region (where on the transconductance curve) has it been juiced? This is why e.g. when Pass Labs upgraded the XA30.5 to the XA30.8, they increased bias current significantly, resulting in an amp that was still rated at 30Wpc but used over 100 watts more at idle and weighed 25 lbs more.

Class A Power Ratings 🔌

With all that in mind, let’s look at the rated power of these two amps. The Pass Labs weighs 60 lbs/27 kg and is rated at 30 watts into 8 ohms, which is literally 1/10th the rated power of the similarly-sized Bryston 4B Cubed. The Valvet is rated at 55 watts into 8 ohms, with each compact monoblocks weighing 26 lbs/12 kg - it’s well under half the size and weight of the Pass. How can both be Class A, meaning they both operate at low efficiency, yet the Valvet is purportedly 83% more powerful in such a compact package? While I haven’t spoken with Valvet designer Knut Cornils about how he rated the power of the A4, Pass Labs is very clear that their 30Wpc rating is for fully Class A operation, but that the amp will continue delivering power with low distortion well past that. And indeed, when Stereophile measured the XA30.5 on the bench, it delivered 130 watts into 8 ohms and 195 watts into 4 ohms before hitting 1% distortion. Those famous Pass Labs bias meters (NOT power meters as on e.g. Macintosh amps) also tell you exactly when bias current starts to fluctuate, indicating the amp is leaving Class A. On my 92.5dB-efficient Audiovector SR 6 speakers, they would just start to wiggle on heavy bass notes or orchestral climaxes at high listening levels.

Valvet A4 power draw at idle. Double this for two monoblocks.

Since I wasn’t able to measure the actual bias current inside the amps, I took a look at idle power draw as a rough proxy. Though the Pass XA30.5 is rated at 238W at idle, I measured closer to 190W once fully warmed up; meanwhile, the Valvet monoblocks idled at around 90W each. So, pretty similar, which doesn’t mean their Class A biasing is the same (it depends on a host of other factors such as the voltage of the supply rails) but it hints to the Valvet not being “juiced” any more deeply into Class A despite its higher power rating. This is also borne out by the similar operating temperatures (toasty, but not burning hot) and the fact that the power supply in the Pass, while having less capacitance than the Valvet, likely has just as much (if not more) transformer muscle. I don’t know the rating of the Pass’s massive toroid but I suspect it’s more then double the 400VA in each Valvet.

With the caveat that this is conjecture based on the physical, electrical and sonic observations (more on those later), the Valvet’s 55 watts are likely closer to the 1% THD point where it has crossed over into Class AB, and not at full Class A. And as another point of comparison, I currently have the Gryphon Essence Class A power amp that’s rated at 50 watts Class A, and it weighs all of 100 lbs with an absolutely massive power supply. Just as all watts on amp ratings are not alike, neither are all Class A watts apparently.

Sonics 🎶

The Pass amp took some time to come out of its slumber after having been powered down for a while, but its famously warm, relaxed character was immediately discernible. After a couple days much of the initial “MOSFET mist” burned off and a wonderful synergy developed between Pass Labs amp, Audiovector SR 6 Avantgarde Arreté speakers and Furutech DSS-4.1 speaker cables. The XA30.5′s big tone, ripe bottom end and easy power nicely complemented the speed and range of the Audiovectors, requiring no softening or sugar coating from the exceedingly transparent Furutech wire. Compared to the Valvet, the Pass had a bigger sound with more generous bass that was borderline fat without ever getting sloppy. Interestingly the soundstage was noticeably wider as well, despite the Valvets being monoblocks which would ostensibly give them an advantage in channel separation. Vocals on the Pass were a little fleshier on a broader, more spaced stage, and dynamics felt a bit more grounded by that extra bass oomph.

Pass’s XA.5-series styling certainly wasn’t known for its subtlety...

The Valvet counters with a faster, more incisive sound. One of the distinguishing features of the Valvet is the use of a single pair of transistors in the output stage. A number of manufacturers have been taking this approach as of late, including Pass in their XA25 amplifier which takes purism a step further by also eliminating the emitter degeneration resistors. The argument for such a simple topology is that no two transistors behave identically, and thus paralleling them causes some loss of fidelity as you can never get all of them at an identical ideal operating point and things kind of “average out.” The XA30.5 uses 10 pairs of MOSFETs per channel, and it’s only when you listen to the Valvet that you realize the Pass might have a few extra dancers in the troupe who aren’t quite as perfectly in lockstep with the music. The Valvet paints with a finer-tipped brush that can trace all the contours and curves of a musical line with great agility; the Pass doesn’t lack for resolution, but feels a tad slower and mushier, like a brush that has a bit of fuzz around it. This is particularly apparent in the upper frequencies where the Valvet has noticeably more sparkle and precision.

Tonally, both strike me as not deviating very far from neutral, but the Valvet has a subtle bit of upper midrange highlighting that methinks is in part due to its silver internal wiring. Silver tends to have a shinier sound to it, and when balanced well in a system it can really bring the details of a performance alive; but if not properly balanced, it risks sounding lean and forward. With the Valvet, the silver character is applied very judiciously, but I did find I needed to use more relaxed interconnects and speaker wires (e.g. Audience) to get the right overall tonality and perspective. The payoff is in the upper frequencies, where the Valvet makes the Pass sound a bit thick and cloudy by comparison. With a suitable source and preamp (the Gryphon Essence preamp was transformative in this respective), the tinkle of triangles and sheen of violins are presented with effortlessly clarity.

For reference, that’s a bookshelf speaker (Role Kayak) with 4″ woofers.

In terms of Class A qualities, both have wonderfully colorful midranges and a fair helping of liquidity and naturalness, but the Pass wears these quality more on its sleeve by sounding downright lush at times. It also maintains this warmth at higher volume levels where the Valvet can start to get a bit brighter and more strained, perhaps indicating where it’s leaving its Class A bias range. Where both excel is in conveying the lyricism of a tune or the palpability of an instrument or voice owing to their resolving, tonally complete midrange presentations. Both have a singing character that sounds and feels so organic and unencumbered vs. a typical Class AB amp. The Valvet does it with a slightly sharper focus on the lines around instruments and a bit more sparkle and dynamic alacrity; the Pass does it with a big, easy smoothness and weighty low end. Though the Valvet has no problem driving my full-range Audiovector speakers to satisfying volume levels, the Pass feels like it’ll be a bit more effortless and stable into a wider variety of speakers given its beefier output stage.

Going out on a limb: based on Gary Beard’s insightful remarks in Positive Feedback, methinks the Valvet might have more in common with the sound of the newer XA30.8. Gary’s observations of the XA30.5 align very closely with mine, and he describes the 30.8 as being more precise and incisive vs. the 30.5, similar to how I hear the Valvet vs. the 30.5. I would certainly expect the newer Pass to have more grunt than the Valvet given its even more massive power supply, but the Valet might capture some of the delicate qualities of the Pass XA25 as well. Both of those amps would make a really interesting comparison to the Valvet.

Closing Thoughts 🤔

Nit-picking power ratings aside, the Valvet A4 and Pass XA30.5 are both fantastically musical amplifiers that deliver plenty of the famed Class A magic with verve and character. It’s no coincidence that after the Valvet landed in my system, the next two amplifiers I’ve sought out - the Pass and the Gryphon Essence - are also Class A. This isn’t to say I’ll never go back to Class AB (and I’m actually expecting a Class D amplifier soon 😱), but after years of swearing I’d only seek out more practical amps that weren’t so ridiculously big and hot, the Class A bug has bitten me pretty hard. If tonal purity and musical nuance are top priorities for you, amps like the Valvet and Pass Labs deserve a spot on your audition list.

#class a #audio #audiophile #hifi #amplifiers #pass labs

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fulgensun · 4 years

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𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑹𝑨𝑪𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝑺𝑯𝑬𝑬𝑻.

repost, don’t reblog

BASICS.

full name. Tidus pronunciation. Teedus nickname. Ace, Star Player, Jecht’s son gender. Male (he/him) height. 5′9″ or 175 cm age. 17-18 && 20 in ‘Will’ zodiac. His true date of birth is unknown, so we can’t be sure. if we follow the trend of also Zidane and Squall etc DOBs, Tidus would be born on October 10th and be a Libra. but given he’d be the most dysfunctional Libra ever I personally doubt it ahah I headcanon him being born on July 19th, the day FFX was first released, so his zodiac sign here would be Cancer. spoken languages. Common Spiran which is the same language spoken in his Zanarkand, tiny bits of Al Bhed learnt during the pilgrimage.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS.

hair color. Dark blond with brown roots. As a child, he had light-brown hair. eye color. Sea-blue irises, the same as his mother’s. skin tone. Quite tanned, mostly the result of hours spent outside - probably practising under the sun. Actually, he isn’t fair-skinned even as a child - nor his parents seem to present a particular pale tone of skin which may have genetic reasons involved, but teen/adult Tidus would still be more tanned than he himself looked like as a seven-year-old boy. body type. He has an athletic built, which comes from his years of swimming and blitzball practice. He’s a little underweight for his height and age, though. At the age of seventeen, Tidus’ muscle form is already very defined and toned. accent. Tidus present a rather funny and child-like sounding accent most of the time - or when he’s not being too serious or firm; for example, his original dub has him ending sentences in --SSU, which is a very informal and friendly deflexion, also used by very young people. That makes it sound like he sometimes changes words in a rather playful manner (in the japanese dub), which would simply translate in him just sounding very informal. voice. He has a very sharp voice, that leans on higher tones when he’s relaxed or excited. When more serious, instead, he tends to drop some tones in his voice pitch, but he doesn’t really notice it, and when he does it doesn’t bother Tidus. dominant hand. He is right-handed, he’s seen throwing the ball in Blitz with that and he is also seen mostly kicking the ball with his right leg too. posture. He’s an athlete, swimming agonistically has proved to make back muscles stronger and firmer, so standing correctly straight comes as something natural and effortless to him. Still, Tidus tends to slouch forward very often when he sits, it’s very rare to see him sitting straight anywhere when he’s made wait long periods of time or when he’s particularly bored. In those cases, he really looks nothing like the athlete he is -- as he props his weight whenever it feels more comfortable. scars. Nothing major or too visible like his father, the few scars he’d have would mainly be the result of the most physical Blitz matches he has attended or just peculiar and tougher battles fought during the pilgrimage. tattoos. // birthmarks. // most noticeable feature(s). His vivid eye-color, probably the contrast between skin tone and hair color too; weird clothes for Spiran standards.

CHILDHOOD.

place of birth. Dream Zanarkand. hometown. Dream Zanarkand. birth weight. 7 pounds. birth height. Around 20 inches. manner of birth. Natural birth. first words. The common ones all toddlers learn first, or his own name. siblings. // parents. Unnamed mother and Jecht (father) parental involvement. His mother would difficultly care and hardly give proper attention to the young Tidus whenever her husband was home from work; she was still a very docile and gentle figure to the boy, a composed yet often distracted kind of mother. She’d often cater all her strengths and attentions to Jecht, sometimes ignoring or neglecting the child’s cries or pleas till her husband would make her notice at last; as a child, Tidus simply didn’t notice this side of her or chose to forget about it, thinking instead his father would keep her away from him on purpose to monopolize her affection - a fact that did add to his childish reasons to hate Jecht. His father would be home for way less time than Tidus’ mother, because of his work. He was a rougher and brusque type of parent and despite loving his son, he could never express it clearly nor found a way to show him. Still, his father was somehow the one who sparkled in Tidus his sense of competitiveness and his passion for blitzball, no matter if the man would often verbally belittle his weak son’s poor attempts with a ball – that’s the type of father Tidus has believed to know. Still, Jecht was involved in his growth, the novel even reveals it was him who taught Tidus how to swim as a child. Once Jecht disappeared and was believed dead by his fans and city, Tidus’ mother fell chronically ill and depressed, ceasing to care or tend to her son. She died of sheer heartbreak shortly after Auron came to Zanarkand to become Tidus’ guardian.

ADULT LIFE.

occupation. Ace Player of the Abes Team back in Dream Zanarkand; Guardian when brought to Spira; post X-2, Tidus returns being a Blitzball player (most likely playing for the Aurochs) and quickly regains his once-lost fame and popularity. current residence. Verse dependent. Dream Zanarkand before the events of FFX. Right after X-2, Besaid, but it is heavily implied he left the island to move to Bevelle a couple of years later his return, living near what’s called Mika-Road, the recently built street which leads to the new blitz stadium. close friends. Yuna, Wakka, Rikku, Auron, Kimahri, Lulu. A part of me really wants to add Clasko to this, too, while he’s obviously not as close as the others for Tidus. relationship status. Canon-ly speaking, in a relationship with Yuna. financial status. I’d say, he’s in the financial middle class. Considering Spira’s hierarchy, nothing can really top the clergy, the monks, the priests and priestesses, not to mention the ex Maesters which I would consider the higher class. As Blitzball is considered an integral part of Spira, but it is not a humble job, that’s the class he would be part of. driver’s license. Dream Zanarkand had cars and all but I guess he never got a license back there, and that kind of stuff just don’t exist in Spira; he has the chocobo riding license, haha, directly earned it through Calm Lands weird races. criminal record. By Spiran Temple standards and teachings, he’s accused of heresy for having entered the sacred Cloisters when still not a guardian twice; he’s also accused of having conspired with Al Bhed and joined their insurrection back at Home, and of having interrupted an important Yevon wedding in the holy capital. He’s also accused of having opposed and most likely killed warrior monks during the wedding crash, not to count Guado guards in Macalania and Home. He escaped prison and became a ‘most wanted’, too, with a bounty on his head. Plus, opposing Yunalesca and Yu Yevon could be associated with blasphemy. He did partake in the murder of Seymour, a Maester of Yevon, not to mention the fact Spira did believe Tidus and the others had killed Kinoc too. I guess the accusations all fell with the following crisis of the Temple and the disappearance of Sin but… vices. Being too loud, daydreaming, being too impatient. Pride.

SEX & ROMANCE.

sexual orientation. Heterosexual romantic orientation. Heteroromantic preferred emotional role. submissive | dominant | switch preferred sexual role. submissive | dominant | switch (?) libido. Average for his age and curiosity, I guess. A little above that if we consider the novel. turn on’s. // turn off’s. // love language. He’s anything but subtle when it comes to relationships and partners, even to a fault sometimes. He is a deeply affectionate boy despite the way he was raised, so he likes to prove it physically: hugs, hand-holding, pecks, kisses - love and tender signs and gestures, little favors and gifts, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. On a darker note, I guess it’s to be expected given his fear of loss and abandonment, but his love language is sincere nonetheless. relationship tendencies. He was and is still seen as a charismatic boy. At home, he’d have many fans and girls fawning over him at every given occasion over him (and his bond with Jecht) - and while the attention is something that did fuel him, sorta, I bet it was something that was seen as a way to get into first relationships. Maybe even out of fear of solitude. It changes once he leaves Zanarkand for good, I guess his devotion for Yuna speaks louder than any other word.

MISCELLANEOUS.

character’s theme song. X hobbies to pass time. Swimming, playing blitzball, cooking and eating, reading Al Bhed primers, practising fighting and time-related spells, napping, daydreaming. mental illnesses. Anxiety disorders, fear of abandonment. physical illnesses. // left or right-brained. Right-brained. fears. Loneliness, to disappear, abandonment, silence. self-confidence level. It’s a rollercoaster... it goes from high to low depending on both situation and mood. vulnerabilities. To be considered weak, or too emotive. Also... Yuna?

tagged by: ......... i stole. ohohhhh tagging: @painsrequiem @sunstolen @sabazio / @exciofides and whoever else

#▐┊ about.#long post #[ back at it again. with the long. hc posts ]#[ old habits die hard ]

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jemmaginary-blog1 · 5 years

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Agents of SHIELD Promo Poster

Because I can never just leave things alone, below is my analysis/thoughts of the poster and what I think it could mean. I very well may be wrong as this is Agents of SHIELD and they like to keep us guessing and make us think we know what’s going to happen but I did try. Some of this may be a reaching a bit or wrong and feel free to correct me/tell me what you agree or disagree with! So I apologise if this is a mess as I’m new to all of this and new to Tumblr so the formatting may not be great.

I shortened this down as I didn’t want to annoy people with my six page ramble.

(Also credit/thank you to jemannesimmons for pointing out that Fitz wasn’t grabbing Daisy’s hand as that is what sent me on this mad spiral trying to see what else I missed and what subtle clues were lurking in the poster.)

(Also did a quick speculation of the previous poster down at the bottom as I hadn’t really seen it before!)

(Also my computer isn’t great so I may have missed things to do with the kree writing as it’s currently impossible for me to zoom in on this picture without it becoming impossible to actually look at and see something other than pixels.)

(Alsoooo need to come up with a word other than also wondering if anyone has any breakdowns of previous season cast photos? Joined this Fandom during the break between S5 and S6 and curious as to what predictions people made last year.)

(Yay it’s been confirmed that there ARE easter eggs/clues in this poster so yay for that. Though easter eggs and clues/hints are different.)

The Last Supper

The fact that it's positioned in a similar way to the Last Supper could be accidental but I doubt it as 'faith,' has been a bit of a theme in AoS and so I think with Mack being director and becoming more of a main character it would be interesting to use the Last Supper as a way to hint to what's going to presumably be a season with a lot of focus on him. So here is me breaking down that side of it first.

I think multiple characters match with the same character or could due to the smaller number of characters in AoS when compared to The Last Supper and the different grouping.

You can somewhat match them up with the identity of the apostles and their grouping, either by their reactions to what’s happening or their placement in the photo frame. Though it does change depending on which one you do.

In The Last Supper it’s broken down into four groups of Apostles:

GROUP 1: Bartholomew, James the Less and Andrew are all surprised.

GROUP 2: Judas Iscariot is taken aback; next to him, Peter holds a knife and looks stormy, while the boyish John, the youngest apostle, simply swoons.

GROUP 3: Thomas is upset; James is shocked. Philip wants an explanation.

GROUP 4: In the final group of three, Jude Thaddeus and Matthew turn to Simon the Zealot for answers.

Out of our eight I’d roughly match them up, reaction wise, as follows:

Group 1: Fitzsimmons and Deke, they’re all surprised although Deke also appears to be up to something.

Group 2: May and Not!Coulson

Group 3: Daisy

Group 4: Elena

Mack: On a framing/position basis he matches up with Jesus. Like Jesus in the Last Supper he has an expansive pose that contrasts with everyone around him, he's the focus and the centre of the frame. The new leader and he has his agents(apostles/followers) around him. Mack appears to be positioned in a similar place to Jesus, opening up the idea of him suffering some kind of betrayal from those closest to him. Similar to how Jesus was betrayed by Judas. I don't see Fitzsimmons being the ones betraying him because of last season, he's already had conflict with Fitz and then saw him die - so I don't think it'll be Fitz and Simmons had a minor betrayal by siding with Fitz rather than following orders and helping lock him up. For me the most likely candidates are May, Daisy or Elena as they are all close to him.

Judas Candidates:

May could betray Mack for Not!Coulson, Ming hinted towards May having some kind of motive/alternate mission this season that isn't to do with SHIELD/Being a SHIELD Agent and so she could be delving into that. If May is Judas then perhaps Not!Coulson is Peter although that could shift old Coulson into being Jesus (depending on if when referring to Peter saying he doesn't know who Christ is he's referring to not knowing what SHIELD is - like in the trailer or Coulson.)

Elena and Mack are already slightly strained, the conflict over the death of Ruby and the repeated idea that Elena seems to feel like she has to do what’s right regardless of the others opinions of it. She’s impulsive and headstrong (I love her, putting that in here as it sounds like I’m just criticising her,) which could cause problems as she’s the Directors girlfriend and she’ll probably be going against orders during the Season. He’ll not want to seem like he’s playing favourites, especially as in S2 it was shown he wanted a fair SHIELD and I’m assuming he’ll still want that. Plus Mack will be extremely busy, too busy for them to be as close as they have been. And Coulson/Fitz’s deaths will place a strain on Mack. He’s lost Coulson, been placed into the position of Director and has a hologram with the face of Coulson telling him what to do. I really doubt he’ll be in a great place during Season 6.

Daisy: To me she’s the most unlikely candidate for Judas but I will admit it’s a possibility. Similarly to May it could be a Not!Coulson caused rift as Coulson was a Father to her and she may be feeling guilty over his death considering it was a give the serum to her or him situation. Or it could be because she wants to be the Director, Coulson had been grooming her to be the new Director or at least the new face of SHIELD and maybe she’ll disagree with Mack over how he decides to run things as he will do things differently this season as he’s called Coulson out/disagreed with him multiple times.

Other thoughts:

Fitzsimmons and Daisy are grouped together, hopefully showing that at some point that rift between Daisy and Fitz will be healed. I simultaneously want that Fitz/Daisy bromance back and want Daisy’s trauma to be addressed because it got somewhat ignored last season.

May is drinking what is presumably Haig, somewhat heartbreaking.

Elena is wearing the ill-fated SHIELD jacket of death if Season 3 is anything to go by.

As mentioned in many other posts Mack has his toolbox, offically the Director of SHIELD.

Daisy appears to have different gauntlets, presumably because her powers are stronger this season (after taking the serum) this will probably affect her in some way. Also backs up how she seems to be more powerful/confident in her powers in the Season 6 trailer.

Red Lights

The red light seems to be focusing on three people: May, Fitz and Deke with a focus on May and Fitz especially.

All people that were separated from the team in some way at the end of the last season.

May: She lost Coulson and was with him as he died. The team left her on the beach as they flew off to find Fitz and so we can assume there’ll be some distance between her and the rest of the team. She is also physically separated from them in 5x22 with the ship flying off into space, though the s6 trailer does show she reunites with SHIELD at some point it doesn’t mean it’s immediate. With her I think the ‘danger,’ is Not!Coulson and whatever his mission/motive is - he looks like the man she lost and loved and so he’s in a position to manipulate her.

Fitz: He’s out frozen in space and the team are going to find him. Though he may have been abducted which only separates them further. There will also be emotional distance as he died, he hurt Daisy and so he’s going to be shocked. They’re dealing with finding him whilst knowing their Fitz who rescued them from space died and dealing with what happened to Fitz (mental break.) The danger when it comes to him is the physical/literal danger he’s in if he’s been taken captive and taken away from cryo!chamber the team are heading to and the mental danger (maybe why the red light covers his head - brain -> brain injury -> framework!Fitz - the whole dual personality thing) as this Fitz has been hearing the Doctor and there’s still a chance he could go through what Loop!Fitz did. Whether that be because of something that has happened during the time between Season 5 and 6 or sometime during the season.

Deke: The canary in the coal mine, their proof that the timeline changed. As far as the team know he’s gone, he never existed and so to them he’s dead. Rather than them searching for him I think it’ll be the other way around, Deke finding them or them finding him accidentally.

These people are the most isolated from the others and so are in the most vulnerable position. They are in the most hypothetical danger and have the greatest chance of being hurt/influenced right now.

Red is traditionally used to symbolise danger and so the light could be representing that, danger and anger and a warning to the audience that none of these characters are safe. Either during or at the start of the season.

With Fitz there are also alien runes surrounding him, symbolising the fact that he’s lost in space/surrounded by aliens? May’s is simply light reflecting on the metal grating of the background, seeming much more ‘normal.’ Reflecting the fact that she’s on earth/focusing mainly on earth in terms of her plot-line?

In contrast the light around May seems darker, emotionally she’s in a dark place and she’s also in the dark when it comes to the mystery surrounding Not!Coulson.

Also may be reaching slightly but Not!Coulson (how are we actually referring to him?) is looking towards her and the light follows the arrows in his eye-line heading towards May with the light increasing in brightness. Showing he’s influencing/manipulating her this season? Or placing her in danger.

With Fitz and May it could also link to the religious symbolism.

The light around Fitz almost resembles a half halo (because he died and was reborn? Angel? Or because this Fitz is innocent compared to Loop!Fitz) and his light is also the brightest shade of red.

The way the brightest red forms a red triangle almost horn shape. Indicating she could be Judas? or influenced by the devil/Lucifer (Not!Coulson) although I don’t feel as if Not!Coulson is going to be a villain after Captain Marvel (he could be but that movie changed how I felt about the Skrulls and so far I think he’ll be a Skrull.) Maybe it indicates that whilst Fitz was reborn she’s going to die (hopefully not!) or ‘fall,’ by doing some bad deed and/or betraying the team/SHIED.

Look who’s in front of the ‘D,’ and guess what word starts with D? Doctor.

Also does anyone else see figures in the background of the pink/orange bit? Behind the writing

#agents of shield #Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.#agents of shield s6 #agents of shield speculation #AoS Season 6 Spec #mack mackenzie #elena rodriguez #yoyo rodriguez #daisy johnson #Leo Fitz #jemma simmons #Fitzsimmons #deke shaw #melinda may #phil coulson #skrulls #fan theory

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momestuck · 5 years

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Epilogues: Candy, chapters 6-13 [the rest of Epilogue 2]

I’m told that there are 40 chapters, and a postscript, in Candy - and also that it’s split into 8 individual ‘epilogues’ within that, of varying length. ‘Epilogue 2′ began with chapter 4, featuring Rose and Kanaya. So I kind of cut it off in exactly the wrong place. Oops!

Anyway I’m going to split these up by Epilogue section from now on. This one covers the rest of Epilogue 2, which mostly concerns shipping, and processing of feelings.

Here are the irons in the fire at the outset of chapter 6:

Gamzee is back! he claims to be setting out on a ‘redemption arc’

Terezi is in space somewhere looking for Vriska, but set to return at some point, and not all that happy that Gamzee’s back

Dirk has perceived some bad news. And briefly spoken about it with Jane, though without explaining anything.

But that’s all Epilogue 1 stuff - old hat!

Rose has suddenly recovered from her illness, and is patching things up with Kanaya

Jade has attempted to push Dave and Karkat to admit they’re into each other, but really just made things worse

Jane attempted to run for President of Earth C - to the trepidation of the Karkat, who hyperbolically suggested this would amount to troll genocide - but abandoned the idea

That’s all interesting but let’s talk about money! This is something I didn’t pick up on in the last post:

KARKAT: OK, SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT. YOUR PRIORITIES ARE: NUMBER ONE, THE ECONOMY, WHICH LET ME REMIND YOU IS BUILT ENTIRELY ON INFINITE, FAKE MONEY THAT WE CAN MAKE AS MUCH OF AS WE WANT.

Elsewhere, Jane’s megacorp and stocks are mentioned.

One wonders why, given the machinery to manufacture just about anything by means of alchemizer, the forms of money, stocks, and corporations are retained... what sort of productive and reproductive labour is regulated and mediated by these markets? Or are they merely acting out the vestigial forms of capitalism as a bizarre drama...

As for the consequences of an infinite money supply, let’s not get into the ‘modern monetary theory’ debate on a Homestuck post, maybe.

on to chapter 6+

This is a Jane chapter. It opens almost immediately with economic discussion; Dave apparently once accused Jane of ‘neoliberal corporate welfare’ for trying to bolster the ‘struggling locksmith industry’ rendered unnecessary on a planet without crime.

She’s visiting Jake, who’s probably my least favourite Homestuck character (who’s not an alpha troll). About Dirk... Jake (Jane says) seems to still have a bit of a thing for him, and Jane, meanwhile, still “has no idea why she can’t get [Jake] out of her system, even after all these years.”

The reason Jane cancelled her run was, it turns out, because Dirk said ‘cancel everything’. She gets drunk, very quickly... and hits on Jake, who is completely oblivious to her advances. She speaks of wanting to abandon business to raise a family, which Jake himself notes is something rather new for her (though the whole traditional gender thing she does isn’t lol)

Jake/Jane isn’t a ship I have any sort of opinion about, honestly. Dirk/Jake’s terrible collapsing relationship was kind of interesting but yeah, here’s a thing. What even are heterosexuals though? “I want to clean your giant house and have a lot of children”... incomprehensible!

One thing I will give credit for is the narration: it creates pretty strong images of like, these characters as fully embodied people, being intimate in like, subtle physical ways. that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense... whatever lol. it works

chapter 7

...brings us back to Gamzee. fittingly, i’m listening to the friendsim soundtrack as i read this, and i just hit ‘take me to clown church’.

anyway since this whole story basically seems to be an exercise in developing ships along the lines of ‘A is into B, B is obvious to their advances’... Roxy’s hot for John now I guess? or at least, so Callie thinks. she insists they’re all going to be ‘very, very happy’ despite her disappointment.

anyway, then we get Gamzee saying a bunch of casually misogynist stuff to John about Roxy. in this context, basically two interpretations are shown: a shallow ‘oh he’s redeemed now’ attitude from Roxy and Callie, and a ‘oh god i hate this person keep him away from me’ attitude from John. Gamzee’s repulsive qualities are underlined by the narration (from John’s perspective): he’s unhygienic, he’s casually misogynist (which seems like a new element, and rather out of keeping with the gendered-but-somehow-theoretically-not-patriarchal Alternia)...

chapter 8

Rose and Kanaya chapter. Jane’s possible presidency is once again the subject of discussion. Jane apparently wanted to apply some kind of anti-troll eugenics policy, and tried to bring Kanaya on board - and got told to fuck off for it. Our two good lesbians agree that, if Karkat were president (and Dave running the economy), things might have worked out ok...

We are briefly introduced to a new character, a jadeblood troll called Swifer Eggmop. Her character archetype, we are directly told, is ‘1920s newsboy’.

We bear witness to an egg hatching (in prose, anyway). This particular baby grub out closely resembling Vriska... which Kanaya says is because she comes from a slurry based on the original 12 trolls. Rose notes this would make Vriska the troll’s Ancestor, which raises an interesting question of whether Ancestors still exist as a social concept on Earth C. Anyway, Kanaya wants to adopt baby Vriska, which can only be a fantastic idea...

KANAYA: There Are Two Things Of Which I Have No Doubt

KANAYA: That You And I Are Going To Be Happy For The Rest Of Our Lives

KANAYA: And That We Are Never Ever Going To See Vriska Again

I think we can safely assume that neither of those things are true. The emphasis on ‘happiness forever’, voiced by multiple characters, is interesting... also the turn towards reproduction.

I went to uni with people who have kids now. Heck I have friends who have a child (who they are trying to spare from gender)... but for most of my social circle, which is to say almost entirely 20-to-30-something trans women, even the idea of adopting is incomprehensible? It’s somehow weird to think of ‘wanting kids’ as the narrative of 20-something year olds...

Kanaya is right. Vriska is dead, and despite everything, she died a hero. Vriska was a complicated figure of contrasting extremes; her heroic actions were matched in scale only by her monstrous ones, and since no one had actually witnessed her end, it was impossible to say which side the pendulum swung and judged her death—Heroic or Just.

It would be a fitting memorial for her and Kanaya to raise a version of Vriska who would be given every chance to make good on her noble characteristics. A true, symbolic redemption arc. Something about the thought appeals to Rose’s taste for the dramatic flourish. It would be proof that this was all worth it in the end: the destruction of multiple universes, the death of Kanaya’s friends, the circuitous rites of suffering experienced by the nearly infinite splintered versions of every being to inhabit Paradox Space...

Once again, the notion of a ‘redemption arc’ enters the narrative explicitly, directly echoing fandom discussion. Unlike Gamzee, this is studiously neutral on the Vriska Question: steering exactly between ‘Vriska did nothing wrong’, nor ‘Vriska is a monster’. Regardless... I think it’s probably safe to say that everyone’s prophecies are wrong and we haven’t seen the last of the ‘true’ Vriska.

chapter 9

More of Jade trying very hard to ship her friends, to the discomfort of everyone involved. Jade kisses Karkat, and Karkat explicitly names what she’s doing as sexual assault, a violation of boundaries and consent - Jade attempts to convince him that no, it was really Dave who kissed him!

This prompts a long monologue from Dave in which it’s obvious that he has put some thought into kissing Karkat. Point seems to be: they sure are into each other but Jade’s intervention is not at all welcome. At least I hope that’s the point. I would prefer not to see Jade vindicated by the narrative.

Anyway, other things of cultural note: grub spaghetti is apparently still eaten on Earth C. I always thought it was implied that ‘grubs’ in Troll food were like, actual troll babies, but maybe they’re just ordinary (for certain values thereof...) bugs bc I don’t think Kanaya would stand for that.

chapter 10

The ‘Jane running for president’ subplot has largely disappeared, because what we’re really here for is... shipping! This time, a John/Roxy chapter. I think they call it Roxygen or something? Terezi explains the ‘pair the spares’ logic of the ship (dequirkified):

TEREZI: Um, yeah John.

TEREZI: We are not idiots. We can all do the math on this.

TEREZI: It’s not like you were going to fuck your human mom or human sister.

TEREZI: And you are “not a homosexual,” which takes Strider dick out of the equation.

TEREZI: And Kanaya is the only girl troll left, and she lesbian married one of the two remaining eligible human females.

TEREZI: Oh and Jake is a double threat. A human dad with a human dick!

TEREZI: So by a process of elimination, of *course* you were going to “fall in love” with Roxy.

Equation of ‘dick’ with ‘male’ there terezi but whatever... (god is this fic going to get into the question of what a ‘nook’ and a ‘bulge’ is...)

(lol i’m calling it a fic...)

Anyway, my position on this one is: Roxy/Calliope was a fine ship worth upholding, and I do not see any reason why anyone would be into John. Though I may be biased on that front.

Terezi also brings up the Calliope question. John is trepidatious on that front.

There’s an interesting line from Roxy here, when John tries to assure her she doesn’t have to wear makeup:

ROXY: john...

ROXY: do u ever think about like

ROXY: gender???

JOHN: ???

JOHN: uh. not really, i guess?

JOHN: but i don’t think girls should feel like they HAVE to wear makeup just because they’re girls.

ROXY: lol

ROXY: thats not what im getting at

JOHN: what do you mean then?

JOHN: are you, like...

ROXY: like what

This is where I’m conscious of the ‘trans character’ tag on this one.

They talk about adulthood, as a performance that they do not feel ‘ready’ for. At that point Dave shows up, clearly aflustered after Jade’s intervention:

DAVE: anyone can be a dude if they really want thats part of the beauty of living in this brand new world with none of the baggage our old world had like gender and sexuality and relationships only involving a very specific number of people

chapter 11

So yeah now to pick up the torch on Dave starting to understand he’s gay. here for this

DAVE: theres a metric fucking ton of shit about to come down on me because i dragged my heels on doing some serious self reflection

JOHN: is this just some more stuff about...

JOHN: being gay?

DAVE: maybe yeah

DAVE: ok definitely yeah

DAVE: its 110% about being gay

JOHN: i thought you’d already worked all that stuff out?

DAVE: turns out it takes a long time to figure out your sexuality after a childhood filled with repression and abuse

nice to see it named as such i guess

the dialogue in the last couple of chapters has been really good. i’m getting properly drawn into this, the characters feel extremely well-realised. threads which were long latent are finally being made explicit.

Dave is struggling with very abrupt self-realisation: he definitely has feelings for Karkat, he has complicated feelings for Jade, but the ‘simple’ solution of just entering a non-mono relationship both is not feeling ‘right’ to him. John isn’t really able to help... he’s gonna talk to Dirk.

This chapter does a lot, I really like it, but at the same time I’ve not got a tremendous amount to add to it.

chapter 12

in our latest chapter of ‘homestuck but they fuck now’, Jake and Jane did that - while up on various substances, including at least alcohol and the trickster lollipop. Jake is having second thoughts but when he tries to back out, Jane looks sad, so he decides to go for it. This can only end well.

Also damn I guess someone on the team thought ‘what would it be like to fuck while high on the trickster lollipop’ so uh, that’s a thing now.

chapter 13

Back to the Strider boys. There’s a heavy intro...

Dave and Dirk don’t talk that much about the heavy stuff. They don’t need to. Dave can hear his brother’s voice in his head.

Not, like, literally. That would be insane. But Dave knows what his bro is like. Dirk, or a version of him, instilled in Dave a way of living and thinking that would, for better or worse, persist far beyond the first thirteen years of his upbringing.

Yeah huh.

Can’t believe Rose and Kanaya have the dubious honour of being the most ‘together’ characters in this.

Anyway in this case Dave still feels like he needs to talk to Dirk - who we know has gone awol, for some mysterious reason. He meets... Gamzee, who says some religious clown stuff, and offers Dave a redemption arc (really running this joke into the ground huh), but Dave brushes him off. Then he finds a fembot that Dirk was working on, with a note.

We don’t get to read the note yet. I would guess that’s the end of epilogue 2.

Sure enough it is.

Epilogue 2, taken as a whole

I quite enjoyed this, Gamzee sections notwithstanding. The prose is tight, the dialogue is hitting its flow, and a lot of relationships that were left vague in Homestuck proper are finally being given time to develop.

Obviously it’s kind of risky bringing in explicitly sexual themes, but I think they approach them in the ‘right’ way: focusing on the emotional meaning of relationships that now might - now we’re dealing with 23-year-olds - include sex, rather than just porn lol. It does slightly strain credibility that, in all their time on Earth C, none of them have made any meaningful friendships or relationships outside the core group of 8 kids and a handful of surviving trolls, but I can also understand the desire to focus on the already-developed characters. That’s a common problem for ‘endgame’ ships: in truth dating exclusively within a tiny friendship group is probably a recipe for disaster, but in fiction it makes a work manageable.

I am enjoying just how gay Homestuck has gotten. If Homestuck is the comic for Very Online kids who were around 13 in 2009 when the comic began, it’s somewhat fitting, because our cohort has, at least to a degree, done the same thing lol. Of course, that’s shaped by my personal experience of like, transitioning and moving to a friendship group that’s like 99% trans lesbians and bi women, but I suspect statistics would bear out the idea that more and more people are comfortable identifying ourselves as not-straight in some way. I could be wrong about that though lol.

Of course, it’s too much to hope that this trend - insofar as it exists! - is like, the beginning of the end for Gender as a system of social relations, violent exploitation and coercion - especially since periods of ‘more acceptance’ often seem to precede violent repression (c.f. Weimar Germany and then, the nazis; the period just before the AIDS crisis; much earlier, the construction of colonial/modern gender in the first place on the bones of less rigid gender systems...)

Anyway, let’s see what’s happened to old Dirk. I’m still wondering who the “trans character” is going to be, and how they’re going to handle that. It’s going to be tough to match fic like @rememberwhenyoutried‘s An Earth-Shattering Confession, but we shall see.

#momestuck

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howlandreads · 6 years

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Feminine Rebellion In ASOIAF

One of the things I love most about ASOIAF is how carefully crafted each of the female main characters are. GRRM has taken so much time to create meaningful characters that aren’t stereotypical, sexist, or caricatured. Though each female character is unique and shows a different perspective of what it’s like to live in such an incredibly patriarchal society, I think the three I find most interesting are Sansa, Arya, and Cersei. Each of them shows one of the three main ways a woman can react to the expectations a patriarchal society places on them. Sansa reacts by fully embracing society’s expectations of her, Arya reacts by rejecting the expectations she’s not naturally suited for and pursuing other skills, and Cersei reacts by becoming embittered towards everybody, but especially other women she views as not fighting hard enough for her idea of women’s equality in Westeros. In their own way each of these points of views is fighting against the sexist society they’re living in (some in a much healthier way than others). It’s fascinating what can be learned from the perspective of each of these three women, and I love that GRRM gave us these contrasting characters. I think understanding how each of them relates to the societal expectations around them is crucial to understanding them fully as characters, so it’s worthwhile to break down each of these reactions to patriarchal society:

Sansa

Of all the female perspectives in ASOIAF, Sansa’s rebellion against her circumstances is often the most subtle, but it is effective and important nonetheless. Though Sansa has mostly catered to the Westerosi male standard of what a woman “should be” (she excels at activities like needlework, is polite to a fault, and constantly thinks about the duties of a Lady) she still uses these attributes to help those around her and put herself in a better social position. Despite being ridiculed endlessly by the likes of Cersei, Joffrey, and the Hound for her kindness and pleasantries, she still never gives up on her ideal of what a true Lady should be. Instead of allowing her situation to make her bitter and resentful, she stays resiliently gentle throughout her whole arch, even when she’s in the throes of depression. Just because her rebellions against society are gentle doesn’t make them any less worthwhile. Each time she refuses to play the part that’s expected of her, even when it’s subtle, ends up leading to a defining character moment or to an improvement in her circumstance – for instance, the Hound expects her to play the role of scared little girl, but instead she remains polite and caring just as a lady should, choosing to comfort him instead of shy away from him, which leads to him protecting her later. This type of scenario happens over and over again – her decision to show no outer signs of distress while Joffrey torments her so as not to allow him the satisfaction, her choosing to de-stress the guests in Maegor’s Holdfast during Blackwater when Cersei expects her to beg for her life. Westeros’s patriarchal society has forced roles upon Sansa, expecting her to be weak because of them, but instead she takes every opportunity to prove that courtesy, kindness, and goodness are strengths that shouldn’t be underestimated. It should also be noted that Sansa’s strength can be seen in more obvious rebellions, like her actually physically fighting against her marriage to Tyrion:

“Sansa tried to run, but Cersei's handmaid caught her before she'd gone a yard. Ser Meryn Trant gave her a look that made her cringe, but Kettleblack touched her almost gently and said, ‘Do as you're told, sweetling, it won't be so bad. Wolves are supposed to be brave, aren't they?’

Brave. Sansa took a deep breath. I am a Stark, yes, I can be brave.”

- Sansa III, A Storm of Swords

Arya

Though some people view Arya as a simple tomboy, her character is actually much more complex than that. Arya is naturally considerably less suited for Westeros’s idea of what a highborn lady should be, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t wish she was suited for life as a lady:

“Arya's stitches were crooked again. She frowned down at them with dismay and glanced over to where her sister Sansa sat among the other girls. Sansa's needlework was exquisite. Everyone said so.”

- Arya I, A Game of Thrones

She is upset by the fact that she isn’t as capable of lady-like activities as Sansa is, and that constant feeling of inadequacy is mostly what’s driven her to pursuing other interests like swordplay. But rather than wallow in her feelings of inadequacy, she embraces the talents she’s better suited for. One of my favorite things about her character is that she never lingers too long on the conflict of her refusal to meet society’s expectations. Instead of worrying about her identity as a female in a patriarchal society, she just digs deeper into her identity as a “wolf”:

“Arya was a trial, it must be said. Half a boy and half a wolf pup. Forbid her anything and it became her heart's desire.”

- Catelyn VII, A Clash of Kings

“Yes, Arya thought. Yes, it's you who ought to run, you and Lord Tywin and the Mountain and Ser Addam and Ser Amory and stupid Ser Lyonel whoever he is, all of you better run or my brother will kill you, he's a Stark, he's more wolf than man, and so am I.”

- Arya VIII, A Clash of Kings

Though Arya takes every chance she can get to rebel against the expectations Westeros has for women, it’s never a conscious decision she decided to make – it’s just her nature:

“’You look different now. Like a proper little girl.’

“I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns.’”

- Arya IV, A Storm of Swords

Arya misses a lot about her life at Winterfell, but the fineries of highborn life aren’t one of them. Despite the fact that she’s slowly turning into a total badass, GRRM has still managed to make sure her character has a subtle feminism that’s never too on the nose. She’s a strong woman, who can take of herself, but it’s never overly emphasized, and it’s never the only dimension her character has. All of her development into a warrior of sorts is always tied to her inner struggle about what it means to be a Stark:

"’The wolf blood.’ Arya remembered now. ‘I'll be as strong as Robb. I said I would.’ She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth.”

- Arya X, A Clash of Kings

Cersei

Of these three characters, Cersei’s method of coping with patriarchal expectations is by far the most maladaptive. While Arya acknowledges that she’s very different from most women in Westeros, she still loves to befriend them and bares them no ill will. Cersei, on the other hand, views herself as superior above all women because of her awareness of the expectations and men that are holding her back. Her resentment against patriarchy has actually led her to contribute to the problem by being horribly prejudiced against the majority of women who she views as unintelligent and weak. Some of the best examples of Cersei’s prejudice against women is her unnecessary hostility towards Sansa and Margaery:

“Dontos chuckled. ‘My Jonquil's a clever girl, isn't she?’

‘Joffrey and his mother say I'm stupid.’"

- Sansa IV, A Clash of Kings

“The king studied her a moment. ‘Perhaps you're not so stupid as Mother says.’"

- Sansa I, A Clash of Kings

“If Margaery Tyrell thinks to cheat me of my hour in the sun, she had bloody well think again.”

- Cersei V, A Feast For Crows

Though a lot of her hostility can be explained by her fear of the YMBQ, it still has a lot to do with her bitterness towards women. Instead of viewing other women as her comrades in a fight for equality, she prefers to see herself as a pseudo-man, and uses that position to further oppress other women. Though Cersei views herself as the only woman in Westeros who’s truly fighting the patriarchy, she’s actually contributing to the system that holds women back.

I love the contrast between these three. Each of their actions makes total sense when considering their back stories and past traumas. Though some view Sansa as weak, Arya as approaching sociopathy, and Cersei as a one note villain, GRRM has actually crafted them to be multi-dimensional characters that avoid tropes, while staying morally grey and intriguing.

#asoiaf meta #Sansa Stark #Arya Stark #ASoIaF #game of thrones #a song of ice and fire #cersei lannister #Feminine Rebellion In ASOIAF

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saferincages · 6 years

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(you might say we are encouraged to love)

I received an ask requesting I make this response its own post in full (which of course I don’t mind doing!) so here it is:

An anon in the original post asked why, “Anakin/Vader is seen as interesting for women,” and that could be a bit of a loaded question, but I think there’s a definite rationale behind it. The way it was phrased made me think of a post I saw which addressed the fundamental split between Anakin and Vader as seen by certain audiences, why Anakin is treated by many derisively because there’s an element of the “heroine’s journey” that happens in relation to his arc and the struggles he goes through. It’s here and it’s really interesting in its entirety. “The constant barrage of degradation and trauma and unfairness of a system that benefits at your expense and refuses to validate you for it. And some of that he might have been able to reconcile by “growing up,” the same way a lot of us learn to come to terms with social fuckery, but Anakin doesn’t get the space to do that. He gets a giant bundle of unaddressed trauma and psychological issues and handed a kind of ambiguous destiny about needing to save the entire universe.” <- Imagine the burden of that, and they put it on a child and then give him zero structure to cope with it.

I’m also going to add this comment from that post because I think it’s worthwhile to note: if someone makes you angry and you show anger with your very own face you are weak, you have lost face, you have shown yourself vain and driven by a selfish, animal, irrational, feminine urge to defend yourself; but if you show anger without a face, if you show it unpersonally (the less it’s connected to direct accusation or a specific ill), especially in order to execute a role, then you suddenly appear to be the one in the position of strength, because you can no longer be directly accused of selfishness. The more you can cloak anger in the guise of necessity, the more you meet the societal expectation to be dispassionate, rational, always controlled - the more justification and legitimacy and power to you, even though this mode of anger is often more destructive than the first. This dynamic, assuming it exists as I’ve hypothesized it, is why I think Anakin codes as feminine to many, while Vader appeals to a certain masculine ideal.

Basically, the gist of it is that the emotional turmoil, the trauma, the way he’s exploited for his talents or what he can provide others, the way his agency is stripped repeatedly from him again and again tends to not be the way “male” hero journeys are told. It’s feminine coding (unfortunately) for those themes to be explored. For those emotions to be plumbed and portrayed with a substantive sense of sorrow and helplessness in the central male hero - it is not the “macho” standard. Why they thought they’d get a macho, unyielding masculine power trip from Anakin Skywalker remains a mystery to me, this is the same series where its original hero, Luke (who is his son! of course there were going to be essential parallels and contrasts between them), purposefully throws his weapon away and refuses to fight, and is characterized by his capacity for intrinsic compassion rather than any outer physical strength (even Han is much less of a “macho” guy than dudebros tend to make him out to be - not only because he’s unmistakably the person in distress who has to be rescued from capture in ROTJ, he has a lot of interesting facets that break down that ‘scoundrel’ stereotype, but I digress other than to say I love the OT, and the subtle distinctions in Luke, Leia, and Han that make them break the molds of expectation). SW fundamentally rejected toxic masculinity and the suppression of emotions from its inception, Luke’s loving triumph and role as redeemer only happens because he refuses to listen when he’s told to give up on his friends or on his belief that there’s good in his father, his softness is his ultimate strength. Anakin was never going to be some epitome of tough masculinity, and George Lucas knew exactly what he was doing crafting him in that way. The audiences who wanted Bad Seed Anakin from the beginning didn’t know how to reconcile this sensitive, kind-hearted, exceedingly bright kid, with their spawn of the Dark Side notions, and I think, unfortunately, far too many then either rejected him completely or refused to understand what the central points in his characterization are about.

The fact that this narratively would have made no sense (if Anakin had been “born bad,” then there would have been no miraculously surviving glimpse of light for Luke to save - I’ve said this before, but imagine how profoundly essential to his true self that goodness had to be for it to even exist any more at that point, after all he’d suffered, after all he’d done. the OT tells us more than once what a good man Anakin Skywalker was, it’s part of what makes the father reveal as powerful as it is - if we hadn’t heard the fragments of stories about Luke’s father, it wouldn’t be nearly as shocking, but we KNOW he was a hero, an admirable man, a good friend). I can’t fathom how tricky telling the prequels had to have been to that extent - the audience knows what will happen in the end, it’s a foregone conclusion, we know he will fall, we know Vader will be created, we know the Empire will rise (though that would have happened even if Anakin had remained in the light, which is a whole other discussion). So the question became, who is this person? What influenced him? What shaped his destiny? And that ended up being a far more complex and morally fraught and stirringly emotional story than just “badass Jedi becomes badass Sith lord.”

That talented, highly intelligent boy is taken in by the Jedi after he has already developed independent thought and very intricate emotional dimension - the argument that he’s “too old” to be trained is because he’s not malleable enough to be indoctrinated the way Jedi usually treat the children they take. They may blame this on his attachment to Shmi, but she’s not the problem (if anything, had they not been so unfeeling and rigid, and had they freed her and allowed her to at least stay in contact with her son while he was training because it was a special case - they’re the ones who stick that “Chosen One” mantle on him, you’re telling me they couldn’t make an exception? but no, because they put that weight on him and then never help him carry it and constantly undermine it and question and mistrust him - Anakin would have been stronger in his training, and he would never have fallen to the Dark Side at all. There are so many moments, over and over, where his fall could have been averted, and everyone fails him to the bitter end, when he fails himself).

And so he is traumatized, due to years of abuse and difficulties as a slave, due to having to leave his mother behind because the Jedi would not free her, due to being told to repress his emotions over and over again when he is, at his core, an intuitive and perceptively empathetic person (he wants to uphold that central tenet of his training - “compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is central to a Jedi’s life”), yet he’s made to feel he is broken/wrong/constantly insufficient. He’s wounded by abandonment issues and lack of validation and the human connection/affection he craved, and he develops an (understandable) angry streak, he’s socially awkward due to the specific constraints/isolation of a Jedi’s life and due to the fact that they tried to stamp out what made him uniquely himself, which makes him continually conflicted with a never-ending pulse of anxiety (see absolutely ANY moment where he breaks down emotionally, and you’ll see him say something to the effect of “I’m a Jedi, I know I’m better than than this,” “I’m a Jedi, I’m not supposed to want [whatever very basic human thing he wants, because they make him feel like he can’t even ask for or accept scraps of decency]” - they fracture his sense of his own humanity, Padme tries to validate those feelings but that Code is a constant stumbling block in his mind). He is troubled by fear and the constant press of grief (I would argue he has PTSD at the very least), and all around he’s met by mistrust and sabotage.

Male heroes shouldn’t be treated as infallible in their own narratives (none of them are that, as no character of whatever gender/origin is, as none of us are), but at the very least we usually see them treated with respect by others. Anakin often gets no such luxury. He’s treated the way we frequently see women treated, and that treatment comes from the same rotten core - the idea that emotions are weak, that expressing them makes you lesser, that crying is a sign of deficiency, that fragility of any kind cannot be tolerated. Anakin is even the hopeless romantic in this situation - Padme, while gracious and warmhearted, is much more pragmatic and tries to reason her way out of her blossoming love for him until she’s of the belief that it doesn’t matter anyway because they’re about to die, and she wants him to know the truth before they do. (I’d also like to note that the closest people to him all speak their love aloud when they’re at the point of death - Shmi when he finds her bound and tortured with the Tuskens, Padme in the Arena, Obi-Wan watching him burn on Mustafar, and how unbearably sad is that? even though his mother had said it before, even though he got to hear it many times again from Padme - and it’s her last entreaty to him - we shouldn’t be pushed to the brink of death to express it). Anakin is the one gazing at her dreamily and tearing up about it and professing earnest, dramatic love in front of the fireplace (idc what anyone says about the dialogue, the way he expresses himself is entirely sincere, it’s the rawness of that sincerity that I think makes people uncomfortable bc it’s unexpected), she’s the one who talks about living in reality. She, too, has been taught to guard and temper her emotions from her time as a child queen and the years she’s spent navigating the murky political waters of the Senate, but she’s become adept at it, unlike Anakin. If anything, they’re the only person the other has with whom they can be truly genuine and unafraid of exposing the recesses of their hearts, they’re the only safe place the other has, it’s no wonder they give themselves over to that, and the fact that they do is beautiful, it’s not wrong (which I have more cohesive thoughts on here and it was the underlying thesis of my heart poured into the super long playlist for them too /linking all the things). They see the joy and spirit in the other that no one else ever sees, and they make a home there.

Anakin becomes an esteemed general not only because he’s awesome in battle and strong in the Force and a gifted pilot and a skilled leader (all of which are true), but because he shows those around him respect, and great care. So, yet again, there’s a subversion of what might have been expected. No one is expendable to him. He views the Clone troops as individual human beings. He mourns their losses (many of the Jedi, with their no attachments rhetoric, allow the Clones to be used without much hesitation or thought for their status as sentient beings born and bred and programmed to die in war, but Anakin was a slave. He comprehends their status more than anyone else could). Anakin is a celebrated hero to the public, and in private is being chewed up by fear and uncertainty. Anakin is devoted to and completely in love with his wife, but has to keep it a secret. Anakin still craves freedom that even being a Jedi has not afforded him, because of their rigor. Anakin still desperately has to scrape for even the bare minimum of approval from the authority figures around him - even his closest mentor and friend, Obi-Wan, while they are irrevocably bonded and care for each other in a myriad of important ways, often doesn’t understand him and dismisses his feelings, refuses to advocate for/stand up for him when he needs it, or tells him to calm down. I’m surprised they never tell him he’s being hysterical when he gets upset, but the connotation of being told to “calm down” when angry or sorrowful or frustrated is something most women can identify with all too well. His desperate desire to protect Padme as everything begins to curl and smoke and turn to ash around him has a very clear nurturing aspect to it underneath the layers of terror and frustration and building paranoia - all he really wants is to be able to protect and care for his family, all he hopes is to save them and have a life with them away from all the war and the political in-fighting and the stifling Order. He’d quit right that second but he needs help due to his nightmares, and no one is willing to give it to him. (Except, ostensibly, Palpatine, who has been grooming him and deftly manipulating him and warping his perceptions since he was a child, all under the guise of magnanimous, almost paternal, care. Palpatine is brilliant in his machinations, perfectly cunning in his evil. He knows exactly how to slip in and break people, and he plays Anakin to the furthest extreme. I’m not saying Anakin doesn’t have choices, he does, and he makes the worst possible ones, but Palpatine pulls the strings in a way that makes him feel that he has no agency - and in truth, he does have very little agency throughout every step of his arc, marrying Padme and loving her in spite of the rules is one of the only independent choices he ever makes that isn’t an order, a demand, a fulfilling of duty - and Palpatine poises himself as the answer to all the problems, if Anakin does as he’s told. He’s been hard-wired to take orders for too long. He is so damaged by this point, and so distrusting - Hayden said something once about how Anakin is still very naive in ROTS, even after what he’s been through in the war, he’s still so young and unknowing about many things, and then his naivete is shattered by complete and utter disillusionment, and that shock is terrible and incomprehensible for him, so he clings to the one source of power he’s given, and it’s catastrophic). He is haunted by grief and impeded by fear of loss, and it drags him into an abyss. We watch all of this happen with bated breath, we see everyone fail him, we see every moment where he could have been helped, we see every path he could take if only he had the ability to stand up for himself and had been given the tools to cope with his psychological and emotional baggage, we see that he very nearly turns back, up until the death knell at the end. We know it’s coming from the moment they land on Tatooine and meet him and decide to make him a Jedi. We know, and we still hope for it to turn out differently. We know, and it still breaks our hearts.

I don’t want to make blanket statements about typical male viewers vs. typical female viewers, that’s too dismissive of a stance to take, but on a seemingly wider scale, I don’t think many of the former (especially the ones who were either older fans or who were teenagers themselves at the time) were as interested in political nuance and a tale of abiding love and a young man burdened with more than should ever have been put on his shoulders. Since the question was basically “why does he appeal to women,” (and not just cishet women) I imagine that the answer to that varies greatly depending on any one perceptive outlook, but has a similar core in each case of us wishing we could help change the outcome, even though we know we can’t, and of wanting to understand his actions and his pain, wanting to see his positive choices and his goodness validated, wanting to see him learn healthy strategies, wanting to see his love flourish, wanting to see him freed from the shackles he drags with him, from childhood to Jedi to Vader. The crush of the standards of society and expectation on him may speak to many. He is never liberated (until his final moments of free breath). His choices are either taken or horrifically tainted. His voice is drowned out by those more powerful around him. His talents and intelligence go largely unrecognized. His good, expansive heart is treated like a hindrance. The depth of his empathy and love is underestimated - and that, in the end, is important, because that underestimation, ending with Palpatine, becomes the Dark Side’s ultimate downfall and undoing. Vader may literally pick up an electric Palpatine and throw him down a reactor shaft, but that physical action is the final answer to a much more complete emotional and spiritual journey. He throws him down and the chains go with the slave master, and for the first time, certainly since before he lost Padme, his heart is unfettered, his love is reciprocated, and he is offered a true voice, a moment of his true self, a sliver of forgiveness, before being embraced again by the transcendence of the light. It is his act of rebellion, it is his own personal revolution, his final blow in the war. The entirety of the arc hinges upon him in that moment, Luke has been valorous and immeasurably valuable, but he’s done all he can do - the final choice is Anakin’s (and it’s such an interesting case because where else have we ever been able to fear and appreciate a villain, and then totally transform and re-contextualize him?). He is in that moment, indeed, the Chosen One.

All these facets are fascinating to watch unfold if you’re willing to be open-minded and heartfelt and sympathetic to the journey, if you’re willing to dig into the complex depth of his pathos.

I remember seeing AOTC as a teenager, and my love was Padme, she was where I was invested, I identified with her, I loved her kindness and her bravery and her sense of honor and justice, I loved that her femininity did not in any way diminish her and was an asset, I loved that, while she takes charge and has the fortitude to rush headlong to the rescue, while she can fight and tote a gun and blast a droid army as well as anyone, her superpowers are her intellect and her giving heart and gentle spirit. I totally get why Anakin holds onto the thread of hope she gives to him for all of those years, and why he falls in love with her as he does, but since I felt a lot of the story through her eyes, I understood why she was drawn to and fell in love with him, too. He’s dynamic and a bit reckless, he’s courageous, but he’s vulnerable and needs support, he’s deeply troubled but also radiantly ebullient at times (the scene in the meadow where she’s so touched by the carefree joy he exhibits, how it delights her and takes her aback, because she’s almost forgotten what it is to feel that, she’s almost forgotten other people could, and here he is, warm and teasing and spirited), he is often guileless, especially with her, he’s fervent and loving in a way she’s never seen or experienced, and that love is given with abandon to her. Who…wouldn’t fall in love with that? It’s a gravitational pull. AOTC impacted me in certain other personal ways as well, I was trying to understand some nascent hollows of grief (Anakin losing his mother as he does was very affecting and heartwrenching for me, at the time I’d lost my grandfather to whom I was quite close, and I’m also really close to my own mom, so his woe had an echo to me), but that vision that I specifically had of their love, the way I interpreted it (which I may not have had words for at the time, but I certainly had the emotional response) was a dear and formative thing.

I talked about this here, but to rephrase/reiterate, by the time ROTS came out, my life had shifted completely on its axis. I was still young, but my much dreamier teenage self was being beaten down and consumed by illness, and I was angry. Anger is not a natural emotion for me (guilt and self-blame tend to be where I bury anger), and I really didn’t know what to do with it. Everything felt unfair and uncertain, like there was no ground at all to stand on. I hurt all the time, literally and figuratively, I was in constant pain. I was lonely and frightened and sleep deprived and often had nightmares (this is still kind of true lol, as is the physical pain part). Padme was still my heart and touchstone - as she remains so to this day in this story - but suddenly I understood Anakin in a much more profound way, one I’ve held onto because he’s important to me and I love him. I felt his rage, his anguish, his desire to do something, anything, to somehow change or influence the situation, to rectify his nightmares, to cling to whatever might make a difference, might save him from being drowned in the dark and from losing everything that made him who he was as a person. Seeing him try and knowing he would fail was devastating, but also…relatable, in an abstract way (obviously not the violent parts, but thematically, I felt some measure of what it was to scramble up a foundation that is disappearing beneath you, that your expectations and dreams of what your life would be can vanish in disintegrating increments). All I wanted was for someone to help rescue him, because all I wanted was for someone to help rescue me. All I wanted was the hope that things could turn around - and there is hope in ROTS, despite the unending terror and tragedy, it’s never entirely gone, because Star Wars exists as a universe with the blazing stars of hope and love ever ignited at its center - but still, it was a very personally rooted emotional exploration for me, and I only started to deal with my own floundering anger when I saw how it might consume the true and loving and softer parts of me if I didn’t hold it back. (A few years later, I went through this again in an even worse way, and the source of that rage and despair was someone I cared for, and once I got through the worst bleak ugliness of it, there were a couple of stories I returned to in an attempt to gain newfound solace and comprehension, and Anakin and Padme were in there. My compassionate, hopeful heart was being torn by that fury, and I clawed my way back up from the brink of it because I knew I could die, not even necessarily figuratively, it was…a bad time, if I didn’t find my way out. Anakin’s story is a tragedy and a fable and a kind of warning - we should not deny or suppress our emotions or our authenticity, but we also cannot let it destroy us - and then ultimately his lesson is restorative, too, that we never lose the essential part of our souls, that we must allow ourselves to feel. Balance indeed).

As consistent and transparent as my love for Padme has always been, my Anakin emotions are actually so close and personal that I intentionally avoided ever exposing them for actual years, it’s like…basically in the past month that I’ve ever been truly honest about it on Tumblr, because exposing that felt like too much, but I don’t really care about keeping it quiet any more, and that’s very cathartic.

I myself am an incredibly emotional person, and I don’t believe that Anakin’s emotions are negative qualities, which I meant to underscore. In fact, his open emotions are an exquisite part of him, and it’s the Jedi who are wrong for trying to stamp that out, when his emotional abilities are part of what define him in his inherent goodness and his intellect and strength. He has an undying heart. For he and Luke both to stand as male heroes who represent such depth of feeling is really special, and vital to the story. Anakin is the most acutely human character in many respects, in his foibles and his inner strengths, in his losses and his longings and his ultimate return to his true self - that’s why we feel for him, that’s why we ache and fear for him, that’s why we rejoice for him in the end.

Other people could speak to the Vader part of it much better than I can, Vader’s an amazing and very interesting villain (the fact that, as Vader, Anakin is much more adhered to the Jedi code and way of thinking than he ever was as an actual Jedi, for example - he has an order to him, he is much more dispassionate, he is very adamant about the power of the Force - is endlessly intriguing, because he’s such a contradiction). I use this term for a different character, but I’m going to apply it here - Anakin is a poem of opposites. He is a center that can serve as either sun or black hole. He is a manifestation of love and light and heroism, he is a figure of imposing power and cold rage. He’s the meadow and the volcano. The question then becomes, how expansive are we? When we’re filled with the contradicting aspects of ourselves, how do we make them whole without falling apart? When we do fail, can we ever do anything to fix it? And the answers again will vary by individual, but to my mind - we’re infinite, and thus infinitely capable of, at any point, embracing our light, even if we’ve forgotten to have faith in it, and while we may not be able to fix every mistake or right every wrong, we can make a better choice and alter the path. The smallest of our actions can ripple and extend and are more incandescent than we know. That’s what he does, against all expectation. In the end, he is an archetype not only of a hero (be that fallen or chosen or divine), but of a wayward traveler come home, a heart rekindled, a soul set free to emerge victorious in the transcendent light.

In the final resonance of that story for me personally, I love him for being a representation of that journey, that no matter how long it takes to get there, how arduous it is - that things we lose can be found again, that with the decided act of compassion, pure, redemptive love can be held onto, that the light persists and that, even when it flickers most dimly, refuses to be extinguished, and can at any point illuminate not only ourselves, but can shine brightly enough to match the stars in the universe.

I hope this is at all cogent, here’s a gif for your patience ♥

#anakin skywalker #darth vader #sw meta #star wars #okay to reblog #(of course! <3)#this is so long i'm so sorry for anyone who's now seen it twice but i didn't want to ignore the very sweet message i got #(which i am honored by thank you for even asking and caring and being patient enough to read this spiel omg)#i tweaked some of the wording for clarity (i changed it in the original too) but otherwise it's basically the same #bubble wrap around my heart #*#encouraged to love #anyway i love him #and i love luke so much and that's a vital component here #luke's faith and kindness and important heroism exists for a reason #luke sees the truth and the good and he doesn't let it go and his spirit does not waver and is brightly right in the end #don't you dare try to tell me anakin wasn't always fundamentally good in the truest and most luminous parts of his heart #to do so is to not only undermine anakin but to invalidate luke and padme and i won't stand for that #i could write one of these for luke but i think he's getting really good defense from sharper minds than mine in many cases #i could write one of these for padme but she's also been getting quality recognition lately #so as far as any defense goes this is the best my exhausted little brain can do and i hope it does justice to the story in some small way #i'm so ill and out of it that i have no idea if this makes sense even after copy/pasting it and fixing it up but itried.jpg #long post for ts

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bluewatsons · 4 years

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Emily Brady & Arto Haapala, Melancholy as an Aesthetic Emotion, 1 Contemp Aesthetics 1 (2003)

Abstract

In this article, we want to show the relevance and importance of melancholy as an aesthetic emotion. Melancholy often plays a role in our encounters with art works, and it is also present in some of our aesthetic responses to the natural environment. Melancholy invites aesthetic considerations to come into play not only in well-defined aesthetic contexts but also in everyday situations that give reason for melancholy to arise. But the complexity of melancholy, the fact that it is fascinating in itself, suggests the further thought that it may be considered as an aesthetic emotion per se. To this end, we argue that it is the distinctive character of melancholy, its dual character and its differences from sadness and depression, which distinguishes it as an aesthetic emotion.

Besides my other numerous circle of acquaintances I have one more intimate confidant-my melancholy. In the midst of my joy, in the midst of my work, she waves to me, calls me to one side, even though physically I stay put. My melancholy is the most faithful mistress I have known, what wonder, then, that I love her in return. —Søren Kierkegaard [1]

1. Introduction

When discussing the problem of emotions and art, recent philosophers have most often considered it in two contexts-music and fiction. Music, usually lacking an easily definable propositional content, is an art form in which emotions have the most dominant role to play; in our western tradition it is common to describe certain kinds of movements as 'sad' and others as 'joyful', and it is appropriate, in some sense, to feel these emotions while listening to a piece of music. The problem has been how to characterize more specifically the connection between a composition and the emotions it is claimed to express. The question of fiction and the emotions has been in the forefront because of the apparent paradox of our response to fictions; why, for example, are we moved by the fate of a fictional heroine when we know that the object of the emotion is not a real one, but only fictional.

The emotions considered in these contexts have been, typically, fairly straightforward and uncomplicated, for example, joy, sadness, and especially in respect to fiction, fear in its various degrees, with horror as an extreme. These sorts of emotions point to some of the logical and philosophical issues arising from art and emotions, and although not enough attention has been paid to the nature of these emotions themselves, they are sufficiently understood for exemplifying the dilemmas mentioned. This has also meant, however, that many other significant and interesting emotional qualities have been neglected.

The sublime is one of these emotional qualities that has been neglected but it has seen a small revival in neo-Kantian aesthetics. Another emotional quality that in some respects resembles sublimity has been almost completely forgotten. Melancholy is no less complex a phenomenon than sublimity, and it has a role to play in many works of art. Looking further back into the history of philosophy and literature, there are chapters in which the topic is touched upon. There have been many studies of melancholy, but sustained treatments of the concept have been 'clinical', where it is equated primarily with a mental illness or a dominant temperament.[2] Robert Burton's classic, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), is one exception, since its scope is broader than the clinical definition. Still, in these very different and varying accounts melancholy is not explicitly connected to aesthetic considerations (except perhaps in some poetic works).[3]

We want to show the relevance and importance of melancholy as an aesthetic emotion. Melancholy often has a role in our encounters with art works, and it may also be significant in our aesthetic responses to the natural environment. But the complexity of melancholy, the fact that it is fascinating in itself, suggests a further thought-that melancholy might be considered as an aesthetic emotion per se. Melancholy invites aesthetic considerations to come into play not only in well-defined aesthetic contexts but also in everyday situations that give reason for melancholy to arise. It is the special character of melancholy, and that which differentiates it from sadness, sorrow, despair, and depression, which distinguishes it as an aesthetic emotion.

One feature that makes melancholy an aesthetic emotion-like that of sublimity-is its dual nature. There are negative and positive aspects in it which alternate, creating contrasts and rhythms of pleasure. These aspects combine with the reflectivity that is at the heart of melancholy, and the particular refined feeling of the emotion. Like every emotion, melancholy arises out of a particular context, but with melancholy its various aspects come together to create an aesthetic situation around itself that gives the context a new aesthetic dimension. Although we shall not enter into the discussion concerning the educative function of emotions, we think it is reasonable to suppose that these sorts of complex and reflective emotions are particularly relevant in this respect.

Understanding the aesthetic character of melancholy requires a discussion of its objects and causes and the kinds of situations in which it arises, so we shall begin with an analysis of the distinctive aspects of the emotion. Following this analysis, we discuss how melancholy is prima facie an aesthetic emotion and illustrate melancholy's role in art and in our aesthetic encounters with nature. All this emphasizes, we think, the relevance of melancholy from the educational point of view. This subtle emotion is crucial in understanding many works of art, and the capability to feel it enriches human life in many ways, as well as giving us a possibility to come to terms with many difficult matters in our lives. As we shall show, melancholy is a mature emotion in which reflection calms a turbulent soul.

2. Distinguishing melancholy from depression

The main reason for melancholy's neglect is that it has often been connected too closely or even equated with sadness or depression. Melancholy is easy to lump together with these emotions, and the emotional terms are often used synonymously. This tendency masks the distinctive nature of melancholy. It is also necessary to distinguish our analysis of melancholy from the clinical tradition: as we understand melancholy, it is not a mental disorder of any kind. We want to progress beyond these rather narrow meanings of the concept and argue that melancholy is a more refined emotion with qualities of its own.

This clinical tradition begins in Aristotle, continues in parts of Burton's analysis, and more recently we find it in works by Freud, Julia Kristeva, and some psychologists who have considered the problems of artistic creativity.[4] In the Greek, we find the clinical origins of the term, 'melaina kole' or 'black bile.'[5] Freud identifies melancholy with the dejection and apathy of depression, and he also links melancholy to narcissism and mania.[6] Kristeva writes that "the terms melancholy and depression refer to a composite that might be called the melancholy/depressive, whose borders are in fact blurred. . . ."[7] Although she is right to note the overlap between depression and melancholy, by aligning her analysis with the clinical tradition she overlooks important differences between the two. It is useful and illuminating to retain a distinction between melancholy and depression as well as a distinction between the clinical definition of melancholy and the broader emotion-based use of the term (although there is also overlap between each use of the term).[8]

One of the clearest differences between depression and melancholy is that depression is an emotional state of resignation, whereas melancholy is not. When we feel depressed we feel unmotivated, unable to complete even the simplest task and unable to see any way forward. It is a pessimistic state that involves pain. By contrast, melancholy is not such a debilitating mood, rather it involves the pleasure of reflection and contemplation of things we love and long for, so that the hope of having them adds a touch of sweetness that makes melancholy bearable (while misery is not). Its reflective or thoughtful aspect also makes it somehow productive. Melancholy is something we even desire from time to time, for it provides an opportunity for indulgent self-reflection. We enjoy this time out for reflection, but the pleasure is also connected to recollecting that which we long for, where this reflective element can be even exhilarating or uplifting.

One feature that connects depression and melancholy is that they can both be experienced as moods. Moods constitute a sub-class of emotions, but they are emotions felt in relation to no explicit object. They seem to come over us without reason, and have the quality of being settled, all-pervasive, and drawn out.[9] In this way moods contrast with the sharpness, shock and the immediacy of emotions like fear, anger, or in some cases, sadness, which are directed at objects and also lack the long-lasting flavour of moods.

3. The reflective nature of melancholy

Melancholy is an emotion often occasioned by people or places; we feel melancholic about a lover or friend, or a meaningful place in our lives, perhaps somewhere we have once lived. The quality of the feeling resembles and overlaps with sadness, but is more refined, involving some degree of pleasure, although not as much as bittersweet pleasure. Melancholy also shares a family resemblance with love, longing, yearning or missing something, as well as feeling nostalgic or the emotion that accompanies reminiscing. Although melancholy clearly belongs to this set of emotions, it is also a distinctive emotion in its own right.

As an emotion, melancholy's most distinctive aspect is that it involves reflection. Rather than being an immediate response to some object that is present to perception, melancholy most often involves reflection on or contemplation of a memory of a person, place, event, or state of affairs. This reflective feature is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of melancholy because other emotions, for example, mourning, also involve reflection. Interestingly, contemplation and reflection are states of mind often associated with the aesthetic response more generally; especially in the Kantian tradition, some kind of reflective, contemplative and distanced point of view has been regarded as typical of the aesthetic situation.

Melancholy's reflective feature lies in the fact that its objects are often indirectly experienced through memories, thoughts or imaginings related to an absent object.[10] The emotion itself seems to grow out of reflection or contemplation, so that melancholy is typically caused by particular memories or thoughts. The melancholic response to a desolate moor might arise from the setting combined with the recollection of particular memories, a narrative of some kind.

The memories that evoke melancholy are, like other memories, vividly real, faint and sketchy or somewhere in between. The reflective aspect of melancholy often involves the effort of recollection, that is, the reflection necessary for retrieving memories that are faint and sketchy. This explains the solitary state of mind that accompanies melancholy and facilitates the attention needed for such retrieval. When the memories are vivid, or become vivid through retrieval, our reflection is characterized more by contemplation rather than the effort of recollection.

But whether actively recollecting or contemplating, the significance of memories is in their role as a narrative for melancholy. It is in the unfolding of the narrative that we find the more specific objects of this emotion. Melancholy can involve shades of other emotions-sadness, love, longing, pleasure and even dread-and each of these emotions may be a response to either a whole narrative or aspects of it. For example, as the narrative of a past love affair unfolds in memory, a negative feeling, a tinge of sadness, comes when reflecting on the bitter end of the affair; longing and pleasure are felt as we recollect the various pleasures of being with that person; while the dread comes in one sharp moment of recapturing the feeling of loneliness felt without that love. The narrative supplies the objects of each emotional moment in reflection. When examining the melancholic response to art we shall see that the narrative of memories is replaced with the narrative of the artwork where, for instance, the narrative of a film becomes the object of melancholic reflection.

There can also be cases, however, in which there is no object of reflection in melancholy. In these cases, a melancholic mood descends upon us and is caused by being in the sort of place that easily invites reflection or a pensive mood, such as a church. Sitting on a hard, wooden bench, with abundant space and light around us, at once evokes feelings of exhilaration and loneliness. A similar case arises in aesthetic contemplation of a desolate moor or the vast ocean, where solitude and a contemplative state of mind bring on a melancholic mood that appears to have no object.

Why do these places invite melancholy? They are places of reflection because they provide the solitude that forms the characteristic backdrop for melancholy.[11] Solitude can be both cause and effect of melancholy; when we spend too much time alone, we may suffer from the loneliness and longing for people that is a feature of melancholy. Or, when we find ourselves in quiet, deserted places we may become melancholic. When we already feel melancholy we seek solitude, perhaps to fully feel the emotion. In his analysis of melancholy Burton remarks that:

Most pleasant it is at first, to such as are melancholy given, to lie in bed whole days, and keep their chambers, to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by a brook side, to meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject, which shall affect them most. . . .[12]

Furthermore, he observes that people who spend too much time alone-people who study too much-are also prone to melancholy. The link between melancholy and solitude also explains to some extent why we often associate melancholy with nature. We use nature as a retreat from people and problems, and this may explain why many of the Romantic poets used nature to describe and evoke a melancholy mood.[13]

Solitude also facilitates the imaginative reflection involved in melancholy. Imagination's role in melancholy is twofold. First, imagination makes associations between a present and past experience, and in this sense it has a role in causing melancholy. It connects a quiet beach to an evening stroll with a lover, or a Scottish landscape with the sound of bagpipes. Secondly, imagination is used to embellish or fantasize around the memories of melancholy, perhaps imagining our return to some place. Through fancy, imagination extends memories in a way that deepens reflection, and in turn this deepens the feeling. In these cases it is imagination, drawing significantly on memory, which provides the narrative in which melancholy is anchored. Here it also enables us to prolong the emotion, creating new scenarios as sources of pleasure and meditation. Burton points to the almost inevitable use of fanciful imagination when we feel melancholic:

A most incomparable delight it is so to melancholize, and build castles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which they suppose and strongly imagine they represent, or that they see acted or done.[14]

Imagination may become so fanciful that memories are altogether left behind; they exist merely as the starting point of fantasy which may even border on delusion.

Some writers have noted a connection between melancholy and madness, which seem to be linked through imagination. The reflective aspect of melancholy leads to an overly fanciful imagination, resulting in delusions. For example, in The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare writes, "melancholy is the nurse of phrenzy." This is also reflected in Hamlet's character, which could be described as the sort of melancholy that leads to madness (and that which is more aligned with the clinical tradition).[15]

Both memory and imagination point to the central role of reflection for distinguishing melancholy as a type of emotion. The reflective nature of melancholy is especially significant insofar as it makes this emotion more refined than others. This can be shown by comparing it to a companion emotion, sadness. Because of melancholy's reflective nature and the indirectness of its objects, it lacks the immediacy and brevity that typifies sadness. Feeling sad is most often in response to some type of loss, and this is deeply, yet most often immediately felt. Sadness can of course be prolonged, and in this sense it will overlap with depression. Sadness often (but not always) involves crying or looking miserable-not smiling, long in the face, looking lost, or a purging, where nothing is held back. In melancholy we do not cry-it is neither an emotion with this extreme, nor it is exhibited through this type of expression. When we are melancholic our behaviour is pensive. We may ask to be alone, or seek solitude in which to indulge in the thoughts or memories that are making us melancholic. This behaviour stems from the fact that melancholy is not a purging of emotion, but instead a full and ripe emotion.

Here the reflective aspect of melancholy is key to keeping us from falling over the edge into sobbing. We hold in thought memories or imaginings of lost love or distant places; we contemplate them and in this way prolong the emotion. There certainly are cases through in which sadness exhibits most of the features of melancholy; it can be experienced as a mood, it does not always involve crying, and it can involve reflection. But there is a key difference between the two emotions which lies in the positive aspects belonging to both of them. In sadness the positive aspect has to do with the object, that is, the loss that precipitates sadness must be something that we value. In melancholy the positive aspect may also be connected to the loss of something we value, but there is another more important layer to this positive feeling, that is the self-indulgent, almost narcissistic pleasure which is a felt feature of the emotion. This feeling feeds on itself and contributes to the aesthetic experience that arises through feeling melancholic.

4. Melancholy as a complex emotion

The distinctions between melancholy, on the one hand, and sadness, on the other, point up another feature of melancholy. Melancholy is always a complex emotion rather than a simple one. It can be categorized in this way for a few reasons. First, it does not involve a single emotion, rather it is an emotion with various shades: a shade of longing; a shade of sadness; and a shade of feeling uplifted, or even a subtle sense of excitement. Secondly and perhaps most strikingly, it has both displeasurable and pleasurable shades of feeling.[16] This combination of different aspects constitutes a second necessary condition of melancholy, but which also is not a sufficient condition since other emotions involve both negative and positive aspects. A notable emotion of this type is the sublime, which overlaps with melancholy in ways that usefully articulate how the negative and positive elements function within each different emotion, and how both emotions can be conceived as aesthetic.

Kant describes the sublime as a complex feeling that combines both displeasure and pleasure. The displeasure is caused by the agitation and overwhelming of the senses and imagination which struggle but fail to take in the vastness or power of the sublime object. In the dynamically sublime the displeasure also seems to be caused by a feeling verging on fear. We feel so overwhelmed by the object that we would fear for our lives, except that we are safe and secure, and thus able to experience a sense of awe rather than genuine fear. This feeling on the edge of fear is the point at which displeasure gives way to pleasure from an elevated imagination in which we have a feeling of being at home in the world. That is, we are not actually overwhelmed by the object so that we lose control, rather, we apprehend our status as autonomous beings. The feeling here is one of respect for both humanity and nature. So the sublime has negative aspects of mental agitation verging on fear combined with positive aspects of a feeling of respect. Generally, sublime feeling is pleasurable, for although it does not involve the immediate delight of the beautiful, its pleasure lies in a feeling of being exhilarated and uplifted.[17]

With melancholy, the displeasurable or negative aspects lie in feelings of loneliness, emptiness, sadness from loss, and the fear or dread that sometimes accompanies longing. The pleasurable aspect comes primarily through reflection, when we dwell on happy memories or fashion elaborate fantasies. Here melancholy is intentionally sought out by finding solitude in order to deepen the reflection and in turn prolong the pleasure. While the sublime seems to begin in displeasure and end in pleasure, melancholy's negative and positive aspects alternate unpredictably. The enjoyment of a pleasurable narrative may give way to the sudden pain of desperate loneliness or unbearable longing. We might then seek to keep the pain at bay by returning to the sweetness of particular memories.

The differences between the sublime and melancholy are coupled with some interesting similarities. The two emotions share a higher reflective element; a feeling of elevating ourselves above the crudeness of stronger, more immediate feelings. As we have seen, in melancholy we refuse to give in to the urge to collapse into a heap and cry. In the sublime, we never give into the fear of nature's might, and instead we feel the exhilaration of our capacity to cope with an impending obstacle. They also share at least one common cause-nature. With melancholy, nature provides the solitude that serves as backdrop to our mood; while with the sublime, it is most often natural objects that evoke this feeling. The same desolate moor, or indeed a vast, gloomy ocean, may give rise to either melancholy or sublime feeling. Kant points to how sublime objects invite melancholy:

Thus any spectator who beholds massive mountain climbing skyward, deep gorges with raging streams in them, wastelands lying in deep shadow and inviting melancholy meditation, and so on is seized by amazement bordering on terror. . . .[18]

The various aspects of melancholy sketched above provide a working definition of this distinctive emotion. It is a complex emotion with aspects of both pain and pleasure which draws on a range of emotions-sadness, love and longing-all of which are bound within a reflective, solitary state of mind. It is this special character of melancholy that makes it a more refined emotion and an emotion which engenders aesthetic experience.

5. Melancholy, the arts, and environment

In this section our aim is to show how melancholy can be understood to function in the context of the arts. Melancholy is an emotion that we experience apart from art, as the examples noted above illustrate. But it is also an emotion we experience in a variety of artistic contexts, from the scenes of a Scorcese film to Friedrich's landscapes, or to Wordsworth's romantic images and Chopin's melodies.

In Martin Scorcese's film The Age of Innocence the source of melancholy is clear; it is a situation that would be regarded as melancholy also outside the context of the film. In this case it is the love affair between Newland Archer (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) and Countess Ellen Olenska (played by Michelle Pfeiffer). The story told contains the bittersweet aspects referred to above-the joy of two people being in love and the disappointment and sadness of the impossibility of their lives together. Spectators can enjoy the development of their relationship, the different aspects of it, and feel at least in a vicarious sense some of the emotions the characters of the film are experiencing.[19] The overall emotion, after the basic constituents have been revealed, is melancholy. There is no despair, no depression, only the kind of refined or sublimated mellow sorrow, which through reflection has brighter aspects woven into it, that we have called melancholy. It would not be an overstatement say that the beauty of the film is to a great extent due to its melancholy nature.

This film, as well as other narratives, exemplify cases in which melancholy takes the form of an emotion rather than the more particular species of a mood. There is a narrative of some kind, a sequence of fictional events, in which fictional characters and places become the intentional objects of our melancholy emotions. Sometimes we can specify the source of the emotion to a particular sequence of events or to a particular character. We could point out certain expressions in Newland Archer's face that show his emotions, or we could refer to certain encounters between Archer and Olenska that show the tragic aspects of their affair. But on the other hand we can also feel the happiness and pleasure that Archer and Olenska feel and enjoy when being together. These two, the shadow of a tragic end and the happiness of two people in love, give rise to melancholy.

With a film like The Age of Innocence the question concerning the borderline between melancholy and sentimentality arises. One would have to adopt only a slightly more cynical attitude to condemn Scorcese's film as sentimental entertainment. But why is The Age of Innocence a melancholy rather than sentimental movie? Sentimentality in art refers to the arousal of emotions that are somehow inauthentic and shallow. Sentimentality is not an emotion or mood in itself, it is rather the way in which emotions and moods are sometimes presented. There can be sentimentality in sorrow and joy, and when these emotions are portrayed in a sentimental way it means that they do not appear to be justifiable in view of comparisons to real life. In real life too there are instances of sentimentality, but in these cases the shade of inauthenticity comes from not being true to one's real feelings. In our characterization of melancholy above, melancholy in its clearest instances does not allow for sentimentality. There cannot be sentimentally portrayed melancholy, because melancholy in itself is such a complex and refined emotion that it excludes any superficiality. Then the question is, rather, whether there is real melancholy in Scorcese's film or only sentimental presentations of the different emotions that go with falling in love and breaking up an affair. In The Age of Innocence there is, in our interpretation, a higher level in the film itself that creates complexity, and keeps it from falling into a naive and shallow love story.

Let us now look at a different case in the arts. There is a long tradition of works of art that represent melancholy as a clinical disease, for example, Albrecht Dürer's "Melencolia I" (engraving, 1514),[20] but there are also works which express melancholy emotion. [21] Many of Edvard Munch's works are known for this quality, but he also completed several paintings, and a well-known woodcut, all entitled "Melancholy." Several versions depict a pensive man sitting by the sea (for example, paintings from 1891; 1892), and his woodcut, "Melancholy" (Evening, 1896), presents the man in a gloomy, evening scene. The theme of solitude is carried through in the painting, "Melancholy" (1899), of a woman sitting alone in a room, dressed in dark shades of blue, green and black, in contrast to brightly coloured walls around her.

We have noted above that melancholy is often evoked in the context of quiet reflection. This is particularly relevant in a range of artistic instances that feature solitary persons set amongst the grandeur of nature, a theme commonly found in the Romantic tradition in art and literature. For example, Caspar David Friedrich's paintings often feature landscapes with a single figure with her or his back to the beholder (Rückenfigur). The figure beholds nature's awesome beauty, and in many cases, strikes a reflective pose, the pose of a 'halted traveller.'[22]

These features are the source of a melancholic response to Friedrich's "The Dreamer." In this painting [view at end of article], a man sits on the ledge of the great gothic window of a ruined monastery. The interior of the ruin is composed of dark reds, but bright, golden light pours through the centre of the picture, filling the emptiness of the gothic tracery. One can identify with the relaxed, contemplative perspective of the seated figure. The feeling evoked is one of calm reflection, with the contrast between dark and light suggesting both loneliness and a feeling of hope. Accompanying this there might be a subtle longing for the stillness of the scene.

In many of Friedrich's works we can also locate melancholy's overlap with the sublime. Friedrich's use of the solitary human dwarfed by nature and his dramatic use of light combine to evoke an uplifting feeling, sometimes one that is closer to the sublime, sometimes one that is closer to melancholy. The meeting point between the two emotions emerges in the mixture of agitated reflection. It is a calm, peaceful contemplation mixed with anxiety-whether from fear (the sublime) or from loss or longing (melancholy).

The themes of solitude and sweet sorrow associated with melancholy are also common in Romantic poetry. For example, Wordsworth's poem "Tintern Abbey" shows how closely solitude is linked to nature and to the reflection that accompanies longing:

Of five long winters! And again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain springs

With a soft inland murmur. -Once again

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

That on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect

The Landscape with the quiet of the sky.

The day is come when I again repose

Here, under this dark sycamore, and view

These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts...

These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me

As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

And passing even into my purer mind,

With tranquil restoration:-feelings too

Of unremembered pleasure....[23]

When discussing the arts, the closest we come to finding melancholy as a mood is in music. In cases above, there are visual images, filmic scenes and the representation of a landscape, which convey a set of propositions that, in turn, raise the emotion of melancholy. In music, however, it is easy to find cases that are not connected with any propositional content. Chopin has composed numerous pieces that express sadness or sorrow, the "Death March" being the prime example. But in his compositions we also find instances of melancholy. Many of his mazurkas exemplify melancholy rather than sadness. For example op. 67 no. 4 or op. 33 no. 4, with their subtle changes in tempo create the lingering mood of melancholy. This is especially noticeable when one compares these with more vibrant pieces from the same series, like op. 68 no.1, in which there is no time for reflection or contemplation.

When listening to Chopin's pieces one can imagine suffering and sadness, but the musical qualities that give rise to the mood of melancholy are independent of any actual events. In music it is perhaps the fairly slow tempo combined with episodes of vivacity that create the sense of reflection and indecisiveness which together with the brighter and darker notes constitutes the melancholy mood. This is an emotion that in its complexity and inner conflicts escapes any simple classification.[24]

Finally, we shall step outside the arts, and consider melancholy in respect to our aesthetic encounters with nature. Imagine that you are walking across a desolate moor. The land that stretches out into the distance is empty and spacious, coloured by subdued shades of brown and green against the grey backdrop of the sky. The air is still and mild with a refreshing mist. A reflective mood descends as you settle into the rhythm of a quiet pace. A feeling of longing forever to be in the pleasurable solitude of the moor combines with pangs of loneliness. Specific memories and thoughts may come into play; perhaps memories of living near that place long ago. There is some pleasure felt in recollecting the good times, but along with it, almost in equal measure, comes sadness from missing the place itself. The desire to prolong the emotion is strong, and you indulge in the rich feelings by cultivating the mood and lingering in it.

Particular sounds of nature, as with music, can also evoke the subtle mixture of pleasure and displeasure associated with melancholy. The curlew's call, heard as you walk in the moor, sounds lonely but at the same time alive and vibrant. Or in a setting more like the one described by Wordsworth, we might hear the incessant and excited, yet mournful melodies of the nightingale's song.

In these cases of the natural environment there is no narrative that we respond to, no artistic content that we interpret as melancholic. However, we are still able to associate melancholy with aesthetic qualities of the experience. The sombre colours of the moor are associated with the negative, sad aspects of melancholy. The downcast tone of the birdsongs, mixed with lighter, more positive sounds suggest a mixture of positive and negative shades of feeling.

In the mixed environments of gardens or the countryside we sometimes come upon ruins (actual ruins or even artificial ruins, which were an architectural feature of picturesque landscapes and gardens). Ruins express the passage of time, and more specifically the qualities of impermanence and transience, all closely associated with melancholy. Ruins induce a contemplative state of mind, suggestive of events and lives from past ages that have come to an end. These decaying structures leave behind only fragments of past lives and events, enticing imagination to reconstruct narratives around, for example, well-preserved ruined abbeys, castles or the overgrown foundations of once-lived in stone cottages. The reflective stance may be part imagination, part memory, but, in any case, melancholy attaches itself to various aspects of the experience: the deserted places of many ruins, the way that ruins generally express the impermanence of culture, or more specifically to, say, the associations made between a ruin and events surrounding it. Here, again, we find shades of both positive and negative feeling in nostalgia for another time and place now gone, for the glory of past times, and so on. As surviving structures, many ruins symbolize human feats, but this is coupled with an awareness that as the forces of nature take control, no feat is immune to the ravages of time. As Shakespeare so poignantly observes in Sonnet #64, "Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, That Time will come and take my love away."[25]

6. Conclusion

The emotion of melancholy is not unique in its richness and its dual nature-we have pointed out that the sublime enjoys an analogous position-but it deserves more attention in the context of aesthetics. What is specific, perhaps even unique, to melancholy is the role it can play in our everyday life, in contexts that are not aesthetic in the prima facie sense. When mourning transforms itself into melancholy, when the desperation of a loss has calmed down and is mixed with pleasurable memories, then we have an instance of melancholy, which in itself seems to create an aesthetic context of its own. The calmness and reflection involved in melancholy resemble the traditional requirement of contemplation in the aesthetic response. Melancholy in this everyday context may lack the intensity of artistic experience, but its refined harmony is no less a significant aesthetic feature. The pleasure of melancholy does not come from excitement or intensity, but indeed rather from overall harmony we are experiencing. When feeling melancholy in the sense we have outlined, we are in control of the 'lower' emotions; we have won both overwhelming sorrow and joy. The reflection constitutive in melancholy makes it a rational, controllable emotion. We have been able to take some distance from our previous experiences; we have given them a place in our own history. The result is that we are more in harmony with our past, and we can enjoy the feeling of melancholy, rather than sink into sadness.

This feature, perhaps more than any other, makes melancholy an 'educative' emotion. It is an instance of a mature, reflective emotion, the experience of which provides a way to cope with painful events in human life. It is clear that melancholy is no substitute for feeling sorrow and sadness; when facing loss we have to go through these emotions. But melancholy can step in at a later stage, and do justice both to the dark and bright sides of our existence.

We have also seen that melancholy is not a strange emotion in art, or in our aesthetic encounters with nature. It occurs in many forms of art, both in the modern and in the classical. It is in no way an archaic phenomenon, although in the extremities of the present culture, it easily goes unnoticed. Those looking for joy or sadness-not to mention horror-are not satisfied with the subtle mixture of pain and pleasure in melancholy. But there are those-as the quote from Kierkegaard in the beginning of our paper suggests-who have had a sense for melancholy, and who have been able to enjoy the very distinctive pleasure it brings along.

Endnotes

Soren Kierkegaard, "Diapsalmata," in Either/Or, Penguin, 1992, p. 44.

See Jennifer Radden's edited collection, The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), for a representation of the clinical tradition. For the complex history of the concept see her excellent introduction, pp. 1-51.

Theodor Adorno mentions melancholy ('schwermut') as an aesthetic quality, but he does not discuss it in any detail, and in any case, he seems to equate it sorrow and depression. See T. W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. C. Lenhardt, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedeman (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), pp. 375-376. Walter Benjamin gives a more detailed account in his treatment of the German tragic drama ('Trauerspiel'), but his discussion equates melancholy with sadness and depression even more clearly than Adorno's. He also makes connections with the clinical tradition. See Walter Benjamin, The Origin of the German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London, New York: Verso, 1998), pp. 140-158. So, neither Adorno nor Benjamin really contributes to the discussion concerning melancholy in the sense we have defined it here.

See Joseph J. Schildkraut and Alissa J. Hirshfeld, "Mind and Mood in Modern Art I: Miró and Melancholie," Creativity Research Journal, 8, 2 (1995), 139-156.

See Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle, Vol. VIII: Problemata, Books I and XXX, ed. W.D. Ross, trans. E.S. Forster (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1927).

See Sigmund Freud, "Mourning and Melancholia" (1915, 1917) in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XIV, ed. J. Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press, 1957).

J. Kristeva, The Black Sun: Depression and Melancholy, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 10.

In her introduction, Radden points out that melancholy has typically been associated primarily with 'melancholia', a clinical disease, although she notes that in the 19th century melancholy as an emotional quality began to receive some attention in its own right, as we see in some Romantic poetry. See p. 4.

Radden also points to this dominant characteristic of melancholy, see pp. 37-38.

There are some (non-art) cases in which the object of melancholy is present in some sense. For example, if we are somewhere we have been with a past lover, this brings on feelings of melancholy directed upon that person, but they may also be directed upon the place to some extent (where the place is also the object of melancholy, and not merely the catalyst of the emotion). Another case might be when the object of melancholy to perception, but it is out of reach in some way, and in that sense it is absent and unattainable.

Like loneliness, it is possible to feel melancholic in a crowded place. For example, a busy train station or bustling cafe may bring back memories that trigger the emotion.

Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Holbrook Jackson (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1978), p. 246. Burton's analysis of melancholy gives it a range of meaning that does not belong to modern usage. For example, it is identified as a disease and equivalent to unhealthy 'black bile'. But alongside this he identifies aspects of the concept that fit with more current usage. In particular, he notes its sweet and sour aspects, its association with solitude, and its overlap and resemblance to sadness, longing, etc.

See A.L. Reed, The Background of Gray's "Elegy": A Study in the Taste for Melancholy Poetry 1700-1751 (New York: Russell & Russell, 1962), p. 140. She cites the following examples: Wordsworth's "Yew Trees;" Coleridge's "Dejection;" and Byron's "Elegy on Newstead Abbey."

Burton, p. 246.

See Reed, pp. 10ff.

Radden notes this quality too, and she cites Keat's poetry as an example of the dual aspects of melancholy. See p. 220.

I. Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. W. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987),§27, pp. 114-115.

Kant, §26, p. 129.

See R.K. Elliott, "Aesthetic Theory and the Experience of Art," Aesthetics, ed. Harold Osborne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 147; and A. Haapala, "The Role of Experience in Understanding Works of Art," International Yearbook of Aesthetics, ed. Göran Hermeren, 1 (1996), pp. 27-37.

Dürer wanted to depict one of the four humors. In Panofsky's interpretation Dürer brings together different traditions and combines them with his 'spiritual self-portrait: "Thus Dürer's most perplexing engraving is, at the same time, the objective statement of a general philosophy and the subjective confession of an individual man. It fuses, and transforms, two great representational and literary traditions, that of Melancholy as one of the four humors and that of Geometry as one of the Seven Liberal Arts. It typifies the artist of the Renaissance who respects practical skill, but longs all the more fervently for mathematical theory-who feels 'inspired' by celestial influences and eternal ideas, but suffers all the more deeply from his human frailty and intellectual finiteness. It epitomizes the Neo-Platonic theory of Saturnian genius as revised by Agrippa of Nettesheim. But in doing all this it is in a sense a spiritual self-portrait of Albrecht Dürer." E. Panofsky The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1943, 1955), p. 171. In this interpretation, reflection is the new element that Dürer added to the clinical tradition: "His Melancholia is neither a miser nor a mental case, but a thinking being in perplexity. She does not hold to an object which does not exist, but to a problem which cannot be solved." Panofsky, p. 163.

See Radden's collection of images of melancholy in art throughout her introduction, pp. 1-51.

J. Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape (London: Reaktion Books, 1990), pp. 182-183.

William Wordsworth, "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour"), The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, ed. Thomas Hutchinson (London: Oxford University Press, 1895).

We have stressed that melancholy is not a simple 'negative emotion' in the sense of sorrow. This is why we shall not go into the discussion concerning the 'logic' of negative emotions in the arts, and music in particular. The problem has been widely discussed, cf., e.g., Jerrold Levinson, "Music and Negative Emotions," in Music, Art, and Metaphysics (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1990).

Quoted by Donald Crawford in his excellent discussion of the dialectical character of ruins in, "Nature and Art: Some Dialectical Relationships," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 42, 1983, p. 55. For an interesting, recent book on the attraction of ruins in human history, see Christopher Woodward, In Ruins: A Journey through History, Art and Literature (New York: Vintage, 2002).

#soren kierkegaard #emotion #philosophy #existentialism #love #aesthetic emotion #melancholy #unhappiness #despair #depression #sublime #environment #sorrow #aesthetics #literature #poetry #art #immanuel kant #julia kristeva

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jira-chii · 5 years

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Reflection on Devotion

Hello my sister finally convinced me to watch a play-through of Devotion, a Taiwanese horror game with absolutely stellar visual storytelling.

I don't normally enjoy horror games but I made an exception for Devotion, because I had previously seen Detention (the other game by Red Candle), and I loved it. However it completely blew my mind how much better Devotion was, visually and conceptually. Like, I legit did not think they would have been able to top Detention. And they did. And it was so impressive I had to write about it. So here we are.

The first half of this post will be spoiler-free, because I definitely don't want to spoil this game. Unfortunately, Devotion was taken off Steam for (imo really dumb) political reasons but I highly recommend seeing a play-through of it or something, because I seriously want everyone to experience its story before reading this.

I have no qualms about spoiling Detention though so we'll start from there. (They're not really spoilers though, because it's been a while and I don't remember most of the details).

One of the things I remember loving about Detention was the integration of the school setting with the personal family setting. At one point we are suddenly dragged into a representation of the main character's house, making the fear feel uncomfortably close. I loved this because the game was now able to mix the “familiar” with the surreal, in an even more effective manner than with the school. Furthermore, it gave us new insights into the main character by showing us facets of their life from a new and more empathetic perspective.

And now we have a game completely “devoted” to this concept. Hooray.

Devotion (and Detention to a lesser extent), uses an unconventional type of horror in that it relies less on jump scares and shocking, gory scenarios, and more on atmosphere and a mysterious story. This subtle type of horror is more typically seen in Asian countries than Western ones, and the result is that immediately, it might not feel as heart-poundingly terrifying, but it leaves you with very disturbing thoughts, that get scarier the more you think about them, and don't leave your mind for a very, very long time.

I'm gonna say it now but Devotion is 10x more scary if you're an Asian with traditional family values, because the situations are so relatable.

The game revolves around a family of three. Using limited settings and a limited amount of characters, the storytelling feels compact yet at the same time is able to delve into multiple perspectives.

The other cool thing is that Devotion's horror is not an external, unknown threat. It is about a series of events, that permeate every aspect of gameplay, but by the end there are relatively few mysteries. That said, at one point it becomes very clear what happened. But we can't do anything about it. Which is terrifying and possibly all too relatable for some people.

There are waaay too many elements to analyse in this game, so I'm going to narrow it down by focusing on one idea, namely the one of Family. This also gives me a chance to talk about all three of my favourite scenes in the game:

The Arowana fish tank

The Storybook scene

Reducing stress with marbles

*SPOILERS* start here if it wasn't obvious.

The game's title screen shows the three main characters in a family portrait. Father and husband Du Feng Yu is a screenplay writer, his wife Gong Li Fang is a retired singer-turned movie actress, and their daughter Mei Xin wants to grow up to be a superstar just like mum.

The picture hangs above the living room sofa opposite the TV, and that space is like the embodiment of all the values of the dad, Feng Yu. Interestingly, this title screen image is taken from the perspective of Mei Xin's bedroom, and seems to mirror a scene in the game where she peeks at you from said bedroom.

Anyway my point is the title screen very clearly shows that family is the focus of the game. So I'm going to talk about each of the family members.

Mei Xin is definitely the character I relate to the most. She constantly pops up in the game, and is represented by a doll, which is the perfect symbol because even though she looks creepy to the player, she actually won't hurt you, and is more manipulated by the people around her than anything else.

Mei Xin is in fact powerless to do anything on her own, a concept which is taken to its literal limits in the fish tank scene where you actually have to press the buttons to make her move. From the arowana’s perspective, we see Mei Xin going about her day, revealing things to the fish she wouldn't dare reveal to her parents. As a fish in a tank, you also get a good feel for how trapped Mei Xin feels, being unable to go to school, and even being denied her promised trip to Alishan.

Mei Xin hates being in the house and she hates taking her medicine. It doesn't seem fair that she has to listen to her parents when they lied to her. She ends up dumping the medicine in the fish tank, and as we look up, we see the deadly pills slowly fall toward us. Unable to escape, the fish can only watch as death approaches, which is a metaphorical foreshadowing of Mei Xin's fate as well.

Can I also just mention, Feng Yu bought that fish to bring the family prosperity and fortune, so it's super ironic that Mei Xin was the one who killed it. It's a really neat metaphor for the relationship between the father and daughter. Feng Yu thinks spending more money will fix the family but materialistic goods could never be a substitute for real affection.

Mei Xin is probably the biggest victim in the feud between her father and mother. It is heartbreaking to see her inner thoughts in her journal. Though it is not explicitly stated, it is not hard to see how she herself might feel guilty about her parents’ fighting. After all, their financial situation is partly due to her father doing everything he can to cure her illness. I appreciate the marble scene in making Mei Xin's anxiety apparent. If you don't use the marbles to distract Mei Xin, huge mouths begin to overlap the screen and her vision becomes more chaotic, making it very obvious that the source of her stress is her parents fighting. Here I also have to commend the superb voice acting. Listening to the parents arguing in the background very near gave me PTSD as they sounded so similar to my own parents.

As mentioned before, it is ironic that, even though both parents are doing everything they can to help their daughter out of love and devotion, they don't realise the thing she truly needs is their physical presence. That's why the storybook scene absolutely killed me.

In a rare moment of genuine father-daughter interaction, we get to experience reading Mei Xin's favourite book. Literally. First of all, I love this scene because of the visuals. We go inside the storybook and the way they've created this huge change in tone is incredibly imaginative and a welcome break from the creepy apartment we've been trapped in the whole time. Perhaps in a similar way, this is how Mei Xin escapes her depressing reality too.

So on top of having nice visuals, and a semi- decent story, this scene is important because it actually shows Mei Xin and her father having quality time together. And it even emphasises their bond by having us experience the changes Mei Xin makes to the book as a result of the conversations she has with her father, which is really cute and sweet but also just the best way of showing why this book is her “favourite”. Towards the end, we find out the book's core message is about the love a daughter has for her father, and the lengths she will go to because of that love. Plus that extra touch with the tulips at the end is just breathtakingly beautiful, a huge contrast to almost everything else in this horror game.

I have heard a theory that the true meaning of devotion in this game isn't that of Feng Yu’s devotion to his daughter, but of Mei Xin's devotion to her father. The hint is in the lyrics of the song she performs, Lady of the Pier, which was also her mother's debut song. I guess that's the beauty of a title like this. There can be so many different interpretations and the creators really maximise the possibilities of each.

As an added bonus, Mei Xin means beautiful heart.

Gong Li Fang is probably the most underappreciated character in this game. I honestly have so much respect for her. It took courage to sacrifice everything she had built up to become a housewife and support the family. That's her devotion to her family. But when everything goes pear shaped suddenly everything also seems to conspire against her. The message she gets from her own mother is particularly scarring. Li Fang wants to leave the relationship but her mother tells her not to. Instead of supporting her own daughter's wellbeing, Li Fang's mother wants her to grin and bear it in order to save face. This was, of course, the norm in the 80s, but it is still painful to see a once highly successful woman struggle against the patriarchy.

Another scene that really gets me is the welcoming ceremony? I forget the name. There is a list we find, of strict instructions regarding the mountain load of things the wife had to prepare before guests arrived for what was essentially a housewarming party. Sometimes the superstitions really go overboard. Could you imagine going from a famous movie star to that? Li Fang is portrayed as a demon in the game, but honestly I don't blame her. Du thinks she is possessed, but truthfully he is just blind to what she really needs.

The elevator scene shows this best I think. Following what is possibly the most frightening chase scene in the entire game, we enter the elevator. As the doors close, Li Fang's demonic face has changed to one showing her loss and desperation, as she lays pitifully on the floor, watching helplessly as the doors close in her face. Maybe she was actually looking to us for help, but instead we ran from her.

As we stew alone uncomfortably with that knowledge in the claustrophobic space, we hear the radio. Li Fang has decided to return to her career. Naturally the radio announcer asks about this news in relation to how her husband reacted.

Coming out of the elevator, look behind and we see her in the moment she gathers the courage to leave. Her silhouette against the elevator light is ethereal and beautiful. Wearing the qi pao her husband hated, she walks step by elegant step away from the household that has caused her so much pain. Her stance implies she is defiant and confident, but of course that's because we never see her face.

Li Fang leaving has huge ramifications for the rest of the family, and I bet it definitely created a heap of problems for herself. Leaving her husband will basically be seen as a scandal and her career going forward is going to be rocky. Oh, also she'll probably be disowned by her family. Plus she never sees her daughter again. But in that moment I just felt so proud of her.

Du Feng Yu is the main perspective the story is told through. The core concept around him is blindness. Near the start of the game, graffitied onto the wall outside the apartment is a sentence: why are you closing your eyes? Incidentally, my sister at this moment was covering her eyes to avoid any jumpscares. I now know this message had a far deeper meaning.

The disjointed way Feng Yu sees things as he pieces together all the things in the past that culminated in the tragic present makes a great premise for horror. Things like people knocking on doors, hospital beds, sudden phone calls, and even a huge bath of red liquid are eventually all explained through the story.

In my opinion, psychological horror honestly makes for the best horror. It is eerily surreal when the realistic setting of the apartment is overlaid with mental representations of people and events. Even worse when they move.

The repetitive setting also means when we see something other than their apartment, it leaves a lasting impression. For me that was the bath scene, which became worse when I thought back after the end of the game and realised we basically experienced what Mei Xin did...

Each of the family members is tragic in their own way. Mei Xin because she dies without being able to do anything. Li Fang because she is forced to choose between herself and her family. And Feng Yu because he basically did the opposite to Li Fang. He continued to hurt himself, sacrificing himself financially and spiritually. He only wants the best for his child, but is unaware he's going about it the wrong way. He was too stubborn and self absorbed in his own worries to see the other factors tearing the family apart. And I don't blame him. It's not easy for him either. As the man of the house he is expected to hold it together. His wife gave up her career so he is the sole breadwinner. The pressure must be intense. The sad thing is situations like these are all too common.

Finally I kind of want to list some of the reasons I personally find this game so relatable. If you have zero interest in my life, feel free to skip the rest, and also thank you for reading up to now.

The size of the following list probably explains why the game resonated so strongly with me. I will admit first off that I am not Taiwanese and I have not been brought up in the most traditional Asian household. A lot of these similarities are also pure coincidences. That said, this kind of horror capitalises on the player’s familiarity with the setting, and I hope these vignettes of my own experiences help to convey just what that means for me. Because of course it’s terrifying when you realise just how similar your own family is to the main characters in a horror game.

Devotion starts with the family portrait title screen. This probably isn’t a Asian-only thing but we also have one. It’s hung in the dining room. Asian families love taking family photos. There are even special studios just for it. I appreciate the game drawing a link to the importance of photos and memories using the camera. Incidentally, my dad also used to be a photographer. But he only knows how to use the old ones with film. Digital cameras sadden him.

All Asian kids play the piano. Unfortunately, unlike Mei Xin I have no fond memories of our piano at all. Barely anyone plays it now and it’s basically just a status symbol at this point (it’s a grand piano).

On that note, I would like to make it clear we are not a rich family, but Dad loves giving off the appearance that we are. Grand piano, chandelier, and most recently, a finger print scanner for our front door. What a waste of money, all for the sake of maintaining face. There could be a deeper meaning to it though. Dad immigrated from a very poor part of China, so when he got the opportunity he made sure nobody would ever look down on him again.

Like Feng Yu, lately Dad is not earning much money from work. This is actually because of age though. He does physical labour and nowadays he can't take on as much as he used to. Luckily mum and I still work. That said, dad does zero housework.

Dad’s spot is also the sofa in front of the TV. He also eats dinner there. Even though we have a dining room...

We have a fish tank. For the same reason Feng Yu bought one. Having nine goldfish is supposed to bring good fortune. Except ours kept dying. Dad just bought more. But now he’s moved on to raising tropical fish? Which are even harder to keep alive?? And are more expensive??? And yes they keep dying and he keeps buying more. Omg can you imagine how much the Arowana scene triggers me.

You may have noticed by now but Dad makes the worst decisions out of all of us. But he refuses to listen to the better judgement of all four women in this household.

Can we just talk a bit about Mei Xin’s dream to be a superstar? This is an interesting departure from the stereotypical mindset that all Asian parents want their kids to be doctors or lawyers. Mei Xin’s parents definitely still push her in a similar way though, taking her to professional singing classes and whatnot. I’m glad she had supportive parents, because my parents were also supportive when I decided to major in Japanese (basically every Chinese person in their generation hate the Japanese).

I’m sick all the damn time. Apparently my mother also had a fragile body.

My aunt is divorced, and she is religious (though not very serious about it), and involved in a pyramid scheme selling supplements :( I feel for her kids. She damn near involved us in the pyramid scheme too, but luckily mum has a brain. Since the divorce, my aunt has thrown all of herself into her work and that’s basically her whole life now. Unfortunately Du Feng Yu doesn’t get that luxury.

Mum and dad actually made a promise to never divorce, even though there’s never been any love between them. Dad was guilted into a wedding because he got her pregnant, and they had to live together to get permanent residency. In the past, dad had a divorce with another woman and it really had a negative impact on his kid then (my older half sister). You really get a feel for this in the later scenes of the game, where Mei Xin misses her mum. A divorce is really not good for a kid who’s still that young. That’s why dad is determined to keep the household together this time; it's literally their devotion to us, their children, that are keeping them together.

Writing this just made me realise my dad embodies the worst of both parental figures in this game. We still love him though.

That about wraps up all my thoughts regarding this game. It got a little personal near the end but I hope this post has conveyed why this game was so impactful to me. Asian representation in media always gets me excited and I really hope Red Candle recovers soon so I can look forward to their next game.

#devotion #game #analysis #personal #long post

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