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blueskittlesart · 2 days

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I've heard that while most people really really love BotW and TotK, some people hate those two for going open-world, and some people hate TotK specifically for something about the story. As the resident Zelda expert I know of, what do you think of those takes?

"something about the story" is a bit too vague for me to answer--if you look at my totk liveblog tag from back when the game was newly released or my general zelda analysis tag you may be able to find some of my in-depth thoughts about the story of totk, but in general i liked it.

the open world thing though is something i can and will talk about for hours. (I am obsessed with loz and game design and this is an essay now <3) breath of the wild is a game that was so well-received that a lot of the criticism from older fans who were expecting something closer to the classic zelda formula was just kind of immediately drowned out and ignored, and while i don't think it's a valid criticism to suggest that botw strayed too far from its origins in going open-world, i am more than willing to look into those criticisms, why they exist, and why i think going open-world was ultimately the best decision botw devs could have made. (totk is a slightly different story, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

Loz is a franchise with a ton of history and a ton of really, REALLY dedicated fans. it's probably second only to mario in terms of recognizability and impact in nintendo's catalog. To us younger fans, the older games can sometimes seem, like, prehistoric when compared to what we're used to nowadays, but it's important to remember just how YOUNG the gaming industry is and how rapidly it's changed and grown. the first zelda game was released in 1986, which was 31 years before botw came out in 2017. What this means for nintendo and its developers is that they have to walk a very fine line between catering to older fans in their 30s and 40s now who would have been in nintendo's prime demographic when the first few games in the franchise were coming out AND making a game that's engaging to their MODERN target demographic and that age group's expectations for what a gaming experience should look like.

LOZ is in kind of a tough spot when it comes to modernizing, because a lot of its core gameplay elements are very much staples of early RPGs, and a lot of those gameplay elements have been phased out of modern RPGs for one reason or another. gathering collectibles, fighting one's way through multilevel, mapless dungeons, and especially classic zelda's relative lack of guidance through the story are all things that date games and which modern audiences tend to get frustrated with. for the last few releases before botw, the devs had kind of been playing with this -- skyward sword in particular is what i consider their big experiment and what (i think) became the driving force behind a lot of what happened with botw. Skyward sword attempted to solve the issues I listed by, basically, making the map small and the story much, much more blatantly linear. Skyward sword feels much more like other modern rpgs to me than most zelda games in terms of its playstyle, because the game is constantly pushing you to do specific things. this is a common storytelling style in modern RPGs--obviously, the player usually needs to take specific actions in order to progress the story, and so when there's downtime between story sections the supporting characters push the player towards the next goal. but this actually isn't what loz games usually do. in the standard loz formula, you as the player are generally directly given at most 4 objectives. these objectives will (roughly) be as follows: 1. go through some dungeons and defeat their bosses, 2. claim the master sword, 3. go through another set of dungeons and defeat their bosses, 4. defeat the final boss of the game. (not necessarily in that order, although that order is the standard formula.) the ONLY time the player will be expressly pushed by supporting characters towards a certain action (excluding guide characters) is when the game is first presenting them with those objectives. in-between dungeons and other gameplay segments, there's no sense of urgency, no one pushing you onto the next task. this method of storytelling encourages players to take their time and explore the world they're in, which in turn helps them find the collectibles and puzzles traditionally hidden around the map that will make it easier for them to continue on. Skyward sword, as previously mentioned, experimented with breaking this formula a bit--its overworld was small and unlocked sequentially, so you couldn't explore it fully without progressing the narrative, and it gave players a "home base" to return to in skyloft which housed many of the puzzles and collectibles rather than scattering them throughout the overworld. This method worked... to an extent, but it also meant that skyward sword felt drastically different in its storytelling and how its narrative was presented to the player than its predecessors. this isn't necessarily a BAD thing, but i am of the opinion that one of zelda's strongest elements has always been the level of immersion and relatability its stories have, and the constant push to continue the narrative has the potential to pull players out of your story a bit, making skyward sword slightly less engaging to the viewer than other games in the franchise. (to address the elephant in the room, there were also obviously some other major issues with the design of sksw that messed with player immersion, but imo even if the control scheme had been perfect on the first try, the hyperlinear method would STILL have been less engaging to a player than the standard exploration-based zeldas.)

So when people say that botw was the first open-world zelda, I'm not actually sure how true I personally believe that is. I think a lot of the initial hype surrounding botw's open map were tainted by what came before it--compared to the truly linear, intensely restricted map of skyward sword, botw's map feels INSANE. but strictly speaking, botw actually sticks pretty closely to the standard zelda gameplay experience, at least as far as the overworld map is concerned. from the beginning, one of the draws of loz is that there's a large, populated map that you as the player can explore (relatively) freely. it was UNUSUAL for the player to not have access to almost the entire map either immediately or very quickly after beginning a new zelda game. (the size and population of these maps was restricted by software and storage capabilities in earlier games, but pretty muhc every zelda game has what would have been considered a large & well populated map at the time of its release.) what truly made botw different was two things; the first being the sheer SIZE of the map and the second being the lack of dungeons and collectibles in a traditional sense. Everything that needs to be said about the size of the map already has been said: it's huge and it's crazy and it's executed PERFECTLY and it's never been done before and every game since has been trying to replicate it. nothing much else to say there. but I do want to talk about the percieved difference in gameplay as it relates to the open-world collectibles and dungeons, because, again, i don't think it's actually as big of a difference as people seem to think it is.

Once again, let's look at the classic formula. I'm going to start with the collectibles and lead into the dungeons. The main classic collectible that's a staple of every zelda game pre-botw is the heart piece. This is a quarter of a heart that will usually be sitting out somewhere in the open world or in a dungeon, and will require the player to either solve a puzzle or perform a specific action to get. botw is the first game to not include heart pieces... TECHNICALLY. but in practice, they're still there, just renamed. they're spirit orbs now, and rather than being hidden in puzzles within the overworld (with no explanation as to how or why they ended up there, mind you) they're hidden within shrines, and they're given a clear purpose for existing throughout hyrule and for requiring puzzle-solving skills to access. Functionally, these two items are exactly the same--it's an object that gives you an extra heart container once you collect four of them. no major difference beyond a reskin and renaming to make the object make sense within the greater world instead of just having a little ❤️ floating randomly in the middle of their otherwise hyperrealistic scenery. the heart piece vs spirit orb i think is a good microcosm of the "it's too different" criticisms of botw as a whole--is it ACTUALLY that different, or is it just repackaged in a way that doesn't make it immediately obvious what you're looking at anymore? I think it's worth noting that botw gives a narrative reason for that visual/linguistic disconnect from other games, too--it's set at minimum TEN THOUSAND YEARS after any other given game. while we don't have any concrete information about how much time passes between new-incarnation games, it's safe to assume that botw is significantly further removed from other incarnations of hyrule/link/zelda/etc than any other game on the timeline. It's not at all inconceivable within the context of the game that heart pieces may have changed form or come to be known by a different name. most of the changes between botw and other games can be reasoned away this way, because most of them have SOME obvious origins in a previous game mechanic, it's just been updated for botw's specific setting and narrative.

The dungeons ARE an actual departure from the classic formula, i will grant you. the usual way a zelda dungeon works is that link enters the dungeon, solves a few puzzles, fights a mini boss at about the halfway point, and after defeating the mini boss he gets a dungeon item which makes the second half of the dungeon accessible. He then uses that item in the dungeon's final boss fight, which is specifically engineered with that item in mind as the catalyst to win it. Botw's dungeons are the divine beasts. we've removed the presence of mini-bosses entirely, because the 'dungeon items' aren't something link needs to get within the dungeon itself--he alredy has them. they're the sheikah slate runes: magnesis, cryonis, stasis, and remote bombs. Each of the divine beast blight battles is actually built around using one of these runes to win it--cryonis to break waterblight's ice projectiles, magnesis to strike down thunderblight with its own lightning rods, remote bombs to take out fireblight's shield. (i ASSUME there's some way to use stasis effectively against windblight, mostly because it's obvious to me that that's how all the other fights were designed, but in practice it's the best strategy for that fight is to just slow down time via aerial archery, so i've never tried to win that way lol.) So even though we've removed traditional dungeon items and mini-boss fights, the bones of the franchise remain unchanged underneath. this is what makes botw such an ingenious move for this franchise imo; the fact that it manages to update itself into such a beautiful, engaging, MODERN game while still retaining the underlying structure that defines its franchise and the games that came before it. botw is an effective modern installment to this 30-year-old franchise because it takes what made the old games great and updates it in a way that still stays true to the core of the franchise.

I did mention totk in my opening paragraph and you mention it in your ask so i have to come back to it somehow. Do i think that totk did the gigantic-open-world thing as well as botw did? no. But i also don't really think there was any other direction to go with that game specifically. botw literally changed the landscape of game development when it was released. I KNOW you all remember how for a good year or two after botw's release, EVERY SINGLE GAME that came out HAD to have a massive open-world map, regardless of whether or not that actually made sense for that game. (pokemon is still suffering from the effects of that botw-driven open world craze to this day. rip scarlet/violet your gameplay was SUCH dogshit) I'm not sure to what degree nintendo and the botw devs anticipated that success, (I remember the open world and the versatility in terms of problem-solving being the two main advertising angles pre-release, but it's been 7 years. oh jesus christ it's been SEVEN YEARS. anyways) but in any case, there's basically NO WAY that they anticipated their specific gameplay style taking off to that degree. That's not something you can predict. When creating totk, they were once again walking that line between old and new, but because they were only 3ish years out from botw when totk went into development, they were REALLY under pressure to stay true to what it was that had made botw such an insane success. I think that's probably what led to the expanded map in the sky and depths as well as the fuse/build mechanics--they basically took their two big draws from botw, big map and versatility, and said ok BIGGER MAP and MORE VERSATILITY. Was this effective? yeah. do i think they maybe could have made a more engaging and well-rounded game if they'd been willing to diverge a little more from botw? also yeah. I won't say that I wanted totk to be skyward sword-style linear, because literally no one wanted that, but I do think that because of the insane wave of success that botw's huge open world brought in the developers were under pressure to stay very true to botw in their designing the gameplay of totk, and I think that both the gameplay and story might have been a bit more engaging if they had been allowed to experiment a little more in their delivery of the material.

#wow it's been a while since i've written a real homegrown organic legend of zelda essay. i missed this #hi everyone. when the fuck is the next game going into development i need to have something to wildly theorize about again #god. it's been. seven years since botw came out. im going to go chew on live electrical wires #zelda analysis #asks

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gerbelx2000-blog · 2 days

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i honestly really dislike the palace rulers being treated so drastically different from akechi in the fandom. even though there's still people who refuse to say anything positive about akechi because he's a terrible guy, the majority of the fandom still treats him like a character and read into his backstory, behaviour, and motivations.

but when it comes to the palace rulers, there's not a single ounce of that attitude for them. it's so strange because not even the story itself has such a crazy bias; the same amount of sympathy towards akechi is given towards the palace rulers too. madarame and okumura are my most obvious examples, with yusuke often expressing his conflicting feelings on the matter, and haru learning about her father's motivations through takakura during her confidant.

in that sense, joker and akechi's relationship parallels that of haru/yusuke and the respective father figure; the two mutually love and care for each other, but unfortunately, one cares more for themselves and it causes their bond to break.

the cut backstories for the palace rulers add a lot to their character, and maybe that's why i like them so much. it makes them feel as rounded out as akechi was (in vanilla, i know he's much more humanized in royal's third semester. that might add to the bias, actually) and it makes me feel kind of bad for those sick, twisted bastards.

but obviously, that content was cut, and it's not very widespread knowledge, unlike akechi's backstory which he explains in-game, right in your face, unavoidably.

there's also this thing i've noticed that i call "fandom activism" where any deep analysis into a good-written character that is a genuinely bad person is seen as condoning their actions because WE ALWAYS HAVE TO SHUN THE EVIL GUY!!! WE CAN'T TALK ABOUT THEM IN CASUAL CONVERSATION!!! WE NEED TO HOLD A FICTIONAL CHARACTER ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS EVEN THOUGH THEY'RE NOT REAL AND...... the way we treat them makes no difference in the world? huh.

personally, i was informed that the way i talk about kamoshida makes people uncomfortable. it's not like i said anything creepy about him, all i do is read into him the same way one would with akechi. he's a genuinely good villain, the same way akechi is! and his mindset is really interesting to look into!!!!! i think they're all missing out!!!!!!!!

my last line of defense is that the palace rulers are unfortunately made way less conventionally attractive than akechi is. that's something i don't like about them, and the fact that everyone lets that sway their opinions of them even less. i know atlus pulls the "make the unsympathetic character ugly" shtick a lot and it's suuuuuuuuuuck.

yeah. i'm kind of peeved about this and i thought you were the best person to send this to. kaneshiro isn't a cute twink but i'm still going to love him with the little attention he gets........... :')

FRICKEN NAILED IT THERE! NICE JOB!👍👍👍😭😭😭 AND I CAN RELATE TO YOUR PAIN AND STRUGGLES!

#persona 5 #persona 5 royal #suguru kamoshida #ichiryusai madarame #junya kaneshiro #wakaba isshiki #kunikazu okumura #masayoshi shido #goro akechi

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andradrawsstuff · 10 hours

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An in-depth character analysis of Skipper: pt 1

This version of Skipper is probably the simplest since he was comic relief at first, but a bit of a hot take, might actually be my favourite (I prefer the show version of the other three tho). Going back to the movies after years of watching the show, I realised that this version of Skipper is surprisingly… chill? I guess I’ve been so used to his tv personality that my brain just decided to override his movie personality with tv Skipper.

Buckle your seatbelts, this is going to be a long one ☝️🤓

Movie Skipper is quite a nonchalant, carefree and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but calm character. He’s kinda just minding his own business doing his missions. He’s pretty serious when he’s leading his team and planning his missions, eg. the boat hijacking scene, but generally you’ll see him with a smile on his face. He’s always been a suave and charming little guy with a lot of sarcasm and sass, which he wouldn’t be Skipper without.

Generally he takes no bs, is straight to the point, and is pretty blunt, usually to Alex and his bunch. But this is also where his sass and sarcasm starts to show more. It’s funny. I think that Madagascar 2 really shows his charm and sass more out of the three main movies bc of all the chaos.

It’s pretty safe to say that the penguins are chaotic neutrals (apart from Private maybe) but they do it in such a way that makes it really funny. Not only do they trick the tourists and steal their car (ya know, grand theft auto) but also run over the grandma after seeing she’s still alive (ya know, attempted vehicular homicide). I could name every single crime they commit istg and it’s a long list 💀 But anyway, Skipper does all this with such a chill and carefree attitude and simply doesn’t give a shit. It’s what makes him so funny. It’s a big reason why I love this version of him, bc he doesn’t take everything too seriously and just goes about his day like nothing ever happened.

Obviously, he’s not evil and does still care about others, for example when they rescue Alex and his bunch in Madagascar 2 and 3, as well as stopping Dave in their spinoff. But I do think that he has something against humans (which is understandable) bc he seems to have a general disregard for them which is kinda funny.

In Madagascar 3, you start to see a bit of a shift in his personality and he becomes a little more aggressive. I’m guessing it’s because Tom was used to voicing Skipper more aggressively for the tv series and they also probably adopted a bit of tv Skipper into movie Skipper. But he is still generally pretty nonchalant nonetheless. He isn’t as suave as the other two movies either, but he does activate Kowalski’s nuclear reactor just for the funnies so I’ll give him that. The best thing about them here is their interactions with Dubois, the sheer trail of carnage they leave behind wherever they go, and the funny little quips here and there. Can’t forget bababooey.

The penguins spinoff movie brings back a little of Skipper’s charm and swagger, mostly with the “I do things my own way” attitude and him just being an asshole to Classified bc he doesn’t like him. This movie also makes Skipper more tame than the other movies which I don’t mind that much, but I wish he was a little more chaotic neutral rather than so hellbent on being heroic.

But the thing that really solidified Skipper as a complex character was his character development. This is the first time you get to see his vulnerable side and even from the start of the movie you see that he’s actually pretty sweet underneath all that chaos. When they “lose” Private is when you really start seeing Skipper’s full character, going from carefreeness to pure desperation trying to get his little brother back after he gets kidnapped, which I think was a great way to go because it shows how much he loves his family.

Later on he kinda “gives up” and follows the North Wind’s plan, which is one of the only moments you see him completely vulnerable and unmasked - no clever quip, no opposition, just acceptance. A perfect contrast to his usual “never give up, never back down” attitude. I think it adds a lot more realism to his character and shows that the one thing that can break him is losing one of his brothers. This is something that you don’t really see in the show (other than for a short period of time eg. Skorka) which I think would have been a great way to develop his character more.

When they get Private back at the end of the movie, you get to see Skipper’s sweet side again and his character development comes full circle - he learns to stop undermining Private. He realises he was wrong and tries to make it right. In a way, I guess he takes accountability. Which you don’t see all that often in the show, only episodes like Needle Point coming to mind when thinking about it.

I think that this is another big reason why I prefer movie Skipper over tv Skipper - yeah, he’s a bit flawed and a little simpler than tv Skip, but he makes an effort to change in the end which tv Skipper doesn’t do as much. Movie Skipper is nonchalant, sassy, suave and by the end, pretty sweet. I guess you could say he’s pretty well written and honestly I wish we got to see more of his softer side and less paranoid attitude at the end of the show.

That’s not to say I hate tv Skipper tho, when i was a kid I LOVED him a lot more than movie Skip and I still find him rlly funny, I mean Skipper is Skipper haha. I guess my opinion just changed bc I grew up and I started seeing characters differently and started valuing character development a lot more, but who knows, maybe in a year it’ll change again lmao.

I am so sorry this got so out of hand and turned into a mf essay 💀 I promise the other analysis will be shorter 🙏

#tpom #the penguins of madagascar #penguins of madagascar #tpom skipper #madagascar movie #character analysis #i am so sorry this is ridiculously long 💀#and this is only part 1 💀

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roidepoison · 1 day

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Reo Mikage is Actually Great BPD Representation- Some Thoughts

So I had the extremely unfortunate experience of being exposed to Blue Lock (unfortunate because it's all my tiny pea brain can think about now), and while it is absolutely full of silly guys whose brains I want to pick, this little bugger really stood out to me. The second he came onto the screen, I KNEW I smelled the borderline on him. As I watched the series and read the manga, I noticed he is actually an incredibly well-written depiction of someone struggling with BPD. Reo is a super layered character and my favorite hobby is picking apart those layers and yapping incessantly about them, so here we are. I want to write this analysis for a few reasons:

1.) Too many people misunderstand Reo and categorize him as dramatic or childish without any elaboration and he deserves a proper character deep-dive. I think him being borderline explains a LOT of his reactions/choices throughout the story.

2.) Borderline representation is extremely important to me. I'm diagnosed borderline and have struggled with this disorder for around ten years now, so I get really excited when I spy BPD-coded characters (especially if they're likable people and not just ghoulish irredeemable villains or manic pixie dream girl characters). This disorder can be so isolating, especially when the majority of people will never even bother to research or understand it. I know that some people like to chalk Reo's emotional reactions up to him being a moody 17-year-old, but I think I have enough evidence to prove that this is undiagnosed BPD that's festering in his noggin. Not to mention, literally nobody else acts like this in the series. Reo is incredibly unique and distinct in the way he behaves through this narrative and I think it's way past the point of normal teenage angst. Regardless, believe what you want. He'll always be my borderline princess tho <3

3.) I have a master's degree in English and what good is that if I don't write long, painful, pointless essays on anime guys? Not that this is exceptionally well written, I just like to laugh at myself for getting a whole M.A and then this is the shit I publish online lmao

By the end of this, I hope I can shed some light on wtf is going on inside of Reo's silly little head. (I'm also obviously not a psychologist, don't use any of this to diagnose yourself pls I don't need the scandal)

If you want to read, buckle up, because this is gonna be a long one!

First, let me define BPD- It's a personality disorder characterized by a long-standing pattern of instability in mood, interpersonal relationships, and self-image. At its core, it is a disorder categorized by emotional dysregulation (the inability to regulate one's emotional responses) People with BPD feel everything EXTREMELY hard. That's important to keep in mind IMO, because while their reactions may seem dramatic or extreme, what they're feeling IS dramatic and extreme. Everything they're feeling is amplified, so their reactions are amplified. Obviously from the outside, people assume it's an overreaction since they can't see what's going on inside the borderline's head. When you sit down and dissect the thought process of someone like Reo, it becomes a lot easier to understand why they react the way that they do to certain situations.

(Also, I'm not going to reiterate more than once that an explanation is not an excuse to treat people poorly. I cannot read ANYTHING on BPD without hearing every 2 minutes how the disorder isn't an excuse to hurt other people. We get it!! I'm explaining it, not excusing it. This enter essay is an analysis of why someone acts the way they do, not whether or not it's excusable)

So then, what behaviors/signs does somebody need to exhibit to receive a borderline diagnosis? The 9 diagnostic criteria for BPD are as follows:

1. Fear of abandonment

2. Unstable or changing relationships

3. Unstable self-image; struggles with identity or sense of self

4. Impulsive or self-damaging behaviors

5. Suicidal behavior or self-injury

6. Varied or random mood swings

7. Constant feelings of worthlessness or sadness

8. Problems with anger, including frequent loss of temper or physical fights

9. Stress-related paranoia or loss of contact with reality

Someone would only need 5 of these to receive a proper diagnosis. Just with the main story and the spin-off manga that is currently released, I think I have enough evidence to argue that Reo has 8 out of 9 criteria for a BPD diagnosis. For the sake of organization, I’m gonna group some of those together though, indicated by a + symbol. I also want to define a few important terms before I start yapping, so that y'all without BPD can understand wtf I'm even talking about.

Favorite Person (fp) - This is someone who holds massive significance in a borderline's life. They emotionally depend on this person a lot and to a certain extent, their worldview almost revolves around them.

Splitting- the change in perception of someone or something caused by black-or-white thinking or dichotomous thinking. It is the devaluation of someone who was once idealized and vice versa.

Mirroring (aka: the chameleon effect)- the constant, unconscious change in one's identity or sense of self by imitating another person’s behaviors, characteristics, or traits. It is common in people who have a vacant or distorted self-image which is a general symptom of BPD.

Now, time for me to break down the most prominent moments where Reo showcases borderline behavior. As I mentioned, I'm going to try and organize this under each criteria point (with some being grouped together)

Unstable self-image; struggles with identity or sense of self:

Before I delve into Reo's relationships, I want to start with his baseline sense of identity. It’s established early on that Reo is a very bored, empty, unsatisfied person. Nothing excites him, nothing motivates him, and everything is handed to him. He’s frustrated because his parents notoriously try and buy his affection even though he doesn't want anything. For most of his life up until the narrative starts, he's wandering through life empty and frustrated. That is, until he finally sets his sights on soccer and decides to dedicate his life to winning the World Cup:

The wording, 'proves my existence' is interesting here. I think this is the first instance Reo has felt alive. So far, the only notable thing about him has been his family and his money. He hasn't achieved anything exceptional for himself, but now he has that opportunity. With this goal, he can really build something up from nothing and make it his own. It's almost like he's clinging to this dream to prove that he has some purpose in his life other than being the family heir.

Now, this dream changes when he meets Nagi, of course. I'm not gonna focus too much on their relationship in this section, but I will mention that meeting Nagi shifted Reo's entire dream, and not for the better. Through the narrative, his dream went from:

Winning the World Cup

Winning the World Cup with Nagi

Proving to Nagi that leaving him behind was a mistake

Improving himself and becoming a good striker on his own

Being a tool for Nagi to become the best striker

Had Nagi not come in and ask for Reo to come back to him, I think Reo could have done a great job at establishing his own sense of identity without Nagi. But no matter how much he works on himself, with Nagi in the picture, he's never going to value himself more than Nagi. Reo lets Nagi cloud his identity to the point where Isagi calls him out and asks what he's even doing at Blue Lock in the first place, since he clearly can't survive on his own, he needs Nagi with him.

After dealing with the turmoil of being abandoned by Nagi, Reo goes through a few stages. He starts with wanting to become somebody worthy of being beside Nagi, somebody that Nagi would want to choose. Devoting himself to becoming stronger and more versatile, his end goal is to have Nagi realize he made a mistake by leaving him behind. After a few more matches, Reo starts to realize that he needs to grow and change and become a stronger, better version of himself for himself and not for other people.

He decides that the fight was all his fault to begin with, that he should have never forced Nagi to play soccer and now he is going to get back to what his dream was originally, combined with his new desire to be a stand-alone player (and person, for that matter). Reo accepts the mistakes that he made, admits that he shouldn't have forced his ideals onto Nagi, and resolves to become a better person for HIMSELF. That's excellent!

Of course, Reo can't be happy for TOO long. Nagi comes out of the woodwork saying that he can't beat Isagi on his own and asks for Reo's help. Reo does stand up for himself a bit, saying that Nagi is being inconsiderate of his feelings and mentioning how long it took for him to recover from Nagi leaving. Now, the BPD trait here is how Reo not only forgives Nagi and is jumping on him and hugging him THE NEXT PAGE, but he also just disregards everything he said in this sequence. In a matter of two minutes, he no longer wants to be a player that can fight on his own or improve for himself, he wants to improve for Nagi. He starts ruminating again about how hurt he was when Nagi left, but now he's saying all of it wasn't so that he could get stronger individually, it was so that he could be reunited with Nagi again. Nagi asking for his help and saying that now they can play together again motivate Reo more than anything we've seen so far. (Nagi notoriously throws Reo little affection crumbs like this that Reo eats up, but I'm not trying focus on that) Now, Reo's alright with being a tool for Nagi's success again. Everything that happened was supposed to make him stronger so he could be a better partner to Nagi, right? Reo also says as the chapter ends, to please let him be a part of Nagi's dream until Nagi becomes the world's best striker. That's literally so sad!

He's also immediately back to the 'our' 'we' 'us' talk as well. If he can master his chameleon style in order to keep Nagi above the rest of the players, he wont get left behind again. If he devotes his time and energy into being a solo striker like the rest of these guys, Reo knows that he wont be able to keep up. This was always supposed to be his role, right? Building Nagi up to his full potential! :*)

I also like the detail that Reo is back to hugging Nagi and holding him, but Nagi never really touches him back. I think Reo's love language is touch for sure, not that it's incredibly relevant, but I do think it shows that Reo is back to being 100% comfortable around Nagi as if their fight never happened. I hear a lot of fans asking how Reo could have forgiven Nagi so easily, and I say this with my entire chest, it's the BPD. The black-and-white thinking combined with Nagi being Reo's fp and the excruciating pain of being abandoned by him in the first place ?? Of course he's going to take him back. Also, I've seen people blame Reo for not saying no to Nagi when he asks for help and I have to say that is an absolutely insane take. How are we gonna look at a panel where Nagi asks for help and then blame Reo for helping him?? I'm not going to focus on it too much in this post but in my opinion, it is crazy how little accountability both the narrative + fans give Nagi. Reo is pegged as responsible for both of their downfalls and it's nuts tbh.

Currently in the story, I think Reo's identity is still centered around Nagi. It's really easy for borderlines to structure their entire lives and personalities around their favorite person, but I can only hope that these two keep having open and honest discussions with one another. Hopefully, Reo will eventually learn that he can exist without Nagi and that he's more than just 'his arms and legs'.

Unstable or Changing Relationships:

The most notable relationship in Reo's life is Nagi. They're both each other's first real friends, which already sets up a less-than-ideal dynamic. Nagi has no idea how to communicate and he has pretty weak emotional intelligence. On the other hand, Reo is great at communicating, but he isn't used to regulating his emotions. For a lot of borderlines, they can go a very long time without experiencing any symptoms when they don't have a favorite person. When you think about it, the bulk of the disorder is shown through those interactions with other people. If Reo has never had a real friend in his life, I don't think he'd be used to the emotional turmoil that comes with having a fp.

The minute Reo meets Nagi, he's attached. All his classmates notice it, too. They question why Reo is suddenly so obsessed with this random kid who has no interest in him. Reo is ignoring everybody that isnt Nagi.

Very quickly, Reo boils down his view of the world to being him and Nagi versus everybody else, and he makes that very clear. It also depicts something that I think is incredibly crucial to Reo’s character that a lot of people overlook; as Nagi develops to be Reo’s favorite person, Reo’s dream isnt ‘playing soccer’ anymore. It’s Nagi. It’s being with Nagi, playing soccer with Nagi, being useful to Nagi, taking care of Nagi, and being somebody important to Nagi. He doesnt teach Nagi the rules or how to actually play, he teaches Nagi how to play with him. He literally re-writes and re-structures the game so that it can center around him and Nagi. Nagi calls him out on this in the spin-off manga:

Reo doesnt care about the structure of the game, he cares about Nagi. The other people on the field don't matter. The other team doesn't matter. He also starts to unknowingly put Nagi up on a pedestal, which is another borderline trait. He starts reiterating that Nagi is special, he's different from everybody else, he's destined to achieve great things. The more he raises Nagi up, the more he isolates the two of them in his mind, reiterating the idea that it's them against everybody else. His language reflects this too: Reo exclusively talks with 'us' 'we' 'our', insinuating that they're going to do everything together.

When Ego says that there can't be two winners, Reo says that he'll make Nagi the best striker. His 'ego' will be making Nagi successful. Along with putting Nagi on this pedestal, Reo also very early on establishes the fact that he'd pick Nagi over himself any day of the week. He's the only person in Blue Lock who really couldn't care less about becoming a striker himself: his dream is to be a tool in Nagi's success. Or, in simpler terms, he wants to be useful and make Nagi happy.

These two were in trouble from the very beginning. Nagi is lazy as all hell, has 0 motivation to do anything, and his dream is to live a life of luxury and never have to work. Reo, being the borderline baddie that he is, is more than happy to do EVERYTHING for Nagi. Borderlines love extremely hard! It's one of our best traits and I think it's important to showcase that Reo is a massive sweetheart at his core. He clearly loves Nagi a lot and goes to extreme lengths to make sure he feels taken care of. To someone with BPD, NOTHING is too big of an ask for a person they love, especially if that person is their fp. I also disagree with the argument that Reo 'made' Nagi codependent. Nagi likes being taken care of, he says it all the time. If you ask me, I would actually argue that Nagi takes advantage of Reo a little bit because he knows that Reo will do anything for him. But regardless, I think that Reo starts to develop an unspoken expectation with Nagi that he'll provide him with everything he needs, and in turn, Nagi will stick around. I don't think he's doing this intentionally, nor do I think it's being done in a manipulative way. I just think that Reo has a dormant fear of being abandoned that he doesn't totally know he has yet.

It isn't just Nagi that Reo showcases having unstable relationships with, though. Zantetsu is another good example. Reo starts out disliking Zantetsu, he snaps at him a couple times, and calls him a moron more than once. He starts to warm up to him because Nagi tells him to. The favorite person has MASSIVE sway in the borderline's life. If Nagi likes someone, Reo likes them too. (This is, of course, on the condition that they aren't a threat, looking at you Isagi).

In the immediate next chapter, Reo is acting like they're all best friends. He's climbing on top of them in their big bed, saying that the three of them are gonna win their matches, being a little pookie. He goes from not liking this guy at all to considering him one of his close friends super fast. Also on the topic of Isagi, when they're making up the teams for the second selection, Nagi doesn't initially want to tell Reo that he wants Isagi on their team bc he's worried Reo will be upset. But, when he does finally say it, Reo is literally fine with it because like I said, who Nagi likes, Reo likes! On the condition that they don't replace Reo, which clearly happened soon after.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Reo also shows how he can go from loving someone to despising him very quickly. After Chigiri and Kunigami tell him to get back up in the game post-Nagi's abandonment, we can literally see the switch flip in Reo's head:

Suddenly, he hates Nagi. Nagi's a jerk who abandoned him; he never cared about him, and he threw him away. Dude literally says "Let's kill the bastards that betrayed us". This act of unintentional devaluing is called splitting. What Reo's essentially doing is going from one extreme to the other: if Nagi isn't his perfect treasure, he's the devil that broke his heart. There's no room for a grey area. The reasoning behind borderline's developing this black-and-white mindset is rooted in self-defense. If Reo devalues Nagi into being nothing more than a traitor, then he's stripping away the power that Nagi has to hurt him. If he looks at him like a rival or a villain, it's protecting him from being hurt by Nagi again.

That doesn't mean that he genuinely believes any of this, more so, he's trying to convince himself that it's true. We see that at his core, the reason he's acting like this is because he's hurt. I'll go more into it later on, but he's constantly thinking, what does Isagi have that I don't? What do I have to do in order to win Nagi back? This black-and-white thinking is an automatic self-defense mechanism that I think he's doing subconsciously. Regardless, the shifting he's doing here can cause a little whiplash, which brings me to:

Varied or random mood swings + Problems with anger, including frequent loss of temper or physical fights:

I can’t think of a better way to describe Reo's temperament than the wiki, so let me quote it: "Generally, he seems to feel every emotion with full force and is extremely aware of his own faults and shortcomings, which is evident in several instances of painful breakdowns shown in the spin-off manga. Due to his high emotionality, he can even get violent when he loses his temper."

Reo is characterized as being emotionally unstable. When he's happy, he's elated! When he's sad, he's miserable. There are a ton of scenes between the manga and spin-off manga that show how fast his emotions can flip, but this one was one of my personal favorites:

In this scene, Reo has developed a little scheme in the dining hall where the guys are trading their side dishes. At face value, a throwaway moment. But, I think it's worth looking at because not only does this show Reo's emotional response being triggered in an opposite, semi-extreme direction, but the root cause for the reaction was that he felt rejected by Zantetsu. In his own weird way, he's asking Zantetsu to come over and hang out with him. He's not being exceptionally clear with that message, but I can still pick up on it. "You wanna join in, don't you?" He's extending the invite, making himself vulnerable, and Zantetsu shoots him down by saying nah, I'm fine with my noodles. Reo JUMPS on him like YOU KNOW WHAT? I TOOK THAT PERSONALLY! lol. Jokes aside, I think this moment is a great one to argue Reo's BPD tendencies because it's such a seemingly mundane interaction. Even Zantetsu is surprised by Reo's random outburst. This also sets up the fact that one of Reo's most obvious triggers is being rejected/abandoned/betrayed, an extremely common one between those of us with BPD.

Other instances of Reo having a bad temper are a lot more obvious. In the match against teams V and Z, Reo straight up elbows Raichi in the throat, and then tries to go throw hands with Kuon for hurting Nagi. He only stops because if he gets into any more fights, he’ll get thrown out of the game and won't be able to play with Nagi anymore. He’s visibly pissed though and calls Team Z a joke. Hell, even Reo himself can recognize on a certain level that he can't control his emotions: they control him. They cloud his judgment and make him react in ways that he wish he didn't.

He is constantly plagued by these extreme emotional reactions that are out of his control. Not to say that people with BPD are unable to ever control their emotions, because we can! It takes time and therapy and practice though, which Reo hasn't had. His lack of regulation is also why he has such a dramatic and extreme meltdown when Nagi abandons him.

Fear of Abandonment:

Reo's biggest trigger and the cause of his inner turmoil throughout Blue Lock is his fear of abandonment. I mentioned before that I think he's had this fear dormant inside of him for a while as so many borderlines do, since he hasn't had the chance to experience it before. He alludes to it early on when they first arrive at Blue Lock:

The thought of leaving Nagi for somebody else? Reo considers that heartless. They came together, after all. They're going to win the world cup together. Nagi could break both of his legs and Reo wouldn't leave him, because again, Reo isn't there to team up with the best player and become the best striker in the world: he's there to play with Nagi!! And, like I said, in Reo's mind it's him and Nagi vs everyone else-

Reo exhibits a lot of signs early on of being jealous while they're playing in Blue Lock. I mean, as we discussed, everything should be focused around him and Nagi. When Nagi passes to Zantetsu in the team V and Y match, Reo pulls up like 'hey, why didn't you pass it to me?? ):' There are a lot of little moments like that, but Reo's jealousy is a lot more relevant to my argument after he gets abandoned by Nagi.

Let's talk about that word: abandoned. It seems dramatic, right? Reo uses that term constantly and exclusively. Every time he brings that moment up, he uses the word 'abandoned', or he'll say 'betrayed' or 'chose'. These are very definitive words. He’s not saying Nagi ditched him or flaked on him or blew him off, no; he has abandoned him. That word choice may seem disproportionate to the situation, but that's Reo's reality. This was the ultimate betrayal to him. The constant use of that vocabulary reiterates that in Reo's mind, there is no grey area. Either Nagi chooses him, or he chooses someone else. In choosing someone else, he abandons Reo. Reo is paranoid that Nagi isn't ever going to come back to him and it's because of something that Reo is lacking. How can Nagi like Isagi more than him, anyway?

Now, I do fault Nagi a bit for not communicating better at that moment. I understand that he's bad at communication, but I don't think Reo could have been more obviously upset if he tried. The dude was in TEARS. Nagi saw him devastated and then expected everything to be fine when he met him in the bathhouse? Idk. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he didn't realize it would upset Reo to such an extreme: maybe he thought that they would miss each other, but Reo wouldn't take it personally. I'm doing my best not to harp on Nagi since this is about Reo.

Abandonment is detrimental to people with BPD. It causes extreme inner turmoil that we see with Reo as the story progresses because it is the only thing he can think about. If he isn't trying to cover up his hurt feelings with this idea of revenge, he's self-destructing over being abandoned. He becomes obsessed with wondering why Nagi chose Isagi over him. Was there something wrong with him? Isagi isn't that impressive, why would Nagi rather be with him? These thoughts torture him endlessly and fuel his desire to 'steal' Nagi back. He literally says to Isagi, that he's going to steal Nagi back. Much to his dismay though, Reo starts to notice that Isagi is bringing out some positive traits in Nagi. Nagi's entire vibe is different with Isagi. Nagi is having fun playing soccer without Reo. In fact, he's having more fun. He's making plays he's never made before. His face is visibly different; he's more excited than before.

This is heartbreaking for Reo. Not only was he right that Isagi did have something to offer Nagi that he couldn't, but Reo is having a massive self-hate spiral during this point as well, so he's internalizing all of his flaws and mistakes while the thought is sitting in the back of his head: did Nagi actually have a good reason for abandoning me? Was I not enough to satisfy him? Did I only drag him down? This gets significantly worse the longer he watches Nagi and Isagi play:

Everything is falling apart. Nagi is doing completely fine without Reo, and Reo is an absolute mess. We're circling back to Reo's lack of identity here as well. He's watching firsthand that he's losing Nagi to Isagi: what does he do? What happens to him if he loses Nagi, who is he without Nagi? He's overwhelmed during this match and at one point Reo literally screams that he's going to tear apart their connection. Jealousy is consuming him, but it's also those feelings of inferiority and wondering if he really did deserve to be abandoned. If Nagi is so happy without him, maybe he really did have a reason. These are the thoughts that are circling around in Reo's head. Not to mention, he is constantly tortured by the flashbacks of Nagi leaving him, which I think is a great detail. Some readers might say it's just pointless recapping but I disagree, I think it's depicting how traumatic that was for Reo. As a borderline, being abandoned by your fp IS traumatic. Reo relives that moment so many times because so many things trigger it for him throughout Blue Lock. He can't even look at Chigiri and Kunigami without thinking about him and Nagi. It's a really devastating experience that quickly deteriorates him emotionally.

Constant feelings of worthlessness or sadness + Suicidal behavior or self-injury:

One of my favorite things about Reo is the fact that he is self-aware that he's behaving somewhat irrationally, but he doesn't know how to stop. When we look at one of the several times that Reo is curled up crying over Nagi, he mentions how he really did want to tell Nagi to go and have fun, but he didn't. He couldn't. The visuals shift for this too:

Reo doesnt want to be acting this way, but he can't help it, and that's frustrating to him. It makes him start feeling ashamed of himself. His inner thoughts start to spiral and he feels weak and alone. He's reflecting here on what his true feelings really were at that moment, and how scared and lonely and weak he felt as a result of Nagi leaving him behind.

These feelings quickly evolve into Reo feeling worthless and falling into bouts of self-hatred. He's so ashamed of the way he's feeling and behaving but it feels so out of his control. He says, "maybe if I hadn't gone to Blue Lock in the first place, I wouldn't have to experience this feeling." As I said before, borderline's feel things EXTREMELY intensely; the disorder is described as living with third-degree burns all over your body. Everything hurts. His feelings are so intense and all-consuming right now, it's all he can think about:

I saw some posts in the fandom reddit asking why Reo is acting like this. One in particular reads: "I get that he is betrayed and stuff but he is acting like it’s the end of the world, is it explained later why he acts like this? Is it because he doesn’t think he can win without Nagi?" Not to call this person out, I just want to answer the question in this post-

It has nothing to do with winning; it was never about winning. It was always about Nagi.

If we're looking at Reo through the borderline lens, it IS the end of the world for him. Nagi was his world. What's worse, he's fully aware that he's not acting rationally and he doesn't know why, which is making him feel ashamed and weak and embarrassed. Now I know why he's acting like this, but there are no Blue Lock psychiatrists sitting around to wack him with the mood stabilizers or the DBT handbook, so he's gonna stay feeling like a monster.

He lets these thoughts, along with the resentment and anger from being abandoned in the first place, fuel him for the second selection match. As he's watching the game play out, as Nagi is about to score the winning goal, Reo's mind starts racing with intrusive, negative thoughts.

He's praying that Nagi fails, that he gives up, that he stops trying, anything to stop that solidifying moment where he scores the winning goal and proves once and for all that not only was Reo not strong enough to stop him, but Nagi doesn't need him anymore. He catches himself really quickly, because he realizes he's sounding just like his parents. Everything is spinning out of control so bad, Reo wants Nagi to end up in a vulnerable position so that he isn't the only one falling apart. As he catches himself thinking this, he's disgusted with himself. He calls himself 'utter trash', and as he watches Nagi score the winning goal, he falls to his knees, wishing he was dead.

As he sits there decomposing in emotional turmoil and suicidal ideation, Nagi's team chooses Chigiri to join them, and it's the nail in the coffin. This is probably Reo's lowest point in the entire story IMO. Nagi comes up to compliment him on his plays and Reo shows us another classic borderline move: he's anticipating how bad it's going to hurt to be abandoned by Nagi again, so he's trying to push him away before it can happen. We see the dichotomy of his spoken words and inner thoughts here, where he's talking big game to Nagi, saying things like 'you clearly don't care about me anymore, you're throwing me away, if you're going to abandon me just do it properly', while internally he's thinking 'I'm the worst, I wish I was dead, please take this bait and break my heart so that I can self destruct in peace'.

i LOVE the visuals during this moment. This is what Reo thinks is his last line of defense, the last thing he can do to preserve any part of his dignity is to make Nagi hate him so that he'll stop throwing these crumbs of affection at him. It's also really telling that despite his switch in behavior and the devaluing of Nagi, the root of all of that is STILL that he was so hurt by the abandonment.

I don't think I need to analyze the suicidal ideation because he just straight up says he wants to die like three times in this scene but, aside from that, the visual of his inner thoughts vs what he's actually saying is so powerful. Not to mention the chameleon imagery which i'll geek out about in a second, this is another example of his black and white thinking along with the reiteration that being abandoned was literally traumatic for Reo: he says they can never go back to what they were before. Speaking as a borderline, this is painfully true. When people break my trust even in a small way, I can never view them the same as I used to. I can forgive them and let it go, but I'll never be as open with them as I once was. In Reo's shoes, he had Nagi up on this pedestal that he was perfect and would never do anything to hurt him, but he did hurt him (in the worst way possible).

After Nagi tells him he's a pain in the ass and that he doesn't care anymore, Reo thanks him for 'finishing him off'. In his mind, they're done now and he can suffer in peace and quiet without dragging Nagi down anymore.

Bonus Point: The Chameleon Effect

I LOVE THE FACT THAT HIS THING IS CHAMELEONS AHHHH

The chameleon imagery with Reo makes me INSANE dude. As I mentioned towards the beginning of this post, a part of borderline that is seldom talked about is the tendency to take on 'the chameleon effect', or mirror the people around them. REO'S ENTIRE THING IS CHAMELEONS LIKE BFFR ?? That image where he was trying to get Nagi to hate him, was before he even started using his chameleon style, it was just something the authors thought was necessary to include during Reo's mental breakdown. Aside from the cool imagery, his chameleon style is a reflection of his relationship with Nagi. He gets called a jack of all trades and a master of none early on in reference to how when he’s without Nagi, hes not really exceptional at anything. He never really took the time to master one specific thing because he was always so concerned with helping Nagi. This rings my BPD bell for a couple reasons: first of all, when you have no sense of identity and you’re worried it means you have no real personality ?? Steal one!! Take the closest person to you and copy that one. That’s something us baddies know VERY well. Also, think there’s something about you that your fp doesn’t like? Change it! You can morph into anything they want as long as it means they won’t leave you !! :*) Before he makes up with Nagi, he copies moves in hopes that it'll make him stronger and appear more desirable to Nagi. After they make up, he copies whoever he has to so that he can get Nagi to that goal and make himself useful, make himself somebody that Nagi wants to have around. It is a literal direct metaphor for him changing anything and everything about himself for Nagi and graaaahhhh it’s so cool

Reonagi ?? Some thoughts-

I want to close this yap session with my thoughts on Reonagi as a ship. I do think that they can work and I want to make that clear. I'm not on board with the 'borderlines arent capable of having loving and fulfilling relationships' crap. That being said, they both have to put in a bit of effort. Reo has already recognized a lot of his own issues. He admits that he was wrong for pushing his ideals onto Nagi, that he needs to let Nagi grow and be his own person, etc. Nagi really hasn't accepted any fault. I stand by the fact that Nagi needs to be more sensitive with Reo. Way too often when a relationship like this fails, all the blame is put on the one with borderline. I'm gonna be the outlier here and say that if Nagi cares about Reo, he needs to learn about Reo's triggers and be mindful of them. I'm not saying that since Reo is sensitive to abandonment that Nagi should just isolate himself from everybody else, but what I am saying is that when he's going to do something that doesn't involve Reo, he needs to learn how to communicate that he still loves and values Reo. "I'm gonna go play soccer with this person right now, but I haven't forgotten about our promise. When I come back, we can play together. I still love you and I'm not going to leave you for whoever tf I'm playing with rn." (sneaking that 'i love you' in bc like..they're literally canon at this point asdfghjkll) But, I do think that Nagi loves Reo and cares about him in his own way. The two of them just have to keep working on their communication skills. Nagi has the potential to have a hot rich husband who will literally bend over backward for him and buy him all the robux he could ever want, he's gotta put in a shred of effort!

I also like to think that Nagi didn’t totally get the fact that Reo doesn’t gaf about just playing soccer. Nagi thinks soccer is what they do together, it’s what makes reo happy, right? He’s always pushing him to train harder and take the game more seriously because he likes the sport, RIGHT? It would make perfect sense to go play with isagi so that he can get better at soccer and come back to reo a more improved player. Maybe that’s why he was surprised when Reo was so mad in the bathhouse, bc he wasn’t making the connection that Reo cares more about him than soccer. That Reo puts all that energy into him playing soccer because he thinks it’s something that they can have as their own, and once Nagi notices how good he is, he’ll start enjoying it and the two of them can hold hands and run around the soccer pitch!! I think Nagi missed that part tbh, and I don’t think he know that even now in the story. Maybe Reo doesn’t even notice it.

Anyway, a shameless plug to my reonagi playlist if that's your thing (i cooked with this one, i fear) https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5CsvSqmuI4cxOl1nTaV4GJ?si=737a0f21e0bd482a

Closing Thoughts:

Reo is a bpd baddie and I love him very much. I think he's a sensitive guy with a lot of feelings who would benefit from taking time to work through his trauma and his emotions. I hope that he eventually is able to build an identity for himself that doesn't involve Nagi, but baby steps, I suppose. I think Reo is a great balance of positive and negative borderline traits and he reads as a really believable and sympathetic character. He is, however, definitely that friend that you have to slap to stop them from running back to their ex.

Jokes aside though, BPD can be extremely hard to live with, even more so when it's undiagnosed and untreated. If someone you love has BPD, take the time to read up on it and do your best to understand them. I promise you, it will mean the world to them.

If you managed to get this far, thank you for reading! This was a messy stream of consciousness and I appreciate your support by listening.

#blue lock #reo mikage #reonagi #nagireo #nagi seishiro #bpd

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the-conversation-pod · 14 hours

Text

Dispatch! (The Ossan's Love Episode)

And we're back!

NiNi and Ben bring our friend @twig-tea to the show to talk about the entire Ossan's Love series. We'll talk about the way this franchise evolves over time, the difficulties of comedy, what it means to love older queer men, and how this show tackles the complexities of family and masculinity.

Timestamps

The timestamps will now correspond with chapters on Spotify for easier navigation.

00:00:00 - Welcome 00:01:15 - Introduction and Some Context 00:06:25 - Ossan’s Love History and Summary 00:13:42 - The Characters 00:28:23 - Love or Dead and In The Sky 00:39:00 - Ossan’s Love Returns 00:45:33 - Final Thoughts and Ratings

The Conversation Transcripts!

Thanks to the continued efforts of @ginnymoonbeam as transcriber, and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader, we are able to bring you transcripts of the episodes.

We will endeavor to make the transcripts available when the episodes launch, and it is our goal to make them available for past episodes (Coming soon thanks to @wen-kexing-apologist). When transcripts are available, we will attach them to the episode post (like this one) and put the transcript behind a Read More cut to cut down on scrolling.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

00:00:00 - Welcome

NiNi

Welcome to The Conversation About BL, aka The Brown Liquor Podcast.

Ben

And there it is. I’m Ben.

NiNi

I’m NiNi.

Ben

And we’re you’re drunk Caribbean uncle and auntie here sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs.

NiNi

Four times a year we pop in to talk about what’s going on in the BL world.

Ben

We shoot the shit about stories and all the drama going into them. I review from a queer media lens.

NiNi

And I review from a romance and drama lens.

Ben

So if you like cracked-out takes and really intense emotional analysis…

NiNi

If you like talking about artistry, industry, and the discourse…

Ben

And if you generally just love simping…

NiNi

There is a lot of simping on this podcast…

Ben

We are the show for you!

00:01:15 - Introduction and Some Context

Ben

And we're back!

This week, we are covering all of Ossan's Love, from 2016 through 2024. We have brought on a special guest for this special episode as we're going to talk about the longest-running BL project. We have brought on our friend @twig-tea.

Twig

Hello.

NiNi

Hi, Twig. Welcome to the show.

Twig

Thank you so much for having me.

NiNi

New friend of the pod. Super excited to have you here. Twig is what we delightfully referred to as a ‘fandom old.’ I'm very excited to be having this conversation with two fandom olds in here, Twig and Ben, because, dear listeners, I have not had the time to watch Ossan's Love, so this is gonna be interesting. Ben and Twig are gonna school me.

Twig

We'll do our best.

Ben

This is going to be an interesting episode because we're going to be talking about a project that was somewhat overlooked by fandom, myself included, until the last couple of months. And I'm a little bit salty about it, and so I wanted to bring on somebody who has watched all of this in real time, and I thought that their perspective would be helpful.

Twig, you are new to our listeners. Why don't you tell them a little bit about yourself in fandom and your history with queer cinema and BL?

Twig

I actually started on the GL side, which is a little bit different than I think a lot of folks in the BL fandom. I started with getting into Sailor Moon and got involved with a group of women who started Yuricon. The first Yuricon was held in Newark, NJ, in 2003 and I was the secretary.

From there, there just wasn't enough GL content, and so I got into BL, too. I was really into Japanese manga, was part of a few scanlation groups, got oversaturated, stepped away, came back in 2016 to be shocked at the fact that a whole lot of the stuff that I used to watch was now made into live action.

The YouTube algorithm in late 2016—early 2017—fed me Lovesick and I sort of went, “Hello. What's this?” Then watched Make it Right and was hooked on Thai BL. Tried to backfill as much as I could, so I watched Gray Rainbow, and Diary of Tootsies, and all this stuff that nobody talks about, really, anymore.

One of the things about fandom at that time was that the way you found stuff was digging and a prayer, and random people making random lists, and it was very hard to tell how good those lists were. And so I managed that by watching everything and making my own opinions. And that is why I watched Ossan’s Love when it aired, or as soon as I could get my hands on it.

NiNi

So we're talking like real, real old school. We're talking about “Oh God, maybe some fansubber might help us out here.”

Twig

Fuckin’, like, Internet relay chat.

NiNi

IRC was my job back in the day.

Twig

Yes!

NiNi

I was talking about other things—not BL, but I was there.

Ben

Twig has sketchy as shit DVDs that were handed to her by a fan that have not great rip but really solid subs.

Twig

Bought in a mall parking lot with Mandarin subtitles that we used to watch with my friends who spoke Mandarin so they could translate for us in real time. It was hard. We used to walk uphill both ways back in the day.

Ben

A lot of folks who have been in this for a long time—we joked that we watched everything because we had to. You have done a better job of keeping track of what you've watched.

Twig

I wish I'd done better. I only really started tracking things in 2020. I did try to backfill the years before that, but I only really captured all of the major series. There was so many shorts, and things like that, I just couldn't do. But my spreadsheet has about 600 things on it, 606 as of today.

Ben

Incredible.

NiNi

I have been watching media overall—like seriously watching media—for…30 years…and I have not watched 606 of anything.

Ben

Nah, I believe her. It adds up. I engage with close to 100 BLs every year for the last 2-3 years.

NiNi

Clearly I'm not in these streets with y'all.

[Twig laughs]

Ben

I'm so glad Twig has showed up because it has given me permission to not watch so much.

NiNi

I bow down to you guys, because there was a point in time where, trying to keep up with week-to-week, I was watching something like eight shows at a time and I literally felt like my head was on fire. So, I don't know how you guys do it.

Ben

Practice. [laughs]

NiNi

We talked about this on the show, how last year I watched 50 things, maybe, for the whole year, and I felt like I was losing my mind. I usually watch like 15.

Ben

50 is good. Like, that's a really healthy number.

Twig

That is. That's pretty solid.

NiNi

As in five-zero?

Ben

Yeah, no, that's great!

NiNi

A year?!

Ben

Yeah! And we made a whole fucking show out of it! It’s good!

NiNi

Deep breaths. Okay, let's continue. Let's go on. [laughs]

00:06:25 - Ossan’s Love History and Summary

NiNi

Let's get into Ossan's Love. Ben, do the honors, tell us what is Ossan's Love about?

Ben

Actually, I want to do this one a little bit differently.

NiNi, you have not engaged with Ossan's Love. The most you have is the fandom vibe on it from the periphery. What is your impression of Ossan's Love prior to all of us posting a lot about the new show?

NiNi

When you say periphery, I think you're being incredibly generous. There was one where they’re flight attendants maybe, or something to do with an airline. I am aware of that. And then there was something with a boss. There was a thing about a shower. There's some dirty jokes that go over my head because they're referential to this show. But in terms of my awareness of Ossan’s Love, it's honestly not much.

Did I get any of those things correct by the way?

Twig

You totally did.

Ben

You did. I almost shouted “Dispatch” when you mentioned the airport. [Twig and Ben laugh]

All right. So, I will give what I knew of Ossan's Love prior to earnestly engaging with it: Ossan's Love is a workplace-set drama in which a guy who works in an office is being pursued by a colleague of the same age as him and his boss—who is like 20-plus-odd years older than him. At the time when I didn't watch it, the fandom vibe on it was that it was fairly offensive, particularly around the old guy character. And, when it was hard to find this show, I was like, “Whatever, I'm not going to work that hard for a show that people seem really put off by.” I have had to make sure that I check if I am riding an old fandom opinion from prior to 2019 when it comes to older work, because those opinions are usually not informed by the lens that I use. And so I decided to engage with Ossan's Love properly.

Before we start describing what the show is specifically, Twig, what do you remember about your experience watching the show in real time and the popular opinions about it?

Twig

So, the first thing is real time had really different meanings back then because we didn't have international distribution. It was sort of when things were fan subbed and when you could find them and knew they existed. So, I actually didn't get to watch the short until years after the original. So my first outing with Ossan’s Love was season one.

At the time, it felt like if you liked it, you should be quiet about it, because the opinion was so negative that you would be shouted down if you said anything positive about it. So I just sort of stayed in my corner of enjoyment and tried not to think too hard about it.

Ben

That is unfortunately how I remember it being. It was not popular to say positive things about Ossan’s Love at the time. Even the fans of Ossan's Love seemed super ambivalent about the second season, which was an alternative universe.

Twig

Yeah. When Season 2 aired it was an even wider swing. The people who really loved Season 1 seemed to hate Season 2. I actually like Season 2 better than Season 1, so I was even more like, [laughs] “Okay, I guess I don't know what I'm talking about, guys, so I'm just gonna stay over here and let you all have your opinions over there.”

Ben

So our quick timeline: we have Ossan’s Love the TV special in 2016. We have Ossan’s Love the TV show airing during spring of 2018. They released the movie Ossan’s Love: Love or Dead —that went into theaters on August 23rd of 2019—and then a few months later, in November, they released Ossan’s Love: In The Sky. It's my understanding that Ossan’s Love Returns was originally supposed to air in, like, 2020-2021. They've returned to that project this year in 2024.

NiNi

I know they're going to be doing a Thai version of this coming up and they also have the Hong Kong version?

Twig

That's right. Yep. There was a Hong Kong version in I think 2021 or 2022.

NiNi

I love when they take a property and they remake it across cultures over and over again. I'm always intrigued to see how they turn out.

Ben

Have you watched the Hong Kong version, Twig?

Twig

I peeked at it. It's really true to season one in a lot of ways. I haven't actually watched it all the way through because I was like, “If I want to rewatch season one, I'll just rewatch season one.”

Ben

I feel like I have to watch it at some point.

All right, so let's get into Ossan’s Love properly now: Ossan’s Love is about a 33 year old man named Haruta who is a slob. He is a hot mess of a man. He cannot take care of himself. He lives with his mom, and she does all the housework. She decides to bail on him and go run off with the hot new man she's with. And so he asks his colleague, whose name is Maki, to move in with him to help him out because Maki is very good at house chores.

He learns accidentally that his boss, whose name is Kurasawa Musashi, has had a crush on him for a long time and also simultaneously learns that Maki has been crushing on him for a long time. Hijinks ensue as the two of them begin aggressively pursuing him, and he is not prepared for this sudden surge in gay activities.

Twig

One thing I add to your description, Ben, is it's a comedy.

Ben

So this is where things get a little bit complicated. Comedy is hard to do correctly, because a big part of comedy is playing with people's preconceptions of how an interaction should go. A lot of folks struggle with Japanese comedy because they're just not aware of the expectations for how an interaction should go, and so the humor is not landing on them, and this can happen even in your own culture. Like, if you showed a teenager today Airplane, many of the jokes in that movie would make no sense to them because they're missing some of the cultural context. Some of that exists with peoples engagement with Ossan's Love, I think.

Twig

I think that's right.

00:13:42 - The Characters

Ben

The big part about Ossan's Love that impresses me is how the show gets better each time they come back. There are things that are kind of yikes in the short that are tweaked out in the first show. There are things that they retooled Haruta and Kurosawa over in the airport season. And then, in the most recent season, Ossan's Love Returns, they've shifted where the focus of their storytelling is after everything that's going on. So we are seeing the same characters, but they're dealing with much different dynamics.

So, Ossan's Love Returns was a completely acceptable point for a lot of people to jump on, and I almost just jumped on. But, I like to know how we got here. So I was like, “I must watch all of this first!” [laughs]

NiNi

I was about to say on what point were you ever gonna just jump on without going back into the before times? You, sir, are a historian and a completionist.

Ben

Of course. And so I went back and watched.

Twig, since you didn't have a lot of people to talk about Ossan's Love with at the time, how about you talk about your impressions of Haruta, Maki, and Kurosawa when you first engaged with it?

Twig

The thing that stuck with me is that, even in 2018, it felt a little more queer than a lot of the other stuff I was watching alongside it at the time. Haruta and Maki, and all of the characters, play into that in different ways. Haruta is an extremely frustrating character. I just wanted to reach through the screen and strangle him through most of season one, and I think that's partially intentional.

Haruta is set up as the literal straight man. He's there to be what your average straight guy reaction might be when confronted with gayness, and everyone around him literally slaps him and tells him he's being an idiot. Delightful, but it doesn't make the character himself very likable at first. The fact that he grows on you anyway, even while he's being so frustrating, speaks to the other strengths in his character: his kindness, and the way he values his coworkers. And I think the later seasons did a really good job of picking up the things that made Haruta such a great character, and enforcing that in the character writing itself to make him more likable overall.

I loved Kurosawa from jump. I think he's [laughs] incredible. He lives life on 11, and I think watching an older man step through some of the more standard romance tropes very clumsily but earnestly is incredibly charming.

Maki is the competent character. He's also a self-actualized gay man. He at no point questions his sexuality at all, has no crisis about it. He knows who he is and what he's attracted to. And that was also really refreshing for BL at the time.

NiNi

Describing the kind of character that Kurosawa is made me think of Ben describing characters like Shin from Minato's Laundromat. When you tend to see these younger characters who are full on gung-ho chasing after the ones that they like, people like that. But they don't like the boss because they don't think their character should be doing that.

Twig

When I was first telling Ben about my opinions about the show, I said one of the things I struggle with is whether Kurosawa is telling the joke or is the joke. I think the more I have watched and rewatched, especially in later seasons, they do a really good job of him being a funny character and we're not laughing at him. He's not the butt of the joke, he's just funny. The people who would be turned off by an old guy hitting on a younger guy no matter what were turned off by that character and the ones who were sympathetic to older men also having romance in their lives were turned off by the idea that it was a comedy.

Ben

The comedy in the way Kurosawa pursues Haruta is about the age gap, not the fact that he's an old man. It's that he's at a different stage of his life. He's not fumbling to figure out stuff, he knows what he wants and his time is limited, so he's pursuing it determinately and also because he's older, he's behaving in line with his generation.

Like, if you don't have friends who are more than 10 years older than you, sometimes you're going to get weirded out by their cultural stuff. Like right now, I'm reaching the age gap with some of the kids I tutor, and I had to deal with all the various iterations on rizz and I don’t like it.

[Twig and NiNi laugh]

I had an 8 year old call himself The Rizzler the other day and I almost pushed him down.

Twig

Oh no.

NiNi

Oh my God.

Ben

I understand the concern around Kurosawa. But that is not what I think the show is doing, and even if it accidentally does it, that is not the show’s intent. Haruta is dealing with the sudden shift in his relationships with men who are important to him. Maki was just like his friend and colleague, who he was low-key mooching off of to do housework for him, and he has to deal with the fact that the only reason Maki is willing to put up with him is because Maki likes him. With Kurosawa, a big part of their relationship is the fact that he respects and admires him so much. The relationship between them is very paternal in a lot of ways?

Twig

A mentorship.

Ben

Yeah, he sees Kurosawa as a respected mentor and Kurosawa respects Haruta as well as a valued member of his team. A big part of the show is them sorting out the way that affection complicates some of these relationships, and we as the audience have to struggle with why these men like this man. Haruta is fucking useless in the household. He may be good at his job, but he is horrible at house related stuff. And so the question is why would anyone want him?

And this is not rhetorical for the show. They really want you to grapple with this. The fact that Haruta is kind of repulsive as a romantic interest is something the show wants you to think about. You have to work to understand why so many people are into Haruta, and I think this gets better overtime.

Twig

They do a really good job with all of the women characters in this show, which was super rare for the time and still worth saying. His best friend Chizu also is terrible at housework, but she's a woman, and so she's struggling with the expectation that she get married and she keeps talking about how she needs to find somebody who does for her what Haruta’s men are willing to do for him. I just love putting those two characters side by side. And the silent question that's asked of the audience. That's like, why is this okay for Haruta, but not for Chizu.

Ben

It's not really subtle. As the show goes on, Maki won't really commit to Haruta because Haruta is ostensibly straight. Maki is hesitant about full committing because it's hard to be gay, like you got a lot to face as a gay person and he doesn't know that Haruta is going to stand up to all that. He's kind of a waffly type of dude. He's kind of a people pleaser who won't really stand up to anyone. This is kind of good for him as a salesperson. It's obvious why all their clients like Haruta. But it makes him kind of unreliable as a partner because you're not certain he's going to hold ground with you when the world is telling you that you shouldn't be together.

The first season ends on a really cool note, ‘cause Maki and Haruta break up and Haruta just falls apart. And Kurosawa moves in with him for a while to help take care of him. For Kurosawa, it's a romantic thing, but it very much feels like someone’s parent going to take care of their kid. Haruta recognized where he failed with Maki, and he starts trying to help out with house stuff a little bit. But it's not like he suddenly becomes like a great housekeeper. I really liked that choice, that he starts putting in an effort but he's still horrible at it.

Kurosawa ends up proposing to Haruta. Haruta has a hard time saying no to people, so he accepts. Also, he used a flash mob. It's hard to say no when someone flash mobs you.

NiNi

Pause. Pause for cause.

Twig

Michael Jackson-themed flash mob.

NiNi

Okay, not pausing. Unpausing. Go ahead.

Ben

Kurosawa is always at 11. He is an incredible character and like he and Haruta are going to get married and at the altar, Kurosawa is like. You need to go to him. You don't actually want to be here. And so Haruta runs to Maki and proposes to him at the end of the first season.

And then there's just an incredible supporting cast in the show. I don't think we have time to talk about all of them properly, but. Haruta’s friend Chizu’s older brother Teppei runs a little bar diner that they often hang out at. He's so funny, always giving them weird gross food combinations to try out. They’re’s Maro, who's a member of their team who did not know Haruta’s given name for the years they worked together, there's Maika, who's kind of a nosy busybody at their work. She's a great source of comedy, ends up with Teppei. There's Takegawa, who's the second at their office in the first season, who is revealed to be Maki’s ex later. And he is intense as hell and becomes a complicating factor in the budding relationship between Haruta and Maki because he challenges Haruta. He's like, why is he putting this much effort into you? You suck! I really love the Takegawa character because he is a hot mess.

Twig

He just is so pained at Maki falling for a straight man. Something that is deeply relatable for anybody in queer spaces. [NiNi laughs] Like we have all been that person. Like, what are you doing to yourself?

Ben

I want to nod to Choko real quick. In the first season, Kurosawa has a wife of 30 years. Her name is Choko. Once his feelings for Haruta become known to Haruta, he decides he's going to pursue them and he tells this to his wife and they get divorced. She is understandably upset about this whole situation. But what's so great about it is, the show allows her to have a journey of figuring out what her life is going to be now that this information is out there. Like, she was hurt and upset at first, but then decides to support Kurosawa because this is her partner of 30 years and she understands him, so she ends up eventually supporting what he's trying to do with Haruta. And she ends up developing her own relationship with Maro.

It's really cool in this show where there's this whole complicated thing about whether or not these three gay men are going to sort themselves out into various relationship configurations, they're also doing a pretty steep successful age gap romance between like a 30-something year old man and a woman approaching 60.

Twig

I love Choko's arc so much. It's the one thing that stayed with me the most. She is also allowed to be funny. She's silly and immature in the same ways that the male characters are. She's not perfect either. And I think that is super important that she's a complicated character.

I think it's really important that this show talks about the ways in which homophobia and being in the closet hurts everyone, not just gay people. I think this show does a good job of at least alluding to the fact that the hurt that's caused by people having to live lies makes waves in communities.

NiNi

I like when they put that on older characters, as well. There's so much to unpack when you're talking about a life lived in the closet, emerging from a life lived in the closet later on in life. What you're gonna do with that life and how you're gonna treat it. From what you guys are saying about Kurosawa, it’s like he just decided to take life by the balls once he came out of the closet, and that's always something that I enjoy seeing.

Ben

I guess, well, on some of the negatives. The humor is choppy in the first season. You do have to recalibrate as you're watching. It is very funny, but in ways that are unexpected. You will end up feeling a sense of revulsion in the show, particularly to season one Haruta. When I started going back to it, I had a difficult time with the first episode because I'm asking myself why would anyone want to fuck this man? [NiNi and Twig laugh] That is a real and valid reaction that you have to work with as you're watching the show. And so parts of it are a little bit difficult to watch in that regard.

And Kurosawa is a huge character. You have to take time to get to know him and understand him and understand where his behaviors are coming from. And if you're not willing to do that work, the show is super off putting.

Twig

It is loud. You do have to allow your comedy ear to calibrate to its shouting.

Ben

However, I will say that if you want to see romance in BL about older characters, Ossan’s Love is right there. The entire drama is about 30-somethings and much older dealing with life and love. There is no wistful stuff about “things were easier when we were kids” in this show at all. It is very much grounded in the perspective and dramas that people in their 30s and 40s and 50s are dealing with in life and romance.

Twig

I feel like the one other thing that I always feel the need to call out about the first season is Haruta, because of what his character is struggling with, is physically uncomfortable with displays of affection, and particularly with kissing, in the first season. And that can be off putting too, but he makes it clear verbally that he's not actually against physical affection, he's just familiar with it? It is one of the things that the show does better later on.

00:28:23 - Love or Dead and In The Sky

Ben

Let's talk about the movie! Ossan’s Love: Love or Dead.

Twig

[laughs] Every time I think about that title, it makes me laugh, ‘cause it's just so extra.

NiNi

I'm sorry, Love or Dead?

Ben

Mhmm.

Twig

Oh yeah.

Ben

The premise of this movie is at the end of season one, Haruta got an opportunity to go work in Shanghai for about six months, and the guys are going to be facing a separation for a bit. There's drama when Maki goes to pick up Haruta ‘cause he's found in a compromising position, and a big part of this is Maki still dealing with his anxiety around whether or not Haruta can be a partner to him. Maki gets selected to be part of this high-powered real estate team, and there's a bunch of drama that unfolds involving a partnership with a drug peddling organization and then we end on like an action note where they have to rescue Haruta from a burning building.

Twig

There are explosions.

Ben

Lots of explosions.

NiNi

This sounds… delightful. This sounds like exactly my kind of crack.

Ben

You should watch it sincerely.

Twig

It is delightful.

Ben

If you're not certain about Ossan’s Love, legit, watching Ossan’s Love: Love or Dead is not a terrible place to start. It's a two-hour outing that covers the basic ground of the franchise, has some really strong moments, and is super cracked out.

What's so fun in it is, we talk about the retooling of the characters. In season one, Maki and Kurosawa beef a lot over Haruta and legit get into physical brawls over it. This is a feature of the entire franchise. These men scrap on the regular. There's this great moment when they're trying to rescue Haruta from this building where Kurosawa's role as their mentor comes through and he reads Maki about how he's always holding back in the relationship. That's what I think works for me the most in this franchise, the collective love that everyone has for each other. It's true that Kurosawa is not going to succeed as a romantic rival to Maki in this story, but that doesn't mean that he's not important to everyone and everything going on. And I really, truly love that.

Twig

His mentorship relationship with Maki really starts to flourish in the movie, the moment where Maki’s hanging off of a ledge and Kurosawa is helping him physically back onto the ledge so he doesn’t fall into the flames, but also verbally telling him what he needs to do to save his relationship. This movie is not subtle with its metaphors. But it's such a good moment where we realize that Kurosawa plays that role for Maki, too, of a mentor, and that he's willing to do it for the relationship, even at the same time as being a love rival. And it sets up the new season really well.

Ben

The movie matters to the timeline of the series. The movie is not just some sort of one off moment that occurs. The events of the movie are built into the characters, and it was the beginning of them retooling how these characters function.

NiNi

This sounds like a very experimental type of series, just the way that they do different things each time. While they are refining their central characters and the central storylines, they're also experimenting with style and tone, and a number of other things it feels like?

Twig

I think that's really true. One of the things about the movie that's really fun is it's the first instance of sports in the series. We get Justice playing basketball with Haruta and working his feelings out through basketball.

Ben

JUSTICE!!! [Twig and Ben laugh]

Twig

Love and peace! And that becomes a huge part of the AU and also part of Ossan’s Love Returns that I think really adds to the experience. They try things out and then if it works, they pick it up and add and yes, and it, and then they pull out the things that didn't really work. I find that really interesting to watch happen.

NiNi

The concept of something being iterative like that in real time, it's not for everybody.

Ben

This series went on to do something super experimental where a couple of months after they released a continuation movie promising that these characters would get back together, they released an alternative universe season where only Haruta and Kurosawa were present from the original cast, and now we're at an airport dealing with a completely different set of characters and a slightly different dynamic.

It also gave Twig and I our favorite bit.

Twig

[laughs] Dispatch! 👍

Ben

Dispatch! 👍 Oh my God. It is so funny, every single time.

NiNi

Every time.

Ben

Every episode has at least two dispatch moments. [Twig laughs] It's so fucking funny.

Twig

Sometimes it's to end a conversation. Sometimes it's to greet somebody, sometimes it's to shut down a conversation, distract from someone saying something you don’t want them to say.

Ben

So in this particular season, Kurosawa is still a leader. He is the captain of a flight crew. Haruta is a new flight attendant who is joining this team. In this case, Kurosawa is not Haruta’s long-term mentor who has been harboring a crush on him. He develops his crush in real time. Haruta moves into company housing and there's a slightly older guy there who's got a crush on Haruta, but he won't say anything about it. And then there's the meanest twink who's ever existed in BL.

NiNi

I mean y'all just seem to be giving me multiple reasons to watch this show at this point, so.

Ben

So in the second season, there's far more complicated people in the Haruta stuff. There's Kaname who is the older mechanic who lives in the dorms, and he's got this huge crush on Haruta, but he'll never say anything about it. Naruse is causing fucking problems all the time, because every time he has relationship drama and people show up at their airport to fuck with him about it, he just starts kissing Haruta to make people go away. And then people throw drinks in Haruta’s face over it. Because Tanaka Kei is a master of physical comedy.

Twig

One of the staples of the series is what I call the Haruta reaction supercut, where they just have multiple cuts of Haruta’s face as it morphs into more and more absurd huh, no, whaaa faces. He does bend his body in ways that's like a cartoon falling over, it's pretty incredible.

NiNi

Ben knows that I love physical comedy.

Twig

Yoshida Kotaro has incredible physical comedy, too.

Ben

Like if you ever want to see an old man try and kill an aging twink [Twig laughs], this is the show for you.

I get why people who liked the first show bounced off of this, because the rest of the cast is gone. The supporting cast is a really strong part of the Ossan’s Love experience, but I really like the AU season because I think it allowed them to retool Haruta and Kurosawa. And retool the relationship between them to make it more about their mentorship. They're building that relationship in the AU season ‘cause they don't know each other.

Twig

The thing that I really like about the AU setup is because Haruta is coming into a new environment, we get to see him build his network of people around him over the course of the season. Showing us what's likable about Haruta because he has to charm all these people around him in order to get friends and build a community, is a really important piece of the puzzle that allowed me to get to like that character a lot more, because he was charming me at the same time.

Ben

We get a lot of great moments in the season. Kurosawa has been a pilot for 30 years and he decides to retire and everyone is sad about it. I'm sad about it, Twig is crying about it.

Twig

Mmhm.

Ben

He ends up inviting the three guys who we've mentioned out to hang out in the park with him. He has this sumo tournament with them where he's basically giving them the last bit of advice he's going to give them and it is, one of the most intensely emotional man moments I have had in this genre. I was losing it and I was crying. I was hollering and screaming, messaging Twig like, “Wake up, I need to talk about this right now, I don't care what you're doing. Get up.”

Truly, it is one of the best moments in TV about the relationships between men that I have ever experienced, and it is this hyper ridiculous sumo wrestling moment in a gay romance drama in the AU season that is technically not canon, and it was the moment from the series that lingers with me the most.

Twig

Even in the moment they're looking at each other like, is this happening? How is this happening? This isn't real. Nobody does this. Nobody calls each other to the side of the river with a note [laughs] to hold a wrestling competition in which we talk about our feelings.

Ben

But it works really well. I ended up really loving the way it allowed us to think about these two men and the relationship between them. We get to appreciate how important Kurosawa is to Haruta.

Twig

That sumo wrestling moment allows us to see Kurosawa's relationships with all of his subordinates. The way he's so firm and so gentle with Naruse, with like “soft landing,” meanwhile, throws Haruta out of the ring.

Ben

The way he talks to all of these men as specific to them, like his role as leader is strongest in the AU season. My primary concern for the Thai adaptation is who is playing Kurosawa, because this character is as important as the romantic leads.

Twig

I think it's more important.

Ben

I am with Twig. Who is going to match Yoshida Kotaro in Thailand? I need to know.

Twig

I'm eagerly awaiting that announcement.

NiNi

The answer is going to be Nu Surasak or Kob Songsit.

Ben

I really hope it's good.

00:39:00 - Ossan’s Love Returns

Ben

Ossan's Love Returns reunites the original cast after five years. Maki is returning from an extended stint in Singapore, and now he and Haruta are gonna start their cohabitating married life together. Maki is now part of the super team at headquarters, following up on the movie. Haruta is still on the streets with regular folk, ‘cause that's where he wants to be. Kurosawa has retired, I liked that follow up from the AU season. And now he's working as a housekeeper. Maki is working too much and Haruta is still bad at house, and so they hire a housekeeper, who ends up being Kurosawa [Twig laughs] who cannot hold back his feelings for Haruta and it becomes one of the ongoing dramas of the season.

One of the things I enjoyed in this season is… they explore how to integrate Kurosawa into their lives long term. Haruta is serious about Maki and committed to their romance. Kurosawa is also extremely important to him and he treats him like a father figure. They explicitly have Choko talk to Kurosawa about how a lot of the ways he feels [laugh] about Maki are a lot of the ways a mother-in-law might feel about their daughter-in-law with the way they beef with each other. And when we say they beef with each other, I mean, these two men are legit fighting in their kitchen, like Kurosawa hits Maki in the head repeatedly with a frying pan. Maki legit throws Kurosawa through a door at one point and knocks it off the hinges. These two men, when they scrap with each other, are fighting for real and I love it every time.

NiNi

It's just like you all conspired to come into this recording booth today and just be like, okay, so you say this and I'll say that and between us we're gonna get her to watch this, because she likes this kind of stuff.

Ben

I didn't really have to work that hard. We're just legit talking about what the show was doing. We get a really great season of Maki and Haruta settling into what their life is going to look like. There's some introduced new characters in the season that we all had very complicated feelings about who I think end up fitting fine by the end. Most of the original cast comes back and there's like a really great bit of exploring what all these characters settling into their relationships that they got into in the first season in this one.

So Haruta and Maki are now living together and figuring out what that is going to look like, who are they gonna be as a couple now that they're not doing long distance ‘cause they've basically been long distance between every outing. Which I think was a clever choice because it means that the characters’ relationship dynamic doesn't really move that much between outings.

Choko is now living with Maro and Maro’s mom, and Choko is struggling because she's older than Maro's mom. She can't just treat this woman like her mother-in-law. And Maro doesn't know how to help because he's caught between his wife, who's way older than him, and his mom, who's confused and a little bit uncertain about this whole dynamic.

Twig

I also love that that's not the only thing we see Choko having worked through in the time we've been apart from her. She opened an archery range after her divorce, and sort of reinvented herself with this new life that she's actually thriving in.

Ben

They get new neighbors who are a bunch of weirdos.

Twig

[laughs] They're so weird. They're so weird.

Ben

These two are revealed to be members of, like, a public security division that maybe doesn't actually exist. Izumi ends up becoming obsessed with Haruta because he's a doppelganger for his dead lover who was killed in the line of duty, who is very, very different from Haruta. It was fun to see Tanaka Kei play a very different type of character in those flashbacks. I don't know that it entirely landed for me over the course of the season, but by the finale, which was fantastic, I was okay with them.

Twig

A large part of the way they were written is that they were a mystery for a large part of it, too. It's hard to bond with a character that you know nothing about and is intentionally opaque.

Ben

Chizu is trying to make it as a single mom and this reinforces one of the big themes of the season, that family is all the people who are going to show up for you all the time. She relies on Teppei and Maika to help, and she feels guilty about this and they tell her straight up, like, don't feel guilty. We are a family. You should rely on us.

She had already made Haruta and Maki designated adults who can pick up her kid from the daycare. An important gay right of passage is your friend calling you and telling you I need you to go pick up my kid, and then you show up at said kindergarten to pick up a kid and they look at your ID and they go “oh you're allowed” and the kid runs to you and everybody goes, well, that makes sense. An important gay moment that everyone must experience.

Twig

One of the things that I love about this so much is that it picks up from a throw away line that Chizu says in the movie. She sort of brags that she's going to balance having a kid and her career. One of the things about the series is that it really feels like the people who are writing it love the whole series and are constantly thinking about how to call back in loving ways and how to pick up threads in loving ways. Something that she just sort of confidently stated she was going to do no problem in the movie becomes a whole plot in the following season.

Ben

There's a final arc in the season where Kurosawa has a health scare where we think he's going to die.

Twig

When we were talking about it, Ben, you said that it was an important moment for Maki and Haruta to confront the idea that Kurosawa won't always be around. And I was like, oh, that's why I don't like this part because I don't want to ever think about that. [Twig and Ben laugh]

Ben

The entire finale is this really great examination about the way this whole group of people are a family to each other.

Twig

It's not even just that it's happening, but they're explicit about it. They're having conversations about what is family? What are we to each other? How do we define our relationship? Where do those lines get drawn? And the answer is just sort of, yes.

Ben

There's an explicit line, like, what is Kurosawa to them? And then Maika comes over and hammers it home for the audience and is like, “There's no need to describe it. What matters is you all are going to be part of each other's lives forever.”

00:45:33 - Final Thoughts and Ratings

Ben

I don't think we talked about it as much. So, the first season is pretty light on kissing and intimacy between the male characters. Ossan's Love Returns is not! There's so much married intimacy between Haruta and Maki.

Twig

The casual intimacy in Ossan's Love Returns is constant, and it just feels very lived in? They're just constantly touching each other and having small kisses and teasing each other.

Ben

We got more of that today in the unexpected special spin-offs we're getting. I was like “ohh, I thought we were done. Oh, it's another cute little 20-minute office episode ending on the two of them making out next to the copier.” Love it.

NiNi

This is called Forbidden Gout Temps Nouveau.

Twig

Mhmm.

NiNi

I have so many questions, but I feel like I should not ask those questions right now.

Ben

My general attitude is you don't need to watch all of Ossan's Love to enjoy parts of Ossan's Love. I think if you are interested in gay domesticity and complex family units, you can just watch Ossan's Love Returns right away.

NiNi

I'm watching it all. Eventually. I don't know when. There's a lot going on in the IRL space right now, but I'm gonna be watching the whole thing.

Twig

I feel like I should say something about the original short. It has a lot of the things that people found the hardest to swallow about season one. A lot of the stuff that they did originally they fixed or did better as they moved through. I would say the short is the thing to skip, of all of it, unless you're really curious about the journey of this franchise.

NiNi

I'm really fascinated by the idea of this as a reserve process of working through and refining the show in kind of a real time. I would like to see the whole thing just for that purpose. I'm a writer, so the way that this feels like multiple drafts, and you getting to actually see the multiple drafts to see why they might have decided to make a particular change in the next draft, or why they would have gone for an overhaul, or what would they have tweaked around the edges. I like the idea of looking at that.

Twig

It is not just the writing that they iterate. We haven't talked a lot about the visual effects that this show uses, but it has its own style. One of my favorites: it uses the bokeh effect, where the lighting in the background is blurred and sometimes takes shapes. It starts from the very beginning. You'll see the lights behind Kurosawa make little hearts while he's confessing to Haruta and Haruta’s has little like stop signs. [Ben laughs] And then they get bigger and bigger with that where Kurosawa’s hearts have little like heartbreak. They have– there’s little, like, zigzags in the hearts behind him when he gets rejected. Sometimes he'll be crying tear lights. That’s just one of the things that they play with in the different versions.

Ben

Naruse having that whole tantrum trying to get someone's attention for help? Then having that super cut of them screaming and then smash cutting to them just sitting at the table. There's like the courtroom audio stinger that dominates the first season that I fucking love [mimics the sound] thing that happens over the course of the whole season. It's so, so dramatic, and I'm like, “Is Judge Mathis gonna walk out? What is happening?”

Twig

Oh, and they do this thing where they hard cut to a visual metaphor like water leaking out of a water bottle or a pot boiling to represent the character’s emotions. There's so many visual moments. It's not just written well and acted well. It's also represented visually really well, and seeing how they experiment with that and how that changes. Like, the weird bobble heads we got in the AU season. I'm still not over those. I'm glad those didn't return.

Ben

It is not a perfect show. This is not a “Everybody was wrong. They should have watched all of this. Grab your pitchfork!” situation. This is not an easy show to love. If you can find your way to loving the show, I think it has been one of the most rewarding watches I've had in the genre since What Did You Eat Yesterday?

Japanese BL is different from Thai BL. More experimental and weirder things are gonna happen over time if the series has a lot of leg in it, and Ossan's Love is one of those that has so much leg in it. Like the second season just ended, and I'd be okay if we don't see them again, but, I really hope we do.

Twig

Me too.

NiNi

All right, so let's get into ratings. I mean, is this the kind of thing that you rate? Instead of rating, let's rank. If you had to rank the different parts of the Ossan's Love franchise, how would you rank them? In terms of, for you, most enjoyable to probably the least enjoyable?

Ben

Well, the least enjoyable is the original special. It's the most rough and the hardest to swallow. I think the best season is the current one?

Twig

Yeah. I mean, for me, it's basically chronological order, I think. I struggle between the film and the AU ‘cause I like them for different reasons, and I struggled with them for different reasons. But I think Naruse tips it over there so that it stays ahead.

Ben

[Ben and Twig laugh] I love that mean twink!

Twig

He's just so great.

Ben

I don't know that I'd want to…rank them that way. I think each outing adds something to it. It's really a question of, do you like seeing people try to get together for the first time, or do you really like seeing people be together? For me, I'm very partial to Ossan's Love Returns because it's about gay life drama, which is what I’ve wanted for a while. And so I'm really fucking enjoying that.

Twig

Yeah, I love it when people have to figure out, “Now that we're in this relationship, how do we make this work?”

Ben

But I also love the AU season. I think the retooling of Haruta and Kurosawa is actually really helpful. I think taking a break from Maki is actually helpful for appreciating Haruta when you come back to them. I think you end up liking Haruta more by the time you get to Ossan's Love Returns and seeing the potential in him. The love people are trying to pour on to him in the current season is more accessible to me as a viewer because I got to spend time with Haruta growing to love him in the AU season.

Twig

I also just have affection for an entire season that seems to have basically been built off of like a throwaway reference to episode one, when Haruta says he's most attracted to stewardesses. And then, and also, like, maybe a pun because Kurosawa’s character is called bucho which means, like, manager essentially through all of the regular Ossan's Love stories. But in the AU he's kucho because he's a captain. And I think that's very funny.

Ben

In terms of my ratings, I'm looking at on MDL, I gave Ossan's Love and Ossan's Love Returns a 9. But I gave the AU season a 9.5. [Ben and Twig laugh] So, there's your answer.

Twig

There you go.

Ben

Twig, what did you rate the second season? I know ratings aren't always your thing, but did you give the second season a rating?

Twig

I didn't. If I was going to give it a rating. Ossan's Love Returns? Yeah, I’d give it a 9.

Ben

It's a 9 for me in that I think if you're into BL, you should watch the show, but I don't know that it is the most accessible show, so I don't want to give it a 10.

Twig

I think the thing about this show, too, is it's about multiple relationships. It's not just about Maki and Haruta, and I wouldn't even say their relationship dominates the story. So, to rank it against other BL as a romance narrative is quite difficult. It's about family and what that means in a queer context. Part of that is romance, but it's not even the biggest part? The family feels is what gets me about this series.

Ben

That's going to do it for Ossan's Love. We have succeeded at our mission. NiNi has agreed to watch the show. Twig and I got to unpack the entirety of this whole franchise. We have the benefit of knowing it gets better over time now, and so I don't begrudge people bouncing when they did in 2018. I think that in 2024, it is beneficial for people who care about the history of the genre to go back and properly engage with Ossan's Love. I genuinely think it is worth reconsidering your initial opinion. They… grow. Their characters are not static. What has occurred is taken seriously and what worked and didn't work is considered as they move forward.

NiNi

That is going to wrap us up on the Ossan's Love episode. Twig, it was so great having you on, and I hope you come back.

Twig

Thank you so much for having me. It was really fun.

NiNi

With that, we out. Say bye to the people, Twig.

Twig

Dispatch!👍

Ben

Dispatch! 👍

NiNi

At some point I'm going to find out what that means, and then I will be unstoppable. Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Peace.

#ossan's love returns #ossan's love #ben and nini's conversations #podcast #lgbtq #the conversation #on art #thai bl #bl series #japanese bl #spring series #spring 2024

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annawayne · 2 days

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TOP 10 favourite AA fanfics?

Hello!

Thank you for asking me too, since I saw the answers from the dear comrades in AA fandom, and I'm very touched you also asked me. Thank you!

As for TOP, it's going to be my subjective taste and, sorry, more than 10, so without further do, in no particular order:

The whole AruAni in Fort Salta, with the leading role of Village By The End of The World by @moonspirit. The true treasure for the AruAni fandom, but, in my opinion, even for the whole AoT fandom as an incredible and impressive post-canon tale.

Phenomenally written with complex, layered narration and excellent character analysis and exploration of various topics - outside and inside, past and present, and the sheer beauty of human lives with all the struggles, traumas and nightmares, tangled with the incredible moments of mundane and peaceful life. This story makes you love this life and see the beauty in the smallest of things - both the characters and the readers.

(but honestly, read all Moon's works)

Black Water and the whole collection by @distortedclouds

A very precise dive into Annie's (and Armin's) relationships through the lens of the family - Annie's father and the one Armin and Annie try to build on their own. It's a fresh and solid exploration with a fantastic character analysis without any restrictions - raw and honest, in all glory. Fantastic style, impressive depths, and a story that leaves a huge impact.

Little Bird by @aquietjune is, perhaps, one of the best Annie-centric fics ever written with a unique post-canon setting and a very sharp, in the most wonderful ways, writing style, that immediately steals you away from this world, and you're caught hostage by June's imagination and mysteries.

Legends by @mimiwrites2000 is an impressive, emotional rollercoaster of canon-divergence with heart-wrenching twists and a beautiful writing style that makes you feel longing for something that you don't even know a name. I would describe this fic as "bittersweet nostalgia".

(just like with Clouds and Moon, go and read everything, honestly)

By Each Crime and Kindness (I'm bound to you) by @aruanimess, in my opinion, is one of the best Cadets AruAni stories I've ever read - the story holds the tense melancholy of the canon with the bittersweet moments of adolescence which was forced to live and to love in their cruel world. But the world is also beautiful, and, I suppose, this is exactly what this story is about.

on the path that led me to you by @the-last-thread-of-my-sanity is another perfect example of one of the best Cadest AruAni fics, in my opinion. Very honest, and fragile, just like the first love and the first leaves in the spring, story, that, however, holds a very deep analysis of AruAni moments during their time as Cadets - and what lies beneath the surface.

The Difference Between Us by @/BreakingSanity - maybe, the most unique AruAni fic ever written. I mean, where else would you find Human!Annie and... Tiny!Annie 4 inches tall romance with unique, complex story-building and universe, plot twists and a lot, a lot of emotions? The story hooked you just from the very first chapter.

Wait By The Ocean by @/SirCookieton is absolutely stellar exploration of the grief and denial, love and hope, that is already doomed from the start, but the sheer longing, the raw emotions that etched every word through the course of the story, leave huge scars in your heart as a reminder that, sometimes, the most difficult part is accepting the inevitable.

Nothing Sweeter Than You, A Perfect Love by @dude-why-3 are my personal favourites and the stories that are very dear to my heart. This is a magical tale of star-crossed lovers in a Romanian village, set in the 1950's, and these stories are a wonderful example of how to write romance stories in general. But let me also mention Who painted the sky? - a story that granted me an experience I never had, but it's so well-written, that it feels like I experienced something like this. It feels like a memory from a summer.

A Force To Be Reckoned by @luciensdefenseattorney a solid historical AU, with mysteries, tension and great background stories! And as for the similar vibe, I would also mention The Viscount and His Silent Ballerina by @/cherriesinmoonlight

These City Lights by @annieleonhardt was one of the first AruAni fics I ever read, and it's still one of my favourites, even if it's not finished. Silent movie director Armin and silent movie actress Annie, set in the early 1920's? Yes, please.

Tater Tots & Heavy Thoughts by Anonymous is still one of the most honest, of the most delicate stories I've ever read, written with a lot of care, attention and love for the details. This story had a huge impact on me, and it still has, so if you want to dive into a fantastic character study through the perspective of some very heavy topics which are explored with a lot of care - this story is exactly for this.

Coveted by @/honeyriot is a majestically written exploration of intimacy and how two ruined souls find solace in each other embrace. 11 chapters of sensuality, honesty, bravery and vulnerability.

On freer seas by @/astralcrow is a very solid Pirate AU, with incredible and stunning world-building, great character analysis and development, and the tension that don't leave you several weeks after you finish this mind-blowing story.

And, some incredible oneshots I really liked a lot:

Tangerine Skies and Muffled Cries by @midnightraine131

A River, An Ocean by @yourmaejesty

Dawn by @/aikrm

okay by @lunamoon1233

Deep Cuts by @dude-why-3

A glimpse of us. by @/Decoii

invisible strings by @diam-etrical

If our love is tragedy why are you my remedy? by @aruxani

But let me summarize that eveyone who creates in AA fandom is incredible, and I'm forever grateful for all the content we have in fandom.

You all are wonderful and thank you a lot!

#aruani #aruani fanfiction #aruani fanfic #aruani fic #arminarlert #annie leonhardt #annie leonhart #armin x annie #answered ask #ask

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speedierthanasubmarine · 2 days

Text

Finished heaven official’s blessing and I really enjoyed writing an analysis on helluva boss I want to make this a regular thing because it’s fun so here’s my thoughts on

Heaven Official’s Blessing

Spoilers (duh)

I think it’s incredibly impressive when someone can make an overarching narrative in which different seemingly disjointed events are significant without A) putting a giant exclamation mark on top saying “REMEMBER THIS IT WILL BE IMPORTANT LATER” and B) Significantly over or under emphasizing the importance of the scene in the moment. Each event stood on its own and I liked that.

There were several janky sentences and word choices but that’s a translation issue, this writer clearly knows what she’s doing.

Characters were a lot of fun and distinct, my favorites were Feng Xin, Pei Ming, Qi Ying, and Ling Wen whenever they were on the page I was like Ah yes, these pages are gonna be enjoyable and I was right, they’re all delightful (cept the brocade immortal stuff, but like I don’t care, Google assistant is fun) Xie Lian and San Lang are delightful, love them, and San Lang is so effed in the head it’s enjoyable to try and imagine what unhinged thing he’ll do next

Tbh there isn’t much plot breakdown I want to do with this series because it knows what it is, it’s a fanfic ass book with good times, trauma, gay fluff, and fights. Need I say more? That’s not a detractor, it’s a strength. Be what you are and own it because a house with a house’s foundation is a great house but slap a building on that house’s foundation and it fails in both regards.

The only aspect I’m going to analyze is the narrative voice the books are written in because holy crap is it super impressive. Xie Lian is a super mature (or ditzy, depending on your point of view) character, he doesn’t dwell on things, doesn’t hold grudges, doesn’t really care that much about people’s histories or even their present, doesn’t focus much on externals and it comes through in the way the book is written. I noticed this when throughout the books San Lang would do fucked up stuff like make it rain blood and kill a pit’s worth of people and Xie Lian kinda didn’t really seem to care and at first it pissed me off, why isn’t the author letting consequences occur because of these peoples’ actions, but then as it held consistently throughout the book and other people kept being super concerned about stuff, like Pei Constantly asking after Shi Qingxuan (I don’t know how to spell their name, it’s so hard to keep track I’m so sorry) or people bringing up Banue, I realized this is just Xie Lian, other people in the book are regular people like me, this one guy is just experiencing things, going “Well, ain’t that something” and then just moving on. Honestly iconic, but also I was halfway through book six when I realized. Especially since whenever they do flashbacks Xie Lian does all normal stuff. He describes settings he’s in, he mentions events that happened a few pages ago, he tells the reader how he feels, it’s after he experiences all his shit he goes through that this all kinda slips away. In “present” scenes he’ll reference things as they come up but like in the flashback after Mu Qing leaves they talk about it a few times and I find that aspect of acknowledgment to be noticeably absent in the “present” scenes. After the black water arc there is a complete lack of discussion about the frankly trauma inducing event that just transpired but sure Cie Lian, you and San Lang have to not hold hands for the billionth time. At first I thought is this author high but then I realized what shes doing is characterizing through prose which is IMPRESSIVE AS HELL. This may be a point I noticed and am now misremembering the entire series just to bolster my take and if that’s the case then I shall sheepishly shrug and say I’m sorry. I’m not rereading 8 books to write a tumblr review. Maybe if I ever start a YouTube channel

I don’t know, I just find it to be an incredible feat of actually good writing when a story is being told through the lens of the main character and you can characterize that character by simply reading the story and seeing how it’s written, not even through dialogue and action. It’s kinda like the Great Gatsby or a Separate Peace, and it’s super cool that a book like this can accomplish the same thing that makes those classics great. There isn’t as much symbolism or analytical potential but those books wouldn’t be nearly as impactful as they were without great execution, which this book pulled off in spades.

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aroaceleovaldez · 2 months

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i hope this doesn't sound like a silly or weird thing to send you, but i'm autistic and have long thought of nico and a handful of other riordanverse characters as autistic and i love your posts about why nico in particular seems intentionally autistic-coded. but i've been thinking, if rick did intend for any of his characters to be autistic, why wouldn't he say so outside of the text at least? i can't think of a good reason why not, when he goes out of his way to be explicit about so many other characters' various marginalized identities and has confirmed things like reyna being asexual outside of the original text. so it gives me this nagging sort of doubt that maybe rick just made nico come off as so extremely autistic coded by accident, somehow. if it wasn't an accident i do kind of wish he'd say so because there's next to zero explicitly stated autistic representation in, like, any media so it'd be nice to have here even if not strictly necessary. either way though, like i said, i love your posts and i agree with you 100% about autistic nico! some others i like to think are autistic are annabeth and leo.

(Most of this is gonna be kind of a tangential ramble to your point and i apologize in advance just bear with me)

This actually touches upon something I've been meaning to do a write-up on recently, which is: depending on the coding, that is our explicit statement. In most coding, actually, that's kind of the point. (Also something something Death of the Author.)

You may have noticed a recent trend across media of characters saying things directly rather than expressing them in a natural way, and often this includes incredibly stilted dialogue of characters explaining things in very politically correct, wikipedia-esque descriptions and terminology that make absolutely no sense for the characters' personalities or mannerisms. This is born out of the idea that if something is not stated in explicit terms, no amount of evidence below an outright direct exact statement will ever count - if two characters of the same gender have an explicit kiss and wedding on-screen, it doesn't matter because they never said the word "gay," etc etc.

In PJO, prior to more recent books, we get plenty of examples of characters explaining parts of their identities without direct statements. Percy never needs to say in outright terms that he has PTSD from Gabe - and it doesn't make sense that he would! He's 12! He's never been diagnosed for that. He probably doesn't even know what PTSD is really. But we, the audience, know without a doubt he has PTSD, because it is clearly expressed to us. That is coding. Tyson is coded as having down syndrome. Nico is coded as being autistic. It doesn't make sense for Nico to turn to the camera and explain that he's autistic and what that means, because he definitely never got diagnosed for it and probably doesn't know what that means cause the diagnosis literally did not exist when he was growing up - and heck, autism terminology was still kind of getting sorted out back in 2007 when TTC was published, so it's unlikely we could have feasibly gotten any exact terminology wink-wink-nudge-nudges short of something like how Percy outright mentions other students called Tyson the r-slur in Sea of Monsters. And in fact we see that same exact style of coding with Nico later on in the series. Nico never turns to the camera and says word-for-word "I am gay, I am mlm, here's me wearing my exact pride flags" (until TOA/TSATS, which... did the exact thing i mentioned about characters speaking like theyre trying to get a good grade in therapy, or giving a powerpoint presentation). But it is never unclear that HoO is telling us outright that Nico is gay. It's not just hinted at. It's there, in your face. But entirely because no one ever outright says "gay" specifically it's technically still only coding. We know he's gay, we know the characters have trauma/ptsd, etc etc. We don't need it spelled out - that's just kind of condescending. It's like if you said describing a character with "eyes like moss" means they were "green-eye coded."

Nico being autistic-coded isn't hidden. It's not a secret. It's very overt. If you know what autism looks like, well, yeah, there he is. Even if you only know very vague 2007 media presentation of autism, Nico in TTC is easily recognizable enough as autistic because that's the point. Tyson is easily recognizable as being coded as having down syndrome and it's very clearly very intentional! It's just never spoon-fed in exact terms to the reader because it's not necessary! You've already been told the information necessary to tell you what is up with this character, so just plainly going "oh they're [x] in exact terms" is very much telling-not-showing and feels redundant. And while there are places for that kind of thing, most of the time it's very unnecessary. Sometimes coding is subtle, sometimes it's obvious, and yeah there are times where writers code characters unintentionally, but the textual evidence is there, and that's the whole point.

And that's what Death of the Author is about - it doesn't matter what the author intended at the end of the day, because if it's in the text it's in the text. You can look at author intent to try and figure out what that text means, but the text is the text. A Separate Peace is a very classic example - author John Knowles denies there being homosexual subtext, and meanwhile one of the protagonists living in 1942 puts on a pink shirt while saying he doesn't mind of people think of him as gay. What the author says after the fact doesn't matter - if it's there, it's there. So Rick saying anything outside of the books is completely irrelevant. And Rick talks about this a lot - he actively tells people that his statements outside of the books are just his own thoughts, but what's in the books is what's in the books, and if the text supports it then that's all the evidence you need.

Nico specifically is a case where yeah, he's clearly autistic-coded. It's very obvious and very obviously intentional when he's younger, and as the books progress it remains a background trait of his but is still notable (except for when it gets forgotten in TOA/TSATS like everything else, including the adhd/dyslexia, but i digress). It's a clear pattern within the first few books that Rick is intentionally including. It doesn't make sense, especially for the year the book was published, for the reader to be directly told in explicit terminology that Nico is autistic, because the reader is already being told that Nico is autistic.

And yeah, Rick doesn't mention Nico being autistic-coded outside of the text, but he also doesn't mention Tyson being coded as having down syndrome. He also said one time that Percy doesn't have PTSD at all, which is very incorrect starting from book 1. Again, Death of the Author. Whatever Rick says outside of the books does not matter, because he already said it in the books. And there's plenty of other stuff in the books that Rick doesn't touch upon, particularly relating to character identity - did you know Leo is Native? Sammy mentions that the Valdez family is Native in Son of Neptune but we don't get any specifics and then it's like never brought up again anywhere. That happens all the time in the series - and outside of the series - Rick can't possibly address every single point to confirm/deny everything from the books. That's what analysis is for! And that's why my blog exists 👍

#pjo #riordanverse #nico di angelo #autistic nico #analysis #ask #Anonymous #long post //#tone indicator just to be sure cause i know i used a lot of italics: this is all non-agressive/not mad i prommy #im just very passionate about this topic (coding & fandom concepts surrounding ''canon'' + death of the author)#also controversial opinion cause i know some people have talked about wanting the use of the r-slur in SoM censored #but i think it should stay because. well. yeah no that was still very commonly used in 2006 #trust me i heard it a lot. i was there. in fact it was commonly used after that point. for awhile.#it wasnt until like a bit into the 2010s iirc that campaigns started to go ''hey maybe. dont use that word.''#like that was RECENT #and yeah! these books are not old! TLT is only just coming up on 20 years. thats not super old for a book!#and yeah! that term was considered a-okay terminology to be used in a middle grade book in 2006! which is startling to think now!#but that's also why it's important to not erase that #because otherwise you forget that up until very recently that word was considered Perfectly Acceptable #and in SoM it's even specifically acknowledged to be used in a hurtful way! Percy is actively condemning it!#like. dont put it in the show or whatever. obviously. replace it with a different indication/coding to explain Tyson's struggles #not that i think Disney would put the r-slur in their show. but like. dont erase it from the book??? from 2006??????#i am frightened to see how the show will handle tyson though. its not gonna go well i can feel it in my bones #anyways man i should post that excerpt from A Separate Peace though #just cause that scene has lived in my brain rent-free for years

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paimonial-rage · 6 months

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from your character analysis ask meme, for alhaitham: Are they prone to jealousy? would he be too logical to be jealous? Would his jealousy be in vain or would it perhaps be a sign that his partner has crossed the line of sorts?

Definition of jealousy:

I apologize for taking some time with this ask. I’m going to answer this in a more analytical format because I think this situation calls for it. I want to say that no, under normal circumstances, Alhaitham is not the kind of person to get jealous. In my experience, there are usually three triggers for jealousy:

1. Reader interacting normally with friends and hobbies and partner gets (unreasonably) jealous

2. Reader getting too involved with spending time with friends/hobbies not realizing they’re neglecting partner which gets them (reasonably) jealous

3. Reader specifically does things that will incite jealousy within partner by purposefully doing things like ignoring partner or flirting with others

Alhaitham would not get jealous under the first instance. Being a very independent person, he would understand and respect his partner’s need for it as well. The second instance would be the closest he’d feel to your definition of jealousy. While he’d be able to withstand it for a while, eventually he’d probably feel neglected and would pull you away to capture your sole attention.

As for the third scenario, while he would get upset and would get jealous, I don’t believe this would happen in a normal relationship. Personally, I would never flirt with someone that isn’t my partner just for fun, even if I’m close to them. I think that’s a very hurtful thing to do to someone that has feelings for you.

So long story short, no, I don’t think Alhaitham is prone to jealousy. Not that he’s “too logical” to be jealous. He just understands and respects people’s need for independence. That being said, he probably can end up feeling neglected if left alone too long.

#genshin impact #genshin x reader #alhaitham #alhaitham x reader #anon #character analysis ask meme #now as i always do i’m going to answer the part you’re looking for in the tags #the reason why alhaitham wouldnt be a jealous person is that hes both reasonable and he doesnt play games #when you enter into a relationship with alhaitham he will make time for you and seek you out #he's self-regulating in that way that he'll make sure to get his fill of you regularly #even if you are busy he'll find some way to slot yourself in your schedule #and like... the thing with him is that he really doesnt need much #itd take you turning him down consistently for other things for him to get jealous and feel neglected #this is when he gets immature because if you try to spend time with him after you can expect some passive aggressive sass #'hmm... you seemed to be having a lot more fun with them instead'#you'd have to make it up to him #add onto that someone flirting with you? he'd swoop in there to stake his claim #that being said i highly doubt this would happen often?#you'd have to be REALLY DENSE to neglect him up to this point #when he is feeling neglected expect him to be more physically touchy #he'd just want you near #haha #sorry this isnt much #i'm the wrong person to go to for jealousy asks #i'm not a person that finds jealousy attractive #unreasonable jealousy i find restrictive and childish #reasonable jealousy i find as a sign i am not doing my job as a significant other #my job as someone's partner is to make them feel loved and needed no matter what #so if theyre not feeling that that means i'm doing something wrong and i need to fix it

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nikikikiko · 2 months

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Angsty set of Morgana-opinion Headcanons for the GaGene family bc yk what they need a bad day. just a bit of a bad day.

• Conrad is an easy subject. Morgana is… a much more complicated topic of discussion for the family. She’s influenced a large part of Gavus’s life, and raised Liberta, and they both have varying opinions on her.

• Gavus is a lot more solid in his feelings, they’re complicated, yes, but he’s solid in that his disapproves of her actions. He’s had time to come to terms that what she is doing is not okay and that he cannot support her any longer. Gavus knows that Morgana is not as good a person he thought she was, but even then. He cannot truly bring himself to hate her. She hurt him, his kids, his husband, and yet he cannot find it in him to hate her. He still wants to plead with her and make her see reason, even after knowing she won’t listen. He does find it painful, even now, to think about the good times with her. It’s jolting to know someone you loved and respected turned out to be so horrible, and it taints everything, Morgana is no exception.

• On Liberta’s side, it’s quite a bit more complicated. Liberta doesn’t know how to respond to Morgana’s actions and horribleness. He doesn’t want to believe it at all actually. He finds himself, often, unable to process what he had actually went through and what is good and bad in his childhood with Morgana because he genuinely cannot tell. Not to mention she treated him nicely, like a son! She can’t be all that bad then, right? She’s still a good person deep down, because she has to be.

• He’s got a good ol’ case of Mafuyu Asahina basically

• Eugene, on his own opinions, hates Morgana. He despises her, and every single fake ass person on the Celestial’s faction. He hates that she messed up badly, that she betrayed Gavus and raised Liberta to believe that his feelings don’t matter. He hates that she did that to his family, and he hates how the situation is complicated. It’s not like everyone can agree she sucks as easily as they do with Conrad. Hell, it hurts him that Liberta even saw her as a parental figure at all! That fucking sucks, and he can’t do anything about it because she DID raise his kid, like it or not. He’s mindful about what he says about her around the kids, but next to Gavus he’s mouthing her off left and right as many chances as he can get whenever she comes up in conversation.

• This both amuses and irritates Gavus. It’s essentially like, “Raven, I know you hate Morgana but can we focus for a second??”. The amusement moreso comes from the fact at least one of them holds enough hatred in their heart for both of them for that woman, thank you Eugene.

• Lastly, Lucilla. Lucilla’s feelings are extremely simplified: Morgana = Conrad. Conrad = Bad, Hate that guy. Morgana = Bad, Hate that girl. She understands there’s more nuance to it for Liberta and Gavus, she’s not dumb, and she can, to an extent, recognize where Liberta is coming from. However, it frustrates her a lot whenever she hears words in Morgana’s defense, from Celestials or otherwise. It’s awful, terrible. Just what about Morgana needs defending? What could possibly be so good about her? She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get any of it.

• Pretty much, the overall opinion as a family is, well, it’s complicated. Her actions run a bit deeper because of her emotional hold on two of their family members, and Conrad at least made it easy by acting like he doesn’t care (because, well, he doesn’t! Mans is as straight forward as he sounds: he just wanted power and destruction.), but Morgana? Morgana acted like she cared, and maybe she did at one point. For Gavus. Maybe she cared a lot about Gavus, and maybe she got attached to Liberta as well. But it doesn’t erase what she did, just simply complicates it further for the ones she hurt, because they loved her.

#afk arena #afk gavus #afk eugene #afk liberta #afk lucilla #morgana too #i have a LOT of feelings with morgana and a lot of it is like a #its a whole analysis kind of thing ???#i dont feel shes as cut and dry as conrad is with this family #i think shes a much more complicated subject bc like #plain as day shes lied to and betrayed gavus and manipulated him #she emotionally abused liberta #and yet she also goes personally out of her way to try and get gavus redeemed for celestials and herself #when he stands firm to his grounds she doesnt kill him she simply leaves him in a prison #so like #she does care a tiny bit about them #her evilness however overshadows her care bc shes not willing to change her ways at all even when its hurting the people she claims to care #about #DO YOU SEE WHY THIS WOULD BE A COMPLICATED SUBJECT #THERES SO MUCH THAT HAS TO GO INTO THIS GOR LIBERTA AND GAVUS ESP BRO #anyways i hope she dies #make it uncomplicated and just die evil wench #bah

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blueskittlesart · 10 months

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any thoughts on how once again zelda was robbed of her agency because her "father figure" didn't listen to her? even if rauru was kinder to her than her father. and that she had sonia who was patient and loving for a little while before she died (just like her mother). i know rauru apologizes for his hubris but still, i wish we saw zelda be upset about it. and even if zelda was such a big part of the quest she still literally sacrificed her humanity once again because of someone else's mistake- because rauru literally didn't listen to the girl from the future that warned you that shit was going to go down. o know nintendo just loves putting zelda inside crystals and stones but i wish we got something better. even if it was her decision to become a dragon... did she have any other choice? it really just feels like they robbed her of agency again just like botw and the games before

i've been trying to figure out how to answer this one. because there are two ways i could analyze this plot point, either from a writer's perspective or an in-story perspective, but neither of those lead to me fully agreeing with your interpretation? I think there's definitely something to be said about zelda consistently being pushed aside in these games, but. well. ok let's get into it ig

from a writer's perspective, I do honestly have quite a bit of sympathy for the zelda devs as they attempt to navigate the modern political landscape with these games. The cyclical lore, though canonized relatively recently, holds them to a standard of consistency in their games in terms of certain key elements. one of those key elements is that there has to be a princess, and that princess must somehow be the main macguffin of the game. The player must chase her, and the end goal of the game must be to reunite the player and the princess. In 1986 this was an incredibly easy sell. women didn't need to be characters. players were content with saving a 2-dimensional princess whose only purpose was to tell them "good job!" at the end. but as society advances, that princess becomes a much more difficult character to write while adhering to the established overarching canon. (as a side note: i don't necessarily believe that the writers SHOULD be held to the standards of that canon. I think deviating from it in certain areas would be a good change of pace. but i also recognize that deviations from the formula are widely hated by the loz playerbase and that they're trying to make money off these games, so we're working under the established rule that the formula must be at least loosely adhered to.) Modern fans want a princess who is a person, who has agency and makes decisions and struggles in the same way the hero does. but modern fans ALSO want a game that follows the established rules of the canon. so we need a princess who is a real character but who can ALSO serve as a macguffin within the narrative, something that is inherently somewhat objectifying.

the two games that i think do the best job writing a princess with agency are skyward sword and botw (based on your ask, our opinions differ there lol. hear me out) in both games, we have a framing event which seperates zelda and link, but in both games, that separation was ZELDA'S CHOICE. skyward sword zelda runs away from link out of fear of hurting him. botw zelda chooses to return to the castle alone to allow link the time he needs to heal. sksw kinda fumbled later on by having ghirahim kidnap her anyway, but. i said BEST not PERFECT. botw zelda I think is the better example because, with the context of the memories, she's arguably MORE of a character than link is. we see her struggles, her breakdowns, her imperfection, specifically we see her struggle with her lack of agency within the context of the game itself. when she steps in front of link in the final memory, and when she chooses to return to the castle, those are some of the first choices we see her make almost completely free of outside influence; a RECLAMATION of her agency (within the narrative) after years of having it stripped from her. from an objective viewer's standpoint, this writing decision still means she is absent from 90% of the game and that she has little control over her actions for the duration of the player's journey. however I think this is just about the best they could have done to create a princess with agency and a real character arc while still keeping the macguffin formula intact--you're not really SAVING zelda in botw. SHE is the one that is saving YOU; when you wake up on the plateau with no memories, too weak to fight bokoblins, let alone calamity ganon. the reason you are allowed to train and heal in early-game botw is because SHE is in the castle holding ganon back, protecting YOU. When you enter the final fight, you're not rescuing zelda, you're relieving her of her duty. taking over the work she's been doing for the past hundred years. in the final hour, you both work in tandem to defeat ganon. while this isn't a PERFECT example of a female character with agency and narrative weight, i think it's a pretty good one, especially in the context of save-the-princess games like loz.

as for totk, you put a lot of emphasis on rauru not believing zelda and taking action immediately, which, again, from an objective standpoint, i understand. but even when we're writing characters with social implications in mind, those character's actions still need to... make sense. Rauru was a king ruling over what he believed to be a perfectly peaceful kingdom. zelda literally fell out of the sky, landed in front of him, claimed to be his long-lost granddaughter, and then told him that some random ruler of a fringe faction in the desert was going to murder him and he had to get the jump on it by killing him first. the ruler which this girl is trying to convince rauru to wage an unprompted war on has the power to disguise himself as other people. no one in their right mind would immediately take the girl at her word. war is not something any leader should jump into without proper research and consideration, and to rauru's credit, he DIDN'T ever outright dismiss zelda. he believed her when she said she was from the future, he allowed her to work with him and he took her warnings as seriously as he could without any further proof. but he could not wage an unprompted war on ganondorf. that's just genuinely not practical, especially for a king who values peace among his people as much as rauru seems to. as soon as ganondorf DID attack, giving rauru confirmation that zelda's accounts of the future were real, he began making preparations to confront him. remember that zelda didn't KNOW that rauru and sonia were going to be casualties of the war--she didn't make the connection between rauru's arm in the future and rauru the king until AFTER sonia's death, when rauru made the decision to attack ganondorf directly. I think the imprisoning war and the casualties of it were less an issue of zelda being denied agency and more an issue of no one, including zelda, having full context for the events as they were unfolding. if zelda had KNOWN that sonia and rauru were going to die from the beginning and was still unable to prevent it that would be a different issue, but she didn't. none of them did.

I think another thing worth pointing out with rauru and his death irt zelda is that rauru is clearly written specifically as a foil to rhoam. this is evident in how he treats both zelda and link, with a constant kindness and understanding which is clearly opposite to rhoam's dismissiveness and disappointment. consider rhoam's death and the circumstances surrounding it. He died because, in zelda's eyes, she was unable to do her duty; the one thing he constantly berated her for. Rhoam's death solidified zelda's belief that she was a failure, a belief which she KNEW rhoam held as well. his death was doubly traumatic to her because she knew he died believing it was her fault. Now contrast that to the circumstances surrounding rauru's death. Rauru CHOSE to die despite zelda's warnings, because he wanted zelda and his kingdom to live. rauru's death was not agency-stripping for zelda; in fact, it functioned almost as an admission that he believed her capable of continuing to live in his place. With him gone, the fate of the kingdom fell to her and the sages. he KNEW that he would die and still went into that battle confidently, trusting zelda to make the right decisions once he was gone. where rhoam believed zelda incapable of doing ANYTHING without link, rauru trusted zelda COMPLETELY with the fate of his kingdom. several details in totk confirm that when rauru died there was no plan for zelda to draconify, that all happened after rauru was gone. it was HER plan, the plan which rauru trusted her to come up with once he was gone. and I think it's also worth noting that zelda's sacrifice with the draconification parallels rauru's!! Rauru gives up his life trusting the sages and his people to be able to continue his work in his place. Zelda gives up her physical form trusting link and the sages in the future to be able to figure out what to do and find her. these games in general have this recurring theme but totk specifically is all about love and trust and reliance on others. zelda relies on link, link relies on zelda, they both rely on the champions and the sages and rauru and sonia and they all rely each other. reliance on others isn't lack of agency, it's a constant choice they make, and that choice is the thing which allows them to triumph.

The draconification itself is something i view similarly to zelda's sacrifice in botw--a choice she makes which, symbolically & within the confines of the narrative, is a demonstration of her reclaimed agency and places her at the center of the narrative, but which ALSO removes her from much of the player's experience and robs her of any overt presence or decisionmaking within the gameplay. again, I think this is a solution to the macguffin-with-agency dilemma, and it's probably one of the better solutions they could have come up with. Would I have liked to see a game where zelda is more present within the actual gameplay? yes, but I also understand that at this point the writers aren't quite willing to deviate that much from their formula. the alternative within the confines of this story would be to let zelda DIE in the past, removing her from gameplay ENTIRELY, which is an infinitely worse option in my opinion. draconification allowed her to be present, centered the narrative around her, and allowed the writers to reiterate the game's theme of trust and teamwork when she assists the player in the final battle, which i think was a REALLY great choice, narratively speaking.

In any case, I don't think it's right to say that zelda was completely robbed of her agency in botw and totk. Agency doesn't always mean that she's unburdened and constantly present, it means she's given the freedom to make her own choices and that her choices are realistically written with HER in mind, not just the male characters around her, and I think botw/totk do a pretty good job of writing her and her choices realistically and with nuance.

#as a note i do think that loz still has a LONG way to go in terms of defining female characters by their relationships with men #and i acknowledge that a lot of zelda's choices within these games are STILL made irt male characters like her father link rauru etc #BUT i still don't think it's fair to act like shes been completely stripped and reduced to a damsel because.. she hasn't.#she's a very nuanced depiction of a girl who is used to being dismissed and ignored and powerless #her initial response to that powerlessness in botw was to reject everyone. she got loud and mean and she tried to do everything alone #and she discovered that that wasn't the right way to get what she wanted. it didnt make her happy and it didn't win her anyones approval #what DID work for her was learning to rely on the people around her and work with them. she found solace in teamwork and family #which is why in the final battle she and link fight TOGETHER against ganon. neither of them can do it alone but they can together #the same thing applies to totk. she continues her own journey by finding others like her who understand her powers and can teach her #so by the time she DOES end up alone she has been given the confidence and skillset to figure out what she has to do #you get it. you understand what im saying #asks #totk spoilers #zelda analysis

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