#finding parallels between characters....

[sotogalmo]

10:10

Till Alnst 🤝 Ace Markey: fighting for their lives and then resigning to die, because they get to see someone they care for (or just someone on the end of their life protect someone else). Yet they are scared to die. They don't want to die the way others plan their death to be. If they were to die, it would be by their own ways. They knew that they (probably for Till) wouldn't survive the game/competition. They were also probably ready to die too (in Till's case, I would be. In Aces case yes I would act like him too- tho I dunno too much). They are so scared. So fucking scared.

[cenvast]

"Toshiro Is Sexist," "Toshiro Owns Slaves": What's Really Going on With This Guy?

I've seen a lot of debate on whether or not Toshiro is problematic because he's a slave owner or because he's sexist in the context of his crush on Falin. While I do want to examine his relationship to Falin, I'd like to take a few steps back and unpack his upbringing first. We'll dive into the gender and class dynamics he was raised with and how it impacts his behavior in the main storyline.

Like all people, Toshiro is shaped by the environment he grew up in. Toshitsugu, Toshiro's father and the head of the Nakamoto clan, is the most impactful model of authority and manhood in his life. Toshiro does recognize some of his father's flaws and tries to avoid replicating them. But whether or not he emulates or subverts his father's behavior, Toshitsugu is often the starting point for Toshiro's treatment of others, particularly marginalized people.

The Nakamoto clan exists under a patriarchal hierarchy with Toshitsugu at the top. As noted by @fumifooms in their Nakamoto household post, his wife has more authority than Maizuru. She's able to ban Maizuru from parts of their residence, but despite disliking his infidelity, she can't divorce him or stop him from cheating on her. Their marriage is not an equal partnership.

On an interpersonal level, Toshitsugu and Maizuru also have a fraught relationship. While she does seem to care for him, she's often frustrated by his thoughtless behavior.

For example, he drunkenly buys Izutsumi for her — without considering how she'll have to raise this child — and invades her room in the middle of the night. When he cryptically says, "It's all my fault," she replies, "I can think of a lot of things that are your fault." She calls him an "idiot" and "believes that [Toshiro] will grow up to be a better clan leader than his father," implying that she takes issue with Toshitsugu's leadership.

Because Maizuru and Toshitsugu are described as being "in an intimate relationship" and "seem[ing] to be lovers," Maizuru appears to be a consensual participant. Still, this doesn't negate the large power imbalance between them as a male noble clan leader and his female retainer. This imbalance introduces an insidious undertone to Maizuru's frustration with Toshitsugu. Like Toshiro's mother, Maizuru doesn't have the agency to do as she pleases in their relationship; he has the ultimate authority. For instance, she doesn't seem to want to raise Izutsumi, but she has to anyway.

While Maizuru's role as Toshitsugu's mistress is significant, she's also the Nakamoto clan's teacher and Toshiro's primary maternal figure. She cares deeply for Toshiro: tailing him, feeding him, and taking responsibility even for his actions as an adult. While it might seem sweet that she cares for him like a son at first, Maizuru was notably fifteen years old at the time of his birth. In the extra comic below, he's six years old and has already been in her care for some time. Even if we're being generous and assuming that she didn't start raising him until he was six, she was still only twenty-one at the time she was parenting her boss/lover's child with another woman.

Maizuru's roles as mistress and maternal figure, in addition to her role as retainer, demonstrate the intersection between gendered and class oppression in the Nakamoto household. Despite her original role being a retainer trained in espionage, Toshitsugu presses her into performing gendered labor for him and eventually, Toshiro. She's expected to be Toshitsugu's lover, perform emotional labor for him as his confidant, care for his child, and carry out domestic tasks like cooking. She says, "Even during missions, I was often dragged into the kitchen." If she was a male servant, I doubt she would have been expected to perform these additional tasks. She can't avoid these tasks either, stating that her "own feelings don't factor into it."

Toshitsugu disregards his wife's and Maizuru's desires and emotions to serve his own interests. Because he has societal power over them as a nobleman and in Maizuru's case, her master, neither woman can escape their position in the household hierarchy.

As a result, Toshiro grew up within a structure where men and male nobility, in particular, wield the most societal power. The hierarchical nature of his household and society discourages everyone, including him as a clan leader's eldest son, from questioning and disrupting the existing hierarchy.

The other Nakamoto household members also internalize its sexist, classist power dynamics.

For example, Hien expects that she and Toshiro will replicate the uneven dynamics of the previous generation, regardless of her personal feelings. She sees her and Toshiro's relationship as paralleling Maizuru and Toshitsugu's relationship; she is the closest woman to Toshiro and his retainer, so she's shocked when Toshiro doesn't attempt to begin an intimate relationship with her. Notably, she doesn't have actual feelings for him. Her expectations are centered around the household's precedent of placing emotional, sexual, domestic, and child-rearing labor onto the female servants without any regard for their personal desires.

Hien also probably knows that her position in the household will improve if she is Toshiro's lover because she's seen it improve Maizuru's position. However, the fact that being the future clan leader's lover is the closest proximity she, as a female servant, has to power further reveals the gendered, class-based oppression she and the other women live under.

It's important to note that the Nakamoto clan bought Benichidori, Izutsumi, and Inutade as slaves, so they have less power and agency than Maizuru and Hien. The clan further dehumanizes Izutsumi and Inutade as demi-humans; their enslavement contains an additional layer of racialization.

Toshiro isn't oblivious to the gendered, class, and racial power dynamics of his household. He tries to distance himself from participating in its exploitative power structure. He walls himself off from Hien, who he's known since childhood, to avoid replicating his father's behavior and making his servant into his lover. He disapproves of his father's enslavement of Izutsumi and Inutade, and he lets Izutsumi go when she runs away in the Dungeon.

But does any of this absolve him of his complicity in his household's sexist, classist power dynamics and racialized slavery?

The short answer is absolutely not.

Despite his distaste for his father's exploitation of his servants and slaves, Toshiro still uses them. He refers to his party as "his retainers," and he has them fight and perform domestic tasks for him. You could argue that Toshiro doesn't like to and thus, doesn't regularly use his servants and slaves. In the context of him asking his retainers to help him rescue Falin, Maizuru says, "The only time he ever made any sort of personal request was for this task." But it shouldn't matter whether exploitation is a regular occurrence or not for it to be considered harmful. Toshiro asking Maizuru to cook him a meal still constitutes asking his female servant to perform gendered labor for him. He's also very accustomed to her grooming and dressing him.

Maizuru sees feeding, washing, and even advising Toshiro romantically as fulfilling Toshitsugu's orders to care for his son. They aren't fulfilling a "personal request." But just because her labor has been deemed expected and thereby devalued doesn't mean that it isn't labor or that she isn't performing it.

Maizuru's dynamic with Toshiro is also complicated by her role as his maternal figure. She loves him and wants to take care of him, and she doesn't have a choice in the matter. During Toshiro's childhood, the onus was on Toshitsugu to cease exploiting his lover and release her from servitude, but Toshiro is now an adult man. Seeing as how Maizuru defers to his wishes and calls him "Young Master," they still have a power imbalance that he's passively maintaining. Ideally, he would not ask anything of her until he has the authority to release her from servitude.

Throughout the story, Toshiro acts as if he has no agency and quietly disapproving of his father's actions absolves him of his participation in maintaining oppressive dynamics. While his father still ranks higher than him, he's essentially his father's heir. He has much more power than Maizuru, the highest-ranked servant. At the very least, he could leave his slave-owning household.

Unfortunately, his refusal to confront injustice is consistent with his character's major flaw: he does not express his opinions, desires, or needs. While this character trait obviously hurts his friendships, it also furthers his complicity in the injustices his household runs on.

Toshiro's relationship with eating food — the prevailing metaphor of the series — also parallels his relationship with confronting injustice. Maizuru mentions that he was a sickly child, so the act of eating may have been physically uncomfortable for him. As an adult, his refusal to eat crops up during his rescue attempt of Falin. Denying himself food might have been punishment for not accomplishing important tasks like rescuing Falin and/or a way to maintain control over something in his life when he felt like he'd lost control over the rest of it, again in the context of losing Falin. (Note: I suggest reading this post on Toshiro's disordered eating by @malaierba.)

But he cannot and does not avoid consuming food forever.

Similarly, Toshiro keeps his distance from his retainers and tries not to use them until the Falin situation occurs. His efforts to avoid exploiting his retainers amount to inaction — things he doesn't ask of them or do to them. But his inaction does nothing to dismantle the existing hierarchy that places his retainers under his authority, denies them agency, and often marginalizes them as not only servants or slaves but as women, and he ends up using them as servants and slaves anyways.

Returning to the narrative's themes of consumption, Toshiro cannot avoid eating just as he cannot avoid perpetuating the exploitative system of his household. The Nakamoto clan consumes the labor and personhood of those lower in the hierarchy. The retainers' labor as spies and domestic servants is the foundation of the clan's existence. Thus, the clan consumes their labor to sustain itself.

Within this hierarchy, the retainers' personhood is also consumed and erased. As Izutsumi describes, they are given different names and stripped of their agency to reject orders or leave. Maizuru and Hien also say their feelings are irrelevant in the context of Toshitsugu's and Toshiro's wants and needs. Both women are expected to comply with whatever is most beneficial and comfortable for the noblemen. Clearly, despite Toshiro's detachment from his household's functions, these social structures remain in place and harm the women under him.

Although we know the Nakamoto clan has male retainers, the choice to highlight the female retainers seems intentional. We're asked to interrogate how not only being a servant or a slave in a noble household impacts a person's life and agency, but how being a woman intersects with being a member of some of the lowest social classes.

Toshiro only distances himself from his father's behaviors of infidelity and exploitation so long as it doesn't take Toshiro out of his comfort zone. He doesn't free his slaves. He's far too comfortable with his female retainers performing domestic labor for him, and he barely acknowledges their efforts; they're shocked when he thanks them for helping him save Falin. He hasn't unpacked his sexist (or classist or racist) biases because he perpetuates his household's oppressive hierarchy throughout the narrative. Considering all of this, he inevitably brings this baggage to his interactions with Falin.

Falin is presumably one of the first women he's had extended contact with that isn't his relative or his family's servant. Because of his trauma surrounding his father and Maizuru sleeping together, he understandably falls for a woman as disconnected as possible from his father and his clan. He seems to genuinely like Falin, respects her boundaries, and graciously accepts her rejection. His behavior towards her is overall kind and unproblematic.

But if Falin had gone with him, she would've likely been devalued and sidelined like the other women of the Nakamoto household. No matter how much he loves Falin, simply loving her cannot replace the difficult work of unlearning his sexism. Love, of course, can and should be accompanied by that work, but by the close of the narrative, we gain little indication that Toshiro acknowledges or seeks to end his part in exploiting and devaluing women and other marginalized people.

A spark of hope does exist. Toshiro expressing his feelings to Laios and Falin suggests that his time away from home has encouraged him to speak up more. Breaking his habit of avoidance may be the first step towards acknowledging his complicity in systems of injustice and moving towards dismantling them.

Special thanks to my very smart friend @atialeague for bringing up Toshitsugu's relationship with Maizuru and the replication of dynamics of consumption and class! <3

[mags-cp]

Wip✨️

This is a work in progress and nothing is definitive yet, but I would love to hear some ideas or feedback for the design or the possible backstory😊

[slickricklj]

Jill Valentine + Chris Redfield - When you know, you know.

Bonus:

[yamsfan]

HARD TO FIND 难寻 (2024)

[roxasboxas]

I am fixated on all of the things we were together But those are fragments that are better off Lost forever...

[daylighteclipsed]

ive been replaying kh1 (going thru the whole series on steam since i never got the chance to play all the games) and i was struck by something a bit odd. i have been dyinggg to talk about it

it's about kairi and her past.

i don't think she's a replica or construct necessarily

but in kh2 there's a parallel drawn between her and sally in halloween town; and the same i think could be true in kh1.

sally is a Frankenstein monster/doll made by the doctor. the entire plot of Halloween town centers around the need for the dr to make a "heart" which requires memories from Sally (the scene of her picking the forget me nots looks a lot like kairi holding a flower for aqua too)

sora takes interest in the project to restore a heart to the heartless too because of his desire to restore Kairi's heart.

i havent really come up with a coherent thought about what this means.

but given that we know kairi was experimented on in a way that involved her heart, it just seems suspicious that this parallel was made twice to her and a doll that was stitched together and animated by a mad scientist.

shes also compared to chirithy in kh3, which from my understanding were created by MoM for keyblade weilders; and to Pooh, who is a toy/story book character that came to life

given too that Kairi already has a weird thing going on with her heart, it just seems possible that theres something..more to it that i have yet to piece together. and its driving me crazy

NO, WAIT… ANON YOU’RE COOKING. Idk what it all means either, but those parallels are so good and so true. Cause there definitely is something artificial about Kairi’s heart, even if just partially. It was experimented on, like you said, and it looks completely different than the organic hearts we see, and I suspect that’s why we’ve never seen Kairi’s heart station. Because it’s (at least partially) artificial. It would look totally different than all the other heart stations and would probably give away what’s going on.

[venice-1987]

Obsessed with the idea of Sonic being a narrative foil to Shadow, and a character parallel to Maria

[joy-girl]

Jinshi from The Apothecary Diaries and Boa Hancock from One Piece have so much in common:

- both are beautiful af and use that as an advantage to get what they want (and both are shocked when that doesn't work with Maomao and Luffy)

- neither of them feel attraction for people swooning over them

- both are drama queens

- both fell in love with weirdos (affectionate) that don't look at them with heart eyes like all the others

- both of them are so down bad, that they either went through depressive episodes or delusional fantasies when their crush is not around, or even fell ill because of love

- both have silly reactions when it comes to interacting with their crush

- both are strong and intelligent

- both are sooo jealous

- both have a position of power, also tied to an empire

- they have a similar haircut

[baeshijima]

……

what the fuck.

[number1villainstan]

watching The Landscape Framed By Kozue (episode 14) and, huh, Juri&Kozue parallels anyone?

-The Shadow Girl play for this episode (waitress advertising food and drinks, doing her job, while the man who's the only one in the car claims he doesn't want anything, and then Utena says "So ignore her" and he immediately orders a drink and sandwich) makes me think that maybe this is about Kozue wanting to return to the idyllic "sunlit garden" as much as Miki does, which is also supported by those sepia-photograph flashbacks she has earlier in the episode. Furthermore, when Miki offers her a milkshake before the duel, she claims she can't drink something that sweet, but after her duel she asks Miki to make a milkshake for her--and the milkshake has been set up as the symbol of childhood innocence for this episode. Even more so: the duel song for the episode is about a "time machine," and the fourth lyric is "taking me back to my innocent childhood days".

-So if Kozue wants to return to her idyllic "sunlit garden" nostalgia-tinged childhood, but claims she doesn't, then why is she pretending she doesn't want it? Because she thinks it's impossible. And Juri's whole thing (as we all know) is wanting something (the miracle of Shiori returning her lesbian love) but believing it's impossible, and coping with that dissonance by denouncing the thing she actually wants (trying to disprove the power of miracles). Which means that Kozue and Juri are using the same unhealthy coping mechanism to cope with two different problems.

-In another vein: both Juri and Kozue seek power within the systems of Ohtori, power that would normally be denied to them on the basis of their gender. Juri is on the Student Council, dresses in a uniform much closer to the 'boy's' than the 'girl's'*, and is shown to be able to dismiss teachers on her own authority--she has gained systemic power. Kozue has not gained systemic power--instead, she assumes a 'cool' persona, and uses sex, femininity, and that 'cool' persona to gain an more informal influence with people that do have systemic or formal power (e.g. Kozue walking off with Akio in the Akiopocalypse arc). In this case, Kozue and Juri are using different tactics to deal with the same issue of being denied power or autonomy on the basis of their gender. And furthermore, they're both seen as somewhat 'deviant' from Ohtori's ideal femininity for their efforts.

*I very much read Juri as a butch transmasc lesbian, or something close to that, but in the Utena Weekly thread it was stated that in the 90s a woman in power performing masculinity was seen as just trying to fit in with the boys/doing what she had to do to gain power, which is why I list Juri's masculine presentation here.

-Both Kozue and Juri call the person they're most closely associated with (Miki and Shiori, respectively) 'innocent', although with somewhat different connotations. Juri calls Shiori innocent in relation to the idea of lesbian love, in the sense Juri doesn't think that Shiori understands/is capable of understanding Juri's emotions towards her. Kozue calls Miki innocent (maybe not outright, but it's implied that that's what she thinks of him) in the sense that he refuses to grow up and see the world for the cruel place it is (in Kozue's eyes). Both of these instances draw on the idea that 'innocence' is a state of not knowing something important: innocence as ignorance as well as--or perhaps even more than--blamelessness.

-In addition, both of the people they call 'innocent' often do serious harm because of their ignorance. Shiori's torment of Juri is very deliberate harm, but it hits worse than Shiori realizes because of Juri's hidden feelings. Miki is less deliberate in the harm he causes, but his Madonna/whore complex and the misogyny that surrounds that still hurt those around him (i.e. treating Anthy like an object, refusing to see Kozue as a person).

So we've got: Kozue and Juri using a similar coping mechanism to deal with different issues (denying that they want something because they feel it's impossible to obtain, miracles for Juri and a regression to the Sunlit Garden for Kozue), using different coping mechanisms to deal with the same issue (Juri tries to gain formal power and Kozue informal power to deal with their systemic powerlessness), and using the term 'innocent', meaning 'ignorant', to describe the person each of them is obsessed with. A lot of these character parallels come from the patriarchal nature of their setting and the idealization of things which should not be idealized, like people or the childhood you don't remember quite right. Both Kozue and Juri attempt to reject the norms that surround them, but both of their rejections are incomplete, which is why neither of them have left yet--they still have deconstruction and disentangling to do before they're capable of walking away from Ohtori.

[streets-in-paradise]

Troy (2004) and Thor (2011) parallel

Achilles and Thor bonding with their respective love interests while explaining overlooked aspects of a topic they are passionate about.

[charleemoon]

if francis and reba have no fans i am dead

[cerulean-renegade]

I might have a very specific taste in scifi/fantasy main characters

(for nimona, i combined the lore from the nimona graphic novel and movie)

[tilda-rothery]

My watch of Star Trek: Prodigy and the dynamic between Janeway and Chakotay has got me thinking about Sam and Jack from SG-1. Two completely different franchises that have a set of characters that would absolutely go to the ends of the galaxy to save the other.

I haven't watched all that much Star Trek, I will admit. But I'm getting there, I promise.

I have, however, watched Stargate more times than I can count (though it did end at season 8 for me) and there is an episode where Sam spends months trying to figure out a way to save Jack after he's stranded on an alien planet and Good ol' Dr Frasier (I love her, by far my favourite recurring character, hence why I use the name Rothery) asks Sam if her feelings are a problem because, hello, regulations and you can't have feelings for your CO Sam.

And then there's the time Sam gets stuck in an interstellar cloud, alone on the Prometheus and Jack can't do a whole lot to help her, so he ends up feeling entirely useless and Teal'c talks to him about how there was a time Sam felt very much the same when he was M.I.A once again on a different alien planet than the one mentioned above.

The need to do all that they can to save the other while probably feeling completely and utterly helpless, because where do you start?

And Upgrades people, let's not forget about Upgrades!

There are just so many instances but these are the ones I was reminded of when I watched Prodigy, because for me, the scenes with Janeway desperate to save Chakotay just vibed in a similar way. And yes, I need to watch more Voyager because I don't know the half of it yet.

The only difference in Stargate is that the feelings are acknowledged on screen by Sam and Jack, but we can just leave them in the room, sir if you want and pretend we don't have them, when we totally do. That's cool Carter, let's do that. Alrighty then...

And I forgot where I was going with this, it's late and I'm tired and now I am just rambling and not making any sense...

But I guess my point was who doesn't want someone that would travel through time and space to save your ass because the world is a better place with you in it, all because they love you so goddamn much?

And sure it can be platonic if you want, but with these two pairings it doesn't feel that way to me. But that's just how I feel about...

As a S/J shipper, thank God for Moebius and Threads.

...And I know in these shows there are instances where other crew/team members get equally stuck in stupidly dangerous/life threatening situations that require them to be saved (::cough cough:: Daniel), but it's not quite the same now is it, when there is no yearning present?

[homely-ghost]

If I had a nickel for every time I made a made up fanfic in my head and got so attached that I wanted to make it its own story, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but fuck do I need to stop.