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it's a new year, harrier.

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I Gave Birth to a Shounen Protagonist so I Trained Myself to Avoid Death

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gekkan shoujo uriel-chan doing what she does best!!!

(based on the tomoda!!! scene from gekkan shoujo nozaki-kun)

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lol. My interpretation of KDJC’s opinions of yoohankim

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So I've seen a few too many people on twitter talking about The Kiss Scene from the new Scott Pilgrim anime. People saying it's fetishistic and indulgent, people calling it male gazey, etc. And while the kiss itself is certainly a bit exaggerated, I felt like writing a bit about why I disagree, and why context is important, like it always is. But it basically turned into an extended analysis on the metatextual treatment of Roxie Richter. So bear with me. It's a long post.

What really matters about this scene is not the kiss itself, but what precedes it. Not even just the fight scene just before it, but what precedes the whole anime series, really. And that's the Scott Pilgrim comic book, and the live action movie. Because in both, Roxie is a punchline.

She's a joke. Her character starts and ends with "one of the exes is actually a girl, I bet you didn't expect that." Jokes are made about Ramona's latent bisexuality, the movie especially treating it as funny and absurd, and her validity as a romantic interest is entirely written off by Ramona as being "just a phase." There's a fight scene, she's defeated by a man giving her an orgasm which implicitly calls her sexuality into question (come on), and the movie just moves on. It sucks. It really, really sucks.

The comic fares a little better. It never veers into outright homophobia like the movie does, and while the line about Ramona having gone through a phase remains, Roxie actually gets one over on Scott when Ramona briefly gets back with Roxie. But Roxie is still only barely a character. Like all the other evil exes, she's just a stepping stone towards the male protagonist's development. She barely even gets any screentime before she's defeated by Scott's "power of love." But Roxie stands out, since she's the only villain who is queer, or at least had been confirmed queer at that point (hi Todd). In a series that champions multiple gay men in the supporting cast, the single undeniable lesbian in the story is a villain. She's labeled as evil, made fun of, pushed aside in favor of the men, and then discarded. Her screentime was never about her, or her feelings for Ramona. It was about the straight, male protagonist needing to overcome her. And that was Roxie Richter. An unfortunate victim of the 2010s.

Fast forward to current year, and the new anime series is announced. Everybody sits down to watch the new series expecting another retelling of the same story, and.... hang on, that straight male protagonist I mentioned just died in the first episode. And now it's humanizing the villains from the original story. And there's Roxie, introduced alongside the other evil exes in the second episode, and she's being played entirely straight, without a punchline in sight. No jokes are made about her gender, no questions are made of her validity as one of Ramona's romantic interests. The narrative considers her important. In one episode, she already gets more respect than she did in either of the previous iterations of Scott Pilgrim. And this isn't even her focus episode yet... which happens to be the very next one.

The anime series goes to great lengths to flesh out the original story's villains and to have Ramona reconcile with them. And I don't think it's a coincidence that Roxie gets to go first. While Matthew Patel gets his development in episode 2, Roxie is the first to directly confront Ramona, now our main protagonist. This is notable too because it's the only time the exes are encountered out of order. Roxie is supposed to be number 4, but she's first in line, and later on you realize that she's the only one who's out of sequence. She's the one who sets the precedent for the villains being redeemed. She's the most important character for Ramona to reconcile with.

What follows is probably the most extensive, elaborate 1 on 1 fight scene in the whole show. Roxie fights like a wounded animal, her motions are desperate and pained. Ramona can only barely fight back against her onslaught. Different set-pieces fly by at breakneck speed as Roxie relentlessly lays her feelings at Ramona's feet through her attacks and her distraught shouts. And unlike the comic or the movie, Ramona acknowledges them, and sincerely apologizes. And the two end up just laying there, exhausted, reminiscing about when they were together.

Only after this, after all of this, does the kiss scene happen. Roxie has been vindicated, she has reconciled with the person who hurt her, the narrative has deemed that her anger is justified and has redeemed her character. And she gets her victory lap by making the nearest other hot girl question her heterosexuality, sharing a sloppy kiss with her as the music triumphantly crescendos.

It's... a little self-congratulatory, honestly. But it's good. It's redemption for a character who had been mistreated for over a decade. And she punctuates the moment by being very, very gay where everyone can see it, no men anywhere in sight. Because this is her moment. And then she leaves the plot, on her own accord this time, while humming the hampster dance. What a legend. How could anything be wrong with this.

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the red gaze

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Word of mouth really kept me away from Scott Pilgrim for like a decade cause I was told it's this shitty book aimed at incels and he's a pedo and then I read it recently cause of the netflix anime and it's like "this guy sucks and all his friends barely tolerate him and he's trying to feel like a big man by leading on a 17 year old girl he's not actually interested in and everyone including the narrative acknowledges that that's pathetic and he should grow up. anyway let's explore how men see women as a means to their own self actualization but fail to acknowledge that they have lives of their own" like wow this is the book yall were talking about?

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o captain my captain

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iconic

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Ramona Flowers dyeing her hair in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

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making content about characters you dont think about a lot is sooooo embarrassing what if the fans see it and your interpretation of their blorbo is so atrocious that they have to block you like im sorry i didnt study at spamton university

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You people better have actual hope for Palestine because I just know you some of you are ITCHING to cry doomerism. Palestine will be free, fight like you believe it. Because you should.

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iM LAUGHING LIKE A MANIAC MY RAT JUST WENT INSIDE MY BROTHER’S TOY CAR AND SAT IN THE FRONT SEAT

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adventure time slang is weird cuz like. when you first watch the show and hear the slang you're like "oh this is cringy slang but its not like awful" but it gets to a point where the voice actors deliver the slang so naturally you don't even notice it and its just. part of the world's vernacular. I can't think of any other show that's done in-universe slang like this

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Please stop seeing politics as an identity and start seeing it as a collective means for change

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simon n betty from sketchbook cuz i like them