#Traumatizing characters and viewers alike

[decisivelyindecisivelibra]

[captainswanapproved]

Unpopular Opinion About That Scene in the context of Daemon's arc and Daemon x Rhaenyra's relationship - It Doesn't Matter

This will not win me any support, but here is my take on the confrontation scene.

Stans and Antis alike are all overreacting. I don't expect any different from the antis, but my friends and fellow stans of Daemon and Rhaenyra, the scene actually not a big deal.

In fact, in the greater context of the show, the "choking" doesn't matter at all.

Now, before all of you jump down my throat, your dislike of the scene is absolutely justified.

When we consume media, we bring our own personal experience into the consumption. If you felt triggered or uncomfortable by the scene, that is absolutely valid. If you want to forget it ever happened, that is valid. If you want to rave against the show runners because they included it, that is absolutely valid.

But I am going to try to analyze it objectively

Every one of Daemon's actions was, in my eyes, perfectly in character. From the moment Rhaenys arrived and announced Viserys' death, you could see the pain and devastation on his face.

He is certain, mistakenly so, that the Greens killed Viserys themselves. That is is BROTHER. The only person aside from Rhaenyra and his children that he loves. He believes his enemies have killed the king and stolen the Iron Throne.

He accuses Rhaenys of inaction, and he feels betrayed by his kin. Yet, he follows Rhaenyra's lead and does not accuse the Velaryons of treason.

Then Rhaenyra goes into labor.

Everyone knows that this will not end well. There is nothing Daemon can do about the outcome of the birth. What he can do is shore up their defenses and make plans so his wife and his Queen will be prepared to strike against their enemies when the time comes.

Also, he is in incredible pain himself, traumatized by Laena's disastrous birth, and probably his mother's too. And he is a man of action. He cannot just sit at his wife's side as the enemies are closing in. It is not in his nature. He HAS to act.

Yes, he sort of dismisses Jace coming to the Black Council with orders not to act. But he does not explicitly go against Rhaenyra's command. Instead, he does what he can do without flying with Caraxes to get the crucial support in the Riverlands.

He makes certain that the knights swear their allegiance to the Queen and her son. He shows Jace the true meaning of loyalty.

At Visenya's funeral & the coronation, his only focus is Rhaenyra. He is by her side at every moment. He is her strength. He places the crown on her head, kneels before her and calls her his queen.

Then we come to the bridge. He awaits Rhaenyra's arrival. He does not take matters into his own hands. and strike against Otto, even though he is sure that Otto murdered his brother and knows that the Hightowers stole his wife's throne.

When he snaps and wants to have the pleasure of killing Otto himself, Rhaenyra orders him to stop, and he does! He puts aside his own anger and lust for vengeance and puts down his sword. She is his queen and he obeys her.

Then we are in the council again. Daemon's wish for war and Rhaenyra's wish for peace is the main conflict between Daemon and Rhaenyra this episode.

He is frustrated with what he views as her vain hope for peace. Rhaenyra send everyone out of the council chamber.

Daemon is understandably angry.

But the thing of it is: Rhaenyra curbs his worst impulses, and I would argue that she always has. She expresses her reasons for wanting to hold the realm together.

He sees this as weakness, but as the viewer, we are made to understand that it is a different kind of strength.

I have seen Daemon be called an abuser, a wife beater, a monster and more. None of these are accurate.

He is at his breaking point and he grabs Rhaenyra, but it is not to hurt her. It is to make her come to her senses.

If he wanted to hurt her, he would have grabbed her with both hands, crushed her windpipe, and incapacitated her. He has the strength to do it, but he doesn't. He says that is brother is weak and foolish to believe in dreams. Also he is realizing that his brother never saw him as a true heir.

For a man who has been chasing his brother's approval his whole life, that is absolutely devastating!

Then he lets go, because Rhaenyra is not fighting back, she is not coming to her senses as she wishes he would.

And now, we come to why the choking doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter because of Rhaenyra's reaction. She is not disgusted with him. She is not truly hurt. She smirks and mocks him.

He walks away.

Now to the aftermath, further establishing that this does single action does not matter in the context of Daemon and Rhaenyra's relationship.

Corlys asks where Daemon is.

Rhaenyra has not told anyone, because she doesn't view it as an act of violence or treason against her. If she wanted to, she could have had him locked away or killed for laying hands on her. But she has already forgiven him.

She knows that he is occupied with going to awaken Vermithor. Because of course she does. I am sure someone told her. She's the Queen, and she knows what each of her councillors are doing.

Daemon still is not moving against Rhaenyra's orders. He is shoring up their forces because he knows this will come to war in the end. He knows that something will happen to force Rhaenyra to give up her hope for peace.

Now we reach the end. Daemon goes to Rhaenyra and tells her of Luke's death. He comforts her and she accepts his comfort.

They were divided, and they will surely disagree again. But Luke's death forces Rhaenyra to realize that peace is impossible. The Greens killed her son.

She said she didn't want to deal the first strike of this war.

Aemond dealt the first blow by killing her son who went to Storm's End as a messenger.

We see the fire in her eyes.

Now I will address the Inside the episode.

No one addresses the choking because IT DOESN"T MATTER. It won't be addressed. It has no bearing on Daemon and Rhaenyra's relationship going forward.

What matters is the clash between Daemon's wish for war and revenge and Rhaenyra's hopes to hold the Realm together because of the Song of Ice and Fire and because of her wish to not rule a kingdom of ash and bone.

But in Season 2, that dream of peace will be gone. Rhaenyra and Daemon will be on the same page again.

I still think Rhaenyra will be the one to restrain Daemon from his worst impulses. And even if he doesn't exactly follow her orders, he won't explicitly disobey them. Above all, he is loyal to Rhaenyra, even during the worst moments of his life.

Do I wish they had included more of Daemon's scenes? Of course I do. Matt is phenomenal.

Do I like that he took Rhaenyra's throat? No. But I understand it. And objectively speaking it is in character.

This is not being treated as abuse or violence against Rhaenyra in the context of the show.

And I honestly think the show runners and Matt and Emma will not address it. Because in the context of the greater story, IT DOESN'T MATTER.

You can argue all you want that it was rushed and OOC. In media, there is no one correct interpretation. Was it the best writing choice? No.

Do I hate Daemon and believe he is the worst character in the show and that Daemon and Rhaenyra stopped loving each other? Absolutely not.

Do I think many of the stans are overreacting? Yes. But you are entitled to your feelings and opinions.

What I'm saying is that that I believe it will not be addressed in the show moving forward, and because of that, it doesn't really matter.

If you disagree with me, that's fine, but like all of you, I am entitled to my opinions and interpretations.

Daemon and Rhaenyra still have the strongest relationship of the show. And I am excited to see them burn together and commit war crimes in Season 2.

[seizethegrey]

DON'T FEAR THE RAVEN QUEEN

ON MOLLY, FEARNE, ORYM, AND WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER PULL THE PUNCH ON A KILL SHOT.

Something I think all DMs, players and fans of D&D should examine about PC death is the way it can transform a campaign.

Let's look at C2, and generalize that to what could change about C3 (and by extension, what can change about YOUR campaign at home).

There will NEVER be a moment at your table more memorable or pivotal than a PK. I would say it is more or less the only time I have invariably seen tables simply forget about their DM for the rest of the session.

For once, the DM is irrelevant. The players are grieving for a character they wanted to see develop, and the characters are grieving for a companion lost too soon.

And for those of us consuming a game as a piece of fiction in a format that is ostensibly not unlike any other show or stream? Suddenly, the difference is immeasurable.

We've all seen so many characters die, and sometimes we've seen our own personal little baby meow-meow moon-and-stars die in the stupidest way possible. But even if the death was a surprise for us, it wasn't a genuine surprise for the actors.

With a PC death, we're seeing something radically more raw. We look on in shock and horror as the genuine fear of rolling death saves transitions abruptly into the panic of a rez attempt and the crushing, all-consuming grief that grips the table when the rez fails and the last available component is consumed.

It's a fictional death that feels more real than any other medium would allow for. As someone whose entire life was consumed with grief starting from that first time I watched someone die gasping in March 2020, watching Molly die (much later than some of you did, but I had NO IDEA it was going to happen) was a moment so crushingly recognizable that it ripped me from the narrative and forced me back into my own skull. Caught completely off-guard, I scrambled to yank off my headphones as a panic attack slammed into me with concussive force, stuck in a place I'd tried to avoid for months.

When I managed to put myself back together enough to put the headphones back on, Matt is asking for last words. Then Taliesin storms from the table, leaving behind a party as shocked and bereft as the audience.

The path they forge from that moment forward defines the campaign. Many parties do everything to bring a character back to life, rewriting the DM's plans - but this party didn't want that. They didn't want to take away the significance of Molly's loss. Instead, the characters canonized their (deeply flawed) dead friend. It was that sainthood, that rose-colored view of a man who in life had been so varicolored, that made the incredible conclusion of the campaign possible. It made the party willing to spend so much time and so much conversation with a BBEG that wouldn't have been possible unless they hadn't been convinced that Molly was in there somewhere. It made Lucien's presence traumatic and upsetting for the party and the viewers alike without a single bit of violence being required (though of course there was violence, and that was horrifying).

Sitting alone at home, taking frequent pauses to calm my breathing, I took something away from the depictions of both Lucien and Kingsley that I am sure other survivors of disaster did as well. I felt for the first time that you can try to go back - but that you can't. And what's more, if you could go back, the dead would look at you in surprise. They would look at you with sadness in their eyes - not for themselves, but for you.

I'm dead, they would say. I'm not coming back. You fought a war for me - and the war won.

Don't cheapen it by asking God to undo it.

I'm glad you don't just remember me as a time of death, as yet another line on which you copied the ICD-10 code for acute hypoxic respiratory failure, whatever the fuck that is. I'm glad that to you, I was a person.

But people die.

You didn't kill me, doc. Being born did.

Now stop trying to get into this god damn grave with me? There isn't room for two.

The decision to let death win was a choice that fundamentally made C2 the incredible story that it became. As popular as C1 remains, I don't think it holds a candle to the sheer emotional punch packed by C2. All of that was because they let Molly die.

So what would character death mean for C3?

First, some technicalities: Fearne is the one with the second Revivify slot, so she'll be the first rez attempt. Her chance of dying right now is about 15%. Orym's is 24%. So I'll focus on Orym first.

If Orym dies, he will have died within minutes of realizing that he's going to be killed by the person - the single person - who killed his husband. The party will be unable to do anything but stand and watch as the person who murdered their friend in front of them walks away.

It's worse than that, though. Otahon isn't just the woman who killed their friend. She's the reason Orym left his happy, tranquil life in Zephrah, the very person who single-handedly uprooted him from a place he'd hoped he'd live and die in peace and sent him on this quest that ended his life. She's the beginning of his misery and the end of it. She's the reason.

The best among their number, the only decent, normal person, will have died because of this woman that defeated them, this woman who now has a direct line of communication to the most powerful member of the group. If she didn't just chase Laudna's mind when she heard her thoughts on the balcony, she might even walk away with Treshi. It all would have been for nothing.

This will have happened either because FCG's first Revivify on Fearne failed, or because Fearne's Revivify on Orym failed. The crushing immediacy of "my failure caused his death" will be a lie - but a lie that will consume them both.

FCG will blame himself no matter what, feeling his actual purpose is now invalidated. He's not just a bad person - he's a bad healer. (My therapist will be hearing a lot about this one).

Fearne will have failed to save the guy who's been at her side from the beginning, the first tank to ever soak up hits for her. This is the person who might have been happy again with Dorian (and/or Ash), the person that might have made Dorian (and/or Ash) happy, too. This was her moral center, and now he's broken and bleeding at her hooves because of her inadequacy - morally, ethically, magically, personally.

And what about if we lose Fearne?

If that happens we're looking at a complete refocus on the Nightmare King. If he hadn't asked for the weave lens or kept her parents in his thrall, she never would have left the Feywild. She might have lived her life in Morri's fane, mercifully unaware of her fate as a Ruidus-born. Also, the way she left it with her parents? Fucking kill me now, please, before I have to pressage the thought of listening to that Sending.

Everybody has to die somehow - and I don't imagine for a second that the party will do what home games do all the time. No one will want to pursue a True Resurrection spell. If that was the answer to this party's problems, then Orym would have just asked Keyleth to do that and he'd still be at home with Will. This isn't about them - this is about the fate the moon has in store for them.

Now more than ever, they will recognize that all of them might die on this quest. And yet, we know them well enough already to know that they aren't going to hesitate. They're going to do what brave, lawful good Orym and chaotic neutral Fearne had both set as their highest personal priority.

Exandria matters. They don't. They'll have lost the only man who would have told them otherwise with an authority they'd have listened to.

I hope they don't die - but if they do, I know their stories won't die with them. They will become the stars that the group navigates by, the pearly light of Catha that illuminates their passage through the dark.

[the-anime-project]

The Psychological Evolution of Ken Kaneki: A Gripping Transformation

Introduction

Anime and manga enthusiasts have been captivated by the dark and thrilling world of Tokyo Ghoul, created by Sui Ishida. At the heart of the series lies the psychological evolution of its protagonist, Ken Kaneki. His transformation from a shy, bookish college student to a powerful, ruthless ghoul has been a roller coaster of emotion, making him one of the most unforgettable characters in the genre. In this blog post, we will delve deep into Ken Kaneki's journey, exploring the factors that contributed to his dramatic metamorphosis and the significance of his transformation for the overarching themes of the series.

Ken Kaneki: The Beginning

Ken Kaneki starts as a timid, introverted college student with a passion for books. His life takes a drastic turn when he becomes a half-human, half-ghoul hybrid after a life-saving organ transplant from a ghoul named Rize Kamishiro. This transformation forces Kaneki to confront the terrifying world of ghouls and learn to survive in a society that hunts and discriminates against his kind.

The Mask of Acceptance

As Kaneki struggles to adapt to his new life, he initially tries to maintain his humanity, refusing to consume human flesh. He clings to the belief that he can exist as both human and ghoul, wearing a "mask" of acceptance. This internal battle is the first step in his psychological evolution, as he learns to accept his dual nature and the reality of the ghoul world.

The Torture and Awakening

The true catalyst for Kaneki's psychological evolution occurs when he is captured by the sadistic ghoul, Yamori. Subjected to unimaginable torture, Kaneki's psyche fractures, resulting in a mental breakdown. It is during this traumatic experience that he fully embraces his ghoul side, realizing that in order to survive, he must become strong and merciless. This marks a significant turning point in the series and signals the beginning of a darker and more ruthless Ken Kaneki.

The White-Haired Ghoul

Kaneki's transformation is physically manifested through his white hair, a striking symbol of his newfound power and determination. As the white-haired ghoul, Kaneki adopts a more aggressive and dominant demeanor, shedding his previous introverted and vulnerable self. This persona represents the culmination of his psychological journey, reflecting his acceptance of his ghoul identity and his willingness to protect those he cares about, even if it means becoming a monster himself.

The Search for Identity

At its core, Ken Kaneki's psychological evolution is a powerful exploration of the struggle for identity. His journey serves as a commentary on the often-painful process of self-discovery and acceptance, as he must reconcile his dual nature and come to terms with the harsh realities of the world. In doing so, Kaneki's character arc provides a gripping and thought-provoking narrative that resonates with readers and viewers alike.

Conclusion

The psychological evolution of Ken Kaneki is a captivating and integral aspect of the Tokyo Ghoul series. His journey from a naive, gentle human to a powerful, merciless ghoul is not only a testament to the strength of his character but also serves as a reflection on the human condition and the complexities of identity. As we explore the depths of Kaneki's transformation, we are reminded of the power of storytelling and the enduring impact of unforgettable characters like Ken Kaneki.

[cl0verlemon]

Original Molo's story wasn't always happy. Never was, knowing me. (WARNING!! Following content includes the talk of consent, mentions of rape and sexual assault, and abuse.)

---

In his character guide, kids don't ever see the innuendo of something terribly wrong with the character. Just a fun loving British moth who transferred all the way from the UK with a masters degree in dancing. But parents as they watched the show found something else.

Molo was a character of confidence, grace, beauty, and kindness. He was cocky, flirty, a bit of an asshole but nothing too serious. He was kind to his neighbors and that's all parents really cared for. A character that could role model their children.

But, unknowingly, he resided with older audiences a little too heavily.

Teens who had went through traumatic experiences resided with him, and eventually, there was a deleted episode that rolled out. It was a special episode that only lasted a week on air before being cut short, and DVDs of the episode were scarce, but thankfully one person got ahold of one. Now we will share it to the world.

---

The episode started in normal fashion, the big 'Welcome Home' title in front before fading to the front of Home. The building's window shutters abruptly flapping open and closing, before adverting it's pupils elsewhere. Usually Wally Darling, the most beloved neighbour to all the children would have come out by now. But as the camera panned it showed that the episode wasn't about Wally. Not today.

It panned to the pink rosy maple moth from the old cartoon, 'Silky Moth', a comedy slapstick that was canceled just a few months after Welcome Home aired. His smile as big as ever, blue pupils expanding in the center of black sclera. Then, he motioned to a blank paper chart next to him, turning it around to reveal the word. "Consent."

"Today's episode may be too sensitive for littluns, I reckon it would be best if they were to leave the room."

His accent, adored by many, was more serious than the rest of the light-hearted episodes he's been apart in. The scene waited minutes, as if waiting for parents and teens to usher kids and younger siblings out of the room before Molo spoke again.

When he did, he pointed to the white paper.

"Assuming the children are out, parents. This topic is also incredibly sensitive. It is about consent, and is meant for older kids such as fourteen to fifteen years of age. If you can not handle the talk of assault, non-consented actions, and adult topics, I absolutely recommend you turn off the telly and spend the day with your kin. Otherwise, parents and teens alike, if you are alright with the topic. We shall proceed."

Another few minutes pass, aswell as a disclaimer at the bottom in bright, bold text, "VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED!"

"We will talk about consent." He repeated, wings fluttering behind him as the scenery around him turned pure white. "Consent, if you do not know, is asking for permission. If someone does not give you permission, or says no, you are not allowed to proceed with your actions. Even if you so desperately crave to."

He took steps away from the paper, and towards the TV screen.

"Some of you could have been victims of non-consented actions, whether sexual, physical, mental, you all have a voice and have a valid reason to speak your mind against it."

He faded, yet his face was still there as images of simply drawn sandwiches appeared in front of the screen, drawn in crayon. It was obviously Wally who was drawing it, his art style recognizable to many adults and teens who watched the show.

"Take consent as, someone is asking you for a sandwich. Your answer depends on their actions. If you say yes to the sandwich, they may give you the sandwich."

The camera clipped and showed a new picture of someone eating a sandwich, then changed again to a half eaten sandwich.

"You do not have to eat the whole sandwich, you can say 'no thank you' even when you've accepted the sandwich."

The camera panned to a drawing of Molo refusing the sandwich.

"If someone says no to the offer of a sandwich, that is okay. You cannot force the person to eat the sandwich." The camera clicked to someone force feeding a childishly drawn Molo a sandwich. "You cannot unconsciously feed a person a sandwich." Another one of Molo being forced to eat the sandwich whilst unconscious. "Even if the person isn't feeling well, er-, we'll just say they drank a bit too much. They cannot accept your sandwich."

The camera panned back to Molo.

"Consent is important during relationships, romantic, platonic, familial. Somebody needs consent to go through your things, somebody needs consent to see something personal to you."

His eyes went blank.

"They need consent when touching you."

Then the background faded back to the simple background everyone was accustomed to, showing Julie walking down the sidewalk and Sally stopping her.

"My, Julie! This extravagant day has been becoming even more marvelous every second that passes!"

Sally twirled, holding a flower in her grasp before outstretching her hands.

"You must smell this flower dear!"

"Oh, no thank you!"

"But you must! It has such a beautiful fragrance!"

"I'm alright Sally, I don't want to smell the flower!"

"Just once?"

The scene stopped and panned back to Molo.

"Sally is not accepting Julie's 'No', like the sandwiches, Sally has to ask if Julie wants to smell the flower. Julie can say no to that matter, and it be left at that."

He turned to the camera.

"Let me show you a way that is better."

The camera panned back to Julie and Sally.

"My, Julie! This extravagant day has been becoming even more marvelous every second that passes!"

Sally twirled around once again like she did before, then lifting her arms to put the flower in Julie's view. Not directly in her face, nothing like that.

"Would you like to smell a beautiful flower I found?"

"No thank you, Sally!"

"Oh!" Sally paused, lowering the flower. "Alright! You said no, I can't force you darling!" Then she walked away.

The camera faded back to white, and Molo stood in the center.

"Now, Sally is listening to Julie's 'no'. And has left the topic alone. She did not force it upon Julie, she did not go against Julie's wishes. She was polite about it."

Molo paused, seemingly staring at the camera for a long moment. His face fell from a smile and his hands quickly reached to grab his arms. You could see Wally's hand reach into frame before Molo pipped up again.

"You can say no for simple things, or for big things."

He stopped again, eyes casting downwards as he gripped onto his arms tighter.

I told myself I was ready for this.

He glanced back up at the camera with a more strained smile.

"No matter what, you have a say. If you feel uncomfortable, if you do not want whatever is being offered, if you do not accept their plea. You can always say no. Not give them your consent."

Molo looked like he was going to pass out, having to take a step back as he tried to get oxygen rushing to his head again. He couldn't. He collapsed onto his knees after minutes of silence, and quickly did the little neighborhood darling come running to sit next to Molo. Nothing he could say would make it better, nothing he could say would erase the past of his dear friend.

Molo turned his eyes to Wally slowly, staring at him for a moment before holding onto the plush man as tightly as possible.

The screen faded to black with the words 'Tell an adult if you experience anything that makes you uncomfortable. Call your local police department if you've been assaulted.'

----

The episode was taken off air for being too serious for children, and too serious for the TV show. Aswell as giving major hints of a character that had been sexually assaulted and possibly even had been raped. However, Molo was kept in the show due to being a fan favourite, and artists put a small Easter egg and glimmer of hope for victims alike.

Inside of Molo's house, which was only shown for a few episodes called 'nightlight fun' and 'Mary-Go-Round', there was a big hanging picture of a woman with snakes as hair. A sign of Medusa. A symbol of a survivor.

---

For people who love Molo as a character, an oc, he was in fact assaulted many times. He was pressured into sending images, intoxication that lead to something incredibly dangerous, and was never listened to. He wanted to share his experience nonchalantly, and tell teens of all kinds that it is alright to speak up. That he supports it, and encourages victims to speak out and scream to the world, even when he never got to.

I'm a victim of SA, and had resonated that within my OC and told a small part of my story with his.

Molo Moth is 26 years old, when his case started, he was only 16. He's still trying to heal. He has a voice, and wanted to share it.

[soonparisblog]

The Psychological Depths of 'Asur': An Examination of Character Motivations

'Asur' is a gripping web series streaming on Voot Select that challenges the viewers by taking them on a journey inside the complex minds of its characters. The psychological underpinnings of the series are intriguing, offering a deep dive into the motivations and behaviors of its protagonists and antagonists. In this article, we will examine how the creators of 'Asur' have meticulously designed the characters' psychological depths, unraveling their motivations and decisions that drive the narrative forward.

The Protagonist: Dhananjay Rajpoot

Arshad Warsi plays Dhananjay Rajpoot, a skilled forensic scientist and a tenacious crime solver. His character is riddled with a haunted past and personal demons that add depth to his portrayal. Although highly competent as a detective, Rajpoot's internal struggles manifest throughout his decision-making process, affecting his relationships and moral compass. By tracing his character's motivations, we gain a better understanding of his actions and an appreciation of the psychological turmoil that enriches the narrative.

The Antagonist: The Mythology-Driven Serial Killer

The enigmatic antagonist in 'Asur' is a serial killer whose motivations are intricately tied to Indian mythology, religion, and beliefs. As this deeply disturbed individual carries out a series of ritualistic murders, the series uncovers a backstory that blends childhood trauma with an intense fascination with mythological tales. It demonstrates how a combination of environmental factors, belief systems, and psychological deviance culminates in the killer's warped and vengeful motivations.

The Torn Hero: Nikhil Nair

Barun Sobti plays Nikhil Nair, the quintessential tormented hero who is torn between his personal and professional life. He is a former protege of Dhananjay Rajpoot and now an FBI agent based in the United States. As he returns to India to participate in the investigation of the serial killings, he faces the internal conflict of reconciling his career ambitions with a strained relationship at home. This character's psychological depths and shifting motives keep viewers emotionally invested in his journey.

The Role of Philosophical Beliefs

The psychological depths of 'Asur' are amplified by the exploration of philosophical beliefs that underpin each character's decisions. For instance, the concept of dharma (duty and morality) often comes to the fore when characters must choose between their personal values and professional responsibilities. This blend of philosophical ideologies and personal motivations lend a more profound meaning to the characters' actions and contributes greatly to the overall narrative.

Nature vs. Nurture: The Making of a Monster

'Asur's exploration of the lead characters' motivations raises an age-old debate — are individuals born with certain inclinations, or do their environments forge them into who they are? The series delves into this theme, particularly with regard to the serial killer, to reveal how both genetic predispositions and traumatizing life experiences can intertwine to create a deranged individual whose sole motivation is twisted vengeance.

In conclusion, 'Asur' stands out for its masterful examination of the intricate psychological depths of its characters. By delving into the motivations of the protagonists and antagonists alike, the series keeps viewers enthralled and emotionally invested. 'Asur' is not only a thrilling crime drama but also an intelligent psychological study that leaves a lasting impact on the audience, showcasing the exceptional craftsmanship of its creators.

[talesfromaurea]

I posted 2,266 times in 2022

224 posts created (10%)

2,042 posts reblogged (90%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@elytrians

@talesofsorrowandofruin

@the-finch-address

@magic-is-something-we-create

@ashen-crest

I tagged 1,287 of my posts in 2022

Only 43% of my posts had no tags

#other's art - 471 posts

#other's work - 170 posts

#pathfinder talk - 114 posts

#it's rambling time - 91 posts

#guild wars 2 - 70 posts

#my writing - 61 posts

#tag games - 51 posts

#positivity - 43 posts

#my art - 31 posts

#dnd - 29 posts

Longest Tag: 136 characters

#truthfully i kind of just see the wip as various shades of blue but i wanted to make the colors section a bit more interesting than that

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

@copper-dragon-in-disguise​​ - a tiny friend...

Thanks for the request! 😊

40 notes - Posted February 21, 2022

#4

Fina Foxglove and her fern hound Missile enjoying some fishing in the Seitung Province 🐟

43 notes - Posted April 4, 2022

#3

Writing Mixed Race Characters

Mixed race characters in media - it’s something I haven’t seen many people talk about so I decided to make a post about it. I go over some common tropes and some very basic things you should think about when writing mixed characters

Disclaimer: these are my personal opinions and observations based on my background as a non-Black mixed person in the USA. Remember: like everyone, mixed people are not all the same and this is not meant to be representative of the feelings of all mixed people. Please be sure to listen to and take into account a variety of mixed experiences and opinions if you’re looking to write mixed characters and/or better understand our lives.

Anyway, with that out of the way, let’s examine a few of the common tropes we see in media that feature a mixed character!

Trope #1 - The Tragic Existence

This trope is #1 for a reason, as it’s by far the most common one applied to mixed race characters. We’ve all seen it - the character who doesn’t belong anywhere, who is rejected by everyone, who is “too x for y and too y for x”. Being mixed is used as a catalyst for angst and trauma and, quite often, the mixed character is an orphan and/or actively shunned in their community. There are countless mixed characters this applies to, including Shadow and Bone’s Alina Starkov (the show not the book - I’ve never read the books but I hear Alina is white in them which makes a ton of sense considering how hamfisted Netflix is when handling her race) and Inuyasha, the half-human, half-demon from the anime of the same name (yes, fantasy “races” count but more on that later). In fact, this trope is so overused that I’ve heard many mixed folks wonder if it’s not some sort of propaganda - cautionary tales about having mixed race children, who will only grow up lonely and confused

Trope #2 - Our Race Is Only Used To Traumatize Us

Sometimes you’ll be watching a show and a character’s mixed background is never mentioned until another character is suddenly racist towards them. This happens a lot with monoracial characters of color as well and can be really damaging to viewers when they see their race used purely as a weapon to inflict harm. Again, I go back to Alina Starkov for this because, at least in Season 1, her being mixed is exclusively brought up when other characters are being racist and malicious towards her. There’s not one instance where Alina’s race is brought up in a positive, or even a neutral, way and it really just feels like Netflix changed her race from the books in order to write in racist insults to further emphasize her alienation from society - which is a messed up thing to do to both mixed viewers and Asian viewers alike. Hopefully Netflix makes some changes in future seasons but… not holding my breath

Trope #3 - The White Parent Raising The Mixed Child

Usually presented as a “feel good” story - you have a single, white parent raising their mixed child, sometimes alongside white half-siblings. It’s normally used to insert racial discussions into predominantly white stories and feels very much like it’s supposed to mollify white feelings rather than genuinely explore mixed experiences - not to mention the casual shadiness of slipping in the “absent parent of color” (often a Black parent) trope. The “white parent raising the mixed child” is the least outwardly malicious trope of the three I’ve listed here, but it’s still painfully obvious that these aren’t meant to be mixed stories. Instead, the inclusion of a mixed character is merely a way for the white parent, white siblings, etc. to grow and learn

While all three of these tropes can be reflective of our experiences, they are often portrayed in an incredibly reductive way and, more importantly, they reinforce this pervasive idea that being mixed is an inherently traumatizing and negative experience. Most of the time, the best mixed folks can hope for is a character where being mixed “doesn’t matter” i.e. a message that reeks of “benevolent” colorblind racism. 

In fact, I racked my brain trying to think of a *single* positive story about being mixed race in mainstream media and literature and came up with nothing. I’m 33 years old and have never seen or read a story about someone like me who has a mostly positive experience being mixed, who is proud of and uplifted by their heritage. But I can think of countless stories where being mixed was a source of trauma and shame, and an obstacle the character has to “overcome”. That’s really horrible! 

So now that I’ve gone over how mixed characters are commonly portrayed and the issues surrounding it, what are some things you should consider when writing to avoid falling into these harmful pitfalls?

If you want to show negative aspects of being mixed (like the examples above), consider also showing some positive aspects. Being mixed can be lonely and isolating (almost entirely because monoracial people like to exclude us), but it can also be fulfilling and give you a unique and valuable perspective

Consider having a variety of mixed race characters with different opinions on and experiences with their backgrounds. The “tragic mixed person” trope isn’t inherently bad - it’s only bad because that’s basically the only story we ever get about us. Throw out the formula and get creative! Show us different kinds of mixed characters

If you REALLY want to be radical, write a character where being mixed is an important and positive part of their lives and trauma doesn’t factor into it at all. Sad that that’s radical but here we are

Avoid the idea that mixed people are “half and half”, as in somehow lesser/diminished than their monoracial peers, especially when writing a character who is white mixed. This reinforces the white supremacist notion that heritage and the cultures of POC can be “bred out”. We aren’t diluted, we are whole and full members of our communities

For fantasy and sci-fi writers out there - take these ideas into account when writing characters who are part-human, part-fantasy creature/alien (or characters of any mix, really), especially when “fantasy racism” is a thing in your world. But even when it isn’t, the experiences a half-elf character has with their heritage is still going to be closely adjacent to the experiences of real life mixed people so it’s good to be aware of these things. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Balto because a wolf-dog was the closest thing I got to representation in media so yeah

And that’s all for now! I’m thinking of making a second post where I talk more about the actual lived experiences of being mixed, as a sort of general list of things you could potentially explore to make your mixed characters more believable and relatable to mixed folks. Let me know if you’d like to see that and thanks for reading! I hope some of this was helpful to someone out there. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to shoot me an ask

218 notes - Posted May 2, 2022

#2

🦖 Dinosaur-themed Writeblr Ask Game

New writeblr ask game: reblog to get dinosaurs and share passages from your WIP(s) 🦕

Megalosaurus - share an scene that begins a chapter/story arc/etc

Spinosaurus - share a scene that ends a chapter/story arc/etc

Therizinosaurus - share a scene that you’ve put a lot of work into

Parasaurolophus - share a scene where a character is/gets embarrassed or flustered

Triceratops - share a scene where one character is protecting or caring for another

Deinonychus - share a scene with banter

Allosaurus - share an action or combat scene

Stegosaurus - share a humorous scene

Troodon - share a scene that is really important to a character’s development

Brachiosaurus - share a sad or tragic scene

Velociraptor - share an ominous or scary scene

Iguanodon - share a character introduction scene

Gallimimus - share a happy or lighthearted scene

Pteranodon - share a peaceful scene

Maiasaura - share a scene full of love between characters (platonic, romantic, familial, or otherwise)

Ankylosaurus - share some of your favorite descriptive text

Apatosaurus - share some of your favorite dialogue

Carnotaurus - share a scene that contains some cool worldbuilding

T-rex - share a scene that you're really proud of

283 notes - Posted July 4, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

You guys ever see a character that just makes you go like “damn I hope I can write a character like that one day”

680 notes - Posted April 24, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[whump-town]

Was Hotch Abused?

I offer you my 2,300+ worded thoughts on the matter with episodes included. There's going to be lots and lots of talk about abuse so you're going to want to steer clear of that if that's something you're not cool with but for those of you interested... I give you all the proof I could think of:

Natural Born Killer.

In the eighth episode of the first season, “Natural Born Killer”, we meet Vincent Perrotta. His father was abusive but from the outside looking in, no one knew a thing. Perrotta started drinking at fourteen and committed petty crimes, as well as assault, for pleasure. Going as far as to kill his own father not too long after. But Perrotta is a monster and a psychopath so it’s clear we’re not supposed to sympathize which makes his interaction with Hotch so peculiar.

Hotch is our “Captain America”. A true neutral with an infinity for doing what’s right so it’s inconceivable to compare him to Perrotta and yet Hotch gives us some rather conflicting lines to dissect.

Before Gideon hands the interview over to Hotch, he spends a moment talking with the others out in the bullpen. The whole time he’s leaned back and he’s watching Morgan and Hotch. Now, at this point, we don’t know about the sexual abuse Derek Morgan faced at the hands of Carl Buford but there’s something about the way that Gideon spends the entirety of the conversation only looking at the two of them. Waiting for them to put together what he clearly already has and when Hotch does…

Hotch jumps straight into Perrotta’s profile, asking: “You grew up in a house that looked normal and happy, didn’t you Vincent?”, “But your father beat you every chance he got”

Perrotta excuses it with a shrug, “he smacked me around some, didn’t everybody’s old man?”

Abuse is a complicated thing and, often, abused children just don’t know what their parents are doing to them is abuse. It can be a subtle and outright thing but there’s an element of normalcy to it. The parent’s abuse is as habitual, as minimal as biting your nails to the child. Adults often can’t identify their parent’s past abuse.

With Hotch you learn that his lack of expression is often as telling as his expressions and as Hotch looks back at Perrotta, there’s something so sad about his eyes. His voice goes from loud, assertive to his whispered answer to Perrotta’s question. “No.” As if, well, maybe that’s a question he’d raised once too.

Perrotta doesn’t care about that though and he taunts “well, maybe if yours had you would have learned to fight”. But is it not more telling that Hotch didn’t make a sound? Perrotta got in several hits and the only sound Hotch made was when the wind was literally punched out of him. Not even when Gideon called to him and at that point, Perrotta did not the garrote around Hotch’s throat. That’s another thing mentioned before in the profile and something Hotch mentions to Perrotta directly. You learn to take the beatings, smile even. So, it’s just a little odd how little Hotch responded…

But that’s all nothing, you can take that how you want

Which leads us to the fateful, not everyone comment.

"You were just responding to what you learned, Vincent. When you grow up in an environment like that, an extremely abusive and violent household... it's not surprising that some people grow up to become killers"

That can’t mean NOTHING, there’s so much there but there’s something about Hotch’s subtle wording. The way he’s unconsciously slipped himself in there (a very real thing that people do) and he hasn’t even realized it. Doesn’t even know he’s done it until Perrotta pushes and he pauses, asks what Perrotta means. And the subtly of it, the way he doesn’t even mean to that says more than anything else.

“And some people grow up to catch them.”

It’s a super-specific comment to make. He can’t possibly be talking about Derek because he doesn’t even know about Carl Buford yet not to mention saying that about him would be incredibly rude if he were talking about Reid (and again, he doesn’t know about Reid’s childhood yet). So… that really only leaves him because JJ, Garcia, and Elle were not abused.

“P911”

In season two, episode two “P911” the team is hunting down a man trying to sell a young boy, Peter, on the black market. Kevin Rose is an underage boy “selling” himself on the internet while his abusive father has been in prison. I’ll let you just guess who it is that leads the team on finding out more about Kevin.

Your guess is more than likely right-- Morgan and Hotch. Now, we know about Morgan but come on. Nothing to say about it being Hotch who makes the emotional appeal?

The camera even follows his gaze, he’s crouched down (to appear non-threatening because he’s so close) and we watch his eyes take in the scars on Kevin’s chest. You can also note that while Gideon remarks that Kevin’s father was “always drunk, you never knew why he was hurting you, why he was so angry” both Kevin and Hotch look away from him.

AND FUCKING TRY AND TELL ME THE “some grow up to catch them” LINE WAS NOTHING TRY BECAUSE GUESS WHAT GIDEON SAYS? NO, NO GUESS--

Gideon: “At night you’d cry yourself to sleep hoping someone would come and save you”

And it’s HOTCH, HOTCH IS THE ONE TO SAY: “You have the chance to be the one who saves someone, Kevin. You can be the one who answers him, the one who stops his pain.”

PARALLELS PEOPLE THE PARALLELS

“Profiler, Profiled”

I bet you weren’t expecting this one, huh? But there’s something about people who faced trauma that makes it so perceptible to other traumatized people-- they sniff it out like coke to a drug hound. And, just guess, who it is that spends the majority of his time fighting with Morgan? Who knows (like I said about the bloodhound) immediately there is something Morgan’s hiding.

Hotch is angry, he’s upset that Morgan would hide anything. Mumbling about there being “larger implications” and how the team can’t have secrets. With the knowledge of exactly what that secret is it makes Gideon’s eye roll a little telling. Because it’s like they both know but neither will say. Driven home by Gideon turning the attention to Hotch, asking “would you want us profiling you?”

And again Hotch is the one to leap onto the abuse. The one to put the pieces together. Hotch’s anger makes no sense. He says he’s angry that Derek’s keeping a secret but the team has many, way too many. Over the years the team unwraps all kinds of secrets, he’s never angry then. So, it’s not about the implication of a secret at all. It’s what the secret is, like misplaced anger. Anger with himself may be leftover from his own abuse. But still…

Hotch lets Morgan escape. Knows exactly who and what Carl Buford is but all he tells the team is that “he won’t even speak about him”. He always knows how to find the abuse… like I said, a bloodhound.

George Foyet

I know you’re going to find this so fucking surprising but guess who also was abused? George Foyet was beaten by his biological father and his mother didn’t save him so he hates women (bleh, men are disgusting what’s knew).

Now, blah, blah, blah Hannah, I know you’re not about to say Foyet and Hotch are a lot alike-- no of course not. Don’t be silly. What I’m going to say is that they’re foil characters? They accent one another in an opposites sort of way. Foyet is a manipulative narcissist who doesn’t work well with others. Hotch is a guilt-ridden team leader who can’t let The Reaper’s case go. There are meant to be comparisons drawn between them. A good villain does that. George Foyet shows us that Hotch is not at all this removed, cool guy that we’ve previously assumed him to be. He cries in an alley because he blames himself when The Reaper kills a busload of people.

We see he has a rather compulsive nature. He never let The Reaper case go and has very personal ties in this case. Not even after Foyet attacks him, if anything it’s worse. He brings the case file home.

But it’s certainly interesting to see yet another “villain” with that same tragic abusive father and submissive mother come into play with Hotch. We’re nearing a point where it’s getting hard to call it coincidence (and according to David Rossi, there simply is not such thing).

Haunted.

In the second episode of the fifth season, “Haunted”, Hotch voice’s over a Dickinson quote: “One need not be a chamber to be haunted, One need not be a house; The brain has corridors surpassing. Material place.” These quotes are often cheesy, if not a little cliché, but given the premise of this episode is in exploring the ways in which a man’s traumatic childhood has left him now grappling for a truth he can not define… well, maybe we can say the writers were onto something here.

Darrin Call, debatably the Unsub of “Haunted”, was abused by an alcoholic father. We see several signs of it throughout the episode-- Darrin’s delayed speech & severe neglect that leaves Darrin in dirty, hole-riddled clothing. If what we see is not enough, the reports that the team is given on Darrin explicitly state that he was extremely physically abused. It is this abuse that leads to the PTSD that he’s diagnosed with.

As sad and disheartening as Darrin Call’s life is, overall it’s the sort of episode that is forgotten over time. When it’s placed right after the episode that viewers have to watch Hotch say goodbye to Haley and Jack then, who is Darrin Call when compared to the agony of watching Hotch show genuine weakness? After watching Hotch lay in a hospital bed, tears in his eyes wondering if his son will remember him? His fears become our own and after watching George Foyet disarm and mutilate the one guy we’ve been led to believe for five seasons is infallibly, unflinchingly never going to break… well, Darrin Call has it bad but our focus is elsewhere.

It’s on Hotch, right?

The guy who is coming back to the job after only a month (and a day) off to recover. Who Morgan worries might have PTSD but he knows they can’t easily measure because Hotch wrote the questionnaire, he knows all the right answers. Who we see has had new locks installed since the attack and has Foyet’s file sitting open on a table for easy access. Who hears Darrin Call’s life (worked the same job without promotion for years before getting fired, no wife, no kids, a hermit) and bluntly asks why Darrin hasn’t just killed himself.

And let’s just take a moment to break down that comment. Hotch, who in the episode previously lost his wife and child, wants to know why a man who is steadily starting to sound a lot like him hasn’t just killed himself.

And I don’t say “sounds a lot like him” lightly.

Darrin Call has PTSD. Hotch, more than likely, has PTSD

Here are some signs just from that episode: hostility (he yelled at Garcia over something very small), self-destructive behavior (he ran into Darrin Call’s father’s house without a vest, back-up, or telling the other’s what he was doing), and guilt (blamed himself for missing the eye twitching Darrin exhibited because of his years of antipsychotic use)

Darrin Call was abused… this marks the second HEAVILY implied time that Hotch has been compared to another man abused by his father

Vincent Perrotta was the first with that hard to forget the exchange

George Foyet and his notably exactly the same past as Perrotta

“Haunted” feels like it’s supposed to prove to the audience that Hotch is losing it. He distances himself from Morgan, leaving every room that Morgan is in. He doesn’t pick up Garcia’s calls after Darrin Call attacks his therapist. The only glimpse we see of the old Hotch is with Emily, pulled to the side, but his guilt burns and he even brushes her off. Shaking his head and turning his back to her because somehow he should have seen something no one else did.

Throw in Reid’s comment about Call “victims are often drawn to the scene of their first trauma” and we’re painfully reminded of Hotch’s apartment. A place you’d think he’d want to escape but didn’t. The man was stabbed nine times in his own apartment and stayed in that same place. Almost sounds like that statement could be applied to Hotch too.

A dash of Hotch’s own comment about where Call would go to in his confusion and he says “to what he knows”, even the importance of how that orphanage is “where he became Darrin Call”. Where does Hotch go? What does Hotch know? The job.

So… we tally now three total Unsubs that Hotch has this direct relationship with. Three Unsubs with abusive fathers and mothers who couldn’t protect them. Hmm… coincidence?

Brothers Hotchner

Supervisor Special Agent Hotchner is a master of hiding, that is undeniable. It’s hard to see anything behind those furrowed brows and impersonal suits and that’s likely for a reason. However, anyone with a little sibling can tell you that no one on this Earth can and will annoy the ever-loving shit out of you like a sibling.

But that’s not really important. Sean and Hotch don’t talk about their parents. At all. Ever.

Hotch says that when Sean was in the first grade he got sent off to boarding school. “I was the screw-up making bad choices”. Interesting enough of a statement to make but you throw in the rough ages of Sean and Hotch at that time and it’s a little more than just “interesting”. You have Hotch at roughly 14-15 getting into trouble just like Morgan did at that same age (coincidence???).

(now you can certainly look at Hotch’s parentification vs. Sean’s immaturity doubled with substance abuse problems but we’d be stretching. “The Tribe” touches on the parentification but Sean just calls it “the big brother” thing and tells Hotch that he’s not Sean’s father and it’s fine it’s whatever. Hotch is a bit pushy. That’s not new. Substance abuse can just be a problem, it doesn’t have to be bc they were abused but again… a little coincidental)

So... was Aaron Hotchner abused as a child? I certainly think so

[coolgenie]

Not sure if it’s just delusion setting in to cope with this horrible turn of events BUT… The more I think about Bad Buddy so far and P’Aof’s directing style…It would be a strange choice for them to drag us through PatPran’s breakup in the current timeline as the preview for episode 12 suggests.

At this point, that would be like beating a dead horse w/your already emotionally traumatized audience and it would be such a waste of screen time that could instead be spent in your final episode actually repairing the damage done and showing your characters coming together again in the future.

Given the way this show has hopped around with time jumps so far, it seems more likely that if they were truly committing to the time jump, they’d just cold open episode 12 post time jump and let us catch up with the reality of the situation. I imagine it would be quite similar to the time jump we experienced between episodes 6 and 7. The final scenes of episode 11 certainly laid the groundwork for a storytelling & directing decision like THAT, as much as it would still break my heart.

Especially with the way episode 11 ended, there’s absolutely no narrative reason to drag us through the breakup in the current timeline other than to make EVERYONE, characters and viewers alike, suffer. & maybe I’m giving him too much credit but that doesn’t seem like P’Aof’s wheel house.

I HOPE that the preview for episode 12 stays true to Bad Buddy format and is VERY misleading. These characters have already been through enough and giving each other up and letting the feud between their parents dictate their lives does NOT fit with the themes this story has presented so far.

As much as P’Aof has subverted genre tropes throughout this series, Bad Buddy is STILL a Y drama and as such it’s practically a guarantee that we’ll get a happy ending. At this point, I just hope it’s one that the characters truly deserve and fits the story that’s been told so far. Not a last minute reunion between 2 characters that have been made even more broken by their time apart and the perpetuation of their time spent in toxic family environments without their number 1 support systems (ie. each other).

[august-persona]

More Witch Week Epiphanies (I'm losing track at this point)

Some time ago, I wanted to write a little essay (I feel weird calling it an "essay," makes this sound scholarly and not at all like the ramblings of a hyper fixated 15-year-old, but that's what it is) on the queer-coding in Witch Week. I got very busy and sort of forgot about it. Recently, I've been thinking about it more, and realizing just how much mental health plays into the themes of Witch Week as well as homophobia.

In the world of Witch Week, you cannot tell a witch just by looking at them. Witchcraft is not tied to any ethnicity, sex, religion, etc. Anyone could be a witch and you'd have no idea unless they told you. Of course, some people seem to be more obviously a witch than others. Everyone assumes Nan is a witch (and they are right), but even then they really have no way to be sure. There's also the way that witch history is banned, stifled, twisted to fit a certain narrative. The book asserts that this is all very wrong. Witches cannot help being born witches. It's simply not healthy for a society with so many witches - a society where witchcraft is intrinsic to so many people's lives - to persecute that witchcraft so harshly.

Now replace the words "witch" and "witchcraft" in that paragraph with "gay, queer, lgbtq+."

The themes of Witch Week are very relatable to the lgbtq+ community. You cannot tell that someone is gay or otherwise just by looking at them. There are people who are assumed to be queer based on how they act or look (and you might be right), but there's no way to be sure. Anyone of any ethnicity, sex, religion, etc., could be lgbtq+.

Lgbtq+ history, similarly to the history of witches in this story, has also been frequently banned, stifled, twisted to fit a certain narrative by society at large.

Homophobia is harmful. It hurts everyone living within a society where these bigoted mindsets are the norm, even straight and cisgender people.

Now, onto the topic of mental illness. It was no new revelation to me that many - if not all the kids - at Larwood House have, or at the very least exhibit some symptoms of, various mental disorders. The book even says at the beginning that Larwood House is a school for witch orphans and children with "other problems." Nan is schooled at Larwood House because she is a witch orphan; Charles is schooled at Larwood House because his parents sent him there, presumably due to his "other problems." The book was a bit vague on this. It mentions Charles becoming standoffish after his encounter with the second witch, and his parents being concerned that he was a bad influence on his siblings, but there are certainly more elements at play.

Along with being queer-coded (more on that some other time) there are many instances in the book where Charles is obviously in a dissociated state. Charles often references this 'other part' of himself, which splits away from him when he is distressed. Sometimes Charles floats away while the other part of himself does the talking and walking and such; in other instances Charles is present but aware that a split has occured.

Charles clearly has a personality disorder, one which is probably the result of his traumatic childhood experiences and further exacerbated by Larwood House's awful environment. He has no good friends, and his emotional needs often go unchecked by teachers and peers alike. Charles often wonders how no one ever seems to notice when he 'splits.'

You cannot tell that someone is mentally ill, or neurodivergent (some mental disorders aren't so harmful to one's life that they are ill) just by looking at them. Anyone of any ethnicity, sex, religion, etc., could have a mental disorder. Of course, some people seem more likely to have a mental disorder than others based on the symptoms they exhibit, but even then you may not know for sure what exactly is going on.

The only time anyone realizes something is up with Charles, is when he self-harms in view of the boys in his dorm. Even then they only conclude that Charles must be pretty stupid to do such a thing to himself, and think not much more than that.

Then there's the ways in which mental disorders have been demonized (and more recently romanticized, but that's a whole other beast) and twisted to fit narratives in mainstream culture which are often harmful to people with those disorders - should the concept of mental disorders and neuro divergence even be addressed in the first place - in order to cater to a neurotypical audience and a society which would often like to promote the idea that people with trauma and mental turmoil should simply choose to be unaffected by these sufferings, and should the "mentally ill" ever display symptoms or behavior deemed to be inconvenient due to their disorders, it is a moral failing on their part and not a failing of their caregivers and authority to provide them with help.

Or, that the mentally ill simply need to be locked up because they are no use to society; or even done away with entirely because how could they be any more than inconvenient, and quite possibly dangerous.

In cases of people whose disorders are not harmful to themselves or others, there is often an idea that their unusual behavior must be 'fixed' (got rid of entirely) to prevent inconvenience.

These are attitudes often applied to lgbtq+ folks as well. That queerness is a moral failing, or that queer people need to be locked up, or that their queerness must be 'cured.' If not considered a sin, homosexuality was considered a mental illness for a very long time. 'Homosexuals' were thought to be dangerous, and best kept locked away or done away with. Then there's the "trans women are actually just predatory men" storyline that's been unfortunately popular lately.

Parents are still kicking lgbtq+ kids out onto the street, telling their own children they're going to hell. Lgbtq+ kids are still being sent to conversion camps in some places. Lgbtq+ people are still bullied, killed, arrested, executed, around the world.

Mental disorders and neuro divergence is a present aspect of many queer people's lives. And no, not because homosexuality = derangement - but because some people with mental disorders just so happen to also be queer; or due to the fact that queer people tend to be more susceptible to trauma, end up developing mental disorders more frequently.

What's interesting about Witch Week is that Charles' disorder is not linked to him inherently being a witch, but to how his witch-phobic society traumatized him and led him to develop his disorder.

That's pretty neat. Consider the sheer quantity of media which depicts queer and queer-coded characters as being deranged. Even when the narrative does not outrightly state "gay = psycho," the connection is still made in the viewer's mind, overtly or subconsciously. And rarely is the distinction made that the Evil Psycho Gay ended up mentally ill not because of the fact they're gay, but because of the way their homophobic culture traumatized them.

Then there's Witch Week, a book featuring a subtle but excellent portrayal of a child living with an unaddressed personality disorder in the character of Charles; a character who also happens to be queer-coded; a character who is not the antagonist, but one of the protagonists; in a book which makes it altogether very clear that it is not the fact that any of these characters are inherently witches (witchcraft = lgbtq+) that they lash out in ways that are harmful to themselves or others, but that these harmful behaviors are perpetuated by the bigoted society they live in.

[brokehorrorfan]

4K Ultra HD Review: Dead & Buried

While 1980s horror has been mined for gems by distributors and cinephiles alike, some great films still remain under the radar. Dead & Buried has been readily available on home video - thanks to Blue Underground's ownership of the film, it received a robust DVD release in 2003 and a Blu-ray upgrade in 2009 - but many new viewers are being exposed to the 1981 cult classic 40 years later. The reasons are twofold: it was featured on The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs in May, and now it's making its 4K Ultra HD debut via Blue Underground.

The film gets off to a fiery start as a photographer (Christopher Allport, Jack Frost) - who, upon first viewing, one might assume is the main character - is set on fire while still alive by a group of locals in a seaside community. The perpetrators watch on emotionlessly, some photographing and filming the gruesome events, and then make it look like an accident to cover their tracks. They repeat a similar process several times throughout the film, each with a different vicious method of death but always documented.

Enter Dan Gillis (James Farentino, The Final Countdown), who returns from the big city to his coastal hometown of Potter's Bluff, Maine to serve as sheriff. Gillis teams with local coroner Dobbs (Jack Albertson, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory) to inspect the rash of recent visitor disappearances. The investigation takes an unexpected turn when the victims begin popping back up among the townsfolk. As he connects the dots between the murders and disappearing bodies, Gillis even becomes suspicious of his wife (Melody Anderson, Flash Gordon).

Dead & Buried went through three production companies, each involved at a different stage (pre-production, filming, and post-production) with clashing visions for the final product. It went from a dark comedy script to an artful yet suspense-driven horror production with suggested violence to an R-rated straight horror film with additional gore inserts and re-editing against the director's wishes. Considering the many cooks in the kitchen, it's shocking that Dead & Buried is watchable, let alone genuinely great.

While the script by Ronald Shusett & Dan O'Bannon (Alien, Total Recall) deserves a fair share of the credit for the film's effectiveness, much of its success can be attributed to director Gary Sherman (Poltergeist III, Wanted: Dead or Alive). He and cinematographer Steven Poster (Donnie Darko, Rocky V) turn a would-be picturesque community into a desolate locale with diffused lighting and a cold, desaturated color palette, coupled with a melancholic score (with occasional big band music) by Joe Renzetti (Child's Play). The use of the red is limited so that blood has a great impact when it's shed. They also employ a number of dynamic but understated long takes that immerse the viewer. The chilling atmosphere is akin to The Fog.

Having a character within the movie film the death scenes is ahead of its time, although its ultimate purpose is superfluous (albeit potent). The snuff-style Super 8 footage is projected on several different screens of varying sizes for the big finale, adding a layer of creepiness that makes it easy to overlook the plot holes created by the twist when scrutinized. The nasty kills - from the aforementioned traumatic burn to a shot of eye trauma that would make Lucio Fulci squirm - are accomplished by Stan Winston (Jurassic Park, Terminator 2). Even this early in his career, his special effects are astonishingly convincing.

Farentino is a fine, if unremarkable, lead. Despite his declining health, Albertson delivers a standout performance in the tradition of Vincent Price. (This would be his final film appearance, as he passed away from colorectal cancer shortly after its release.) The supporting cast features several character actors as townspeople, including Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street), Lisa Blount (Prince of Darkness), Bill Quinn (Twilight Zone: The Movie), Glenn Morshower (24), and Michael Pataki (Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers).

Dead & Buried has been newly restored in 16-bit 4K from the 35mm interpositive, approved by Poster, with Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos audio. The picture and audio quality are simply impeccable, bestowing the film with the flawless presentation it deserves. Blue Underground's limited edition set includes the film on 4K UHD and Blu-ray along with a CD of Renzetti's score and a booklet featuring an essay by journalist Michael Gingold on the film's distributor, Avco Embassy Pictures (also home to The Fog, Escape from New York, Phantasm, Scanners, and The Howling). The first pressing features three different reversible covers, each with a matching lenticular slipcover.

The film has four audio commentaries, three of which are carried over from the DVD. Sherman provides ample insight into the production, but the most astounding reveal is that the memorable sequence in which a writhing character is wrapped in bandages was accomplished entirely with a dummy created by Winston; even in the realistic closeup of the eye, it was not an actor. The second track features Shusett (who also produced) and his wife, actress Linda Turley. It's less informative but still worthwhile, including Turley explaining that Pataki accepted the role because she is his niece. The third track is a technical one with Poster, who breaks down the picture's unique look and how it impacts the viewing. Film historians Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson's new commentary doesn't have any fresh information that isn't covered by the first-hand accounts, but they offer context from a fan perspective.

Four new featurettes are included. Behind the Scenes of Dead & Buried consists of 33 minutes of fly-on-the-wall 8mm footage shot by the crew during production with new commentary by Sherman, Poster, first assistant director Brian E. Frankish, and production assistant Dustin Bernard. Sherman and Renzetti sit down together to discuss their collaboration on the music. Novelization author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is also interviewed, detailing the unique process of conveying a movie without visuals. Dead & Buried Locations: Now & Then contrasts clips from the film with footage of the Mendocino, California filming locations as they appear today.

Archival interviews from the original DVD release with three genre titans are ported over: Winston humbly discusses the early days of his craft; the loquacious Englund reflects back on his pre-Freddy Krueger career; and O'Bannon elucidates on the film, for which he admits he only doctored the script rather than co-writing it, and horror as a genre, including asides on H.P. Lovecraft and George Romero. Other special features include three trailers (U.S., international, and teaser) and seven galleries (posters, advertising materials, Japanese souvenir program, lobby cards, stills, video and book covers, Stan Winston’s effects, and Poster’s location scout photos).

Dead & Buried will be released on 4K Ultra HD on July 20 via Blue Underground.

[only-by-the-stars]

the annotated Tome of the Wild

Part five: Babes in the Wood!

- A half-moon the color of yellowed pages hung high in the sky above the figures on the ground OH LOOK IT’S THAT SAME DAMN MOON AGAIN. DESPITE THAT DAYS HAVE GONE BY AND IT DEFINITELY WOULDN’T LOOK THE SAME AT THIS POINT.

- “Idiot child. Perhaps I should've done something to make you more intelligent, instead of just transforming your body.” And here we have confirmation that it was Koume that changed her into this.

- Of course, the centerpiece of this scene is the reveal of what Midna’s been up to this whole time. In the show, the situation for Beatrice is similar: she thought that Adelaide just wanted a couple of kids to do household chores, and was fine with just turning them over to her in exchange for the item she needed to break her and her family’s curse. Until, of course, she grew to like them and have second thoughts, as Midna does here. Which of course lines up with how Midna initially thought to just use Link in TP to help herself and her people, until his actions and Zelda’s made her reconsider her disdain for the people of the world of light. Here it’s her bond with Aryll and Link that makes her hesitate to hand them over: she really likes Aryll, and after a rough start with Link they’re now getting along, and she feels a lot of sympathy for his situation with Mipha. She doesn’t want to keep them from getting home even for a little while, and when she finds out about Koume’s true intentions she draws the line, as her moral code won’t let her hurt others for her own sake and she knows Zelda wouldn’t want her to hurt anyone on her behalf either. This conflict and growth are exactly why I had an easy time casting Midna in this role, and I loved being able to write her and develop the dynamics she has with Link and Aryll.

- “Only the voice of the shadow that lurks in the woods, the king of darkness that rules the night, concerns me...” King of Darkness is one of Ganon’s titles in the series.

- “There is only his way.” A line that will be echoed by the Beast himself much later.

- “Aryll, I know!” Link froze as soon as the words were out of his mouth. We’re at the point where Link is snapping at his beloved baby sister, showing just how stressed out he is right now. He was able to relax more when Midna was around, but now her betrayal is driving him further along that path to despair I’ve been mentioning. He immediately apologizes, to his credit, but he’s still starting to crack.

- “You are in grave peril, and your fate, your very lives depend on if you heed my words or not! The Beast stalks you, seeking your fall into his grasp... but you must not allow him to capture you, you must not give in to despair!” He’s not wrong! Listen to him!

- The shadow laughed, a long, low sound that seemed to ooze up from the deepest depths of the earth where eldritch creatures slumbered, forgotten by time and the gods alike. Calamity Ganon emerges from deep beneath Hyrule Castle.

- “You forget, do you not, that your daughter's safety depends upon keeping me happy?” The first hint of the deception that the Beast is working on Rhoam.

- Aryll is now calling her frog Alfonzo, after the engineer in Spirit Tracks.

- AND THEN THERE’S NAYRU AND KOTAKE. This was one of the most FUN things I got to play with. The episode this portion is an adaptation of is probably my favorite in the show, and I had an utter blast toying with expectations here just as the show did. Maybe even more! The show leads you to believe that the character Kotake replaces is the sinister and evil one, preying on the hapless young girl that Nayru is replacing, only to yank the rug out from under you and reveal that the girl is possessed and trying to eat the brothers.

now, Nayru is from Oracle of Ages. You meet her at the beginning, whereupon she quickly becomes possessed by the evil sorceress Veran. Kotake, meanwhile, is present as a villain in OOT and a linked Oracle game, and as a friendly shopkeeper in Majora’s Mask. We just saw the villainous version of her sister at the beginning of this chapter. So... is she evil too? If you’ve never seen the show, have played OOT and MM but not the Oracle games, you probably got taken in just like a first time viewer of the show is. Only to find out too late, as does Link, that Nayru is the people-eating one, and not Kotake, who is indeed her MM self and not evil.

- Nayru laughed too, a pleasant sound reminiscent of harp strings being played. Nayru gives Link the Harp of Ages in OOA.

- Aryll has switched the frog’s name to Dr. Calip, after the NPC in BOTW who gives you the Cursed Statue shrine quest.

- “It is thanks to you that I shall finally be free to roam the outside world, after all.” DANGER DANGER, the evil spirit wants to roam free and EAT MORE PEOPLE.

- Aryll spots the danger, but mistakes it for her desire to see Link end up with Mipha and no one else. Which we all agree with, of course, but it’s not the real reason she’s uncomfortable. Link, meanwhile, is oblivious to it, at least partially because he’s sinking deeper into despair and contemplating just letting Mipha go out of his intensifying self-hatred over what he’s done to her.

- Nayru's eager whisper broke into his thoughts. He glanced up and saw her eyes gleaming with a sort of hunger as she gazed across the room at him. DANGER DANGER, SHE WANTS TO DEVOUR YOU. Again, I choose my descriptive words very deliberately.

- Eerie purple light glowed around Nayru as she hovered in the air, and her face had been twisted into something that resembled a ReDead mask. Veran’s spirit form is indeed purple, and nobody who’s ever played OOT, MM, or WW can forget the ReDeads. my favorite monster I want them back dammit

- “Link?” Aryll pressed herself against his side and clutched at his arm. “There are a lot of skeletons in here...” Remember how Aryll was so excited about digging up a single skeleton back in Ikana? Not so fun anymore.

- In the show, the whole sequence of trying to avoid being eaten was creepy, but a bit more comedic too. I leaned fully into the horror that it truly would be here, not just because I wanted to write something scary, but also because I needed something that would traumatize Link enough to push him into the breakdown he has in the woods afterwards, setting the climax of the story in motion. His feelings of failure mirror what I headcanon he must’ve been going through just before he fell in Blatchery Plain as well, the despair he would’ve felt over being unable to prevent the fall of the kingdom, the deaths of his friends (especially Mipha, who he’s grieving the most), and knowing that he’s at his limit and about to die before he can get Zelda to safety. Which is another way that the appearance of that painting in the last chapter ties in.

- Aryll’s dream sequence! OH BOY. In the show, this is an entire episode, done in the style of 1930s animation, with musical numbers and everything. That doesn’t quite translate to prose, though, so I had to change and abridge it. More interestingly, though, there’s subtle hints in the show that the dream is not real, and is intended to lure Greg, the younger brother, into the clutches of the Beast. I decided to run with that. One of the hints in the show is that the gates you see seem to be made of ivory; in Greek myth, dreams pass through one of two gates, either horn or ivory. True dreams come through the gates of horn, while false ones pass through the gates of ivory. So naturally Aryll walks through gates of ivory to reach the tower.

The tower itself is the one located in the Cloud Tops in Minish Cap. Which, here, is ruled by Princess Hilda from Link Between Worlds, who has Aryll save her kingdom from the evil Yuga. This is all a HUGE hint that this is false, a trap. Because in ALBW, Hilda was conspiring with Yuga in a desperate bid to save Lorule. And who took over Yuga’s body as part of that plan? Ganon. BAM.

- And now the frog is being called Ezlo, after the talking cap in Minish Cap.

- Link is now so deeply in despair that the dekuwood is starting to grow around him, which is what motivates Aryll to make her deal with the Beast that brings everything to its eventual conclusion.

- A dark shape emerged from the curtain of snow; it was a small, plump man with a beard that covered the entire lower half of his face, rowing a rickety little boat. His eyebrows went up as he took in the sight of Midna lifting the unconscious Link into the air with her prehensile hair. “That is one strange fish you've caught there, missy...” This is the fisherman from Link’s Awakening.

- What Midna sees in the distance is the Great Deku Tree, but I wasn’t about to reveal that just yet.

and that does it for part five!

[ruvieracd]

Do the Rochambeau Guys Look Identical?

Okay so we’ve gotten a few questions about faces. Namely, how do the Rochambeau guys look alike and not question it. This is up to the reader, really, but realistically, they wouldn’t look alike. To them, they don’t look alike. We picture them all as Lin b/c that’s what we’re used to as viewers. The more I write these characters, the less I see them as Lin which sort of helps b/c then my brain isn’t constantly thinking “CLONES” or something. I’m going to kind of talk about how I envision them and if you have a particular faceclaim for one or more of them, we’d love for you to reblog and add it to this post because we’re curious as to what you guys see-even if it’s Lin at different ages. Remember, whatever YOU envision is correct. That’s all that matters. I just decided since we were asked three times to kind of give an idea of what I see when I’m writing, but LOVE to know your ideas :)

Alexander: So Alex being the oldest, I get this sense of maturity and looking older than the rest of them (not necessarily Lee). I do see a lot of Lin b/c you can’t have Hamilton and not think of Lin. @break-so-beautifully​ has really molded him into this seasoned veteran wise badass that I adore and the more I tried to to think of a face for him, the harder it was b/c I see Lin but also just this handsome, suave guy who’s going to do whatever it takes to protect his new family. Definitely older Lin vibes.

Physical Description: On the shorter side-no taller than 5′8, and this is important to me because I’ve never been a fan of guys trying to make themselves bigger b/c height is something you can’t help anyway, and a short man that owns his height and is unapologetic about it is a plus in my book. Alex definitely owns his height. He’s lean and fit and has short hair (he’ll grow it out back to Ham style later) and is very Lin in those soulful kind of eyes and has a mild New York accent. No scars due to his condition. 

Usnavi: I definitely get young Lin vibes from Usnavi, but I picture Usnavi being on the thin side-like he’s extremely lanky and is probably still ID’d out at bars. He’s on the darker side of skin shade (being Dominican) and has thick hair (you just can’t tell b/c it’s under a hat) which he keeps short. He has braces (didn’t get them until he was an adult) and looks younger than he is. 

Physical Description: Lanky, average height. Thick hair and soulful eyes, but definitely tired looking with dark circles under them most of the time. Has the darkest shade of skin out of all the guys. Little scars here and there just from life. Braces. Almost always wears his hat. 

Not exactly, but I have this kind of look about him in my head (the hair, thick eyebrows, facial hair, and thin boyish look about him)

Ruben: *sighs* Here we go-my baby. So...Ruben is also on the darker side of skin tone. He has that sweet, soulful-eyes Lin look to him, but his hair is curly. Like, when his hair gets long enough you can put that shit in a ponytail in no time. He has marks all over his body from his traumatic experience in Jamaica-burn marks, scars from being hit with an extension cord and a belt, a stab wound scar in his abdomen from an accidental stabbing, and Ian’s name branded into his chest from a hot coat hanger (check out RACD to really delve into this). On his face, he only has one visible scar near his jawline 

Physical Description: Average height. Scars all over (wears long sleeves all the time and mostly sweaters and collar shirts), curly hair that can get absolutely out of control if he doesn’t tame it, big soulful eyes, soft spoken, stutters a lot-and the stuttering is extremely important. This isn’t stutters once in a while. This is a more frequent than not kind of thing. Even in regular conversation, he can be trying to push one word out for several seconds (don’t worry-none of the boys call attention to it). Second darkest shade of skin out of the guys. 

Scar looks like this: 

Luckily I have a faceclaim for Ruben and his cute face and curly hair.

The hair: level unbrushed and untamed

Alvie: The baby of the group (unless you’re counting Lyra). Alvie is the smallest, definitely on the thin side and has just this boyish, scrufy look about him. I picture him having kind of a really soft voice with a slightly raspy texture sometimes (plays in well to his power involves sleep so he might sound tired a lot). I have a faceclaim for him for sure. In my headcanon, Alvie’s half white and it sort of worked with him struggling to fit in growing up. My face claim for him is Alexander O’conner (Rex Orange County). He has the right boyish look to him.

Physical Description: The smallest of the guys (but also the youngest) and def still looks like a teenager almost. He’s half white and looks more white than Hispanic (but he does tan in the sun). He has a gap between his front teeth and doesn’t grow facial hair as well as the rest of them. He has self-harm scars on his wrists (from his teenage years) and a small scar on his left temple from a botched ETC session at Rochambeau. He has thick, straight sticky-up y hair. He doesn’t particularly know how to (or care to) to tame it and in Rochambeau they kept his hair short for ETC treatment so it would have gone from this:

to this: 

Lee Scoresby: He kind of ties with Alex on the Lin faceclaim only he’s not short. Lee is definitely the tallest of the bunch. I think b/c he’s the newest character I can’t picture anyone but Lin, but he definitely screams ‘tallest’ in my head.

Physical Description: The tallest of the guys with a mustache and thick hair quiff. He’s right on the level of fit with Alexander only he does have scars-just cuts and nicks here and there. It’s important to me that he’s tall b/c he can tote Lyra around when she’s hurt or tired like a mother koala bear.

Lawless: Honestly since he’s not a Lin, I did not have to struggle with him. He’s just Leslie Odom Jr. I picture him almost exclusively always in a suit. Even when he goes to bed. Even when he showers.

Pippa: Same. She’s just Phillipa Soo. 

Lyra: Dafne Keen only slightly younger Dafne Keen b/c she’s eleven in this story and I feel she’s small and can fit in tight places to hide and spy and she has those little kid long toothpick legs that are not in proportion to her body yet. More legs than torso.

[yousaidyes]

I wish I could dig this “coding in a different way” but that’s allowing the writers to say nothing at all in the text. If gay narratives are intended, they must be presented tangibly in the plot. Abstract symbolism or obscure references open to interpretation only perpetuates debate. Most ST viewers are not on tumblr/twitter reading the meta or the S4 movie blueprint. I'm happy to get byler in any form, but who wants to rely on possible coding as a plot fill? It's not "more than enough" to many.

i hear that, and yes, i agree anon. im aware that there are a lot people - a really good chunk of st viewers - that do not participate in the fandom. and since they aren't present here to read all the meta and analyzes, its granted that i wasn't regarding them in my post. i doubt they even take st for more than your usual sci-fi monster show for kids. to those people, i understand that the coding isn't blatant enough, and it won't be until byler happens for real. and only then will they be like oh so that's what this was about and notice everything upon rewatching the series.

so, i wasn't talking about them. they aren't ever here. i was talking about the fans that are here, participating in the fandom, and have access to all the meta that there is to read, and they've read it, because of course they have. how can a st fan resist that kind of evidence? but then, like i said, i still see them hcing mike as bisexual after everything. i'd seen someone do it recently, and that's why i'd made that post. they know what is going on and yet they don't want to hc mike as gay - even though they do will - for reasons that i don't understand. especially when there's more coding for mike. will's is less yet it's so valid, but mike's isn't. and i don't think that's fair to his character, you know? will got called names by bullies and his dad, by mike? he has projected on a girl. that's just as huge imo, and definitely more unique than the primary way of traumatizing the said gay characters with bullying and abuse by people around them like how show creators usually go about to get the point across. but the way the duffers have dealt with mike is a really new way of coding a character as gay: engaging in projection on a look alike and participating in compulsive heterosexuality. that's why i called it different. but idk why the same people who take will's sexuality so seriously, don't treat mike's the same. and i totally get it when viewers like to hc characters as whatever they see fit - its sometimes done even after their sexuality is confirmed - but then if they are one of them, why side with will's coding with so much passion? because he got called slurs and mike dated a girl? sorry but it doesn't prove anything. and alright, even if nothing is different or more than enough, if dating the opposite gender - and failing at it - isn't one the major neon signs of being gay, then i don't know what is.

and it's not “possible coding”, mike realizing that he's gay by coming to terms with his feelings for will at the end of the series is literally what his whole development arc is about. and by saying that im not trying to make his character about will or byler, please don't take it that way. he's his own person, but to be that person he has to admit the biggest truth of his life to himself. and i just don't like how such a big part of his life which is scaring him shitless gets disregarded the way it is.

[lesbianrobin]

time 4 hot takes with em: i'm sure SOME of these critiques are valid but i literally Cannot trust any criticism of a period piece that claims it's "too progressive" for its time.

like first of all 90% of those criticisms are just flatout wrong. either the ideas in a given work Were present at the time and the person criticizing is just working off of generalizations and assumptions rather than historical fact, or the work has been intentionally written to allow for the inclusion of more diverse characters and progressive viewpoints than might have been typical of the era, and the person criticizing is simply ignoring this fact.

second of all i have a hard time trusting your judgment if you leave a work of fiction (especially one focused on romance, comedy, and/or escapism) complaining that you didn't get to see enough hate crimes or that the marginalized protagonist had too much self-esteem. novels were written in the eighteenth/nineteenth century, and you're perfectly free to go read them! films and television shows were produced all throughout the twentieth century, and you're perfectly free to go watch them! there are certain things that people in 2020 just don't want to reenact, certain things that might be harmful or even traumatizing to artists and audiences alike, things that would completely distract from the intent of the story, and i don't believe that every period piece is under an obligation to explicitly depict the very worst of an era while also avoiding the depiction of the very best.

why are you upset that a work of art is reflective of its own time? that's just how art works!!!! shakespeare's historical dramas certainly weren't Perfectly Period Accurate, just like the period pieces of today aren't perfectly reflective of the eras they depict. the vast majority of works of historical fiction/period pieces are written specifically to call attention to the problems and conflicts of contemporary society, not to educate the viewer on history.

also i just KNOW that a lot of the people complaining about period pieces being "too progressive" would complain about lizzie bennett and call her unrealistic and Too Modern if they read/watched pride & prejudice without knowing it was written in 1813. like i KNOW they would.

that is all thank you for your time this has been hot takes with em <3

[dweemeister]

Movie Odyssey Retrospective

Bambi (1942)

In the early 1920s, Austrian Felix Salten began working on his best-known novel. Salten, a prominent Jewish author, was an avid outdoorsman who closely observed the habits of wildlife in the Viennese countryside. His experiences led him to write Bambi, a Life in the Woods, which became a bestseller in Europe. It was a bestseller in the United States, too, but Salten’s work had somehow been recategorized as a children’s book when exported across the Atlantic. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) producer Sidney Franklin (1942’s Mrs. Miniver, 1942’s Random Harvest) purchased the film rights, but he experimented and failed to find a satisfactory way to adapt Salten’s novel. Frustrated, Franklin handed the reins to Walt Disney. While Disney took on this new project, the Nazi Party banned Salten’s novel – claiming it to be, “a political allegory of the treatment of Jews in Germany.”

Salten, who soon fled for neutral Switzerland (never to return home to annexed Austria), may have inserted some such allegories, but that is not his novel’s primary intention. In one of the novel’s most memorable passages not present in the Disney adaptation, Bambi’s father shows his son a poacher’s corpse – another human has shot this poacher. In realizing humanity’s fragility and its sameness to the animals of the forest, a frightened Bambi, while examining the poacher’s body, declares, “‘There is Another who is over us all, over us and over Him.’” Salten’s novel and the 1942 Disney adaptation directed by David Hand are about the inevitability and universality of death – subject matter not exclusive to children.

Bambi was slated to be the second animated feature by Walt Disney Productions (now Walt Disney Animation Studios). Due to production delays, narrative confusion, aesthetic difficulties, and especially the Disney animators’ strike of 1941, it is the fifth and last entry of the studio’s Golden Age. Whether because of or despite these delays, Bambi seems an outlier in the Disney animated canon. It bears scant artistic resemblance to any of its predecessors or successors. To the bewilderment of viewers who believe that a great movie requires plot, Bambi dispenses of such notions. If conflict appears, it is resolved immediately – with one continuous exception. As Walt Disney insisted on the animation being as realistic as possible while retaining anthropomorphic qualities, the True-Life Adventures series (1948-1960; fourteen innovative nature documentaries that continue to influence the subgenre’s narrative and visual grammar) remains Bambi’s closest cousin in the studio’s filmography. Bambi – wildly innovative, underappreciated upon release and today – completes a consecutive run of five animated features for a Golden Age. Rarely matched today are the standards set by those five films.

This film is a coming-of-age tale; more specifically, it is about a male fawn’s experiences and observations on the natural life cycle. It begins with Bambi’s birth and concludes as Bambi inherits his father’s role as Great Prince of the Forest. This animated Bambi is less pedantic than Salten’s book, which focuses on Bambi’s survival lessons from the other woodland creatures. Instead, story director Perce Pearce (1940’s Fantasia, 1943’s Victory Through Air Power) and screenwriter Larry Morey (primarily a lyricist; 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) adopt a free-flowing episodic structure where Bambi lives life innocently, with violence puncturing through the idyll rather than being omnipresent. We see him befriend the rabbit Thumper and skunk Flower, learn to observe his surroundings before grazing in the open meadow, and play in the snow and on the ice come his first winter. There are comic misunderstandings and warnings about men, neither of which dominate the film.

Bambi also takes time, for a minute or a few, to avert its concentration from its protagonist to other animals. In a less disciplined film, these decisions might undermine the film’s goals – in this case, to portray nature as faithfully as possible within the bounds of a loose narrative. But each of these scenes focused away from Bambi either strengthen Bambi’s characterization, the liveliness of the forest, or the film’s messaging.

A handful of scenes including the elderly Friend Owl introduce us to Bambi and his mother as well as those adolescent, animalistic romantic tinglings he calls “twitterpation”. Friend Owl moves the film forward in ways that abided by the censors at the time, as well as introducing concepts to Bambi and friends in just enough time that is necessary. The most graphic moment during the first scene featuring the hunters (who are never depicted, aurally or visually) does not concern Bambi and his mother, but a few nameless pheasants. Covered in shadow by the long grasses, one of these pheasants speaks of the impending danger, and the audience hears the terror in her tremulous voice. Flying out of the underbrush in a desperate attempt to flee, she is shot by the hunters, and drops to the ground. The frame shows the pheasant’s corpse, but does not linger. This is the only depiction of a dead animal in the film – contrary to the recollections of many viewers. For younger and older viewers alike, this scene emphatically communicates the dangers that Bambi’s mother has warned about, priming the audience for what is to come, and doing so without sensation.

It leads directly to a scene that has become a sort of childhood rite of passage. The death of Bambi’s mother in a later scene has traumatized multiple generations of viewers – intrepid, timeless cinema. As Bambi and his mother are grazing on early Spring grass in the meadow, the latter senses movement and pokes her head up, turning her head realistically as if on a swivel. Her eyes are wide, unnerving. She looks straight at the audience; this would be the stuff of fourth wall-breaking comedy in any other context, but here it is almost inquisitive. Bambi is one of the few Disney canonical films in which what is happening off-screen is equally (if not more) important than what the audience is seeing – something most evident here. The film stubbornly fixes its perspective on the deer and the snow-blanketed backgrounds that emphasize how exposed they are. They flee. There is no cover as the editing becomes more frantic, closing in on the deer’s terrified faces as they rush back to the thicket. A shot rings out. The film’s score – a constant presence throughout Bambi until now – decrescendos from broadening string lines to a chorus vocalizing pianissimo (mimicking the wind-blown snow drifts), and disappears completely when the Great Prince of the Forest appears.

The Great Prince is obscured by the falling snow.

“Your mother can’t be with you anymore.”

Silence. Stillness.

Bambi sheds but a single tear. He walks away with his father and, mirroring his deceased mother, looks towards the audience – this time, not in accusation or inquiry, but faint hope. Cynical viewers label this scene as anticlimactic due to Bambi’s lack of expression. But the filmmaking preceding it – a combination of the editing by Thomas Scott (1939’s Beau Geste, 1948’s So Dear to My Heart); the compositional decisions by composers Frank Churchill (Snow White, 1941’s Dumbo) and Edward H. Plumb (1944’s The Three Caballeros); the attentive character animation by artists too numerous to single out here; and the moody lighting and brushstroke textures to the backgrounds set by Tyrus Wong (1956’s Giant, 1969’s The Wild Bunch) – helps justify Bambi’s reaction. Some of the most important, at times traumatic, moments in life are silent and still. There is just enough pathos here without being anticlimactic or maudlin, or to be patronizing towards young viewers.

And yet the next scene shows Bambi grown up, in the middle of Spring, at play. There is no allusion to the tragedy on-screen a few minutes prior. The filmmakers are not minimizing Bambi’s trauma or nature’s violence, but saying that life nevertheless continues. There is growth, the acceptance of grown-up responsibilities, romance, love, child-rearing. Stags – like Bambi and the Great Prince – mate with does, but do not participate in the lives of their fawns. Unlike other Disney films where animals assume greater anthropomorphized qualities (1967’s The Jungle Book, 2016’s Zootopia), Bambi’s naturalistic approach contradicts any application of human norms and values onto its animals.

For years, this meant struggling to animate wildlife – especially deer. Rendering deer in appealing ways is difficult, due to the shape of their face and the positioning of their eyes on either side of the face. In the end, the animators went with character designer Marc Davis’ (Davis also led the character design of Thumper, Flower, and Cruella de Vil from 1961’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians) outlines: maintaining realistic deer anatomy, but exaggerating the face with a shorter snout and larger eyes. The Great Prince’s antlers proved most infuriating due to the intricate perspectives in animating them. When the animators resolved that they could not animate antlers from scratch, a plaster mold of deer antlers were made and was Rotoscoped (projecting live-action film onto an image for an animator to trace it) the film’s animation cels.

But the most remarkable contribution to Bambi comes from Tyrus Wong. Wong, a Chinese-born American artist, established the look of Bambi’s painterly backgrounds. Based on landscape paintings from the Song dynasty (960-1279; a Chinese historical period when landscape painting was in vogue), Wong’s concept art caught the eye of colleague Maurice “Jake” Day. Day, a photographer, illustrator, and naturalist, spent weeks in Vermont and Maine, sketching and photographing deer and the woods surrounding them. His sketches, however, were deemed too “busy”. By comparison, Wong’s concept art – using pastels and watercolors – is impressionistic, deeply atmospheric. Disney, impressed by Wong’s work, appointed him to be lead production illustrator, and instructed the other background animators to take inspiration from Wong’s concept art. Wong’s lush backgrounds have graceful dimension (a hallmark of Song dynasty landscapes), seemingly extending the forest beyond the frame. A brushstroke implies dimensions to the forest unseen. Wong’s sense of lighting – whether soaking in sun-bathed greens or foreboding black-and-white, blues, or reds – helps Bambi smoothen otherwise abrupt tonal shifts.

Nevertheless, history downplayed Wong’s enormous contribution to one of the greatest animated films ever made. The studio fired Wong shortly after Bambi’s completion as collateral damage from the aftermath of the Disney animators’ strike – by the terms of the agreement with the strikers, Disney recognized the animators’ union but would lay off a union-approved equal ratio of strikers and non-strikers. Wong later found work as a Hallmark greeting card designer and a production illustrator for Warner Bros. Retiring in 1968, Wong was contacted by Disney to serve as a sketch artist for Mulan (1998) – Wong declined, stating that animated films were no longer a part of his life. Only within the last decade has Wong, who passed away in December 2016 at 106 years old, received due recognition for his contributions that his on-screen credit does not reveal.

Perhaps inspired by his meetings and collaboration with conductor Leopold Stokowski and music critic Deems Taylor for Fantasia, Walt insisted on a film score to be present across Bambi’s runtime. Composers Frank Churchill and Ed Plumb take inspiration from the Silly Symphony shorts made prior to Snow White – Bambi’s score and soundtrack occasionally blends with the sound mix and it liberally uses “Mickey Mousing” (the synchronization of music with actions, most notably footsteps, on-screen). With the writing team periodically revising Bambi, Churchill and Plumb waited until the final structure of the story was set before composing the music. Transcripts from the Disney Archives also reveal an emboldened Walt – again, perhaps inspired by his experiences from Fantasia – to insert his own preferences in how the music should sound. Walt, a man who once professed that he, “[didn’t] know beans about music,” was more musically articulate than he had been before Fantasia, and was unusually influential in the film’s orchestration. In the end, the Churchill and Plumb score is largely framed by the opening credits number, “Love is a Song”.

Love is a song that never ends. Life may be swift and fleeting. Hope may die, yet love's beautiful music Comes each day like the dawn.

In a few short stanzas, the composers begin a score that falls silent only two times: when Bambi’s mother mentions “man was in the forest and when the Great Prince of the Forest appears shrouded in snow. If one did not already associate it with the actions of the film’s characters, Bambi’s fully-orchestrated score sounds like a lengthy, motif-filled tone poem that can be heard in a concert hall. Listen to the string harmonies supporting the “Love is a Song”-vocalizing chorus during “Sleep Morning in the Woods/The Young Prince/Learning to Walk” beginning from 4:19-5:20. That sort of harmonic density would not be out of place in a late Romantic-era concert hall. Occasionally, that tone poem of a score gives way for the limited musical soundtrack like “Little April Shower” – the film’s best song, and one where instruments and vocalizing humans serve to simulate the sound of rain and wind. Bambi contains some of the tenderest music, reflecting the film’s thematic content, in the Disney canon.

Upon release, many critics and audiences found Bambi a step backward for Disney, caring not that the studio’s namesake and its animators agonized over its realism. Disney had upended the moviegoing world’s expectations with Snow White and spawned competing studios looking to replicate that alchemy. But in doing so, the studio also coded audience and critic expectations that animated film should only be fantastical. To strive for realistic animation to reflect nature was, “boring” and “entirely unpleasant” – for these critics (who say nothing about how animation can guide emotion), animated fantasy was innovative because it bent reality in ways live-action cannot portray. Echoing the most vehement criticisms hurled towards Fantasia, Bambi’s then-contemporary naysayers implied that even attempting to animate nature realistically and ignoring fantasy would be a pretentious exercise. In columns and tabloids, the American media also devolved into a mud-slinging debate over whether Bambi – because of its off-screen portrayal of humanity – defamed hunters.

By similarly contradictory logic, animated film in 1942 was mostly perceived as children’s entertainment – an attitude that has been dominant ever since, and one that yours truly tries to discredit with exasperating frequency. With no other rival animation studios attempting anything as ambitious as a Fantasia or Bambi, gag-heavy short films from Disney and its competitors contributed to these widely-held views. With World War II underway, the dissonance of expectations would only escalate. American moviegoers, though wishing to escape from the terrible headlines emerging from Europe, North Africa, and Asia, believed animated films too juvenile for their attention. Bambi – a dramatic film intended for children and adults – faltered under the burden of these wartime contradictions. It would not make back its production costs during its initial run.

This commercial failure, on the heels of the animators’ strike, cast a shadow over Disney’s Burbank studio and on Walt himself. Walt would never publicly admit this, but he believed he had been too focused on animated features. So much of his creative soul and experimental mind had been dedicated to the Golden Age films, but at what cost? The critical and commercial triumphs of Snow White and Dumbo were offset by Pinocchio’s (1940) budgetary overruns and the headline-grabbing negativity (by music and film critics) that financially drowned Fantasia and Bambi. Internal divisions that led to the animators’ strike nearly destroyed the studio; heavy borrowing from Bank of America resulted in runaway debt. Walt – spiritually and physically – would not be present for the rounds of layoffs (mandated by the agreement with the striking animators) that almost halved the studio’s staff after Bambi’s release. He accepted a long-standing offer from the Office for Inter-American Affairs to embark on a goodwill tour of South America to help improve relations with Latin American nations (as well as collect ideas for future animated films).

Bambi remains a sterling example of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ artistic daring. The film pushes realistic animation as far as the technology of its time can. It does so not only for the sake of visual realism, but to reinforce the profound emotions it has evoked for decades. The film’s tragic dimensions are legendary, oft-parodied; yet this does not (and should not) define it. Almost eighty years since its debut, Bambi’s reputation continues to be mired in the contradictions that first greeted its release. There are some who still believe that animated cinema, by its nature, is specifically for children. And by an extension of that thought, some believe tragedy has no place in animated cinema. What a limited view of art that is, an underestimation of humanity’s capacity for understanding.

Bambi concludes the Golden Age of Walt Disney Animation Studios. Since its departure from theaters, moviegoers have rarely been treated to animated cinema of equal or greater maturity – let alone from Disney itself. The artistic cavalcade of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942) resulted in five consecutive films resembling nothing like the other, but all united in ferocious innovation. The central figure of this Golden Age, Walt Disney, was personally involved in each of these works; the end of this so-called Golden Age comes as he stops dedicating himself so completely to the studio’s animated features. In their own ways, each film helped define what animated cinema can be and who it is for. That debate remains fluid, one where the principal interlocutors learn from or disregard the lessons of this Golden Age.

My rating: 10/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

This is the seventeenth Movie Odyssey Retrospective. Movie Odyssey Retrospectives are reviews on films I had seen in their entirety before this blog’s creation or films I failed to give a full-length write-up to following the blog’s creation. Previous Retrospectives include The Wizard of Oz (1939), Mary Poppins (1964), and Oliver! (1968).