#and how it could also be a commentary on how when we're young we dont fully understand the terribleness of the world

[madame-mongoose]

Horror story concept where the general theme is how nostalgia can hide the truth/warp our perception

[bozepomagaj]

i was 15 when i watched made in abyss as well, finished the 1st season and promptly never touched it again because of what i learned about the author. From what ive seen from koreans they say that the version shown on korean tv is censored (which sounds plausible) which could mean that the weird parts that we skip may be cut out entirely(?dont quote me on that idk) soobin is on thin ice cause the 2nd season is worse and taeyong is in deep shit because i dont think there is any reason why someone should own the manga😟

I'mma preface this by saying I completely get everyone who couldn't stomach this series. It contains a lot of disturbing topics and at the end of the day, it's a horror series, of course not everyone is gonna be able to handle that, and again that's fine. But I can also say that this arc was surprisingly handled with a lot of care, wasn't fetishized nor glorified just... disturbing. Think of Outlast 2 or the ending of Amnesia:Rebirth.

TLDR:

Second season is way more disturbing but not as sexual in nature and Soobin most likely was talking about the fight scenes when saying how cool it was. And if he wasn't then who knows what he was yapping about, don't know him personally so I can't put words into his mouth unless he says something. As for Taeyong, can't defend him at ALL but calling him a p3d0 would still be a bit too much for me.

AND I wanna add after further investigation, Mingi said he didn't even watch it and instead dropped it because it was too much for him, so there's that.

For a more in depth explanation, here you go:

I'm gonna have to explain the lore in order for you all to understand this FULLY, so heres a summary:

The arc introduces us to Vueko, a victim of trafficking who was thrown into the Abyss with the rest of the now villagers because she wasn't deemed as someone useful. So obviously, when she meets Irumyuui, who has been exiled from her village for not being able to give birth at the age of 8, she immediately takes her in. As a victim, she understands her, and the author explains how, through helping Irumyuui, Vueko is able to heal her own trauma and heal Irumyuui as well. It's extremely well written, and as a fellow victim, there was something so sweet about seeing someone heal with the help of another. Especially when that someone acted like a mother figure. But of course, this is the Abyss. The point of the Abyss is that despite you thinking there's some light at the end of the tunnel, there isn't. Wazukyan takes that away, and Irumyuuis wish backfires (think of it like the wishes in Madoka, you get what you want but at a cost), and she gets turned into a horrible monster. But despite everything, she's happy because to her, she's fulfilled her purpose.

This is the part that I could discuss for hours because to me, it was commentary on how young girls even nowadayas are convinced by others that 'they have to find a man one day' and how having no kids is looked down upon. Especially in 3rd world countries. I could write an entire essay, but we're not here to do that.

I can tell you immediately that none of this was fetishized nor glorified in an yway, it's just supposed to make you feel absolutely empty because again, author is really trying to push that "oh you think you got the good end of the stick? Think again!" The manga if FILLED with situations like this, from Rico's origins to Nanachis arc, the subplot of this entire manga is 'how far are you willing to go to survive?'. Think of it like Fire Punch. Disturbing? Yeah, I mean, even I had to drop it once they began talking about trafficking women. Once again, I am comparing it to Madoka Magica but far more gruesome. Nothing explicit was shown, Irumyuui's private parts were never exposed, and her giving birth was also never shown. Her transformation WAS shown, but it's your basic body horror, like in most Junji Ito works.

SO, obviously if you're not a fan of the horror/seinen genre this is deeply disturbing and fucked but after seeing games like Outlast 2 and Amnesia: Rebirth, I wasn't as disturbed PERSONALLY. Again, recommending this publicly might've not been the smartest idea because you really do have to be into the horror genre to be able to handle topics like that. Even I just had to sit in silence for a couple hours after reading that backstory cuz damn, it hits you right in the feels. And most of the manga past that part just has badass fight scenes and when people praise it, they usually talk about that. From what I saw it was well animated and lots of clips were shared on tiktok, twitter etc. So there's a big chance he was talking about that.

(Examples of why people were hyping it up, even non-fans who had no idea about the series were going crazy because of this fight scene)

Now as for Taeyong... see now the reason I didn't mention him in the original post is because of that specific thing. I love the series and have come across physical copies of the manga but I know damn well I'm not buying cuz I don't wanna be seen supporting the author, purely out of spite. And saying 'oh well maybe he didn't know what the author is like'. Unlike some sites, physical copies DO include the extra chapters which contain stuff like this:

Totally unnecessary, not relevant to the plot and while some say it was added as a "haha funny joke" c'mon now. Let's use our brains. Now, would I call him a p3d0? Absolutely not. Would he be weird for this? To me, yeah. For anyone reading this, it's up for you to decide. I'm only here to answer questions about the series because I see people saying random stuff and making it seem FAR more worse just cuz they saw a couple tags.

[rouge476]

The colors of soukoku

Finally the clothing analysis or commentary that i promised like a year ago, yay!

NOTE: So firstly because i don't know how to add the "read under de cut" this will seem kinda long, you can just scroll down if you are not interested, thanks and sorry for that.

There is a lot of rich symbolism in bungou stray dogs, either hidden or in plain sight in every single feature of the product, this time i'm going to analyze a very distinctive area in the design of the characters and that is: their clothes and colors. This post will separate itself in 4 areas for better comprehension: fifteen, sixteen, eighteen (dark era), 22 (modern era) and beast.

I could go on with everyone from the cast, sure, but i'm going to start with soukoku because they are the ones with the most changes in their clothing through the series (mostly chuuya, fashion king) with that covered let's start.

Fifteen

The age of changes and revolution, and also when the duo first met and continued to grow together, as we're going to see in their clothing:

See, layers and boton ups can be as well as some awesome fashion sense choices, a good metaphor for emotion, clothes help us show the world who we are and how we feel, let's start with chuuya:

Green leather jacket with a lot of zippers, a gray zipped sweatshirt and a bright red shirt under, black trousers with a cimarron head belt referencing the sheep and him being the king since he has he horned one, remember what i was saying about layers? Since the story also covers the unraveling of chuuya's secret being arahabaki, it makes sense that all this zipped layers are closed since he's keeping it a hidden through all the novel as well as his hands, onto the colors:

Acording to color psychology, green is the color of temperance, hope, peace, and freshness, is an earth color, but also combined with black or blackened can also mean ambition, seriousness and destruction, puting the green as principal color is showing sheep leader chuuya among all, ambitious with his protection and leader skills, template until enraged and serious.

Light Gray is the color of neutrality, estability, wisdom and moral neutrality, again we are seeing here sheep chuuya.

Bright red is the color of power, dynamism, passion, and often than not, danger, this is trademark chuuya color, but we dont see it in fifteen until the last layer of clothes, he was hiding his true personality in order to be a good leader for the sheep.

Black here is the color of elegance and mystery, the unknown, dark and even malice in some way, this color wraps up the entire scheme of meanings in chuuyas clothing while also making the outfit not straining to see.

As for the material, the first jacket is thick leather while the rest may be light cotton, another metaphor for auto protection.

Now onto dazai:

Here we have fifteen mafia dazai, unmotivated and wanting to die, but still young at the end of the day, he's wearing formal clothes and a monochrome color scheme, aside from the trademark bandages in the eye and the gauze what i find interesting here is the percentage of color in the design, we see a lot of black, yes, but also a large chunk of visible white in the shirt, very visible even under the coat that in the arts of the novel it mostly is fying in his shoulder and not bloking the white shirt, white is the color of purity, innocence, infantiliy, and even harmony and in this design, it shows us that he is, even in mafia black, still a kid at the end of the day.

Another thing i noticed while analyzing this design is that the underside of the cloack is light gray, so the ambiguous morality is there too, as for the material, i don't realky know but visually is a little stiff while soft, so it helps the feeling too.

Thanks for reading all this nonsensical analysis, in the next post, we will be exploring sixteen y/o soukoku with the addition of stormbringer design!

Next >

[wolf-stark]

You ask I deliver — both tfatws asks in one!

tfatws weekly ask 1

i finally saw ep1!! i wont be able to see ep2 until thursday at the earliest but i already have some Thots on this ep. here are the ones I remember

first is, and i'm so sorry for this, a grammar lesson. an appositive is when you stick an additional phrase in between commas, dashes, or the like. i actually just used one! the "and i'm so sorry for this" in the first sentence of this paragraph is an appositive. thing is, most english speakers don't normally use them when they speak, only in writing. so i'm always on high alert whenever i hear somebody in tv or movies use one. (it's generally a marker of bad screenwriting). anyway there was one right in the beginning of the episode. the white army guy yelling at sam wilson said "first lieutenant Torres, our intel officer, will be helping on the ground." yeah so. the writing of this series started out on the wrong foot for me. but the rest of the episode was obviously tons and tons better (every interview i see with malcolm spellman makes me love him more and more)

the contrast between the opening minutes (falcon action sequence) and the rest of the ep.... i would 100000/10 rather watch a series with just sam and bucky dealing with life. i dont give a single crap about the flag-smashers or any of that. i just want sam, sarah & fam getting their boating business back on the ground & yeeting racist dickwads, bucky going through therapy and making amends, sam and joaquin being bros, sambucky homoerotic tension, etc.

the cinnamontography! wandavision mostly used cinematography to signify era n stuff. tfatws doesn't have wv's premise to go off of, so here's some tricks i noticed:

with sam there's obviously all sorts of shots with the captain america iconography next to his face, but he hasn't totally claimed it. there's the mural of steve rogers in the background; there's sam staring into the shield like it's a spectre of steve's face; there's sam looking into the exhibit, the shield and sam separated by glass and a layer of camera focus. steve is a constant spectre, always there, an idea, a symbol himself. sam's relationship with this iconography is distanced. he is separated by glass exhibit walls. by painting canvases. he doesn't yet feel worthy to take on that iconography. this whole thing was pulled off quite well but also a bit on-the-nose if only in quantity. there's just sooooo much fancy iconography stuff

speaking of the exhibit, there's something that i get real pissy about. it's when like, there's an action going on you're supposed to be paying attention to but the cinematographer is like,,,, hey! check out this location! or this headline! or something! there was a lot of that in the exhibit. the camera was like, you could focus on sam and rhodey's convo (which was fine but could have been so much better with an extra like 10 minutes of deep character study talk) but noooo you want me to look at the symbol for the united nations and read all the text about bucky who hasn't even showed up yet. shut up i know the lore and ill watch the shot-by-shot breakdown yt vids you don't have to make the shot this long jkdsalcjklasejf

my fav trick was with bucky and the therapist. i had seen a clip of the scene with bucky and the therapist beforehand and i thought the cinnamontography was super obnoxious, but then i was like, oh duh. the shots frequently change the distance between the camera and its subject. sometimes it's uncomfortably close and sometimes it's really far. a clear allegory for the duality of therapy, esp for bucky! therapy is an invasive process wherein he is ruthlessly examined, picked apart, and berated for his trauma (this therapist is crap in every way btw, "mean therapist" works for greg house and greg house only). so the camera goes close. it makes the viewer claustrophobic like bucky. but when he's like "no i haven't had any nightmares" the camera suddenly goes really far. we see bucky as this tiny head in the center of the bottom of the frame. we are distanced from him. he has pushed us away. we cannot see him. he lies because he is vulnerable. so yeah, amazing work there. the therapy scene was hard to watch on purpose!

did bucky slip a note to yori inside the dollar bill? bucky stop making me emooooo. the suuper awkward fake smile has me 😭 (veteran trying to adjust!)

mark my worrrrds when sam asks someone y the govt picked john “white bread” walker they’re gonna say “we needed somebody everyone can get behind....someone uncontroversial, someone everyone can see themselves in” like that exact racist dog whistle

tfatws weekly ask 2

just saw ep2 so im taking advantage of the 2 seconds i can be on tumblr without worrying about tfatws spoilers before new episode drops

when isaiah said "your people put me in prison for being a hero" and bucky thought "your people" means hydra. 🤦‍♂️

speaking of racism, the interplay between sam being Black (anti-Black racism) and sam being the Falcon (negrophilia, "can i take a selfie w you as i deny you a loan?") and the intersection between the two (j*hn lichrally called sam "steve's wingman"! he takes the crypto out of crypto-racist in like 2 seconds!) !!!!!!!! a Black celebrity's Black experience, the separation of man and identity!!!! (thinking about vanessa bayer in snl in that skit "beyonce is black" telling her black friend "you're not black, you're...my girl!")

after sam gets racially profiled by cops we see j*hn standing in front of cop cars cinematic parallels turns out j*hn is racist who knew

this therapist sucks major ass but she got bucky and sam together in the same room and ready to collaborate...that's something ig. it was lichrally couple's therapy she said she used her miracle exercise with couples sambucky antis get blended

bucky says "he was wrong about you so maybe he was wrong about me"...that's not how people talk. when therapist asks bucky, the guy who doesn't talk at all about himself, "y do you hate sam", the last thing bucky's gonna do is actually connect his hatred of sam to his own self-worth issues. bucky generally refuses to talk about himself, so why would he talk about himself in the one context that nobody ever links back to their own neuroses: hatred of other people? one thing human beings hate most is admitting we're wrong. admitting you hate someone because of your own issues? that's a major therapeutic step. bucky would absolutely have to be prompted to do that. even like one or two lines of dialogue more would have set up that line better. but in terms of the actual thought? an amazing way to take the sam/bucky relationship. bucky bases his self-worth on steve believing in him, and if steve is wrong bucky has no self-worth, so 1) he has to develop self-worth disassociated from steve's assessment of him and 2) he has to love himself before he can love sam, and 3) he has to realize that sam giving up the shield is a sign of sam's humility not his unworthiness.

conversely, we don't get into why sam hates bucky? yeah sam has the right to hate a guy that has tried to kill him (albeit while brainwashed) multiple times, and now shows up in his life just to bash him but. everything happens so fast i cant follow their relationship

in fact i dont feel like i understood much of anything. like y did bucky and sam go on that mission together? how connected are sam/bucky/joaquin with the government? doesn't bucky just want to retire now? literally what is everyone doing/feeling and why???

if battlestar becomes a knowing commentary on the black best friend stereotype i'm gonna party, but i dont expect much of that

the interplay between man and symbol. captain america is obviously a symbol. the shield is obviously a symbol. but steve rogers? the. man behind the cowl? he too seems to become a symbol. a paragon of a good guy, so good he's unreachable. steve was just a guy stop idolizing him the last thing steve would want is to be idolized

as the resident musician/music nerd on mcublr, 1) that captain america rally music slaps, but 2) re: the song at the end of the ep, if you're just gonna rip off mozart's lacrymosa then at least play mozart's lacrymosa. we wont blame you the lacrymosa slaps (if you dont know what im talking about go on yt and search it up youll recognize it fo sho

look i love enfys nest as much as the next guy but if tfatws is gonna get erin kellyman to play another innocent little gurl blackmailed into the fakeout-villain position (her text seemed to suggest as such) then 😡 like why can't women just....be evil? young, freckly, innocent-looking women? girls are not untouchable pure objects but full of rage and resentment just as much as anyone can be

bonus ep1 comment: bucky says about that senator whose car he hijacked, "she continued to abuse the power i gave her." fictionaldarling on yt say that he says "i" because he can't disassociate himself from his winter soldier persona which begets endless and senseless guilt. like dude. can i not be emo for like 1 second.

OKay. First off, as much I enjoy your sending it to me, what made you decide to send me these??

-

TFATWS WA #1

Don't worry about getting this to me as early as possible. I usually don't watch the episode right away.

1. Cool writing lesson.

2. Everyone wants a comedy show [like Friends] about the MCU superheroes.

3. Cinematography is always a beautiful thing.

4. Sam definitely has to carve his own Captain America status for himself, outside of Steve's ya know everything.

5. They have to do that for people who was just now tuning in because they're in love with Sam Wilson or Sharon Carter.

6. I think the therapist was taking a 'tough love' approach for Bucky, because she likely has some very strong opinions about the literal assassin she's been assigned to give therapy too. She did not choose to talk to him, she was assigned that make that clear in the second episode.

And, Bucky isn't lying when he said it wasn't a nightmare. It wasn't a nightmare, it was a resurfaced memory. So, technically he wasn't lying - and yes, the camera does move away because while he's saying he didn't have a nightmare, he's not expanding on what actually happened - so, he's still pushing the therapist/us away.

7. Bucky, and Steve, have/had a TON to adjust to.

8. Yeah, I agree that will be the bullshit line they give. If they ever actually talk about it.

TFATW WA #2

Yeah, always got to take advantage of avoiding those spoilers lmfaoo.

1. Honestly, that line was double meaning. Both about White people and Hydra [which is made up of mostly white supremacists/nazis] So, the line is gesturing to both White People in general and Hydra assholes together. I think the terminology is “double edge sword”??

2. This whole paragraph structure confused me, ngl - so I'm going to answer it the best I can. I do like that they're not ignoring the fact that Sam being Black is 1000% the reason he's not the Official Captain America - because the gov't is racist as hell.

I also like the little lines about how they point out little things about Sam's Falcon persona, like that kid calling him 'Black Falcon' specifically and Sam's response show the split between Sam and Falcon itself.

John is a dick for calling Sam the wingman of Steve Rogers. Sam was a hero all on his own before Steve asked him to join up again. [Side note, it's lichrally??]

3. Exactly, the parallel of Sam being profiled and surrounded while just on the street and John being surrounded by fans and being able to spring Bucky with apparently only a few sentences shows a Loooooot

4. Honestly, at this point I wonder if she's not actually a therapist and is just an agent assigned to assess Bucky outside of an Official Building. I do know, however, that her 'look at each other and speak' exercise is actually a real therapy practice. It's just a little slower.

5. Actually, I think he would've blurted that out. That whole line. I don't think Bucky hates Sam. I think they could've done the scene better, but I think that had Sam prodded him/the therapist been more annoying Bucky would've lost control of his emotions and blurted out the whole "If he was wrong about you, he was wrong about me" but I feel like the writing for this show is just... not there. Sometimes you blurt shit when you get overemotional and I think that was what Bucky was supposed to be like.

6. I don't think Sam hates Bucky, I think he doesn't trust him though. I do wish they'd talked about that though. The whole 'talk to each other' scene should've been a LOT longer and a LOT slower.

7. Sam and Bucky's relationship is being fast tracked because they don't really know how to work the relationship out, writers-room-wise. Bucky is technically retired, but I feel like he's trying to live up to Steve's expectations and doing what Steve would've done and we all know that if Steve was there, Steve would've jumped on that plane with Sam. It looks like Sam/Bucky/Joaquin are a side-team based from Military services but as Sam says they're all free agents so...?

8. Sadly, They seem to just be propping up to be another stereotype.

9. Captain America is a symbol. Steve Rogers is a man. But now Steve Rogers is an idol because of all the shit he's been through and honestly, it's not a bad thing he's become an idol for people - it's using Steve as a reason to make White Bread Walker the next Captain that makes Steve's idolization so fucked.

10. I don't know anything about music so I have no opinion here, sorry.

11. Enfys?? Also, I think they did the whole Innocent Girl Thing as side commentary for Bucky lowering his guard about seeing a young girl rather than a guy.

12. Bucky is the Winter Solider. The Winter Solider is Bucky. That is how Bucky will always see it because although he was brainwashed, it was still him and he remembers all of it. When you have constant memories of something 'someone else' did, you tend to not be able to pull the two personas out of each other. I want Bucky to take up the title, White Wolf instead of Winter Soldier. Honest.

This is all my opinion, I’m honestly a little disappointed with the writing of TFATWS so far so... I’m not really optimistic about this.