#and i think the movie has made some people interpret him as like the 'responsible mom' character which is a bummer

[ironinkpen]

The interpretation of Rise Raph as a 'perfect responsible soft boy uwu' is so BORING I'm sorry, Raph is a rowdy adrenaline junkie with anxiety and I won't take this slander any longer

Raph secretly kept an enemy soldier in their actual literal house as a sparring partner. Raph glued his brothers together and dragged them out to fight crime. Raph once asked Leo to punch him in the face to prove he 'takes damage like a boss.' Raph tried to lift a school bus, twice. Raph offered to help his favorite wrestler beat his little brother up. When Leo suggests evacuating Bullhop, Raph says no bc the best defense is a good offense babey. Raph's idea of a 'friendly chat' with April's upstairs neighbor is to put on a black ski mask and go stand menacingly at their door. It takes Raph 10 episodes to conclude that they should MAYBE start training. Raph's plan to get a potentially priceless (and potentially FRAGILE) museum artifact is to punch a car in the middle of a busy street and also cut it in half with his brother still inside.

Raph's never met a problem he wouldn't try to punch in the face and does not know the meaning of the words 'excessive force.' He roughhouses with his bros and drags them out to fight villains and thinks any plan that doesn't involve an all-out brawl is boring and lame. He'll do anything to protect his family from harm and be a hero, but also he eats wet salami off the floor and once single-handedly destroyed a library.

I just adore how, at his core, Rise Raph is such a classic Raph—impulsive and stubborn and caring and passionate. He is a very sweet, strong, honorable guy who has a very powerful sense of personal responsibility... and he is also the exact kind of jock who throws you in the pool at a party without checking if you have your phone in your pocket first.

[1shirt2shirtredshirtdeadshirt]

Today on popping the corn and feeding the children, what do you folks think of this discussion? :)

I'm always curious to hear what other Trek fans, especially queer Trek fans, think about our place in Trek history and how we fare as the queer participants within our fandom. What have your experiences been like?

Overwhelmingly I've found a great reception and a welcoming attitude, but I admit that has increased considerably since the 90s. However, there are still some Trek fans who seem to be vehemently in denial about queer history in Star Trek, or the fact that anyone who has worked on Trek has pro-LGBT attitudes. This always surprises me considering some of the blatant queer content we have already seen in Star Trek such as the Jadzia Dax and Lenara Kahn kiss.

Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion that followed and seeing the overwhelming outpouring of support coming from Star Trek fans in response to this thread.

Here was my two cents contribution:

"No, what they said was factual.

Have you forgotten Nichelle Nichols was indeed an African American woman in the core seven bridge crew back in 1966?

Or the fact that Gene Roddenberry went out of his way to write The Motion Picture Novel, creating the term "T'hy'la: friend, brother, lover" so that fans could choose which interpretations of Kirk and Spock they saw fit? He also embraced K/S fans and hired a number of them to write the earliest Star Trek novels, including the very first official one (The New Voyages Vol. 1 & 2) which included slash fiction as well as Gene's approval/forward in the books.

In case anyone has forgotten, here's a little bit of background on Gene Roddenberry and his perspectives on queerness in Star Trek.

He admitted that in his early life he was very affected by how society and culture treated the LGBT community, and that he too found himself subjugating and judging others for that lifestyle because it was what people did at that time. As he got older and had more life experience, he began working with a number of queer artists in Hollywood -- and through TOS, a number of queer individuals began asking questions about Kirk and Spock.

Instead of vehemently shutting down this perspective, Roddenberry was intrigued, and saw potential to tap into a large audience (LGBT) that most others didn't want to go near or acknowledge publicity-wise. He saw it as an opportunity to expand the fanbase while also pushing yet another envelope.

But with the heat already on the show for what they'd already pushed, he found he was often stuck between what he'd like to do and what production would let him get away with. There are a number of Kirk and Spock scenes in scripts that got cut out for leaning a little too obviously romantic. Tiny trickles of that content still made it in were infamous moments like the backrub scene in Shore Leave. Even the 2009 movie had a K/S moment while Spock Prime and Kelvin Spock talked that was written and filmed that was cut out of the final product.

Queer subtext and coding has always been relentlessly weeded away at with an excuse ready to go for why they always try to cut us out, but we all know it's because they are scared of the homophobic backlash and ratings hits. Look how violently homophobes went after the gay romance episode of The Last of Us **just this year**. This has always been our reality, so for someone like Roddenberry to make efforts in the 70s? That was massive.

But Gene as well as the queer/slash Trek community managed to accomplish some things in the 70s which I'm surprised more folks don't talk about or give much credit.

In the same TMP novel which features "T'hy'la" and the famous footnote, Gene cleverly wrote Kirk with a bisexual/pansexual lens: Kirk describes himself as *preferring* women but being open to "physical love in **any** of its many Earthly, alien, and mixed forms." (Direct quote from Genes book). Basically, Captain Kirk was DTF with whoever if there was a connection, which was a very progressive take for a character in a novel written in 1979, but made sense for the future which would have a lot less hang ups about sex and love compared to our current rather puritan/conservative society.

I also prefer women, but I married a man. Shout out to Gene Roddenberry for giving us a seat at the table back in the 70's when folks *still* try to insist there is no place for K/S or queer concepts in Trek, because he made efforts -- however small -- to employ queer people and show queer perspectives. According to David Gerrold, LGBT+ representation was a big thing that Gene personally pushed for in TNG and wanted various depictions of love/couples in the Risa scenes, to name one example.

In the 70s, fanzines led to meetings and swapped fanmade magazines, which got so big that they needed hotel centers, then convention centers, then one day the TOS cast came to one and what we know as modern fan conventions were born -- inspiring even George Lucas who attended Trek conventions in the 70s and saw how popular Trek was in syndication; it was a great climate to launch his Space Opera. Star Wars then became so huge that we got TMP.

But none of that would have happened without the level of organization, passion, and creativity that those fans poured into Star Trek and their characters after it got cancelled and went into syndication.

Without queer folks we wouldn't have George Takei, Theodore Sturgeon who gave us Tribbles, Bill Theiss and his amazing TOS costumes, Mike Minor's art direction, Merritt Butrick, David Gerrold (writer for TOS, TAS, TNG) to name a few of many queer contributors to Trek that Roddenberry respected and tried to go to bat for wherever he could in a climate that was absolutely impossible to gain an inch in.

At a time during the 70s and 80s when so many people resented and feared the queer community and wanted us to disappear, especially in the 80s during the AIDS epidemic which many homophobes claimed was "God's punishment to the gay community" or "Gods's answer" to our "hedonism", thinking we'd gotten our just desserts and should just disappear . . .

During that time, Gene Roddenberry gave us queer folks a place to say: "You know what? Sure. Write your stories. TV says you guys shouldn't exist, they pull books with queer people off the shelves and burn them. Laws exist specifically to forbid you guys from loving each other, and call you mentally ill. You can't even hold hands in public. But I'm going to validate you guys and invite you to write novels or work for me, try to see what we can get by production, and allow you to see yourselves in my characters if you want to. There's a place for you in our fandom."

He gave us bi/pan Kirk, he gave us K/S is open to interpretation. In Phase 2 Kirk's surviving nephew Peter, son of his brother Sam from Operation: Annihilate!, was going to be written as gay and living on the Enterprise with his partner -- that also got chopped and reworked into a script that wouldn't get used until decades later. That was huge at a time that being queer was officially listed as a mental illness, and villainized due to the AIDS crisis.

So before you try to dismiss or tell K/S + queer Trek fans whether or not they deserve a seat at the table, remember that Gene Roddenberry was among the **first** to pull that seat out for us in a climate that was ruthlessly against LGBT+ folks." -- 1Shirt2ShirtRedShirtDeadShirt

P.S: Have some cute bisexual/pansexual K/S pride gifs. :) Pride month is a hop, skip and a jump away.

LLAP!🖖💚

[patricia-taxxon]

So, I watched that response stream that DeadwingDork made about my furry boinking video, here it is if you're curious.

By some accounts, this gentleman seems like he means well, with regards to pronouns he pulls the "when in doubt, they/them" gambit, which is partway there. If he finds this, I'll politely let him know I don't use they, just she & it. Thanks!

I have good reason to believe he began this journey in good faith, but over the course of the video he slowly gives up being charitable, and it's very frustrating to watch. There's a few key moments of miscommunication I noticed that I'd like to clear up.

DeadwingDork and I got off on the wrong foot very early on, and part of that's my fault. I start the video openly lusting after Garth Alphandomega, and this put him on edge. This might be an ideological difference we can't get past, he says that Garth is "Just a wolf" when I personally think he's quite different from a wolf. After that, I do the joke where I say "If the opportunity presented itself I would fuck my-" and cut to The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe, but he didn't have the context to understand what I'm saying by cutting to that album in particular, so he thought I was jokingly saying I would fuck my dog. He spends the rest of the stream with that initial impression of me lusting after what he perceives as literal animals, it's kinda the initial rock that starts the avalanche and closes him off from understanding basically anything that I'm saying, until the end, where he's convinced I've just spent 43 minutes coming out as a zoophile.

This might just be a difference in artistic philosophy, like he interprets Alpha & Omega to be about wolves whereas I interpret it as being about people through the aesthetic lens of wolves. Metaphor isn't just for abstract art movies, after all. Garth walks on 4 legs, but he has enough obvious persistent human-like traits both visually and behaviorally for me to understand him as a person delivered via wolf. For the same reason, he is disturbed by my lusting for Shoukichi Pompoko, because he interprets that movie as literally being about tanuki. I think this the main reason the concept of a character being "simultaneously human and inhuman" completely whiffed on him. He skimmed over my segment on how Leo can be both a wolf and hispanic & didn't understand the relevance, because I don't think that contradiction can be resolved in his head.

The most frustrating part of this stream is the way he clearly picks up on a lot of the overarching subtext that I'm putting down, but by that point in the video he doesn't have enough faith in me to interpret it as being put there intentionally. He treats the connection between my special-ed dog training and my current animal identity as an unintentional self-report, when it isn't. There's this *maddening* segment where I talk about Pom Poko for the first time, and he... honestly quite accurately picks apart the picture I'm illustrating about alienation, but he handwaves it away in favor of his horrible mangling of the exact literal sentence I am saying at that moment.

He says:

"There's clearly a story here, but it's being buried. There's a lot of stuff that's leading towards... 'oh, you watched this movie and this movie and your parents did this and your fuckin' teachers did this, and that's why this is happening.' That's like the fuckin' undertones of this video, [but] the main takeaway is supposed to be that this movie... I dunno, makes you f.. is supposed to feel like how fuckin' animal people feel like they're... whatever, I don't, I don't... whatever."

He grabs at the subtext, the story I'm obviously telling with the surface level anecdote of my experience seeing Pom Poko when I was young. I say obviously, because he and his chat both understood it. But then he discards that, assumes it was unintended, and importantly, he doesn't have a good answer for what I'm actually saying divorced from that. Because... what's even left after you remove the subtextual story I'm telling with this anecdote? The anecdote itself? Of course he's empty handed.

Other notes:

He can't decide whether I'm an over zealous recruiter trying to call everything furry, or that I'm a gatekeeper trying to force robust definitions of 'furry' into the general lexicon. This isn't very important, it's just kind of funny.

He is dismissive of me saying I won't report news if my only source is Kiwifarms, but he doesn't really give a good reason for it. I am having trouble summarizing his argument for why I should have referenced a website whose users doxxed me. He hilariously suggests that I should negotiate with them to have my address taken down, as long as I'm not a "lolcow" about it. I'll be charitable and say that I don't think he's thought this through very much.

He hates that I "compare autistic people to animals," when that really just doesn't mean anything on its own. A comparison is a comparison, a follower of mine pointed out to me they could say that trans people are like cockroaches & it could either mean they are doggedly resilient in the face of harsh circumstances or that they are pests that need to be exterminated. I meant something specific by using an animal metaphor to describe my autistic identity, and it transcends the literal reading of "calling autistic people animals."

He derisively calls Echo a "gay furry sex game" when it simply is not. I'll forgive him for this because he hasn't played it, but Echo isn't porn, it's a horror game. There's sex in it, and it has the framework of a dating game, but it is far from the main appeal. I'm not saying this to elevate Echo above the degrading label of "porn," because Adastra is definitely porn and it's almost as good, just not as easily recommendable to outsiders.

He thinks its commendable that Sean Booth bought my album, which is nice.

Overall, I don't think DeadwingDork is outwardly hateful, but he is quite gullible. He accepts hate speech at face value and buys into narratives useful for hate movements. There's echos of trans groomer panic, that old "you're the reason people are transphobic" chestnut, and of course, using Kiwifarms as a news source. He said he came into the video knowing nothing about me and had no reason to be approaching me in bad faith, but he clearly doesn't trust me enough to think the main rhetorical thrust of the video was intentional.

bad stream lol

[ghibli-collector]

Another interesting article about the new Ghibli film Boy and the Heron with great insights into Miyazaki’s relationship with Joe Hisaishi and Toshio Suzuki making films over the years. Again it has a few spoilers

What’s it like to work with Hayao Miyazaki? Go behind the scenes.

News of Hayao Miyazaki’s retirement can’t ever be trusted.

The Japanese animation master’s repeated claims that he’ll give up filmmaking are a response to the strain that creating each of his largely hand-drawn universes entails. At least that’s what Toshio Suzuki, a founder of Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki’s right-hand man for the past 40 years, believes.

"Every time he finishes a film, he’s so exhausted he can’t think about the next project,” Suzuki explains. "He’s used up his energy physically and mentally. He needs some time to clear his mind. And to have a blank canvas to come up with new ideas.”

A decade after 2013’s "The Wind Rises” was heralded as Miyazaki’s final film, the 82-year-old auteur’s newest feature, "The Boy and the Heron,” is being released in the United States after major success in Japan over the summer, where it opened without any traditional publicity.

Though the director hasn’t given any interviews about "The Boy and the Heron,” Suzuki, 75, who is also a veteran producer, and Joe Hisaishi, 72, the longtime composer on Miyazaki’s movies, describe in separate video interviews the master’s working process and how their collaborations have evolved — or not — over the years.

Suzuki is casually dressed and speaking, via an interpreter, from Japan, where he sits next to a pillow emblazoned with Totoro, the bearlike troll that serves as the studio’s logo. He says the new fantasy film is Miyazaki’s most personal yet. Set in the final days of World War II, the tale follows 11-year-old Mahito, who, after losing his mother in a fire, moves to the countryside, where a magical realm beckons him.

"At the start of this project, Miyazaki came to me and asked me, ‘This is going to be about my story, is that going to be OK?’ I just nodded,” Suzuki recalls with the matter-of-factness of someone who’s learned it would be futile to stand in the way of the director.

For a long time, he says, Miyazaki worried that if he made a movie about a young male, inspiration would inevitably be drawn from his own childhood, which he felt might not make for an interesting narrative. Growing up, Miyazaki had trouble communicating with people and expressed himself instead by drawing pictures.

"I noticed that with this film, where he portrayed himself as a protagonist, he included a lot of humorous moments in order to cover up that the boy, based on himself, is very sensitive and pessimistic,” Suzuki says. "That was interesting to see.”

If Miyazaki is the boy, Suzuki adds, then he himself is the heron, a mischievous flying entity in the story that pushes the young hero to keep going. Director Isao Takahata, Studio Ghibli’s third foundational musketeer, who died in 2018, is represented onscreen by Granduncle, a wise but weathered figure who controls the fantastical world Mahito ventures into.

Suzuki first met Miyazaki in the late 1970s, when the animator was making his first feature, "Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro,” an amusing caper. Back then, Suzuki was a journalist hoping to interview him.

But Miyazaki, who was working on a storyboard, had no interest in talking and ignored him. "Out of kindness, I thought it was a good thing to introduce his works to my readers, and for him to be very cranky and disrespectful, I was very angry,” Suzuki remembers.

He stuck around the studio for two more days of silence. On the third, Miyazaki asked him if he knew a term for a car overtaking another during a chase. Suzuki’s reply, a specific Japanese expression for such action, finally broke the ice and kick-started their long-term relationship.

"Miyazaki still remembers that first meeting, too,” Suzuki says. "He thought that I was a person not to be trusted. And that’s why he was very cautious about talking to me.”

Over the years, Suzuki has become increasingly indispensable for Miyazaki. "He always tells me, ‘Suzuki-san, can you remember the important things for me?’ And then he feels that he can forget about all the important things not concerning his films. I have to remember them for him,” Suzuki says.

Best friends more than mere collaborators, Miyazaki and Suzuki talk every day, even if there’s nothing urgent to discuss, and make it a rule to meet in person on Mondays and Thursdays. "What we talk about is very trivial most times, I guess he feels lonely or misses me, but it’s always him who calls me. I never call him,” Suzuki says, adding with a laugh, "Sometimes he even calls me in the middle of the night, like at 3 a.m., and the first thing he says is, ‘Were you awake?’ And obviously I was not. I’m in bed!”

In contrast, Hisaishi, the composer who first worked with Miyazaki on the 1984 feature "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind,” has a strictly professional relationship with him.

"We don’t see each other in private,” Hisaishi, wearing an elegant sweater, says through a translator. "We don’t eat together. We don’t drink together. We only meet to discuss things for work.” That emotional distance, he adds, is what has made their partnership over 11 films so creatively fruitful.

"People think that if you really know a person’s full character then you can have a good working relationship, but that doesn’t necessarily hold true,” Hisaishi says. "What is most important to me is to compose music. The most important thing in life to Miyazaki is to draw pictures. We are both focused on those most important things in our lives.”

On "The Boy and the Heron,” Miyazaki didn’t provide Hisaishi with any instruction. The musician watched the film only when it was nearly completed but still with no sound or dialogue. At that point Miyazaki simply said to Hisaishi, "I just leave it up to you.”

"I feel he was just thinking that he could rely on me and expected me to come up with something,” Hisaishi says. "I feel like I was very much trusted to do this.”

For all of their previous collaborations, Miyazaki would bring on Hisaishi to discuss once three out of the four or five parts of the storyboard for a new film were ready. That the process changed this time was possible only because of their shared history.

"It’s as if we’ve been Olympic athletes making a film once every four years for 40 years,” Hisaishi says. "It’s been a long time of training and performing. When I look back I’m amazed that I could write music for these very different films.”

In his contemporary classical work, Hisaishi had been working on minimalist compositions with repeating patterns, and he took that approach to the new film.

While he maintains they are just colleagues, every January for the past 15 years, Hisaishi has composed a small tune, recorded it on a piano and sent it to Miyazaki as a birthday present. This tradition has now become the seasoned musician’s lucky charm.

"After about three times I thought, ‘This has probably run its course,’” Hisaishi recalls. "I didn’t send one the following year. That whole year I wasn’t able to work very well. It was sort of a jinx that I had not sent him something, so I started sending him the music again for his birthday,” he adds with a laugh.

Both Hisaishi and Suzuki say their interactions with Miyazaki have not changed much over the decades. On the contrary, the men have become staunch creatures of habit.

Asked why his profound connection with Miyazaki has endured so long, Suzuki says: "I don’t necessarily agree, but he once told me, ‘I’ve never met someone so similar to me. You are the last person that I will meet like that.’”

BY CARLOS AGUILAR

THE NEW YORK TIMES

[sciderman]

Currently reading through the spiderpool blog and just finished the civil war era. That alternate timeline where Pete is an assassin, of course we know Ben is alive but what happens to that version Ben and May? I wonder if they know what he is doing and if they are still even apart of his life.

oh, anon. anon... it's a sad little tale,, it's a sad little story. i do imagine that this specific peter parker pursues his career of fame and fortune, and becomes vain and horrible. a real "talk to my agent!" kind of asshole.

and initially, he still cares for uncle ben and aunt may. they're the only two people in the world who loved him properly. but... but. fame goes to his head. the old cliché. he's making bank, and – there's less urgency for him to stay to support aunt may because uncle ben's still around, so, peter kind of goes his own way. very quickly he can afford his own apartment by doing tv deals and very quickly he's signed on for a movie deal. he is hot shit.

of course all of that fame and being so busy and being so secretive and spider-man's identity still being a secret to the public and to ben and may means that he ultimately grows distant from may and ben. he skips school to pursue fame, doesn't think he needs it. and i mean, the guy hates high school. it's a living hell for him. he's given an out - of course he'll take it. he doesn't graduate high school. doesn't get a college education. doesn't tell uncle ben and aunt may because obviously they wouldn't endorse him dropping out of school.

they wouldn't get it. they wouldn't understand. he becomes a mystery to them. they don't know where he goes, what's going on with him. he's barely home and then he, so very quietly, moves out with all the money he's made.

fame is fickle, though, and - spider-man doesn't capture peoples hearts for the long-term. spider-man doesn't inspire heroism in this world. he doesn't waste his effort on selfless deeds. he doesn't become a heroic figure. hence why wade doesn't join weapon x.

the spider-man of this turn of events doesn't amount to more than a quick cash-grab, and the people are over him so quickly. people who worked with him realise he's kind of a jerk, and isn't even pulling in money anymore. spider-man becomes a has-been before he even reaches his twenties.

so, this spider-man lives alone - can't face uncle ben and aunt may because he's quickly realising that yeah. he made the wrong choice. he dug his grave, and he has to lay in it. he's a drop-out, and he feels like peter parker is entirely worthless. he can barely look at himself in the mirror. at least as spider-man he has some power. some reputation. something. peter parker? peter parker disappeared off the face of the planet some years ago, and nobody knows who or where he is. peter parker is dead and neglected. there's no future for peter parker. so he builds a life with the skills that he has, as spider-man. he does what he's good at. becomes hired muscle. becomes hired muscle for anyone that can pay his rates. those are usually bad guys.

he falls deeper and deeper into that rabbit hole. and the further he falls, the harder it is for him to conceive he could ever come back to uncle ben and aunt may and have them welcome and accept him, with all the mistakes he's made.

unfortunately, in this particular timeline - as bex and i'd plotted it out for the alt!verse fic where wade winds up trapped with this sad, isolated peter parker - it still takes uncle ben dying to destroy peter's barricades and have him finally reach out to aunt may, in his way. first distantly offering her financial support before he, after months, eventually gains the courage to face her. and she can see the scars on his face.

i think it kind of universally takes uncle ben dying for peter to learn "great power great responsibility" - not as peter interprets or misinterprets it, but... the loss of uncle ben meaning peter recognising he has a responsibility to the people around him. he can't disappear from it. he can't isolate himself from it. when uncle ben passes, he finds out he has a responsibility to aunt may. that's kind of the whole thing, that's what great responsibility is. him filling uncle ben's shoes.

i think that's something i'm obsessed with - that peter knows that the loss of uncle ben means he needs to step up and fill ben's shoes, but he's still not entirely sure what it means. what he has to do to be able to fill that void that's left empty by ben's absence. what ben meant. what manhood means.

great responsibility is about manhood, and looking after the people you love. it's not - it's not about what you owe the world.

i think peter unfortunately has to learn that lesson the hard way, every time.

but, eventually, at some point, peter comes home.

[kyrieeleisonelise]

Ai’s true feelings?

(Spoilers!)

Judging by the amount of times I’ve seen with this manga panel on tumblr and YouTube, Ruby’s interpretation of Ai in the recent chapter has definitely made a stir. 

Is this really how Ai felt? 

Realistically, it would be difficult to accurately re-tell the life story of somebody as secretive as Ai once they are long-dead.

In the world of the Manga though, we are supposed to understand the movie as being at least mostly an accurate representation of Ai’s life, since they have the analytical genius Akane point out it’s ‘90% accurate’.

But when it comes to the topic of Ai’s feelings, it seems significant that both Ruby and Aqua- who sometimes seem to represent the two sides of Ai- interpret her differently.

Throughout the manga, but especially the movie arc, we are seeing two different interpretations of Ai. There is Nino and to an extent Aqua who think Ai was as emotionally invincible as she acted. 

Then there is Ruby and the director (and even Kana) who recognise that there was probably a lot of dark feelings and anger that Ai felt she had to hide. 

Even the Director, who has the tapes of Ai we’re yet to see admits he feels like he never got to see the true Ai, even when she was trying to be honest with him. This further cements the idea that nobody really knows how Ai feels. 

We’ve seen hints about Ai hiding darker emotions throughout the chapter, but Ruby’s interpretation of her seems more extreme. Did Ai have this much hate in her heart? Or is Ruby projecting her own feelings?

In chapter 136 we see the argument between Nino and Ai being acted out by Ruby and Kana.

I think we are meant to take the acted-out argument as being an accurate representation of what actually happened between Nino and Ai.  From Kana’s insights while playing the role, I get the impression that Nino was so upset by Ai not only because she was jealous, but because Ai, someone who she thought of as a friend, seemed indifferent to her. Ai just gave glib responses when Nino was trying to express that she was struggling, and when Nino lashed out and tells Ai that she wishes she was dead, Ai just smiles at her. 

Nino thinks Ai doesn’t care- Nino means so little to her that her hatred can’t hurt her at all. Even years later, Nino still maintains that Ai probably immediately forgot what Nino said to her. 

But I really don’t think Ai was unaffected by Nino’s words. Kana was probably right when she said Nino and Ai used to be friends. Anyone would be hurt if a friend wished them dead. 

We met Ai’s mother a few chapters back, and it’s revealed that she gave up custody of Ai out of jealousy over her beauty (when Ai was 8!?) Having someone else in her life hate her over her looks probably really hurt Ai, and maybe even made her angry . If Kana is right about Nino and Ai being friends, it probably hurt even more to have another person she cares about reject her out of jealousy. 

Why didn’t Ai just tell Nino how upset she was? If Nino saw Ai’s human side it may of lead to them actually making up and deepening their friendship.

Ai had a really troubled upbringing; She was abused and abandoned by her mother and then raised in a children’s home. It isn’t surprising that she had a lot anger in her heart. 

To protect herself, Ai would lie about how she felt and pretend she didn’t have feelings and that nothing could hurt her. Eventually it seems like lying became automatic and Ai didn’t know how to stop, how to express herself truthfully or what the truth even was any more. 

When Ai first meets Ichigo, she uses her traumatic background as a defence mechanism to try and unsettle him and chase him off. She acts tough, saying that she doesn’t care she was put in a children’s home. She protects herself by acting indifferent and making the people around her uncomfortable.

But her reaction when Ichigo gives her some encouragement and tells her she can be an idol and say she loves people ‘until it’s real’ shows she does still want to connect with others, she just doesn’t know how. 

Ai was good at lying. So good that some people started to believe she was as detached as she pretended to be. They saw the ‘invincible persona’ she was projecting instead of the traumatised girl.

I don’t know if Ruby’s interpretation of Ai’s feelings are completely accurate. But I do think that Ai was probably deeply, deeply hurt by Nino. Ai’s dismissive reaction to Nino was probably due to Ai’s lack of social skills rather than true indifference. If Ai hated the world in that moment I wouldn’t be surprised, but I don’t think Ai carried any long-term resentment towards Nino.  

 The Ai we know seemed a bit more socially adept and stable compared to the Ai Ruby portrayed. Ai was probably only around 14 when she had her argument with Nino. I thin as Ai matured she probably realised why Nino lashed out the way she did, but it was too late to repair things.

It’s been mentioned a few times that Ai stopped her ‘catastrophic’ behaviour and matured after her time in theatre troupe, so it will be interesting to see what specifically it was that made her change

I don’t know if the story will ever give us a definite answer on Ai’s actual feelings, or if, just like in real life, we’re left to interpret and guess how a person really felt about something after they’re no longer there to ask.

[cherlockbrolmes]

Making this its own post because I feel VERY passionately about this. The original reblog’d response is right under this on my profile. This is a copy paste of my response.

ABOUT LEO’S GROWTH IN THE RISE MOVIE, and how a good portion of the fandom has interpreted his behavior…

TLDR: Leo isn't a sadboy defeatist who takes his self-sacrificial tendencies to unhealthy levels. His development in the movie was a net positive. HOPE and TRUST are the central and truest parts of Leo's character that permeates even the darkest of situations.

Ok this isn't meant to be an attack on the poster or anything, so initially I want to make this VERY clear before I get into it. I know this is mostly humorous, and l'm not trying to dull the mood either- I just have a lot of thoughts. People are allowed to interpret media the way they want; that's kinda how it works (mostly. We should be aware of the disgusting exceptions).

But dear lord, I have to talk about this because this characterization for Leo being so extremely self sacrificial and sad is RAMPANT and I have to give my own two cents.

I kinda heavily dislike this characterization and mostly disagree with it.

That's not to say there isn't truth in it; Leo has trends in many if not all iterations to have some self sacrificial tendencies. That sometimes pops up as a problem, too- but I really don't think Leo is taking it to a majorly unhealthy degree here for one big reason:

He trusts his family.

But let me break it down first. While I'm sure Leo shows a LOT of character growth by the end of the movie, one thing l'm sure he's not going to lose is major traits of his personality. First and foremost, he DOES value himself, even if some members of the fandom want to insist otherwise. Some portray or interpret his ego as a facade, when I really don't think that's it at all. Do I think it's overplayed in moments of insecurity? Yes, absolutely, but that doesn't mean it's purely a face.

Leo doesn't think his family is more or less than him.

He sees the value of them TOGETHER, and I think the movie helped him understand that even more.

Leo enjoys himself, and he enjoys them, and if he sees another option, he'll take it instead of going to a self sacrificial solution. Leo, while maybe not able to spell things well or understand what Donnie is talking about 99% of the time, is smart in his own way. He's a STRATEGIST- that's why Splinter promoted him to leader. Leo will absolutely be able to figure things out before he leaps to self sacrifice. His choice with Krang Prime came from a moment of desperation and not knowing what else to do. And even then, he held on to the thought of his family- the HOPE that they will ultimately be able to save him.

Hope is a big part of this rant. Just hang in there.

A big part of Leo's character is how much he values his family being together. That is made VERY clear in Portal Jacked, when he's openly distraught about having lost them. And I think he knows his family well enough that if one unceremoniously splits off, it creates deeper cracks. Not to mention he knows firsthand what losing one of them feels like. Why would he subject the others to that? I think that would make him actively AVOID self sacrifice if the option came up. It's only in the darkest of moments that Leo would accept it...and that's even pushing it, due to how much faith he holds in his family to have his back.

That's part of what makes a good leader of the Hamatos, too. Hell, that's what the ENTIRE FINALE OF THE SHOW ILLUSTRATED. That trusting your family to have your back will help them win in the end.

But there's also ONE BIG PART of the movie that I think people dismiss all too often. And I get it- the drama that proceeds it is fun and juicy and everything, but the quote highlights Leo's character growth better than the "it's not about me" bit.

“We still have a ninja’s greatest weapon…hope”

“We still have hope!”

“Our future isn’t written until we write it…as a team”.

“I’m not leaving him behind”.

“We still have hope!”

“A ninja’s greatest weapon…”

“Hey, I like that!”

Leo, to me, is an enormously POSITIVE character.

It's hard for me to believe that Mr. "A Ninja's Greatest Weapon Is Hope" would be...so sullen in his attitude and so prone to self sacrifice.

Self sacrifice is never off the table for him. But it is also not an option he sees as mostly beneficial.

He trusts his family.

He has hope.

I personally believe that..while he was defeated and distraught in the Prison Dimension, as any would be...he still had hope. He was SMILING. He trusted his family.

I don't think the "what took you so long?" was a disingenuous, deflecting quip. I think he meant it. He trusted his family to save him.

Leo's character development is definitely accepting it isn't about him. "I realize I don't have all the answers is the PINNACLE of this. He isn't one to launch himself in and think he can handle it on his own anymore.

He has learned to trust his family, and through that, he trusts himself on a level deeper and more true than he ever has before.

And he's such a goofy guy, c'mon guys.

TLDR: Leo isn't a sadboy defeatist who takes his self-sacrificial tendencies to unhealthy levels. His development in the movie was a net positive. HOPE and TRUST are the central and truest parts of Leo's character that permeates even the darkest of situations.

[kitty-tea]

We’re all weird

Link to masterlist

Pairing: Draco Malfoy x Reader (formerly)

Hi this is my first time writing something for Harry Potter. The idea for this plot’s kind of based off a dream I had which is why some stuff doesn’t make sense. Like the setting. I know every autistic person has a different experience, so I tried to write this as similar to my own experiences as I could. Also the story doesn’t follow the main timeline of the books or movies. I don’t own any characters except reader and the four first year students.

Whether the reader is diagnosed or not, it’s open to interpretation

Summary: After you catch Draco cheating on you, you’re forced to go to a school banquet. Unfortunately you can’t avoid anyone.

Tags/warnings: ableism, internalized ableism, name calling, reader has an emotional outburst, Dumbledore being confusing, reader is autistic, social isolation, bullying, teasing, Draco being mean, pure blood supremacy, mentions of cheating, angst

You looked around the venue for an empty table. You were one of the last people to arrive, so all the tables were taken. If only you hadn’t spent the last hour overthinking and dreading this event, you could have gotten ready and arrived a lot sooner instead of grabbing one of the last portkeys that were set up at the school.

The theme of the party was for the students to dress in their house colors. Being a Slytherin, you wore an off the shoulder emerald silk dress that went down to your feet, accentuated with a slit that showed off your entire left leg. You decided to keep your hair down to use as a curtain for your face as you always did as a way to avoid eye contact.

As your eyes scanned the rows of small tables lined along the room horizontally, they met the very reason you were dreading coming here. You spotted the group of Slytherins from your year, which included your ex-boyfriend Draco and his friends, Blaise, Crabbe, and Goyle. Draco had his arm around Pansy, who looked over to you, which drew the attention of everyone else at the table.

“Look, it’s Flappy-hands.” Even through all the people talking in the room, you managed to hear Pansy’s comment referring to your habit of flapping your hands when you were happy or excited about something.

You saw Goyle get up from his seat. He started to flap his hands while jumping up and down. Even though you had a harder time reading people’s intentions, you knew he

“I can’t believe I ever dated a freak like her.” Draco was telling his friends. “She brings shame to Slytherin. Would’ve been better off as a Hufflepuff.” He rolled his eyes.

“Only because she's a pure-blood, but that doesn’t mean they should let freaks like her into the Wizarding World.” Blaise said.

“Dumbledore only made her Head Girl because he felt sorry for her. He’s the only one too.” Pansy laughed.

You knew that wasn’t the case as evidenced by your several conversations with him. Dumbledore always knew you were different from other students even before you figured it out, it seemed. When you came to him to question what made you deserve this position, he said something about how he knew you were one of the rare people who would never abuse their position, and that the extra responsibilities would help you grow as a person.

“She really earned her place as Head Girl.” Crabbe smirked before adding, “she’s the Head of the freaks.”

You were in no place to cry at the moment. You wished you could be in one of your “safe rooms” around the school where no one would be around you to bother you.

A few tables in front of the seventh year Slytherins, you spotted the table with the Gryffindors from your year along with Ginny and Luna. Every time you saw Harry Potter with his friends, you couldn’t help but feel jealous. You didn’t know why. Maybe it was because of how well they all seem to belong together, except for when they got into fights but that was normal for any friend group. Everytime you’d pass by them, you’d think about how nice it would be to be friends with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. They might as well have been friends with every Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff too. They were welcoming towards students from other houses, except for yours which made you feel left out from the rest of the school. Especially during your fifth year when you found out Harry and his friends formed a secret group called Dumbledore’s Army, and hadn’t invited anyone from Slytherin. Not only was that group in on something you weren’t, but so were your former friends. You felt like a reject in the middle.

Your thoughts were consumed by the events of the past week and the course of your overall social life.

Everything from the day Draco asked you to be his girlfriend to that time you came back into the common room after patrolling the halls and saw him making out with Pansy on the couch invaded your memories. You were completely clueless to the fact that Draco had been flirting with you for the last two years, so it was a surprise to have him ask you out and call you beautiful. Everyone in your group could see how flirtatious he was except for you.

You had years of practice of holding in your tears when something emotional would randomly pop into your mind, this should be no different, you thought.

For as long as you’ve been in school, Draco, and all the other Slytherins from your year were the only people you’ve ever hung out with. Even though you hung out with that group for years, you always felt that there was something off, like you didn’t really belong, and they seemed to think that way too. It wasn’t until you broke off from them that the insults about your differences came at you unrestrained. They’d point out every little thing about you that they found odd, most of which were things you didn’t notice about yourself.

Before you became Head Girl when you used to share a dorm with the other girls, you’d catch them whispering to each other about the little odd things about you they would notice, like how you didn’t understand when you weren’t welcome into a conversation or how there were jokes and expressions you took seriously. You didn’t know how to stick up for yourself without crying, so all you could do was pretend to sleep by using your covers and pillow to muffle your sniffles.

It was a break from your routine after you cut them off where you were left completely lost and confused. You liked routines and order in your life. It was like having the rail of the stairs to hold onto for a long time and relying on it to get you through it, only for it to be snatched from you.

After you had caught your ex-boyfriend making out with Pansy, you used the disillusionment charm to sneak into your dorm where you cried. Not bothering to change out of your uniform, you hatched a plan to get revenge on Draco the next day, to humiliate him in front of the whole school. The plan was that you would intercept him in the courtyard after class and throw all your rage at him, then yell exactly what he’d done in front of everyone. What you didn’t plan was for him and his friends to laugh in your face as they told you that he’d been cheating on you with Pansy since a month into your relationship when he wanted to give up on “dating the freak.” You thought the other students from other houses around you would defend you, but with you being a Slytherin, you should’ve known that they’d keep quiet as you ran away since you were associated with that notorious group.

You were so in your thoughts that you didn’t pay attention to which table you sat yourself at.

“Hello.” You heard a small, high pitch voice from across you. As quickly as you turned to the owner of the voice, you looked down at your lap. It was a first-year Gryffindor student. Next to her was a Hufflepuff boy, also a first-year. It had just come to your attention that you, a seventh-year student, was sitting at a table full of first-years. To your left, you saw a Ravenclaw boy and to the opposite side of you, a Slytherin girl you didn’t recognize. You knew they were first years mostly because they were wearing their school uniforms instead of the fancy dresses and suits the older students were allowed to wear. You assumed the first-years had to show up in their uniforms so that the older students would be able to distinguish the ones who needed guidance more or something like that.

“Aren’t you the Head Girl?” The Gryffindor student asked you.

“Yeah.” You forced yourself to look into her eyes briefly before you spotted the staff table at the back of the room and looked down. You had come close to making eye contact with Draco’s father, Lucius. You should’ve known he’d be there. He was the governor of Hogwarts. Besides your former group, he was the person you were dreading to see for the rest of the night. You used your fingers to brush some hair in front of your face, hoping he wouldn’t see you.

“Why are you hiding your face?” The same girl sitting across from you asked. Shielding half of your face with your hand now, you looked up at her.

“There’s someone here I don’t want to see tonight.” You whispered.

“Who?” The same girl asked, not lowering her voice.

“There’s a man behind you. He’s sitting at the staff table. He’s the blonde man next to Professor Snape. His name is Lucius Malfoy. He’s my ex’s father and the Hogwarts governor.”

“Oh yeah,” the Slytherin girl sitting to your right piped up. “I’ve seen you around a lot with your friends.”

“They’re not my friends anymore.”

“Sorry, I forgot your name. We’re all first years. We don’t really know a lot of people at the school.” The Gryffindor girl said to you. After introducing yourself, they told you their names. The Gryffindor’s name was Melanie, the Slytherin’s name was Kayla, the Ravenclaw’s name was Stuart, and the Hufflepuff was named Owen.

“Why did you and your boyfriend break up?” Kayla asked you. You would’ve thought that she’d be more informed about your house’s gossip, but seeing as her friend told you that they didn’t know a lot of people, you deduced that the four of them mostly kept to each other for company more than students of their own houses.

“I caught him cheating on me with another girl from our house. It’s because they all think I’m weird. They’ve been calling me a freak.” You stopped yourself from saying more. You did not want to start crying.

“It’s okay we’re all weird here.” Melanie said.

“Yeah that’s why we have each other.” Stuart said.

You looked up at all four of them, smiling at their apparent welcomeness towards you. You quickly realized you shouldn’t have looked up again as you spotted Lucius and Snape having a separate conversation from the rest of their table, about you probably.

“I think they’re looking at us.” Stuart tapped on your shoulder. You flinched. “Sorry, do you not like being touched?”

“Don’t you?” You asked him.

“No, it’s fine I hug my friends and family all the time.” He smiled. “You’re like my cat. He hates being touched too.” You couldn’t understand how there were people who were okay with being touched, it felt smothering to you.

Stuart left the mostly one-sided conversation to dig into his plate which gave you time to eavesdrop on the one Lucius and Snape were having.

“I see your son’s ex-girlfriend has distanced herself from her usual friends.” You could hear Snape say even through all the noise of overlapping conversations around you.

As quickly as the two participants of the conversation looked over to you, you hung your head down for the umpteenth time that night.

After a while of you taking your eyes off them, you could feel two new presences behind you, and you didn’t like it at all. You were dreading the words you predicted would come out of Lucius’ mouth should he come into contact with you tonight.

It was Snape who spoke first instead. “If it isn’t the Head Girl, hanging out with the four troublemakers I have the delight of having as my students.”

“Good evening, sir.” It was the first sentence you heard Owen say since he told you his name.

You knew if you turned around you’d see the same scowl you’d grown familiar with seeing over the years.

“Aren’t you, an eighteen-year-old about to graduate, too old to be hanging out with first years? You won’t even be there for them next year.” Snape spoke to you.

With a shaky breath, you forced yourself to look into the eyes of the two men as you turned around in your chair.

Lucius put a hand on Snape’s shoulder. “If you recall our first meeting where I, a seventh year Head Boy befriended you, a first year, you wouldn’t be so harsh on her. She’s only doing for them what I did for you.” You were confused that your ex’s father was apparently defending you.

“I’m going off what happened.” He explained.

“You’re her ex’s dad aren’t you?” Owen turned to him with a raised eyebrow. That made Lucius’ attention snap away from you.

“Did you know your son cheated on her, that’s just mean.” Kayla said.

“How dare you disrespect your elders like that.” Snape clenched his fists. “I’ll be taking ten points from the five of you each. Such disgrace coming from my own house. Unbelievable.” He scoffed.

“That’s not fair.” Melanie argued.

“Does anyone want detention?” Snape warned and everyone at your table shut their mouths.

“I was not aware you and Draco were no longer together until your teacher mentioned it. I’m usually the first person who hears from him.” Lucius said to you. “Really disappointing how you turned out, given the pure blood family you come from.”

Throughout your relationship, you thought the less time you spent with Draco’s parents, the less likely they’ll come to find out about the part of you and your personality you were desperate to keep hidden from other wizards for the sake of you seeming normal to them. And now you knew Snape spilled everything to him, every single thing that made you different that he was able to pick off you.

“Will you stop acting like a child who was caught being naughty and look into the eyes of whomever is speaking to you? As I’ve told you over and over?” You had to suppress the urge to swat Snape’s hand away as he reached down to pull the curtain of hair hovering over half your face. Now, both of your eyes were on him. Even with makeup on, your face felt naked without your hair covering it.

“She doesn’t like it when people touch her, you know. She didn’t do anything wrong.” Kayla glared at him.

He pulled his hand away from you. “That is the second time you have disrespected me tonight.” He glared back at the younger girl.

“She’s just a child, it’s understandable to have the instinct to defend someone who’s unable to do it for themselves.” It hurt that Lucius was taking a jab at your inability to stand up for yourself, something he picked up on really quick. Why couldn’t you pick up things about other people like that?

Snape’s eyes were on you again. You used a trick Dumbledore taught you where you looked at people’s forehead or eyebrows whenever you’d get uncomfortable and overwhelmed with holding eye contact. You used that trick on Snape quite often.

“As someone who’s about to graduate, you should know that the real world won’t be as forgiving of your freakish nature as Professor Dumbledore or your little friends. You know how they treat werewolves and Squibs.”

“I know.” You spoke for the first time in the conversation. You were converting your anger towards how the world had treated you into courage to stand up for yourself. At least that’s how you thought of it “The whole school actually made sure of it when they made it clear I’m not welcome here with the rest of you people!”

You didn’t have much volume control or awareness, and you didn’t know most of the people in the room heard what you said until Snape and Lucius looked around themselves. Your eyes followed theirs. Everyone had halted their conversations.

You saw Draco slap his palm against his forehead, muttering “she’s so embarrassing.”

“So is his father.” Harry whispered to his friends. You heard him and his friends snicker, but Draco didn’t.

“Yes, Draco and Harry. Your father and I are an embarrassment to Slytherin! Whatever!” You snapped at them. “Everyone should go ahead and tell each other how much of a loser I am too!” Your voice started to tremble and so did the tear running down your cheek. “About how I’ve never been truly welcomed in any of you all’s friend groups.”

“If I’d been sorted into Slytherin I would’ve known just how mental she is. Almost feel sorry for Malfoy. And I thought you were the mental one at first, Hermione.” You heard another snide whisper, this time from Ron.

“We’ll maybe if you and the whole school weren’t so closed off in your anti-Slytherin world you would’ve gotten to know me as a person and exactly how mental you think I am or am not!” You shouted at him. He flinched back in his chair. Even though he and the whole school had seen your meltdowns, this was the first time he was the subject of it.

“She’s right. If only Potter’s little friends and us ever got together, then we could all agree and talk about how weird she is.” Draco said and you took a step forward, but Snape grabbed your arm, holding you back.

“Enough!” He yelled harshly enough for Ron to sink into his chair even further.

“Severus, trust me you’ll want to lay your hand off her.” Dumbledore stood up from the staff table and walked over to you.

You didn’t think he sounded mad, but you couldn’t tell most of the time.

Snape let go of you.

“Everyone, you may go back to your previous social engagements.” Dumbledore addressed the whole room.

“Albus, she needs to be disciplined more harshly than the others. I just know she does. Look at the example she’s setting for the younger students.” Snape said to Dumbledore as soon as everyone else started to mind their own businesses.

“I’ll take care of it.” He said and looked over at you. Without any words of objection, Snape and Lucius resumed their places at the staff table, not looking back at the four students that were just talking to them. “I’d like to speak to you alone. This way.” Dumbledore said gently.

You were too ashamed of the way you acted to do anything but nod your head as you followed him on shaky legs to the entrance hall outside the room. You hated how you couldn’t seem to keep your emotions in check as much as everyone else did. It was something that other people would notice about you and call you out as being weak.

As soon as you were alone with Dumbledore, the sobs you held in exploded. “I’m so sorry, I know you’re angry with me. Blaise was right about me being a freak and how I don’t deserve a place in the Wizarding World. And Pansy said you only made me Head Girl because of pity. I tried so hard to be normal, but I can’t.”

Throughout your rambling and sobbing, Dumbledore didn’t interrupt you. Another way Dumbledore treated you different from how the adults treated you was that instead of interrupting you or trying to finish your sentences when you got stuck, he patiently waited for you to finish them yourself.

“I think Snape knows. He knows how… how much I’m not like the others. Please don’t tell him you know too. I can’t have him be… he can’t find out. He thinks something’s off about me. And he hates me for it. He’s ashamed of me and so am I.”

“I see.” Dumbledore said quietly, folding his hands in front of him. “And while I’ll respect your decision to keep some things about yourself private, I can only tell you it’s not something to do lightly.”

“What do you mean?” You were always confused when Dumbledore gave you advice in a cryptic way.

“Let’s just say one can only keep a house made up of mud for so long before it starts raining profusely.” You still didn’t understand the sayings he’d throw at you. You’d always get frustrated with figurative expressions. Why couldn’t people say exactly word for word what they mean?

“Why would I need to build a house with mud? We don’t live in that type of climate. Bricks would be easier to access where my family is from.” Dumbledore chuckled. If someone laughed at something you said it was because they were making fun of you. Dumbledore was the only person you trusted enough to know that wasn’t his intention.

“I can’t be angry with you for the person you are.” Dumbledore brought the topic back to where it was before. “When I was in school, I remember thinking everything I would learn in the classroom and the books would prepare me for what was to come in the real world. I was wrong. The best teachers are often our own experiences. And I think you and your classmates will share those same thoughts after graduating.”

“Thank you, sir.” You said. “I’ll um, get back to the party.”

“Oh, and one last thing.” Dumbledore said as you turned you were about to turn your back. “Before you leave school, I want you to always remember that you should never be ashamed to be who you are.”

“What if people don’t like me for who I am? That’s always the case.” You interjected. Even if you found people who cared for you and accepted you, you didn’t think you’d be able to do it for yourself.

“Which is why I said you should never be ashamed of yourself for your differences.” Dumbledore answered before telling you to go back into the room. You were left wondering if other people thought Dumbledore was just as much of a confusing person as you did.

-

Let me know what you think!

[nicoleanell]

By POPULAR DEMAND (a couple of people said "hey Nicole I care about your Renfield 2023 meta")

Ever since I made this gif set of something that's grown to be one of my favorite moments in the movie, I was a little wary of responses to it? Not just whether the source or my highlighting of it would be interpreted as victim-blamey, but that some might actually use it as a jumping-off point to say something more insensitive and victim-blamey themselves in the comments/tags. (Which thankfully hasn't happened! But the first thing is a take I've seen from a couple of people.)

Now, I feel pretty strongly like "victim-blaming" or being anything but 100% on the side of the abused is the LAST thing Renfield (2023) is trying to do, considering [GESTURES AT THE ENTIRE MOVIE]. But I do think it needs to be unpacked a little bit.

This idea of having partially gotten yourself into a situation and that means you can get out and get better… that's not going to relate to EVERYONE'S experience. (Certainly not, for example, a person whose abuse started in childhood.) It's not a universal truth and I don't think it's meant to be. See that tumblr post going around about how fiction that's harmful (or just lightly off-putting) for some people can be healing for others, and vice versa.

But for this character it IS really important that he's not a perfect innocent victim but not an irredeemably bad person either. And it's also important that any Redemption he's capable of is not through shame and punishment, something he's had quite enough of already, but being alive and happy as the person he wants to be.

They have him acknowledge before the end of the movie - in a way that is framed as correct and honest - that he bears responsibility for where he ended up, on a very literal in-canon level. Although Dracula is manipulative and he's implied to have some degree of hypnotic power to influence/charm people, what did not happen (contrary to some versions of the story) was Renfield having his sanity and/or free will magicked away entirely. He made CHOICES. He continued making them!

But… there's something about the fact that he gets to own that without hating himself. He has to own it without hating himself. A not insignificant thing for him is to be able to say that he made mistakes and bad choices, and he takes responsibility for that, but that doesn't mean he deserves to suffer for those choices forever. He's allowed to move forward and be happy.

It's such a huge and weirdly nuanced take for this movie's version of Renfield to be fully accountable for his actions AND extremely sympathetic AND go basically unpunished.

Relatedly, I love the fact they acknowledge shame as a motivating influence on him, which is so fucking dark and sad and complicated coming from this movie?!?!?! A lot of people took that line to be specifically a queerness/attraction thing, and I think that's there and valid. But I also just took it to be like over time the primary way Drac manipulated him was through his shame over what he'd done & become.

Which is such a heartbreaking thing to throw in there, because everything else on that list (dreams etc) is a positive reinforcement -- the devil on your shoulder appealing to the things you want -- but then it crashes into this understanding that he didn't want to want some of those things, and that was also a button to push. There is something equally powerful to Dracula knowing what shames him and the exact ways he hates himself, maybe to take it away, maybe to just keep pressing it until he agrees he's worthless and deserves to suffer. That is MOST of the dynamic we actually see between them in the timeline of the movie, regardless of what their earlier relationship was like.

So the answer to that is not to say he's totally good and has done nothing shame-worthy, but it's also not to say he should be more ashamed actually, it's just… knowing all this and still believing he deserves to be alive and free.

IRL it's not uncommon for there to be a self-blaming factor within abusive relationships and some guilt and shame that goes along with that. It's not always incorrect to realize like: some of this was in my control, I gave a lot of power to this person willingly. I emotionally relied on them, I let my identity get wrapped up in them, I should've known better or stood up for myself or put up stronger boundaries earlier, and the fact I didn't just reinforced how hopeless I felt. It hits the same way for anybody struggling with addictive or self-destructive behavior. The flip side of all that can be understanding and forgiving that version of yourself and reclaiming that power rather than feeling ashamed and trapped by it.

And again! That's not necessarily the story or mindset that resonates with everyone, and it could be perceived badly if one feels it's speaking for all survivors. But if it resonates, it really does.

Last note: The movie also says very firmly that it is NOT as easy for everyone as simply "loving yourself, standing up for yourself, accepting responsibility etc." Like, I actualy think they made a pretty loud point that when your abuser is violent and vengeful and threatning to hurt you and others, you actually fucking CAN'T get out so easily and the self-help affirmations are kinda bullshit. HE NEEDED ALLIES AND SUPPORT IN A VERY REAL AND TANGIBLE WAY. Without Rebecca and also Tumblr he would've been fucked several times over. :) But the bullshit affirmations were still something that mattered to him emotionally, and something he drew strength from, to even get the belief it could get better into his own head.

[ni-kol-koru]

Hi❤️ 2, 4, 12, 14 for Hayama. ✨

Hiii! Thank you so much for sending the numbers, and thank you for sending me numbers for my favorite boy! ✨️

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

Well, I can't really pick one favorite thing, because I literally aodre everything about him! However, one of my favorite canons about Kotaro is actually something that I rediscovered recently: it's that when he sees someone is taking a photo he has to get in on action! We had him do that once in an Audio Drama when he photobombed Seijuro's photo for Shintaro. In that one official art (that I think was supposed to picture that exact moment from the Audio Drama) we can see Reo trying to take a photo of Seijuro and Kotaro just hugging him and excitedly smiling and showing the peace sign to the camera! I think that was an adorable moment!

Now, I think he would just hug and intentionally get into the frame only when it is his friends or classmates or skating buddies taking photos. He probably wouldn't jump onto a stranger just like that... If he was aware that he was getting into a frame of a stranger's photo, I think he might just smile at the camera, wink or show some hand sign! He would just feel the need to subtly photobomb them, and that would be a respectful and non-invasive way to do so! Imagine being a tourist and looking back at your photos from Kyoto and finding a blond teenager smiling, winking or showing hearts or peace signs in the background while looking at the camera? I would find it hilarious, and very endearing and sweet! He sure made a lot of people smile like that, I just know it!

I wouldn't be me if something seemingly minor didn't tell me something deeper about the character. Of course, Kotaro's love for being in photos can be interpreted in a couple of ways and reveal something about his personality!

There is one very obvious reason why Kotaro would like to jump into people's pictures: because it's fun, it can turn out to be very funny, it creates a unique and fun memory to look back at and he is just the type of a guy to chase the fun things and fun activities! That would just prove of how lighthearted, fun, playful and upbeat his personality really is, and I love that for him!

Now, onto another perspective!

When someone loves having their photos taken, it can show just how comfortable they are with the cameras and with what they look like in photos! That can be a very obvious sign of confidence right there. Maybe Kotaro is naturally very photogenic and always looks good in photos, whether they are candid or posed, so he likes being pictured. Or maybe he thinks he always looks good because humans are always beautiful and perfect and thinks he doesn't need to look like a perfect doll to look good in a photo. So yes, maybe Kotaro's love for being in photos shows how comfortable he is with being human and how confident he is in his looks!

Still, if we look at the original canon, Kotaro doesn't really stand still and let people take pictures of him. He jumps into them! If he isn't doing it for fun, he might just do it because he wants attention. He might also do it because he is self-centered and narcissistic and wants to appear everywhere. He wouldn't really care if he was potentially ruining a photo, just as long as he was in it!

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

I often wonder about this actually! I could always see him as a part of anything I was reading or watching. I recently started re-watching Marvel movies, so, let's say I would put him in a superhero movie! He could be both the hero and the villain. In both scenarios I would give him some power with lightnings and thunders and speed and people would, of course, know him as ''The Raijuu''!

If he was a hero, he would be that goofy, unserious, lighthearted, High School boy that just somehow got superpowers and is now responsible for the safety of his city while having loads of homework and studying to do! His movies as a hero would be comedic, because of his own funny nature. Reo and Eikichi would be his best friends and classmates and the only two people in his life who would know about his superpowers. They would always freak out when Kotaro has to do his superhero business, but still do their best to cover for him when he is saving the city instead of doing an exam! If you watched Spider-Man movies with Tom Holland, that is the exact type of movie for superhero Kotaro!

If he was a villain, he would be one of the few villains that the main antagonist created to get rid of the protagonist and help them fulfil their evil plans. He would be nothing but someone's puppet and obey someone's orders. I can't really see him as independent villain, because I don't really see a reason for Kotaro to be evil. Even when speaking of his role in KuroBasu you can't call him evil, and he is an antagonist just because he plays in the same team as the main antagonist. In the movie where he is a villain, he would be in that kind of a situation as well. Matter of fact, he might just be kind enough to reveal to the protagonist how they could defeat the antagonist, because he doesn't like the ideas and plans of his boss, the main antagonist.

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

I have a lot of headcanons for my favorite boy, but here is one that I developed most recently: that he is a picky eater. I always wondered why his favorite dish (kappamaki) was something so simple. For those of you know don't know what kappamaki is (because I had no idea what it was for a while), it is sushi roll that consists of a piece of cucumber in the middle and rice around it, wrapped in dried seaweed. Japanese cuisine is really rich and has a lot of really unique dishes, and yet this boy decides cucumber, rice and a piece of dried seaweed is the best thing there is! I know a lot of picky eaters aren't really fond of Japanese cuisine because of the combination of different food textures and the fact that you can't separate the ingredients and eat them separately. Then there is kappamaki: you can easily take the dried seaweed off, take the cucumber from the middle and eat the three ingredients independently. He might love kappamaki because of that!

When I thought about Kotaro being a picky eater, it somehow made sense to me, and I wanted to explain it somehow.

I think it might come from his childhood. Hear me out, please. We know that teenager Kotaro can't sit still. Imagine how impossible it was to get mini Kotaro to sit still. Mini Kotaro likely couldn't really sit still for a while, even if it was for a meal. He just had more important matters to attend to, he was a kid and just wanted to play and run all the time. When it was food he liked, he could sit still for a while and enjoy. On the other hand, imagine how hard it was making him eat something that he didn't like. Hellish. Considering he is the third child and his parents were likely tired of parenting, I can just see his parents giving up and giving him food he likes so he just sits still and eat. They gathered all of their patience and made sure he was fond of foods that provide the most necessary nutrients. The rest of the foods and textures? Noup. He might warm up to them when he grows up.

When he came to Rakuzan and started living in the dorms with Reo and eating in the canteen, I can see him warming up to some foods and textures. After all, you can't really pick too much in the canteen. Reo would sometimes cook for him and he would try something new, and Eikichi would also make sure to inspire him to try something new. So he kind of expands his horizons a bit in High School. Still, you can't teach an old dog how to bark. Kotaro still gets shivers down his spine if he accidentally puts two different textures in his mouth, he will never eat fries with ketchup and will keep ordering chicken nuggets in restaurants.

14. Assign a fashion aesthetic to this character?

I am not so into fashion and I don't really know the terminology, but I can see Kotaro wear the colorful 80's inspired clothes! The looks I have seen on Pinterest when I searched for '80's inspired fashion colorful men' look very pretty and bold! They look like something that would suit Kotaro and his personality! He loves being spotted and unique, so 80's inspired fashion probably does the trick since it's not something you see every day. He would have sweaters and jackets and Hawaiian shirts in so many wild colors and patterns, he would always wear colorful sneakers and socks and, of course, wear them all with the wide legged jeans! Sometimes he would have some accessories like sunglasses of unique shapes or colors, colorful bracelets and belts!

[hopeymchope]

Hey. There was a new Raincode interview written a few days ago and in that interview, Halara’s gender was brought up. I made a post about that question on my blog and I am curious your thoughts about it. I also linked the interview in my post.

(This is the post in question, for anyone interested. Which I think you probably should be, but... )

My thoughts are mostly that Kodaka's quote/response feels frustratingly uninformative and devoid of any value, but also sadly unsurprising. I know it's just a machine translation, so maybe this isn't capturing the exact nuance of the statement... but the sentence "I didn't specifically intend a social message" is just exactly the kind of vague, wishy-washy, "I really don't want to be in trouble with or offend anyone on any side of any possible argument" language that I've LONG gotten used to in promotional interviews about movies, TV, books, games, etc. Because god forbid you possibly appear to be either for or against anything that might be considered controversial in any possible market! Having STANCES on THINGS could damage your profit margin with some potential demographic.

I suppose this could be all there is to it. Maybe Kodaka legitimately means what he says here and put no greater thought into Halara's lack of gender identity. But I also think it'd be weird if the implications of leaving their gender unknown didn't at least occur to him at some point, particularly as there's been a growing awareness of so-called "X-gender" people in Japan over the last year and a half.

But ultimately, "Master Detective Archives: Rain Code" is Japanese media, and that leaves this kind of question-dodging not only expected, but arguably maybe even necessary. Take a look at the recent of the recent controversy over The Witch From Mercury, the Gundham anime that is over-the-top mega-gay. Bandai Namco still felt the need to declare that the relationship between Suletta and Miorine is "open to interpretation" despite the fact that the two get FUCKED MARRIED.

In fact, this Kotaku article does a good job digging into not only that anime's particular can of worms, but also how queer-friendly media in Japan continues to be suppressed and censored from the dominant conservatives behind the media companies and government even while those works enjoy massive popularity with younger consumers. Get a load of what they say about Yuri! on Ice:

Look no further than the fate of 2016’s smash hit Yuri! On Ice, which tells the tale of a struggling figure skater, Yuri Katsuki, who is coached back to success by the charismatic and undeniably handsome Victor Nikiforov. Similar to The Witch From Mercury, the pair’s relationship is explicitly laid out in the story, and the characters also exchange rings. It was, and still is, celebrated as a landmark anime for LGBTQ+ representation. It received acclaim in Japan, winning Animation of the Year at the Tokyo Anime Awards as well as a number of fan-voted awards. It has consistently been named as one of the top anime of the 2010s by IGN, Anime News Network, and here at Kotaku. In what seemed like an obvious move to capitalize on the success of the show, a feature-length Yuri! On Ice movie was greenlit almost immediately. But six years later, a statement from Studio MAPPA CEO Manabu Otsuka said that despite the show being a hit, the company didn’t make a lot of money off of Yuri! On Ice, and as such, the movie likely won’t happen. Back when Blu-ray sales mattered to the anime industry, Yuri! On Ice torched the competition, selling nearly double the amount of discs of its nearest competitor, the juggernaut franchise Love Live. The runaway success of Yuri! On Ice led to MAPPA’s heightened profile in the industry, which helped it secure the rights to produce Attack on Titan’s never-ending final season, the massively popular Jujutsu Kaisen, and the second season of Makoto Yukimura’s viking masterpiece, Vinland Saga. For MAPPA to claim that the Yuri! On Ice movie isn’t financially viable is disingenuous and contradicts standard industry metrics for success. MAPPA could release the Yuri! On Ice movie tomorrow, and it would be a guaranteed hit. Which begs the question, what is the hold up? It's a reminder that speaking out against the anime production committees that dole out the work to animation studios is a dangerous game. In most of her press for Yuri! On Ice, creator and director Sayo Yamamoto played nice, answering softball questions that never directly addressed the very obvious love playing out on screen between Yuki and Victor. But, in the Yuri! On Ice fanbook “Go Yuri Go!” from 2017, Yamamoto claimed that the series had been censored outside of her control, and she had to fight to keep a kiss between Yuri and Victor in the final cut of the show. Since then, Yamamoto has not gotten any other projects. To have arguably the biggest hit of 2016, receive critical acclaim from your own industry, and then not be given any work? It doesn’t add up. MAPPA has tied Yamamoto to the Yuri! On Ice movie project and essentially strung her out for six years now, leaving her in a kind of professional purgatory. In an industry where the slightest scandal can lead to blacklisting, the idea that Yamamoto is being punished for wanting to go all-in on a queer narrative is not far-fetched.

So. Yeah. This is all a very long way of me saying "I don't know whether what Kodaka said here really tells us much about his intentions/thoughts, nor do I expect we'll ever hear much more on the topic." A lot of Japanese creators have gone the way of just letting the work speak for itself and vaguely denying anything else in public, because it's just safer that way... even if it leaves the rest of us clueless as to where the legit allies are.

Either way, Halara is a pretty awesome representation regardless. I'll just take that as a positive sign.

[luna-rainbow]

Hello! I noticed you have a lot of posts analyzing the details of marvel movies, and there was something in the Winter Soldier that I thought I’d ask your opinion about. No pressure for a response!

This is about Alexander Pierce’s little speech in the bank vault scene. It seemed kind of weird to me when I saw it. You wouldn’t talk to a soldier or a professional operative like that, it kind of sounds like he’s talking to a child. He uses language that will be personable - “I need you to do it one more time” - instead of making general statements on behalf of the entire organization. One explanation for this in my opinion is the brain damage Bucky had. I’m wondering how much that had an effect on the way they treated Bucky, and how he may have perceived their treatment of him in his own mind?

Thanks for the ask! Sorry it took me 3 days to get back to civilisation LOL

My impression of that scene changes on a regular basis 🤣 The scene is very ambivalent and whatever interpretation you have would be based on your own headcanons for Bucky. Some people point to this scene as proof that Bucky had a choice in what he did. Some people see this scene as Pierce taking advantage of his physical resemblance to Steve.

My assumption for Bucky is that the brain frying meant Bucky struggled with complex information and wasn't able to make complex decisions.

My most recent view is shaped by a story from a psychologist about someone who had a background of trauma, and their protective mechanism was to completely disintegrate who their sense of self was. They acted out what other people expect them to do, without ever knowing who they were or what they wanted for themselves. The person was a "people pleaser", who always said whatever made people happy even if it was conflicting information, "because they were afraid of punishment", not because they wanted to deceive or manipulate others. If you asked them something about themselves - their wishes, how they felt, what they thought, they couldn't answer because the identity doesn't exist.

It...reminded me a lot of Bucky, who was forced to have his own identity erased to become the Winter Soldier.

Your work has been a gift to mankind. You shaped the century, and I need you to do it one more time. Society is at a tipping point between order and chaos. Tomorrow morning we're gonna give it a push. But, if you don't do your part, I can't do mine, and HYDRA can't give the world the freedom it deserves.

I think the way Pierce approaches him is using a few tactics:

When someone is a shocked state -- which Bucky was in, because his mind was in overload from seeing Steve and having some of his memories come back -- they often respond better to tone of voice. Pierce takes a quiet, intimate tone of voice with him, which helps give an illusion of closeness.

When someone is in Bucky's brain injured state, they also tend to respond better to simple phrases rather than something complex and abstract. Pierce does speak in abstracts, though -- and quite possibly Pierce knows Bucky wouldn't have the capacity to process the more complicated phrasing that are blatant lies. Bucky would understand the simpler sentences. "Your work has been a gift", "I need you to do it one more time", "if you don't do your part, I can't do mine". It is pertinent to note that these instructional sentences are much more straightforward in their wording and easier to follow/obey.

If we take Bucky as someone who doesn't have a sense of self, there is no anchor to what he knows or wants, so the only thing he can responds to is positive and negative messages from outside. Pierce first gives Bucky a carrot "your work has been a gift" before applying pressure. And...my other headcanon is that Bucky is driven by loyalty, which boiled down to its essence is a need to please and protect those he thinks are his people. He's not capable of making his own judgement in this state, so he relies on people he trusts to tell him what's right to do. It's also pertinent to note that what Pierce says gives nothing for Bucky to hang onto about what himself -- he's not given any hint about his identity, his previous beliefs or wants, and he's not given an opportunity to speak. "This is what we want and you've always done the right thing, so you'll do it again, right?"

Pierce probably also knows that Bucky's loyalty is to persons, rather than to organisations (Bucky being not keen to join the army is a good indicator that he doesn't get swept up by crowd sentiment and tends to be loyal to the few people he believes in). This is another reason why Pierce would take a personable tone with Bucky rather than speak about the organisation. It is also interesting that Pierce invokes "freedom", which is something more representative of Steve, but perhaps a word that Bucky responds to because of its familiarity.

I don't think that this scene indicated that Hydra or Pierce was kind to Bucky though. Many abusive/exploitative dynamics will have these little islands of superficial kindness between long periods of abuse and depersonalisation. If anything, it was clear from what followed ("Wipe him") what Pierce offered was an ultimatum, and abuse victims are very good at recognising an unspoken threat even if it's presented in a friendly tone. Pierce gave Bucky the illusion of a choice and Bucky's expressions indicate he understood what the "choices" were - do what he was being asked, or go through the wiping and be made to do what he was asked. Nevertheless, Bucky chose defiance, because when Steve called his name, he suddenly had an identity, whereas with Hydra he didn't, and that was important to him.

[corybiit]

Purely out of curiosity, what drew you to Snowjanus? For me I always thought they had the potential to work as a social power couple 🤭 but it’s always fun to hear other people’s interpretations!!

Okay so, after I read the book which was around May last year I think, I went to ao3 almost immediately bc I got so obsessed with it, like I read it in two days and that was bc I couldn’t read all day, but I totally absorbed the book. And when I went to ao3 I saw some sejanusxcoryo fics. I didn't read anything bc I didn't find anything that caught my attention but at the beginning, I was really confused bc I didn't see it in the book how that would work.

Then the movie came out and I saw a lot of people shipping them, and I really don't read fics with heterosexual ships, it's weird for me bc fics have always been a comfort zone for me and it is really rare for me to read something like that on a fic.

And so I went to the snowjanus tag and I saw someone had written Coryo as an omega, and I really like omegaverse I'm not gonna lie, mostly bc of how subgenders make the whole gender thing more open and you can explore there the dynamics and so on, so I got hooked on Coryo being an omega and I really loved how Sejanus made perfect sense with him.

This bleeding heart boy who trusts with his whole soul this manipulative little shit is just amazing. I also like tropes like abusive and manipulative relationships bc of trauma and stuff, and it just works you know?

Like it aligns perfectly with tropes I like, and I totally loved the book and how Coryo was such a well-written complex character that is bad bc he chooses to be bad, and that gives you a perfect chance to write whatever you like, bc the protagonist is a piece of shit so he's not afraid of being the bad guy, he's not afraid of choosing himself first, he's not afraid of cheating or lying or manipulating, and to have that freedom as an author with a character like that is really fun.

Also bc in my other fics from other fandoms I normally write my characters closer to Sejanus' way of acting, the responsible ones, the hopelessly in love ones, the bleeding hearts and the self-sacrificing ones, even though I've also written complete assholes. Writing from Coriolanus's pov is something if not new then refreshing.

And this has nothing to do with your ask but I have another ask in my inbox about how it isn't discussed enough how Sejanus sees Coryo as his or his possessiveness towards the other and that would also be so fun to write.

Idk if this answers your question or if my rambling was too much, but yeah :] it was bc of their potential and my love for gay ships and the characters themselves.

[further-fields]

Hi, I'm not alterhuman myself (as far as i know) but plan on writing one.

So my interpretation of a character I love (Silver the Hedgehog specifically) is deeply connected to angels while not specifically identifying as one, and they (they/ae pronouns in my human!AU) use this angel theming as a superhero. However, idk how to express this side of aer character and relate it to their personality/identity, without overshadowing other aspects of them if that makes sense? I use "angelhearted" to refer to this, but lately I've been feeling that it either isn't that accurate or I'm not portraying it right. Do you have any tips on portraying alterhumanity in writing? If not, do you know anyone who does?

Oh this is an interesting question! Sorry for the late response. I don't have alterhuman OCs, but I can breakdown my experience of being otherhearted and how that could translate to written expressions. A character who is deeply connected to angels without identifying as one certainly sounds like a 'hearted experience.

My hearttype is something that has shaped who I am. I see it as there being two forms of expression: the internal and the external. The extent of which any person focuses on either varies between people.

Personally, I'm quite shy with external expressions and there's little that I do that indicates my hearttype. (Scale weaving, taking walks through fields, and having an open interest in astronomy for some examples. Certainly nothing that looks meaningful together to anyone but me.) On the flip side of internal expressions, there exists my reason for why I feel 'otherhearted' fits me. There's no brief explanation for it, but it involves my daemon being a complimentary part of me. I am incapable of looking at their alien species and not seeing myself in them. It is also my ideal self. Actions I'll take include daydreaming, starting envisage shifts, meditating to induce phantom shifts, going about my day while letting my mind drift about how my hearttype perceives the world, and pondering how the species behavior compares to myself (which is something I have retroactively learned about myself through). I even wrote a daemon style analysis once. If a narration of myself existed mostly outside of my head, there would be little indication of alterhumanity :p I think regulating how the narration is balanced between self-perception and actions could provide good flexibility in how to focus the writing. Certain actions they take and habits they have can be mentioned without continually explaining the reason behind them. It's also worth mentioning that it's very common for folks to go through cycles of how connected they feel to their 'types.

For character examples, I think Hiccup is a good one who reads as alterhuman. In the first movie, the way he regarded dragons was considered weird for his community, one way of marking his relationship with them as unusual. Dragons are an pivotal part of his character and he loves incorporating them into his life. In his pursuit of learning more about them, they've brought out good traits in him. His mannerisms aren't draconic, but he does actively try forming a closer relationship with dragons in his own image through wearing scales and inventing a wingsuit. Hiccup reads as dragonhearted to me, but some would say dragonkin due to Valka's "soul of a dragon" line. Honestly, there's a lot of overlapping experiences between the two.

I know Poppy mentioned another character as a good example of being otherhearted.

I'll be honest, I cannot remember who has made alterhuman OCs. But @who-is-page if you're up for it, do you have any advice for writing alterhuman characters?

Of course anyone else, please feel free to add on to this ^^

[alsgrid]

On why conservatives don't get to have their wish fulfillment media

I've been thinking a lot lately about why online discourse around any kind of media is so incendiary these days. Why is there so much outrage about every single new thing that comes out? Don't get me wrong, it's always been this way to an extent but it really seems to have gone into overdrive lately. And the focal point of it all, at least for the past few weeks, seems to be Barbie. Why is a movie about a doll for little girls making so many adult men upset? Well, there's many reasons(a lot of them very stupid in nature) but to put it bluntly, it's because a lot of people are upset that it doesn't pander to them. More importantly, they are upset that it panders to someone else. As do most movies. Somewhere along the way, the English-language media landscape has shifted to completely exclude things a certain demographic wants to see.

Of course, much of it can be explained by things like demographic shifts and society as a whole changing over time. But not all of it. In the last few decades, it seems like we've completely changed our approach to how we consume and interpret media. Instead of taking its themes and messages on their own terms, we look at how they apply to and influence the real world. Instead of shutting up and enjoying the ride, we critique the morals of what is presented, and how they reflect on whoever made it. Which completely shuts down a lot of violent wish fulfillment media. Most specifically, the kind that conservatives enjoy. And I get it, I do. When they say that people these days no longer understand that "it's just a movie", they're not exactly wrong. But what they don't understand is that it's their own fault.

Let's take a look at Dirty Harry. In many ways, Clint Eastwood's character is the archetypal conservative action hero. Rude, ruthless, emotionally dulled, and willing to break any rules as long as it gets results. But does it? In the real world, it doesn't. But of course, movies aren't real. Dirty Harry succeeds because the script wants him to. He is in the right because the entire plot is a puzzle engineered for precisely such a character to slot right into it. And the people making it understood this. The movie's director, Don Siegel, whose views were diametrically opposed to the character's, didn't want to make a piece of social commentary. He wanted to make a cool action movie. Even Clint Eastwood, famously conservative, called it escapist wish fulfillment. Their expectations were simple, audiences were transported into a world were things worked differently, enjoyed their time, and went back to the real world. But that's not what happened. The audience broke the social contract. They never left the fantasy world behind. Hell, they could barely distinguish reality from fiction. Andrew Robinson got death threats aimed at the character he played, a fictional serial killer which never existed. And an entire generation of Americans grew up thinking that Dirty Harry was a character worthy of being emulated in the real world. And that's just one example. When Martin Scorsese made Taxi Driver, he probably knew some people were going to misunderstand his movie. I doubt he knew someone was going to misunderstand it so hard that they would go shoot the president so Jodie Foster will fall in love with them.

Over and over again, filmmakers, writers, even musicians had to relearn the same lesson: people have a hard time distinguishing fiction from reality. And the more conservative they are, the truer it is. So now most of us understand, creators carry a moral responsibility for the content of their work, and most audiences are willing to hold them responsible for that. So, if you are a conservative, please remember. Next time you insist that "it's just a movie", or "it's just a joke", it's not that we don't understand that. It's that you don't.

[yallemagne]

the reincarnation plot from every bad dracula movie but make it queer

Preface:

Every time I go out for a walk I think about the goddamn reincarnation plot that movies use and I ask to myself “but what if it was Jonathan--” and then twenty years get taken off of my life as retribution. Basically most story ideas I have are “what if the bad thing happened to Jonathan”, and I refuse to reflect on what that entails. 

How most reincarnation plots go is that Dracula rifles through Jonathan’s bag and finds a picture of Mina and suddenly goes batshit as if he’s not seen a women in a thousand years (he totally has, he has three roommates). This happened in Nosferatu (don’t recall if it was bc she looked like his dead wife or he’s just an incel) and way too many other adaptations while having never actually happened in the book. 

But I can make the reincarnation plot gay AND stick more faithfully to the book. 

Okay lessgo--

When Jonathan finds the study:

Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love letter, and writing in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last. 

and

I determined not to return tonight to the gloom-haunted rooms, but to sleep here, where, of old, ladies had sat and sung and lived sweet lives whilst their gentle breasts were sad for their menfolk away in the midst of remorseless wars. 

Besides just screaming femme Jonathan, that’s perfect reincarnation fodder. You can play this as if he’s recalling his own memories of being Dracula’s forlorn wife worrying about him as he goes off to war. 

And then he meets the Weird Sisters, and he recognizes one of them:

The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great wavy masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where. 

Most people interpret the blonde vampire as being Dracula’s original wife and the two dark-haired vampires his daughters. Totally see that. Now, why does Jonathan recognize her? Blah, blah, she’s him, he’s her. 

The thing about most reincarnation plots though is that they always have the Sisters but they have no bearing on the plot. Hey Mina, your “hubby” has three women he keeps as pets, why don’t you ask WHO THEY ARE AND WHY HE DOES THAT TO THEM. But those would be rational questions. 

So anyway, how do dead vampire wife and living Jonathan wife exist at the same time? I mean, it could be that Dracula’s original wife wasn’t turned when she was alive. Perhaps the same deal with Satan he did to become immortal reanimated his wife’s corpse. But of course, her soul was gone. 

Whoopsies Dracula, you fucked up. 

"How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me! Beware how you meddle with him, or you'll have to deal with me." The fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him:—

"You yourself never loved; you never love!" On this the other women joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the room that it almost made me faint to hear; it seemed like the pleasure of fiends. Then the Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said in a soft whisper:—

"Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so?"

I’m just gonna say, the blonde vampire’s response to Dracula staking his claim in Jonathan being “you’ve never loved”... foreshadowing. Even the corpse bride over here is like “bitch, I know you’re not gonna treat my soul right this time”. And I’m not the only one who has said Dracula looking at Jonathan and saying softly “Yes, I too can love” is pretty homosexual. 

Now you may think I’m veering towards Dracula/Jonathan, but Dracula is still an abuser, so no. 

With that said-- MINA!

She fetches Jonathan from the convent and they travel back to England, and Jonathan can’t help feeling severely out of place now. He spent so much time as a damsel in that castle, having past memories come to him in the form of nightmares, and then he spent his recovery surrounded by women who were sympathetic towards him and promise to keep the weird memory dreams secret. 

But now he’s in England, and he can hardly walk down the street without being a little genderqueer about it. 

And what is he supposed to think about his relationship with his gender when he’s not even sure these are his own feelings? Is he experiencing actual gender dysphoria towards being a man or are these just the thoughts of a long-dead woman? Doesn’t help if this is still set in Victorian England where if he were to confide these feelings in anyone, he could be institutionalized. 

Not to mention his relationship with Mina. Is he being deceptive towards her? He doesn’t know. He feels guilty for these newfound feelings. Does having a woman’s soul invalidate their relationship somehow? Does his previous relationship with Dracula invalidate it? Should he let her go so she can seek out a more worthy partner? The answer to all the questions are no of course, but this is a drama. 

I could go on and try to plot out an actual story on the spot, but the original intent of this was just to make a point that the reincarnation plot has more backing it if Jonathan is the reincarnated bride of Dracula instead. Which plenty of people have already said, but I'm giving my own talking points because I’ve been dying to okay.