#and my boss has dropped the bombshell that a lot of my students will be complete beginners which.. is completely normal and expected

[fingertipsmp3]

Me getting the job:

Me immediately being hit with imposter syndrome:

[leavesofmaple]

The ShinBon Bomb

On Friday the final episode of Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu aired. After the previous week’s episode, where Kikuhiko (Yakumo) passed on into the afterlife with a smile on his face, viewers expected the beloved series to wrap up peacefully. But Shouwa did not go quietly into that dark night without first dropping a massive bombshell on us: that Kikuhiko may be Shinnosuke’s real father.

The following is this fan’s thought process on the implications of this twist.

On a Moral Level-

Does anyone out there remember the manga/anime Bunny Drop? Do you remember WHY it received the backlash it did? It’s because it’s the story of a man who raised his grandfather’s newly discovered toddler only to TURN AROUND AND MARRY HER WHEN SHE GREW UP. The series tried to make the argument that, because it was later revealed that Rin wasn’t actually Daikichi’s grandfather’s daughter, the two aren’t related by blood and therefore it isn’t actually incest. But incest isn’t the problem: child grooming is. Child grooming is when an adult raises a child in such a way to condition them to be open to sexual advances from said adult. It’s a real thing, and it’s disgusting.

The thought of Kikuhiko sleeping with Konatsu is horrifying: not because they are related by blood (they aren’t), and not because of the age difference, but because Kiku was a father figure to her through much of her life, including most of her childhood. He took her in after the death of her parents and raised her. She is the closest thing he has to a daughter. To turn around and sleep with her when she comes of age breaks any sort of familial trust that was established between them, and is an incredibly dishonorable thing to do to the child of your two closest friends.

On a Thematic Level-

Shinnosuke as the physical manifestation of the three original mains (Kikuhiko, Sukeroku, and Miyokichi) is an absolute stroke of brilliance. These three characters, who loved and were loved and never found peace with their situations, are finally tied together in a very real and tangible way. It is especially satisfying as you realize through his presentation and appearance that Shin-chan is the lovechild that Kikuhiko and Sukeroku would have had if their relationship had been pursued (and if there weren’t obvious physical limitations). It brings a level of closure to the relationship between these two men who, despite being very close, were always at odds with each other and the world.

My Personal Thoughts-

I don’t think Kikuhiko slept with Konatsu. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for a man who, despite being super far in the closet, never let Miyokichi (the woman he was the closest to) touch him, to turn around and sleep with her daughter. And do you think, even for one moment, that Sukeroku would have welcomed Kikuhiko into the afterlife with open arms if Kiku had been fucking his daughter?

One thing that is important to remember is that it is Higuchi who puts this theory forward. Higuchi, as a writer, is always looking for connections in things, and has put more than one false accusation forward in the past. Remember when he accused Kikuhiko of killing Miyokichi? We know from Matsuda’s account that Kiku was blameless in what happened to Konatsu’s parents. We also know that, as interested in Kiku as Higuchi is, he also held a vendetta against him for a long time: for both rejecting him as an apprentice and getting involved with a woman the young writer had feelings for.

Do I think it was actually the mob boss? No. Oddly enough, I always thought Mangetsu was Shinnosuke’s father. Why? Some of it was the child’s appearance. He had the black hair, the gray eyes, and the same sly smile as the rich medical student. But what really made me consider the possibility was a scene from episode 6, when Konatsu formally thanks him for helping bring Kikuhiko to the hospital, and Mangestu replies “You finally looked my way, eh?” Konatsu looks up quickly, taken aback. At the time I read this as Mangestu quietly commenting on the fact that Konatsu refuses to acknowledge the father of her child. It’s not a lot to go on, but I do think it makes a lot more sense than the mob boss or the mob boss’s son.

Some people are going to disagree with me. And that’s okay. I agree that there is a lot of evidence sprinkled throughout the series pointing to Shinnosuke as Kikuhiko’s son. Whether that evidence is canon fact or thematic conjecture is going to be up to the interpretation of the viewer. Haruko Kumota intentionally brings up the idea because she wants to introduce the implications on a metaphorical level, but she also intentionally leaves the situation ambiguous, because Shinnosuke’s real father does not ultimately change the larger story of Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu, which is one of love, loss, and the eternal power of rakugo.

[starstuffandalotofcoffee]

Agents of SHIELD, What If

Good lord it’s been a long time since I wrote a bechdel test because I’m like a thousand episodes behind on the DC CW shows (read: have been doing other stuff, mostly podcasts and Grace and Frankie on Netflix and working a zillion tutoring jobs) but I’m glad to be back for this fucking amazing episode.

So, pass a few times over with Jemma and Daisy (and May). SPOILERS AHOY THOUGH IF YOU WATCHED THE PROMOS/LAST EPISODE YOU’LL KNOW MUCH OF IT.

The diverging point is May not killing the girl in Bahrain. As a result, she gets to the U.S. and goes critical in Cambridge, MA, killing a bunch of school children and triggering a straight up fascist crackdown by the government because while Marvel Comics is like “clearly diversity doesn’t sell it’s definitely not the Nazism that’s the problem”  and the Defenders wasted a bunch of time on a boring white guy with a boring white plot that made Daredevil S2 look coherent, Agents of SHIELD is like “no one ever pays attention to us anyway so we can do what we want provided no movie stars actually show up onscreen except Nick Fury that one time.”

Daisy, Ward (surprise bitch you thought you’d seen the last of him), May, and Fitz are all Hydra - Daisy and Ward as agents, May as their CO who has funneled her guilt into being as fascist as possible instead of taking a desk job and flying planes silently as she did in the real timeline. Fitz is the Mengele analog of this universe. Bonus points to Fitz for being creepy as fuck, making out with  Ada (the director of Hydra, in what appears to be Hugo Boss circa 1940 by way of Ann Taylor and also Daisy’s eyeshadow), and sporting a blatant Richard Spencer haircut because this show is at its best when it forgoes subtlety. HYDRA=NAZIS=FASCISTS=BAD.

Coulson is your friendly neighborhood high school teacher who teaches kids how GREAT it is that their individuality is a lower priority than the safety of the state, which freaks me out on a deeper level. I mean, I was in high school during the Bush administration (because I’m old) but I was in a blue state and most of my teachers were openly calling him a dumbass, and Coulson serves as our civilian viewpoint character which is also pretty chilling seeing as how he flat-out gaslights a student and lets another be taken to most likely get killed or experimented on. Jemma was a casualty of the attack on the SHIELD science academy, but respawns. Which means she has to spend a lot of time doing what she’s mediocre at: lying and hiding.

Mack hasn’t shown up nor has Mace which I find highly disappointing. By which I mean I can take or leave Mace but I really want Mack to be chill and in the resistance. He probably isn’t though.

Once we get through the obligatory adjustment period for our two heroines and get the lay of the land, the bombshells drop. First: Ward in this universe found out Daisy was an inhuman (code!Daisy had not known, but obviously the real Daisy does), hid the info, and joined the resistance as a double agent. Second: Because Jemma’s alive again, it rewrote the code and prevents them from exiting freely - they’re going to have to play to win.

So as you can tell I loved the shit out of this episode because it combines two of my favorite things: People stuck in virtual reality (I’ve actually only really experienced this in one other media thing, the book Heir Apparent, but whatever it was great) and people being like “All of Hydra are Nazis, and all Nazis deserve immediate death, as do fascists by any other name.”

My complaints are primarily that while turning the Bahrain incident around this way opens up a great story, it does kind of cheapen May’s anguish over several seasons if the end result was “actually killing that girl saved lives and prevented us from turning into a dystopian nightmare that is somehow even more desaturated than the typical show!” and also that while Resistance Grant Ward is intriguing, I’m not sure why this happened. Maybe because May was the ‘seed’ character of this framework and it’s just pitting Ward as a double agent against her, regardless of her allegiances? I just kind of like the fact that in exchange for being Hydra, he died in space. Twice.

Anyway, looking forward to next week as our badass heroines work to turn their colleagues and get out of this hellish computer game.