#and people who ignore canon so they can project their own identities/desires onto characters

[madeofjules]

I've seen quite a few bad thg opinions the past couple days so here's a reminder that these things are canon:

Katniss is suicidal until Peeta comes home. He gives her the hope she needs to heal and move forward. They eventually enter a romantic relationship because she desires and loves him.

Katniss's only reason for not wanting kids was her deep-seated fear that they'd be reaped. Becoming a mother shows how much she's recovered from her trauma. Her children make her feel joy.

Katniss is happy in 12. She would've ended up there anyway. (“A few hundred others return because, whatever has happened, this is our home.”)

So anyone who thinks her ending isn't good or what she wanted probably doesn't actually like Katniss and definitely doesn't understand her character as she's written. Thankfully her creator does know her and gave her the peaceful ending she deserves.

[strangertheory]

"anti-Mileven"

I know you submitted this as a message and not an Ask, but I hope you don't mind if I answer your question with a longer post because this is a topic that is important to me but is complicated. I've meant to do a post about this, but kept putting it off because it is a very layered topic for me and my thoughts about Mileven are probably not what a lot of fans want to hear.

I respect that everyone develops an attachment to their preferred couples in stories for personal reasons, and as such any criticism of the dynamic between two characters that are dating can feel like a very personal criticism. I respect everyone's head-canons and favorite ships as sacred ground: I don't want to tell anyone how they should or should not relate to a story. That's unique to each of us as fans, and we will all enjoy Stranger Things for different reasons.

However: I do have some thoughts regarding the way that the narrative has established the dynamic between Mike and El. And I personally do not find their dynamic *as it currently is* to be one that is ideal for either of them yet.

I really care about Eleven and I really care about Mike. They are two of my favorite characters in the story.

To say that I'm "anti-Mileven" is a huge oversimplification of how I feel about Mike and El's dynamic.

I am very much anti:

overlooking the fact El has been treated as a lab rat and abused and isolated from society for the majority of her existence and her ignorance of her own identity and her own desires is repeatedly reinforced canonically. ("How do I know what I like?") El has spent only a few months out in the world beyond her cell at the lab and beyond Hopper's cabin, she knows very little about the world yet, and she is being taught much of what she now knows by her boyfriend who also happens to be one of the few people she interacts with in her daily life. The power difference and social difference between them is huge currently regardless of whether Mike is a nice kid with good intentions or not, and they are both fourteen years olds.

overlooking that it is superficial and not representative of a "deep" relationship to only kiss and make out with a significant other and not do other meaningful activities that establish a real day-to-day relationship (like hanging out with friends and other loved ones as a couple.) There's a popular misconception that the act of two people kissing is inherently romantic and a sign of emotional closeness. But kissing becomes romantic psychologically when two people share a deep affection for one another that is based on shared experiences and emotional and psychological connectedness. If two characters can be shown to care about one another without ever physically touching, they have the potential for a deep connection that is based on more than the thrill of physical affection. Give me a well-developed relationship first, and then kissing will seem romantic to me. Without an established psychological and emotional connection between characters, kissing is merely a superficial representation of the idea of intimacy between characters without any actual substance underneath. Sure that's what kids do when they're figuring out how dating and feelings and physical intimacy work and it's not harmful in itself provided that they are both comfortable with it, but keep this in mind within the context of the other concerns I list here.

trivializing Mike's dishonesty and blaming Hopper for Mike's lying when the truth is Mike could have easily explained to El that Hopper didn't want them spending as much time together and having some space would be better. El is well aware of Hopper's dislike for their time spent together. This should have been a very easy conversation. As Lucas rightfully asks as Mike is ranting about the situation he got himself into: "Why lie?" Good question, Lucas. Good question. El asks Mike this again later at the mall. "Why do you lie?" Mike stares back at her with an awkward expression, and does NOT answer her. Why is this answer not an easy one? Why has Mike still not addressed things with El? I think there is more going on here than just Hopper's threats.

I am very in favor of:

El learning more about who she is and what she wants to do with her life outside of the desires and expectations of other people.

Mike figuring out how to effectively express his thoughts and feelings honestly. He is clearly struggling to do this throughout season 3, and it is uncharacteristic of the kid who defiantly said and did what he wanted frequently in seasons 1 and 2. Clearly Mike is not comfortable and is nervous, which is understandable for someone exploring new emotionally vulnerable territory like dating for the first time, but he needs to learn to be honest and tell people how he is thinking and feeling or else he is also putting himself and his feelings and needs at risk and potentially establishing an unhealthy relationship that will hurt him and hurt others even if he doesn't mean to. Mike's nervousness is STILL present in the final goodbye scene in which Mike and El talk, and El tells him she loves him and kisses him. He is still stumbling over his words and anxious, and he seems notably confused after El kisses him. These small details are not trivial, they are clearly intentional.

Recognizing that Mike is the first person her age that was kind to El when she escaped the lab, and given that she has only known pain and abuse her entire life and has never known friendship let alone romance that her psychological readiness for understanding a romantic relationship is NOT the same as an ordinary 14 year old's and this cannot be stated enough.

Recognizing that societal pressures and personal insecurities might be a huge factor in how Mike clings to El's attention and affection for him, and that there is evidence in the story that supports this interpretation. We know that Mike is bullied frequently, and that there is a layer of homophobia often involved. (Even if James and Troy were speaking rudely about Will, they were still directly confronting Mike. The implication is there.) We know that Lucas yelled at Mike "No Mike. You're blind. Blind because you like that a girl's not grossed out by you!" This reveals that Lucas knows that Mike is insecure and wants validation. Just because Mike has a desperate desire to be loved and liked by a girl does not mean that his appreciation of El's attention is based on his genuine romantic affection for her. Mike might be dating El because he enjoys the attention, he likes being liked, and he likes how having a girlfriend makes him feel more accepted and normal.

Recognizing that every moment that Mike has tried to share something that he is passionate about with El (the Yoda figurine, the dinosaurs) she has been completely disinterested. Since El has no cultural connection to the pop culture stories Mike loves and she lived in the Lab her entire life, it makes perfect sense that she will have no interest in these toys. Her lack of interest in what Mike is passionate about, however, is worth noting: not because it's a bad thing, but because it's just one of many reasons they are "not even from the same planet" and cannot bond and connect easily. El has lived an incredibly different life from Mike, has suffered through so much, and is still learning about the outside world and about herself. She is severely behind in social and personal development. She needs time to learn and to grow and to heal so she can live her best life and recover from what she has been through. (She doesn't really care about your Star Wars toys, Michael, because she just learned what a phone is and is processing a lot of other things right now.)

*I want to credit @kaypeace21 for pointing out many of these particular observations listed above: you can read her very detailed and extensive analysis in her post here: El is Not in Love with Mike.

These are just a few of many thoughts I have regarding Mike and El's dynamic together, and why I find the romanticization and idealization of their dating relationship to be more suited to fan-canon and fanfiction. For El to have a relationship with Mike that I would personally enjoy and appreciate, the story would need to convincingly allow her to establish a notably better understanding of who she is and what she wants, and have time to heal from her trauma and learn a lot more about the outside world. While I suspect that the Byers moving away will be very difficult for Will, in many ways I think it will benefit El tremendously and I hope that she is given more opportunities to learn and to grow.

I also agree with @hawkinsschoolcounselor 's hypothesis that Mike is projecting his feelings for Will onto El. It's impossible for me to see Mike's dynamic with El as entirely separate from Mike's relationship with Will because El was found in the woods when they were looking for Will in season 1, El helped everyone find Will in the Upside Down and saved his life, and El reappears at the end if season 2 and saves Will from the Mindflayer. Until season 3, El's appearance in Mike's life has been directly tied to Will's survival and safety. I do not think this is a trivial aspect of El's narrative. El's importance within the larger story being told is repeatedly tied back to what Will is dealing with. The reason that El and Will's narratives are so deeply intertwined has not been revealed in the story yet, but I suspect that there are some important aspects of El and Will's stories that haven't been fully revealed yet that will bring all of these seemingly isolated plot threads together. The creators of Stranger Things repeatedly tie El and Will together visually and narratively (re: @kaypeace21), and I believe there is a very specific reason for this.

I look forward to seeing what happens in season 4. Whether my interpretation of El and Mike's dynamic is fair or not, I trust the writers have a compelling next chapter in their story for us all to enjoy.

[mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker]

...

“I was really enraged over “One More Day”. Having been on the Ditko side of the argument for so long, I finally saw that Marvel was totally against letting Peter Parker age and develop new stories. I had planned on protesting the books. But, then they hooked me with the creative teams. Then, they brought back Norman Osborn.”

 Er no they didn’t they brought HARRY Osborn back...pointlessly....

 “Plus, they were trying new stuff and it wasn’t terrible.”

 By new stuff I wonder if they mean ‘Guess who this Goblin themed character is’ and ‘Oh no Spider-Man is framed’ or ‘Yuk yuk Peter just can’t get a date lulz!’

 And by not terrible I wonder if they mean ‘Hey look it’s the Chameleon and his whole history with Peter Parker is being ignored so we can imply he’s raping a woman’ and ‘Here watch this woman take advantage of Peter when he’s drunk before turning on a dime into a racist and sexist sterotype of Latin American woman’ or ‘Let’s ruin the Lizard and Kraven’s Last Hunt for everybody’.

  “What was going on here? Constant creative rotation to keep things fresh and lively?”

 Fresh as in a fresh way to suck shit as inconsistent story and artistic beats pile up to insanity.

  “Villains being reintroduced as the classic threats we know them to be?!?”

 Because we didn’t have that before OMD and needed the marriage gone for that to be the case.

  “Then, we got to see Marcos Martin and Dan Slott on the book. Spider-Man had entered into a new Golden Age. ”

 John Romita Senior’s run was a Golden Age.

 Roger Stern’s run was a Golden Age.

 2004 was a Golden Age.

 Mary Jane dates a loser cleberity because she’s out of character whilst Peter Parker invades people’s privacy which is even MORE out of character and here comes Mysterio alive and well ignoring everything we knew about him for the past 10 years isn’t a Golden Age. Its just hot trash.

  “But, what of Mary Jane? She was Peter’s wife and the mother of their disappeared baby. Would we ever get some sort of closure? Hell no. What was more surprising was how little it mattered.”

  WTF does ‘it didn’t matter’ even mean in this context?

  It mattered to most of the readers hence they kept teasing us with reconciliation to spike sales over and over again before just giving us an AU book...then bringing them back for real!

  “ Does that say a lot for Mary Jane and her defined role in the Spider-Man universe. I venture to say that it did. But, why are now realizing the futile nature of Peter being married and its importance to Mary Jane?”

 Yeah. It’s so futile to have character development for the lead and second biggest character that was the bedrock of 20 years of stories that by and large were better than the objective trash that followed int heir wake and fundamentally damaged both characters going forward.

 “Mary Jane has always never made sense for Peter Parker or Spider-Man. It was wish fulfillment for a guy that went from puny nerd to crushing multiple samples of poon in a three year period.”

  This sexist bullshit again.

  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and even if that wasn’t true Peter is himself attractive and even if he was ‘average looking’ someone as attractive like MJ would marry someone like Peter all the time in the real world.

 It was their personalities and shared histories that made the relationship make sense.

 To dismiss MJ’s backstory and the inter-personal emotions between them that made the relationship happen is ignorant and a clear sign of either not having read or not having paid attention to the material.

 The hard truth is MJ pretty much ALWAYS made sense for Spider-Man. She wasn’t wish fulfilment she was her own well rounded character who organically developed in tandem with Peter, as Nick Spencer himself has corroborated.

  “Gwen was his equal,”

 How?

 Gwen was more financially affluent than Peter, had a higher social standing afforded by her father’s job and their comparative wealth to Peter.

  If we are talking her brains, Gwen wasn’t anywhere close to Peter’s league. Peter was the kid whipping up web-fluid in his bedroom as a teenager. Gwen was...someone who was in his science class. A statement that could apply to Harry.

  “ Betty was the older woman and Mary Jane was the neighbor’s niece thrown upon him. ”

 Betty was younger than him canonically Stan lee said so in a letters page but even if she wasn’t in the context of the times she wouldn’t been a few years removed from high school and Peter would’ve been a senior. Big whoop.

 Betty’s place has little to do with her age but more to do with just being his first romantic experience.

  As for MJ putting aside how she was retconning to not be his neighbour, that assessment for her character applies to the Silver Age and literally no other period of time beyond it. That was NOT her role in the Bronze age in the 1970s, the DeFalco run of the 80s and obviously not the time during the 1990s or 2000s when they were married.

  WTF is with his toxic notion that a character is not allowed to develop FFS!

  MJ hasn’t been the nieghbour’s blind date for him for the majority of her existence.

   “Mary Jane doesn’t even show up until the classic final page of her debut issue. Sure, it’s one of the best entrances in comic history. However, Mary Jane already feels like a put on intruder into a world that she doesn’t understand.”

  Correct and Norman Osborn wasn’t revealed as the Goblin until 4 issues before that, Gwen Stacy didn’t die until 7 years after that and Venom never showed up until 22 years after that.

  I guess all that shit is irrelevant to the character and mythology of Spider-Man and is just totally optional and superfluous.

  I’m sorry I never realized only the first 4 years and few months of Spider-Man mattered.

  I never realized Venom, Hobgoblin, Carnage, KINGPIN and all the OTHER shit from after ASM #41 were ‘intruders’ in Spider-Man’s world.

  Give me a fucking break.

   “She spends the next year dancing through the comic and pushing off the boys. ”

  And again, the early years of a character don’t = the inherent nature of the character that is never allowed to develop beyond that ever. If it did the X-Men would’t ever need Wolverine or Storm and Dick Grayson being Nightwing wouldn’t matter at all.

  “Peter grows closer to Gwen until she eventually dies, then he’s forced back onto Mary Jane. ”

  No, he and MJ over the course of 2 years of masterful stories by Conway gradually grow closer organically.

  Can you spell ‘Gwen Stan’?

  “Mary Jane rejects him, then he starts associating with related ESU students, Marvel Team-Up guest stars and the Black Cat.”

 That’s YEARS later. Gwen dies in 1973. Peter and MJ hook up in 1974. They break up in like 1978!

  “When all of those go into the crapper, Mary Jane shows up and he proposes. ”

 Oh dear god this is a quintessential example of buying into Marvel propaganda.

 That isn’t the sequence of events.

  First of all MJ showd up DURING his relationship with Felicia.

 THEN she revealed she knew he was Spider-Man and became his confidant.

  THEN peter and Felicia broke up.

  THEN he and MJ began growing closer and closer.

  THEN he had one last fling with Felicia following a seeming rejection by MJ.

 THEN he proposed to MJ.

  All that shit played out between approximately 1983-1987. That’s about FOUR YEARS of publication with THREE titles running simultaneously!

 “Parker gets rejected, then MJ accepts due to a pending marriage in the Spider-Man comic strip.”

 Again no. Yeah the wedding we got occurred due to synching with the newspaper strip but the build up to it was in the works for years by DeFalco and Frenz who were in charge of the book and embellished by Peter David and other people on the satellites. It wasn’t intended as actually leading to them crossing the threshold as man and wife but the build up to make that happen and for it to hypothetically happen anyway still existed.

 “That’s right, kids. Peter and Mary Jane only got married because Marvel wanted to tie it into an unrelated storyline in the national newspaper comic strip.”

 Again that’s true but the build up for to nevertheless make sense in story was still there and still paid off 4 years of character development.

  “The key point of Peter and MJ’s relationship was based on editorial interference. ”

  Peter and MJ’s relationship began in 1973 nearly 15 years before they got married and it occurred out of a sincere desire by the writer to tell a story about grief.

 “Tom DeFalco had actually spent a storyline early explaining how MJ figured out Peter’s identity, but kept it to herself. ”

 Er...no he didn’t. He explained she knew his identity but never explained how.

 And...this kind of egregiously undermines the central argument right here.

  “Then, made a very reasonable argument for why she could like Peter as a friend. ”

 And then along with Frenz his collaborator and Peter David spent the next 3 or so years developing their relationship as clearly much more than friendship so why is this fuckwit taking one line from ASM #259 totally out of context and ignoring all the stuff it led to.

 Oh right....in order to support the argument via lying.

  “Cut to two years later....”

 It was more than 2 years.

  “forced attacks and a second rejected marriage”

 Forced attacked? Alastair Smythe made the natural presumption that MJ was affiliated with Spider-Man based upon his encounter with her in ASM Annual #19.

  “then MJ is cool about dealing with Peter.”

 No. MJ has a change of heart after resolving her commitment issues directly connected to her estrangement from her sister and her bad blood with her father which Peter helped her to resolve in the course of the story where she accepts his proposal.

   Learn to read the damn stories!

  “Why was it such a big deal? Why did we loft MJ up to this status that doesn’t seem deserved?”

  Because it was wholly deserved based upon the actual stories that were written and not the propaganda assessment this article is pushing.

 “The marriage issue is so confusing. It happened in the first Amazing Spider-Man issue I ever read and most of the imagery has come to dominate my opinion of Spidey through the years. Whether it’s the marriage nightmare with the villains attacking the guests or the robbery with Electro; these images are what I see in my head when I see Spidey. Everything after that point was an excuse to force MJ into action, whether it was Venom attacking for the first time or the creepy landlord stalking her. ”

 Putting aside how ‘everything’would have to mean literally 100% of each Spider-Man story ever when there were many issues MJ either didn’t appear or had a small role...why would this be a bad thing?

  You have a supporting character...they are important...they are used within the narrative...this is bad because why again?

  The sexism and hypocrisy is strong with this point because half the time MJ gets shit because she didn’t do ENOUGH in the marriage. But when she is involved within the super side of things in some capacity it’s forced and bad.

  How?

  A super villain knows Peter’s identity and invades his home, targeting someone clone to him who he maybe lives with. That’d been happening since the silver age with Aunt May, Betty Brant and Gwen Stacy.

  As for her getting kidnapped by a stalker, this happens in real life especially to women and famous people and famous women. Spider-Man is a reflection of real life so WTF is the problem with this? HOW is this forced.

  “For next decade, everything became about MJ’s pregnancy, habits and constant fears for Peter.”

  Again, ‘everything’ would need to mean 100% of stories.

 MJ was pregnant for under 2 and a half years, not a decade.

 Not every story revolved around her fears for Peter.

 Her smoking habit lasted for less than 2 years too.

 And there was after all a period of time when Peter wasn’t even the main character of the damn series.

 And of course the notion of ‘everything’ or even ‘most things’ REVOLVING around MJ is bullshit because hate to break it to you but MJ was never the main character, Peter was.

 Everything revolved around him and since she was his wife a lot of stuff revolved around her which is called ‘Godd Wrting’.

 Notice how a shitton of screen time and subplots revolve around the wives of the main characters of drug dealer and mafia boss Walter White and Tony Soprano in the 2 most critically acclaimed TV shows of all time, Breaking Bad and the Sopranos.

  USING supporting characters and giving them screen time is IMPORTANT!

  It’s also the reason people hated Aunt May for decades until JMS started doing this in 2001! That’s near damn 40 years of Aunt May being mostly underutilized and useless to the point where people hated her and wanted her to die. THEN a lot of stories or story moments began involving or revolving around her and opinions changed.

  “The comic was quickly becoming a relationship drama, when we weren’t dealing with fake robot parents, clones, the Superhuman Registration Act or Aunt May getting shot. ”

 a)     The dumbass who wrote this referred to events across the decade following the marriage and then included 2 things AFTER that point in time

b)     This is again a lie it wasn’t a relationship drama

c)     God forbid there be relationship drama in a book that heavily involved soap opera elements and also the real life of the hero who could be you, i.e. someone who has to deal with relationship drama a lot because most people in real life do

 “Enough was enough, as the time came to re-evaluate what MJ brought to the team. ”

 A grounding for Peter. Character development for him. Strong female representation. A human hero who didn’t need to fight villains to be heroic. A realistic flawed and complex human character in a series all about that? A confidant for the main character? An exposition device?

  “The answer was that she is a party girl who worked better as an X Factor.”

  Get fucked and read some comics beyond the Silver Age hack.

MJ STOPPED being a party girl or an X-Factor in 1973!

  “The mystery created by Romita and Lee was long dead and that revealed something didn’t work. ”

 It’s so interesting this author will quote one line from ASM #259 and then totally ignore the rest of the entire issues which developed MJ into a supporting character and confidant who mirrored Peter.

 Because she just didn’t work.

  Get fucked.

  “MJ isn’t meant to be understood by Peter, she’s out of his league.”

 There is no such things as leagues. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and any two people with enough time, compassion and empathy can come to understand one another. Peter came to understand MJ via her tragic backstory which echoed his own.

  “Ultimately, what matters is that Mary Jane stays a viable character in the Spider-Man universe”

 Which she was for over 2 decades and even longer before that when she stopped being a party girl.

  “While she is a personality mis-match, she’s a life-long friend that knows a lot about the man behind the mask. ”

  How are their personalities mis-matched.

  “That kind of grounding is absent outside of a direct family tie to Peter. When MJ makes Mephisto end their marriage during “One More Day”, ”

  GET FUCKED!

  Mj doesn’t MAKE Mephisto do shit. This is yet more of the author swallowing and regurgitating Marvel’s sexist lies. Peter put MJ on the spot with an untenable position then she sweetens Mephisto’s deal. Mephisto made the offer though. MJ didn’t make anyone do shit, especially Mephisto. She just complied with his wishes.

  “she whispers something that we don’t find out until “One Moment in Time”. Unfortunately, this twist is negated by the fact that Peter forces MJ to remember their life together as it was, but the duo chooses to split and move on.”

 Fuck this article even fails to accurately represent the events of the bullshit storyt hat supports their claim.

 MJ’s whisper to Mephisto takes places before he changes time and Peter forcing MJ to remember (more like he forces her to not forget) occurres for unrelated reasons after time has been altered. The two things aren’t directly connected.

  Moreover the duo don’t CHOOSE to split, MJ leaves him.

 At least represent the bs you are defending accurately.

  “It’s a tricky setup, but it’s one that has led Spider-Man back to the promise of the early 1980s”

 It’s not tricky it’s hacky.

 It didn’t lead Spider-Man back to the promise of the 1980s because things weren’t written as well.

 Moreover the early 1980s were when O’Neil was writing Spider-Man and the series sucked shit, why would you want to go back to that?

 In fact even if it didn’t suck why would you want to go BACK to something antiquated as being 25-30 years old FFS!

  “There are multiple people in his life demanding certain things, but they all want to push him forward. Even Mary Jane has setup her own business and works as an outside factor in Peter’s life.”

All of which didn’t require ending the marriage or a deal with Satan to facilitate.

 “The book is “The Amazing Spider-Man” for reason and not “Mary Jane Knows Best” for a reason.”

 Get fucked the book was never that during the marriage either.

 “ Supporting characters work when they have a defined role for our central figure.”

You mean like a life partner, best friend, confidant and life line to normalacy.

 “After a quarter century in the main book, MJ lost that focus and the story suffered.”

 After what feels like a quarter century reading this article I feel like my brain has suffered from the lies and misinformation contained within it.

 “While we have turned back the clock on that matter, something harsh remains. Why can’t a woman be on par with Spider-Man?”

She can be but when she is sexist jackasses like this knock her down and just plain lie, misrepresent or twist things to pretend things are untenably bad when they aren’t.

 “ Much has been made out of his MC2 counterpart Spider-Girl. Sure, it’s his daughter as a legacy character keeping the identity alive, but she manages to find time for her retired father in her book. But, her book keeps getting cancelled and the readership of that title is a tenth of what Amazing Spider-Man pulls down. Point rested.”

 Point no rested.

 Spider-Girl suffered in sales because it was a female led book at a time when that wasn’t something the market was kind to. It suffered because it was a mass market book sold on the direct market. It suffered because it underined Marvel’s desired narrative and was spearheaded by a former EIC, people who traditionally generate a lot of bad blood courtesy of consequent editorial regimes who throw them to the wolves. It suffered because they wanted to promote another character with the name. It suffered because it was an out of continuity title.

 It has shit to do with anything related in this dumpster fire of an article.

  In summary:

  This article is hot trash peddling sexist propaganda in line with a false narrative Marvel wants.

 Kill it with fire.

But what can I expect from a writer who doesn’t even know Eddie Brock wasn’t a photojournalist or thinks Ned Leeds was ‘tricked’ into becoming the Hobgoblin.

[devouryouwhole-blog]

✍ cmon saltbae

(( Fanon does not equal canonFanonDoes notEqualCANONHow people cannot comprehend this either makes them a true idiot or the biggest deliberate asshole in any creative endeavor. Fans by default are going to filter, compress, and project their own desires onto characters in media in order to comprehend the character without having to think too hard. While this can sometimes make for funny jokes, this should never, EVER, ever ever ever ever ever, come to define the entirety of a portrayal or thoughts about that character because simply put it's nothing but fucking lies and half truths that should not be given serious attention and development when it's time to go to work on constructing someone. Especially to do so from another person's work. To look at something, some representation of a person, and proceed to entirely clip and strip away possible years of hard work on the original creator's part to write this person as a person and then fit them into a ooc, selfish, self gratifying and narrow view point is EXTREMELY DISRESPECTFUL. You don't care about respecting the creator's wishes (and yes there have been creator's who hear about their characters being flanderized and do get upset; the director of Girls Und Panzer being one of those people to the point that he defied that fan group's expectations for the new character and had his character be the opposite way in an actual episode so don't believe that shit of "Oh the creators won't care" they can and do, I myself would've been equally as insulted if that was my oc who I have poured four years of my life into trying to get right and I still haven't yet) That kind of mentality too, that ability to strip away and degrade, dehumanize someone and outright ignore or twist who their are and their identity into a mockery of itself that's then filled with the objectifying bastard's own sick thoughts and doesn't care for evidence to the contrary screams a lot to me about how they look at people in real life and how little they care if they do that to someone they meet who doesn't like to be put in a box and removed from their own self. It's an abusive trait, and it's something often a lot of passive aggressive people do too, I've seen it firsthand and have been victim to it when I was younger firsthand. Also I simply love cold hard factsFacts and evidence cannot be disputed, and rarely ever disproven For someone to completely ignore the facts and what's going on in front of them says they're so delusionally out of touch with reality they can't come down and reason like most people they're just forever out there and need psychological help; or that they're aware but they're doing all this nasty shit for attention and to fit in so they can get and keep followers stupider than them for cheap and shallow praise- or followers who only give them attention because they've fit into a predetermined and favorable mold instead of actually having dignity, standards, and are being themselves. Because they are spineless, useless cowards unfit to survive a day off mom's teat. Canon evidence is always there for you to reach out for at any time, especially in the age of screenshots being possible, if you can't even be fucked to get it right and study it properly then you are a fucking waste of time. You might as well not be portraying a canon character. A Kira Yoshikage who doesn't murder for example; who the fuck is that? When did that happen in DiU? I didn't see no part where Kira said he thought murder is bad bitch what. Fewer people have this 4th-5th grader skill called Reading Comprehension than you might think and it's a fucking shame and disgrace. Rp really lets me see how badly an education system has failed someone or they have failed it. ))

[peraliavia]

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Notes:

When the labour pains began, Grenouille’s mother was standing at a fish stall in the rue aux Fers, scalingWhiting that she had just gutted. The fish, ostensibly taken that very morning from the Seine, already stank so vilely that the smell masked the odour of corpses. Grenouille’s mother, however, perceived the odour neither of the fish nor the corpses, for her sense of smell had bee utterly dulled, besides which her belly hurt and the pain deadened all susceptibility to sensate impressions. She only wanted the pain to stop, she wanted to put this revolting birth behind her as quickly as possible. It was her filth. She had effected all the others here at the fish booth, and all had been stillbirths, or semi-stillbirths, for the bloody meat that emerged had not differed greatly from the fish guts that lay there already, nor had lived much longer, and by evening the whole mess had been carted off to the graveyard or down to the river. [...] Grenouille’s mother wished that it was already over. And when the final contractions began, she squatted under the table and there gave birth like she had done 4 times before, and cut the new born things umbilical cord with her gutting knife. But then, on account of the heat and the stench, whcih she did not perceive as such but only as an unbearable, numbing something - like a field of lilies or a small room filled with too many narcissi - she grew faint, toppled to one side  fell out from under the table to the street, and lay there  knife in hand    -pg 4

...he smelled it more precisely than many people could see it, for his perception was perception after the fact and thus of a higher order: an essence, a spirit of what had been, something undisturbed by the everyday accidents of the moment, like noise, glare, or the nauseating press of living human beings.          -pg 36

It was a strange perfume that Grenouille created that day. there had never before been a stranger one on earth. It did not smell like a scent, but like a human being who gives off scent. If one had smelled this perfume in a dark room, one would have thought a second person was standing there. And if a human being, who smelled like a human being, had applied it, that person would have seemed to have the smell of two people, or, worse still, to be a monstrous double creature, like some figure that you can no longer clearly pinpoint because it looks blurred and out of focus, like something at the bottom of a lake beneath the shiver of waves.   -pg 155

The blossoms were were emptied out in the workshop by the basketful into massive but lightweight and fragrant piles. Meanwhile, in a large cauldron Druot melted pork lard and beef tallow to make a creamy soup into which he pitched shovels of fresh blossoms, [...] They lay on the surface for a moment, like eyes facing instant death, and lost all colour the moment the spatula pushed them down into the warm, oily embrace. And at almost the same moment they wilted and withered, and death apparently came so rapidly upon them that they had no chouce but to exhale their last fragrant sighs into the very medium that drowned them; for - and Grenouille observed this with indescribable fascination - the more blossoms he stirred under into the cauldron, the sweeter the scent of the oil. And it was not that the dead blossoms continued to give off scent there in the oil - no the oil itself had appropriated the scent of the blossoms. Now and then the soup got too think, and they had to pour it quickly through a sieve, freeing it of macerated cadavers to make room for fresh blossoms.   -pg 180

[Cold enfleurage] The souls of these noblest of blossoms could not be simply ripped from them, they had to be methodically coaxed away, In a special impregnating room, the flowers were strewn on glass plates smeared with cool oil, or wrapped in oil-soaked clothes; there they would die slowly in their sleep. It took three or four days for them to wither and exhale their scent into the adhering oil. Then they were carefully plucked off and new blossoms spread out.  - pg 186

[thinking about using the last of his perfume] and then he saw, smelled, how his beloved scent would vanish in the air, irrevocably, for ever. It would be a long slow death, a kind of suffocation in reverse, an agonising gradual self-evaporation into the wretched world.   -pg 198

She had disappeared behind a hedge. And it took about two heartbeats longer than he expected before she emerged again- and he was frightened to death, for during those two heartbeats he thought he had lost her forever.  -pg 210

http://www.westshore.edu/personal/mwnagle/Wciv/PerfumeAnalysis.htm :

Addressing the question of literary influences, Suskind claims to be a blissfully ignorant epigone whose memory is so poor that he barely remembers what he has read, much less who wrote it, which, it seems to him, is a fortunate handicap for a creative writer since it frees him from the anxiety of influence and creates an uncomplicated relation to plagiarism, without which, he paradoxically insists, nothing original can be written.

Suskind projects his concern with personal identity and literary persona onto the themes and characters of Das Parfum. Set in eighteenth-century France, Das Parfum tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a physically and emotionally abused orphan whose supernatural sense of smell guides him in a perverse search for the lost origin of his identity. 

-deals with plagiarism and the enlightenment trope of individual autonomy-

Presumably, the implication that the writing subject of a novel like Das Parfum has been swallowed by the black hole of postmodern ecriture, only to re-emerge as an irrationally destructive and cynical parasite, is too frightening to contemplate in a culture clinging to the shreds of an uncohesive collective identity.

More than a parasitic parody that feeds on dead poets, Das Parfum can be productively interpreted as an enactment of literary anamnesia that contributes to a working through of complex psychic and social issues.

Grenouille's coldly rational plundering of the human body to create an ideal perfume is undeniably an allegory of the "murder" that instrumental reason commits on the objects of its reifying analysis 

In the wake of the Enlightenment's demand for self-legislating subjectivity, so Bloom argues, the Romantic poet could no longer unquestioningly imitate previous models to develop a literary identity. Thus Bloom casts the Romantic poet as a version of the oedipal son who contests the father's priority, not in direct conflict, but by a defensive repression of the precursor's voice. To achieve authentic identity, the artistic imagination must define itself by rejecting anterior discourse and narcissistically seeking its own voice, constituting an ego by love of its own figurations.

For the Bloomian poet the literary equivalent of this narcissistic symbiosis is an initial affiliation with a central precursor: "the strong poet's love of his poetry, as itself, must exclude the reality of all other poetry, except what cannot be excluded, the initial identification with the poetry of the precursor." Thus, "the mystery of poetic style" is reduced to the "mystery of narcissism" 

The result of this imaginative narcissism is a creative melancholia that promotes a literary amnesia.

Because originality becomes the post-Enlightenment law of creativity, Bloom argues that writers in the Romantic tradition (which he interprets broadly to include most canonical literature since the late eighteenth century) must refuse to mourn the loss of the idealized precursor by a process of self-defensive repression. "Poets," Bloom contends, "do not exist to accept griefs" (Yeats 5). Inevitably, such repression leads to an enormous diminishment of the creative ego, making Romantic poetry "the result of a more prodigious sublimation of imagination than Western poetry from Homer through Milton had to undergo" (Anxiety 125). As Freud cautioned in his essay "Trauer und Melancholie," a refusal to mourn causes a depressive melancholia, which can only be cured by a process of grieving called Trauerarbeit. What the melancholic must work through and overcome is the narcissistic fantasy of omnipotent mastery over the lost object. Absorbed into the unconscious, the unmourned object of love poisons the ego, whose reproaches against the lost object become self-reproaches and create symptoms of dejection, an inability to construct new idealizations, and above all a diminishment of self-esteem.

Undoing melancholic repression, citational play creates a discourse of mourning that undergirds and sustains both the philosophical and aesthetic practices of a postmodern culture confronted with the disintegration of Enlightenment master codes of unity and totalization.

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Indeed, one of the novel's most notable but least analyzed achievements is its expansion of the mad genius topos of Romanticism into a literary case study of the psychopathic mind. As a serial killer, Grenouille conforms to a profile established by current clinical research linking the narcissistic borderline personality with homicidal psychopaths. Citing early childhood traumas of abandonment and abuse as significant factors in criminal pathology, recent studies postulate that such traumatic events prevent the formation of stable self-structure, leading to the fusion of idealized objects with an unmodified grandiose self. In adult life the earlier developmental failure to differentiate the primitive grandiose self from idealized objects results in a repeated failure to identify with social norms, especially moral codes, which leads to antisocial acts expressing unconscious abandonment rage

E. T. A. Hoffmann's tale Das Fraulein von Scuderi -contains Cardillac who’s mother while pregnant with him desired a man only due to the beautiful gems he offered her, when she grasped them he died and her hysteria was transferred to the foetus triggering the formation of a creative imagination obsessed with fetishized works of art whose violent retrieval compensates a primal narcissistic wound. Cardillac went on to become a master jeweller who would Oedipally create beautiful jewellery/works of art precisely so that he can take them back: The crucial element in Hoffmann's portrait of the artist is a compensatory mechanism. [maybe u were on to something with pygmaliolism]

Parodying the Enlightenment conception of Bildung as a progression toward an autonomous ego, Grenouille's formative relationships promote only regressions to primitive ego states in which compensatory fantasies of infantile omnipotence replace the mature resolution of dependency issues.

The artist creates as a result of a deeply rooted need to restore structural deficits in the core self. On this point Suskind's text is unambiguous: To tame and structure his incoherent internal universe, Grenouille must assimilate an idealized feminine scent. His most urgent need is to reinscribe a feeling of symbiotic unity into his disintegrating self-structure.

In such an allegory of creativity, regression to an antecedent stage emerges as a psychopoetic metaphor consistent with the Bloomian notion of the creative genius who unconsciously reactivates a primal affiliation with a central precursor and imaginatively regresses to a state of primary narcissism. Although Bloom seems unaware of it, his idea finds support in the aesthetics of object relations theory, which shifts the conception of creativity from classical Freudian sublimation to a compensatory idealization of the self. In post-Freudian psychoanalysis it has long been the consensus that artists work to restore a lost beauty and perfection that was once their own. By inventing an idealized object onto which primitive fantasies of omnipotence are projected, artists enact a mourning of the lost omnipotence of the primitive grandiose self (Layton and Schapiro 23-36). Especially artists who exhibit an exaggerated concern with wholeness and ideal beauty are unconsciously attempting to restore the blissful perfection of archaic narcissism associated with the idealized self-object. Suskind and Hoffmann, however, who depict the psychic abnormalities that often underlie aesthetic idealism, parody the artistic fetishism of Romantic idealism. Rather than disavowing the pain of a primal wound by regressing to the imaginary perfection of primary narcissism, their fantasies recreate sites of emotional injury in search of psychic insight and reparation.

Without such pre-oedipal triangulation, the child remains suspended in a regressed state of primary narcissism. In Das Parfum the image used to convey this emotional stunting is the tick, a parasite that withdraws into itself and survives on a single drop of blood for years. Like the tick, Grenouille requires only a minimum of nutriments, especially in the psychological sense

In this metaphorical description of the regressive borderline personality the psychoanalytic significance of Grenouille's name emerges: Grenouille (French for frog) is Suskind's metaphor for the liminality and failure of identification that characterize the narcissistic condition.

Unlike Freud, whose patients suffered neurotic symptoms thought to result from unresolved oedipal guilt (like the hysterical reaction of Cardillac's mother to the intruder),contemporary psychoanalysts typically confront a depression signifying wounds to a primitive ego preceding the Oedipus. According to Kristeva, this profound sadness, the melancholia of the borderline personality, is perceived by its sufferer, as a "fundamental lack," or "congenital deficiency" 

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 As the organizing allegory of a postmodern Kunstlerroman, the metaphor of perfume is particularly well chosen, for what would be a more appropriate trope for the self-deconstructing text than a composite mixture distilled from canonical essences, a parodic blend of the tradition's master codes and most seductive stylistic voices? 

As the blatant citationality of Das Parfum shows, in postmodern kenosis the creative psyche is diminished not to clear space for a narcissistic genius who represses fetishized precursor texts but to dissolve the fantasy of omnipotence and redefine imaginative subjectivity as the fluid space of ecriture where singular authorial identity disappears and its repressed other, the citation, emerges in a hybrid intertextual construct. Tropingmultiple precursors, Suskind's pastiche foregrounds the creative process as an evacuation of literary identity and its reconstitution as a plurality of voices.

In postmodern pastiche, on the other hand, the myth of singular voice fostered by the Enlightenment ideal of individual autonomy is abandoned and the dead ancestors return in citational clusters.

In a similar fashion, the novel's concluding image of self-extinction mirrors the postmodern kenosis of subjectivity. After achieving his highest ambition of being loved unconditionally and then realizing that this love is only a manufactured illusion, Grenouille commits suicide by drenching himself with his ideal perfume and throwing himself to a crowd of riffraff, who tear him to pieces and consume his body in an act of "love." The corporeal sacrifice and redemptive reincorporation suggested by this cannibalization is amplified by a cluster of allusions including, most obviously, the Christian crucifixion, as well as the Euripidean dismemberment of Pentheus by the Dionysian maenads, the latter representing the defeat of the rational ego in both the classical text and its postmodern adaptation. Additionally, the image resonates with Kleist's Penthesilea, which also ends with the devouring of a wounded hero (Achilles) in an orally sadistic Liebestod. Reinhabiting ancient and sacred myths, these images of ingestion, communion, and redemption converge with the psychic necessity of introjective Trauerarbeit as a cure for wounded cultural identity. Grenouille's Christian name, Jean-Baptiste, further reinforces the interpretation: John the Baptist preached the gospel of redemption achieved by an identificatory communion performed in the name of the Father.

He refers to these regressive reveries as vintage wines, which he addictively imbibes to fortify himself against the painful emptiness of his depleted psyche. Sometimes these scented memories are called "books," which his servants retrieve from a "great library" implying that he, the aesthete, intoxicates himself with an excessive consumption of literary art. Ironically, despite this retreat from reality into the inner sanctum of his imagination, he is unable to defend himself against external influences, least of all from painful memories of rejection and abuse, which return in the scented memoirs he obsessively peruses. Similarly, the return of repressed Romantic and Symbolist texts is so pervasive in these chapters that many passages seem to consist of almost nothing but blatant plagiarizations (Ryan 399). Thus the aesthete's narcissistic fantasy of a self-enclosing realm is defeated by an underlying web of citations, commenting parodically on the perverse impossibility of self-origination.

Rather than repressing the ancestral voice blocking the epigone's access to some imagined Ursprache of poetic language, the postmodern imagination liberates itself from the narcissistic delusion of originality, converting creative anxiety into intertextual productivity. Thus, the postmodern writer, no longer the mythic, self-aggrandizing genius, is restored to the status of virtuoso, a term that in the premodern era signified a collector of art and highly skilled player. This is, in a productive sense, what the writing subject appears to become in the intertextual artistry that distinguishes Das Parfum as an allegory of postmodern creativity.

see: bauldilaire