#and the core themes/character traits seem to be the same so far | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

some-pers0n · 4 months

Text

So a while back I decided to run a poll on what first to give advice on. I've been meaning to do something like this for a while– I have done something like this before– and let's just see how it goes. So, sit back and just try and think for a bit, okie? Here's some of my advice on writing characters and emotions, as that seemed to be the main thing.

So, characters, ammie right? Me personally I love them. Love writing them. I find it easiest to write conversations between characters, having them bounce back and forth off each other. It's fun, simple, and I think I've developed a bit of a reputation for doing kinda well. But, how do you do it? That's what I'm here to tell ya.

To begin, know the basics of how to format dialogue. I'm sorry but you gotta know it. Comma on the inside if it's the character saying something, period instead if it's an action. You can probably just google this one. There's some quirks and tricks to it, but overall you get used to it. Gotta lay the foundation for what we're gonna talk about.

Another rather disappointing thing is that you gotta practice. You gotta write a lot. I'm sorry but there's no magic article to read where you just magically get good at writing dialogue and characters. Me? I've been writing for four years by now, and each day I feel as though I get better and better. You just gotta work on things. But how do you know what to work on? Well...lemme try to explain.

The thing with characters is that I think it's best to understand that you can't just assign random traits to them willy nilly as if to fill some quota. You're fearful that your precious lil' OC is a Mary Sue so you gotta hit them with some flaws. The issue here is that flaws develop from a character's central personality. I like to call this the "core", which I particularly like rambling about when it comes to fic writing.

The core of a character is what makes them up if you strip them all down. What are some central traits. That's another thing that you've unfortunately gotta be good at to write: literary analysis. That's right, you gotta be a good reader to be a good writer. You gotta think like a writer. You gotta wonder what is the most central aspect of a character, something that will pretty much remain the same in any iteration.

Let's take a familiar character: Moonwatcher. How would I describe Moon? Well, she's an anxious character. She's developed this anxiety because of her mind reading abilities as well as her mother's constant fear being rubbed off onto her. Even when she makes friends, she still worries. She's polite, kind, yet has a but of stubbornness to her. It's easy for her to get locked in a headspace, where she convinces herself of something because she's been festering within her own head for too long.

Now, when I'm writing a oneshot involving Moon, I have to consider some variables. I have to consider how far along Moon is in her arc. Is this Pre-MR? Post-MR? After the entire second arc? The way that Moon's character shifts is visible during those phases. I got to consider how she talks and acts. How Moon would react to Qibli giving her a compliment would be far different depending on whether it's Pre-MR or Post-Arc 2. Understanding that a character, especially a protagonist, is often times dynamic and fluid in some aspects means a lot.

However, even with all of her character work, I would still hold that central core of Moon tight. That deep-rooted anxiety and kindness. She's a sweet and gentle soul, but one that is prone to overthinking. Even when she's comfortable around her friends, she can still get caught in these spirals.

Of course, it's harder with original characters. I fully understand that. I'm simply using canon characters as my own little dolls, but I think some of it can still transfer onto OCs and such.

Tying into that character core is the main theme or "root flaw" of a character. This is typically the type of flaw that a character has at the start of a story that is then resolved either partially or entirely by the end. Something they've come to terms with and are getting better at. These flaws don't come from nowhere, no? There has to be something that creates these flaws, these core values and perception of the world.

Bringing back Moonwatcher real quick, her root flaw is her anxiety and nervousness. Her worldview was formed by her mother planting seeds of fear into her. This belief that her abilities were something to be feared and shamed. That she would be discarded or worse, harmed, if she was discovered. Like most root flaws, this is gradual and overtime, but that isn't to say that a person's worldview can't change in one event.

Over the course of the book, this belief is challenged. She is shown friendship and love. Of course, there's conflict and strife when she's found out and has her doubts, but that's just basic story formatting. Gotta have the reveal eventually and it ain't gonna be pretty. However, Moon learns by the end that, at the very least, her friends love her. She doesn't have to hide or be scared of anything when around them. She's happier all around.

"Okay, cool, you just told me how a character arc works. What about the dialogue?" Ah-ah, I'm getting there. Now, in my time I have heard some TRULY frustrating advice when it comes to dialogue. "Never have the characters say directly what they mean" gets under my nerves the most. Maybe it's the autism (which, hey, author bias always comes into play when writing) but I utterly despise the idea of having characters just. ignore when a character is asking a question.

Dialogue is...situational. Again, literary analysis. You need to really understand your character and their core. What makes them tick. Those central character traits and root flaw that follows them throughout the story. I think it's somewhat irritating to see people have these "rules" for character dialogue like "never have them say what they're feeling!" since like. okay sure maybe yeah sometimes it's quite jarring, but other times it makes sense. It depends on the character and the scenario they are in.

What best is that I like trying to give characters a specific voice. A cadence. Not usually an accent of sorts (even if in some fandoms I do like leaning into an accent), but with how they talk. It's hard to describe and, again, core character values.

Here's some dialogue I just made up. Do you recognize the characters? Slight hint, they're from the second arc of WoF :]

----

"Hey! Got your stuff." He presented the scroll in his claws, waving it around. "You owe me one with that."

"Gmph..."

"What? Didn't hear you. I think what you were trying to say was 'thank you, dear friend, for getting me my homework while I was busy dying'. It's a lot to say, I understand if your condition has progressed to the point where you can't--"

"Just give me the scrolls," he hissed sharply. He took a large inhale afterwards. "I've got a headache, and your" –he gestured vaguely in his direction– "this is not exactly helping. Can you leave me be? Let me lay here in peace?"

"Sheesh, lighten up a little! You're acting like you're dying over some lil' cold."

"I've been in bed all day."

"Mhhh true, true. Can't quite argue with that." He looked at his friend. "You are looking pretty...oh what's the word– bad."

"Ha ha..." His voice dripped with sarcasm.

----

That was a scene between Qibli and Winter. Could you guess who they were? No? Can't blame you. It's also why dialogue tags are quite handy. You don't need to use them constantly, you can just let the dialogue flow naturally and not have interruptions, but it's nice to have some clarification. I have a pea-sized brain and am very dumb so I like it when character names are there.

However, I don't know about you, but I can tell the difference between the voices, despite them both having the same pronouns. Qibli is more jokey and doesn't take whatever ailment Winter is coming down as seriously. Winter is snappy and tired, as he's been struggling with whatever cold he's got.

For OCs? Here's some things you gotta decide on: what is most important to them? There's a hundred ways to format a sentence. Whatever is most important to the character at that moment is probably what they bring up. Do they talk more formally (what are you doing?) or more casually (what'cha doing?)

It's a bit of a hard thing to grasp, and it very unfortunately is just one of those things you just get better with as time goes on. You get a feel for how they speak the more you write and the more you write about that character in particular.

For character emotions and actions it also is just one of them things you practice at. It's a stylistic thing from what I've seen. I personally like delving more into how a character reacts.

Example: Character touches a hot stove. Yeowch! I'd try and do something like this.

Sizzling pain raced through their body the second they laid a finger on the stove. Immediately, they pulled away, wincing as they instinctively flapped their hand as if to shake the burn off.

Of course the stove was hot. It's red! Red means hot. In what world would a bright, ruby red stove mean it was off? Idiot!

I briefly describe the pain, though mostly put focus onto how the character reacts. This character is self-critical, blaming themselves for their misjudgement. It tells us more about the character and how they are as opposed to whatever sensation they felt.

The same goes with violence and gore and whatnot. Whether the character is receiving or inflicting the pain, I'm gonna talk a whole lot about their emotions and how they're reacting. Again, goes back to that core character thing.

That's...all the stuff I really wanted to talk about right off the top of my head. Rapid fire stuff go NOW!

Fidgets! I like having characters have specific fidgets and such. It's just a goofy lil' character thing I enjoy doing. One character might rock on their heels while another clicks their tongue before doing an "erm actually" thing

Italics are your friend. Italics are so good and fun and can completely change the tone or delivery of a sentence

Similar with accents, I personally like writing out stutters and pauses and whatnot. I think it adds flavour and such. It's a stylistic thing though and, again, best to find out via practice

LISTEN TO HOW PEOPLE TALKKKKKK I CAN'T RECOMMEND THIS ENOUGH JUST LISTEN TO LIKE A PODCAST OR SOMETHING

Read read read read read oh my god you need to read so much you don't understand you gotta read some good books that are highly praised for their dialogue you can find them pretty easily

Likewise, shows that are praised for their dialogue as well. I've learned so much from example

Reading your dialogue (or general writing) aloud can really help you visualize and sound things out and see if it's realistic. It's magical how much you can realize just by reading your work

Maybe a bit too intense for advice, but characters are not people. If they were people, they'd have large chunks of their life that is...pretty boring. Have you heard a real person talk by the way? Imagine transcribing all that. A character is like a slightly more perfected and dramatized person, one that goes on an arc and such

Practice. I've said it before and I'll say it again, but you gotta work and put in the effort to get good

Hey pspspsps fic writers like me? You gotta read a wholeeeee lot about The Characters if you wanna write about them and write about them well. Take notes. Constantly refer back to actual dialogue they've spoken or anything to get a feel for what they're like. All that

To conclude, basically just learn the basics, over-analyze the character, try to think about their character and how they would react in a situation, and just write a lot. Yeah. Questions? Comments? Concerns?

#sp-rambles #This was originally just for the Wiki but eh here you go

7 notes · View notes

peppermintbiotics · 2 years

Text

okay, hear me out: prospera and suletta are the closest we get to akio and anthy in g-witch

g-witch steers entirely clear of the incest theme that utena has built its core messaging around, so that takes a huge chunk out of any akio/anthy counterpart we could’ve had. what is left is:

two immediate family members with one of them in a parental role (ikuhara talked about writing akio to be more of a paternal figure towards anthy) and a clear (emotional at the very least) power disparity

the younger of the pair possessing great powers that the older of the pair draws from (both anthy and suletta are explicitly called witches)

the parental figure grooming the other one for their own goals

the parental figure manipulating the other despite loving them (akio loves anthy, or at least thinks he does; he abuses her all the same. prospera seems to genuinely care about suletta but she is very much not above using her as a tool). both pairs are the only immediate family they have left in a world that has tried to harm them for being what they are

the parental figures both being skilled manipulators

there are, of course, key differences as well

ohtori is a closed-off, self-sustaining system (as long as anthy is around). the world of g-witch extends far beyond the school itself (which is also why it’s difficult to draw comparisons between utena’s major story beats and g-witch; utena’s story hinges on it being told in its own little ecosystem that the outside world can’t reach while g-witch’s story can span an entire universe)

subsequently, prospera’s power is much more real, in a sense. akio’s power draws from him being king of the teenagers as the only adult (in power). prospera, on the other hand, is surrounded by equally powerful actors and doesn’t get to rely on cheap tricks as much

anthy is much, much less naive than suletta. to me, it seems like only her role (in miorine as the bride and suletta as the witch) has really survived in the references g-witch makes to utena. there isn’t really a character who posesses her personality or character traits.

where am i going with this? i think the ending of g-witch will echo the ending of utena: suletta will come to recognize prospera as what she has become (trapped in her coffin of revenge) and with the help of miorine, aerial, and everyone she has gotten to know in asticassia, finally leave.

#mobile suit gundam: the witch from mercury #revolutionary girl utena #g-witch #rgu

80 notes · View notes

centrally-unplanned · 2 years

Text

The (After)Life of Haibane Renmei: Part 1

Haibane Renmei was my favourite anime as teen, a trait I am definitely not alone on, for how it showed up at the right time. I was young and introverted (still the latter, not the former...) but while I knew how to socialize I kindof didn’t know...why? I was late to figuring out how to care about people, and I only really started to figure that out in my teens. Haibane came along for me right at the height of that struggle, being released in 2002 and growing into prominence in the western anime fandom in 2003. I was 16 I think when I first saw it, and it was hugely inspirational for me. First anime I showed my high school girlfriend when we weren’t even dating yet, jesus she definitely liked me if she put up with that (the wisdom of hindsight); “Its…slow?” “Yeah but give it 5 more episodes, trust me”.

Why I am not alone on torturing prospective partners with Haibane comes from the way what the show hit the expectations & desires of the early 2000’s weeb space. It was a fantasy series, sure, but the most grounded fantasy series you could imagine. The stakes are entirely personal and emotional, its episodes focused on first Rakka’s, then Reki’s, internal struggle to justify living with and depending on others. The fantasy setting is built up, but only incidentally - instead it serves to isolate the characters, to render Reki & Rakka unable to connect to outsiders in a way far more powerful than the modern world can provide. Rakka’s “plot beats'' are things like burying a dead bird in the bottom of the well and listening to riddles on the Circle of Sin from monks and just thinking about them, and the climax of the series is portrayed with full magical realism, but in actually is just Reki having a panic attack in her room - throwing dramatic paint on the walls doesn’t actually change that. You get all that edgy cred - oh all the Haibane are suicide victims getting a do-over and their names & dreams are derived from their suicide method of choice? Fucking metal - but its mostly off screen, the average Haibane is living a happy life. Its all so grounded, hell even down to the color scheme; sepia-toned in an era of hyper-bright digipaint anime.

Full kino - Lo-fi edition.

Digging even deeper into the themes, I think Haibane, for western audiences, was ahead of the curve in its level of internality. Haibane is a hyper-deep dive into the question of how to relate to others, “the struggle of being known” and how wounded people build healthy relationships. The finale is just all lines like this:

Vintage depression-core I know, but it works for the show. The duo’s angst is resolved simply through coming to terms with it, not through overcoming it. Reki's fears don’t go away at the end, Rakka simply accepts them as part of Reki, which is what she needed to start accepting them herself.

There were very few western TV shows on air with this focus on interiority at the time. Shows about social relationships often premise their drama on big events and external occurrences (and are normally romances). More exciting…but less relatable. *Certainly* for the emo kids, who were burdened by existence, not specific events, in a way that never seemed solvable. And while there was maybe a few similar western media properties around, in the early 2000′s you couldn’t think of *anime* like that that western audiences were watching. The earlier eras of anime we got were heavily biased towards action shows, with a dash of comedies or romance. And for a certain kind of nerdy online type it being anime was critical, we liked anime, we liked its design sensibilities, its beauty & idealism, its easy flirtations with fantasy and the unreal. A show like say MTV’s Daria, with all its ugly cynicism, is great but it's not filling the same role. Haibane in particular was realistic enough to be a mature story, not a “friendship, yay!” tale, but still have anime’s Romantic touch. The Haibane are just us...but they have wings and a halo, ‘cause they are just a little more magical than us. Relatable and aspirational, at the same time, the magic combination that lets one sink their identity into a character on a screen. Haibane helped a class of people be seen.

All this leads to Haibane having the ultimate rep of being “not like other anime”. Trust me, you heard this alllll the tiiiime on the anime forum/blogosphere. It is so meditative! It doesn’t have any fighting! No fanservice! If you liked anime’s aesthetics, but hated a lot of the baggage that the genre came with in the form of its tropes, Haibane had you covered. It was the most unique show you could find on air that was still comprehensible, grounded the way the “mindfuck” pantheon (Eva, Lain, FLCL, etc.) could never be. It was the mature, hipster pick for those of us sneering at the shlock of Elfen Lied and co that the other half of the emo teens demo was embracing at the time.

For all of these reasons, I loved it, it was my favourite show of all time. It was a love letter to the depressed internet teens we all were, and no one else was writing with the same pen for that target audience. It was the only show in town.

Or so we thought in, ya know, 2003.

#anime essays #haibane renmei #should be 4 parts

55 notes · View notes

insomniactalks · 3 years

Note

1/3 I saw your ask about Ricky and Ej and I wanted to point out that the "pretty boy" line shows us that they aren't really that close as (from what I've noticed) most of the fandom thinks they are. People were asking how did they become so close, but if you think more about it, you'll notice that they aren't. At this point I see them as kind of friends, superficial friends. They don't seem to interact outside the rehearsals (Ej's line about the last time being in Big Red's basement)...

2/3 There is an obvious progress in their relationship, from enemies to kind of friends. Ricky's perception of Ej changes from thinking about him as a bad guy (calling him "bad news" in homecoming episode) to seeing that he isn't, but Ricky still sees him as a superficial person ("pretty boy" line). It makes sense for Ricky to think that, based on their interactions up until that moment, that were superficial. An actual friendship act is Ej checking in on Ricky during spring break…

3/3 I find it funny how he refers to himself as "someone" not to let Ricky think that he actually cares. This friendship has so much potential to be funny, and at the same time, to have a lot of depth (both of them can help each other). Since Frozen's main theme is sisterhood, I expect s3 to focus more on friendships and family relationships. My favourite episode is Thanksgiving because is the first episode when we actually see these characters actually bonding. I really hope to see more of that

Thanks for your ask, anon!😀 I do agree that Ricky and EJ are certainly not best friends from what we’ve seen so far (same goes for Gina and Nini). The core four friendships are not the closest, but they have come a long way from where they started the school year (considering EJ/Gina are no longer actively plotting against Ricky/Nini anymore LOL). 😅 I think the “pretty boy” line is exactly as you said, more of a superficial commentary on their friendship (but they are friends nonetheless!) I think part of that comment may stem from some jealousy Ricky holds against EJ because EJ “seems to always have it together” (2.10), which he admits is not the case. (Remember, EJ has a few traits that Ricky is insecure about, like being a leading-man/theater kid, being reliable, confident, etc). So to add on to what you’re saying, the “pretty boy” comment is part superficial and part jealousy/insecurity. 🤔 I agree a Ricky/EJ friendship has so much potential to be funny, esp with how close the actors are in real life. I would imagine portraying their off-screen friendship to on-screen wouldn't be too difficult (if S3 gives them the chance to actually bond🙏🏽). Both of them can help the other esp since they each possess certain qualities they may want (like Ricky wanting to feel more comfortable as a theater kid and performing on stage). I’m also hoping S3′s central storyline is the bond between the Wildcats (the sisterhood b/t Nini, Kourt, Ash, Gina and maybe a brotherhood b/t Ricky, EJ, Carlos at camp). I really want the Wildcats to embrace their found-family and maybe have a group hug/song to solidify that (bonus points if Ricky’s the one to do that so that it parallels his speech in Big Red’s basement in 1.06). I would love another game night for the Wildcats (mostly to see competitive Portwell)😅! (Please deliver S3!!! Let these kids have FUN! They deserve it.) 🥰

#hsmtmts #hsmtmts s2 #hsmtmts s3 #hsmtmts speculation #hsmtmts analysis #ej caswell #ricky bowen #nini salazar roberts #gina porter #ej x ricky #ricky x ej #caswen #gini #gina x nini #nini x gina #portwell #gina x ej #ej x gina #thanks anon!

57 notes · View notes

aestherians · 3 years

Text

Choice or Chance?: Exploring voluntarity and categorization in the otherkin and therian communities

Under the cut is the full script for my Othercon 2021 lecture, in which I examine the way we categorize nonhumans based on the perceived amount of choice they had in their identity and how this practice is detrimental to both questioning people and our community as a whole. At the end, I propose a new way to define otherkind and otherlinkers to hopefully move our community forward.

Reading time: 30-40 minutes.

The focus of this lecture has changed a bit since I started working on it. My earliest idea was to discuss the grey area between otherlinks and kintypes - in fact one of my working titles was Grey Zones and Silver Linings. And I still plan on talking about this, though not in the way you might expect. I originally wanted to argue that those who found themselves in this grey area should be able to choose how they wanted to refer to their identity, but the more research and thinking I did, the more I realized that this would still leave a bunch of people torn and confused and wouldn’t solve any of the greater problems in our community. It also seems like such a water-is-wet statement with how the conversation has developed… and you know me, I’m only happy when I’m starting controversies.

So I went looking for the root of this whole categorization debacle.

The nonhuman community, as we know it, didn’t always exist, and though we often say it has roots in elven communities from the ‘70s, that’s only half the truth. While the Elf Queen’s Daughters and related successors such as the Silver Elves are the earliest known organized nonhuman communities, they’re by far not the only pioneers.

Because nonhuman identifying people have always existed, and our numbers have always been relatively small, some of us ended up grouping together without even being aware of the other groups that existed. And of course, all these independently formed groups ended up with their own cultures and traditions and philosophies.

Mailing lists, like the Elfinkind Digest, were generally open for anyone to join and read. But they also weren’t widely known or easy to stumble upon for folks who didn’t already have an interest in these kinds of spirituality and identification. This resulted in a culture where people’s self-identification was generally respected, and they would only be questioned if they made extraordinary claims.

Compare this with the newsgroup Alt.Horror.Werewolves, which was open for anyone to access on Usenet, and which was originally created as just a place to discuss werewolf media. On AHWw, the therians (or ‘weres’ as it was back then) would frequently have to defend their existence against strangers who just found them by coincidence. This would lead to a culture more focused on appearing respectable, which in turn would lead to grilling of new members and shut-downs of “fluffy” topics.

Other independent groups, such as Alt.Fan.Dragons, which was centered around dragons, or Always Believe, which was centered around unicorns, had their own cultures as well. For example, AFD generally accepted dragons from modern fiction, which would not have been tolerated on AHWw.

The Silver Elves is another semi-independently evolved group of elves, fae and similar beings that still exists to this day. They only represent a fraction of our community, but for today’s discussions I find their writings very illustrative. They’ve written about choice of identity on multiple levels. For starters, they believe a lot of elven spirits have actively chosen to incarnate into human bodies. More provocatively, and more interesting to me, they’ve stated multiple times that simply wanting to be an elf means you are an elf.

This is in contrast to the therian community on AHWw, where there was a big focus on involuntary shifts and theorizing on why some people were born with and animal side. I think it’s reasonable to assume this focus on involuntary experiences is due to the werewolf narrative that the community stemmed from. In werewolf media, a person’s wolfish side is rarely, if ever, a choice, while in new age and spiritual communities, like that of the Silver Elves, there’s a greater emphasis on choice of spirituality and subsequently on choice of identity.

It wouldn’t be right to say that every therian back then shared the same idea; however, the idea that involuntary shifts are a core trait of therianthropy does seem to persist in the AHWw’s userbase. Nearly all introduction posts include a line about involuntary shifts. Another idea that repeats itself is that the therian either had a “sudden awakening” or “just always knew” they were animalistic; contrasted with the Silver Elves’ idea that simply wanting to be an elf is enough for you to be one.

There are two main ideas about origins that seem to persist in all of this: That one is either born nonhuman or becomes nonhuman. Both are equally true. The ‘born-this-way’-narrative is quite a bit more common than the ‘becoming’-narrative, though that’s not to say that the idea of becoming nonhuman is rare, or even all that controversial in most communities - with a few caveats, that is.

The idea that one can become nonhuman tends to rest on the idea that what we become is outside our control. On the more metaphysical side of things there are stories of people being spiritually transformed into an animal after encounters with an animal spirit, or of having a shard of a god put into them. And on the more mundane side, there are stories of imprinting on a species during early development, or of taking on the experiences of a character after being engrossed in a piece of media. Most people I’ve talked to don’t have a problem with these ideas of ‘becoming’ as something outside your control.

What really gets people’s goat is when someone describes specific choices they’ve made on their journey, which ultimately led to their nonhuman identity.

This finally leads to the theme of this lecture: The topic of choice itself and how we categorize others based on the perceived amount of choice or chance there’s been in the development of their identity.

Questions I’ll discuss include: What kind of choices do we have regarding our identities? What the heck does ‘choice’ even mean in this context? And how does the idea of choice (or lack of choice) affect the way our community functions?

There are many kinds of choices that we inarguably do make on our journey of self-discovery. Probably the first universal choice is to undertake the journey and to seek out a nonhuman community. Choices that naturally follow include choice of labeling - whether we want to call ourselves otherkin, therian, fictionkin, nonhuman, and so on - and the choice to accept or reject whatever feelings caused us to seek out a nonhuman community in the first place. In this line of thinking, being otherkin is a choice - you choose to label yourself as otherkin. However, the feelings, on which you base your decision to label yourself, are not a choice. The feelings that pushed you towards the community were already there.

Another choice that follows pretty naturally in this line of thinking is the choice to strengthen whatever connections you already have. This is something I’m intimately familiar with, as I’ve been doing it since I awakened as a bison. Before I even became aware of my species identity, I knew I was nonhuman. I’d been having simultaneous bison and gnoll feelings for a few years, but couldn’t separate them, and had, without much introspection, decided that I must be some weird kind of wolf. I think a lot of us with uncommon theriotypes have gone through a phase like that.

However, one day I experienced a very strong flashing image - basically a flashback - of being physically a bison. The vision was so vivid and tactile, I immediately knew what it meant, and for the next few weeks I ignored every experience that wasn’t quite bison in nature, and just examined the recognizably bovine feelings. This helped strengthen my bison identity, and in total my questioning process only took around 2 months.

Though I’ve settled in my identity as a bison, and I’m comfortable referring to myself as a bison, I never quit reinforcing it. While I didn’t create the original bison-like feelings, I’m very conscious of the fact that I do choose to connect every trait to my bisonhood that I can. Whether I see the traits as a cause of my current bisonhood, or a result of it, things like being stubborn, preferring physical fights over verbal ones, and even liking the taste of those Beanboozled jellybeans that are supposed to taste like grass… all these traits, that any human could have, are things I connect to my identity as a bison.

I’ve experienced some pushback towards this idea from a few therian communities. A very common rebuttal I’ve run into in introduction threads and grilling threads (which, introduction threads should never be grilling threads in my opinion, but that’s another story)… a very common rebuttal to considering these kinds of traits part of your nonhuman identity is: “Isn’t that just a regular human thing?”

I have so many problems with that question, I’m honestly not sure where to even begin. Yes, those traits are experienced by humans all the time. I think some of the only experiences in the community that regular humans don’t experience are, perhaps, species dysphoria and shifting. But if your identity began and ended with having dysphoria and experiencing shifts, it would hardly qualify as an identity. Treating an identity like just the sum of its parts, rather than a whole and complicated construct, is reductive and it doesn’t just hinder discussion, it stifles discussions.

I don’t know, maybe I’m the odd one here, but my whole nonhuman identity can not be encompassed by my horn dysphoria or the fact that I sometimes feel more like a prey animal than an apex predator. My identity is so much more than that. It’s how I view the world and how I view myself in relation to the world. It’s how I react to things, what I like and dislike, and what I want out of my life. When you envision an identity in this way, as a way to describe who you are, rather than a summary of every individual thing you experience, you absolutely will see some overlap with humans, like it or not.

Another reason I dislike the question “Aren’t those just human traits?” is that it’s often asked in communities where the consensus is that you were born nonhuman, and that your identity is somehow more real or ‘valid’ if it can be corroborated by childhood memories.

While looking back at your childhood and seeing how your current identity might have formed or changed throughout the years can help paint a picture of the identity as a whole, that kind of reminiscence should always be secondary to what you are currently experiencing. Your identity is not based on the fact that you played dog when you were a toddler. Pretty much every human child has played dog or been obsessed with cats or wished they were a dragon. It might be related to your current identity, but if those were your primary nonhuman experiences you would hardly consider yourself nonhuman, nor would you find a home in the community.

No, your identity is based on who and what you are right now, and what you’re experiencing this moment. The validity of your identity should not be judged based on the number of times you pretended to be that creature in kindergarten. Your kintype should be determined based on your current experiences. And if your current experiences include things that humans can also go through, that should have no impact on the validity of your identity.

Alright, back on topic: Hopefully, we can agree that there’s no shame in strengthening your connections, reinforcing what traits you already have, and in drawing connections between a nonhuman identity and seemingly human traits. Which is a nice segue into a statement that might ruffle a few feathers:

Linktypes are typically based on preexisting traits that are reinforced to fit a certain narrative or ideal. A copinglink or an otherlink is rarely if ever pulled out of thin air. You just can’t craft an identity from nothing. Yeah, crazy, I know?

This parallels otherkin identities, which, as I mentioned earlier, are based on preexisting experiences and connections that one chooses to give a name and to strengthen.

The process of becoming a linker usually starts with recognizing certain traits that one either wants, or already has but wants to reinforce, by focusing them through a linktype. For example, wanting to become better at handling stress can be difficult to accomplish on its own, but is made easier by thinking about what a specific character or animal would do in a stressful situation.

But you can’t just establish a connection to any given character. There needs to be a resonance between you and the linktype, and if you don’t already have that resonance with the character, it’s impossible for you to craft an identity around them. And in that sense you could easily argue that there is an involuntary aspect to linktypes.

Once the prospective linker has recognized a connection with a character, they will begin the process of reinforcing the identity, which can include anything from writing fanfics in 1st person to wearing clothes reminiscent of the character to asking people to treat you like the character. All things that an otherkin or fictionkind might do when first establishing their identity.

A key trait of linking is that a linktype should fade away once you stop reinforcing it… Linktypes are supposed to go away if you just ignore them and push them away long enough. They’re built to be temporary.

However, a significant number of linkers or former linkers have talked about their linktype becoming an inseparable part of how they view themselves - even the ones who might be able to force their linktype away would at this point become completely different people if they did so.

In other words, their linktype has become an inherent part of who they are as a person. This integrality can appear regardless of how much effort they put into creating the linktype in the first place, and regardless of how nonexistent the linktype was before they created it… What I’m getting at is that some people describe creating an identity from scratch by their own choice, which later becomes an irreversibly ingrained part of them. It’s an experience completely contrary to the idea that we are born nonhuman. I’ll refer to these people as ‘linkers-turned-kin’.

There are a few regular rebuttals I’ve seen to this idea: That linkers-turned-kin just had a late awakening. Or that, perhaps, they felt compelled by their inner true species to seek out the identity. Or even that they were actually born nonhuman, but just didn’t realize until later.

All these rebuttals are disrespectful of the linker-turned-kin’s experiences and intelligence. I won’t even try to hide it: They make me angry. The rebuttals ride on the idea that the born-this-way idea of nonhuman identities is a fact rather than a common belief. I know that for a lot of people the born-this-way narrative rings true. I see you and I am not trying to invalidate your beliefs. Instead, I want you to acknowledge that others may not have the same belief as you. For several people in our community otherkinity is an identity that develops in response to certain traits they have - for some, those traits are inherent, something they’re born with. For others they’re traits that developed later in life, or that were worked towards. And I want to argue that, for some, these traits were expressly chosen.

The reason these arguments against linker-turned-kin make me so angry, aside from the fact that they’re built on the idea that linkers-turned-kin don’t understand their own experiences, and the assumption that your idea of how nonhuman identities work trumps someone’s lived experience… Another reason the arguments make me so angry is that they prescribe more importance to the why than the how of our identity. When you define otherkin by the way our identity formed, you’re basically saying that the cause of otherkinity is more important than the experience of otherkinity.

We can’t talk about this without also exploring the community’s animosity towards psychological beliefs.

Through my years in the community, I feel like I’ve had to handhold some folks through the concept of religious tolerance. I remember a little over 4 years ago someone on tumblr asked me my opinion on fictionkind - it would be another 2 years before I had my own awakening, so my response was basically that I was fine with fictionkind, though I didn’t understand their experiences and the only way it could fit into my own worldview was as a psychological phenomenon. Even after my awakening, the latter still holds true. My fictionkinity is primarily psychological. But yeah, somehow my statement that I didn’t believe fictionkinity was caused by past lives got twisted into me saying that fictionkind were all just roleplayers.

Rereading the whole debacle that ensued, this twisting of my words had little to nothing to do with my own personal beliefs - it instead exposed a widespread antipathy towards psychological otherkin. When I have talked about my current experiences as a gnoll, my shifts and my flashbacks and my hiraeth, people generally accept it without a second thought. But when I mention that I believe it’s caused by various psychological phenomena, I have on multiple occasions been told that it must not be a real identity. Some people have even treated my parallel life as just an elaborate fantasy, rather than something that’s completely real to me. I have, word for word, been told that there’s no way I could identify as a nonhuman, or be another species than a human, without believing I have a nonhuman soul. A direct quote: “To say “I am fae” when [you] don’t believe in fae is illogical.”

What I take from these kinds of responses is that a subset of people within our community take it for granted that whatever beliefs someone has about the origin of their identity are objectively true, rather than understanding that our beliefs about our origins are just that: Beliefs. Whatever conclusion we’ve reached based on our experiences, reincarnation or imprinting or something else entirely, and no matter how much we believe in it, it will always be a belief and never a fact. I’m fully convinced that my bison identity is caused by a past life, and that my gnoll and Ben 10 identities are caused by various psychological phenomena. But if that doesn’t fit into someone else’s worldview, they have all the right in the world to explain it away however they want. I have friends who believe my bison identity must be caused by something psychological, and I have friends who believe my gnoll identity must be caused by something spiritual. That is their prerogative.

It doesn’t matter how people make sense of my nonhumanity, as long as they’re respectful towards my own experiences with my identity and don’t try to impose their beliefs on me. If you have to quietly believe that someone really has a faerie soul in order to accept that they’re really a fae, so be it. As long as you don’t try to deny the reality of their current identity. As long as you don’t try to claim that they aren’t really nonhuman, just because they have the quote-unquote “wrong” beliefs about their origin.

There is another, more recent and more prominent, example of the animosity towards psychological otherkin that comes to mind. I will not mention the term itself for fear of people harassing its creator. For the purpose of this lecture, I’ll refer to the concept as “nonhuman by birth”, which is essentially its meaning. If you know which word I’m talking about, I ask that you please don’t mention it in the chat. If you need to know, you can DM me. Also, don’t misunderstand this as me hating on people with past life or soul beliefs. Remember, my own bison identity is based on a soul from a past life.

So, last year a rather old community member on tumblr coined a term, separate from ‘otherkin’, to refer specifically to those who believe they have a nonhuman soul. Which wouldn’t be a problem in and of itself. After all, terms like animafidem and cerebrumalius have been around for half a decade with no issues. However, “nonhuman by birth” is specifically described in its coining post as a “less bastardized” alternative to the word ‘otherkin’. What this post describes as “less bastardized” is spiritual experiences, and specifically those spiritual experiences that are based on soul transfers and reincarnation. Essentially “nonhuman by birth” defines all other beliefs as bastardizations of what otherkinity is supposed to be. All beliefs, including spiritual beliefs that aren’t based on souls or past lives, psychological beliefs, beliefs of becoming nonhuman, beliefs based on magic, neurological beliefs, and archetypal beliefs… None of these are quote-unquote “true otherkin” according to the “nonhuman by birth” concept.

The word thankfully never gained much traction off tumblr, but I have seen individuals use it, and it always, without fail, makes me feel unwelcome, and unwanted. Not because there’s anything wrong with a strong belief in past lives or souls, but because those who choose to use that label specifically believe themselves to be the only true nonhumans. Because the term itself is not based on a respectful, individual belief, but on what its coiner believes to be an objective fact. Because this subset of our community has an almost-evangelical conviction that all nonhumans have nonhuman souls, and those who don’t have nonhuman souls are not nonhuman.

And like I mentioned earlier: The cause of otherkinity can affect the experience a lot. That’s why we have these discussions in the first place - we come together due to our similarities, and we try to understand each other and ourselves by discussing our differences. And this is exactly why proclaiming any version of nonhumanity as the One True Kind of Nonhumanity is so damaging. It completely stifles any exchange of ideas. It makes it impossible for us to understand our differences, and it leads to more and more narrowly defined subcommunities that all believe themselves to be more real than the others.

To define is to limit. We need some limitations, otherwise a dog is a cat and no words have meaning. But we need to be extremely careful where we want those limits to be, otherwise we end up with a community where psychological otherkin are bastards, and only those who are born with nonhuman souls are really nonhuman.

The next thing I want to discuss is subjective truth… Subjective truth is one of the most important concepts to understand and really internalize if we wanna have fruitful discussions and respectful experience sharing. In short, a subjective truth is something that is not real because it can be proven to exist through scientific measurements but is instead real because a person experiences it as real. If I make the claim that tea tastes better than coffee, for example, you cannot refute that simply because you think coffee tastes better. We have to understand each other’s experiences and accept that we experience the world in different ways. It’s equally true to say that coffee is better than tea and that tea is better than coffee. This is what I was talking about when I said that the “born-this-way”-narrative and the becoming-narrative are equally true.

So, how does subjective truth apply to this discussion?

A phenomenon in the community I’m sure we’re all aware of is kin memories. If you’re somehow not aware of them, in short they are images, episodes, sensory information, and similar experiences that are thought to stem from another life, usually a past life. They have all the qualia of a memory, except they didn’t happen to the body currently recalling them. These experiences, though, are not restricted to those who believe their nonhumanity stems from a past life. They aren’t even restricted to spiritual otherkin. Plenty of folks with psychological beliefs, mixed beliefs, and other beliefs report the exact same experience: Images, episodes, and sensory information that does not originate from this world or from this current life.

For decades there’s been a lexical gap in the community to describe these memories that aren’t memories. Which is where I can’t avoid tooting my own horn a bit. I have an extremely rich and detailed parallel life as a gnoll, from which I can quote-unquote “recall” events, people, traditions, names, and so much more. It’s all integral to my nonhuman identity.

However, because I believe it all stems from some deep unconscious part of my brain, and because it feels like a parallel life, not a past life, I never felt right calling these things memories. So almost two years ago at this point, I undertook the quest to fill that lexical gap. And after looking through dozens of obscure web pages and dictionaries and articles, I found something useful: The word ‘noema’. Noema is a rarely used Greek word that translates to concept, idea, perception, or thought. And I’ve been very happy to see the term catching on in my corner of the community, where it’s often used as a broader alternative to ‘memory’.

In philosophy, a noema is defined as “the perceived as it is perceived.” At first this might sound a bit vague or esoteric, but when looked at through the lens of subjective truth it suddenly starts to make sense. A subjective truth is something that’s real just because a person experiences it as real. A noema is the perceived as it is perceived. So when we’re using noema as a substitute for memory… when we’re discussing memory-like experiences in the community and we explicitly refer to them as noemata, instead of referring to them as memories, the actual cause of the noema is then irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that it’s in one way or another perceived as a memory. When talking about noemata, it’s completely and utterly irrelevant if they’re real in any objective way - the only thing that matters is that the individual experiences the noema as real. Essentially the word ‘noema’ makes the cause irrelevant, so we can instead focus on the experience alone.

And I think the fact that this word has caught on (at least on tumblr) hints that our community might be moving in a positive direction. I at least dream of a community where we care a lot less about our origins, and a lot more about our actual presence in the world.

I had a conversation with a friend a few months ago, about this community-wide worry about the origins of our identity. And just to reiterate, I’m not saying your spiritual beliefs are irrelevant, because they can be really important when forming a whole picture of your identity. I’m more so saying they can be a bit of a distraction. In my opinion, the whole discussion about spirituality vs psychology is a red herring. Most of us didn’t seek out the community because we had certain spiritual beliefs. We sought it out because we felt not-quite-human, and it was only later that we reached any conclusions about why we feel nonhuman.

So, my friend and I talked about the role this discussion of origins plays in our community, and we reached a few interesting conclusions. For starters, it’s really upsetting to some folks to have to earnestly consider the idea that reincarnated souls are no more real or ‘valid’ than psychological imprinting, or any other non-spiritual beliefs for that matter. That’s part of what started the whole ‘nonhuman by birth’ idea I mentioned earlier. And it seems this uncomfortableness stems from a place of insecurity.

At the risk of offending some folks, I’m gonna draw a parallel to the trans community. In the trans community there’s a discussion of origins that parallels the one in the kin community and is likewise an attempt to draw lines between the quote-unquote ‘real’ trans people and the so-called transtrenders - which are supposedly people who pretend to be trans for clout. Those who attempt to draw these lines proclaim that being trans is a medical condition that they wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy, and one that’s marked by intense dysphoria and stress. They’ll also regularly state that being trans is only real or ‘valid’ because it has been proven through MRI brain scans that some female-assigned people have supposedly male brains, and vice versa.

(And just to make things clear, those brain scans are not real. It’s malicious pseudoscience spread by people who want to ‘cure’ transness by preventing trans kids from being born.)

But I think this attempt at validating your identity - in this case with science - stems from a dislike of one’s own traits, or more likely from the outside world’s dislike of those traits. When certain trans people try to prove themselves more valid than others in the eyes of the public, it’s not because they just hate those they deem ‘not trans enough’ - it’s because they’re afraid of being rejected by the rest of the world. These people are basically saying: “I didn’t choose to be trans. This is how I was born, so you have to accept it because it’s unchangeable.” It’s a cry for acceptance in an unaccepting world. And all this is not to say that some trans people aren’t born trans; I really think most trans people have a narrative like that. I’m more so trying to get across that, someone else’s narrative of choice should have no impact on your narrative of involuntarity. Both are real ways to experience being trans. And in many ways, having a narrative of choosing to be trans is necessary for the community, because it closes the doors for eugenicists who would try to eliminate quote-unquote “the trans gene”.

Viewing transness as a purely medical phenomenon where you need to meet certain requirements to get a trans diagnosis is a really reductive way to look at identity. Like I mentioned earlier: An identity is not just the sum of its parts, and it cannot be summarized by being forced to feel dysphoria. The fact of the matter is that we don’t know trans people are real because we have brain imaging technology, or even because certain people meet the medical criteria for having gender dysphoria. We know trans people are real because there are real people who identify as trans. We should be able to trust that people are trans when they tell us they are. And I think we need to look at nonhuman identities the same way.

Before I move on to the conclusion, I want to explain why this topic has become so important to me. A couple of months ago, after a good year or two of introspection, I realized I had created a hearttype. Not a kintype, but nonetheless an equally integral part of how I view myself and engage with the world. And changing something so fundamental about myself sent my thoughts racing.

When I was a kid I picked up a fear of spiders. It wasn’t bad enough to give me panic attacks, but it was bad enough that I couldn’t pick up a spider and carry it outside, even though I could do so with other bugs. I was around 10 years old when I decided that this was dumb, and I wanted to change it. So as a tween I quickly started on my own exposure therapy, looking at photos of spiders, reading about them, photographing them in nature, and after several years it had gotten to the point where I barely had a reaction to seeing them. But as I continued on, getting used to the idea of holding them and touching them, something changed in me.

Where I had previously felt fear, I started to feel admiration and love and a sense of familiarity. I wanted to surround myself with these animals, I wanted to work with them, and I started spending a not-insignificant amount of money on terrariums. And now, after more than a decade of rewriting my own thoughts and changing a mild fear into a love so deep it affects my sense of identity itself, I feel confident saying I created a hearttype. It was not an easy process. Like I said, it took more than a decade. Changing your entire mindset like that can’t be done with just a snap of your fingers. But evidently, some people are able to do it.

Though I have to add that, even here, it’s very easy to argue that there was some level of involuntarity. I already had an emotional response to spiders when I was scared of them. I don’t think I could form this kind of relationship with something I’m completely indifferent to, like, I dunno, a Toyota or a Marvel character. You can’t really form a relationship from nothing. And I appreciate this argument, because it really highlights just how confusing the entire concept of choice is, and how it doesn’t make sense to define ourselves by our lack of choice, when we can’t even define what counts as a choice.

But yeah, realizing that I created a hearttype, an identity that at the time was considered involuntary… realizing that I didn’t just play a part in creating this identity, but that I did create it, period. It sent my mind spinning, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what else might be possible. If I could create such love in myself, could I also do the opposite and tear down my own hearttype and recreate the phobia? Not something I want to test. But I think I could. And which other identities could be created like this?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the creation process has no impact on the nature of the identity itself, and I ended up posting a really controversial thing on tumblr. In hindsight I understand why some people got so pissed off about it, but I still stand by those thoughts. I’ll read it to you in full: “Theoretically I probably could force myself to not be otherkin. But it would take a decade or more, the way my hearttype creation did, and it would require constant work throughout those years. However, I see no way I wouldbenefit from that work, the way I did when I unintentionally created a hearttype in the process of getting rid of a phobia. It would just rid me of a part of myself that’s intrinsic to how I recognize myself. That’s not something I in any way want - and because I don’t want it, and because the choice would have to happen continuously on a timescale I can barely comprehend, I couldn’t make that choice in practicality.”

A very long and very complicated discussion came out of this post that I’d need a whole separate lecture to recap. But a few important ideas were developed, which I need to mention here. For starters, when discussing shadowwork and the Jungian archetypes, Jasper accidentally coined the term ego alteration. Through that discussion we ended up defining ego alteration as the process by which you proactively alter your conscious mind, your self-perception, and your thought-patterns. It’s not something to be taken lightly, as you’ll essentially be changing your sense of self by it. And it’s also not something everyone has the ability, desire, or drive to do. To integrate something into your sense of self, or to remove something that’s currently a part of your sense of self is serious business, and, like my hearttype creation, is something that should be thought about on a decades long timescale. I don’t have time to get in-depth about it here, but to consciously change your identity and your sense of self is definitely possible for some folks, and it’s nice to have a name for the concept.

Something else that came of that discussion is my own thoughts about how we define otherkin. The most common definition I’ve seen is “to identify, wholly or partially, as something nonhuman on a nonphysical level, by no choice of your own.” … I suggest we drop the last bit.

Okay, it’s a bit more complicated than just deleting a few words. In order to drop the “by no choice of your own” bit, without losing the meaning of otherkinity completely, and letting kin for fun take over, we’d need to rethink that entire definition.

Instead of defining otherkin by the amount of choice we had in the formation of our identity, I suggest we define otherkin by how integral our identities are to us. It was briefly mentioned on in one of the other panels (though I forget which one), but a pretty big source of conflict is that kin for fun just don’t understand the gravity of otherkin identities. If we define otherkinity as something that’s inseparable from who we are as individuals, it would not only make it clear to kin for fun that this is, well, not for fun. It would also get around the problem of people who worry that their identities might be invalid because they’ve made certain choices.

Your otherkinity is inherent, and by that I mean you would be a fundamentally different person if not for your kintype. At its most basic level, your kintype is what you recognize yourself to be. It’s the kind you belong to, rather than, or in tandem with, belonging to humankind. You kintype is an intrinsic part of you, and even if you could get rid of it, it would fundamentally change who you are is a person. If you chose not to be otherkin, you would also choose not to be you. In that sense, I suppose otherkinity is involuntary, in that you yourself can’t choose not to be otherkin, because as soon as you make that choice, you aren’t you. Though you could also argue that it is a choice because you wake up every day and choose to be you. And thus, the topic of choice leaves us running around in circles like it always has.

Being otherkin… being otherkind has never been about being forced to feel species dysphoria. It’s about being of another kind. It’s about knowing and recognizing humankind, and accepting that, in one way or another, that does not describe us.

And all this is not to say that copinglinking shouldn’t be a concept, but we need to rethink that as well. From the very few copinglink writings that exist, one topic I’ve seen several times is the idea of copinglinks becoming inseparable from you. This is not the point of links, and those who do go through a change like that find themselves more at home in the kin community than the link community. I don’t want to impose myself on linkers, but if we want these two words to make sense and have a use, we need to redefine both. I suggest defining copinglinks and otherlinks by their lack of integrality or by their ability to be dropped when necessary.

The line that has been drawn between otherkin and copinglinkers doesn’t help anyone as it is. There are far too many nonhumans who straddle the line, who feel torn between either community, or who only call themselves linkers because they feel pressured to do so. There are far too many nonhumans who don’t feel like they have a community they can call home.

So, I’m gonna propose a new and much more inclusive definition: To be otherkin is to identify as something nonhuman on an inherent or integral level. There you go, clean and simple. No more caveats or nested sentences.

#otherkin #otherkind #fictionkin #fictionkind #alterhuman #othercon #i don't think this is gonna show in the tags so reblogs are very appreciated

174 notes · View notes

papers4me · 2 years

Note

What are you thoughts of Ogata's last chapter & death... Do you think it is an example of bad writing... seems that's what most fans think...

Hi anon! I loved Ogata's last chapter! there are things I didn't like in the last few chapters ( Tsukushima & Ushiyama), but Ogata's the winner when it comes to awesome character-writing!

What I like most abt Ogata is that his writing & characterization is so consistent since the beginning!! If you search Golden Kamuy tag in my tumblr, you'll find my writings/thoughts abt Ogata way before this last chapter comes & you'll see that what Ogata dealt with this chapter was in plain sight all along! I'm so happy that I read him correctly!!! Noda can deliver unexpected turns but so far it has been consistent with his character's core issues & character traits. Really nothing abt Ogata was surprising to me, except how well it was presented.

Ogata is not a hero nor a vicious villain, he is simply the same as all GK characters, a person in a journey to deal with his own issues. GK isn't abt gold hunt, nor forward political Ainu/Japan issues. It's a story abt characters embarking on self-focused journeys where they are the focus of their own mini tale. All of them, including the convicts at the beginning. Nikaiado was the focus on his own story, Nihei & others too. No one is 100% manipulated, powerless or a victim.

Each of the characters at least once in their journey had a choice to either let go, better themselves, rise above their own sins, repent, reflect, make a U-turn, or choose a happier path. ALL OF THEM. That's why GK is one of the best stories, cuz we watch 5678656 characters deal with things differently & either win or lose. Ogata is one of these characters & he went thro the same themes.

-The theme of " you can choose your path" regardless of your tragic surroundings:

Ogata is one of the most tragic characters. born to a mentally sick mother ( or perhaps she was healthy all a long, but developed toxic attachment issues to her partner) & a selfish, self-serving & conceited father. While he might have been loved when he was born, he found no love as he grew past his toddler years. An absent minded mother & an physically absent father. Extreme emotional neglect can cause serious issues in children. What Ogata went thro is sad & tragic. In his young mind, he believed that if he killed his mom, his dad would come rushing to her funeral, hence proving that love did exist in his family. But none of that happened. Children are capable of harmful thoughts & actions due to trauma & lack of proper mental judgement due to their age. Picture this: a child forming the thought & action of killing his mom with poison!! only to not achieve anything except more loss. He then sets to see this father, & further hurt him by killing the innocent brother, only to gain nothing as inn his last moments, the father still refuses Ogata as a son & shows no remorse & no love. Tragic background, but it was riddled with choices. In every step of the way. Ogata could have chosen to not pursue the father, he could choose to not kill Yuusaku, He could've also chosen to find another path to heal. There were redemption stops in his journey that he chose not to take in, Why? Cuz Ogata has decided that he is a victim!!! He decided that he is NOT loved by anybody. that he MUST prove to dead father who abandoned him that he was worthy of love, nurture & respect all along~~ If he could become the leader of the 7th division, he could prove that! to whom? a dead man. Tragic life can force a certain path on us, but inflecting harm on others is a choice we make in moments of weakness & darkness. There was happiness in Ogata's path. A brother who actively & genuinely sought his love & companionship, but Ogata was blind to that, cuz he has judged himself to be a victim on a journey to prove others wrong, a ben broken twisted man that can prove everybody is similar to him. Tragic story, bit uh! so well- written! ( also many characters share this theme but I'll only focus on Ogata now)

-The theme of " guilt & the human compassion":

Since Ogata has decided that he is a broken, bent, twisted victim, he refused to engage in guilt. He loved his mother & sought desperately to gain her love but fail. Killing her wasnt easy choice. While he didnt cry, he convinced himself that it was her fault for being pathetic or that he is simply twisted. He joined the army, where logically if you kill the enemy, you are a hero! it is expected of you & you are encouraged to do it. Further proving that all humans are twisted & bent. He met Usami, a guy with the most healthy & loving family in GK who saw no guilt in killing innocent child & thrived in war. Further proving to Ogata that he is the norm. Tsurumi a leader who celebrated death & rejoiced in battlefields, His fater sacrificed an entire division to win one battle for his own glory & honour, all the broken men in war, solidified this thought. Then he met Yuusaku, a guy who found no joy in war & who is desperately trying to cheat his way in an official manner into not killing anyone of his enemies by being a flag bearer. He doesn't even carry a sword. A guy who refuses to kill unarmed army prisoners. A guy who told him, "it isnt normal not not feel guit" Suddenly Ogata's entire identity is put into questioning & his perspective of life is shaken, but still Ogata chose to find validation from Usami that they are right, he chose to imitate Tsurumi's twisted mindset. Killing Yuusaku meant that Ogata has a tool to torture his father & also silence the voice of compassion.

GK is not a story abt superstitions, wandering spirits nor fantasy. It's based on reality. Yuusakue's ghost is not real & is only a fragment of Ogata's tired, sad consciousness. Ogata is a normal human being. He can feel guilt like all of us. But chose to silence e this feeling & chose to continue to believe that he is twisted & bent. Thast's why the ending is perfect. Ogata died knowing that he is normal, loved but chose wrong.

-The theme "letting go of the Past":

So many GK characters are chained to their past, Trurumi, Ogata, Sugimoto, Tsukushima & many more. Most of them refuse to let go, others cant find the proper copying mechanism to deal with their past sins & mistakes, Some accept that their present life is punishment if such sins & chose to remain still, Some want to punish the words as well for all the pain of the past. Most see no future. No... All of them see NO future. That's why, those who'll be able to let go of the nostalgic happy past & accept the sins of the recent past, will SEE a future. Ogata saw a future where he sat in his dad's position, but it was a future based on forcibly holding into the toxic past, built upon many wrong choices.

-The theme "Reaping what you saw":

I love this theme!! GK is unique in doing this theme properly. Most stories the most fan fave or the protag get away with things simply cuz fans dedicate stories. They're the customers afterall. I didnt necessarily wish for Ogata's death nor anyone's death. But You gotta pay the price of you sins towards others. Ogata paid it so thoroughly & in a really shocking writing style! truly interesting from a writing perspective. Now my eyes are on Tsukushima, will Noda treat him the same way? make him pay the price? Similar to Ogata, Tsukushima refuses to let go of the past & insist to continue a toxic path. They both have someone who cared for them trying to stop them. How will Noda deal with him worries me especially that few chapters are left, so perhaps the volume will have better & full exploration of Tsukusima's journey? I duno.

There are may themes & many things to say abt Ogata's arc! but one word is enough: Complete & very thorough!

Well done, Noda!

#golden kamuy #hyakunosuke ogata #ogata #yuusaku hanazawa #excited paper #manga review

47 notes · View notes

hawkland · 3 years

Text

(Mostly) Destiel Fic Recs #5

This is a LONG recs post because it’s been a while since I did an update and I fell hard into reading one author’s work (DeanRH). In fact I could easily do a rec post just of their fics alone, but for this round I’m just going to pick out a handful of my absolute favorites so far, the ones I’d recommend to start out with, along with more other authors’ works I’ve especially enjoyed lately.

Absolution at the Five-and-Dime by DeanRH (125k) - this is perhaps THEE DeanRH fic to start with if you want a good, long read with a little bit of everything (Roadtrips! Intriguing casefic! Americana! Tasty Dean/Cas pining! Wing!kink and unique angel lore! Kinky soul fisting and tentacles!) It’s kind of two of parallel stories in one: the first, a flashback to Dean and Sam's first year hunting on their own (as well as trying to avoid hunting, and John in general); the second on how Dean and Cas finally get together during an unusual case and when Dean is able to really let go of his past trauma and accept himself/accept love from Cas.

What I love about DeanRH’s work is that they write from the unique point of view of a drifter, so they understand living on the road, traveling place to place, and the highs and lows of that life like no others I’ve encountered in SPN before. (The author’s notes are often as much fun to read as the stories themselves). They also write a kickass angel!Cas and never lose sight of his non-human traits and background. Their writing style is unique - almost poetic in nature, and I know some readers have found it difficult to get into. But it works really well for me in their SPN fic...gives it the flavor of oral story telling as might actually happen at a drifter’s camp (with one story written exactly as such). Be warned this particular fic does play up the idea of John Winchester being mentally abusive and Dean having to turn tricks when he was younger in order to support him and Sam, so there is some dark stuff. But as someone who grew up with mentally abusive parent, reading this was extremely cathartic to me and believably written (unlike some stories that go too over the top with abusive John, or just don't understand how that kind of abuse leaves lifetime psychological scars.)

The rest of this round’s recs below the cut.

Carnevale by DeanRH (18k) - Actually the first fic by this author I read, because I just couldn’t resist a story set in my favorite place in the world, Venice, Italy. Castiel is the Angel of Venice, banished there for so long he does not even know or remember the reasons why. But Carnevale season is the one time a year he can let his wings out - figuratively and literally. And during this particular Carnevale season, he meets an intriguing masked young American tourist there with his brother and their one night stand turns into something far more powerful than either expected. This one’s hot, romantic, and achingly sad at the end as it all ties together unexpectedly with canon-verse...though with a hint for the future so it’s definitely not totally sad. I loved how DeanRH clearly understands Venice as a fellow lover of the city, the side of it most tourists never see unless they spend a long time there. This story made me cry just from wanting to be back in Venice again.

Ice cream was sweeter, food more satisfying, everything was an epicurean delight. There was just something magical about Venice, and he had lived here in the city for hundreds of years, so the shine should have worn off by now.

But it didn't, and there was always something more, something wonderful to discover around the next corner. The painted eaves of a church. The beauty of two women dancing with flowers in their teeth across the Piazza San Marco one day, overcome by the sheer joy of just being there. The way the university students still created Venetian masks, like Castiel's extravagant volto mask and Dean's humble servetta muta, with crafts that had been handed down across the generations. The morning silence that lay against the stones.

Hard Landing by DeanRH (26.9k) - A bit similar in theme to Carnevale. A pre-series Dean and Sam are sight-seeing in Spain when an angel, struck by a babel-spell, crash lands right in front of Dean. A strange yet seriously hot encounter with the angel turns into something much more complicated when the brothers return home and realize something more serious is afoot and they are both trapped in the middle of it. This is another story where things are very much not as they seem at first (as fun as that is!) It features master strategist Cas at his best, with a side helping of delightful trickery care of Gabriel and Balthazar as they deal with Lucifer, Michael...and a few others along the way.

The Sacred Band of Thebes by DeanRH (14.5k) - The last DeanRH fic I’m gonna allow myself to include in this round up, because it’s just very soft and sweet and beautiful - for a story about Dean & Cas being magically transported back in time to ancient Sparta! This is another story infused with a great knowledge of place and history, with some wonderfully delightful original characters added in that make it all the more enjoyable to read.

And now on to some other authors, I promise!

IPAMIS OL OLPRIT by emmbrancsxx0 (56k). A really wonderful fic that take a different look at what might have happened with a temporarily resurrected John Winchester during Season 14. Dean & Cas are in an established relationship here, and John here isn’t too happy about it — though mostly because he sees Cas (and Jack) as monsters, the kind of monsters he spent his lifetime hunting. This is a great fic for the emotional complexity of how John, Dean and Cas are all handled. John isn’t a cardboard evil dad, Dean is struggling between his loyalty to his father and to Cas, and Cas is increasingly bitchy/frustrated at Dean still being so desperate for his father’s approval (and all the more complex for not just being a quietly suffering perfect supporting boyfriend.) There’s some great action sequences in this too along with the emotional angst and a delicious dose of hurt!Cas if that’s your thing (as it is for me :D)

Abrenuntio by Neonbat (51k). A very dark but compelling AU take on the/a apocalypse universe. Dean, Sam and John are all alive in this post-angel war-apocalyptic world. They are part of a group of human survivors fighting against the angel army when they manage to capture “Blue” — a particularly feared angel of death. Dean is tasked with bringing Blue in for interrogation and he becomes a prisoner in their camp after John is killed. As mentioned, this is a pretty dark/sad fic (with some rather gruesome torture scenes) but I still found it quite compelling as a look at how things could have gone in some other parallel universe. And somehow the author manages to make the Dean/Cas relationship come together despite them starting out as complete enemies. This is one of those AUs that works for me because the core of the characters really shine through despite the differences in the setting.

if it all fell to pieces tomorrow by spocklee (37k) - a gorgeous post-Empty rescue fic that takes an approach I haven’t really seen explored in detail before (despite being something I’ve actually thought about as something that could’ve happened.) What if Cas has spent so long denying himself happiness, and then trapped in regrets and false-rescue scenarios created by the Empty, that he can’t trust that his rescue is real? And so he runs off to be on his own - literally stealing the Impala because he can’t handle being in Dean’s presence one moment longer - and only slowly comes to terms with the idea that it’s over now and he can be happy with/around his friends and family. This one’s both deliciously angsty and at times funny/sweet, looking at Cas’s relationships not just with Dean but with Sam, Jack, Claire, even Eileen. It does some fun stuff with other returned angels and demons who now find themselves back on Earth (and human), and...I just really enjoyed this one a lot.

Both Saved and Lost by angelfishofthelord (13.7k) Gen Cas character study, absolutely gorgeous and sad and one of those fic I couldn’t stop thinking about the day after reading it. AU where Apocaverse!Cas isn’t immediately killed by our Cas during 13x22 but instead hitches a ride back to the main ‘verse. Dean and Sam want to keep him alive for information on Michael; Cas is torn and trying to figure out just how similar—or different—they really are. Some great angel stuff here (I also highly recommend this author’s Jack & Cas “dadstiel” fics, they’re equally lovely and heartbreaking at the same time.)

flesh of the mighty by Mudprophet (2.7k) - THEE “What exactly did Dean eat in Purgatory, anyway?” fic you’ve probably already heard about. *cough* I’ve been trying to work up the courage to read this one for a while and finally gave in and OH MY CHUCK I’m so glad I did. It’s perversely disturbing and beautiful at the same time, Cas is wonderfully DERANGED and ALIEN in that way that I love it when fics managed to convey just how much angels are NOT human. Do heed the tags.

Full of Grace by ilovehowyouletmefall (11k) - Another one for the weird-as-fuck-angel!Cas lovers’ list. Heaven/canon-compliant fic where Dean knows he should feel happy and at peace but he just...isn’t, even with Cas and all of his friends and family there. He finally goes looking for Cas when he’s been absent for a time and, for the first time, gets to not just see but experience his true form. Another one that hits some kinks I knew I had and others I didn’t...until now. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

don't ask me where i've been by saltwound / @1x06 (8k) - I can never resist a good 09x06 fiction gap fic! What makes this one really stand out is how well it captures Cas’s internal voice - his struggles adapting to human senses, limitations and emotions versus what/how he experienced things as an angel. The longing and feelings between Dean & Cas here are so achingly beautiful and I just wanted to cry when Cas says he misses hearing Dean’s prayers, so Dean, he...oh, I’m not going to spoil it. *happy sigh* Just read it.

this room is wrong by DarkHeartInTheSky (12k) - Sometimes I like torturing myself with some good 15x03 divorce arc angst and this fic hit that button just so. It’s an alternative take on where Cas might have ended up after leaving the bunker and features some great Cas & Sam friendship feels, when Sam sets out to try to bring Cas home. It’s all the stuff you’d wish the writers would’ve let them talk out in canon.

Well that’s more than enough for this round! Go forth, read and give some great writers some kudos & comment love!

#fic recs #my fic recs #destiel recs #destiel #deancas recs #my destiel recs

52 notes · View notes

scope-dogg · 3 years

Text

Knight’s and Magic: Final Thoughts

Isekai anime have been very popular in recent years, and 2017′s Knight’s and Magic was one of many cashing in on that trend, with the added twist of being a mecha series. However, what many may not realise is that the Isekai genre of anime was originally born out of the mecha genre, with the first Isekai anime arguably being the 1983 classic Aura Battler Dunbine by Yoshiyuki Tomino. While Isekai has split off and diversified into its own extremely prolific and popular genre, mecha has kept a foothold within it, and subsequently some of the greatest mecha shows have been fantasy-themed, with great titles like Magic Knight Rayearth and The Vision of Escaflowne following in Dunbine’s footsteps over the years, so really Knight’s and Magic should be viewed rather as the continuation of a fairly long tradition of fantasy mecha rather than Isekai but with robots. Adapted from the early volumes of a currently ongoing manga by the same name, it’s a short series, but one with high production values, superb mechanical design and entertaining action. It’s also a series that I ultimately simply cannot stand.

The plot setup is that Tsubasa Kurata is an unassuming but highly talented programmer working in contemporary Japan - or at least he is until he’s killed in a road traffic accident. As he dies, he has but one regret - that he’ll no longer be able to live with his hobby of building plastic model kits of giant anime robots. As is often the case with such a setup, he finds himself reborn into a fantasy kingdom called Fremevilla as the son of nobles called Ernesti Echavalier. However, to his joy, he finds out that the main weapon for fighting back against these monsters is the Silhouette Knight, a kind of gigantic magic-powered mecha. Thus, he devotes himself to the art of learning everything there is about these machines and one day building and piloting one of his very own.

There’s nothing really wrong with this premise, but Knight’s and Magic is flawed in how one-track it is. The show’s really only about one thing - how robots are cool. Of course, I agree that robots are cool. Knight’s and Magic’s lineup of robots in particular is very cool, both in their form and unique functions. However, anyone who’s actually a fan of the mecha genre knows that just having cool robots isn’t enough to carry a show - you have to have compelling characters and interesting narratives. The all-too-frequently trotted-out line of “[x mecha show] is actually good, unlike the rest of the genre, because it focuses on the characters instead of just the robots” is probably the single most effective thing you can say if you want to piss off a mecha fan, because that sentence describes literally every mecha show that was ever worth a damn, even going back to the genre’s roots in the 70s. However, it arguably doesn’t really describe Knight’s and Magic. The series’ creators come off as just as obsessed with robots as its main character, and it comes at the expense of the characters and setting. Each new episode comes with a cool new robot or a cool upgrade for an existing one, but practically none of them feature development of the setting or its characters. Fremevilla and its neighbours never come off as anything more than “generic fantasy kingdom”, the supporting cast are all cut from extremely generic-feeling moulds, and Ernesti never undergoes any growth or exhibits any notable character traits beyond “likes robots.”

Now, there have been several characters in mecha anime who are in large part defined by their dedication to giant robots as an ideal, or simply to their aesthetic, and some of these are truly excellent characters. For instance, Gai Daigoji from Nadesico, Akagi Shunsuke from Dai-Guard, Noa Izumi from Patlabor, Sei Iori from Gundam Build Fighters, or the Super Robot Wars Original character Ryusei Date. The difference between all of these and Ernesti is that being fans of robots isn’t the only thing that makes them relatable or endearing characters, whereas in Ernesti’s case it’s basically the only thing that defines his personality. It also doesn’t help that he’s perhaps the biggest Mary Sue main character that I’ve seen in a mecha anime. His gimmick is that his past-life experience as a programmer also makes him profoundly adept at magic, and that he’s a genius Silhouette Knight designer. He’s always totally successful at everything he tries and everyone loves and respects him for his accomplishments. Ironically, it’s this that makes him an unlikable character for the viewer, because, again, he has no real admirable qualities beyond liking robots and being good at making and using them. It’s a character’s struggles and tribulations that ultimately make them truly sympathetic, and Ernesti is never really challenged until right at the very end of the series, and ultimately that challenge only feels like a mild speed bump for him. This results in a series that despite all its cool robots and flashy battles is fundamentally dead as a story at its core.

However, all of this simply describes a series that I would find boring and mediocre rather than one I actively disliked in a serious way. However, this is arguably the first series I’ve watched since Gundam Seed Destiny that really ground my gears quite badly, and it all boils down to one specific moment in the show’s narrative. To explain why, I need to diverge from my usual review format and spoil not only this show, but also it’s forefather, the original mecha Isekai, Aura Battler Dunbine. I really don’t think spoilers for the former is anything to worry about but spoiling the latter is probably more of an offense. As such, the remainder of this review is below this spoiler cut:

Dunbine is not everyone’s cut of tea. It’s old, has bad animation, it’s long-winded and has a sometimes confused and scrambled narrative in accordance with some of Tomino’s worst habits. However, it was also a work of great imagination that really delivered on communicating a valuable message in some engaging ways. It’s a message that Knight’s and Magic cheerfully and infuriatingly tramples all over. Let me explain.

In Knight’s and Magic, the show’s hero is an outsider who enters into a fantasy world and uses his real-world knowledge to bring about a revolution in technology. This also happens to be the chief descriptor for a major character in Dunbine too.

However, this isn’t the description of the show’s protagonist, Show Zama.

It’s the description of the show’s villain, Shot Weapon.

Shot Weapon is the creator of the Aura Convertor, the technology that powers the show’s mecha, the Aura Battlers, and other weapons besides. The introduction of this technology destroys the peace of Dunbine’s world, Byston Well, and causes it to descend into anarchy and bloodshed. However, the real devastation doesn’t occur until Shot’s creations are transported back into our world, where they inflict destruction almost beyond imagining. Ultimately, Shot Weapon’s actions condemn him to a punishment of being forced to live forever in Byston Well in a state of eternal suffering, like Cain after murdering his brother Abel. Dunbine’s ultimate, most crucial message is that those who manufacture weapons and spread death are to be condemned.

Knight’s and Magic gave itself the exact same opportunity to deal with this exact same theme. The show’s final arc is that a kingdom called Zaloudek has accumulated vast military power and used it to invade its neighours. We get to see as they descend into a neighbouring kingdom, slaughter its just and rightful rulers and install themselves as tyrants. Now, enter Ernesti and his friends at the conquered kingdom’s borders. At this point he’s achieved his aim of creating his own unique robot called the Ikaruga, and in its first battle effortlessly dispatches the Zaloudek soldiers guarding the border. In the aftermath, he examines the wreckage of a destroyed Zaloudek Silhouette Knight. He and everyone else see the obvious - this machine, the Tyranto is based on Ernesti’s designs. Previously, one of the prototype Knights he’d constructed in an earlier arc was stolen by a mysterious foreign agent, and now it’s become clear what happened to it. The source of the military strength that’s fuelling Zaloudek’s ambitions of conquest are the new technologies that he created, reverse engineered from the stolen mecha. As he looks upon the wreck of the Tyranto, the show is presented with a unique opportunity to do something that it’s thus far not done - challenge its protagonist with the consequences of his actions. Sure, Ernesti is not exactly the same as Shot Weapon - he only wanted to create robots because he thought they were cool, while Shot Weapon wanted power. However, in this case the end result has been the same - death, destruction and oppression. Ernesti has a chance to think about whether the things he’s done are right and acknowledge that he’s at least somewhat responsible for the disaster that’s played out, even if it’s just to acknowledge that he has a duty to set things right by beating Zaloudek. This is an opportunity for him to grow as a character for the first time.

The show swerves this opportunity without flinching.

Sure, Ernesti does liberate the kingdom in the end, but it’s clear that it’s not as a result of any real moral calling. He just wanted to build more robots and fight with them. His motivation in the final battle is that he wants to destroy the enemy’s flying battleship because he’s worried that battleships might replace Silhouette Knights if he doesn’t. He remains a totally one-dimensional character right to the end.

As I said before, Ernesti’s obsession with cool robots arguably mirrors that of the creators of this show, if its myopic focus on them is anything to go by. Perhaps this seems extremely out of character for me to say, but this is an infantile obsession. Yes, I like giant robots, but I don’t like them so much that I miss the point. The core of not only the real robot genre that both Knight’s and Magic and Aura Battle Dunbine belong to despite the fantasy trappings of the show, but arguably of the mecha genre as a whole, is that technology can be a force of destruction and great evil when not used responsibly. Yes, the protagonist mecha in these shows are meant to be heroic, but only in their opposition to those who’d use technology as a tool of death and oppression. This is the core of the soul that makes mecha as a genre compelling. It’s a point that Knight’s and Magic completely misses and why it’s fundamentally a failure. It’s as if it’s trying to be what the mecha genre’s detractors try to paint it as.

That said, despite my misgivings there is entertainment to be found if you only want dumb action. But I’d highly encourage you to check out any alternative. If you want a fantasy mecha series, Dunbine, Escaflowne and Rayearth are all much more compelling stories than this - even ones I’m not so keen on like Panzer World Galient and Ryu Knight are fundamentally more interesting as stories than this. If you want a story with a mecha fanatic in the lead role, you’re much better off watching Patlabor or the chronically underrated Dai-Guard instead.

#knight's and magic #mecha #respect the robot

23 notes · View notes

oumakokichi · 4 years

Note

Hello!! Since I saw you were enjoying YTTD, what do you think about Sou and possible parallels to be drawn between him and Kokichi? Love your blog!

Oh boy, that’s a pretty great question. I had a feeling when I started YTTD that it was only a matter of time before Sou wound up being my favorite, and I wasn’t proven wrong over the course of the game. There are definitely some similarities between the two of them—and some differences too!

Spoilers for both games under the cut, so be careful when reading!

Well, to start with the similarities: they both lie. Uh, a lot. In fact, lying is sort of the most memorable thing about both of their characters.

Kodaka has stated that Ouma represents ndrv3’s entire theme of lying on multiple occasions, and I don’t think anyone needs any convincing that lying is Ouma’s entire schtick. With Sou, Nankidai has never (as far as I know) said anything about him representing the concept or idea of “lies,” but it’s still pretty evident nonetheless from the narrative.

Where Sara tries to keep the group united and cooperating with each other honestly, Sou undermines her attempts at nearly every opportunity and lies time and time again, both in and out of the main game. Even his theme song emphasizes how much he lies. Vgperson did a great job translating the title in my opinion by making it “Not So, Sou,” and in Japanese the title is “Sou no Uso”—a play on the fact that his name is a rearrangement of the Japanese word for “lie.”

They even have a few physical similarities as well: Sou is physically taller and older, but both of them are fairly scrawny, underweight (this is lampshaded with Sou in Your Turn to Shine by the fact that he can put off dying from starvation for at least one extra turn), and of course, they both wear scarves.

I have actually seen a few people in the DR fandom call Sou “green Komaeda” when playing YTTD for the first time, probably due to his role as the “trickster” character within the main game, but I honestly think it’s much fairer to say he’s similar to Ouma instead. If anything, it’s kind of hard to not see the similarities between the two when going from one game to the other.

Ouma does, after all, go out of his way to antagonize people within trials as well, and both he and Sou are considerably paranoid and mistrustful of others’ intentions. Both of them are all too happy to play the role of the villain even if it means being hated by everyone else, because they want to make it out of their respective killing games alive and they don’t trust anyone who talks openly about “cooperating” and “believing in each other.”

Of course, that’s not to say that the two of them are carbon copies of each other. Sou is similar to Ouma, but he’s definitely not identical. Their key differences are easier to see when you look past their surface-level personas, as well as their motivations for why they do the things they do.

To put it simply, both of them lie, but for almost completely different reasons. It’s true that Ouma in part does lie because of his own paranoia and lack of trust for the rest of the group—but also, Ouma just really, really loves lying. It’s a core part of his character; he states multiple times that he believes having the ability to lie is the same as having free will, and this shows how deeply he resents the idea of “having” to tell the truth, or well, being “forced” to do anything, really.

He also lies to entertain. He says so pretty explicitly in his salmon mode ending, and it’s absolutely not a lie: Ouma is someone who loves being dramatic, over-the-top, and entertaining. He hates being bored, and he hates the idea of boring other people even more.

After playing ndrv3 at least once, it’s really easy to see that deep down he’s just a clown with a love for funny wigs and really dumb pranks, so I wholeheartedly believe that even outside of a killing game, Ouma would still lie all the time (in fact he does, again, in his salmon mode route). It’s just that his lies would lack any malice or hostility to them.

The thing that sets Ouma apart from many other “bastard trickster” characters in fiction is that his love for lies isn’t some of act or façade that he’s putting on. He enjoys it in the same way that a kid enjoys making a prank phone call or putting a whoopee cushion on someone’s chair. Within the constraints of a killing game, it’s absolutely true that Ouma is cold, calculating, and manipulative—but he’s also genuinely childish, fun-loving, and silly. These traits are honestly the reason I love Ouma so much as a character and find him so interesting.

By contrast, Sou lies out of absolute necessity. Knowing that he has a 0% chance of survival only increases his desire to make it out of the game alive all the more, and solidifies his distrust in Sara with her high rate of survival. He lies out of sheer desperation, willing to talk and act like a completely different person from his true self if it means giving himself even the slightest sliver of an opportunity to stay alive.

Even his name (his real name, that is), reflects this. He took on both the name and, to some degree, the persona of the real Sou Hiyori: a first name that is, like I said, an anagram of the word “lie,” and a surname that means “sunny.” By contrast, his actual name, “Shin Tsukimi,” means “truth” and “moon-viewing.” Before the events of YTTD, Shin Tsukimi was an extremely gentle, timid person who was honest and trusting to a fault, further confirmed when we actually see an AI of him in chapter 3 who acts completely different from Sou as we know him.

Sou might put on an act and pretend that he enjoys lying and being a huge bastard in the middle of the main game, but he’s not nearly as good at keeping up the villain façade as Ouma, and his cracks show a lot easier. Multiple characters, particularly Sara, Kanna, and Keiji, call Sou out on his bad acting at various times, and insist that he isn’t nearly as evil or uncaring as he’d like to pretend. This is a sharp change from Ouma, who remained an enigma even after his death and played the part of the ringleader so well that nearly everyone still believed he was a Remnant of Despair until nearly halfway through the chapter 6 trial.

From what we can see of Sou’s personality, both in YTTD and YTTS, he’s not lying because he likes the fun of it all, or because he’s just a kid who loves pranking people deep down. He’s really, truly scared shitless and eaten alive by his own paranoia for pretty much the entirety of YTTD, and while he’s certainly not the trusting or naïve Shin Tsukimi anymore, he nonetheless tends to still show signs of being quiet, timid, and occasionally even grumpy and closed-off from other people.

For example, Sara has multiple opportunities to tease him or attempt to befriend him throughout the game. When you teasingly insist that you’ve “always been close friends” with him during the second half of chapter 2, he looks completely startled and taken aback, even a little horrified at her persistence in wanting to get to know him after all the stunts that he’s pulled. You can also have Sara bother him while he’s working on the laptop after they get rid of Mishima’s AI, to which he responds with more and more irritation. In my opinion, I get the sense that Sou is more used to being the butt of jokes rather than making them, and doesn’t enjoy feeling as though someone’s poking fun at him, even if people like Sara are doing it with good intentions.

While I called them both scrawny earlier, I do want to clarify that I absolutely, unironically think Sou is weaker than Ouma physically too. Ouma isn’t exactly super strong or anything; he complains when lifting the inugami statue with Saihara in chapter 3, and he doesn’t seem to like PE class from some of his dialogue in salmon mode. But it’s really clear that Ouma does hide some of his aces up his sleeve, and that he can punch a hell of a lot harder than he lets on, like in chapter 5 when he counters Momota’s second attempt to punch him.

Meanwhile Sou… Sou struggles to open cabinet doors and probably pickle jars too. He has weaker physical strength than both Kanna, a middle schooler, and Gin, an elementary schooler, in his YTTS stats. I love him to pieces, I think he’s a fantastic character, but it’s just too funny. Sou is not merely scrawny, he’s essentially the biggest, weakest pushover despite being around 20 years old or so and I think that’s great.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts on the similarities and differences between the two of them! Both of them are absolutely willing to go to extreme lengths in order to try and survive their respective killing games, and they’re both extremely paranoid and distrustful of others. But removed from the killing game, Ouma is pretty clearly someone who aspires to be a clown (both a class clown and a literal, pie-throwing, nose-honking party clown) and to entertain others, while Sou is honestly just an exhausted and extremely grumpy convenience store worker bordering on unemployment who has zero upper body strength and just wants to be left alone.

Thank you for the really fun question, anon! I really love both Sou and Ouma, so I had fun getting to write this meta for them!

#danganronpa #your turn to die #kokichi ouma #sou hiyori #shin tsukimi #ndrv3 #my meta #ask #anonymous #ndrv3 spoilers //#yttd spoilers //#okay to reblog

88 notes · View notes

crusherthedoctor · 5 years

Text

Why Jim Carrey’s Robotnik is The Fuckin’ Man™

Yep, the movie is still on my mind, and I'd say I love it even more with each passing day. Partly because it came as much relief during a time when IDW Sonic is continuing to aggravate me with nearly everything it does with its story and characters, but mostly because I just really enjoy it on its own merits (and unlike some people, I don't need to add “it's no masterpiece...” to every sentence as if I'm secretly ashamed about liking a Sonic the Hedgehog film). While the movie's portrayal of our old mate Robotnik is far from the only reason for why I love the film, he's obviously a huge factor all the same, so I felt like listing a few reasons for why - already - he's one of my favourite incarnations of the doctor yet.

A lot of it can be boiled down to how accurate he is to Eggman's character despite the face value differences, but to elaborate that little bit more:

- He's every bit as physical as Eggman is in the games. It would have been easy for Robotnik to be reduced to a Non-Action Big Bad in a live action role, given how often that tends to happen with similar villains in similar live action installments of similar franchises... But instead, Robotnik actually lives up to his character's habits and takes a very active role in his pursuits, culminating with him facing the hedgehog personally, and putting up a good fight in the process. Compare this to the supposedly more threatening SatAM Robotnik, who spent most of his time twiddling his thumbs and letting Snively do all the work.

- Also like game Eggman, he's stronger than he looks, and he's equally capable of handling himself in a fight. A much larger guy who Sonic had notable trouble with is thrown out a window like it's nothing by Robotnik, and despite getting caught off guard by Tom's attack from behind, he was quick to turn the tables enough for their brief fistfight to be considered a stalemate. And let's not get into whatever it was he apparently did to that school bully...

- While he's every bit the glorious ham you'd expect him to be, his witty remarks can be downright morbid at times. The first thing he does when he sees Sonic's seemingly dead body? Make a crack about PETA animal testing. Absolute legend.

- Not only is he funny and menacing in equal measures, but both sides of his personality seem to be working at the same time in a lot of his scenes, going from one to the other then back again in a matter of seconds. This makes him come off as unpredictable, which definitely adds to the tension involving him.

- The government is clearly terrified of him, treating the mere idea of hiring his services for the blackout investigation as though he's a Horseman of the Apocalypse, and being incredibly quick to give his existence the '06 retcon treatment when it looks like he's gone for good (spoiler: he won't be forgotten for long). But at the same time, they bring him in specifically because they know that he's the only one with the genius to handle the apparent threat that Sonic poses, and their own talk of him having helped out with numerous foreign coups in the past - probably single-handedly at that - is yet more proof that his credentials are no joke. If G.U.N. exists in this universe, they're basically admitting that they ain't shit compared to this one man.

- Despite technically acting on the government's behalf during the events of this film, Robotnik treats the affair in the same way that Blofeld treats his affiliation with Red China: Namely, it's a very transparent means to an end that will ultimately benefit himself more than them, and it's clear at all times that not only is he the one holding the reins, but that they're perfectly aware of this and are simply unable to do anything about it. Considering this is, again, the government we're talking about, that makes it abundantly clear before we even meet him in person that this guy isn't your typical basement dwelling mad scientist whose ambitions far outweigh their capabilities.

- In a Sonic the Hedgehog movie production starring Ivo Robotnik, played to perfection by Jim Carrey, the meme potential is too vast to quantify.

- His drones are essentially Matryoshka dolls of destruction, and they have the tricks and the persistence you'd expect to be saddled with that implication. They highlight the doctor's own determination in catching the hedgehog, and they also confirm his surprisingly keen sense of foresight in dealing with opposition. If only he leant some of that foresight to IDW Eggman...

- His big black truck is actually really badass for an “evil lair”, as the man himself labels it. It's equipped with the aforementioned super persistent drones, it comes with a hangar bay for his sizable hovercraft (which, by the way, just so happens to have an Egg Mobile colour scheme), he can experiment in his lab while he's on the move, and he even has wacky virtual simulators to play around with on the side... and the means to make a latte apparently. It may not have the scale of a Death Egg space station or an Eggmanland theme park, but considering this is an up-and-coming Eggman of sorts, it's a very interesting and impressive choice for the doctor's first humble abode, as it shows that even when he's just starting off, he's already thinking in a different (and cooler) wavelength than most.

- It didn't take him long at all to successfully harness the power of Sonic's quill in a manageable form, meaning he understood how Sonic's speed worked and was able to use it against the hedgehog himself in a relatively small amount of time. If Metal Sonic is ever introduced, he's likely going to be a juggernaut on par with his OVA portrayal.

- Yet another trait he shares with game Eggman: he does not cower. Sure, he might get startled by seeing Sonic for the first time, or accidentally getting creeped up on by Agent Stone, but in terms of legitimate fear, he has none to show for it. Sonic, who he thought was banished to the Shadow Realm killed, suddenly revives himself and takes back his quill by force, all the while throwing one hell of a death glare his way as he becomes supercharged with electricity. How does Robotnik react to this? By putting on his own game face (and his goggles) and staring him down for a final standoff. The idea of running away or pleading for mercy doesn't even appear to register in the doctor's mind.

- Even after going mad upon being stranded on the Mushroom Planet, he remains as determined as ever to reach his goals, and while he may have nothing else on him for the time being other than Sonic's quill, we know for a fact that his return is inevitable, and he'll be hitting twice as hard no matter what he decides to use. His final transformation into a more recognizable Eggman may be born out of isolation and insanity, but despite the circumstance, it's more strangely triumphant rather than tragic or pathetic. He even notes that lesser men would be hopeless in his predicament, and presumably that includes lesser villains as well.

- This face.

I want that face on a T-shirt.

Overall, despite the expected and at times necessary differences for a live action portrayal, Robotnik hasn't actually been watered down in terms of character OR threat level. He's already dangerous enough to risk the safety of the entire planet, and if the stinger is any indication, he's only getting started.

And you know what else? While it's obviously delightful that his resemblance shifts to being more Eggman-like by the end of the film (and the full moustache actually doesn't look too bad on Carrey's face), I don't think I would have minded that much if his appearance remained the same in a sequel, because the core of his portrayal was so perfect and quintessentially Eggman that the differences didn't even click after a while, even as I kept looking at them point blank.

That's how you know the guy did well. Although it probably also helps that his non-Eggman look is considerably more dignified and cool than SatAM Robotnik falling into a vat of concentrated 90's.

#Opinion #Dr. Ivo Robotnik #Sonic Movie

622 notes · View notes

yugyummygot7reactions · 4 years

Text

Behind the Curtain - 7

| Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | Epilogue |

Updates are Sundays at 5pm PST! Next week is the end!!!

Characters: Jaebeom x You

Genre: Smut

Warning(s): Breath Play, Light Name Calling, Size kink? sort of not really

Word Count: 2,248

You were turning the final corner to your room when you slammed face first into a wall of a human. Im Jaebeom.

“I’m sorry!” You said as you stood up and tried to catch your breath. “

My office.” He said as he walked past you, “NOW!!”

Dealing with the situation inside of you would have to wait. It was time to face the fearsome leader.

He’s twice your size. Easily. He’s nearly a head taller than everyone but Yugyeom and is built with the shoulders of a linebacker. You fidget uncomfortably, wondering why your stomach insists on flipping like a gymnast at the Olympics. JB’s eyes settle on you, anger seething from them and for some reason you blush and quickly avert your gaze.

Jaebeom paces around the room while you just awkwardly stand there, waiting for whatever storm was about to come your way and his arms keep brushing yours as he paces. Whether it was accidental or not, it was sending shivers down your spine. He pushes a button on his desk and then finally stops to turn and face you.

“Did you know what was coming and not tell me?” He finally asked, his voice is loud in your ear, his head so close that you are occupying practically the same space in his large office. You have to fight the flush crawling up your neck having him this close. “The raid?” You ask innocently, “Why would I have known before you?” “That is the true question Y/N.” He paces again before pulling his face hairs away from yours, his eyes piercing your soul. “Why did you know before us? Are you involved?” “I didn’t know.” You said firmly, trying not to falter as your heartbeat began to race. He might seem soft to those who know him, but he isn’t the gang leader for nothing. “Ahhh…I thought we didn’t lie in this gang.” He said as he pulled back a little. “I’m not lying.” You try to convince him and a smirk overtakes his lips. “That’s impressive.” he says, taking a sip of the water you just now notice is on his desk. “You must practice a lot.” “Practice?” You asked, confused at the statement. “Yeah,” he says, slyly, “Practice keeping your life story straight, your lies straight, keeping us complacent with your nearly flawless work only to have it all come crashing down in the end.”

You were looking anywhere but him. If you make eye contact, you’ll die. Literally and metaphorically.

“Someone has to work hard to make a good girl out of you.”

His voice has dropped an octave with that comment. You feel it in your core, but have to remain calm and collected on the outside. Does that mean he is letting you live? That he has some kind of plan that will assure his victory?

“Sometimes you need direction to find your way back to where you belong, a heavy hand, maybe?” He asked as he began to come closer again. “Do you like it when someone’s strict with you? You seem to not tremble as much as I thought someone like you would.” “Someone like me?” You asked, swallowing harder than you meant to.

“A traitor.” His hand comes up—hot, searing fingertips ghost against your jaw before carefully sliding back so that his thumb hooks under your chin and the rest of his fingers can put heavy, pressure on your throat. His fingers span the entire width of your neck easily and the pressure on your windpipe quickly hits you. He leans down until his face is directly in front of yours again. You can feel your knees start trembling when you realize that your life is literally in his hand and he knows your secret. “I wish you would look me in the eyes instead of looking away all the time.” He tilts your head up, almost forcing your eyes to lock on to his. You stare fiercely, emboldened by his dare. You look at his lush eyelashes, his moles above his eye, the stubble he missed on his chin, the way his skin creases at his eyes. Most of all, you look down at his mouth—pink, soft lips that he wets with the tip of his tongue before he speaks. If this was the last thing you ever saw, you wouldn’t be too mad.

Jaebeom quickly swapped places with you and pushed you up against his desk. His one hand reaching your waist to hold you still. He squeezes, a fingertip ever so gently gliding under the waistband of your pants. It drives all of your blood south, making your clit throb against the seam of your pants. In the craziness of earlier with Jackson, your underwear had disappeared.

You yelp as JB releases your throat for a moment, grabs you around the middle and completely lifts off the ground with a pair of arms as immovable as iron shackles. You squirm, nearly managing a kick where it hurts the most, but you are pulled back tight against a warm, solid body.

“I kinda like you scared,” he counters, squeezing you. “seeing the look in a traitor’s eyes before death always gives me a rush.

“I’m not a trait-“

His hand is around your throat again in an instant. It makes your whole body dizzy, it makes you feel vulnerable as hell and you can’t help but want to melt into the arms of the man who is about to kill you. The weirdest thing is that you can breathe easily—his fingers only squeeze on the sides, effectively cutting off the blood flow to your brain, instead of your windpipe. He is trying to weaken you for information instead of just outright kill you and you realize just how skilled with his hands this man is. The effect is like a live wire to your cunt.

“Why is it you only listen when you have to be manhandled into it?”

He sets you down on your feet again and you gasp for air, the blood rushing back to your head. It sends a trickle up your spine.

His hand sneaks up your shirt to squeeze your breasts hard enough to make your whimper. “Gonna fucking devour these tits. If you’re going to lie, you’re going to die, and I might as well have some fun first.“

“Jaebeom,” you accidentally moan, sounding pretty needy.

He pulls back, wiping his mouth where spit has practically dribbled onto his chin from his forceful talking. It should be gross, but instead you want to lick him clean.

“Get on your knees, sweetheart.”

He pushes you down on the hard wood. “I always knew you were a little slut,” he mutters, undoing his belt. “Christ, the things I’ve thought about doing to you— and yet you went to everyone else but me for relief over the last few days.“ You watch his zipper with a concentration usually reserved for combat.

His cock springs out, hard and heavy under its own weight. It’s nearly as thick as your wrist.

“Fuck,” you whisper. It’s so much better than anyone else in the gang you had seen. You knew It was your last fuck and you couldn’t be happier it was with this dick.

“You’re going to suck me off until I come in that pretty little throat, right? You have to swallow, okay? Obey one last order before it’s time to go.”

You nod, entranced by the throbbing tip, where he’s leaking pearled drops of pre-cum.

You lean forward and lick the flat of your tongue up his shaft to taste him.

Immediately, he grabs a fistful of your hair, which normally you would break someone’s finger for, but you kind of like being held like this. It just shows his dominance and proves that no matter what, you can’t get away.

Your open your mouth and ease the entire head in as far as you comfortably can on the first try, but when you gag yourself a little, he makes sure to force himself in more, if only a notch deeper.

His cock suddenly jerks to draw your attention, tightening up a bit, as if trying to get harder than he already is. He begins moving your head back and forth and your jaw is already edging on its way to soreness, but somehow feeling the tip hit the back of your tongue, tasting each time more pre-come leaks out of him, feels good.

His breath becomes more labored as you suck on him more. You learned you love the way his chest heaves, the fabric of his shirt stretching across his pectoral muscles. If only you really were on his side, you both would make a great power couple both in and out of the bedroom.

One of his feet slide forward, settling between your thighs. “Good girls get to grind their pussy on my boot while they suck cock,” he growls. “I’m not even that cruel to deny someone release before their death.”

You moan around his length when your clit meets the friction of the shoe through your too thick pants. You roughly hump his leg and leave a clear puddle of evidence. Would he smell it tomorrow, your pussy on his clothes, and think of you on your knees? Crying with a cock between your lips? Would the raid happen as planned and he won’t even make it to tomorrow?

Suddenly his hips find the will to move urgently. His cock fills your throat up enough that you can’t breathe, the hand on the back of your head presses you further into the stretch, and you feel his cock push forward into your gag reflex.

You feel tears leak out of your eyes. It feels like you have been caught in a perpetual choke.

“Good girl,” he groans out. “Swallow. I want to feel it.”

Your mouth quivers. He seems too in control to come. That seems to be the theme with Im Jaebeom though, In control until the last moment.

He groans loudly, hips stuttering. “Feels so fucking good. Knew you could take the whole thing, my messy, drooling slut.”

He slides out and you launch into a coughing fit, doubling over. He gives you a second to catch your breath before tugging at your scalp again, pulling you back up on your knees. “I.. can’t.. take it, please, fucking do it already ...” you begged, not knowing at this point if you wanted him to just fuck you or kill you already. “Do what? “ he said coyly, as he slid your pants down and moved you up onto the desk, pushing his still hard tip slightly into your folds. “Kill you? No. you are too valuable for that. I need more details before you can have this suffering end. I know you aren’t on our side and that your ‘mother’ who you write to is actually your handler. I’m smarter than you clearly give me credit for.” With that, he lined himself up and quickly thrust himself into you. You couldn’t contain your loud gasp as his cock filled you up so quickly. The stretch was painfully blissful. Jaebeom began to pound into you, keeping up a consistent rhythm, hard and quick. He was going to fuck you silly so that he could get all of the information he needed. You were starting to lose focus, but you had to stay coherent. He slowed down as he felt himself come close to climaxing, his breathing becoming heavy again. “Tell me when the raid is.” He said as he slowed his pace, stopping your pleasure in its tracks. “No,” you panted, trying to keep your cool. His hands found your neck this time, cutting off airflow. “Tell. Me. Now.” His teeth were clenched and he was clearly ready for this game to be over. You shook your head as best you could. The lack of airflow and fullness of his cock inside of you was bringing you to your climax without him needing to move at all. You knew you wouldn’t last too much longer. You might even black out first. “TELL ME!!!” he screamed as he grabbed your neck tighter. Your orgasm hit you hard with his rush of anger and much to his surprise, the way you clenched around him caused his focus to slip and an orgasm hit him harder than he thought it could. He grip tightened again as he came, and before you could black out and accept your fate, the door to the office was kicked in and the special forces were there to save you. Jaebeom let go of you out of surprise and you fell to the ground coughing. The agency made it in the nick of time. “Who?” Is all you were asked by the lead; you recognized the voice as your former partner. “I’m glad you got my message to move up the raid. A second later and I would’ve been a goner.” You barely got the words out your throat was so sore.

“We can talk about that later. Who?” He asked again. “Mark, Bam Bam, Yugyeom.” You said, rubbing your neck to rid the feeling of JB’s hand trying to force the life out of you, still working on catching your breath. “What does that mean?” JB asked angrily as two men ran forward and restrained him. “Mark,” you stood up, “Bam Bam,” you fixed your pants, “and Yugyeom.” You took a gun from your former partner put it right between Jaebeom’s eyes. You heard the agency spread the word on who to save while you quickly removed the safety from the weapon. “I’m glad I was able to let you cum one last time before the end.” You smirked. “I’m not even that cruel to deny someone release before their death.”

You pulled the trigger.

_______________________________________________________________________

Hello My Lovelies!!

So that was the last smut chapter!!! What did you think??

Were you surprised on who was light or dark?

Let me know!!! Epilogue is coming next week.

Until Next Time,

~LoLo

#Behind the Curtain #yugyummygot7reactions #jaebeom #im jaebeom #got7 #jaebeom smut #jaebum smut #got7 smut #jaebum #im jaebum

87 notes · View notes

warlordgab · 5 years

Text

Analysis of shipping: Revisiting detracting arguments

I know some people were expecting more content here, and I'm sorry for taking so long to put this thing together. This post will be a little different from the other analyses you’ve seen here...

It's no secret this blog is mainly about LuNa...

...and NaLu

And several post made here are meant to showcase how their respective stories build them up through consistent bonding; defend their position as potent relationships by means of evidence and logic; or both.

We know standing next to each other in the same panel or frame are not “moments” if the context and/or the story doesn’t turn them into a meaningful interaction.

We know a girl slapping a guy is not something inherently romantic, and it’s not a defining trait of a potent relationship, specially when context says otherwise.

We know that brief rescue scenes are not always the sign of a potential romance as there are several elements needed to turn them into actual moments for a pairing

But, there are some arguments that persist because shallow shippers think they give meaning to their premises, disprove the potential another pairing has, or both. This post will deconstruct a couple of those arguments used to argue against LuNa and NaLu's position as potent relationships in their respective stories.

1) Romantic pursuit Vs. Consistent bonding

I was going to call this one the “Touka Argument”, or Touka's Rhetoric. Naming it after FT's Touka...

...she seemed to be the embodiment of nearly everything shippers argue against relationships as LuNa and NaLu until we got a comedic plot-twist worthy of a trolling writer.

Still, the argument goes a little bit like this: any one-sided pursuit of romance should become part of the endgame pairing. It doesn't matter if the story doesn't take such "affection" seriously, it doesn't matter if it is meant to be a joke with little to no weight, all that matters is the character actively looking for romance while proclaiming “love.”

A character who appears much later in the storyline openly expressing "love" for the MC. Meanwhile the MC shares far more development with a romantically inactive girl.

Some shippers may argue that the girls or guys who are actually "in love" are the ones who will win their object of affection. Others may admit this is a extremely subjective matter as some of these girls end up winning, which makes it hard to analyze this stuff properly. But, there's one thing that helps people to keep an objective perspective: development

If we take a look at relationships like Gruvia from Fairy Tail, we get to see that their most powerful scenes are not the ones that involve the characters being all mushy over each other, but the moments of actual emotional significance; actual build-up...

...created by impactful moments

Some of Hiro Mashima's works prove he's aware that what truly matters in this particular regard is not how often a character makes claims of love, but how much development she or he has with a significant other.

What about Eiichiro Oda and his works? We got one notable example from the Whole Cake island arc

One sincere gesture of kindness from Sanji (the local pervert and Casanova wannabe) was enough for him to get to Pudding's heart...

...when he shattered the image she had of herself as monster with that gesture, and later an armor-piercing question, she ended up falling for him as he was the only person on that island that saw her true face and still deemed her as a beautiful woman instead of a monster. Sanji had such impactful moments with Pudding without going "horny" mode on her.

Other authors know that this kind development is needed for the logical progression in both good storytelling and decent characterization. They may not say it out loud, but their works speak for themselves while showing even characters who are not looking for romantic love can eventually develop such bonds.

Take a look at relationships like Kenshi and Kaoru from Rurōni Kenshin...

...they became an item, despite neither of them being romantically active, because they bonded over time, supporting and caring for each other, to the point of developing a much deeper connection. No over-the-top corny lines nor becoming all horny on each other; it was just consistent bonding, which ultimately triumphed.

It's shouldn't come as a surprise given the author of Rurōni Kenshin mentored Eiichiro Oda.

And to add it more to the irony, there was another girl interested in Kenshin who got a role much greater in the anime than the manga, and who was more mild-tempered, feminine, and seductive.

Another mangaka who understood this matter is Seishi Kishimoto, brother of Masashi Kishimoto (of Naruto fame), and author of O-parts Hunters.

The moments shared by the main characters led Ruby to become Jio's emotional support, and both of them to get emotionally attached to one another. Another girl was interested in Jio, but consistent bonding made Jio and Ruby's connection remain as a potent relationship... as well as some other plot points.

And of course, there's the critically-acclaimed Fullmetal Alchemist (Brotherhood for anime-only watchers) by Hiromu Arakawa.

Edward and Winry. Two well-written characters who weren't romantically active before ending up together, yet their relationship and later upgrade made total sense... I could name Roy and Riza too, but that would be overkill.

The point is that it's not the romantic pursuit (or gag-like claims of "love") that makes or breaks a pairing; it's all about the moments that leave an impact along with shared experiences which give a strong companionship the potential for a relationship upgrade.

2) Every shonen story is the same story?

While this argument sounds ridiculous, it serves as an umbrella for several other claims some shippers may use.

A lot of anime fans know that most popular shonen stories, such as Dragon Ball, usually feature underdeveloped relationships. So, more often than not, shippers may claim or imply significant moments and actual development mean little to nothing in a shonen story. This reasoning can be easily mixed with the "romantic pursuit" argument.

Another related argument is the "informed attribute," which means you can off-screen the whole relationship and just let a character or narration "tell" you how a pairing happened instead of "showing" you how they developed. Basically, a violation of "show, don't tell."

While it's true several shonen stories share similar tropes, the more you examine each story, the easier it becomes to tell them apart.

Eiichiro Oda wrote a story that could easily fit the concept of "romance," as in a dramatic narrative treating themes such as heroism, idealism, mystery and adventure...

In fact, according to Sugita, a former One Piece editor, "Oda revealed that One Piece was something of a deliberate subversion of Dragon Ball through having a vastly more complex story and characters, while Dragon Ball is a manga infamous for its simplicity."

This is consistent to Oda's own statement: "I write ONE PIECE as dramatically as I can. If I had written a pure battle manga, it would have been easily defeated by Dragon Ball."

Given the amount of themes the series covered and the engaging emotional narrative, the argument of this story being the same as every other popular shonen doesn't hold up. The characters are all bound together as true companions not by a desire to become "stronger," but because they're "in love with adventure" as the author put it.

What about Fairy Tail? Hiro Mashima wrote a fantasy shonen series centered around thematics that are common in other shonen stories: Companionship and Family.

While some people already commented how the manga seems to have strong similarities with One Piece, Hiro Mashima had his own ideas when making the story. As he himself said once: "Usually a shonen manga starts with just a main character, who then slowly accumulates his or her allies as the story progresses. But in the world of Fairy Tail, everybody pretty much knows each other at the beginning. That was sort of what I was going for."

In another interview he even stated one of the thematic differences in relation to his previous work: "Rave Master was about friends saving the whole world, but Fairy Tail is about closer-knit relationships."

This is consistent with what we've seen in Fairy Tail, as the titular guild is all about that theme, how different people of several backgrounds are connected by intimate bonds and the search for exciting adventures.

What about the characters?

Both Eiichiro Oda and Hiro Mashima (just like many other mangakas) grew up watching and/or reading Dragon Ball. But, are their main characters Luffy...

...and Natsu...

...just mere replicas of Goku and other shonen heroes?

It's true that many authors follow the shonen hero archetype when writing the protagonist of a series. Both Luffy and Natsu are golden-hearted idiot heroes, and both of them have personalities that reflect the idea of "No Challenge equals No Satisfaction."

But, unlike Goku their ultimate aim is not all about following an endless cycle of self-improvement. At their core, both Luffy and Natsu are thrill-seekers who are constantly looking for fun and adventure.

Luffy is all about freedom, and even if he's not the sharpest tool in the shed, he can still display actual leadership qualities when the situation calls for it. Natsu, like some other of his guildmates, is a mischievous trouble-maker but still pretty much the embodiment of the values of Fairy Tail.

The more you examine both characters, the more differences you can find...

All of this is related to shipping mainly because people may claim "every shonen story is the same story" to justify pairings that do not have enough canon material supporting them.

So, if the hero and the heroine have a far more substantial development and actual chemistry, shippers who oppose such characters getting together may imply the following: "if several popular mangakas make their official couples with no regard for moments or build-up, why Oda or Mashima should be any different."

Because each author is different, and even if their stories use similar tropes from time to time, elements like themes, purpose, focus, plot, and characters will vary from writer to writer.

3) Anime Vs. Manga

'It's easier to watch a series than read a story'

Which is why whenever a manga gets an anime adaptation, if the story is good, its popularity rises.

However, sometimes the directors and writers of the anime do not share the same vision as the mangaka. And people who are up to date with both mediums can perceive such differences. Dragged out fights, OOC moments, inconsistencies with plot points from the source material, etc. are common place in some adaptations.

But, some directors and other staff members take some liberties to add "shipping fuel" according to their own views and taste.

I apologize in advance if this comparison offends someone, I’m just using it as an example. The anime adaptation of Bleach made by Studio Pierrot featured some ship tease...

Such scenes weren't written by Tite Kubo, the author of Bleach. And they could easily pass as something "romantic."

However, during an interview, one of Bleach's editors, Toya Taichi, stated that "in Kubo sensei’s mind, Orihime is the heroine character and Rukia is a comrade" and he later summed it up as "feeling like a pal" (相棒 in japanese).

When it comes to modern japanese storytelling, the term "heroine" (ヒロイン in japanese) is interchangeable with "love interest." Orihime herself was even present in the Shonen Jump heroines covers. But, people who take filler scenes as the real deal may think otherwise.

When it comes to Fairy Tail, A-1 Pictures did a decent job in adapting the story but they also added shipping fuel, small things like Gray following Lucy and getting teased by Happy for it, or the big things like the non-canon expansion of the flashbacks involving Lisanna, which some people still treat as the signs of endgame pairings.

People who watched this version before reading the manga are more prone to overhype relationships that have little to no supporting evidence from Mashima's works. Fortunately A-1 Pictures toned it down later, too bad some shippers never forget...

If we talk about One Piece, the story is very different to say the least. TOEI Animation didn't stop in this regard, as some people may recall I already posted several of the changes they made for the sake of ship tease, and unlike A-1 Pictures they keep going and going with the moments they keep adding being more and more blatantly shippy (specially with Nami and Sanji) as time goes on.

Since One Piece is very long-running manga, more and more people only watch the anime and they take all those additions as the real deal despite the heroine of this story sharing far more development and solid chemistry with the hero.

However, not every fan is into well-developed relationships, so not every manga-reader will go LuNa/NaLu. Same could be said about anime-only watchers, as not all of them are swayed by filler, so not all of them will disregard LuNa/NaLu if they like consistent bonding.

The point is that the anime adaptation has a strong influence in how the fans perceive the story, the characters, and the bonds they build. And not every anime adaptation presents a favorable image of the in-canon premises made by the mangaka.

Here’s a little bonus:

Who's the One Piece heroine according to Oda?

When talking about Strong World, the movie he wrote, Oda said “I really wanted to make a ‘hero saves the heroine’ story." A movie about a hero (Luffy) saving the heroine (Nami). He added: "You might think otherwise, but I had no intention of bringing in someone new to fill that [heroine] role. So when I had to think about whom to use for it amongst the straw hats of course that meant Nami.”

He also stated in 2019, when an interviewer addressed the fact his wife is similar to Nami, "They say a mangaka often marries a person who's similar to the heroine."

Across the several years the manga had been going, Nami often appears in the Shonen Jump heroines covers due to her role in One Piece.

You can see the latest Jump heroines poster here

Who's the Fairy Tail heroine according to Mashima?

One of his latest works (HERO’S) answers this question...

Context: Ellie is talking about Haru, Natsu, and Shiki (the heroes of Rave, Fairy Tail, and Edens Zero). Each one of these girls has the role of "heroine" in each of their respective stories. One of them even ends up with the hero.

BONUS: The Elephant in the room

As you probably noticed, I used a lot of official statements to back up my post. However, even those who oppose LuNa and Nalu use those kind of statments...

In the case of One Piece, several fans considered "romantic love" a concept completely foreign from the series due to a couple of quotes from the author. When asked about this particular subject, Oda stated that the members of Straw Hat crew are "in love with adventure." And later when asked again, the mangaka said that since this is a shonen story "romance isn't depicted."

Based on these answers, several fans created the myth of "romantic love" not existing in One Piece. Many held onto this conclusion with so much intensity that they always dismissed the bad girl Alvida's obvious attraction to the hero (Luffy).

However, as a clever and perceptive reviewer pointed out we're talking about the same author that once claimed he doesn't kill characters and went as far as to say "I hate when supposedly dead characters come back to life." Yet his story has a couple of "supposedly dead" characters who turned out to be alive. No spoilers here.

Some of his statments are meant to be taken with a grain of salt. He said "romance wasn't depicted" but as of recent years it's been a thing in One Piece...

...Señor Pink and Russian are one example of how traditional romance gets integrated in both story and characters. So, using the author's words to invalidate all possibility of romance in One Piece no longer works.

Ironically, haters take Oda's old claims literally when talking about Luffy, but they completely forget about it as soon as someone mentions Nami or Robin in this particular regard. A clear display of a blatant double-standard...

When it comes to Fairy Tail, some haters love to quote that Natsu and Lucy are "more than friends but less than lovers."

Yet, they choose to ignore that in recent years, when asked about the relationship between these characters, Mashima himself replied: "I feel that the Natsu and Lucy ship is more suitable."

Some time before that statement, during a New York Comic Con, when asked what he feels is “right” in this regard Mashima held up his drawing of Natsu and Lucy...

...so everyone could see his answer to the question.

So, using Mashima's old quote to deny the plausibility of a relationship upgrade here and there is not going to work either.

If people want to defend a pairing or prove a potent relationship has what it takes to become canon, they should try to stay true to the author's works, and the story's internal logic, instead of trying to find a way around them and/or promoting a baseless process of elimination, all to justify another premise.

Consistent bonding, chemistry, and natural development coming from the author’s works should be superior to mere rethoric, hype, and/or anime filler

#one piece #fairy tail #eiichiro oda #hiro mashima #monkey d. luffy #nami #luffy x nami #lunami #luna #ルナミ #natsu dragneel #lucy heartfilia #natsu x lucy #nalu #shipping #analysis #I'm ready for the salt...#this feels like committing blog seppuku #edited to correct a couple of mistakes

855 notes · View notes

mc-critical · 3 years

Note

Asking because I’ve seen you say it on here: What is it that you disliked about Mahifiruze and Aysë as characters (writing or otherwise?)

It's not a problem of sympathy alone, because while these characters have quite a few offputting qualities and have certainly done some heinous deeds, it would be unfair to judge them only by that. There are way worse people in the franchise, which turn me off way more, after all. (*cough* MCK Turhan *cough*) Sympathy-wise, I'm overally ambivalent towards both Ayşe and Mahfiruze and if we only take that into account, I can take or leave them. It's their writing, however, where things take a different turn. Almost everything went wrong there.

The critical problem I find with both of the characters is that they're engrained in one and the same character archetype the writers refuse to get them out of. That brings harm not only to their characterization and the way they're built up, but also to the sympathy we're supposed to feel for them, because, more often than not, it didn't have a ground to stand on. It's true that archetypes often risk to make a character bland and one-dimensional, but the way they went with it is strange and unfortunate, because this all could've been averted quickly.

Magnificent Century's character core is mostly built on archetypes of a soapy drama and Magnificent Century: Kösem seemed to be following that trend. I understand that choice, in a way, because well, it could've just been easier for them, they could've thought they would win their former MC audience once again, playing it "familiar" and "safe". Thing is, the whole franchise overally does pretty well with archetypes: they either subvert them, deconstruct them or break them entirely later, either (in the case of MCK where we saw many previously established MC archetypes) use them with some core conceptual changes and a different theme in mind, which, as far as writing goes, worked very well with many characters. (see: Dervish - Ibrahim; Dilruba - Mihrimah; Atike - Mihrimah; Davud - Rustem, etc.) The thing is though, the writers didn't give Ayşe and Mahfiruze any of that and their archetypes felt like they only were in the beggining line, going almost nowhere beyond that and making the characters feel very often as cardboard cutouts as a result. They're going with archetypes, but they somehow give only a single fraction of these archetypes to figures that play a relatively big role in the story.

Comparisons to other usages of the character archetype of Mahfiruze and Ayşe's help even less, because everything now not only turned out to be a bad concept, but and a shaky, underdeveloped attempt at something done way better before. Mahfiruze and Ayşe both fit in Mahidevran's early season 1 archetype - the rejected, jealous woman, previously valued and loved by the Sultan, which loses everything quickly, planning and ready to do anything to take the rival down, including petty sneers, irrational decisions and will for murder. But even at its worst, Mahidevran's characterization was balanced overall, having moments where we could sympathize or condemn her respectively and had character fleshing out come to the surface as often as the reducement to this one sole archetype, which was lacking severely in Ayşe and Mahfiruze. I'll talk about the similarities they share with Mahidevran only briefly when I analyze them, because I'm admittedly very biased when it comes to this (especially with the double standarts I encounter with the YT comments, where the same people judge Mahidevran and Ayşe by the exact same metric and yet, they love one and can trash the other all day, eh.) and I don't want that to take over the topic at hand so much.

Mahfiruze has the problems I listed above to a much lesser extent than Ayşe, but that doesn't mean they're not present at all. She has a very familiar character role and personality - she is a mother to the eldest heir of the throne and gives jabs and insults to her rival. And.. that's all there is. It's undeniable than Dilara Aksuek's Mahfiruze definetly had a tough act to follow, since the former Mahfiruz screamed potential and promise the latter character was expected to fulfill, but they did the barest possible minimum. (and I don't think Dilara's a bad actress by any means: she acted amazingly in the show Istambullu Gelin as Ipek, an arguably similar and much better written character.) It definitely felt as more of a regression than a progression, because Mahfiruze had no fleshing out or development at all. Her meanness to Kösem seemed central to her character, she barely had any interactions with the rest of the cast and what is worse, used her as a plot device for a plot-line with Ahmet's enemies and then when her role was fulfilled, they.. killed her off just like that without any warning or elaboration. She was the very definition of a one-dimensional obstacle to Kösem that seemed to exist only for the sake to be an obstacle to Kösem. It was as if she didn't matter. And when she did, it was only as a narrative instrument to stir the conflict between Kösem and Osman (which I find very interesting, but I feel it would've been way more impactful if Mahfiruze wasn't only... this.) It was as if the writers ran out of stuff to do with her, which is a very lazy copout for me, because she could've had interesting storylines, if only they just wished to "shake up" the traits of her archetype for a bit.

Ayşe's character is where this repetitive problem shines through the brightest. We can argue that the love triangle plot and Farya's Mary Sue stance ruined it all for her from the get go, but for me, the foundation of her character is what truly did. Ayşe wasn't used simply as a plot device as much, she wasn't even underutilized at all, she was put into an archetype which undermines how different she is as a character in practice and the greatly dissimilar circumstances she's under. They tried to fit Mahidevran's S01 archetype in an environment it would never do in the first place. It not only becomes a stagnant, more over exaggerated repetition of a concept and forces unnecessary drama to prop another character up, it way too often puts a sole angle of Ayşe's character into focus, making Farya the center of her writing. Not to mention that for long, we didn't have a cohesive reason to root for her, her early love for Murat being the thing that was the least fleshed out about her and could make her too obsessive and yandere at times. Her interactions are criminally underdeveloped, as well, and unlike Mahfiruze, that could honestly be cut shorter except for Osman, they were something Ayşe desperately needed. We got only hints of her relationship with Kösem, Silahtar and Gevherhan and that was far from enough. Most of her scenes were either with her maid or Farya. Her alliances with Gülbahar and Sinan respectively were... fine interarion-wise, to be honest, but writing-wise, they only enforced the fairly consistent endorsement of the soapy aspect of her character beyond any measure.

Now, I can't doubt the development in her later episodes, where the writing admittedly improved. I'll always love her scene before the death of Gevherhan and her message to Murat, because that's the Ayşe I wish I saw more often. The self-awareness she gained of how Murat screwed her over was amazing and something I wish happened more gradually and over the span of more episodes. But it was all somehow "too little, too late" for me and it didn't completely save her messy writing. And it's a crime, because Ayşe played a much bigger role than Mahfiruze in the narrative, she was basically a main character and she got robbed of a good, organic fleshing out and arc.

Ayşe was the most egregious example of the severe flawed writing of repetitive archetypes and catch me forever mad about it, because she could've been much more. It's a mistake that had no business being there at all. And it was anyway.

#magnificent century #magnificent century kosem #magnificent century kösem #ayse sultan #mahfiruze sultan #ask #stuffandthangs

18 notes · View notes

mira--mira · 4 years

Note

One obvious for the ask game. The main protagonist; Naruto Uzumaki and Izuku Midoriya.

@shiryusamarkanda it’s so nice to hear from you again! <3

I totally didn’t forget to post this and had it fully finished in my drafts for days...totally.

Naruto

What I love about them:

Naruto's a bratty kid who’s not afraid to speak up and challenge something he thinks is "wrong". This, of course, is part 1 Naruto. I actually like when he's a bit insensitive without being explicitly malicious bc its very fitting for his background/how he grew up but also gives him a clear path forward as he learns how to work as a team/starts to grow. It wasn’t exactly a smart move, but I really liked how he continued to challenge Zabuza in the Wave Arc saying “he’s still my enemy” after Kakashi told him to back off. This is all good and strong characterization that, to me, was more often endearing than it wasn’t. Naruto had goals and a purpose and in early Naruto that was still clear.

What I hate about them:

Part 2 (Shippuden) Naruto. There’s a lot that goes into this but the core deviation is getting away from the underdog story. In Shippuden Naruto is the son of the 4th, the Child of Prophecy, a reincarnation of the Sage of Six Path’s kid, makes friends with Kurama, and has the most OP power of the them all: Talk no Jutsu. What makes all of this even worse is Naruto went from a loveable bratty kid to an insufferable messiah figure. To be “perfect” his natural personality is shorn down until he’s only allowed occasional “stupid” mistakes rather than mistakes that emerge from his characterization. This also makes his ideological “wins” with villains...completely meaningless. Shippuden Naruto doesn’t really...have beliefs. He wants to be hokage and bring Sasuke back to the village. “Being hokage” was fine as a kid but I expected the progression into shippuden to be “what kind of hokage do I want to be?” This seemed natural bc we get in the Wave arc Naruto pushing against “what a shinobi is supposed to be: a tool” from Haku and declaring he’d make his own ninja way. Flashforward to the chunin arcs: hates Orochimaru for messing with Sasuke (esp when he eventually leaves to join him) and Neji for treating Hinata the way he did until he learned more about the Hyuga before declaring it wasn’t fair and you had to fight against fate and destiny. Tsunade’s arc was more about reemphasizing the village was something worth protecting and the Sasuke retrieval arc, while focused on Sasuke, at least kept up this theme. But these moments of growth are only alluded to in shippuden and by the time the war arc and ending come around...nothing changes. Naruto didn’t upset the status quo, he only maintained it. And once that ending was established it was a lot easier to go back and pick out exactly when his characterization started to fall through and the weird messiah figure took over instead. Part of this, imo, is the focus of his ultimate goal being “bring Sasuke back to the village” rather than understand what Sasuke is doing/why he’s doing it and then deciding to help him or stop him.

Favorite Moment/Quote:

“You’re cute when you’re chubby” [in reference to the frog purse]

I really love the quiet moments Naruto has and watching him live out his daily life. The frog purse is absolutely adorable and I love seeing it crop up time and time again. A close second is when Gai kicks Jiraiya in the face and, a short time later, offers Naruto the green tracksuit which he’s appreciative of.

What I would like to see more focus on:

In Part 2 Naruto having a long-term goal alongside bringing Sasuke back to the village or trying to seriously think about why Sasuke does what he does and how that would potentially affect the plot. If I could go back to the very start, keeping the actual heart and intent of an underdog ninja story rather than everything turning into superpowered mecha/kaiju battles and aliens from space this is the big point that I’d want to address. In general, I really like fics that focus on training and give him a range of jutsu besides spamming shadow clones and rasengan variants. I’ve said this before, but if Naruto really wants to keep the “number 1 unpredictable ninja” moniker, learning a variety of small, diverse jutsu and using them in interesting/creative ways would be the way to go rather than spamming the aforementioned two. I also really like fics that buckle down and just go ham and create their own variety of jutsu, especially if it’s small practical jutsu rather than the latest and greatest OP Power #839281 kind of jutsu.

What I would like to see less focus on:

The messiah figure. Talk no Jutsu. The obsession with having a morally pure hero in a world that routinely employed child soldiers and put them in war. I understand Naruto was a shonen manga first and foremost but like...this was the setting/world Kishimoto decided on having. However, I will say some fics take it to far on the other extreme for my taste, creating a edgy nihilistic Naruto that hates everyone and everything.

Favorite pairing with:

Uhh...I don’t actually have a strong feeling for this one LOL. The most I’ve read has been SasuNaru (Sasuke x Naruto) because I’ve found really interesting set-ups. I like the ship and it does have a decent amount of backing in canon but it’s the little moments (or my ability to see possible little moments) that really make or break a ship for me. SasuNaru is all Big Declarations and I struggle to see how they’d actually settle down post Shippuden time into something sustainable. My favorite iterations of the ship is focused when they’re genin age and have a better relationship...but then I recognize that this is getting closer and closer to Hashimada. The other big things I run into with shipping Naruto with Sasuke is 1. Sasuke needs a shit ton of therapy/willingness to process his family related trauma and 2. Naruto needs a good support network/family outside of a romantic partner because it personally makes me uncomfortable to read ‘you’re my one and only’ (here being: I have no other friends, family, loved ones outside of you). It’s a ship that can work but it’s not my personal OTP.

Favorite friendship:

Canon/OoT - Naruto & Sakura

I do have a softspot for fics where Naruto realizes his crush on Sakura is actually a desire to have friends/someone to care about him and then they do become close. In canon Sasuke was clearly the favorite of Kakashi (if chunin arc is kept the same/similar and he takes him away for the month to train) I really like Naruto and Sakura sticking together and trying to help each other. They’re both loud and can wind each other up but Naruto can help Sakura relax a bit from her rigid view of herself and she can help keep him on track/encourage him.

NOTP:

Again, no real strong opinions here. Probably harems? I remember seeing a lot of those a couple years ago and I fundamentally dislike the harem so it will never be ‘done well’ to my personal taste.

Favorite headcanon:

Naruto is smart, he just needs things to be explained in a way he can understand.

I’m not a fan of ‘he’s the smartest person in the entire world’ trope but Naruto is creative, he created the oiroke jutsu before he graduated to genin and has a lot of stubborn determination. He’s just really bad at typical ‘book learning’ and traditional testing and he’s not a genius/prodigy like Sasuke or Neji.

Read line for BNHA manga spoilers

Izuku

What I love about them:

He’s such a smart kid and while he’s unsure/insecure about himself he still does his best. Honestly the premise of BNHA is amazing and I was so excited to watch this little quirky (heh) boy do his best and outthink heroes, utilizing his intelligence and knowledge of quirks. I really love early Izuku and how he has to approach situations from a different angle bc he grew up quirkless/can’t properly handle OFA. The sports festival arc remains one of my personal favorites and really showed his ingenuity. I also really love that Izuku is openly emotional, he cries, he gets super happy about things, he’s angry, he’s sad, etc.

What I hate about them:

Why do stories insist on calling themselves “underdogs” when for a majority of the time, they’re not? Or not as much as they would be from the original premise? Look, TDP came about exactly bc BNHA was billed as ‘quirkless boy becomes number 1 hero’ it changed rapidly into ‘Izuku gets the strongest quirk but can’t control it’ and while I was...disappointed with that, it happened so quickly I wasn’t really upset. Fast forward to apparently OFA has...what seven(?) quirks inside it and I just...it’s frustrating. Even more the longer we go the more Izuku strays away from a character that is forced to use his intelligence and creatively outthink his opponents and instead becomes...I just have to hit him harder! The Muscular fight already inched towards this but the Overhaul fight just felt like Super Shonen Smack-down 728329. Which, isn’t an inherent problem, it just doesn’t match up to the expectations I had about BNHA I had at the start and how I hoped the series would go. For a character trait that I hate: Izuku is stupidly self-sacrificing. It makes sense with his character but he shoots beyond what is safe and reasonable and I wish there would be more internal emphasis on the question “is it better to save one person today if it meant I couldn’t save ten people tomorrow?” I think he’d choose the former or forsake the question altogether (we touched briefly on this during the overhaul arc with Eri) but I think it’s a serious question needs to be touched on (or I just need to go back and rewatch things again LOL)

Favorite Moment/Quote:

See entire sports festival arc. I don’t really have a favorite moment because I love the entire arc and we get so much out of it.

What I would like to see more focus on:

Quirkless Izuku. There’s already a lot of fics, but I really do love them. It deviates a bit, but I do like the creativity of giving Izuku his own unique quirk and then exploring what he can do with that/how it changes canon. Really I want Izuku to keep his original characterization and not trade his smarts for more punching power or deus ex machinas for quirks hidden inside of OFA. If OFA!Izuku is kept, I like story ideas where he still has to rely on means outside of his quirk. Preferably this is isn’t because he injuries himself so much, but I like toying with the idea that Izuku never gets OFA to All Might’s level so he really does have to make the quirk his own and still rely heavily on his intelligence and quirk journals to become the number 1.

What I would like to see less focus on:

Quirks hidden inside OFA. Strength should have been enough, it was already billed as the most powerful quirk of all. I know this is a common theme for shonen stories, and I don’t mean to harp specifically on Izuku, but again the premise of BNHA was an underdog story.

Favorite pairing with:

Tododeku (Todoroki Shouto x Midoriya Izuku)

Friends to lover and battle couples lads, I am weak to them. I like the contrast between their personalities as well as origins (Shouto being the number 2′s (now 1) kid and Izuku from a quiet civilian background). At the end of the sports festival arc both of them are extremely well characterized and it’s easy for me to imagine how their relationship progresses from there and how they can support each other and help each other grow. It’s a very sweet and wholesome ship the way I write and read it and it’s v cute.

Favorite friendship:

Canon- Midoriya Izuku & Uraraka Ochaco & Iida Tenya

I really like the core trio and think their interactions are really sweet. They balance each other out well and their friendship was immediately believable to me. I also like later when Tsuyu and Shouto start to get included in the group and out of the “main” core friends I’m endlessly entertained whenever Izuku and Tokoyami interact with one another. (This is also because I love my bird son, but you know.)

TDP - Midoriya Izuku & Ashido Mina or Midoriya Izuku & Hatsume Mei

Really, I love all of TDP’s kiddos interactions. Their chemistry is one of my favorite things about the fic and all the villain school kiddos meshed really well and had hilarious interactions. Mina and Mei are my faves but just barely. Mina came out of left field for the fic but she plays a similar role that Ochaco does in canon as a usual source of positivity (but unlike Ochaco with additional chaos). She’s Izuku’s first real friend even before starting HIVVE and wouldn’t hesitate to call Izuku her cousin as she views him as family. In return, Mina’s someone Izuku can completely count and depend on if necessary. Mei is...Mei. Izuku is her best “useful customer” and it’s actually terrifying how similar their thoughts are, just Mei has an (un)healthy dose of Hazmat’s insanity and her own business acumen added into the mix. They have slightly different fields of interest but are intellectual equals that work well together and that’s something new to both of them.

NOTP:

Bakudeku (Bakugo Katsuki x Midoriya Izuku)

It’s unhealthy. Unless it’s an AU that changes what the start of their relationship is like, Bakugo and Izuku will always have a toxic friendship to me and I can’t ever see them in a healthy relationship. Both of them have a lot to learn and I am of the opinion that Bakugo should get the opportunity to grow and become a good person and leave behind his past as a bully. However, I’m also of the opinion that no matter how good of a person a bully becomes their victim is never required to absolve them of past wrongdoings. Izuku and Bakugo were friends once, their relationship turned toxic, and now it’s in the interest of both of them to grow apart from one another. I even hesitate to really say they’ll be friends again because the early characterization of their relationship was so imbalanced to me, but for the right author and the right work I may see them being on good terms. It’s still a romantic relationship that I dislike.

Favorite headcanon:

Crack headcanon? Izuku does have a natural quirk, the force of his tears is clearly superpowered 😂 Regular headcanon, (that is canon in TDP and kindaaa in regular canon(?)) when Izuku gets really engrossed in a super stressful fight he focuses on what will work rather than what is moral. It has...mixed results.

For the ask game.

#shiryusamarkanda #naruto #bnha #mha #naruto uzumaki #izuku midoriya #my fics #the diverging path #out of time #spoliers #bnha manga spoliers #asks

15 notes · View notes