#basically there's a lot to unpack. whether and how you like to see it unpacked is a personal preference

[gideonisms]

Nona/John Gaius

wow so we are rising to the challenge of finding a ship I can't get into Immediately, huh?

I don't exactly ship this one, but that's because for me there's no way to reduce this one to ship/don't ship, considering nona's complicated identity and the variety of power dynamics at play

why don't I ship it? There's actually a lot about this dynamic that I find interesting, ie exploring the reason alecto might have chosen John originally + the fact that nona is a version of alecto without the trauma. john is not the entirety of her trauma, but he's the most extreme example of the fact that alecto loves humanity deeply, and they keep hurting her. we see her fury in alecto, but not in nona, because nona is the way she's compartmentalized her anger and pain. So I find the nona/alecto dynamic with john really fascinating and relevant to muir's themes. it's also not something I'd necessarily read a sweet fluffy romance about, if that makes sense?

what would have made me like it? if tamsyn muir had written nona/john, I would trust her to make it fucked up enough

despite not shipping it, do I have anything positive to say about it? it's extremely relevant to the themes of tlt. It makes me deeply uncomfortable in a way that I think is kind of the point? muir's writing for john is so brilliant because she continually comes THIS close to the line of where I think people would find him completely unsympathetic even as a villain. she's playing with fire, bad faith reception-wise, and I can only respect it. to me, nona/john is that

[theminecraftbee]

do you think dl pearl and sl lizzie would've gotten along?

OKAY SO I HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS. and i think the answer depends on a lot of factors actually because like... okay lizzie and pearl have SIMILAR arcs but, crucially, they have different responses and attitudes about those arcs and also two hurt people who are lashing out at others. are not. in a headspace to easily make friends necessarily.

so we're gonna have to... i think it depends on whether you say "these are those guys in the MIDDLE of their arc" or "these are those guys AFTER their arc". most of the time i think people mean "if they're in the same series" so it would be during, and the answer is "i think dl pearl would be a LOT more willing to make friends than sl lizzie would be".

so like okay. let's unpack that. so let's start with dl pearl. while she's somewhat defined by being alone, lashing out at people, it's 5 am pearl she's doing questionable things and isolating herself in response to the fact everyone has shunned her, it's not that she doesn't want friends. she opens MOST of her interactions with being willing to open a hand of friendship, it's just that everyone rejects her as 'crazy' or 'dangerous', or she's just like, not really wanted as a friend for some reason or another. and then she lashes out, and tells herself she's fine alone anyway, but the key is she does want the friends.

also of note is that, while pearl is associated with being a red name because her COLOR scheme was red and she had her red name skin on basically the whole time, she... wasn't. she wasn't a red name. she was one of the last yellow names actually she only went red in basically the last episode. she was PLAYING UP being red. she was PLAYING IN to the narrative she was dangerous. but she... wasn't actually on red, and while she's often ATTRIBUTED revenge as a motive, it was less revenge and more a defensive "if you're going to treat me as evil i'll show you evil", if that makes sense.

so like, i could see pearl, in a similar scenario to when she allied with ren and martyn, trying to befriend lizzie. because she would see herself in lizzie! hell, arguably secret life pearl DOES do that! but even mid-arc, worst of herself double life pearl would go "oh you ALSO have a broken heart maybe we can be demons together?" to lizzie i think.

the problem is that i don't know if lizzie would buy it.

SO. secret life lizzie. so the thing is about secret life lizzie is that she is ALSO rejected by the people around her. the difference is, it's not for some perceived quality in her that makes her dangerous; she sort of starts isolating herself first, before she tries to reach out. this is because if i had to attribute a trait to life series lizzie it might be paranoid? ineffectually paranoid, she's not paranoid in a way that's useful, but like. she tends to perceive everyone around her as Weirdos who are Dangerous and Out to Get Her. she's the only sensible one around here in her mind. (note that this is not me assigning lizzie of all people as ACTUALLY the sensible one are you kidding me have you seen that lady. this is me saying this is how she tends to see the world.)

this, in turn, works against her. when she's first trying to get everyone to sleep and then everyone to go to the end--in other words, getting everyone to show up to her party--they don't. and it's not, typically, so much because they personally distrust her. (note the way people talked about lizzie was REALLY not the same way people talked about pearl at all!) it's because lizzie has given them no reason to trust her. she's not an ally, she's obviously trying to do a task, it's possibly a trap, the end is really dangerous, so... thanks but the last party in this series had explosives under it.

the END RESULT is still lizzie being isolated! the END RESULT is still her resentful and alone after no one but joel shows up to her slumber party! but the root causes are a little different. true, you could argue pearl is rejected in part because of her own actions, but it's not in the same way lizzie is. pearl was WILLING to trust, even afterwards, and gets rejected both because of a system that ended up stacked against her and because of one mistake she's not being allowed to make up for. she's persecuted and seen as evil. lizzie, meanwhile, is rejected indirectly, less a rejection of her as a person and more a result of the fact that lizzie doesn't play the social game well, doesn't trust anyone herself, and puts herself at risk as a result of that.

anyway this also adds up with. lizzie was turned red by a horrible careless accident by jimmy. pearl was turned red as part of the final hunt of all the red names on the server, an intentional act. lizzie died first. pearl died last. lizzie was resentful and wanted revenge as a red name, both because of her rejection and because that's who she is as a person. pearl wanted to win as a red name, and her actions as a red name more followed from her already existing actions. pearl was willing to trust and have loyalty, but no one was willing to return it. lizzie doesn't want to have to trust or be loyal in the first place.

the RESULT? i think double life pearl would offer to be friends with lizzie and lizzie would decide that pearl was a crazy person who was mocking her. and which way that ends up resolving to--a friendship, an enemyship, a mutual respect--would be a FASCINATING story to explore from there.

anyway there are people who are better lizzie and pearl experts than me who probably have more to add her and bits of my character interpretation to confirm or deny (lord knows i could have them very wrong i am not good at writing out meta that isn't in the form of a fic) but in conclusion: this too is yuri,

[duhragonball]

Roundabout

I watched CJ the X's video about Rick and Morty, mainly because I kept seeing people screencap the parts about perfectionism near the beginning. Well, I thought I should see it for myself, and then I wound up getting pulled into the "Story Circle" concept used by series co-creator Dan Harmon.

This may be old news to a lot of people-- in fact, I'm sure it is, because Harmon admits that this is heavily based on the monomyth concept popularized by Joseph Campbell. I've never fully appreciated the "Hero's Journey" idea before, but I think Harmon has refined it by simplifying the names of the steps. "Atonement with the Father" just becomes "Take", and that's a lot easier for me to grasp. Campbell probably never meant to suggest that every story features a literal "atonement with the father", but his work involved identifying common elements in story structure, so I'm sure he had trouble coming up with fitting names for everything.

Harmon's circle might be a little too simplified, since there's a lot to unpack in the word "Take", but his model is focused on making a formula to write new stories, as opposed to comparative mythology. What I like a lot about the Story Circle is that Harmon insists that it's not a rule that must be learned and followed. Rather, it's an observation of something all humans do when they tell stories, whether they realize it or not. But sometimes it can be helpful to be made aware of the pattern, like checking a map even when you're familiar with the route.

It can be fun, although probably distracting, to apply the circle to existing works. The Star Wars movies used Campbell's monomyth as a blueprint, so that's probably too easy. But it can also be used on individual scenes too. Luke(1) falls down a trap door and now he has to find a way back out (2) before the rancor eats him (3). He manages to avoid being eaten using a bone and some nooks and crannies in the pit (4) but at last he finds a door out of the dungeon, except it's locked, leaving him cornered (5). But he manages to drop a heavy gate on the rancor as it approaches him, which kills it (6). The bad guys then open the door to bring him back to Jabba (7), who now prepares to feed him to an even worse monster outside (8).

And that probably sets up the next cycle in the movie, where Luke saves everyone from the next monster, and so on. I think at long last I understand why these kinds of story structures are presented as "circles" or cycles". You don't have to do multiple laps, but the structure allows you to do so, and acknowledges that multiple cycles can also form a larger circle, and so on.

With episodic television series, the final step, change, often means reverting to the status quo. There's a M*A*S*H episode where Radar tries to become a serious writer, and he keeps trying to inject his army reports with purple prose, until finally Hawkeye explains to him that he has to use his own words and stop trying to imitate what he thinks the "pros" use. So Radar does learn a lesson, but the lesson basically puts an end to the weird dialogue he was using the whole episode and puts him back to normal. The Korean War doesn't end, and Colonel Potter doesn't die, and Klinger still wears dresses, but the structure is still followed and sets up the next cycle.

I can see how this is very useful in a writers' room for a television show, especially one like Rick and Morty, where the characters seem to be capable of almost anything. It probably helps to take stray ideas like "Rick turns himself into a pickle!" and run that through a formula to make sure you can get a working script out of the gag.

Anyway, I'm currently trying to use it to flesh out some ideas for my fanfic, since I have a lot of story beats I want to accomplish, but I don't have much to connect them together. Using the Story Circle seems to be helping me figure out which pieces I'm missing, so maybe this will compensate for all those years where I could just use DBZ Episode 66 and Xenoverse 1 as loose outlines that I could follow. This fall, I gotta build my own story skeleton before I can fill it in, and the clock is ticking...

[usergreenpixel]

JACOBIN FICTION CONVENTION MEETING 37: CHÉVALIER (2022)

1. The Introduction

Well, hello there, Citizens! I’m back and I hope you missed me! Sorry for the multiple delays and all, but luckily I’m back at it now!!!

Okay, so this movie has been on my radar ever since it got announced. A story featuring a real Black man who lived during Frev? Sign me up! This has excellent potential and also, to my knowledge, at least a partially Black crew so we get more representation of marginalized groups in crews and on the screen!

At least, those were my thoughts before I actually watched the movie, but we’ll get to whether it was a good media piece later.

I found the movie on Russian language streaming websites, but it’s available on Amazon Prime and Disney Plus for those who would like to watch the original English version.

This review is dedicated to @idieonthishill , @vivelareine (who has a review that unpacks the movie from a historical pov and is welcome to add to the review 😊), @theravenclawrevolutionary , @sansculottides , @citizentaleo , @saintjustitude , @avergehistoryenjoyer , @lanterne and @jenxiez .

Okay, let the Jacobin Fiction Convention reopen!

2. The Summary

The movie tells a story of a real man, Joseph Bologne aka Chévalier de Saint-Georges. Recognized son of a white French nobleman and an enslaved black woman, Bologne must navigate the cutthroat world of the Parisian high society, dealing with racism and trying to reconcile his “white” upbringing with his African roots.

Sounds interesting, but let’s see how the premise was handled.

3. The Story

The Introduction scene - a musical duel between Mozart and Bologne, was actually quite good in my opinion. So were the other beginning scenes of kid Bologne growing up in France as an aristocrat and being bullied by his white peers, plus his father telling him not to let society break him.

These scenes establish quite well that Bologne has to carve out a place for himself among French nobility and make a lot of effort to get even a hint of acceptance. Sounds like a nice setup, right? Well, unfortunately at times Bologne in the movie doesn’t seem to have much agency at all.

For example, his title is granted to him by Marie-Antoinette basically on a whim, handed to him on a silver platter because the queen was impressed by his fencing skills, which in my opinion isn’t enough to show a character who has to work hard to be accepted. I think it would’ve been better if Bologne had at least several impressive fencing performances to prove himself and show more of his skills.

On the flip side, there are characters who have a bit too much agency. For example, in the story it’s Marie Antoinette who is calling all the shots and giving all the orders in France, even though Louis is alive and well. It’s definitely jarring to see how people say “by the order of the queen” when the king should be the one mentioned instead.

I didn’t care much for the love triangle storyline, but it’s my own personal preference and also the fact that it, like many parts of the story, isn’t all that nuanced. So yeah, very bland and boring.

Yes, Citizens, unfortunately nuance has officially left the chat, especially when it comes to the main character. See, at first Bologne doesn’t give a shit about poverty and famine plaguing France. He is enjoying his cushy life and his friendship with the queen of France instead. However, you know what makes him join the Jacobins? A fucking PERSONAL FALLING OUT WITH THE QUEEN. Not promises of abolishing slavery or granting rights to black people, not his own ideals… Just fucking pettiness!

It would have been much better if he didn’t have a falling out with Marie Antoinette and signed up for fighting with the Republicans because he genuinely wanted to do what was right, not due to personal beef. Especially since that was why he joined Frev in reality – the real Bologne made a choice to do the right thing simply because it seemed to be the right thing to him. Not out of petty desire to get back at the queen.

Also, the conflict between Bologne and his mother about how he is acting “too white”… eeeehh. To me it felt very anachronistic but maybe I’m wrong and there is more nuance missing because EVERYONE at court had to carry themselves in a certain way to make it. If you couldn’t do it, you were socially FUCKED. Besides, Nanon (the mother) and her friends crack really mean jokes about Bologne being “too white”, which is… well, an INTERESTING way to endear him to his mother’s culture…

The movie is juggling admittedly anachronistic theme about black culture, anti-slavery message, court drama and love triangles… and the juggling is done quite sloppily too, I’m afraid.

Also, just to illustrate how inaccurate this movie is, the events of 1789 are shown happening in 1776 for some reason, which shows just how much the creators didn’t give a shit about research.

Moving on.

4. The Characters

I really didn’t care for Bologne to be honest. He shows selfishness and pettiness, doesn’t have enough agency in the story and is also very inconsistent. After falling out with Marie Antoinette, he claims he defended her, which… he didn’t! At least it’s not shown in the movie! What the fuck happened to “show, don’t tell”?! Also, his incredible talents aren’t really shown in the way they could’ve been, more on that in the soundtrack section. A missed opportunity, really.

Nanon, Bologne’s mother, is a real embodiment of the themes of slavery and trauma present in the the movie. She merely exists to push him to embrace his African heritage and to remind him that he will never be truly accepted by other nobles. I honestly wish there was more to her character, because she ends up being little more than a walking theme embodiment.

Marie Antoinette here is a capricious, fair weather friend. She CLAIMS to support Bologne, but does it in indirect ways out of fear that nobles wouldn’t appreciate her openly backing a black man. Even though she is an absolute monarch so she can afford to show her support more openly. Actions speak louder than words, and she is clearly not a true ally of Bologne.

Marie Joséphe, Bologne’s love interest, is a woman trapped in a miserable marriage and yearning to act in Bologne’s operas. While I do sympathize with her, I believe that there really isn’t much depth to her either. We just don’t learn much about her. This is becoming a common theme…

Also, just as a side note while we’re talking about characters, many white characters in the movie are shown as mere flat caricatures. I can understand why, but, again, this doesn’t show nuance as in reality, while Bologne definitely had to deal with racism, he was not only accepted, but adored as a celebrity, but we don’t see that reflected in the attitudes of other people towards him. Because apparently the brains of the spectators will implode when they see nuance in a modern movie, it seems.

5. The Setting

Personally I wasn’t that impressed by the costumes or the settings. I’ve seen much better ones. Nothing bad, but nothing outstanding either.

6. The Soundtrack

Where the fuck is actual music from that time period?! Where is music by Bologne himself?! It’s a fucking missed opportunity and I don’t know what prevented the creators from including the music written by the MAIN DAMN CHARACTER into a biopic about him. A shame that they missed yet another opportunity.

7. The Conclusion

Honestly… I can’t say much when it comes to what this movie is fucking about. The story is bland, lacks nuance, doesn’t follow basic historical facts and is pulled in a million directions.

For a movie about an obscure figure, it doesn’t show much of the things Bologne was known for and at times even strips him of agency. We need to have better POC representation, because this is just not it.

The movie is mediocre, bland and forgettable. Don’t waste your time on it.

With that, I declare today’s meeting of the Jacobin Fiction Convention to be over. Thank you for your patience and support during this hiatus of mine.

Stay tuned and stay safe!

Love,

Citizen Green Pixel

[ispeacetoomuchtoaskfor]

On the Subject of Susan

I'm going to be a little blunt and my words may seem antagonistic here. But no hate, please. I'm just trying to analyze and provide my analysis based on the very simple facts. Now.

I've never quite understood the anger at C. S. Lewis for how he ended Susan's tale. Mainly, I suppose, because I had the whole story.

Everyone gets angry that Susan is "banned from Narnia" because she likes lipstick and nylon stockings and being a teenage girl in the 1940s, but no one seems to understand that that's not quite how it went, much less that Susan still has a chance.

Let me work backwards a moment and explain the latter. You see, to quote Lewis himself, in a letter to a girl called Marcela in 1955,

"...Haven’t you noticed in the two you have read that she is rather fond of being too grownup? I am sorry to say that side of her got stronger and she forgot about Narnia... ...She is left alive in this world at the end, having been turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end—in her own way. I think that whatever she had seen in Narnia she could (if she was the sort that wanted to) persuade herself, as she grew up, that it was ‘all nonsense’”

Now, there's a lot to unpack here, but first and foremost, my point is quite simple. "Perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end-in her own way." It was always meant to be open ended, for Susan. Narnia is not forever closed to her, unless you and she choose so.

"But Peace!" I can hear you saying, "There's that whole 'too fond of being grownup' phrase!" Why yes, yes there is, how clever of you to notice. The whole point of the latter portion of Susan's arc is that she chose that- lipstick and nylons and "being grownup"- over Narnia. She grew and she chose to forget Narnia.

After all, what sort of modern teenage girl (in England, during WW2) would be so interested in medieval times and what they probably explained to their friends to be a good old game of pretend? No, no, she can't remember Narnia right now - she's going to the cinema with a few girl friends, she's going to a party, she's focusing on everything but there and inevitably, after pushing it away for so long, Narnia let her be.

You see, C. S. Lewis was a very Arminian (and yes, I spelled it correctly) Christian theologian. And while I'm sure most of you here on this hellsite would like to ignore that, it is relevant to how Lewis wrote his fiction. After all, it's at the core of his basic beliefs, despite his being a staunch atheist in college and into his adulthood, and despite what you may like to think, it crept into his writing even when he did not intend it. For example, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is called an allegory for the story of the Resurrection, despite Lewis' arguments to the contrary. He insisted that it be seen as what it is, very heavy symbolism. Very heavily used Christian symbolism, that is all over the Chronicles whether you like it or not.

Let me explain why this is relevant to Susan, what Arminianism even is, and how that term applies here. Susan is, so to speak, a symbol of an atheist left behind, after all of the Christians she called family died. In a situation where you regard Christianity as true, she is left on Earth while they have gone on to heaven. And this doesn't mean that the gates of heaven are closed to her, quite to the contrary! They would be closed on the day she died insisting that Jesus Christ was not Lord, plain and simple. She has a choice to make, so long as she is alive.

Now, to Calvinist theologians and Christians, Susan never had a choice. Either Aslan, the God symbol here, chose to bring her in, or he didn't. Calvinists believe in a thing called predestination, the concept that every believer that would ever be brought to heaven is chosen specifically by God. Arminianism declares the opposite. It's a whole thing in Christian theological circles, but that's irrelevant to this discussion. In any case, the core of Arminianism is that you and I have a choice in whether or not we believe in God, and in whether or not we go to heaven.

To an Arminian theologian, God, or Aslan in this symbolic case, can influence our choice, Susan's choice, up to a point. Once we reach that point, once Susan forgets, God, or Aslan, steps back. He accepts our choice, allows Susan to forget. It's up to us, up to Susan after that.

Lewis was an Arminian theologian. He made the point, repeatedly, in his theological works, about people having a choice.

He repeats that point with Susan.

One last thing, before you go. You see, there was another letter about Susan, after The Last Battle was released. He'd been asked if he ever intended to finish Susan's story.

This was his answer.

“I could not write that story myself. Not that I have no hope of Susan’s ever getting to Aslan’s country; but because I have a feeling that the story of her journey would be longer and more like a grown-up novel than I wanted to write. But I may be mistaken. Why not try it yourself?”

Well, my people? Now that you've heard what I had to say (and say through quite the essay, my apologies), why not? Go, do what you do and tell her story for yourself. The author has encouraged fanfiction, so go on! And don't worry about Christianity and symbolism too much. It may help you understand how and why Lewis wrote what he did, but unless you're determined to have your tale in his style and overlapping seamlessly with canon, it's unnecessary. Unless you choose to make it a part of your life, you don't have to be concerned about it.

Feel free to ask questions, and I'll answer to the best of my ability, with Google by my side!

Also, I nearly forgot. There are absolutely other problems with Susan being the last of her family, left alone in the aftermath of WW2. This is not the place to talk about those, however, merely to help you understand why she "is no longer a friend of Narnia" and to remind you that there's always hope.

Oh, and besides that, don't forget that I'm talking about the books and not the movies thank you very much, while The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was absolutely perfect to canon the other two were not and I'm not going to consider them in this post. I do appreciate them, but when dealing with book canon they're both nos.

[regenderate]

i just realized i've never posted my rant about what yaz could've been on here

basically i think the show gives yaz a bunch of different traits/experiences/etc as vehicles for messages to the audience and then never actually connects those traits/experiences/etc or lets them build up into a properly nuanced character. like when the show wants to Talk About Racism she talks about her experiences with racism and when the show wants to Talk About Mental Health we see a single crisis from her teenage years but those things don't come up outside of their respective episodes/scenes/messages

like. okay. here are some things we know about yaz. yaz:

quickly corrects gendered language

doesn't have a lot of friends

was/is the target of racist harassment

was bullied in school

ran away from home/is implied to have been suicidal or attempted suicide

celebrates the anniversary of her not-suicide with her sister but not her parents

is into women

all of these things so clearly connect into a full and complex character. but they're all so isolated! we never see how yaz running away and her sister being worried affects her once she starts traveling with the doctor (thereby disappearing from her family again). when her family isn't onscreen, we don't really hear about them-- we don't hear about whether sonya's worried about her, or what her parents think. she seems to have a good relationship with her grandmother but we mostly only see that when the episode is about it. we never hear about whether her race and orientation play into the bullying she got at school. we never hear about whether any of that is part of why she needed the tardis as an escape. the show somehow acts like her being suicidal is a one-time thing and fixed with a single pep talk, which anyone who's ever been suicidal knows is not how that works. if the scene isn't About the life event or struggle in question, it's like it doesn't exist.

and like... yaz as a character is so interesting if you connect these traits. if you think about her as a young pakistani muslim (closeted/repressed) wlw trying to get by in school, and then the trauma she incurred at the hands of others, and the bond she might've had with her sister, and the arguments she might've had with her parents, and then how all of that might've contributed to her running away/being suicidal, and then joining the police force thinking it'll help people because the one cop helped her when she ran away, and then realizing that she's not helping people/that the job isn't what she wants but she doesn't know how to get out, and then, after all of that, meeting the doctor and getting to travel time and space, and finally recognizing her love for what it is, and struggling with being away from her sister and with unpacking some of her childhood/her family stuff now she's finally separated from it-- if you think about all of that, you create such a beautiful and authentic character. but in the show, all of these traits and experiences seem to exist in isolation, and you don't see how they all come together to affect and create yaz's character.

i don't know. it bothers me that she has so much potential to be a really grounded character who i think a lot of people her age (also my age! i was 19 when twwfte came out!) could relate to. i always really wanted to see a scene in ghost monument where she has a moment of panic and realizes she's basically disappeared from her family again and has already almost died at least once and might not get back to them. it's just stuff like that that would have made her feel a lot more coherent and complete to me.

[nicoleanell]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[soo-won]

Hi!! I’ve been following your tumblr and Twitter for a while now and I love all your akayona analyses. ❤️ I remember your rambles about headcanoning Suwon as transmasc/transfem? Could I hear more abt that? It’s rlly cool cause I feel he’s portrayed in an incredibly gender neutral light, in comparison to many other male leads :)

Thank you so much for wonderful ask! I'm glad you like my analysis :') Idk who you are but thank you for the support!!

And yeah! I headcanon Suwon as non-binary and there is a lot to unpack about his gender imo...I very much believe akayona has a lot to say about gender especially through Yona and Suwon's characters, and in that Suwon being a man and Yona being a woman is thematically important. But the way the story presents this theme in Suwon's character in his struggle (or lack of) with balancing between "masculinity" and "feminity" can make him easily readable as trans. Transfem or transmasc and every nuance in between.

I've also been headcanoning him as non-binary from before the manga truly explored these aspects only because I'm non-binary and I related to him too so it's not that deep. But as you said he is portrayed more gender neutrally than most male characters of the cast from the beginning and I think it's worth exploring. Whether he's gender non confirming in universe is interesting to discuss too, because you have other characters like Joon-gi for example, but he's at least not really traditionally masculine from our standards when you first see him.

(Long post under the cut)

But as much as it doesn't have to be that deep, I'm also convinced it actually is and that's why I'm entering character analysis territory here, so please stay with me ahah. When I think about Suwon's gender, I just can't not think about his parents and what they represent to him and how that ties to his overall character arc. Yuhon and Yonhi are pretty much the "ideal" symbols of traditional masculinity and feminity we have in the story in their gender roles and the values associated with them. Suwon is one of the rare character we have a glimpse of both parents that lived long enough for him to remember and be impacted by both. This sounds silly but basically Suwon's gender is like,, if a man and a woman had a baby to me fnbkjhbgkjhbgh.

In universe, Yuhon represents strength, courage and reason. He is the traditional and ideal male. He is bold, brash, dominant. He is the parent Suwon deeply admires and longed to be like, and that he then took upon himself to replace after his passing. He's the figure everyone in Kouka remembers positively as a competent and strong leader. He's the parent that taught Suwon to see people as pieces on a chessboard and to always be pragmatic, to make the most effective and straightforward decisions. Suwon inherented some of these traits himself, but the entire struggle of his character is that he isn't and cannot exactly be his father, that he can't follow in his father's footsteps (or what he thinks they are) as much as he and the people around him would like. This ideal masculinity represented by Yuhon is not something Suwon is able to achieve and that we should wish for. The other side of the coin is dominance and violence, it's stealing the agency of others with no regard to their person, it's causing a chain of pain and more violence. Suwon, ultimately, cannot and shouldn't respond to all these expectations. They're not him. Because he is also Yonhi's son, which he tried to cover as much as he can as a King.

Because in contrast, Yonhi represents the "ideal femininity" that is passive, sentimental and kind. Her assigned role was only to serve Yuhon and Suwon, and had no power for much else. In appearance, she's the ideal wife and mother. She is conventionally very feminine, we see her with different garments, accessories and haircut in every scene, hinting that it's something she likes (especially when you compare with Kashi)... She's kept in the dark about Yuhon's secrets and all he does when he leaves the castle and fights on the battlefield. She has no agency. She is the parent forgotten by all, never mentioned even by Suwon, who died with nothing to her name. She is the parent that didn't want Suwon to kill Il but to think about Yona, she is the one who taught him about kindness. (i also mentionned yuhon and yonhi's respective legacy here)

And the irony is, physically Suwon is almost a copy of his mother. At first glance, Suwon is in general much more like her than he is like Yuhon. Suwon is pretty and cute, and is assumed to be weak, passive, and lacking in general as a warrior. Suwon, who wishes he was like his father, looks "nothing" like him and actually looks like his very feminine mother. And the thing is, what makes him so gender ambiguous is that he actually embraces that. Suwon uses his appearance and plays with the perception others have of him so they underestimate him (Geuntae, Soojin, Li Hazara,...) he has a very similar haircut as his mother, is interested in swordfight, tactics, but he's also into flowers, tea and sweets, he wore clothes with flower and butterflies patterns before his coronation (which is not supposed to be only a women thing of course but in universe I don't have any other example of male characters having those so I take it into account), he interacts with other female characters like a peer that share the same interests, too. He is first perceived the same way as Il and the opposite of his father or warriors like Geuntae, Mundok or Hak. He isn't like Il or Yonhi though, and that's what makes him not entirely feminine either, he actually proves himself as a man to these people after all.

But even as a child, Suwon took up the role of a mother for Yona like it was the most natural thing in the world. And in a similar fashion he also took up the role of Yuhon to "take care" and "protect" his mother, and to lead Kouka. Suwon is able to navigate both feminine and masculine roles depending on what is the most fitting to the situation at hand, and he achieves that with little struggle. This is probably the point that makes him so gender fluid? He's fine with both, it feels natural to him, this is what differentiates him from his parents' image shackled by very stereotypical gender norms. It's definitely what makes him so unique and himself. Suwon is always described as having equal interests and curiosity for everything and everyone, and it plays a part in this as well. In a world where interests are gender divided, where women are encouraged to have interest in love, fashion, luxuries and where the men are rather into sword training or studies, Suwon who can jump from one to the other with ease, like gender doesn't matter feels especially liberating.

But Suwon is actually still shackled and not immune to patriarchy and it all ties to the meaning behind the position of a King. Suwon loved his mother, and he sincerely loved Yona before the coup just like she was for being cute and kind and bringing him warmth. "Feminity" isn't a sin or bad to Suwon, he even values it. However, for him and many others in universe, all these things are unfitting for a King, like...he likes it, but he thinks he doesn't need it for his goal. Which leads us to King Il.

Suwon values "feminity" and is aware of that part of himself, but rejects it when he has to act as a King. "Masculinity" is about being strong, strong enough to protect, and being "feminine" puts you in a position of weakness and powerlessness. I don't think it's a coincidence that he inherited his illness from his mother either, which literally puts him in a position of vulnerability and weakness that he absolutely hates and tries to cover up. Feminity is fine for women and the roles assigned to them, they are lovely as they are, left behind but where they can keep being kind and sentimental while the strong men go to battle and manage affairs, basically. Kouka is a patriarchal society with all these norms being continuously enforced, and where being King was exclusively a masculine position until recent development. Before Suwon ascended to the throne, Yona was the first heir, yet the position of next ruler after her father wasn't to be given to her, but whoever would be her future husband. Yona would have been only a Queen, not one with particular ruling power, but in the sense of being the wife of the King, the same way Kashi was.

So then, Il appears as a failure as a King. He's the example and proof to Suwon that "feminity" is not compatible with the position and that he has to differentiate from him in every way. Suwon liked Il for his kindness and believed in him until he killed his father and proved to be uncompetent as a ruler. Il's kindness and reliance on the divine are unreasonable and based on emotionalism for Suwon. His refusal to use any weapon makes him a coward and weak, and waiting for the gods to save them makes him passive...It's what led Kouka to the sad state it was at the beginning of the story.

To Suwon, feelings, kindness, traits associated with feminity as we've seen, make him weak. He doesn't need it. It's what makes him reluctant and risks to deviate him from his goal and duties as a King. He can't afford to feel for Yona or anyone, he has to take the most efficient decisions with no remorse for people's feelings and especially not his. This is why Yona is so important and the lead of Akatsuki no Yona. Yona redefines what we associate with either masculinity and feminity. Strength, kindness, sentimentality, reason...They're all needed, they don't have to, and they shouldn't be divided so strickly and imposed on people based on their gender and roles. (Especially when it's obviously girls and women suffering from it the most). This divide between Yona and Suwon doesn't have to be, Suwon takes time to accept it, to accept Yona to enter his chessboard and value her as an equal and not just because she's kind and cute. And in doing so, it opens the door for him to also accept his own feelings, his own "weaknesses". Feelings and kindness actually hold so much power, they can actually make you stronger, that's what made Yona and Hak so bright to his eyes from the start, even if it took him long to fully realize it.

I feel like I deviated from the initial topic, but it's all important I swear. It doesn't mean Suwon gave up all his old ways either, he still embraces what he learned and admired in his father, not everything was forced upon him and I believe he genuinely connected with his father's vision. But it's about balancing this with the things he was convinced he had to reject and discard all this time.

That said, here are some examples of how it opens the door for transmasculine and transfeminine interpretations of Suwon's character arc, there can be others of course, but those are the ones I naturally came up with thinking about all this:

If you read Suwon's story as a transmasculine experience, it clicks. From how he was "cute as a girl" in his childhood to the experience of feeling like to be a man, to pass as a man, you have to reject everything that is associated with feminity and force yourself to accept masculine values that are just not your real self, to then realize you don't have to do all that to be a man and it's fine to embrace your "feminity" too. (Btw I really encourage you to read the Requiem of the Rose King manga that is explicitely about this topic!)

If you read Suwon's story as the transfeminine experience, it clicks too. Suwon feeling like he has to and being pushed to follow in his father's footstep when that's just not his real self. The way that he represses his self, the metaphor of closed box and how he locks his true self and feelings into them, until it becomes too much and he can't ignore it anymore. That being a man is not for him, and he doesn't have to be.

Of course, you can also read him as a cis man that is more or less gender non-conforming, or in any nuance of non-binarity in between, but in conclusion, that's what makes Suwon so gender to me. (and again, you don't need any of what I wrote in this post to headcanon him however you want)

There is also something to say about how he's "lacking as man" in how he has no romantic or sexual interest in women, if you take into account all the junctions between gender and heteronormativity that I didn't really bring up here. This point always made him really stand out to me, but Suwon's sexuality is such a Topic I didn't want to adventure myself into today ahah.

[theamityelf]

Here I am again with a question about Naeouma, eheh.

What do you think their relationship will be like after the killing game if everything happens in the simulation? I feel like they'll be similar to Oumota, only more... softer on Makoto's side???

I'd really like to hear your thoughts about this. Thanks in advance for the reply :)

Thanks for the ask! 😁

Honestly, I haven't read very much Oumota, but as a broad answer to that question, yes.

Post-game Naeouma would kind of have two aspects to their progression: the progression of their recovery from the killing game, and the progression of their relationship. When Makoto emerges from the simulation, he doesn't really take the time to address his own feelings/trauma all that much; he just gives himself refuge from them by talking to the other survivors, being social, staying positive, looking to the future. (More on that later.)

And in terms of Kokichi's side of things, I think Makoto would be very flexible about both his recovery and his approach to their relationship, but in a way that is also increasingly dedicated to honesty.

Kokichi emerges from the simulation, and I can imagine a lot of different ways for him to be (for example I kind of like the idea of him being pretty restless until he sees Makoto again), but for this I'm going to say he pretty much commits to acting like nothing in there affected him. He treats it like a nap; just sits up, stretches, and says a cavalier hello to everyone who died in there. Whether he died before or after Makoto (and wouldn't "after" be interesting? 👀), whenever he next sees Makoto, he tries to be his normal self about it. Just "Oh, hey, Koneko! You're back! I missed you when you weren't answering my calls, so I guess you have to make it up to me! 😇"

He's not (generally) lashing out at anyone unless he thinks it would help them (because he's concerned about their recovery), but he refuses to unpack what happened in there in anything but the most brutal terms. If someone tries to talk about how something make him feel, he would just insist on giving a factual and graphic account of what happened and a vague or overdramatized reaction. Basically, what they would get from him is either, "Oh, you mean when Kaede broke her neck playing the piano sh!tty and then we all cried?" or "And then he stabbed her and her blood was all over the floorboards and it was so, so yucky and sad. But anyway, next he got executed."

Makoto is pretty permissive about Kokichi's recovery, compared to (how I imagine) Kaito would be. He's not dictating a pace or really telling him what to do at all. Makoto does push Kokichi to be honest with himself about how he feels about things, but he doesn't demand that Kokichi be honest with others about it. So, when Kokichi jokes about things to deflect or cover a genuine emotion, Makoto will often say, "You don't mean that," or "That's not true," but he won't necessarily push for Kokichi to admit that. He'll point to contradictions between what Kokichi says and what he does, and then he'll listen to Kokichi making up unconvincing explanations that paint him as a chessmaster playing a cruel game, not interrupting or arguing, just making an unconvinced face, until Kokichi eventually stops and maybe says a quiet "Fine. So maybe you're right."

Makoto gives him an understanding look, but then Kokichi turns it around on him:

"But what about you?"

"Me? I'm fine."

"That's a lie!"

And then they're talking about Makoto's feelings, and whether he's really facing them.

And as I mentioned earlier, after the killing game and as they continue to grow closer, Makoto starts to ask for more honesty from Kokichi in terms of their relationship. He still plays along with the consensual lies about anniversaries and such, but he starts challenging him more.

Maybe Makoto is chatting with Rantaro and Kokichi pops in and says something like, "You're not ready yet?"

"Huh? Ready for what?"

"Don't you remember? I asked you to dinner tonight!" (Naturally, no he didn't.)

And Makoto smiles but replies, "No, I don't remember. Guess you'll have to ask me again."

And Kokichi has to actually settle down and ask him out normally.

[nokingsonlyfooles]

The Dark Secret of Kung Fu Panda, Part 2...

...if you're coming from a place of Western tropes and values, you need to read Shifu as a shitty teacher, or the story doesn't scan.

Oh, and also a shitty parent, a shitty student of kung fu, and a shitty student of Buddhism.

(Sorry, little dude.)

I've already unpacked the teacher part, but all these things are a result of trying to write a story set in China, that both Chinese and Western audiences will understand. They did very well! But there's always a few folks who aren't able to keep up with a complex read like this - and they don't go, "Oh well, this story wasn't for me," they get mad at the characters and the writers.

So! Let's talk more about kung fu, Buddhism, child development, tropes and subversions - and whether that shiny piece of paper Tai Lung was after actually meant something or was just an elaborate troll.

I like to go to TVTropes and read the Headscratchers. For a storyteller like me, it's like playing Narrative Minesweeper. Let's see, did anyone have trouble with this plot point? (click) Ah, not too bad. What about this one? (click)

(Check that link! This is the page for Kung Fu Panda 2! People are really upset about this!)

KABOOM! Oh, man. Okay. Let's plant a flag in that and try to figure out why it blew up so bad.

Something I've seen across stories is that audiences have a really hard time noticing that they are being lied to when characters or narrators say one thing and do another. I think it's a mirage coughed up by the suspension of disbelief required to consume a story in the first place. We see a lot of villains who are supposed to be criminal masterminds, yet to make the plot go they have to behave like utter idiots. We're willing to put up with that, as long as it seems like they're supposed to be brilliant in-universe.

Then Rian Johnson throws a character like Miles Bron at us. The whole point of Miles is we're supposed to roll with the "in-universe mastermind" tropes, but only up to a point. The message of the film rests on the audience's ability to snap out of it, pick up their critical thinking skills and go, "Yeah, this guy never did one smart thing. Just a lot of audacious things, because he's too sheltered and dumb to understand the consequences."

But if you check the Headscrachers for Glass Onion (and if you care to look at any right-wing critiques of the film), you'll find a lot of people groping for reasons Miles is smart, actually. Maybe Blanc just called him dumb to get a rise out of him! Maybe he's smart socially but dumb with business! Or vice-versa! Maybe the film is badly-written!

No, he is very dumb. Truly. And I don't think the film is badly-written. But some people just blow right trough a sign reading "STOP RIGHT HERE, THIS TROPE IS BEING SUBVERTED, THE DETOUR IS THIS WAY" stagger off the path, and wind up dead in a ditch. Metaphorically speaking.

The above Troper - who is upset by Tai Lung's lack of a redemption arc, while expecting a nuanced story where the bad guys aren't all bad - has failed to detect a nuanced story where the good guys aren't all good.

In China, audiences need a stop sign that reads "Actually, the brilliant teacher is still learning and can do even better." This isn't too jarring, especially given the relationship between Oogway and Shifu. Shifu admits Oogway is a better teacher than him, and smarter than him. Even when he doesn't understand the lesson and loses hope of ever understanding it, he doesn't blame the turtle, he blames himself for just not getting it, and prepares to clean up his mess the best way he knows how. For his part, Oogway was clearly trying to get some hard lessons into Shifu's head - up to and including, "You don't actually need me to guide you down the path, you need to start looking around and trying to understand it for yourself..."

"Bye-eeee!"

Oogway is teaching in accordance with Theravada Buddhism, which is basically the philosophical equivalent of trying to get the dog to notice you've dropped the bacon on the ground and he's not gonna get anything by sniffing your fingers.

Tai Lung's return is an emergency situation, and if Shifu's not careful he'll be trying to reach enlightenment from the Spirit Realm (which does seem doable, given that Oogway continues to train and meditate himself). So Oogway leaves Shifu a $50, says, "You will have to find bacon without me," and buggers off. Permanently. And you know what? After three films, it works!

"Ah, you have finally mastered your Pride. Never stop learning, my most stubborn student!"

On the other hand, a Western audience has much less patience for jerk-ass teachers - and while they do have experience with Trickster mentors, it's much harder for them to see where Oogway is coming from, and why he nopes out instead of just being honest when it's important! They need a much bigger stop sign that says, "SHIFU IS ACTUALLY A SLOW STUDENT AND A BAD TEACHER AND OOGWAY HAS BEEN DESPERATELY TRYING, AND FAILING, TO CORRECT THIS PROBLEM FOR DECADES." But that's unnecessary and nonsensical in China. What we ended up with is much more subtle and open to interpretation. Some people decided to interpret it as, "Oogway's a troll, Shifu's an idiot, Tai Lung got a raw deal, nobody ever admits any of this, and this movie is stupid."

It's true, nobody ever gets called a troll or an idiot - that would be incredibly disrespectful in China, so that's a nonstarter - so you have to draw your own conclusions based on what they do. We see Shifu having a lot of difficulty in picking up what Oogway is laying down. He trusts Oogway implicity and knows there is always some kind of wisdom being imparted, but he gets impatient and tries to speed up the lesson, or he grabs for the most obvious interpretation and runs, or he just gives up and falls back to something he understands a little better.

Like when he gets sick of waiting for Oogway to blow out the candles and get to the point and he douses all of them with a cool move. Oogway is modeling the behaviour he'd like to see - Shifu really needs to slow down and learn patience. But Shifu responds as if the lesson is, "My Master needs help blowing out candles!" which is just silly, but he's going too fast and not paying attention.

Now watch Po listen to Oogway... and watch Oogway listen to Po! Oogay doesn't run in and go, "We don't have time for this! Tai Lung's coming! Get your shit together!" He lets Po set the pace, reflects back his feelings, and offers a little nudge. Which Po absorbs and thinks about at his own pace, instead of pushing to understand everything as fast as possible right now. Ideally, that's how it should go, but with Shifu this approach has about as much impact as boinking croutons off a brick wall.

So it's not too difficult to imagine that Shifu let his pride get the better of him in educating Tai Lung, while ignoring multiple nudges from his own teacher, because he was just too focused on his ultimate goal and going too fast.

In this case, his ultimate goal was a shiny piece of paper his Master rolled up and stuck in a cool-looking temple, all to give some future student a nudge to help them understand, "Self-worth isn't earned or bestowed in this way, it is intrinsic." And Shifu focused on proving his worth as a teacher by trying to turn out a student who was worthy of the scroll!

"Son, I am beginning to suspect you just ain't right in the head."

How can a friend and teacher manage this without stepping off the path of Theravada Buddhism, which a Chinese audience will recognize and expect to remain consistent? The only thing to do is back off, give your student some room to screw up, and nudge him again when he's open to listening.

Unfortunately, that took a very long time. Decades. In the meantime, Tai Lung grew up expecting to make his father proud by earning the scroll.

"What do you MEAN I spent my whole life training and I'm STILL NOT GOOD ENOUGH?"

There is something that I was taught explicitly, because I learned how to teach preschoolers: it is super easy to get kids to believe your love is conditional and dependent on their ability to get good grades and perform. Like, you can swear up and down that you love your child no matter what, but if you lose your shit and take them to Disneyland when they make Student of the Month, the kid is going to draw their own conclusions. You know how Tai Lung complains about how hard Shifu drove him to train? You can do that with praise just as easily as with discipline. More easily, sometimes.

In China, that's a perfectly acceptable way to teach a child, no further explanation necessary. In the West, not so much, but the writers can't hit us over the head with how wrong it is because in China, it's fine. So we have to watch and pay attention to how they act.

In the flashbacks, we never see Shifu being anything but loving and supportive, even when Tai Lung rips off a piece of his moustache and causes him obvious pain.

We never see the leopard boy eat all of his dad's bamboo furniture and cause a freakout (presumably followed by apologies on both sides). Young Shifu seems to have two modes of parenting and teaching: "I'm proud of you" and "Wow! Great job! I'm extra proud of you!" the second of which is reserved for punching and kicking real good. If that's all his dad seems to want from him, and the solution to every problem is to train harder and punch and kick better, it's possible Tai Lung's first experience with real failure is not getting the Dragon Scroll. You know, the thing his dad named him after.

His lack of experience with failure is evident in his reaction; he has no emotional maturity, he's like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. Shifu taught him how to punch and kick real good, and did not teach him how to deal with failure, frustration, and a lack of outside validation. That's because Shifu himself is super bad at all those things!

Kung fu is not just punching and kicking and going as hard as you can, it is listening and adapting and approaching situations with open-minded humility. When Shifu rolls up and presents his first student like an art project to be graded, Oogway knows he done messed up. All he can do is nudge them away from a lesson neither one of them is ready to learn yet, and back off.

"Ultimately, my stubborn student, this is my failure, but I'm not sure how to resolve this situation. And your kid is a ticking time bomb, do you not even see that?"

Unfortunately, Shifu's flawed teaching method has resulted in a student who knows nothing but punching and kicking, so all he can do is punch and kick. Real good. "Laying waste" to the village was a late add, to help the audience understand how badly Tai Lung melted down, but it makes perfect sense in this context. If he's not getting the validation he needs for his skill, he'll beat up the whole Valley trying to prove he's the best. And when he gets back to the Jade Palace, no, somehow he has still not punched and kicked hard enough to get what he's after, so he tries to beat up the people standing in his way. Maybe that's how you prove yourself worthy of the scroll!

Alas, it was not. And with a student too misguided and dangerous to teach - yet who still might be able to learn, and help Shifu learn - pausing his rampage for a few decades to allow Shifu some more time to get a clue was the best option Oogway had.

Thank heaven for plot devices!

It turns out, Shifu is capable of improving, through immense pain and suffering. After his failure with Tai Lung, Shifu's despair leads him to fall face first into teaching Tigress with Oogway's method...

...That is, at least he backs off and lets her learn she's going to get no validation from the outside, so she stops looking for it. That's enough to keep her from having a total meltdown when she doesn't get what she wants - it's not a betrayal, it's just par for the course. She goes off by herself, because she's learned to solve her own damn problems (as have the rest of the Five, who follow her), and she almost gets them all killed, 'cos Shifu still doesn't know how to teach humility.

It takes him a few movies - he expects to learn everything through hard work and suffering and so, inevitably, he does.

Just to hammer home how badly Shifu messed up, and how fundamentally flawed Tai Lung's understanding of kung fu is, when Po just hands him the scroll, Tai Lung doesn't get it.

Po is a Mahayana Buddhist. He always tries to enlighten his enemies. When they make it clear they're not ready for it, he'll do what he can to keep them from screwing up everyone else's chance to learn.

So Tai Lung gets yeeted direct to the Spirit Realm. But, it is possible to keep learning in the Spirit Realm, as Oogway and Kai show us in the third film. We just don't see Tai Lung again until the animated series, 'cos no matter how cute he is, he's not the protagonist.

Also, I think the writers can't help but noticed how badly Tai Lung's arc landed with some audience members. There is no good way to address that in under two hours of film. Look how long it took me to unpack it in text!

In the end, the Dragon Scroll isn't meant to be useless, or an elaborate troll from a Trickster archetype. It's a nudge in the right direction. For Po and Shifu, once they slowed down and thought about it, it landed. Tai Lung just wasn't there yet, and showing him that the scroll was nothing but a shiny piece of paper wouldn't have gotten him there, no matter when it happened. But respect to the Dragon Warrior for trying, that's just how he rolls. He's not wrong to try, but Oogway's also not wrong about enlightenment not being a thing to teach.

That's why ya boi gets Oogway's staff, and Shifu ends the film series still needing a little more time to learn.

[valentine-writes]

sorry, i'm too shy !

[ tws + notes: no tws, insanely quiet and nervous reader, staff reader, unedited becuz u know me ]

↳ ft. montgomery gator

「 gn! reader, can be platonic or romantic <3 」

author's note: reader gets 2 b a little shy and awkward.... as a treat :] anyways i got carried away and write a whole lil short fic heeheheoeheoehoeh.... first post of 2023!!! woo!!! i will also say rq. i will b clearing my inbox to have a Brand New Start!!! i am sorry if i couldn't reach ur req in time babes :[ </3

the first time you met monty, you were fixing up some scratches on the paint of his bass. he eyed you, as you sat on the green room sofa, gently painting over the marks.

"so, you're the newbie at the 'plex, yeah?"

you glanced up at him for a second, considering his question before giving him a small nod. your incredibly brief response was followed by your focus falling right back to your task.

monty let out a slight huff, dissatisfied with your incredibly curt reply. you had barely even acknowledged him. his impatience was clearly getting the best of him, evident in the edge of his words as he spoke up barely even a second later.

"you got a name, or am i gonna have to keep callin' you newb–"

tap.

you looked up at him with a small smile, gesturing to the name tag pinned to your uniform shirt. your finger tapped its smooth plastic surface again for emphasis.

tap, tap.

he stared at the neat printed lettering of your name, mouthing it to himself before looking up at you irritated. did you just think he wasn’t worth your time? you had spared no words to him, even to introduce yourself. and just like he had never asked, he watched as you went back to finishing up your job.

you lifted the bass to the light, eyes focused on its shiny surface. your nose scrunched slightly as you examined it, trying to figure out whether the scratches were visible. after a few seconds, you deemed it well enough to hand it to him. you gently placed it in his grasp, smiled– and got out of the green room before he could say a word more to you.

—

before monty had known you, you were just the quiet, no-name human employee, present during early morning shifts before opening, or after closing shifts in the late night.

you mostly took care of small tasks– but every so often, you were trusted enough to do little bits of maintenance on the glamrocks. basic things like touching up chipped paint, or replacing broken or missing accessories.

more than usual, however, you took care of more mundane work, such as unpacking and restocking gift store shelves with merch, or being the standby human staff to help out customers who weren't so keen on technology. this specific part of your job (and more noteworthy, the main part of your job) seemed to be something you were… less fond of. any passerby could notice the hesitation before each of your movements or see the soft trembling of your hands as you tried to help out the customers to the best of your ability. monty might’ve not been the most observant– but it’s not like it took too much to see how timid you could be.

still, he never saw you complain about it. not once. you dealt with everything your job required you to do without a single word, even if you had to go out of your way to do things you disliked, you abided by every single rule and regulation, made sure to stay out of other people's way, and even apologized to wet floor sign bots if you ever accidentally bumped into them.

despite your reserved behaviour, you weren't a stranger in the pizzaplex. a lot of the staff and animatronics knew of you and saw you around the place frequently but you seemed to insist on keeping to yourself whenever possible. you were content with being a silent, social recluse, who got the work done day after day without a word.

that sparked curiosity in monty. your shyness had accidentally wrapped you in complete mystery to others.

at first, conversations between the two of you were mostly reliant on monty initiating them, followed by him doing most of the talking. you were all nervous smiles and laughs, nods of agreement or shrugs, and barely ever spoke up. it almost pissed him off, knowing you meant no harm but still showed no obvious interest in speaking to him.

he could’ve ended it there. waited for you to make the first move instead. ignore you and your presence until you came crawling back into hopes to gain the attention he once gave you. in every other scenario, he would’ve resorted to pettiness, yet still, he found himself saying hi to you when he passed you, in a half hearted attempt to start conversations. it didn't work. monty however, ever persistent and growing more curious by the day, had decided to put an end to this. once and for all. he was determined to talk to you.

—

your task of the day was sanitizing and reorganizing the rental bowling shoes in bonnie bowl. so there you stood, behind the bowling shoe rental counter, disinfecting spray in hand. you’d grab a pair of shoes, clean them, and then set them aside, each in a different group according to size. a very simple task, which demanded little to no thought. repetitive, plain, and utterly boring– you did it in silence, off in your own world as you carried out your job. wash, rinse, repeat.

in fact, you had happened to be so zoned out, that you hadn’t paid any sort of attention to the very large gator animatronic that had just walked in. not even when he approached you to stand right in front of the counter, his arms crossed and stance towering over you. you didn’t even look up.

"not even gonna say hello, huh?” though his gaze was undeniably intimidating, something in his voice gave you the impression he was almost amused by your unresponsiveness. it takes a lot to not notice a huge animatronic gator after all.

a smile crept up on your face as you looked up at him, no hint of alarm at his sudden presence. you set down the shoes you had just disinfected, before giving him a little wave.

your little grin seemed to make him stop for a second– like he had lost anything that he was about to say. there was a pause in the moment, as he considered your silence. he looked you directly in the eye. the type of stare that made you want to wilt away, nervously waiting for some sort of angry, sharp-tongued remark.

“y’know, it’s kind of weird,” he began, “to know your name without even being told it.”

your glance briefly dropped to your nametag, pinned to your shirt.

a small frown formed on your face.

“oh.” you had forgotten that your first response to him asking for your name was just a quick point at your nametag and a polite nod. even your reply now– a small noncommittal mumble, more sound than word– was incredibly ambiguous. did that make you rude? oh god. the last thing you wanted was to upset someone.

“that’s what i’m talkin’ about. i get it, you’re not huge on chatting or whatever. but you should know you’re not talkin’ to just any stranger. in all the time you’ve been here, i’ve barely heard your voice.”

the shake in your hands did not calm at this. somehow, the fact he was being patient with you felt worse. you tried to search for something to say, feeling your mouth running dry already. was "sorry, i'm too shy" even a good excuse?

as the mini debate raged on in your head, monty began to feel like he messed up, watching you quiver like an anxious puppy.

“...i didn’t know you’d want to hear it.” you reply. you looked straight back at him, trying not to shy away again. “i’m sorry.”

you leaned forwards, offering a nervous smile while trying to ignore the quickened pace of your heart, or the burning heat in your face. “so uh… what are you trying to find out about me?”

he grinned at you, star-shaped shades slipping down in front of his eyes.

“anything. what’ve you got going on inside that head of yours, huh?”

and so you talked. for the very first time, you did all the talking and he did the listening. it really only began as some mindless rambling to spill the thoughts you’ve been holding in, as you had assumed he wasn’t really listening all too much. but he learned a lot of things about you that day.

he watched the way your eyes lit up when talking about something you loved, how mouthy you could get about something you hated, or how expressive you were when telling stories. your voice was a sound he would’ve never gotten tired of. he clung to every sentence, every word… if you had just carried on with your little rants forever, he would’ve never objected.

finally, he got to know you.

you paused for a second, staring at the now neatly organized shoes. the corners of your lips twitched into a small, uncertain grin.

“ah… thank you for listening. but– i really gotta go.” you mumbled, feeling sheepish that you had lost track of your progress and the time, all because you got caught up in your scatter-brained monologue.

just like the first day, you left before he could even get a word in. giving him a sweet smile and another small “thank you,” you headed out the doors and out of the ‘plex.

always slipping away before more progress could be made. that was fine. he’d just wait for your next shift, hoping he could finally hear your voice again.

[maxwell-grant]

SF6 Comic Thoughts:

(Spoilers) For those wondering at home why the dude became homeless in SF6, Ken Masters got suckered into a crypto scheme and is tanking his company and a developing country’s budget and his relationship with his son at the same time, and he almost gets politically assassinated by the end of this.

This rules.

Yeah this was great. Completely forgot this was even an Udon thing until I started writing this because this had like, a story, and dramatic tension, a major character facing consequences and minor characters getting attention, things happening besides boring basic pretext for fanservice and special moves which has basically never happened in an Udon Street Fighter comic. I like a lot that this is keeping things in limited scope so far.

Even Bengus’ art is pretty good here. I’m really not a fan of how Bengus’s art style looks nowadays, but the black-and-white heavy shadow palette really works here (seen some scans in color and, yeah just doesn’t hit as nicely), the stylization and paneling’s pretty great, idk man, it’s Bengus with a marginal budget and time to work on his art and having interesting material to work with. This has gotta be a breath of fresh air for the dude after years spent in the SFV mines.

Oh thank heavens the character in the poster isn’t Laura, sweet lord mercy I never want to see Laura again I know she’s coming back at some point but we’re good for now thanks

I’m really liking Mel as the other protagonist here. They’ve been sitting on Mel havin an expanded role since SF3 and here he’s given quite a lot more personality than I expected, lonely and frustrated by a sheltered upbringing and biting back against his father’s indecisiveness and immaturity, a pretty great foil for idiot manchild Luke to bounce off.

Mel Masters as he’s presented here is a frankly pretty terrific idea for a Street Fighter protagonist outside the games: someone who couldn’t be less impressed by street fighting but is bound by blood and circumstance to be a part of this, the anti-Sakura. An introspective kid who really just wants to go hang out with friends his age and play Pokemon, but who’s getting dragged through wolf-filled mountains and putting up with hyperactive fireball-tossing buff dudes because his dad is one of the greatest among them.

I like Luke quite a bit here. Not gonna touch the private military contractor thing here though, I feel like that’s a can of worms to unpack later, but if nothing else, Luke gets a lot more tolerable and even enjoyable when he has someone to bounce off even just visually, whether it’s Ryu or Jaime or the player character or Mel here. I think SF6 in game and here has settled Luke into maybe the best niche they could slot him in, described as “someone who likes to fight  but with no intention of getting stronger”. As in, the New Generation but not necessarily the protagonist, but rather the coach who’s showing the ropes for the protagonist, getting you used to the controls or pumping you up or teaching Mel how to improve his camping skills and etc (and in that context him being visually and personality-wise reminiscent of videogame streamers and E-sports celebrities is, a more logical and less grating decision, if nothing else, since those are the guys people go to nowadays in order to learn and improve at competitive videogames).

Curious as to what is Kalima’s deal given she’s making her debut here and what is her dynamic with JP, because I don’t think they’re quite retreading Kolin and it’s unclear as of yet how much is JP masterminding everything.

Zero clue as to who decided to have JP talk like a German cartoon here when he’s Russian and otherwise has little accent in-game. Would love it if they just revealed this was part of the ruse he was pulling on Ken and would even be in-character, since JP’s so far been defined as a duplicitous gamemaster, a brutal crimelord masquerading as a benevolent oligarch and someone who quite literally hides his winning hand the whole time he’s fighting you. I could buy that guy putting on a fake accent to trick a foolhardy American into underestimating him just enough to sweeten the pot.

In what is already a multi-layered scheme to ruin this guy and involves weaponizing the public spectacle of Street Fighter tournaments to leverage viral fame and, having a tragic child king beg Ken to fight in the tournament right in the middle of the guy having the worst time trying to manage his relationship with his son. JP is ice cold, I’m loving it. I’m loving this role he’s having as Ken’s biggest personalized enemy.

I’m loving having a Street Fighter villain who actually does have to take the slower route of planning and masterminding and backstabbing his murderous fighting tournament plots instead of just brute-forcing calling the fighters to take shots at him. JP seems significantly underpowered by fighting game villain standards, and this might make him dramatically more interesting as a villain proper.

I’m really liking the lengths that this is taking to ground Street Fighter in the here and now. IV and V took the Alpha route and moved the series onto a sort of comic book fantasyland where they’d never have to grapple with dates and timelines and so they could slide things into prequel territory, where as this seems closer to SF3 in that it wants to place Street Fighter firmly in the Now, with modern concerns and styles and changes to the world shaping the whole thing.

Almost didn’t think Street Fighter would ever bother telling a story with Ken that was actually about Ken and not just his relationship with Ryu. I’ve gone to bat for the guy before but this is easily the most interesting he’s ever been fucking ever, just this massive reversal of fortune grounded entirely in him finally not getting to have it both ways. His lore said he was facing “accusations of orchestrating a criminal plot” but little did we suspect he really DID assist in a huge criminal plot by sheer negligence. Bison would have pulled some ridiculous super brainwashing plot, but all JP had to do was just get Ken into crypto and hook him into a Nigerian Prince scam.

Ken wants a lot of things, he HAS a lot of things to deal with, and he can’t commit to any of them. He wants to be there for his son, but he can’t be there for what his son actually wants to do in life, so he drags his son into an anciliary role in his life instead. He wants to do right by the family name and company, so he blindly follows lifestyle mottos his dad used and tanks a billion dollars into a humanitarian project while constantly rejecting everyone who asks him to slow down or reconsider what exactly he’s sinking that money into.

He wants to use his privileged position to help those in need, so he funds a project intended to help a developing nation by, what else, a fighting tournament, and funds a nation into speedrunning through technological revolutions. He very clearly desperately wants to be a fighter in his prime again and do more than just fight “with paperwork”, and in the whole comic he only really comes alive when he gets to spin kick a drone, and he has this brief little moment when he has to will himself back into Business Mode to complete a deal with the least trustworthy man of all time, and the whole time he’s patently unsure about what he’s doing and the comic calls him out on it.

It calls him out on just how selfless this idea is and how much is it really about him wanting to help Nayshall’s uncertain future, and how much is it him desperately just trying to achieve something, or even deep down how much does he just want to fight again and feel good about something the way he does when he’s fighting, and the comic makes it clear it isn’t just one or the other. Ken has always been the guy who had everything, who had everything Ryu didn’t. In at least two games his plotline is “things are going great for Ken in his home life and company as usual, but he heard Ryu is showing up at the tournament so he’s dropping literally everything to go fight the one guy who makes fighting worthwhile for him”.

This is what happens when Ken’s character catches up to reality, of what it’s like for Ken Masters, immature carefree good-hearted fighting hothead, to try and manage being himself against being a global titan of philantropy and industry (and having had this entire thing thrust onto him from birth) and being a wholly attentive family man all at the same time. Something’s just gotta give. You can’t be as wealthy and connected as Ken and be irresponsive and impulsive and immature, no matter how well-intentioned or good you are. I’m frankly shocked that this went there at all after the trailers mostly implied Ken was just framed injustly.

Street Fighter has never ever even so much as gestured into the idea of Ken’s position and money as anything other than a point of contrast between him and Ryu, so to go from that to this where the whole thing’s predicated on the idea that Ken, while every bit as well-intentioned as ever and certainly a lot more mature than he’s ever been before, fucked up badly and is doing some real damage to people he cares for? That he tried to have everything and now stands on the precipice of having nothing? That’s good shit my dudes.

He hears “You said you were doing this for all the people in this country. So...haven’t you already decided?” and solidifies his decision, while the panel focuses very clearly on him clutching the red headband, the object that’s always been strongly associated with both his and Ryu’s trajectories, the thing that he gave Ryu all the way back in the Alpha series as a reminder to stay focused and not give in to the Satsui no Hadou, the monstrous thing that was tearing Ryu apart and costing him every ounce of concentration to stave off, a thing that’s come to represent their friendship as well as Ryu personally. The thing that he now clutches to stay focused in his decision, before everything goes wrong and he pays the price for it no matter what his intentions were.

This is some primo shit and easily the most I’ve ever been ecstatic about a Street Fighter plotline in a very long time. Seems like they set out hardcore to undo Ken’s long-standing role as a secondary character to Ryu and not rely on their traditionally hackier stuff with superpowered dark sides or Shadaloo plots. Thoroughly impressed and I can’t wait to see more.

[karouvas]

Adam Parrish + 2 😈😈(for the ask game)

How would you rewrite this characters canon arc?

Partially answered with my tag rant on this reblog https://www.tumblr.com/adanseydivorce/751040074340286464?source=share

I don’t really have much I would say about changing his trc arc because I think overall it’s a very good arc one of my favorites. I did reblog a meta post about both trc and tdt and how Adam generally isn’t allowed to *fail* in a sense, when he overworks himself in a variety of ways manually academically magically etc. and that feeding into the weird way he’s a sort of capitalistic success story when you take in all seven books, and I think they’re right and there are places in both trc and tdt where that could be interrogated or altered a bit. But the emotional beats of his arc are well handled imo and I wouldn’t really change them. I would have liked some additional resolutions to some of his relationships in TRK but that has more to do with issues I have with TRK in general and less Adam’s role in it specifically (although I think if I could change one thing there I would have him actually apologize to Blue for some things about how he treated her; but also I partly feel that way more for fandom reasons than in text ones since in text I think their bitchy Ninos argument is a fun resolution. And then the Adansey shovel talk scene is the opposite: I’m not a huge fan of the scene itself as resolution / would prefer Gansey to actually voice his feeling hurt by Adam so it could be unpacked, but fandom was overdramatic and annoying about the scene so that’s pushed me to acceptance.) much more to say about td3 for obvious reasons so moving on:

Basically I like the set up in cdth of him wanting to reinvent himself, of course being who I am I love the fucked up trying to be Gansey 2.0 part of it lol and I don’t think he should have a smooth sailing path to success / suddenly be content at Harvard so him being a bit miserable there and the whole crying club thing made sense. I do think we should have gotten more details about the crying club like I said I think some actual characterization from them could have helped the storyline. But my problems are largely after cdth, how this never really leads to him reckoning with his identity issues the way we need to see on page for this arc to be satisfying (that one pov is good, but it is not nearly enough to carry that to conclusion).

I think I would have written him trying to explicitly reflect or invert his individual relationships with the Gangsey with the Crying Club, maybe he gravitates towards one character who is a mirror (lol) for Blue that could be really fascinating, there could maybe be one character in the group who is a scholarship student and he projects onto them / tries to kind of reverse engineer his dynamic with Gansey with them to work through some things. That’s a way to explore a kind of complicated dichotomy of him feeling victorious he made it out of Henrietta while also missing “the things that were important to him in the past”, it would also effectively mirror some of what Ronan was doing with Bryde and Hennessy since he transposes elements of Niall Adam and imo Gansey onto Bryde + recreates parts of his dynamic with Kavinsky with Hennessy. (I’m torn on whether Ronan should have an explicit mirror in this version of the crying club because on the one hand I feel like the ‘you were the place I stored all that reality’ would hit harder if he’s the one person Adam didn’t try to replace there, on the other hand it could compliment the Bryde plot like I said… (also ik there are a lot of people who don’t like the Bryde plot at all I’m kind of neutral on it tbh I don’t love or hate it but anyway this is not a post about changing Ronan’s arc so writing this assuming that’s p similar to canon and only changes in response to Adam’s). Yes maybe part of this is self indulgent because it plays on some themes it’s well documented on my blog that I’m obsessed with but also this series is literally largely about clones and doubling and this verse has been concerned with identity/mirroring/masking since trc, so I do think it would fit, self indulgent or not! Also getting to see Adam be crazy like this would make him and Ronan ‘forgiving each other’ seem a little less unbalanced at least to me… I still would want like. Actual resolution to the Pynch arc where they talk, break up for at least a week (I would prefer more, but bare minimum that), work through the issues MI poses… particularly I’d want them to have an actual conversation about Ronan’s insecurity about the role Cabeswater played in their getting together and Adam could respond with the fact that Cabeswater is a separate entity from Ronan in the same way Mathew and Bryde are or how Jordan is separate from Hennessy; the deal he made with Cabeswater was of his own volition, is a separate one from their relationship though it may have played a role in it (at least I think this is what we’re supposed to take from that dropped thread?

I just think it’s something that should be discussed). ((I do realize a big part of why Adam’s arc feels off is the audience feedback loop influencing both Maggie’s willingness to write his pov and in how Pynch was ultimately treated, but this is how I think I would want it written)). In terms of the resolution to the Harvard thing it matters less to me if he stays or transfers like I said on that post but I would like a resolution for the crying club either he came clean and was rejected or accepted by them either one would I think be better for that arc than him just ghosting them (at least I think that’s what he did?) And whatever happens with him and the I would want him to actually develop a community outside of the Lynch brothers + The other Gangsey members to some degree, also obviously he is not going to be a cop in this… idk what specific profession I’d want him to have but I would like to think he actually finds something he wants to do / a new goal to be ambitious about rather than just winning at capitalism. Maybe that latter part is wishful thinking… but anyway. Not a cop at the end that’s the number 1 change I would make obviously everything else is of a lower level of importance than that. Pynch can break up then work through their issues and get back together or they can have a proper divorce arc either one works for me but they can not go on Like That… I mean I think Maggie also feels that way but again Audience Feedback Loop (I rbed a really interesting post about how break ups are treated in ya adjacent lit so I do think if nothing else this got me thinking about that on a meta level in a way I didn’t before… still don’t think it was worth it 🫤. Also this is all a word vomit / theoretical, want to remind ya’ll that I first read Greywaren like a month and a half ago, after a reread spiral of the all the other books in the verse (which basically was a first read of td3 since I read cdth and mi for the first time with High Quarantine Brain and remembered basically nothing about them due to that) so maybe some of these thoughts could change … but currently these are my takes xo!

[itsclydebitches]

Hi, I stopped watching RWBY midway through volume 5 and basically only keep up with it through your blog which has made volume 9 quite a trip. Anyway, I've got to ask what the fuck is going on in episode 9? The team is happy about Ruby drinking the tea???

I literally cannot imagine being you right now lol. Experiencing RWBY solely through this blog?? Absolutely wild concept. How does it feel being blindsided on a weekly basis? XD

But to actually answer your question... yes? The tea is heavily framed as a suicide attempt, given that Ruby drinks it after a physical and psychological beating from Neo, with the intent of not being Ruby Rose anymore, after Neo herself entices her with it because, as we know, she wants revenge on Ruby for (in her mind) killing Roman. There’s no version of Episode 8 in which this is framed as a positive action. However, at the same time the show has been pushing the idea that Ascension (AKA what Ruby has done by drinking the tea) is ultimately a good thing; a way for those who have fulfilled their purpose to finally move on and achieve something new. Now, however harmful a message that might be from our perspective, the show has made it clear that this is natural for an Afteran, so I could sort of buy it as a cultural difference...

Provided the show had explained how losing your memories/even your physical body isn’t a "real" kind of death.

If we hadn’t seen a character dragged off against their will, forced to Ascend despite clearly being opposed to the idea.

If our “best” version of the journey didn’t come from the Paper Pleasers, a group with cult-like undertones that are so obsessed with Ascension they orchestrate daily attempts at physical harm/suicide in order to achieve it.

If any one of the characters had bothered to consider whether this would be good for Ruby, a human who does not come from this world, especially after it’s explicitly pointed out that she shouldn’t be able to Ascend.

If any one of the characters had considered that Ruby doesn't have a defined purpose that she has completed and thus has no need to undergo the Be Assigned a New Purpose Ritual.

And if most of this information hadn’t come from the Cat, a manipulative (according to the heroes) party later revealed to be a Super Duper Evil Villain.

So even within the realm of ‘This is a good thing, just a cultural difference!’ there is a LOT of negative implications that the story hasn’t bothered to unpack. But here, in Episode 9, the group continues to ignore all of it. They see that the Paper Pleasers, after drowning themselves, have come back as the Genial Gems. Does it matter that they had to undergo such a horrific event in order to achieve that upgrade? No. Does it matter that they no longer remember Jaune, a friend who lived with them for years? No. Does it matter that they found Ruby beaten and bloody, being given the tea by Neo while a fake Roman talks about how the world would be better off without her, after she ran from them all post-meltdown because she (rightly) believes that no one cares about her mental health? No! All that matters is that the Gems came back “better” - with “better” defined as now being impervious to water and fire - so that means Ruby will definitely come back “better” too. Hurrah!

The characters don’t care about the horrors that it took to get Ruby to this place, or that she committed magical suicide in front of them, or that Neo helped orchestrate all this, or that Little was lying dead in front of her. All they care about is how this was supposedly Ruby’s “choice” and if she doesn’t come back as the same Ruby they knew, that can only be a good thing because - again - she chose to do this.

(I need to make a separate post on how no, this is not a choice in the way RWBY is framing it. There's a reason why we discuss depression as an illness. You don't "choose" it any more than you choose to die of cancer.)

I can’t emphasize enough that the message of Episode 9 couched in metaphor is, “Yes, if you hate yourself dying is an option. Agency is the most important thing, so if someone wants to die, you need to let them die and accept that fighting for them is selfish (remember Penny?). Lucky for the heroes, they exist in a magical world where death has a reset button, so choosing suicide is an even smarter choice because then you can reflect on that choice and possibly come back with a cool upgrade!”

Yang has one (1) moment where she freaks a little after seeing Ruby encased in the tree, but Blake, Weiss, and Jaune talk her down because remember Yang, your sister chose this. It’s a good thing.

The rest of the episode is this vibe. Behold, the team literal minutes after watching a psychologically terrorized, physically beaten Ruby try to kill herself:

[strqyr]

Just something that hit me while I was thinking of the logistics of everyone thinking that Raven had the Spring Maiden and wasn't the Spring Maiden herself. Because the Spring Maiden disappeared so many years ago. It kinda says something that no one wondered about a bandit, not even Raven necessarily just... killing the previous one in such a manner that they'd be the one in her thoughts. They had Raven and Qrow to send to Beacon - someone of the right age might have been available.

Which fits with the fact that everything we are getting with Raven is that something went horribly wrong that night with Summer - and that her becoming the Spring Maiden was not her idea nor intention. And that yeah - there are more ways for someone to betray someone's trust then just flat out murdering them. Like having poor judgement with who to trust.

yeah, it's definitely interesting that before the reveal, no one brings up the possibility that the spring maiden they knew might have died at some point during the "over a decade" she was missing. and from cinder's and yang's reactions to finding the truth, it really feels like the assumption across the board was that spring was alive and well, the possibility of her dying never crossing anyone's mind.

which, once you get to summer's mission and raven being there with her and trust ("the last spring maiden must've trusted you a great deal before she died. i bet that was a mistake." / "if i do this right, there's nothing to worry about. trust me.") and whether it was personal or mercy... there's definitely a lot to take in, and that's before getting into all the other ways raven has been an open book missing a crucial context (she was there) this whole time.

there's also something about... you don't just drop a bomb like "raven and qrow were sent to beacon to learn how to kill huntsmen" without it meaning something, right? not when it's also noted as something that was kept a secret while being a bandit was, apparently, acceptable information to share. curious to know if summer knew about it beforehand or, if like yang, she found out later after raven had already left and was the last to know, and how much does the "my people were killed by other people, not grimm" from the warrior in the woods play into summer's story bc if it does there's a lot to unpack here.

but back to the point, yeah, i don't really see what potentially happened with spring and how raven got the powers as premeditated, but rather as a choice made in a moment where there wasn't much time to think. it's like, do or die, if you will. it almost feels like the spring maiden was an unfortunate bystander in whatever went down between summer and raven, bc all the stuff about trust and it being potentially personal is an easier sell between two characters that we do know and would have a reason to believe to have been close friends vs a character who, atm, is basically a nobody with no strong connections to anyone, let alone summer or raven.

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

If I may ask: how would you have written/rewritten Sumire's confident story? 😊 Unless it's too close to what you did in code violet, sorry 😂 Personnally, I thought the first half wasn't THAT boring, she was endearing but I felt like she was either in denial or hiding her grief about her sister's death - and then I got the truth 😂 I've become a shusumi fan quickly but I still think there's *something* lacking for it to click. And the last scene we see Sumire was underwhelming imho 🥲

yeah! there are a lot of similarities to what i do in code violet, but it's not identical, since I have a lot more freedom in my fic than there is in the game.

i wouldn't change much if anything about the first half. i agree it isn't that boring, what really makes it seem that way are (1) high expectations for the New Special Girl to be exceptional since she wasn't in the original game and (2) comparing her to the other team members who you're already invested in, her conflict just isn't as interesting (at least to me). basically, you start out every other thief confidant already knowing the core of their conflict because of their palace, so you're already invested in their arcs, while with sumire that is reversed, where you don't learn what's actually going on with her later. so, the "boringness" of the confidant is really exaggerated by that. if you didn't like the way they inserted her into the opening sequence (i never had an issue with it, but royal was my first experience, though i did know the stuff with her was added in the rerelease) so she made a bad impression on you, then it's understandable why people wouldn't like her (at first, anyway)

but let's get to the point. my issues with her confidant. they can basically be summed up in 2 points, and the two of them intersect quite a bit (1) the way she idolizes both kasumi and joker and rely on them for her self worth is not properly unpacked and (2) her role as the waifu REALLY impedes her arc.

basically, sumire idolizes joker. her outfit mirrors his exactly, and her arc in third sem is all about...learning that since joker loves her, she wants to both rise to his expectations and can learn to value herself. and that's not bad, but certain lines about how she wants joker to see her really rub me the wrong way. specifically in her rank when they go to the mall and she picks an outfit for herself. i like the part about her wanting to be seen as herself, and the part about joker's reaction ultimately being irrelevant to whether she likes the outfit, and i would emphasize those points more strongly. but the parts about her wanting joker to see her feel a little like she's trying to be a person he will like? rather than being the person that she is. some of the dialogue is pretty meh, and it feels like she's getting her self worth from joker.

the bones of the confidant are good. great, even. but there's just subtleties in the execution that make it not quite land for me. choosing the romance route ends up feeling unhealthy for both of them, where sumire is putting too much of her worth in someone else and joker is entering an unequal relationship where sumire doesn't give him as much as he gives her because he just isn't in a place to. and i think that's a shame.

for me to get behind shusumi, sumire needs to be on equal ground with akira, and she just isn't. and the game is even aware of this--sumire says on white day that she isn't, but that she wants to be someday. and like, it could be her being self deprecating, but either way it's not what either of them deserve. i wish we could get a moment where she's there for akira like he's there for her, but atlus is allergic to joker's friends being there for him so we never get that.

so honestly, i really wouldn't change much. i'd leave the first half how it is, tweak some dialogue in the second half so it seems less like sumire is getting her self worth from joker, and add a moment where sumire explicitly says she's there for joker and wants to be there for him as much as he's been there for her, so they're on emotionally equal ground with each other.

finally, i do wish we got to see more of her journey, since she really is just at the very beginning of her arc of recovery at the end of the game. but i think it's okay that we don't. there is only so much time allotted to watch her grow, and we see her grow a lot in that time. there's questions she could ask herself that she doesn't have the time to get to, like if she really wants to be a gymnast for herself, or if she's just doing it for her sister. that sort of thing. but again, i think it's okay we don't get to that. i might add a line or two where she says she wants to be a gymnast for herself because she enjoys it, though.

and i guess that's it? i'm sorry for how disorganized this answer is. i haven't really thought in depth about what i'd change if restricted by the confines of the game, and so it's kind of difficult to do a rewrite when that's different than just having problems with what exists. a lot of what i would change can be found in code violet, like how i emphasize that it's "joker makes me want to be seen for who i am, and see him in return" rather than the one-way dynamic of "joker makes me want to be seen and so i will try to be a person he likes" which some of her lines really come across as sometimes. honestly, i think the entire confidant could have been improved by leaning more into the rivalry dynamic. sumire and akechi already have plenty of similarities/parallels, and joker kind of inherits kasumi's role as sumire's rival. so i think it'd have been really powerful if they leaned into that and made it clear that this time, sumire and her rival are equals.

but yeah! sorry this is so rambly. i'm going to end the post now