#but a lot of them were also old & didn't make sense in this context SOB

[ohwell-itsme-but-danganronpa]

The age-old question: Is Kokichi the villain?

Ves: this one whiplashes back and forth from objectively correct to SO SO WRONG so much idk how to feel

Me: well, they're right on their main point and simplified some things to get there and at the end he's an anti-hero, not a villain

Ves: i get being frustrated with woobfication but acting like the cast NEVER treated him unfairly is. UHHHHH Kokichi Is An Asshole, But! - my thesis statement also "bragging about how he got two people killed without a hint of genuine remorse" not a HINT!? NOTHING?? YOU CAN'T REMEMBER A SINGLE THING FROM THAT POSTTRIAL THAT SEEMED REMORSEFUL TO YOU!? 'start looking at him as a villain instead of a clueless victim' this is NOT a zero sum game both of those options r wrong

Me: they treated him Like That before he earned it and in his speech at the end of the 4th trial there's a portion when he says he's just stepping up to what's expected from him

Ves: NO LITERALLYYY THE SCENE IN THE DEATH ROAD LIKE….

Me: he was asking to be executed too, but sure, no remorse

Ves: what are we defining as remorse?? because that seems like literally the most remorseful a person could get to me oohhh i forgot remorse can mean REGRET yeah he's not very regretful neither is gonta! they're both crushed w guilt but that's not the same i guess

Me: the whole. everyone believing him when the lies fit what they want to see. bullshit he's a liar until he's saying he's evil, until he's taking something back, because surely he wouldn't lie about lying without saying the catchphrase

Ves: yeag like,,,when it's 'half my lies are told with good intentions' and 'i'm just trying to give gonta good advice, he'll get killed being so naive' and 'monokuma is going to make you suffer for cooperation like he did kaede' and so on and so on…. that's DEFINITELY a lie guys

Me: he left room to be seen through, he gave hints, he gave so many opportunities for them to get it, that he can't be doing it openly, but they went in with pre-packaged distrust specifically for him I love the theory that Tsumugi had them brainwashed to be opposed to him as a default to push him into his role

Ves: you're right but i wouldn't even describe it as HINTS, he has TWO SEPARATE MONOLOGUES about the danger of public cooperation that honestly monokuma should've clocked [sob emoji] but that's getting more into danganronpa writing than kokichi's morals i love giving him stuff that makes them inherently unnerved by him from the beginning

Me: this is also related to how much of "script" I believe there was for the game, I think they were given cues for how they're supposed to feel, little unconscious suggestions, a vague outline set with motives, nothing actually set in stone, the flashback making machine wouldn't need multiple options if there was a whole defined script that's expected to be executed to a t

Ves: i always thought tsumugi's claim that everything was scripted didn't. make sense. but i can never really feel out how much of it was

Me: she gave them roles, and then left them to improvise, she also has a lot of lines that cue you in on what she wants you to think of other characters, she wouldn't need to be doing that if she already controlled what you thought of them, but she's checking in, if you'll agree

Ves: truuuuee the way she talks about gonta always makes me shudder and the way she talks about kokichi always makes me giggle SNDJBHSHF she's sooo bitchy about him i love her

Me: she wants to shoehorn him into being a classic antagonist so bad and he just doesn't fit, like, I could swear she makes a reference to Nagito at least once when talking about him

Ves: THE WAY SHE TALKS ABT RANTAROU FITS THAT REALLY WELL TOO she KEEPS bringing up him being the fanservice character a playboy and he keeps shooting her down

Me: She fucking hates Rantaro and it's so funny, what did he dooo that finally puts her calling him a normie in a context, he ruined a cliché she was trying to pull, that's punishable by death

Ves: it's like when she yells at shuuichi in the FTEs for trying to say she isn't plain

Sini: I will say this, even though he did in fact show remorse in that instance I can’t blame the others for still being bitchy and pissed with him. Even if he had a good reason, which he did, what he did was still majorly fucked up. He was an asshole throughout the whole trial, an asshole to Gonta until that one moment, and then led him to his brutal death. I’m not saying how they treated him at that moment was good, but they aren’t really going to be thinking too rationally after all that. Ig one thing you could say is that they tend to not treat other culprits like Kirumi that way, but in that case I’d say they should’ve overall had written the characters reactions post trial or what not differently in general

Ves: oh no i absolutely think how the characters treat kokichi after ch4 is justified. i just think the op's casual dismissal is. UHHHH shoulda specified i was talking abt them and not the cast, sorry! kokichi was absolutely an asshole and deserved to get treated like one, but i think op fell too in line with the characters

Me: it was a situation where everyone sucked, nobody ever could begin to be equipped to deal with this shit, and so, nobody handled it well the end of the world was involved

Sini: Yeah, like, he’s a liar. Everyone only assumed he must be lying when trying to be helpful or didn’t mean well when he was spitting straight facts. No one bothered to listen to him. I get he’s an asshole, but fuck man, they cozied up to Maki. Wth is her excuse?

Ves: maki is the wall i always run into here maki is just as mean as he is and FARRR more dangerous but. her being an assassin was added later than her being a waifu

Mauri: i love maki. but in canon why the fuck did everyone love her she choked him out after he revealed that she was a fucking TRAINED KILLER and no one was worried abt that ??? kodaka dont make every single female character waifu bait challenge (almost impossible bc miu my love my life)

Ves: they literally cut to the next day when they're all looking through her lab and not ONCE do they comment on how that debacle…ended. DID ANYONE HELP HIM???

Sini: If Kokichi was a girl, I swear, things would’ve been a little different

Ves: if kokichi was a girl but written the same ppl'd say he EATS BABIES if he was written like kodaka likes to write women he WOULD eat babies but it'd be like, fine

Sini: Kokichi literally revealed a threat to the cast. And yet they still treat him like he’s this big villain….WHAT? Okay, but literally people treat Celeste better than Kokichi. Celeste is worse than Kokichi in everyway (personality wise)

Me: Celeste is evil in such a simple way, it's easy to brush over she's just greedy, a materialistic girl in a materialistic world, who could blame her? murder? god forbid women do anything

Sini: She’s very slay, but it’s just shitty cause you know people only excuse her cause she’s a cute girl

[cantsayidont]

October 1940. Third on the list of original JSA members who didn't seem straight was Al Pratt, the Golden Age Atom. Al was a student at Calvin College, constantly pushed around for being short and skinny (and implicitly for being Jewish, although that was never spelled out) and rudely dismissed by a girl he liked, Mary James, as a "spineless little amoeba." Dejected, Al buys dinner for a washed-up boxing trainer named Joe Morgan, who suggests that he can "make a li'l Superman" of Al in less than a year. Al suggests that the two of them go to live on his uncle's old farm, where they spend the next year in an intense training regime to build Al's physique.

It's important here to note a conundrum in the popular attitudes of this period: While boxing was considered an appropriately macho pursuit, interest in "physical culture" for its own sake was more suspect and might well have been read as gay (in part because fitness magazines were a way to see nude or mostly nude men that might get past the censorship and obscenity laws of the time). Also, the context is suggestive: Al drops out of college for an entire year to live with a man at least twice his age and spend a lot of time getting mostly naked with him to train. Moreover, after a year, Al expresses his wish for Joe to continue living with him:

In the subsequent issue, Al — who is now so strong he keeps accidentally breaking things — has apparently given up on Mary James, although Joe gives him a push in that direction. Joe seems self-conscious about the age difference between him and Al (and presumably the other Calvin College students in their area), but he and Al continue to live together for a few months. By ALL-AMERICAN COMICS #30 (September 1941), Joe has apparently moved out and started his own health camp. Al resumed his pursuit of Mary, although she was still often contemptuous of him as too meek and timid, unaware that he routinely put on a mask to beat people up and fight crime. They were still dating as of the Atom's final Golden Age solo appearance in FLASH COMICS #104 in 1949.

The modern retelling of the Atom's origin in SECRET ORIGINS #25 makes some changes to the Golden Age version, suggesting that Al merely spent weekends with Joe on the farm for a year rather than living there with him, and asserting that Joe left as soon as Al became the Atom rather than months later. However, in this version, Joe's departure reduces Al to tears and sobbing:

(As alluded to in the above panels, ALL-STAR SQUADRON Annual #1 (1982) tried to link the origins of the Atom, Wildcat, and the Guardian by claiming that Joe Morgan had a split personality and trained all three men under different names. This didn't make a lot of sense — the man who trained Ted Grant, "Socker" Smith, was a heavyweight champion prizefighter, not a trainer, and the origin of Wildcat involved Ted inadvertently killing Smith in the ring after gangsters slipped a poisoned needle into his glove!)

Al Pratt's Silver Age guest appearances in THE ATOM indicate that he was still single by 1968 — THE ATOM #36 has some of his married friends trying to fix him up, and he thinks to himself, "I've been so busy as the Atom in the past--I've sort of let romance pass me by!" Modern stories established that he and Mary James were married for a while, although she died a few years later, and that Grant Emerson (Damage) was their son (although Al thought the boy died as an infant). However, it's hardly uncommon for gay or bisexual men to marry women or even have kids, and the sight of Al sobbing at the departure of Joe Morgan doesn't make it seem like his feelings for Joe were exactly platonic, even if you don't want to read too much into their training montage and cohabitation.

[bauresurrected]

If you were going to recommend one episode as THE Emily episode, what would it be? why?

i have an 104 page document about this that doesn't even go past season six I think.

this is hard.

it's an easy answer to say demonology. you get a real sense for who she is, and who she was before the series. you learn about her efforts to fit in and what it resulted in. you learn why she is the way she is, and it's the start of her and Rossi being close.

but that's an easy answer. because it IS the Emily episode.

the lauren episode, where we learn about her time as a spy and what she had to do to keep herself and another child safe really ... just sets you up to understand her entire life. why she did what she did. WHY she's so good at adapting, compartmentalizing. you can contextualize how her past as a diplomat's daughter turned her into someone adaptable for a life as a spy. you learn the depths to which she'd go to protect a child.

but it's a hard episode to recommend because, a lot like demonology, it IS a hard watch. and you lose her at the end of it. there's a real life best friend out there who can attest to the fact that when we watched this live I sat behind him on my bed, sobbing. we'll call this friend thorin. sorry, thorin. thank you for dealing with teenage gay me.

i go anywhere without recommending minimal loss. she and Reid are held hostage and Emily outs herself as an FBI agent to protect him. it's the first time we see her in major danger. she keeps passing the team secret codes. you get a real sense of her strength as an agent. you also get what I call the three stooges - Reid, Morgan, Emily - out in fool force. I meant full force. I mistyped. but it's staying. it's one of my favorite episodes of the ENTIRE show.

children of darkness, where she interacts a lot with a teen who lost her entire family, and at the end of it, asks hotch if she could try to adopt the girl. hotch tells her she needs to know she can still be objective, and she tells him she needs to know she can still be human. at the end of it, JJ tells her she can see it. her and kids. it's such a good episode. in the context of her and all the other interactions with kids too.

WHEELS UP. the entire team are in a car accident right after Reid returns from prison, but Emily gets kidnapped by one of the most terrifying unsub they've ever had - and she's held captive and drugged, making her believe she's in a hospital with him and can't move. you see her go into old spy training to withstand torture. you see how much she relies on the team. and she's doing all of this to save hotch and Jack, who aren't even on the show anymore. she is so full of love, and strength, and you see her break a little. and honestly she's just - haha!! hehe! it's fine it's fine.

other honorable mentions - the one where her mom is there. it's not a necessary watch but it is fun. 200. I didn't put it here because it's more about JJ than it is about Emily, but it's SUCH a fantastic representation of her. It is however a BRUTAL fucking watch. 7 seconds you get to see her go absolutely feral to, again, protect a kid - and it's one of the most haunting cases in the entire show. the one where the guy is taking people's hearts and using his kid to lure them is also a fantastic show of who Emily is as a person, and there's a case later where that kid comes back.

end of the day - minimal loss, demonology, wheels up, children of darkness are the ones i'd say top the list.