#but his arc was complex and layered and had a lot to do with abuse and it’s scars on young kids

[thestobingirlie]

it’s still wild to me that i’ve seen a lot of people say that steve harrington had a “zuko level redemption arc” and i just??

steve was a normal teenage boy and had, like, one bad day and then went “aw nuts. i should apologise.” that isn’t… anything like zuko’s redemption arc lmao.

[jackwhiteprophetic]

My controversial 9-1-1 opinion is that Buck is one of the least interesting characters on the show. Don’t get me wrong, he is complex and interesting but the type of character he is and oftentimes reduced to (sunshine golden retriever boy, abandonment issues, humour to cope and uses false confidence and cockiness to hide the fact he’s deeply insecure) is common and you can find at least one character in almost any media who pretty much matches that description. Usually those characters are also a fandom favourite and you can never escape them.

The clear favouritism for Buck in the fandom also undermines a lot of the incredible things this show has done for representation. “Omg the white guy kissed another white guy! This is revolutionary and the greatest thing to happen on the show!” (Ik I’m simplifying it).

That’s cool, personally I think one of the greatest things to happen on the show is the representation of an abusive relationship and how that trauma impacts a person for years and isn’t fixed in a night after finding the perfect guy. I also think representing postpartum depression was also quite revolutionary and made my mum feel comfortable enough to open up to me about how she had postpartum depression after my sister was born. Like my mum is 50 years old and this silly firefighter show made her feel seen. THAT’S what representation is for.

Regarding LGBTQ+ representation, I think the HAPPILY MARRIED BLACK LESBIAN COUPLE WITH CHILDREN (Mara we’re getting you home) is something never seen in mainstream media, firstly because there are hardly any sapphic relationships and secondly because those sapphic relationships hardly include women of colour.

This is an ensemble and I feel like a lot of people forget that. I’m also still annoyed that when Buck was confirmed bisexual, major article companies acted like this was the first time 9-1-1 had established 1) a queer character and 2) a queer couple.

Henren ran so BT could stumble around and fall flat on its face.

Interesting... We definitely share some of the same views on things, but I do find Buck really interesting as a character now!!! I find Buck and Eddie soooo interesting mainly because I have read probably millions of words of character study on them. Also when I first watched I didn't find Buck suuuper interesting up until the saviour baby arc, which adds so many layers of complexity to his behaviour across all seasons!!!

I really hope there is a greater focus on Maddie next season!!!! Also I think one of the major flaws with S7, because it was written very quickly and they knew they would have to move scenes across episodes is that they didn't really mix storylines massively, so it wasn't very cohesive and we didn't really get to see the 118 as a whole family properly. The pairings we had were Buck and Eddie, Henren and Madney and Bobby and Athena, and that was kind of consistent throughout. Next season I'm really hoping that they can switch up dynamics at least for a few storylines, BC I miss when we would see scenes of like Buck and Chim, or Athena and Hen, which they stopped doing as much once Bathena happened, because they no longer needed Hen as a link between Athena and the 118. WHICH IS SO SAD! I LOVE THEM SO MUCH.

ALSO SORRY THIS ISNT VERY WELL STRUCTURED BUT CAN THEY LET HENREN BE HAPPY PLEASE!!!! Kind of sick of their storylines being "oh no someone is threatening our family" because it just paints their family as unstable and they don't deserve that!!! I want silly storylines PLEASE!

But yes the centering of Buck (and sometimes the other guy who I will not name BC I don't wanna piss ppl off) by SOME people in the fandom ANGERS ME GREATLY. ESPECIALLY with the whole Gerrard thing, where the comments on the IG post were FLOODED with people talking about Tommy (named him here oh well). And people talking about how everyone is gonna defend Buck because if Gerrard even looks at Buck they're gonna throw hands! I'M SORRY WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU MORE DEFENSIVE OVER BUCK THAN CHIMNEY OR HEN, WHO HAVE ALREADY BOTH BEEN TARGETED AND HARASSED AND BULLIED BY GERRARD? WHY ARE YOU MORE DEFENSIVE OVER TOMMY THAN CHIM OR HEN? It fucking disgusts me. The way that Tommy literally was introduced in S2 as a PLOT DEVICE to show how 'bystanders' (he was barely a bystander, more an active participant) in workplace racism and bullying are still so fucking dangerous and disgusting and wrong. And he was so fucking disgusting to both Hen and Chim, bear in mind they have a fucking dangerous job, if CHIM had been in that building Tommy would have absolutely left him to die. WORKPLACE RACISM IN LIFE OR DEATH JOBS LEADS TO PEOPLE BEING FUCKING LEFT TO DIE. And people are more defensive over Tommy being potentially harassed by Gerrard and than they ever were over Hen or Chim. As a white person I am so fucking sorry, this fandom has not lately been a safe space for pocs and the fucking lengths people go to to justify both the character and the actor are so fucking strange. White queer people should do fucking better than this. It is the bare fucking minimum to not be racist or not have been publicly racist in the past. Why not ask for a better fucking standard? ALSO with the actor, if you're trying to fucking argue that he's not like that any more, SHOW ME that he is a fucking anti racist and that he is fucking defending minority groups and that he understands the weight of his actions. SHOW ME how he understands his privilege and uses his platform and the money he is given to donate to and fund the protection of these groups. It is fucking sickening that people have decided they can defend or ignore or tolerate this man and it DISGUSTS ME that they have happily created an environment where people can't feel fucking safe or supported or heard.

The focus on that character is so fucking weird given the lack of screen time he has had, I'm really gonna stop talking about him at all soon because it gives him way too much weight. But it's disgusting. The way some people have to find a way to write Eddie and Chris out of Buck's life and rewrite over canon to bring more focus onto this man astounds me.

As a (lesbian? Idk not currently sure but kinda) queer person, Henren are such beautiful representation and I love them so much and ALSO the foundation of the whole show is basically found family. If you want to only focus on Buck then that's fine I guess, but it is literally written into canon that the family around him mean FUCKING EVERYTHING TO HIM so it's weird that people barely fucking look at it at all.

Anyway sorry I greatly appreciated your message and idk if all of this is related or relevant and it is not well structured but I was just feeling ranty and was inspired by you! I love you and I hope you have a brilliant day!

[ironyscleverer]

Can I do a little rant about Nate Shelley for a sec? Im gonna rant about Nate Shelley for a sec. Just becuase for a show about masculinity and healthy relationships and self-love, I HATED how they handled his character arc so fucking much.

Nate starts off in season 1 as this meek, nerdy, short, chubby Asian man who's routinely bullied by the guys (players) that he works for. He's very specifically disrespected becuase he's not conventionally masculine. It's important to note that Asian guys especially are emasculated a lot in society, doubly so if you're shy and/or brainy like Nate is.

But then once he starts getting a little respect and attention from Ted, we first get to see his confidence grow, but then we also start to see a nastier side of him emerge. He uses his new position of power to feed his insecurities and he becomes vindictive, cruel and resentful. He takes it out on his players, his former bullies, but even then he chooses the weakest person to pick on (ie Colin, who's a closeted queer man as we discover later).

And I actually think this part of the arc is really well done and interesting; it feels very real and throughout season 2, even though he's absolutely horrible, I can still see how it's stemming from a place of pain and bitterness. Being part of a system that abuses and disrespects you, especially when race is a factor, can really turn people sour and warp their perception of reality. Frankly, I think I would have a lot less sympathy for Nate's character if he was just another resentful white man, but his being brown really adds a lot of layers to the character.

And it's important to note that even once he becomes a coach Nate still suffers becuase of how he presents himself! The people at Richmond do occasionally make jabs at him (Jan Maas and the suit), and you can't tell me the situation at the Greek restaurant wasn't some kind of racist power trip. Even though he has more systemic power now, he still doesn't get respect becuase of how he exists in the world.

In that context, his choice to go work for Rupert at the end of season 2 makes complete sense. Richmond was a toxic environment for him given his past experiences there, and he was not going to get the mentorship or understand that he needed. I hoped that his season 3 redemption arc would involve him untangling his victim complex, learning to trust and stand up for himself, and looking out for people who are weaker than him (so basically this fic lmao). Basically, I wanted him to step up to the challenge of being a head coach and really confront his insecurities and their roots. Maybe he could've talked to another coach of color or something. I don't know.

But ultimately, the direction they went in with Nate in season 3 was frustrating to me because he ends up right back where he started at the beginning of the show; at Richmond, working as a kit man for a bunch of white people. Sure, he's forgiven by Ted and he learns his lesson about power, but none of the actual, very understandable hurts on his end are really addressed. He's right back to the same environment he was in before, albeit a bit less toxic. He isn't allowed to grow or distance himself from that chapter of his life. (the writers also decided to just give him a girlfriend and make that fix everythin which I don't appreciate, but that's another essay entirely).

If I had it my way, I would have had him do the whole scene with coach Beard, reconcile with Ted, but respecfully tell them that he can't go back to Richmond. There's too much history there, and even if they've forgiven each other, it would be a bad environment for him. Then Nate and Ted/Beard/others can have a new relationship as equals, built on respect, rather than a boss/employee dynamic. But maybe that's just me being delusional.

Anyway, in conclusion, Nate deserved a better ending and I'm disappointed that they didn't give it to him. Thank you for reading this completely unedited rant, I may do another in the future about Ted Lasso's queer rep or its female characters. Lmk if you want to hear it.

[x-neurotoxin-x]

do you hate endeavor ?

Yikes. I feel like some ppl are not gonna like my answer for this.

I'm only gonna talk about him as a character for one, because obviously if he was a real person I would hate him because fuck abusers but he's not a real person. He is a fictional character.

I have complicated feelings about Enji. I love the todofam and i think their plot line is honestly the best subplot in the series, but i have complicated feelings about a lot of aspects of it and the todofam members themselves. Enji included.

Endeavor is a complex character. He is, and this shouldn't be a hot take. There's several criticisms i have about how Hori took his character and how his character arc was handled and pretty much took over the todofam plot, im not happy with a lot of aspects, but there's plenty of things I like about Endeavor's character and how he impacts the todofam and their subplot. I like that he's three dimensional-- He isn't just a cardboard cut out "bad dad." He has actual flaws, does/did awful things, made terrible choices, but he also has genuine and realistic traits- he's headstrong, determined, and he has emotions other than just "scary angry asshole" like a lotta domestic abusers are portrayed in media. He feels selfishness, anger, self pity, and frustration, but he also feels remorse, he feels guilt, he feels grief and regret. He's human. That's realistic and honestly an aspect about him that i really like because real people aren't cardboard cutouts and abusers can feel bad and want to change, but it doesnt change what they did or take away their responsibility for it. I don't feel bad for him, and I can't sympathize with him but I see him, if that makes sense? Having him have these feelings of regret, self pity, anger, and guilt all in one makes the family drama so much more fascinating and layered to me because he's written with complex emotions and isn't just an evil ass for the sake of it. The way DV is portrayed in Enji and Rei as well as the rest of the family is really realistic in my opinion. The same with how grooming is portrayed with Enji and Touya, Touya's one of the most relatable victims of grooming and abuse ive seen in a while, and it's done really well.

I don't really like Enji's redemption/atonement arc, as in I don't like how it was carried out. There's ways it could have gone so much better and more satisfying, but especially towards the end it feels rushed, lazy, and repetitive. Especially given how we've been shown very clearly from the beginning how terrible of a person Enji was and how many horrible things he did to his family- his atonement arc doesn't match up with how he was written in the beginning and doesn't feel consistent. I wish there had been more narrative consequence for him, and i wish hed developed beyond "I'm terrible and im trying to atone" over and over. Half his lines are repeating the same thing again and again without building on it, expanding on it, or on the other end; tearing it down. I blame that on Hori and moreso how rushed he appeared to be towards the end, but it made the whole thing really unsatisfying.

This is a lot of rambling. In short; I actually kinda like Endeavor's character and the impact he's had on the story. I hate the kinda person he is, but he's well written in my opinion.

[jetwhenitsmidnight]

Skater Boy by Anthony Nerada

Source: Audiobook ARC from NetGalley

Release date: 6 February

Genre: young adult contemporary romance

If you like: queer coming of age, explorations of toxic masculinity, pop-punk, flawed protagonists trying to be better, Sk8ter Boy by Avril Lavigne but gay

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Synopsis

Stonebridge High’s resident bad boy, Wesley “Big Mac” Mackenzie, is failing senior year—thanks to his unchecked anger, rowdy friends, and a tendency to ditch his homework for skateboarding and a secret photography obsession. So when his mom drags him to a production of The Nutcracker, Wes isn’t interested at all . . . until he sees Tristan Monroe. Mr. Nutcracker himself.

Wes knows he shouldn’t like Tristan; after all, he’s a ballet dancer, and Wes is as closeted as they come. But when they start spending time together, Wes can’t seem to get Tristan out of his head. Driven by a new sense of purpose, Wes begins to think that—despite every authority figure telling him otherwise—maybe he can change for the better and graduate on time.

As a falling out with his friends becomes inevitable, Wes realizes that being himself means taking a stand—and blowing up the bad-boy reputation he never wanted in the first place.

Content warnings

Explicit language

Bullying

Alcoholism

Underage drinking

Racism (as experienced by a Black love interest)

Past domestic abuse

Childhood trauma

Smoking (cigarettes + weed)

Homophobia

Physical violence

Review

Why'd Wes have to go and make things so complicated 😔🤘

I hadn't expected to, but I found myself relating to Wes quite a bit. His experience of being labelled as a bad kid, and then only being seen as such without being given the chance to break that expectation, as well as his feelings of anger and fear and powerlessness, that no one wants to listen to him, that he can't open up to people, that he's inferior and will never amount to anything, took me right back to primary and secondary school lmao. (I'm so glad I'm not a teenager anymore.)

I also empathise with how awkward Wes feels around Tristan, or when he's trying to talk to people who aren't his friends; not knowing the right thing to say, or when he says something that comes off as angrier or meaner than he intends—that's literally me, baby!

A part I don't relate to is the bullying. Wes is like, a legit bully, like pushing kids into the lockers like in american high school movies kind of bully. While he's not the main aggressor among his friends, it still kind of hurt to read about how he hurt people in the past. I liked how his character arc developed, with him facing up to his actions and apologising to his victims, although I do think he was forgiven pretty easily; I personally would have held a grudge until I died, but good for them!

At the start of the book I was worried that this would be a whole "find a bf and magically all your problems are fixed!" kind of story, but while Tristan is definitely a motivating factor for Wes to improve himself, I really appreciate that Wes was the one who decided to take initiative and begin the first steps to becoming better.

There's layers of complexity to Wes and Tristan's relationship, because (a) Tristan is Black, and so deals with racism that Wes could never understand, (b) Tristan is out and Wes is not, (c) Tristan is a perfectionist and has a goal and life plans, while Wes is flunking high school with no plans to apply for college, (d) Wes had an abusive childhood, and Tristan has loving supportive parents, and (e) Wes is poor and Tristan is wealthy.

These are a lot of issues to handle in one book, and while I feel like the author does a good job discussing and resolving most of these elements, there's one point that I feel didn't get fully resolved, and that's the wealth disparity between them. Wes is super aware of this, he constantly notices the differences between the way they live, which makes him feel self-conscious around Tristan.

Spoiler warning, but at one point Tristan dresses Wes up in like a pricey cardigan and a polo shirt to meet his parents, and later Wes is furious and leaves early because he feels out of place and insecure, and that Tristan is trying to change who he is. Later, they talk and Wes comes to the conclusion that he was over-reacting, which, yeah, he was. But Tristan never apologises and is like "you know I would never have made you change your clothes if I knew it would make you feel bad!" He also makes fun of one of Wes's friends, and Wes wonders if part of the reason why he doesn't want to introduce Tristan to his friends was because he felt embarrassed.

I feel like this is a pretty big deal, and an obvious source of tension, that doesn't seem to get fully resolved. Most of Wes and Tristan's discussions about their relationship revolve around Wes apologising, but Tristan, even though he never does so intentionally, never apologises for making Wes feel inferior in this aspect.

I also feel that Tristan was kind of one-dimensional. From Wes's perspective, Tristan is perfect and flawless, and he puts him on a pedestal, while Wes is the one messing up. Tristan's only flaw, as far is I can tell, is that he struggles with anxiety, but he never seems to show it to Wes, for all that he encourages Wes to be emotionally vulnerable with him. I would have liked it if Tristan messed-up, or needed Wes to support him or comfort him in some way (Wes does support him, at near the ending, but that doesn't really count), to balance out their relationship a bit, instead of always having Tristan encouraging him, and having Wes mess up and make up for it.

The climax of this book gets really chaotic, huge shit goes down, like life-ruining shit. He manages to work it all out in the end, but I feel that it came way too easily, especially the problems he had with his friends. I feel like it got dismissed as some sort of misunderstanding, like Wes was the one making a big deal out of nothing. Afterwards, he and his friends talk it out very maturely, but where was all that maturity when shit was going down!!

I realise that a lot of my review sounds like I'm complaining, but this is really worth a read! The way this book discusses toxic masculinity, emotional vulnerability, dealing with trauma (because Wes is very clearly traumatised) is so well-done, and you can tell from the author's note that he put a lot of love and thought into this book. I would discuss this more but this review would get very spoilery.

To finish off this review, here are some nitpicks! These are minor details and do not affect the overall story! Some of these are purely personal issues I have that may not apply to other people!

Wes is stated to be a punk, and a lot of this book (the title, the chapter titles, the marketing) is about pop-punk, or scene music in general. But Wes doesn't seem to listen to pop-punk? The only band he mentions listening to is Metallica, which, last I checked, is a metal band. He wears a Linkin Park t-shirt once (huge slay) and mentions the My Chemical Romance reunion (double slay), but that's about it. He seems to be more of a metalhead tbh, which there's nothing wrong with, but I was hoping for more pop-punk references. (This sounds greedy, since almost every chapter title is a pop-punk reference, and I did appreciate that, but I wanted more!!)

I didn't vibe with the audiobook narrator. I'm kind of (very) picky about audiobooks, so the fact that I didn't dnf shows that he did a decent job at least, but I feel like he missed the mark on narrating the dialogue. Sometimes I couldn't tell the difference between Wes's internal narration and when he was actually speaking which was confusing, and the narrator also read everything in this sad, hesitant sort of voice, which works for the overall vibe of the story, but makes the happy, lighthearted moments in the book feel sad as well.

Minor spoiler, Wes's mom got him and his friends tickets to see Metallica, but later they start growing apart and the concert is never mentioned again (unless I somehow missed it?), so its unclear if they did go to the Metallica concert. I need to know if they went, because if they skipped out on it due to their beef, I will be very sad on their behalf.

[abeautifulblog]

What was the verdict? What did you think? Is blood origin worth watching?

Yesssssss, question mark?

[My thoughts/opinions on Blood Origin, accompanied by screencaps from the groupchat liveblog -- spoiler-free, actually!]

Blood Origin has a more interesting story than TWN S2 (it's the story of how the Conjunction of the Spheres happened, and how the first witcher came to be, eyyy! :D), and the actors do a better job convincing the audience that their characters actually care about the other people onscreen.

In fact, coffee-mage said, "Honestly, Blood Origin is rekindling my enjoyment for Witcher more than S2 did, just because this is such an interesting universe"

The scenery is quite beautiful, and so are a lot of the costumes. The empress's costumes in particular have that gorgeous, hedonistic opulence reminiscent of Queen Amidala's outfits, stunning and original, legitimate works of art in their own right -- although they are offset by a lot of pleather armor with no coherent aesthetic, and wigs that are worse than what you'd find at Party City.

I didn't even hate the het romance, because it was a friendship first and a romance second, and it was built on a foundation of earned mutual trust and respect. (And it's enemies-[to-friends]-to-lovers, if that sweetens the pot for anyone.) It was a bit zero-to-sixty when they make the shift from being friends to making cow eyes at each other, but a lot of things in the show were, which brings us to Blood Origin's two main failings:

1) That the story was too rushed. This show had kind of the opposite problem from TWN S2 -- that instead of fucking around and wasting time in order to make a thin amount of plot stretch to cover eight episodes, Blood Origin was frantically trying to cram a complex, multi-layered story with a large cast (like, 8+ primary characters?) and all their backstories and motivations and character arcs into four episodes.

2) That the writing is just. not. good.

I'll be blunt with you guys -- whoever's writing for TWN is simply not smart enough to tell a grown-up story, not on an individual level, and not a world-building level. Blood Origin is supposed to involve a lot of complicated political maneuvering, but these writers' idea of what makes up the mechanisms of power is childishly, cartoonishly simplistic, and it could not be more clear that they have no idea how empires are administrated, how diplomacy and soft power work, what kind of time scale these things run on.

Which isn't even touching on the nonstop abuse of As You Know, Bob dialogue, and how, thanks to the time constraints, almost everyone's backstory is told-not-shown. "AS YOU KNOW, I WAS A FOUNDLING AND YOUR PARENTS TOOK ME IN, AND THUS I GREW UP TO REGARD YOU AS MY OWN SISTER--"

Like, guys. GUYS. This is the kind of shit I wrote in middle school.

It's better than TWN insofar as they remembered that they needed to actually introduce us to these characters, tell/show us what they're like as people, what their relationships and conflicts are, but MAN the dialogue is clumsy as fuck. Character interactions are as basic as can be, and any nuance or complexity there is coming from the actors, not the writing.

The premise of the show -- the story, the characters -- is not fundamantelly flawed. It had the potential to be very good, but it's not, because the execution was hot dogshit.

Joey is a delight as always, but his role in this show is so tiny and SOOOO pasted-on, just a sliver of framing narrative at the beginning of the first episode and the end of the last, so if that's what you're coming here for, you're going to be disappointed. I truck with the theory that they shoehorned him in at the last minute to try to draw in Jaskier fans and keep Blood Origin from being a total flop, because he's not integral to the story at all -- you could remove the framing narrative without a single hiccup.

(Although from a meta perspective, a lot of the plot holes make so much more sense if you interpret it as Jaskier making shit up. Something unbelievable happens and you're just like, LOL, OH LOOK, THERE'S JASKIER BACK ON HIS BULLSHIT. XD)

Michelle Yeoh is also a treat, though god only knows how they roped her into this trashfire. To be sure, her role is so thin that she's basically doing nothing but serving stage presence, but by god she's serving it in spades.

Anyway, tl;dr --

C+

High production value, and a concept with a lot of interesting potential, but foiled yet again by the holistic incompetence of TWN's writing team.

(Seriously, just -- HIRE. BETTER. WRITERS. It blows my mind that they pour all this money into these shows, but then don't think it's worth their time to find people who know how to tell a story?? Like they don't seem to think that part MATTERS? When to my mind, it's the only part that matters??)

So, is Blood Origin worth watching? I can't say, that is a question you will have to answer for yourself. *I* had a great time, but that was more about the day-drinking and getting to share the experience with friends.

So yeah, I guess that's my recommendation -- watch it with friends.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[colorfulandblack]

Ok, fuck it, listen here's unpopular opinion on Marinette X Adrien. They should NOT be together and here's why:

Ok so I'm missing some episodes from the past and some future ones but that episode where they lost their memories, learned their identities and then forgot again? That's the shit

So listen, first of all they shouldn't be together because they NEED and I cannot stress this enough, need to work on their issues before they are ready for a relationship.

Adrien,

my sweet summer child, this boy was deprived of genuine care and kindness so now he dives in for any crumbs of it he can find, and that's what makes him a people's pleaser. He cannot say when things make him uncomfortable and people exploit it. He never get things that he wants like seeing that movie of his mother because in the end he's like ye those people destroyed this opportunity, invaded my personal space, basically HUNTED me down but I can't be rude so like I'll give my email address to the biggest most toxic stalker ever. BABY NO.

So when Marinette is *flirting* or whatever the fuck, either he can't tell and thinks she's just weird or nice or he just allows this because he cannot say no. Literally this boy cannot say no and it's fucked up, man. The way people toy with him like Chloe is straight up toxic (again I know they are 14) but she had so many redemption opportunities and she decided to keep being like this, and then Kagami or what's her face, who if I remember correctly almost forced him into a relationship because he didn't want to hurt her feelings. This isn't healthy, someone get him to therapy. And like I know they all are like 14 but for fucks sake noone is saying anything they are just like: "oh, he's sucha nice and kind person" yeah, it's the fucking isolation and trauma, thanks. Not to mention ISOLATION. Gabriel is straight up abusive mf someone call child protection services.

And lastly, this is very minor but worth mentioning. It's true that Chat Noir backed down when Ladybug told him she loves someone else. (There was a little jealousy arc but it lasted whole 15 seconds and was done for). But did he really? I mean as an audience we know that they are Adrien and Marinette so it doesn't make much difference to us, it's all a long and suffering misunderstanding but they don't know that. And he keeps flirting with her. He did from the very beginning, he doesn't do anything else though but every now and then he does mention how he loves her.

Now, I don't know about other people or Marinette but if I were her it would make my skin crawl. Like, if I knew he's serious not just being funny with his flirting, (and he is serious) it would make me super uncomfortable so idk if this is some reverse things where Marinette doesn't want to hurt his feelings being more vocal about it (ALTHOUGH she does repeats it over and over again that they are not a couple so maybe it does make her uncomfortable) but that's not ok folks.

But over all, he's a kid that's got a lot of catching up to do on social interaction and all, but him being with Marinette would be a disaster. First of all give this boy therapy. This is the ship, Adrien X Therapy. And then let him be in any relationship.

Marinette,

Oh boy ok before we start know that I don't hate her, she's a complex and in some ways more layered and realistic heroine than most media present and that's great however there are some concerning behaviours here.

First of all, her obsession with Adrien is borderline creepy. I really don't like how the show blew it out of proportions and just make her this unavailable to function creature that just lives off crumbs of Adrien's attention thrown her way. Can we talk about the fact that she memorised his schedule? His classes? His everything? That's stalky as shit and not in an endearing way. And I know Adrien notices but again won't say anything so this only encourages this behaviour and it's fucking uncomfortable guys. It's not comical or funny it's just weird. Because they are not throwing those things like "oh he probably has maths. Or he sometimes has photo shoot after school" no she straight up says "I have his life memorised".

Additionally, everyone knows she has this crush and fucking encourage it. Like everyone else in the school already paired up and they just go oh she likes him ok so we'll go along those crazy elaborate plans she has to capture, literally ambush Adrien so she can talk to him. Like no, children this is not how it's fucking done. You're supposed to put a stop to that.

Moreover, and boy oh boy this is the core issue: her jealousy. Like I get it she's 14 and has a crush and she is allowed to feel jealous. And I KNOW that in the end she does the right thing but that's the issue as well.

First of all the mere thought of Adrien talking with anyone else, like Chloe or Kagami or what's her face that lying girl makes Marinette rabid. It's toxic as hell. She doesn't trust Adrien's judgement and doesn't let him chose for himself which is one of core issues of HIS because he's usually not allowed to do that. So in a way that's again restricting another sphere of his life. And I know we as an audience know they are shittt people but like they don't? So let them learn that.

And the second issue with her jealousy. She is almost a female version of a nice guy when she's like that. She literally justifies any action of sabotage or scheming to not let other girl get close to Adrien with the fact that she's Ladybug and she know Adrien so we'll (cos she's a stalker) and she's convinced her judgement is better and they don't deserve him. She dead ass thinks she's Ladybug (a nice guy) so she deserves a guy. That's fucked up. And I know that in the end she does a right thing and that's she's allowed to express her feelings and all but after several seasons this is annoying.

THEY ARE NOT LEARNING FROM THE PAST THEY DO IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN

Like this whole Marinettes in love with Adrien but he's in love with Ladybug and they are the same person might have been a fun drama hook in season one but to drag it THROUGHOUT what is it? 5 seasons? This is tiring and annoying and boring.

Lastly, especially in the context of the above we need to talk about Luca. Marinette is clumsy and shy around a crush and babbly sure but can we compare how she acts around Adrien and how she acts around Luca? We know she's a disaster around Adrien and she is a stuttering blushing mess when talking to Luca but the moment Luca confesses to her (which let me be honest was smooth as fuck guys) she immediately forgets about Adrien. We know she doesn't do anything about it because she is still hung up on Adrien but it's almost as if she's hung up on the IDEA of him. Because she does know him, she THINKS she does but she doesn't. And she can't let go even if there is a perfectly normal and healthy relationship option open In front of her.

Again, I know they are children and all but there are some serious issues here that the show just kept on playing at as a joke or a drama source and that's not ok. The characters have no growth because of that and they seriously start turning Marinette into a toxic annoying stalker and Adrien into a passive hopeless guy when they both have much potential.

[ashesandhackles]

iirc there was a post by you that said Hatori is a character to expand on Shigure's character. wdym exactly?

That was me being a bit petty, because of a few posts I saw that said "Shigure stans, if you like hot men, Hatori is right there." etc etc.

But regardless, I actually do have legit issues around his writing in the story, without the reactionary pettiness. I think i am going to rephrase the rant I had about this on reddit, lol.

From a writing standpoint, after his backstory that builds Akito as an antagonist, he is just there to clean up after Akito's messes and then to add more layers to Shigure. (Watch his scenes and see which character do you get more insight into, lol. Spoiler alert: it's not him.)

Kureno gets an explicit arc that really addresses his destructive altruism (How the story frames things matters a lot in how I feel about characters). Hatori doesn't even get that - instead Yuki apologises to him for resenting him for "following Akito's orders". Yuki gifts Hatori freedom from his guilt - thankfully, Hatori is aware enough as a character to realise that Yuki really didn't have to do it and that he is indeed very kind.

Basically, my problem here is narrative framing, and not necessarily the character itself. The story cannot commit to framing his inaction and irresponsibility critically, beyond "my hands are dirty too" with image of him touching the eye Akito wounded to indicate guilt and shame.

There are couple of places I really wanted an insight into Hatori's struggles for being complicit in an abusive system, or more of his internal life that is not related to his romantic life.

The places I have questions on and story gives very less indication of is:

1. Yuki stopped talking for some time. Haru intervenes when Yuki stops talking and begs Shigure to get him out of there. Hatori is Yuki's doctor. Where was he and what was he doing? What are his feelings about this?

We get Hatori and Shigure discussing Yuki in S1ep12 - but that scene is to set up differences between Akito and Tohru. The underlying message of that scene was Akito traumatised Yuki, and Tohru is helping him heal ("Akito doesn't understand.."). Nothing on Hatori's feelings here, zilch subtext.

2. Rin keeps running away from the hospital and there was a time where she completely disappeared, because she was locked in Cat cage. Kagura asks Hatori and Shigure about it, Hatori says something to the effect of him not knowing anything. We get Kureno's feelings about Akito locking Rin up ("no matter who you are, you can't do things like this"), we know Kureno gets chewed out by head maid for freeing her. We know through Kureno that Hatori drove her to hospital. Again, what was he thinking? What did he face? Because the next scenes we get of Hatori is him chastising Shigure for not being kind to Akito. Where is the connector between those two scenes, where are dialogues that indicates how he feels about things that have happened? Or did he take all this as just another day in the estate even as Kureno didn't? Basically I feel gaps in an otherwise potentially rich and complex character.

I know exactly what Kureno and Shigure are feeling because they get loaded dialogues and images that indicates their feelings. All of these scenes I mentioned here of Hatori are expansion of the Sohma cult, and other characters. Hatori becomes a device to establish those, and not someone with internal thoughts and motivations on his own (seriously, go check his scenes about the nature of abuse in estate: him narrating Kisa being beaten up is exposition. )

The frustrating thing is that there is material right there to develop, but it is just so half heartedly done - and because it is so half heartedly done, it barely comes up in any character analysis of him.

There is so much material in terms of his complicated dynamic with Akito. He loves her (not romantically), and one of the reasons he "refuses to blame Akito" is not just the compulsion of the curse. It's also who he is, and his own emotional history with her. The panel of Hatori picking up a crying Akito is so striking!

We get the first indication of Akito's danger as an antagonist with Hatori's backstory, and we get first indication of a new facet of Akito, with that specific image and Kureno's narration about how he can't abandon Akito. The story shifts perspective and gear with Hatori and Akito - and besides few pointed asides with Shigure about Akito's status ("God can have favourites among us" "Why don't you try to be kinder?") - we dont get more about this. We do get indication of how feels frozen etc, and how he can't cry (and therefore Mayuko cries) - it's good material to be worked with but the framing/treatment of this kind of monstrous passivity (even though it's enabled by his depression) is so meh.

Kureno gets an arc, Shigure is framed as antagonist, Ayame also gets an arc - all adults are complicit in abuse. No one is clean or morally in the right- what story does about it, and how it is told matters.

[army-of-mai-lovers]

in which I get progressively angrier at the various tropes of atla fandom misogyny

tbh I think it would serve all of us to have a larger conversation about the specific ways misogyny manifests in this fandom, because I’ve seen a lot of people who characterize themselves as feminists, many of whom are women themselves, discuss the female characters of atla/lok in misogynistic ways, and people don’t talk about it enough. 

disclaimer before I start: I’m not a woman, I’m an afab nonbinary person who is semi-closeted and thus often read as a woman. I’m speaking to things that I’ve seen that have made me uncomfy, but if any women (esp women existing along other axes of oppression, e.g. trans women, women of color, disabled women, etc) want to add onto this post, please do!

“This female character is a total badass but I’m not even a little bit interested in exploring her as a human being.” 

I’ve seen a lot of people say of various female characters in atla/lok, “I love her! She’s such a badass!” now, this statement on its own isn’t misogynistic, but it represents a pretty pervasive form of misogyny that I’ve seen leveled in large part toward the canon female love interests of one or both of the members of a popular gay ship (*cough* zukka *cough*) I’m going to use Suki as an example of this because I see it with her most often, but it can honestly be applied to nearly every female character in atla/lok. Basically, people will say that they stan Suki, but when it comes time to engage with her as an actual character, they refuse to do it. I’ve seen meta after meta about Zuko’s redemption arc, but I so rarely see people engage with Suki on any level beyond “look at this cool fight scene!” and yeah, I love a cool Suki fight scene as much as anybody else, but I’m also interested in meta and headcanons and fics about who she is as a person, when she isn’t an accessory to Sokka’s development or doing something cool. of course, the material for this kind of engagement with Suki is scant considering she doesn’t have a canon backstory (yet) (don’t let me down Faith Erin Hicks counting on you girl) but with the way I’ve seen people in this fandom expand upon canon to flesh out male characters, I know y’all have it in you to do more with Suki, and with all the female characters, than you currently do. frankly, the most engagement I’ve seen with Suki in mainstream fandom is justifying either zukki (which again, is characterizing her in relation to male characters, one of whom she barely interacts with in canon) or one of the Suki wlw pairings. which brings me to--

“I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!” 

now, I will admit, two of my favorite atla ships are yueki and mailee, and so I totally understand being interested in these characters’ dynamics, even if, as is the case with yueki, they’ve never interacted canonically. however, it becomes a problem for me when these ships are always in the background of a zukka fic. at some point, it becomes obvious that you like this ship because it gets either Zuko or Sokka’s female love interests out of the way, not because you actually think the characters would mesh well together. It’s bad form to dislike a female character because she gets in the way of your gay ship, so instead, you find another girl to pair her off with and call it a day. to be clear, I’m not saying that everybody who ships either mailee or yueki (or tysuki or maisuki or yumai or whatever other wlw rarepair involving Zuko or Sokka’s canon love interests) is nefariously trying to sideline a female character while acting publicly as if she’s is one of their faves--far from it--but it is noteworthy to me how difficult it is to find content that centers wlw ships, while it’s incredibly easy to find content that centers zukka in which mailee and/or yueki plays a background role. 

also, notice how little traction wlw Katara ships gain in this fandom. when’s the last time you saw yuetara on your dash? there’s no reason for wlw Katara ships to gain traction in a fandom that is so focused on Zuko and Sokka getting together, bc she doesn’t present an immediate obstacle to that goal (at least, not an obstacle that can be overcome by pairing her up with a woman). if you are primarily interested in Zuko and Sokka’s relationship, and your queer readings of other female characters are motivated by a desire to get them out of the way for zukka, then Katara’s canon m/f relationship isn’t a threat to you, and thus, there’s no reason to read her as potentially queer. Or even, really, to think about her at all. 

“Katara’s here but she’s not actually going to do anything, because deep down, I’m not interested in her as a person.” 

the show has an enormous amount of textual evidence to support the claim that Sokka and Katara are integral parts of each other’s lives. so, she typically makes some kind of appearance in zukka content. sometimes, her presence in the story is as an actual character with layers and nuance, someone whom Sokka cares about and who cares about Sokka in return, but also has her own life and goals outside of her brother (or other male characters, for that matter.) sometimes, however, she’s just there because halfway through writing the author remembered that Sokka actually has a sister who’s a huge part of the show they’re writing fanfiction for, and then they proceed to show her having a meetcute with Aang or helping Sokka through an emotional problem, without expressing wants or desires outside of those characters. I’m honestly really surprised that I haven’t seen more people calling out the fact that so much of Katara’s personality in fanon revolves around her connections to men? she’s Aang’s girlfriend, she’s Sokka’s sister, she’s Zuko’s bestie. never mind that in canon she spends an enormous amount of time fighting against (anachronistic, Westernized) sexism to establish herself as a person in her own right, outside of these connections. and that in canon she has such interesting complex relationships with other female characters (e.g. Toph, Kanna, Hama, Korra if you want to write lok content) or that there are a plethora of characters with whom she could have interesting relationships with in fanon (Mai, Suki, Ty Lee, Yue, Smellerbee, and if you want to write lok content, Kya II, Lin, Asami, Senna, etc). to me, the lack of fandom material exploring Katara’s relationships with other women or with herself speak to a profound indifference to Katara as a character. I’m not saying you have to like Katara or include her in everything you write, but I am asking you to consider why you don’t find her interesting outside of her relationships with men.

“I hate Katara because she talks about her mother dying too often.” 

this is something I’ve seen addressed by people far more qualified than I to address it, but I want to mention it here in part because when I asked people which fandom tropes they wanted me to talk about, this came up often, but also because I find it really disgusting that this is a thing that needs to be addressed at all. Y’all see a little girl who watched her mother be killed by the forces of an imperialist nation and say that she talks about it too much??? That is a formational, foundational event in a child’s life. Of course she’s going to talk about it. I’ve seen people say that she doesn’t talk about it that often, or that she only talks about it to connect with other victims of fn imperialism e.g. Jet and Haru, but frankly, she could speak about it every episode for no plot-significant reason whatsoever and I would still be angry to see people say she talks about it too much. And before you even bring up the Sokka comparison, people deal with grief in different ways. Sokka  repressed a lot of his grief/channeled it into being the “man” of his village because he knew that they would come for Katara next if he gave them the opportunity. he probably would talk about his mother more if a) he didn’t feel massive guilt at not being able to remember what she looked like, and b) he was allowed to be a child processing the loss of his mother instead of having to become a tiny adult when Hakoda had to leave to help fight the fn. And this gets into an intersection with fandom racism, in that white fans (esp white American fans) are incapable of relating to the structural trauma that both Sokka and Katara experience and thus can’t see the ways in which structural trauma colors every single aspect of both of their characters, leading them to flatten nuance and to have some really bad takes. And you know what, speaking of bad fandom takes--   

“Shitting on Mai because she gets in the way of my favorite Zuko ship is actually totally okay because she’s ~abusive~” 

y’all WHAT. 

ok listen, I get not liking maiko. I didn’t like it when I first got into fandom, and later I realized that while bryke cannot write romance to save their lives, fans who like maiko sure can, so I changed my tune. but if you still don’t like it, that’s fine. no skin off my back. 

what IS skin off my back is taking instances in which Mai had justified anger toward Zuko, and turning it into “Mai abused Zuko.” do you not realize how ridiculous you sound? this is another thing where I get so angry about it that I don’t know how useful my analysis is actually going to be, but I’ll do my best. numerous people have noted how analysis of Mai and Zuko’s breakup in “The Beach” or Mai being justifiably angry with him at Boiling Rock or her asking for FUCKING FRUIT in “Nightmares and Daydreams” that says that all of these events were her trying to gain control over him is....ahhh...lacking in reading comprehension, but I’d like to go a step further and talk about why y’all are so intent on taking down a girl who doesn’t show emotion in normative ways. obviously, there’s a “Zuko can do no wrong” aspect to Mai criticism (which is super weird considering how his whole arc is about how he can do lots of wrong and he has to atone for the wrong that he’s done--but that’s a separate post.) But I also see slandering Mai for not expressing her emotions normatively and not putting up with Zuko’s shit and slandering Katara for “talking about her mother too often” as two sides of the same coin. In both cases, a female character expresses emotions that make you, the viewer, uncomfortable, and so instead of attempting to understand where those emotions may have come from and why they might be manifesting the way they are, y’all just throw the whole character away. this is another instance of people in the fandom being fundamentally disinterested in engaging with the female characters of atla in a real way, except instead of shallowly “stanning” Mai, y’all hate her. so we get to this point where female characters are flattened into one of two things: perfect queens who can do no wrong, or bitches. and that’s not who they are. that’s not who anyone is. but while we as a fandom are pretty good at understanding b1 Zuko’s actions as layered and multifaceted even though he’s essentially an asshole then, few are willing to lend the same grace to any female character, least of all Mai. 

and what’s funny is sometimes this trope will intersect with “I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!”, so you’ll have someone actively calling Mai toxic/problematic/abusive, and at the same time ship her with Ty Lee? make it make sense! but then again, maybe that’s happening because y’all are fundamentally disinterested in Ty Lee as a character too. 

“I love Ty Lee so much that I’m going to treat her like an infantilized hypersexual airhead!” 

there are so many things happening in y’alls characterization of Ty Lee that I struggled to synthesize it into one quippy section header. on one hand, you have the hypersexualization, and on the other hand, you have the infantilization, which just makes the hypersexualization that much worse. 

(of course, sexualizing or hypersexualizing ANY atla character is really not the move, considering that these are child characters in a children’s show, but then again, that’s a separate post.) 

now, I understand how, from a very, very surface reading of the text, you could come to the conclusion that Ty Lee is an uncomplicated bimbo. if you grew up on Western media the way I did, you’ll know that Ty Lee has a lot of the character traits we associate with bimbos: the form-fitting pink crop top, the general conventional attractiveness, the ditzy dialogue. but if you think about it for more than three seconds, you’ll understand that Ty Lee has spent her whole life walking a tightrope, trying to please Azula and the rest of the royal family while also staying true to herself. Ty Lee and Azula’s relationship is a really complex and interesting topic that I don’t really have time to explore at the moment given how long this post is, but I’d argue that Ty Lee’s constant, vocal  adulation is at least partially a product of learning to survive at court at an early age. Like Mai, she has been forced to regulate her emotions as a member of fn nobility, but unlike Mai, she also has six sisters who look exactly like her, so she has a motivation to be more peppy and more affectionate to stand out. 

fandom does not do the work to understand Ty Lee. as is a theme with this post, fandom is actively disinterested in investigating female characters beyond a very surface level reading of them. Thus, fandom takes Ty Lee’s surface level qualities--her love of the color pink, her revealing standard outfit, and the fact that once she found a boy attractive and also once a lot of boys found her attractive--and they stretch this into “Ty Lee is basically Karen Smith from Mean Girls.” thus, Ty Lee is painted as a bimbo, or more specifically, as not smart, uncritically adoring of Azula (did y’all forget all the non-zukka bits of Boiling Rock?), and attractive to the point of hypersexualization. I saw somebody make a post that was like “I wish mailee was more popular but I’m also glad it isn’t because otherwise people would write it as Mai having to put up with her dumb gf” and honestly I have to agree!! this is one instance in which I’m glad that fandom doesn’t discuss one of my favorite characters that often because I hate the fanon interpretation of Ty Lee, I think it’s rooted in misogyny (particularly misogyny against East Asian women, which often takes the form of fetishizing them and viewing them only through a Western white male gaze)  

(side note: here at army-of-mai-lovers, we stan bimbos. bimbos are fucking awesome. I personally don’t read Ty Lee as a bimbo, but if that’s you, that’s fucking awesome. keep doing what you’re doing, queen <3 or king or monarch, it’s 2021, anyone can be a bimbo, bitches <3)

“Toph can and will destroy everyone here with her bare hands because she’s a meathead who likes to murder people and that’s it!”  

Toph is, and always has been, one of my favorite ATLA characters. My very first fic in fandom was about her, and she appears prominently in a lot of my other work as well. One thing that I am always struck by with Toph is how big a heart she has. She’s independent, yes, snarky, yes, but she cares about people--even the family that forced her to make herself smaller because they didn’t believe that their blind daughter could be powerful and strong. Her storyline is powerful and emotionally resonant, her bending is cool precisely because it’s based in a “wait and listen” approach instead of just smashing things indiscriminately, she’s great disabled rep, and overall one of the best characters in the show. 

And in fandom, she gets flattened into “snarky murder child.” 

So where does this come from? Well, as we all know, Toph was originally conceived of as a male character, and retained a lot of androgyny (or as the kids call it, Gender) when she was rewritten as a female character. There are a lot of cultural ideas about androgynous/butch women being violent, and people in fandom seem to connect that larger cultural narrative with some of Toph’s more violent moments in the show to create the meathead murder child trope, erasing her canon emotionality, softness, heart, and femininity in the process. 

This is not to say that you shouldn’t write or characterize Toph as being violent or snarky at all ever, because yeah, Toph definitely did do Earth Rumbles a lot before joining the gaang, and yeah, Toph is definitely a sarcastic person who makes fun of her friends a lot. What I am saying is that people take these traits, sans the emotional logic, marry them to their conception of androgynous/butch women as violent/unemotional/uncaring, and thus create a caricature of Toph that is not at all up to snuff. When I see Toph as a side character in a fic (because yeah, Toph never gets to be a main character, because why would a fandom obsessed with one male character in particular ever make Toph a protagonist in her own right?) she’s making fun of people, killing people, pranking people, etc, etc. She’s never talking to people about her emotions, or palling around with her found family, or showing that she cares about her friends. Everything about her relationship with her parents, her disability, her relationship to Gender, and her love of her friends is shoved aside to focus on a version of Toph that is mean and uncaring because people have gotten it into their heads that androgynous/butch women are mean and uncaring. 

again, we see a female character who does not emote normatively or in a way that makes you, the viewer, comfortable, and so you warp her character until she’s completely unrecognizable and flat. and for what? 

Azula

no, I didn’t come up with a snappy name for this section, mainly because fanon interpretations of Azula and my own feelings toward the character are...complicated. I know there were some people who wanted me to write about Azula and the intersection of misogyny and ableism in fanon interpretations of her character, but I don’t think I can deliver on that because I personally am in a period of transition with how I see Azula. that is to say, while I still like her and believe that she can be redeemed, there is a lot of merit to disliking her. the whole point of this post is that the female characters of ATLA are complex people whom the fandom flattens into stereotypes that don’t hold up to scrutiny, or dislike for reasons that don’t make sense. Azula, however, is a different case. the rise of Azula defenders and Azula stans has led to this sentiment that Azula is a 14 y/o abuse victim who shouldn’t be held accountable for her actions. it seems to me that people are reacting to a long, horrible legacy of male ATLA fans armchair diagnosing Azula with various personality disorders (and suggesting that people with those personality disorders are inherently monstrous and unlovable which ahhhh....yikes) and then saying that those personality disorders make her unlovable, which is quite obviously bad. and hey, I get loving a character that everyone else hates and maybe getting so swept up in that love that you forget that your fave is complicated and has made some unsavory choices. it sucks that fanon takes these well-written, complex villains/antiheroes and turns them into monsters with no critical thought whatsoever. but the attitude among Azula stans that her redemption shouldn’t be hard, that her being a child excuses all of the bad things that she’s done, that she is owed redemption....all of that rubs me the wrong way. I might make another post about this in the future that discusses this in more depth, but as it stands now: while I understand that there is a legacy of misogynistic, ableist, unnuanced takes on Azula, the backlash to that does not take into account the people she hurt or the fact that in ATLA she does not make the choice to pursue redemption. and yes, Zuko had help in making that choice that Azula didn’t, and yes, Azula is a victim of abuse, but in a show about children who have gone through untold horrors and still work to better the lives of the people around them, that is not enough for me to uncritically stan her. 

Conclusion    

misogyny in this fandom runs rampant. while there are some tropes of fandom misogyny that are well-documented and have been debunked numerous times, there are other, subtler forms of misogyny that as far as I know have gone completely unchecked. 

what I find so interesting about misogyny in atla fandom is that it’s clear that it’s perpetrated by people who are aware of fandom misogyny who are actively trying not to be misogynistic. when I first joined atla fandom last summer, memes about how zukka fandom was better than every other fandom because they didn’t hate the female characters who got in the way of their gay ship were extremely prevalent, and there was this sense that *this* fandom was going to model respectful, fun, feminist online fandom. not all of the topes I’ve outlined are exclusive to or even largely utilized in zukka fandom, but a lot of them are. I’ve been in and out of fandom since I was eleven years old, and most of the fandom spaces I’ve been in have been majority-female, and all of them have been incredibly misogynistic. and I always want to know why. why, in these communities created in large part by women, in large part for women, does misogyny run wild? what I realize now is that there’s never going to be a one-size fits all answer to that question. what’s true for 1D fandom on Wattpad in 2012 is absolutely not true for atla fandom on tumblr in 2021. the answers that I’ve cobbled together for previous fandoms don’t work here. 

so, why is atla fandom like this? why did the dream of a feminist fandom almost entirely focused on the romantic relationship between two male characters fall apart? honestly, I think the notion that zukka fandom ever was this way was horrifically ignorant to begin with. from my very first moment in the fandom, I was seeing racism, widespread sexualization of minors, and yes, misogyny. these aspects of the fandom weren’t talked about as much as the crocverse or other, much more fun aspects. further, atla (specifically zukka) fandom misogyny often doesn’t look like the fandom misogyny we’ve become familiar with from like, Sherlock fandom or what have you. for the most part, people don’t actively hate Suki, they just “stan” without actually caring about her. they hate Mai because they believe in treating male victims of abuse equally. they’re not characterizing Toph poorly, they’re writing her as a “strong woman.” in short, people are misogynistic, and then invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of feminist theory to shield themselves from accusations of misogyny. it’s not unlike the way some people will invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of critical race theory to shield themselves from accusations of racism, or how they’ll talk about “freedom of speech” and “the suppression of women’s sexuality” to justify sexualizing minors. the performance of feminism and antiracism is what’s important, not the actual practice. 

if you’ve made it this far, first off, hi, thanks so much for reading, I know this was a lot. second, I would seriously encourage you to be aware of these fandom tropes and to call them out when you see them. elevate the voices of fans who do the work of bringing the female characters of atla to life. invest in the wlw ships in this fandom. drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic (please, drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic). read some yuetara. let’s all be honest about where we are now, and try to do better in the future. I believe in us. 

[doritofalls]

i love korekiyo's character so much!!! What would you write differently 👀

same unpopular fav....! liking kiyo is thankless work but someone gotta do it. thank you for your interest!! let's see... spoilers for drv3 under the cut.

in my opinion, up to chapter 3 korekiyo's character was not handled particularly bad. there are several subtle hints to his backstory and involvement with his sister, remaining noticeable without giving off warning signs. and i think his free time events are delightful! so honestly i wouldn't even really wanna touch any of that. they establish korekiyo as a fairly eccentric, emotionally distant if non ill-intentioned person, who approaches human relationships like academic encounters.

now we get to chapter 3, and with his research lab opened he clearly hits an obsessive phase. the behavioural changes are very obvious, especially if you intend to spend free time with him (the re-occurring message of him going on and on about seances quite reminiscent of the message you get in game 1 when spending time with a completely shut-down taka). we obviously don’t know if that’s just the kind of state korekiyo got himself in with each of his murders (quite possible, with the ritualistic nature he considers them with) or if it is just his his wavering composure, but it starts cluing the viewer into the fact that kiyo is far from a mentally stable individual, despite his fairly good handling of the unique challenges of the killing game. and i still think that’s fairly good writing, showing the audience that something is off about kiyo instead of telling them. 

now where i feel like we hit the wall is definitely with the trial and korekiyo’s subsequent execution. i think the idea of double murders - with only the first culprit being punished - leaves SUCH a fascinating chance for someone to stay in the game despite committing a murder. korekiyo killing tenko, but not angie, and thus continuing to be a part of the game would have been such an interesting direction for the plot and for future character dynamics. though knowing the cast v3 wants to put actual focus on, there was simply no way for kiyo to gain a bigger role than what he already has. 

i do think though, development-wise, that kiyo’s arc is broken in half like a cracker, because we earn the twist of his identity as a serial killer, we learn about his sister, we see whatever he’s got going on, but his near immediate execution really puts an immediate stop to any potential development that could come from this. which, again, i find to be SUCH a shame because korekiyo is an extremely complex and extremely misunderstood character imo. he’s someone who’s learned all the wrong lessons and took all the wrong paths and there’s a lot you can build on that. 

imo, for korekiyo to develop though, he would need a dose of ego death first, because his present personality is... very much a fabrication in more ways than one (something i also find fascinating!). through learning about kiyo the viewer finds that nearly nothing about him is truly his - his uniform is a memento of his sister, which he admits to finding too flashy; he kills in a misguided attempt to appease his sister who could never accept him as her friend; his interest in anthropology even, is something he took up after his sister. korekiyo does extremely little on his own accord without direct co-relation to his sister. he exists as a mirror image his sister left behind and let’s be honest... 

whatever korekiyo and his sister had going on, was very very clearly abuse (it’s enough if you put the timeline of kiyo’s possible age together to get the yikes) and extremely traumatic, something that korekiyo's in-game arc only vaguely hints at. because he’s under layers and layers and layers of denial. i think for korekiyo to develop he’d have to come to terms with this fact, and all the hurt that would come with it - not to mention the kind of hit it would take on his identity, which again, is near completely modeled after his sister’s precieved wants and needs. 

i just think keeping korekiyo around in an environment where he IS a confirmed murderer, while having him go through this crisis of taking himself apart and having to rebuild with near nothing with few allies would make for very interesting character dynamics and loyalties, in a version of the game where he’d have a more major role in the story. because kiyo is not a bad person, per se, but he’s extremely misguided with a LOT of past mistakes to own up to and re-contextualize, and a LOT of issues to address and treat. but i don’t think being abused by his sister and bending over backwards to wrap it into something positive is one of those.  i do have an au for this. i think about it a lot. but that goes in the realm of Making Stuff Up, of which i tried to keep from this post. i hope this made sense;;; :’] i have a lot of thoughts about kiyo and it’s hard to put em cohesively. 

[hamliet]

The Crows Summon the Sun

Or, Hamliet’s review of Shadow & Bone, which gets a 4.5/5 for enjoyment and a 3.5/5 in terms of writing.

The true heroes of this story and the saviors of the show are the Crows. However, the problem is that the show then has an uneven feel, because the strength of the Crows plotline highlights the weaknesses of the trilogy storyline. But imo, overall, the strengths overshadow (#punintended) the weaknesses. 

I’ll divide the review into the narrative and the technical (show stuff, social commentary), starting with narrative.

Narrative: The Good 

It’s What The Crows Deserve

I went into the show watching it for the Crows; however, knowing that their storyline was intended to be a prequel, I wasn’t terribly optimistic. And while it is a prequel, the characters have complete and full arcs that perfectly set them up for the further development they will have in the books (which I think should be the next season?). Instead of retreading the arcs they’d have in the books, which is how prequels usually go, they had perfect set up for these arcs. It’s really excellent. 

Jesper, Inej, and Kaz are all allowed to be flawed, to have serious conflicts with one another, and yet to love each other. They feel like a found family in the best of ways. Kaz is the perfect selfish rogue; he’s a much more successfully executed Byronic hero than the Darkling, actually. Inej is heroic and her faith is not mocked, yet she too is flawed and her choices are not always entirely justified, but instead left to the audience to ponder (like killing the girl), which is a more mature writing choice that I appreciated. 

Jesper is charming, has a heart of gold despite being a murderer and on the surface fairly greedy, and MILO THE EMOTIONAL SUPPORT GOAT WAS THE BEST THING EVER. I also liked Jesper’s fling with Dima but I felt it could be better used rather than merely establishing his sexuality, like if Jesper and Dima had seen each other one more time or something had come of their tryst for the plot/themes/development of Jesper. 

Nina and Matthias’s backstory being in the first season, instead of in flashbacks, really works because it automatically erases any discomfort of the implications of Nina having falsely accused Matthias that the books start with. We know Nina, we know Matthias, we know their motivations, backgrounds, and why they feel the way we do. It’ll be easy for the audience to root for them without a lot of unnecessary hate springing from misunderstanding Nina (since she’s my favorite). Matthias’s arc was also really strongly executed and satisfyingly tragic. Their plotline was a bit unfortunately disconnected from the rest of the story, but Danielle Gallagan and Callahan Skogman have absolutely sizzling chemistry so I found myself looking forward to their scenes instead of feeling distracted. Also? It’s nice seeing a woman with Nina’s body type as a romantic and powerful character. 

Hamliet Likes Malina Now

Insofar as the trilogy storyline goes, the best change the show made was Mal. He still is the same character from the books, but much more likable. The pining was... a lot (too much in episode 4, I felt) but Malina is a ship I actually enjoyed in the show while I NOTP’d it in the books. Mal has complexity and layers to his motivations (somewhat) and a likable if awkward charm. Archie Renaux was fantastic. 

Ben Barnes is the perfect Aleksandr Kirigan, and 15 year old me, who had the biggest of big crushes on Ben Barnes (first celebrity crush over a decade ago lol), was pretty damn happy lol. He’s magnificantly acted--sympathetic and terrifying, sincerely caring and yet villainous in moments. Story-wise, I think it was smart to reveal his name earlier on than in the books, because it helps with the humanization especially in a visual medium like film. Luda was a fitting (if heartbreaking) backstory, but it is also hard for me to stomach knowing what the endgame of his character is. Like... I get the X-men fallacy thing, but I hope the show gives more kindness to his character than the books did, yet I’m afraid to hold my breath. Just saying that if you employ save the cat, if you directly say you added this part (Luda) to make the character more likable (as the director did) please do not punish the audience for feeling what you intended. 

I also liked the change that made Alina half-Shu. It adds well to her arc and fits with her character, actually giving her motivations (she kinda just wants to be ordinary in a lot of ways) a much more interesting foundation than in the books. Also it’s nice not to have another knock-off Daenerys (looking to you Celaena and book!Alina). Jessie Mei Li does a good job playing Alina’s insecurities and emotions, but... 

Narrative: The Ehhhhhhh

Alina the Lamp

Sigh. Here we go. Alina has little consistent characterization. She’s almost always passive when we see her, yet she apparently punches an officer for calling her a name and this seems to be normal for her, but it doesn’t fit at all with what we know about her thus far. Contradictions are a part of humanity, but it’s never given any focus, so it comes across as inconsistent instead of a flaw or repression. 

I have no idea what Alina wants, beside that she wants to be with Mal, which is fine except I have no idea what the basis of their bond is. Even with like, other childhood friends to lovers like Ren/Nora in RWBY or Eren/Mikasa in SnK, there’s an inciting moment, a reason, that we learn very early on in their story to show us what draws them together. Alina and Mal just don’t have that. There’s the meadow/running away thing, but they were already so close, and why?  Why, exactly? What brought them together? The term “bullies” is thrown around but it isn’t ever explored and it needed to be this season. If I have to deal with intense pining for so many episodes at least give me a foundation for their devotion. You need to put this in the beginning, in the first season. You just do.

A “lamp” character is a common metaphor to describe a bad character: essentially, you could replace the character with a lamp and nothing changes. Considering Alina’s gift is light, it’s a funnily apt metaphor, but it really does apply. Her choices just don’t... matter. She could be a special lamp everyone is fighting over and almost nothing would change. The ironic thing is that everyone treating her like a fancy lamp is exactly the conflict, but it’s never delved into. We’re never shown that Alina is more than a lamp. She never has to struggle because her choices are made for her and information is gifted to her when she needs it. Not making choices protects Alina from consequences and the story gives her little incentive to change that; in fact, things tend to turn out better when she doesn’t make choices (magic stags will arrive). 

Like... let’s look at a few occasions when Alina almost or does make choices. For example, she chooses to (it seems) sleep with Kirigan, but then there’s a convenient knock at the door and Bhagra arrives with key information that changes Alina’s mind instantly despite the fact that Bhagra’s been pretty terrible to her. If you want to write a woman realizing she’s been duped by a cruel man, show her discovering it instead of having the man’s abusive mother tell her when she had absolutely no such suspicions beforehand. There’s no emotional weight there because Alina doesn’t struggle. 

When she is actually allowed to carry out a bad choice, the consequences are handwaved away instead of built into a challenge for her. Like... Alina got her friends killed. More than once. I’m not saying she’s entirely to blame for these but could we show her reacting to it? Feeling any sort of grief? She never mentions Raisa or Alexei after they’re gone, just Mal, and I’m... okay. They were there because of you. Aren’t you feeling anything? Aren’t you sad? The only time Alina brings up her friends’ deaths is to tell Kirigan he killed her friends when they were only there because she burned the maps. She yells at Kirigan for “never” giving her a choice, but she almost never makes any, so why would he? Alina has the gall to lecture Genya about choices, but she herself almost never has to make any. 

Which brings me to another complaint in general: Alina’s lack of care for everyone around her when they’re not Mal, even if they care for her. Marie dies because of her (absolutely not her fault of course) but as far as we know she never even learns about Marie. She certainly doesn’t ever ask about her or Nadia. Alina seems apathetic at best to people, certainly not compassionate or kind. 

The frustrating thing is that there is potential here. Like, it actually makes a lot of psychological sense for an orphan who has grown up losing to be reluctant to care for people outside of her orbit and that she would struggle to believe she can have any say in her destiny (ie make choices). It’s also interesting that a girl who feels like an outsider views others outside her. But the show never offers examines Alina’s psychology with any depth; it simply tells us she’s compassionate when she is demonstrably not, it tells us she makes decisions when it takes magical intervention to do so. It’s a missed opportunity. This does not change between episodes 1 and 8, despite the episodes’ parallel structures and scenes, which unintentionally reinforces that Alina had little real development. 

Inej and ironically Jesper and Kaz embody the concept of “mercy” far better and with far more complexity than Alina does. The Crows have reactions to the loss of people who even betray them (Arken, etc), learn, and course-correct (or don’t) when they are even loosely involved in having strangers die. They’re good characters because they change and learn and have their choices matter. When they kill we see them wrestle with it and what this means even if they are accustomed to doing so. Jesper can’t kill in front of a child. Kaz wonders what his killings do to Inej’s idea of him.

Narrative: The Mixed Bag

Tropes, Themes, Telling vs. Showing

So the show’s themes in the Alina storyline are a mess, as they are in the trilogy too. Tropes are a very valuable way to show your audience what you’re trying to say. They’re utilized worldwide because they resonate with people and we know what to expect from them. The Crows' storyline shows us what it wants us to learn.

Preaching tells, and unfortunately, the trilogy relies on telling/preaching against fornicationBad Boys. It’s your right to write any trope or trample any trope you want--your story--but you should at least understand what/why you are doing so. The author clearly knows enough about Jungian shadows and dark/light yin/yang symbolism to use it in the story, but then just handwaves it away as “I don’t like this” but never does so in a narratively effective way: addressing the appeal in the first place. If you really wanna deconstruct a trope, you gotta empathize with the core of the reason these tropes appeal to people (it allays deep fears that we are ourselves unlovable, through loving another person despite how beastly they can be), and address this instead of ignoring it. Show us a better way through the Fold of your story. Don’t just go around it and ignore the issue.

The trilogy offers highly simplistic themes at best--bad boy bad and good boy good, which is fine-ish for kid lit but less fine for adult complexity, which the show (more so than the books) seems to try to push despite not actually having much of it.

Alina and Mal are intended to be good, we’re told they are, but I’m not sure why beyond just that we’re told so. Alina claims the stag chose her, but in the show it’s never explained why at all. Unlike with Kaz, Inej, Jesper, and hell even Matthias and Nina, we don’t see Alina or Mal’s complex choices and internal wrestling. 

Like, Inej’s half-episode where she almost killed the guy they needed was far more character exploration than Alina has the entire show, to say nothing of Inej’s later killing which not only makes her leaps and bounds more interesting, but ironically cements her as a far more compelling and yes, likable, heroine than Alina. We see Inej’s emotional and moral conflict. We can relate to her. We see Kaz struggling with his selfishness and regrets, with his understanding of himself through his interactions with and observations of Inej, Alina, the Darkling, Arken, and Jesper.

We don’t explore what makes Mal or Alina good and what makes them bad. We don’t know what Alina discovers about herself, what her power means for her. We are told they are good, we are told she knows her power is hers, but never shown what this means or what this costs them/her. Their opportunities to be good are handed to them (the stag, Bhagra) instead of given to them as a challenge in which they risk things, in which doing good or making a merciful choice costs them. Alina gets to preach about choices without ever making any; Inej risks going back to the Menagerie to trust Kaz. Her choices risk. They cost. They matter and direct her storyline and her arc, and those of the people around her.

Production Stuff:

The Good: 

The production overall is quite excellent. The costumes, pacing, acting, and cinematography (for example, one of the earliest scenes between the Darkling and Alina has Alina with her back to the light, face covered in his shadow, while the Darkling’s face is light up by her light even if he stands in the shadows) are top-notch. The soundtrack as well is incredible and emphasizes the scenes playing. The actors have great chemistry together, friend chemistry and romantic when necessary (Mal and Alina, the Darkling and Alina, Kaz and Inej, Nina and Matthias, David and Genya, etc.) All are perfectly cast. 

The Uncomfortable Technicalities Hamliet Wants to Bitch About:

The only characters from fantasy!Europe having any trace of an accent reminiscent of said fantasy country's real-world equivalent are antagonists like Druskelle (Scandinavia) and Pekka (Ireland). When the heroes mostly have British accents despite being from fantasy Russia and Holland, it is certainly A Choice to have the Irish accent emphasized. The actor is British by the way, so I presume he purposely put on an Irish accent. I'm sure no one even considered the potential implications of this but it is A Look nonetheless.

The Anachronisms Hamliet Has a Pet Peeve About: 

The worldbuilding is compelling, but the only blight on the worldbuilding within the story itself (ignoring context) was that there are some anachronisms that took me out of the story, particularly in the first episode where “would you like to share with the class” and “saved by the horn” are both used. Both are modern-day idioms in English that just don’t fit, especially the latter. The last episode uses “the friends we made along the way.” There are other modern idioms as well.

IT’S STARKOVA and Other Pet Peeves Around the Russian Portrayal 

Russian names are not hard, and Russian naming systems are very, very easy to learn. I could have waved “Starkov” not being “Starkova,” “Nazyalensky” not being “Nazyalenskaya,”  and “Safin” not being “Safina” as an American interpretation (since in America, the names do not femininize). However, “Mozorova” as a man is unfathomable and suggests to me the author just doesn’t understand how names work, which is a bit... uh okay considering a simple google search gets you to understand Russian names. They aren’t hard. I cannot understand why the show did not fix this. It is so simple to fix and would be a major way to help the story’s overall... caricature of Russia. 

Speaking of that... Ravka is supposedly Russian-based, but it is more accurately based on the stereotypes of what Americans think of Russia. Amerussia? Russica? Not great. 

The royals are exactly what Americans think of the Romanovs, right down to the “greasy” “spiritual advisor” who is clearly Rasputin and which ignores the Romanov history, very real tragedy, and the reason Rasputin was present in the court. The religion with all its saints is a vapid reflection of Russian Orthodoxy. The military portrayal with its lotteries and brutality and war is how the US views the Russian military. The emphasis on orphans, constant starvation, classification, and children being ripped from their homes to serve the government is a classic US understanding of USSR communism right down to the USSR having weapons of destruction the rest of the world fears (Grisha). Not trying to defend the Soviet Union here at all, but it is simplistic and reductive and probably done unconsciously but still ehhhh. 

However, I’m not Russian. I just studied Russian literature. I’ve seen very little by way of discussion of this topic online, but what I do see from Russian people has been mixed--some mind, some don’t. The reality is that I actually don’t really mind this because it’s fantasy, though I see why some do. I'm not like CANCEL THIS. So why am I talking about this beyond just having a pet peeve?

Well, because it is a valid critique, and because it doesn’t occur in a vacuum. The Grishaverse is heralded as an almost paragon for woke Young Adult literature, which underlines itself what so frustrates me about how literary circles discuss issues of diversity and culture. Such praise, while ignoring its quasi-caricature of Russia, reflects a very ethnocentric (specifically American) understanding of culture, appropriation, and representation. All stories are products of their culture to various extents, but it bothers me on principle what the lit community reacts (and overreacts sometimes?) to and what people give a pass to. The answer to what the community reacts to and what it gives a pass always pivots on how palatable the appropriation is to American understandings and sensibilities. There’s nuance here as well, though. 

I'm not cancelling the story or thinking it should be harshly attacked for this, but it is something that can be discussed and imo should be far more often--but with the nuance it begs, instead of black/white. But that’s a tall ask. 

[idreamtofmanderleyagain]

Hot takes about Severus Snape are a wierdly decent glimpse into how a person with progressive values analyses things. Literally every time someone talks about Snape, it’s like this tiny window into how one-dimentionally people actually think.

Recently saw a twitter post that was a fantastic example. Here’s how it goes (paraphrasing):

Person A:“Snape is POC and Queer coded, that’s why you guy’s hate him uwu lol.”

Person B: “Actually I hate him because he was mean and abusive to children under his care uwu but go off I guess lol”

Both of these takes are designed to be dramatic and/or reactionary. They each use partial truths to paint very broad strokes. These are get-em-in-one-hit quips. This is virtue signalling, if you’ll excuse that loaded phrase. Nobody had a substantial conversation, but now everyone who sees their statement knows the high ground they took.

At least a hundred other people chimed in to add their own little quippy hot takes into play, none of which add anything significant, but clearly made everyone feel very highly of themselves.

So many layers of nuance and complex analysis is completely lost in this kind of discussion. On tumblr, you get more of this kind of bullshit, but you don’t have a word count limit, so you guys just spew endless mountains of weak overblown evidence backing up your bullshit arguments, none of which was really about engaging in a real conversation anyway.

Here’s the thing about Snape.

He is a childhood domestic abuse victim. His abuser is a muggle.

He becomes a student at a magical school that takes him away from his abuser and immediately instills in him the idea that being a part of this magical world is a badge of self-worth, empowerment, and provides safety and security - provided that he keeps in line.

There is a war is being waged in that world over his right to exist (he is a half blood).

He is a marginalized person within the context of the narrative, forced to constantly be in the same living space as the children of his own oppressors who are being groomed and recruited into a hate group militia (the pureblood slytherins). They are in turn trying to do the same to him.

He is marginalized person bullied by children who are also part of his oppressor group, but who have “more liberal” leanings and aren’t direct about why he’s being targeted (the mauraders are all purebloods, Sirius, who was the worst offender, was raised in a bigoted household, the same one that produced Bellatrix.).

He had a crush on a girl who is a muggleborn, and therefore she is considered even lesser than him and carries a stigma to those who associate with her. That girl was his only real friend. In his entire life.

For both Snape and Lily, allying themselves to a pureblood clique within their own houses would be a great way of shielding themselves from a measure of the bigotry they were probably facing. There would have been obvious pressure from those cliques to disconnect with one and other.

Every other person who associates with Snape in his adulthood carries some sort of sociopolitical or workplace (or hate cult) baggage with their association. Some of them will physically harm and/or kill him if he steps out of line. He hasn’t at any point had the right environment to heal and adjust from these childhood experiences. Even his relationship with Dumbledore is charged with constant baggage, including the purebloods who almost killed him during their bullying getting a slap on the wrist, the werewolf that almost killed him as a child being placed in an authority position over new children, etc. Dumbledore is canonically manipulative no matter his good qualities, and he has literally been manipulating Snape for years in order to cultivate a necessary asset in the war.

He is a person who is not in the stable mental state necessary to be teaching children, whom has been forced to teach children. While also playing the role of double agent against the hate group militia, the one that will literally torture you for mistakes or backtalk or just for fun. The one that will torture and kill him if he makes one wrong move.

Is the math clicking yet? From all of this, it’s not difficult to see how everything shitty about Snape was cultivated for him by his environment. Snape was not given great options. Snape made amazingly awful choices, and also some amazingly difficult, courageous ones. Snape was ultimately a human who had an extremely bad life, in which his options were incredibly grim and limited.

In fact, pretty much every point people make about how shitty Snape is as a person makes 100% logical sense as something that would emerge from how he was treated. Some if it he’s kind of right about, some of it is the inevitable reality of suffering, and some of it is part of the cycle of abuse and harm.

Even Snape’s emotional obsession with Lily makes logical sense when you have the perspective that he literally has no substantial positive experiences with other human beings that we know of, and he has an extreme, soul destroying guilt complex over her death. Calling him an Incel mysoginist nice guy projects a real-world political ideology and behavior that does not really apply to the context of what happened to him and her.

Even Snape’s specific little acts of cruelty to certain students is a reflection of his own life experiences. He identifies with Neville; more specifically, he identifies his own percieved emotional weaknesses in his childhood in Neville. There’s a very sad reason there why he feels the urge to be so harsh.

Snape very clearly hates himself, in a world where everyone else hates him, too. Imagine that, for a second. Imagine total internal and external hatred, an yearning for just a little bit of true connection. For years. Imagine then also trying to save that world, even if it’s motivated by guilt. Even if nobody ever knows you did it and you expect to die a miserable death alone.

There are more elements here to consider, including the way Rowling described his looks (there may be something in there re: ugliness and swarthy stereotyping). These are just the things that stand out the most prominently to me.

J.K. Rowling is clearly also not reliable as an imparter of moral or sociopolitical philosophies. I don’t feel that her grasp of minority experiences is a solid one, considering how she picks and chooses who is acceptable and who is a threat.

All of that said, this is a logically consistent character arc. Within the context of his narrative, Snape is a marginalized person with severe PTSD and emotional instability issues who has absolutely no room available to him for self-improvement or healing, and never really has. And yes, he’s also mean, and caustic, and verbally abusive to the students. He’s also a completey miserable, lonely person.

There are elements in his character arc that mirror real world experiences quite well. If nothing else, Rowling is enough of an emotional adult to recognise these kinds of things and portray something that feels authentic.

In my opinion, it’s not appropriate to whittle all this down by comparing him directly to the real world experiences of marginalized groups - at least if you are not a part of the group you are comparing him to. There have been many individuals who have compared his arc to their own personal experiences of marginalization, and that is valid. But generally speaking, comparing a white straight dude to people who are not that can often be pretty offensive. This is not a valuable way to discuss either subject.

Also, I believe that while it’s perfectly okay to not like Snape as a character, many of the people who act like Person B are carrying Harry’s childhood POV about Snape in their hearts well into their own adulthood. And if nothing else, Rowling was attempting to say something here about how our perspectives (should) grow and change as we emotionally mature.  She doesn’t have to be a good person herself to have expressed something true about the world in this instance, and since this story is a part of our popular culture, people have a right to feel whatever way they do about this story and it’s characters.

The complexity of this particular snapshot of fictionalized marginalization, and what it reveals about the human experience, cannot be reduced down to “he’s an abuser so he’s not worth anyone’s time/you are bad for liking him.”

And to be honest, I think that it reveals a lot about many of us in progressive spaces, particularly those of us who less marginalized but very loud about our values, that we refuse to engage with these complexities in leu of totally condemning him. Particularly because a lot of the elements I listed above are indeed reflected in real world examples of people who have experienced marginalization and thus had to deal with the resulting emotional damage, an mental illness, and behavior troubles, and bad decisions. Our inability to address the full scope of this may be a good reflection of how we are handling the complexity of real world examples.

Real people are not perfect angels in their victimhood. They are just humans who are victims, and we all have the capacity to be cruel and abusive in a world where we have been given cruelty and abuse. This is just a part of existing. If you cannot sympathise with that, or at least grasp it and aknowledge it and respect the people who are emotionally drawn to a character who refects that, then you may be telling on yourself to be honest.

To be honest, this is especially true if you hate Snape but just really, really love the Mauraduers. You have a right to those feelings, but if you are moralizing this and judging others for liking Snape, you’ve confessed to something about how you’ve mentally constructed your personal values in a way I don’t think you’ve fully grasped yet.

I have a hard time imagining a mindset where a story like Snape’s does not move one to empathy and vicarious grief, if I’m honest. I feel like some people really just cannot be bothered to imagine themselves in other people’s shoes, feeling what they feel and living like they live. I struggle to trust the social politics of people who show these kinds of colors, tbh.

But maybe that’s just me.

[deans-haunted-baby]

Okay I see there are those who are confused as to why most of us are pissed about 15x19 I will gladly explain in depth:

Let’s start off with our boys Adam Milligan & Michael. These characters have not been seen for 10 fucking years. During that time there were Adam stans like myself campaigning like mad to have him and the infamous archangel return for some much needed closure. We had to content ourselves with headcanons, fanfictions and metas based on what we briefly knew of Adam and Michael as people while they unfairly sat in Hell. You might have seen the “Adam’s Still in Hell” memes that circulated. WE WAITED OVER A DECADE FOR THIS. And finally SPN answers our prayers and returns these boys back into the story for the final season. None of us anticipated what their arc and dynamic would look like. Before we could only imagine who these two characters were/are after having been trapped in a cage so long; what their personalities would be like and if they’d be antagonistic to TFW. 15x08 was a surprise because not only were Adam and Michael likable right out of the gate but the writing for them and their dynamic was damn near flawless! And Jake fucking stole the show he killed it as these two. It’s a crime they were not featured in more episodes because the chemistry between these characters is amazing and they’re played by the same dude.

We were given so much background into both Adam and Michael’s psyches in just a short period of time. Their motivations, interests and how they viewed those that wronged them (like the Winchesters); how Hell affected/changed them both and how they viewed their families. We got to see them banter, cooperate with one another and most importantly their different personalities. With Jake Abel appearing in only a handful of SPN episodes, he still fleshed out Michael and Adam beautifully; giving them layers and complexities that most side-characters (who’ve appeared more times than they have) didn’t. The way Jake played Adam’s anger and resentment towards his brothers was brilliant because it’s more under the surface compared to his angsty teenage self in 5x18. He’d become somewhat restrained, laid-back, gentler and wiser which works because Adam displays traits similar to Sam and Dean. He’s kinder and has a sense of humor but none of that distracts from rational thought as he’s quick to analyze and dissect situations. Man, he would’ve made a great hunter/Men of Letters recruit. We know right off the bat Adam’s pissed at his brothers for abandoning him in a thousand-year-prison-sentence and didn’t lift a finger BUT that ironically doesn’t compromise his willingness to help them unlike his past self in 5x18. Jake gets the point across with this character without saying much and that’s what made him so compelling to watch in this episode.

Now Michael was even more of a mystery onion since he wasn’t onscreen as much as Adam had been in past episodes so Jake got to really build on top of this character. Going from the uptight, cold-blooded merciless celestial warrior/dutiful son of God we saw in 5x22 to someone whom despite his arrogance and regal princely demeanor was very human, intelligent, fair, mindful and compassionate. He trusted Adam and respected his opinions even if he didn’t agree 100%. Whereas most angels take over the vessel completely from their original occupant; Michael chooses to share his vessel with Adam as a mutual agreement which says a lot about who he is. He’s fascinated with humanity and wanted to explore it instead of returning to his throne in the clouds. We know that Michael was created specifically to be Humanity’s protector and guardian of Heaven and Earth so these quirks he’d demonstrated in 15x08 aren’t too far off. He holds a lot of pain inside from his abandonment issues with his father whom he loves to a fault and grief over the death of his brothers. On the surface there’s very much an abused child syndrome thing going on with him though he masks it with a domineering presence. And above all this we saw that he was capable of forgiveness. Whether or not Michael always had these traits inside to begin with, its very evident that his friendship with Adam influenced the person he became post-Hell. And that was someone who, like Castiel, chose to rebel for the sake of free will by aligning himself with the Winchesters after witnessing the evil his father had committed. He actually cared about saving the world. This is what we call character development.

What does 15x19 do? It shits all over that. We don’t get to see Adam and Michael’s dynamic at all; and this was perhaps one of (if not the first) most healthy portrayal of a relationship between an angel and its original vessel occupant in the history of Supernatural. Adam is just killed off-screen Thanos style without so much as one last word and Michael barely reacts like he gives a crap. It was just established to us in 15x08 that he’d developed an emotional bond with Adam through years of inhabiting the same body. He protected Adam while they were trapped together in Hell. They were each other’s only friend and source of comfort. They’d developed a certain co-dependency on each other while respecting one another’s space. They’d both made peace with their joint situation. All they had was each other and the writing in 15x19 basically tells us their relationship meant absolutely NOTHING to Michael based on his OOC actions in this episode. He shows up much darker and shadier now that Adam is gone and its like all those years of friendship, things like that independence, newfound strength and humility he’d gained from living with a human for so long are erased. Michael just reverts back to Chuck’s 5x22 bitchboy persona in the most ridiculous 180 shift I’ve ever seen in my whole damn life. And all because his little brother called him mean names. Pitiful. Just when he lectures Lucifer about standing up for what’s right; he betrays his own words, his allies and the rest of humanity in T-minus 2 minutes. That is total character assassination. Nothing about this motivation makes any sense.

There’s no build up to it, no foreshadowing in 15x08 or throughout 15x19 until they get to the lake. He’s completely deconstructed as a character in this episode and rendered weak. It’s like 15x08 never happened. Stripped of all his development for lousy shock value. Instead utilizing all of what he’d learned through Adam and sticking it to Lucifer by proving he could be more than what Chuck tried to mold him into; Michael becomes just another NPC in the story forfeiting the hero he was. And his reasons for siding with Chuck are never specified. Was it about about saving Adam? Was it about proving something to Lucifer (whom he’d already killed in anti-climatic fashion)? Was it all an act that he was in on with the Winchesters; cause there’s absolutely NO FUCKING WAY they could’ve predicted he’d flip on them like that for their magical plan to work. Not after everything Chuck’s done, killing Adam and Jack and leaving Michael to rot in Hell for eternity. And why would he suddenly go along with destroying the Earth when defeating Chuck would probably get Adam back (if that was his goal) which IT DID not to mention its his sworn duty to freaking protect humanity, hello? So his betrayal meant jack shit in the end as it got him killed by his fucking dad!! He’s brought back into the show only to be ruined forever and killed off in the stupidest fashion.

Moving on.

Jack Kline & Castiel. This iron-clad relationship has been in development for 4 in 1/2 years since before Jack was even born. And next to Adam & Michael its the other most healthy relationship on the show. Castiel, a million year old celestial being, spent the first 9 years of his arc on Supernatural following around the Winchesters, being torn between his loyalty to them and to Heaven. He rebelled when he was supposed to be a straight-by-the-book warrior of God. And he defied every rule in the process even when the odds were stacked against him. There was an endless rinse and repeat cycle of love, loss, betrayal and redemption when it came to his relationship with Sam and Dean. It made his character complex, interesting and layered but it still didn’t give him an arc that was his own. Castiel started out moreso being written as just the Winchester’s angel BFF/side-kick. Until Lucifer got Kelly Kline pregnant in 12x08 then things really took off. Before this, Castiel was a lost soul. His faith was broken, he was depressed, lonely, battered and rundown from years of being conflicted over the other angels and Sam & Dean. He felt he’d lost a sense of self and meaning in his life. And didn’t have a mission. Once he turned on Heaven’s orders, Castiel was a rebel angel without a cause so to speak. But like I said this changes the moment he meets Kelly.

Originally Castiel was suppose to kill Kelly in 12x19 because she was carrying the child of the devil and Nephilim are considered forbidden abominations. Told that if Lucifer’s kid was born he could unleash even more evil into the world. But instead of doing what he thought he should, Castiel decides to runaway with her. Choosing to protect her from all threats (Lucifer, demons, other angels, princes of Hell); this especially included the Winchesters. During this short time-frame the angel develops a strong, emotional bond with Kelly and her unborn son that stretches all the way to the S12 finale; to the point where it actually gave him a power-boost. From the womb, Jack appoints Castiel to be his father and protector and he’s given a glimpse into the child’s destiny that he’ll bring paradise to the world. A prophecy that the writers establish head on. This is an unusual circumstance because right here is where Castiel’s solo arc apart from the Sam & Dean takes shape. The journey of becoming a first time parent and guardian. Its a new kind of independence that for the first time has nothing to do with his friends or his family members/colleagues in the sky. Its his own personal mission that he willingly accepts, the second he connects with Jack from inside Kelly. Castiel immediately falls in love with him, before they even see each other; and adopts the boy devoting himself to keeping him safe. Making a promise to Kelly that would later become a vital plot-point in the seasons to come.  

Castiel literally risks everything (Heaven and Earth) to ensure Jack’s birth and ends up dead by 12x23′s startling conclusion. Leaving the newborn infant Nephilim alone in the care of the Winchesters going into season 13; scared, confused and aged into a seemingly 18 year old boy for his own protection. And Alexander Calvert who is a fantastic addition to the cast really brings something wonderful to this role; he’s like a breath of fresh air and a bright light in the middle of a dark room. Jack’s naïve, innocent and curious about his surroundings but also as Castiel once put it “remarkably intuitive”. Right when he’s introduced his arc is intentionally paralleled with Castiel’s. Their alien-fish-out-of-water beginning is practically identical as is their adorable stoic facial expressions. Like father like son. And this helps because while the angel is currently dead in the beginning of season 13, there’s an empty void he’s left behind. So Jack is kind of his temporary stand-in. Odd enough this type of switcharoo would’ve been considered very controversial but it’s handled quite well. Alex is so likable and charming I almost wish Supernatural had introduced him sooner. I mean I really thought I was looking at Castiel’s actual mini-me and not the son of Satan. But I digress Jack’s story in the first half of this season is pretty much about discovery and reuniting with Castiel. He’s a baby so everything is new to him but he’s also one of the most powerful beings in the universe destined for greatness which makes the Winchesters very nervous.

Jack remembers choosing Castiel as his dad which is why he already feels strongly connected to him. Its a bond so powerful that it actually resurrects Castiel out of the Empty the first time. Something Chuck himself was unable to do (that was until the mess that is 15x19). When they’re finally reunited the payoff comes so naturally. Misha and Alex have such a phenomenal onscreen chemistry starting with that first hug; they really play off one another so well that it doesn’t feel like two angels interacting but a genuine father and son duo. So much of what makes Jack and Castiel’s relationship so relatable, deep and endearing is because of what the actors bring to it. But they’re not just a fascinating relationship, they’re compelling on their own too. Both trying to find their way in the world and within the Winchesters’ lives. Death is no stranger to either of them (tragic being that Jack is only a toddler). They’ve each experienced their own personal pain, traumas, life lessons, mistakes and decisions. The biggest for Castiel would be his deal with the Empty to save Jack in 14x08. While for Jack it was the consequences of said deal that would lose his soul causing him to accidently kill Sam and Dean’s mom in 14x18 as a result (something that Jack struggles with immensely to the brink of depression from so much guilt and regret that he’d rather die). Repercussions that would follow into the shows final season. What’s interesting about this deal though is that Castiel made it on parental instinct alone not as a promise to Kelly. He chose to sacrifice himself for the sake of his son as a selfless act of love and kept it a secret from Sam & Dean until his death in 15x18. That’s the extent how much this child meant to him. The other great thing about their family dynamic is that it parallels nicely with the Winchesters. Castiel and Jack share this unconditional love that can never be broken. its even greater than their ties to the Winchesters themselves just as Sam & Dean’s love for each other is greater than any of their other relationships. They would do anything for each other. Castiel would go to the ends of the earth for the little nougat baby because that’s his son.  

Each time these characters were faced with danger or died, Castiel and Jack were overcome with extreme devastation and distress. That said its not just pain that binds these two its happiness. Jack is the best thing that ever happened to Castiel. Literally becoming a father to that child saved him. It brought him back to life, restored his faith and gave him a sense of self-worth and hope he’d long since abandoned. And for Jack, Castiel is the best dad he’ll ever have! He gave this baby comfort, wisdom, nurturing, strength. Was always there when he needed him whether it was to talk or to have his back. No other person in Jack’s life has ever made such an important impact nor made him feel more safe and loved than Castiel. Even when Jack had done such a horrible thing to Mary alienating himself from his family; it was Castiel’s unyielding devotion to Jack that ended up being his salvation. This was huge because once again he’d chosen over the Winchesters proving that no matter what (whether it be the world ending) his son comes first. So when Castiel’s pact with the Empty finally comes due in 15x18 you’d think it’d have an earth-shattering affect on Jack in 15x19. I mean for the first bit it does...until he becomes God. Then its like to hell with that relationship. Castiel is a complete afterthought to Jack and the rest of TFW in this episode. JACK DOESN’T EVEN GET TO GRIEVE HIM PROPERLY. And he just lost his dad because of a deal he’d made a year ago for him. A DEAL JACK HAS BEEN FUCKING DREADING WHILE HE WAS SOULLESS MIND YOU. And when he finally has the power to bring him back, he doesn’t? Jack just walks around with a conceited smirk on his face, bids Sam and Dean adieu and fucks off. I mean who gives a shit right, its only your dad that you love more than anything. This was extremely OOC given that time in 14x14 Jack nearly lost his shit when Castiel got infected with gorgon poison; the anti-venom wasn’t working so Jack resorts to using his powers putting his soul at risk.

I mean if he was so limited to helping Castiel in the Empty AT LEAST FREAKING CLARIFIY THIS TO THE AUDIENCE. This is not about shipping a certain pairing btw. Jack becoming God is not the issue its his characterization after the fact. His first instinct would’ve been to save his dad above getting in touch with the Earth. Yes we knew this transformation was coming it was foreshowed way back in Season 12. Does that justify bad writing or character assassination?? HELL NO.

This is what I’m talking about, episode 15x19 deliberately butchers these characters and their relationships. It shat all over them. No one is behaving like themselves. The pacing is wonky and inconstant. The script feels like it underwent several rewrites and I swear there were scenes cut out. The acting is off too and maybe the pandemic could be blamed for these things but it ultimately falls on the writer. Buckleming screwed up by showing us they don’t know who the hell these characters are, their motivations nor do they give a rat’s ass. And its noticeable on screen. I’ve known better fanfiction writers for SPN than these guys. It’s like they all came back to work but just didn’t care to put the effort into it. That’s why people like me are upset and we have every freaking right to be. Some of us have been with this series for the entire 15 year run. I at least expect these characters to be handled better and for things to make sense. 15x19 doesn’t and its not satisfying its just a cruel joke. The writers and Dabb should be embarrassed to have put this out there thinking we’d just swallow it and shut up. But far as I’m concerned the only thing this episode serves is to disrespect and ruin everybody while angering long-time fans.

MICHAEL. ADAM MILLIGAN. JACK KLINE AND CASTIEL DESERVED BETTER. And that’s the tea.

[loveatfirstwriteblog]

A Complete Analysis of Harry Potter

Like a lot of kids, we probably grew up on Harry potter. We were obsessed and rightly so. The universe created in the world of Harry Potter was, and is, a hugely successful one because of the fact it gave kids a world where magic exists! It seemed to be a great world to live in and it made even better with the fact that it included elements of empowerment, Whether it be showing girls can be just as successful if not more in various pursuits(Hermione), or the fact that even if you have a history of bad events, you can have a good heart(Hagrid), Harry Potter teaches us a lot.

JKR has written a mind-blowing plot in a world of magic, wizards, witches, wands, potions, friendship, love. Our inner-five-year olds--and actually most of our young adult selves too--jumps around excitedly at the beautifully penned words that creates an exit out of this world and into one where magic does exist. 

As you get older, though, you begin to think of Harry Potter in a more critical fashion. The thought of “oh my god, it’s magic” no longer completely overrides my mind, but more of “but what are the laws regarding this? Can people just do this whenever they want? Are there no ethics?” 

No matter how much we’re going to expose the flaws and plot holes in HP now, we’ll always love the books--we grew up on them! But some things just niggle you as you get older, and that’s what we’re going to be focusing on in this post.

Something I adore about the HP books is that everyone, including the “good guys”, has flaws. Harry has a “save the world alone, do first, think later” complex, a driving force that makes him go save Sirius, Ron is very, very insecure to a point where he ditches Harry twice, probably when Harry needed him the most, Hermione is a judgemental, narrow-minded nag (her thoughts on Luna, divination, Trelawney, basically anything that doesn’t fit her black and white world), Molly Weasley is misogynistic and blatantly favourites her children—probably being one of the main factors behind Ron’s insecurities, Arthur is condescending towards Muggles and makes several comments you cringe at while reading the books as a young adult/adult, Sirius, Snape, and Lupin still haven’t let go of their childhood grudges and hatred, etc etc etc. 

These flaws are what make these characters so three-dimensional, so layered, so human. But the problem was, most of these flaws are never intentionally acknowledged. And honestly, that could have been such a good character arc, because the main characters are mostly students. No student is the same through their teenage years—they change, they evolve, they get over their flaws, they try to better themselves. I would have loved to see Ron becoming his own person, Hermione opening her mind up a little, etc. 

Neville is not one of my favourites, but I love his growth and development, from someone who was scared of his potions professor to a man who faced down Lord Voldemort. Ginny Weasley could have had character development, from the trauma she went through in second year, but that was never written in.  She went through this terrifying ordeal when she was only twelve years old, and jump to a year or two later and she’s absolutely fine, with no transition from her trauma whatsoever.

Some of JKR’s characters are brilliantly written and fleshed out, but some of her others lack the structure and complexity that usually comes with being vital to the plot—Ginny Weasley for one. Her internalised misogyny also plays a huge part in the way her female characters are written. We see this again in the case of how she wrote the character of Ginny. 

Ginny Weasley is not a favourite of ours (if you don’t know that by now). She feels a lot like a convenient male daydream—when she waits for Harry to notice her by dating other guys, gets annoyed by Hermione “not knowing quidditch”, etc etc—and fits the “not like other girls” archetype too much, almost like she was made for it (hint hint). She’s portrayed to be strong-willed, spunky, and independent, and I love the idea, but I really don’t see it. To me, she’s a very shallow character, the least fleshed out one. 

Just like James Potter wasn’t necessarily redeemed just because JKR said he was, and Ginny isn’t interesting just because JKR writes that she is. 

Hermione also fits the archetype, but she’s JKR’s self-insert, so we really can’t say much about that. 

To make things worse, Ginny and Hermione are pitted against each other in a very subtle way. Ginny is the sporty, pretty, flirty girl who’s never single from book 4. Hermione is the not-conventionally-attractive, nerdy girl who’s had a few dates here and there but never a relationship. They’re very different characters (the only thing they have in common is the archetype) but they’re against each other in the defence of Harry. 

Another place where JKR’s misogyny shows up is the way other girls are written. Lavender Brown is shown as vapid and immature, just because she likes clothes and boys and didn’t know how to handle her first relationship. Cho Chang is perceived as shallow because she’s emotional. Pansy Parkinson is seen to be throwing herself at Draco Malfoy. The Weasleys hated Fleur because she was beautiful and sexy and French, and that was ever really resolved in the end (Molly accepted her, but we never got Ginny’s and Hermione’s opinions again). You see where we’re getting at? The typical “girly girls” are portrayed as insipid, shallow, emotional, and boring, while girls like Hermione and Ginny are seen to be fun and multilayered. 

The problems with Harry Potter don’t just stop with non-fleshed out characters. There are plot devices that go unacknowledged, issues like blood purity—which is the basis of Voldemort’s tyranny—are never really resolved, huge Chekhov’s guns that aren’t fired. 

A common misconception, which if cleared up could probably expose a load of problems in wizarding society by itself, is that the wizarding world is racist. It’s not racist. Muggles and Muggleborns are not a different race, they’re a different class, at least according to pureblood wizards. Mudblood is a classist insult (a direct reference to nobility blueblood and aristocracy).

Another factor that wasn’t talked about but made the HP world so complex and realistic is the inherent classism in every single pureblooded wizard, including the Weasleys.

 The “Light” wizards all operate on the notion “at least I don’t kill or torture Muggles”. The Weasleys refuse to talk about Molly’s squib cousin who’s an accountant, the Longbottoms were so desperate for Neville to not be a squib they nearly killed him trying to force magic out of him, Ron makes fun of Filch for being a squib, thinks house-elves are beneath him, and confounds his driving instructor in his mid-thirties, the ministry workers kept obliviating that muggle at the quidditch World Cup, etc. 

This could have been a metaphor for how small prejudices and microaggressions (kind of the wizarding equivalent of white privilege) enable discrimination and murder, if JKR had actually acknowledged it. 

The parallel to Nazi Germany is very twisted and definitely shouldn’t be taken too far, but the Nazi ideology grew on the basis of everyday antisemitism, “that’s not that bad” little things. Voldemort’s circle and army grew because the wizard superiority complex festered and blew up in some people, egged on by a deeply classist society. 

Ultimately, Harry Potter has very, very shoddy worldbuilding, the kind of worldbuilding that’s obsessed with answering the “what” of the wizarding world, rather than the “how” or the “why”, which is strange, considering that fantasy or dystopian-era novels’ driving plots and conflicts are usually answering the questions the worldbuilding raises--The Hunger Games and The Shadowhunter Chronicles are two of the best examples of brilliantly written YA fantasy and dystopian novels. 

In HP, however, the main plot just avoids the questions the worldbuilding brings up like the bubonic plague. 

Voldemort’s agenda is built on prejudice towards Muggles and Muggleborns, but the plot just validates the negative perception of them—at the end of the day, being a wizard is what’s special. The Statute of Secrecy is the foundation of the main concept—blood supremacists believe wizards shouldn’t be hidden away—but only vague, barely-there answers are given to why it exists (a Chekhov’s gun that was never fired). 

There are love potions that function like date rape drugs (even Harry was given one by a girl who wanted him to ask her out), potions that force people to tell the truth, potions that literally let you disguise yourself as another person, but the ethics are never talked about, and the laws are so lax that three twelve-year-olds broke them and were never caught. 

But at the same time, the worldbuilding is so authentic, because it transforms the wizarding world into straight-up fridge horror. The everyday horrors are just accepted and rolled with. A corrupt government, constant obliviation of Muggles, slavery that isn’t even talked about. These things aren’t obvious to us as readers, or to the wizards as characters, because they match up to the real world, which is filled with things that are horrifying if you dig deeper. The multiple, normalised forms of abuse, police brutality, the violence in prisons that nothing is done about, the glaringly obvious cultural problems we have with consent, etc. 

The abusive authoritative figures in HP, like Rufus Scrimgeour, Cornelius Fudge, Dumbledore, Umbridge, etc, are so authentic because real-life politicians and people in high places of power behave that way, and their abuse is excused. 

The wizarding world is just like the real world. Corrupt, prejudiced, messed up, but if you’re privileged, or at least have certain privileges, you’re probably not going to notice. The ultimate problem is that the plot doesn’t acknowledge a lot of fridge horror things are messed up either, which is why it miserably fails. 

[ladyloveandjustice]

Spring 2021 anime overview: Quick Takes

Now for my Spring 2021 anime thoughts! I’ve decided from now on if a season’s like, 20- to-24 episodes I’m just going to wait ‘til it’s done to review it unless I feels super passionately, so though I watched To Your Eternity (it’s good!) and MHA (eh), I’ll comment on them next time. Also, for the record, I watched the first eight eps of Joran: Princess and Snow of Blood but I dropped it because it had clearly crossed the line from entertainingly dumb to boring dumb. 

I will probably give Supercub and some other stuff a shot later, this was a stacked season! May give updates on all that later, but this is what I have for now.

ODDTAXI

Quick Summary: A mild mannered middle-aged walrus taxi driver is drawn into a case involving a missing girl, yakuza, Youtube clout-chasers, manzai comedians and idols with big secrets.

It’s rare to walk away from media and be like “that is a singular experience I will definitely never see repeated again” but ODDTAXI is definitely one of those. A tense noir thriller murder mystery starring cartoon animals that spends an entire episode detailing the one (cat)man’s very fall into darkness triggered by addiction to gacha games and an online auction for a novelty eraser? Also there’s a porcupine Yakuza who speaks entirely in rap? Also there’s tons of meandering conversations about stuff like manzai comedy and the struggle to go viral on Twitter?

Admittedly, I had a hard time getting into the first episode, the dry meandering humor not being enough to hold my attention while I was sitting still, but once I watched this while I was working out at the end of the season, I found it an easy binge. A ton of characters with dark secrets or dangerous ambitions, each with their own part to play in a tableau of intersecting events- and it all actually comes together really well.(As for the female characters, it’s a pretty dude driven story, but they do get nuanced characterization and even some good heroic moments from one of them.)

 It’s a great example of a carefully planned narrative paying off, with all the twists appropriately seeded and foreshadowed to reward viewers who paid attention. Even when it ended on a perfect “OH SHIT” moment and denied me closure, I couldn’t help but respect it. If you that all sounds interesting to you, definitely check out the first couple episodes and see if you like it- you’re likely to have a memorable, satisfying experience!

Shadows House

Quick Summary: Emilyko is a ‘living doll’ who’s told she was created to act as the ‘face’ of her shadow master, Kate. The shadows and their ‘dolls’ all reside on the mansion and are required to pass a ‘debut’ to prove they’re a good pairing. If they don’t pass, they might be disposed of. And so the mystery of the Shadow mansion grows...

This slice of gothic intrigue was my favorite of the season, tied with ODDTAXI. With an interesting premise, slightly tense undertones and a strong focus on character building and relationships, it kept me hooked the whole way through. And for any squeamish fans put off by the hype about it, don’t worry, while there are some suspenseful elements, I wouldn’t qualify it as horror. I thought the relationship between Kate and Emilyko might end up being a completely sinister one, but it’s thankfully a lot more complex than that and it’s really interesting to follow how both their characters and relationship grow. The focus of the show is, unsurprisingly, on the “dolls” slowly discovering their autonomy and personhood as they struggle under the rigid system imposed on them by the mysterious elders of this weird Victorian mansion. Can they develop a more equitable relationship with their shadow “masters” (who are also shown to suffer under this system)? There’s a lot to dig into there, and the show has the characters develop through learning to understand and appreciate each other, which is pretty heartwarming. Our hero, Emilyko, is the typical plucky ball of sunshine (they even nickname her sunshine), but she’s also shown to be clever in her own off-the-wall way and she bounces off the far more subdued and cynical Kate well, not to mention the other ‘dolls’ she ends up befriending. 

What’s more, the show spends plenty of time to developing several other character pairings and combinations, and they all have their own interesting dynamic that makes you want to see more of them. Same-gender bonds are at the forefront of this show, and many of them are ripe for queer readings (I definitely appreciated the healthy helping of ladies carrying ladies), but even outside that it’s nice to see a show where a strong, complex bond between girls is at the forefront. My only real complaints about the show are the anime original ending is noticeably a bit rushed (though it’s not too bad, and leaves room for a season 2) and I wish the animation used the whole “shadow” theme more strikingly (like the opening and endings do)- instead the colors are a bit washed out which makes the shadows blend into the background sometimes. The “debut” arc also drags a bit in places, but it makes up for it by having a lot of good character integration.

I hope to check out the (full color)! manga soon and see more of this quirky, shadowy story. There’s some physical abuse depicted, sad things happening to characters and naturally the whole “oppressive familial system” thing, but otherwise not much I can think of to warn about. I give this one a big rec, especially If you’re a fan of gothic fairytales and stories of self discovery.  

Zombie Land Saga Revenge

Quickest summary: In this sequel season, everyone’s favorite zombie idol group must claw their way back into prominence after a disastrous show- the fate of the Saga prefecture LITERALLY depends on it!

This was a fun follow-up to the first season- if you liked the first zombie-girl romp, you’ll probably enjoy this one. In fact, there were a couple areas it improved on- namely, Kotaro failed, ate crow and embarrassed himself a lot more this season, which made him more likeable (as did the fact the girls gained a lot of independence from him). This season also shed more light on what the ‘goal’ of this zombie raising project is and what kind of shit Kotaro got involved with to make this happen, and it’s appropriately off-the-wall and ridiculous. We finally got some backstory for Yugiri too! I wish it had focused on more of her interiority, but she got to be a badass in it, and it was a treat to see this zombie idol show turn into a period piece for a couple episodes (also her song ruled).

 Tae also got a cute focus episode and there was a particular SMASHING performance early on! Also That revelation last season that had the potential to turn creepy hasn’t yet, and hopefully never will. The finale was heartwarming with big hints of more drama to come- I’m definitely down for more zombie hijinks!

Vivy: Flourite Eye’s Song

Quickest Summary: A songstress AI named DIVA (nicknamed Vivy) is approached by another AI named Matsumoto, who says he’s from the future and they must work together to prevent AI exterminating all of humankind 100 years from now.

This show is absolutely gorgeous visually with some really nice action scenes, but when it comes to the story my feelings basically amount to a shrug. It’s fine! I guess! Vivy starts out as an interesting layered character- and I guess still is by the end- with her stoic but stubborn determination bouncing off her fast-talking bossy partner Matsumoto well. She never listens to him, which is delightful. The way the show took place over the course of 100 years was an interesting conceit as well. However, it bought up a lot of themes and then sort of... dropped them. For instance, Vivy interprets her mission (PRIME DIRECTIVE if you will) as protecting humans at all costs, no matter how destructive said humans are or what their fate is supposed to be, and is perfectly willing to murder her fellow androids to do this, showing she inherently thinks of androids (herself and her own people!) as less worthy. Which is a little alarming! There’s a very dramatic point in the show where they bring this up as a potential conflict for her character but then it’s sort of...dropped. Pretty much.

Actually, despite the premise, the show doesn’t dip into the “AI rights” as much as you think it would with the main theme being more about Vivy’s search to find her own creativity and discover what it means to ‘pour your heart into something’. Vivy herself doesn’t actually care if she has rights or anything. Which is in some ways fine, because ‘AI as an oppressed class’ has been done to death, but IT’S ALSO KIND OF IN THE PREMISE, so that means that the show just shrugs really hard at a lot of the questions it brings up  basically just going “humans and AI should work together probably” and that’s it. There’s a lot that feels underexplored. The antagonists in the show also either have motivations that don’t really make sense or have boring hackneyed motivations. In the finale in particular, it feels like a lot of things happen “just because” and it falls a little flat.

I also have to warn that one of the arcs focus on a robot ‘pairing’ where the dude-coded robots actions toward his partner are straight up awful and rob her of her autonomy, but it’s played like a tragic love story. I suppose you could read it differently too, but it definitely made me go ‘ew’ the story seemed to want me to sympathize with this robo dude,

Overall, I wouldn’t anti-recommend this show, it’s an all right little sci-fic romp (and definitely SUPER pretty). My favorite element was definitely the episodes where Vivy develops an entirely new (an loveable) personality, because it played with the idea of of an AI getting “rebooted” really well and interplay between her two “selves” was done really well. But there are a lot of other parts of the show that just feel...a little underexplored and empty, making me have an ‘eh’ feeling on the show overall. It’s definitely an ambitious project, and while it didn’t quite stick the landing, there’s something to be said for a show that shoots for the stars and falls short over a show that just languishes in mediocrity.

Fruits Basket The Final

Quick summary: The final season of that dramatic drama about that weird family with a zodiac curse and the girl who loves them.

It’s very weird that after not cutting a lot out, they kinda sped through some material for, you know, the finale. I guess they thought they couldn’t stretch this final arc to 26 episodes? Or weren’t cleared for another double cour? However, though there were a couple places that felt awkward, despite being a bit condensed it mostly held together pretty well for a D R A M A T I C and ultimately heartwarming conclusion. I was really disappointed they kept the part where Ritsu cut their hair for the ‘happy ending’, I thought  their intro episode not showing them in men’s clothes meant the anime had decided their presentation didn’t need to be “fixed” but WELL I GUESS NOT. That was the only big upset for me though, otherwise the adaptation went about how I expected, sticking to the source material. Furuba has a lot of bumps, from weird age gap stuff to ...gender, but it also has a lot of important feels and great character arcs. It was a gateway shoujo for many and has its important place in animanga history, so I’m glad it finally got a shiny, full adaptation.

[thorniest-rose]

“villains like this have been recontextualized. So instead of being evil, they're simply misunderstood; or their stories have been told by biased narrators; or they have tragic origins which explain how they "went wrong". Maybe writers think they're giving these characters new layers or added complexity. But it's actually the opposite. If anything, these films leech away everything that was interesting about these characters in the first place.”

Oof that’s how I feel about Johnny Lawrence in Cobra Kai. He was not an evil villain, but Cobra Kai’s “well ackkkchually he was just poor and his rich step daddy was really mean to him” rewrite or embellishment or whatever has the same vibe as the villain treatment you described. Cobra Kai could have just let Johnny be that rich violent 80s movie bully and found other ways to make present day Johnny a character that the audience wants to root for.

Oh that's really interesting! I actually didn't have an issue with how the CK writers expanded upon Johnny's backstory, but I can see why you'd consider it to be lazy or cliched. A kind of, "How do we make this character instantly more likable or sympathetic? Let's give him a troubled childhood." And I agree, I'm sure there were a number of ways they could have made Johnny more of a multi-dimensional character without leaning on this.

The reason I don't have an issue with it is because I don't think Johnny is just a bully in TKK. I mean, he definitely is a bully - he's a hot-head; he's violent; he's cruel; he's controlling and possessive with Ali; and he gangs up on Daniel a number of times. BUT I think what elevates Johnny above being the typical high school tormentor is his dynamic with Kreese. This is a really interesting part of the film because Johnny could so easily have been written as the bully and the romantic rival and nothing more, but instead he's given this subtle narrative which turns him into more of a tragic figure.

And even though you only see Johnny and Kreese together in a couple of scenes, you can tell immediately that Johnny looks up to him as a father figure and a paragon of masculinity. He wants to be like Kreese and he deeply craves Kreese's approval. Something that Kreese exploits to make the boys do his bidding. So it's obvious why Johnny bullies Daniel - all he's been taught is violence as a way of channelling his emotions and solving his problems.

But then there's the scene at the tournament, where Kreese tells Johnny to fight dirty and to hurt Daniel. It's such a small moment, but the way William Zabka acts it is deeply affecting: he's scared, because he doesn't want to disrespect Kreese or risk his anger, even though he's being told to do something he thinks is wrong; and he's disillusioned. He thought Kreese was a hero and he's shown that in reality Kreese is just a bitter, jealous man who's using his students as his pawns. It's literally a few seconds, but it transforms Johnny from this one-dimensional bully into a scared boy who craves validation and who's been manipulated by an older man. The start of KK2 then expands upon this even further, in the opening scene where Kreese breaks Johnny's trophy and strangles him.

So already at the start of CK, Johnny has this shadow looming over him: he's an abuse victim, and he was humiliated, hurt and rejected by the man he idolised and considered a father. So I don't think it's too much of a stretch to add that Johnny had a troubled family life too. It actually deepens the reasons why Johnny was so dependent on Kreese and why he so earnestly wanted a father figure. Plus, Johnny's abandonment issues mirror the ones that Daniel has (as Daniel’s father died when he was a little boy, he didn't grow up with one either and this is why he was so drawn to the tutelage of Mr Miyagi), so it has thematic weight. 

It also explains why Johnny cares so much about Miguel, another fatherless boy, and wants to do right by him. Maybe by teaching and guiding Miguel, he can heal himself. He can undo some of his own history. His arc in CK is very much defined by this. Like “how do I not become the man that Kreese taught me to be? How do I break the cycle?” even if he isn’t able to articulate it like that himself.

I wrote a lot here, but in a nutshell, I do agree that it's a lazy and manipulative gimmick to always give a character a troubled backstory. But I think in Johnny's case it is valid, as the seeds of it were planted so long ago in the Karate Kid movies.