#i apply the term to any instance of multiple love interests

[olderthannetfic]

I think the discussion about if loli guys are into actual children misses the point tbh. Even when they’re well aware that it’s not actual children and they don’t WANT it to be and they’re specifically into the non-realism of it…. A lot of loli (and moe, which is not unrelated since it’s rooted in the aesthetics of it but applied outside the specific genre) in anime is still about this fantasy of women as helpless and innocent and needing to rely on you and, above all, not having real world problems. Granted, a lot of romantic fantasy is like that, arguably especially stuff about women aimed at men…. But I think that is what personally makes me not really want to deal with guys who are super into it that in my own personal life. Like, let’s not pretend that a certain kind of guy getting used to expecting women to be like that in anime and video games hasn’t had some real consequences for women in nerd culture who insist on being full human beings over like, the past decade and a half lol. Like it’s just hard to imagine that being the fantasy of a guy who specifically wants a take-charge, dominant, independent kind of woman over like…. Idk, lady villains stepping on his face or something, lol

I’m hardcore anti-censorship and don’t believe that preferences in romantic or sexual fantasy in fiction has an exact relationship to what we want in real life…. But it seems strange and anti-intellectual to argue that media *never* has that influence. Like, just divorce this from arguments about porn and “problematic shipping” for a second. There are a ton of people, of multiple genders but especially over age 20 or so they’re more likely to be men, who seem to think that if they’re friendly enough to someone of their preferred gender (or really, opposite gender, since this is based on an “everyone of my preferred gender is a potential partner” norm that people into the same gender just can’t assume) they’ll eventually reciprocate their feelings, or they *should*. The Nice Guy thing. Do you really think that the numerous romantic comedies that have that as a dynamic, or the video games whose “romance” mechanic is “give them gifts and talk to them enough and they’ll eventually be a love interest possibility,” doesn’t play into that at least somewhat? Like, we’re all smart enough to know that Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon aren’t like real life romance, I think…. But did you know that yet when you were 13? Do you think *everybody* who plays those knows that?

Take it out of the context of romance at all. If you’re a lawyer, how many times have you heard people who have misconceptions about what you do based on legal dramas? Or for doctors, about medical dramas?

And that doesn’t put any responsibility on the creators to change stuff (I mean, the “reward = romance” thing is just a very easy video game mechanic for instance, and programming in something that more closely resembles actual romance would be impossible, and it’s not like it’s any less realistic than like, how you fish or mine or farm in those games), it’s still on consumers to think critically (again, that the video game that has you fighting slime monsters in mines or where you grow broccoli in just a few days and harvesting crops is just one click isn’t going for realism perhaps. People wring their hands about the general popularity of farming games like it’s yearning for some political/cultural thing, and forget that the specific fantasy is it without all the toil. Just like plenty of people love playing restaurant games who work(ed) in restaurants irl and hate(d) it). But like, we talk about “society” influencing people in terms of stuff like racism and sexism. Mass media is part of society. This is why a lot of feminist criticism over the years has focused on critiquing broad patterns that recur in media, to the point that they become societal trends — and a lot of people take this in *unconsciously*.

I think what that one earlier anon meant with “especially with porn” is that porn shouldn’t be like, an exception to this. It’s kind of weird how people who are all for media analysis of problematic patterns in other kinds of media think it suddenly doesn’t apply if it’s media designed for the purpose of getting off. And sure plenty of us are into things in porn we have no desire for IRL (I love mpreg and I love kidfic, I have less than zero desire to have kids and especially be pregnant irl, to the point that it’s actually a squick for me in *het* fic), plenty of people are into specifically the fantasy version minus the Issues they have with that stuff in the IRL version. But… that’s not everyone. Some people’s porn preferences do match up with what they’re into irl. Even when they don’t, as with the loli example there’s often some other particular reason they like that

I don’t think it’s right to go around asking strangers to go around explaining their porn preferences to you, but I think it’s fair to think about it yourself (in the interest of introspection if nothing else), and to critique broad patterns in fandom, same as we would for any other kind of media. Why is porn the special exception for which all the other rules about 101 media analysis don’t apply?

--

[fictionadventurer]

Maybe love triangles work better in classic books because, well first off, because sex isn't really mentioned. Most people's complaint about YA love triangles is that it devolves into "I can't decide which one is hotter." Physical attraction is an element of romance in classic literature, but it's rarely the only one, and you're not going to have the same kind of in-depth descriptions of how standing near a guy causes heat or tingling sensations or whatever. Physical attraction in classic literature is more about what draws someone to another person, while the YA approach is more often about the feelings the other person causes within you, which makes the YA approach feel much more self-centered.

But I also think the different approaches to courtship may be a factor. The other big reason people hate YA love triangles is because the girl is "stringing along" two guys and "not making up her mind." This seems to be tied to assumptions of dating culture--even in the exploration stage when a girl isn't thinking about lifelong commitments, she needs to be in an exclusive relationship, otherwise she's being emotionally unfaithful. (And if she's kissing two separate boys, she's straight-up cheating).

In a lot of classic literature, the relationship only becomes exclusive during the engagement. Before that, the woman is just living her life, meeting men who could be romantic options, but not necessarily pursuing any individual one. She does have to be careful so guys don't interpret her behaviors as romantic interest, because it doesn't take much to be seen as flirtatious and "drawing men in". But she can still be around multiple men and getting to know them without it necessarily feeling like she's "stringing them along". (And she's not likely to be kissing these guys the way a modern YA heroine would). This gives her more opportunity to slowly get to know these guys without being pressured to choose just one at this early stage.

[pinchraccoon]

FAITH: The Unholy Trinity Review

I played FAITH: The Unholy Trinity on stream recently, and I was very very satisfied with my experience.

Admittedly, I'm something of a wuss about horror media usually, but that didn't stop me this time. FAITH is a game in three chapters about a pastor by the name of John attempting to right previous wrongs and exorcise demons that have haunted him for a year since an incident in his first exorcism.

The very first thing that you'll notice upon booting up FAITH is the incredibly palpable style that it sticks to. In it's in-game visuals it's highly reminiscent of an Atari title, but with some modernizations to make it look Not Awful. Additionally, all dialogue has this uncanny text to speech applied to it, such that even your main character sounds horrifying, and adds to an inability to trust most things in the game. The third and final major point toward it's visual style that I feel is worth mentioning, and perhaps it's biggest claim to fame, is that of it's cutscenes. At multiple points in its run, FAITH will pull you into something of a first person point of view (although there is no hard rules saying that this has to be so) where what is being presented to you is seen in this really interesting, almost sketchy, pixel art style that clearly shows signs of being traced from real video references. The visual effect that these make is unparalleled in it's ability to unnerve, and it strikes at the uncanny valley effect that an encounter with a demon would likely bring to attention.

Provided are some notable examples of these cutscenes and their general style. These can occur at any time, and can be absolutely terrifying when the game wishes them to be.

I find that FAITH's visual elements serve to give a lot of this game's strength, and while the rest of the game is still quite good, it's apparent that the style contributes greatly to this games horror.

Regarding that, this game is fucking horrifying.

There are numerous instances in FAITH where I was legitimately in a state of terror regarding what was occuring, and the tension made by FAITH for the majority of it's run is thick enough to take a big, bloody bite out of.

Airdorf Games clearly understands the fundamental tenets of what makes good horror, and the Hitchcockian advice that has served to underpin the genre since visual horror's popularization. Everything that this game pulls in terms of scares this game absolutely earns, both because the actual imagery is somewhat scary in its presentation, as we've established in the section on it, but also in it's pacing. There are very few areas that don't have a really good scare to them, and I'm happy to report that the quality of the game, up to a certain point, remains very consistent.

Smaller things that I liked about FAITH, this game, when it does kill you, doesn't make a huge show of it, and it shows you your death screen and lets you get right back into it, which does serve to assist the combat elements present. FAITH is also quite funny sometimes! It's subject matter is inherently somewhat spooky, but it does have a goofier horror tone later on that calls back to roots of old horror schlock, as referenced in it's key art. Additionally, it contains nods to Yume Nikki, WD Gaster, and I'm Scared, and I love a game that recognizes history like that.

I only have a few complaints regarding this game. They are as follows:

Hitboxes feel janky and inconsistent, which one could argue adds to the horror, but in a boss fight you've been killed in 9 times to this point, it becomes frustrating.

Later portions of the game lose a lot of the horror, although in context they should absolutely be the part of the game that is the most horrific. This is largely due to the increased reliance on gameplay and combat in these sections as opposed to atmosphere as the game had done up to that point. It's not *bad* per se, but it's different in a way that doesn't immediately align with the clear objective of the game to that point

Occasionally the game becomes a little bit too "gamey." Which is odd to say, but there are some things that take me out of it and cut that tension that took so much to make, and when I'm cognizant that I'm playing a game and not being completely in it kinda makes me a little sad. This is a minor complaint however, as some of the puzzles are interesting and kinda fun, they even use this feeling of safeness at some points to really scare the shit out of you later on as well, so it's not all bad, just perhaps not to my taste.

Some puzzle design is needlessly obtuse, but sometimes they throw you a bone and give you means by which to bypass these (as well as boss fights) but with narrative consequences for them. I really love this idea, and this makes the game have a clear narrative arc FOR you that YOU make yourself. My run of FAITH might be completely different from your run of FAITH, and that's really cool!

I would implore you to play the game for yourself, as even if you watched my VOD of the game, you will get a completely different experience if you engage with it yourself.

Overall, I recommend that you should absolutely play FAITH: The Unholy Trinity. It's a lovely horror experience unlike much else. The best horror is Catholic, and this game is certainly a guilty pleasure.

If you'd like to watch my playthrough of the game, it's up on my YouTube, linked right below!

[jungwookjins]

Hi! I'm introducing some friends to the untamed and making some notes on where the netflix subs don't give enough information/good translations, according to the fandom. I saw your translation of the 'to die by your hand' scene and it KILLED me, so I was wondering if there are any other particular scenes you think it's important to note a different translation? Thank you so much if you can!

ooh so there aren't any scenes i can think of where the translation falls so so short of the actual emotion and meaning as much as that one, however there are definitely some less dramatic instances.

in general, i would say that mandarin (and a lot of other languages from what i've heard) has a lot more inherent emotional depth than english, so in translation, a lot of the subtitles sound very emotionally neutral or ambivalent when they really aren't.

the instance of this that sticks out to me the most is during the confrontation between wei wuxian and jiang cheng at the guanyin temple (ep 48, ~9 minutes in) where wuxian says to jiang cheng「都不要放在心上了」(dou bu yao fang zai xin shang), which the subtitles translate as "please don't keep it in your heart," which i'm actually not really mad at as a translation, but it's just not a phrase used much in english, so it sounds slightly awkward/doesnt convey the emotional context of that phrase.

so for context, mandarin has multiple ways of saying, loosely, "don't worry." there's「不要擔心」(bu yao dan xin), which is probably the most common and versatile to say it, and there's「不要放在心上」(bu yao fang zai xin shang), which is the one wuxian says to jiang cheng. (there's other ways too, they're just not rly relevant here) the literal translation of it is "do not put it on your heart," which the netflix is pretty close to, but ofc that doesn't tell u much abt usage. the way i've explained it in the past was, say u made a mistake at work and were beating urself up over it.「不要擔心」is something your coworker or boss might say to you to essentially say "hey it's no big deal, don't worry about it, ur fine;" it can be very casual. whereas, once you get home and start talking abt ur bad day at work,「不要放在心上」is more likely something your parent/sibling/partner/other loved one would say to you as they put a bowl of ur favorite soup in front of u. it has a level of inherent familiarity and deeper desire to comfort the person ur talking to than「不要擔心」. (note: i say inherent bc「不要擔心」doesnt have to always be casual/relatively emotionally neutral, it can be said w emotion ofc but the words themselves do not carry as much emotion as「不要放在心上」.

other than that, i’m not remembering any other specific scenes rn (if i remember smth, i’ll rb w the addition and @ you), but one thing that happens throughout the show is translation discrepancy when characters are addressing each other. for example, when wuxian and jiang cheng talk to yanli, the subtitles always have them both addressing her by name, but in chinese, family members often dont address each other by name, like my younger brothers both call me 姐 (jie), which means older sister. jiang cheng calls yanli 阿姐 (a-jie) most of the time (the 阿 at the beginning is just a prefix used in front of names and other forms of address to express familiarity, it’s the same character used in a-yuan). wuxian calls yanli 師姐 (shijie), which is what you call a senior female fellow student studying under the same master/in the same school/etc.

(rest under the cut bc this got rly long)

nie huaisang calls mingjue 大哥 (dage)/哥 (ge); 哥 means older brother and 大 means big, so 大哥 is often used for the eldest brother (esp common if there are multiple brothers). an interesting thing is that wangji does not call xichen 哥 or any variation of it, rather he calls him 兄長 (xiong zhang), which also means older brother but is a term of respect and much more formal, so that’s also a reflection of their characters and upbringing. 兄長 is not in common use nowadays but 哥 very much still is.

after nie mingjue, lan xichen, and jin guangyao take their oath of sworn brotherhood, they also change their forms of address with each other. for example, guangyao calls xichen 二哥 (er ge), which means second older brother (since xichen is the second oldest) and calls mingjue 大哥 (like huaisang does). (i feel like i vaguely remember guangyao being called 三弟 (san di), which means third younger brother, by someone but don’t remember if it was xichen or mingjue.)

(also impt to note that in chinese culture, familial terms as forms of address aren’t strictly reserved for family (whether that be blood or found). for example, in a casual setting, you can address any woman who is your parents’ age or between their age and your grandparents age as 阿姨 (a-yi) (or name + 阿姨), which is the term for your maternal aunt, and you can address any man of the same age range as 叔叔 (shu shu), which is what you’d call your paternal uncle. similarly in a familiar/casual setting, you can call women older than you but younger than your parents 姐姐/name + 姐, like the daughters, who are all younger than me, of my parents’ friends call me jessie jie-jie. and you can call men in the same age range 哥哥/name + 哥, like how wang yibo calls xiao zhan, zhan-ge. the same applies for people younger than you, with which you would use 妹妹, younger sister, and 弟弟, younger brother.)

another example is that jin guangshan calls jiang fengmian 江兄 (jiang xiong), 江being his family name ofc and 兄 meaning brother (same character as in 兄長, which wangji calls xichen), since they’re of the same age and status and their wives are sworn sisters. xichen, on the other hand, calls fengmian 江宗主 (jiang zong zhu), which means sect leader jiang. in the subtitles, these are often just translated as “you,” when they’re talking directly to him. 

so in general, there is a lot of information abt characters’ relationships, level of familiarity with each other, age, etc that is contained in their forms of address that just doesn’t come across in the netflix subs, since those default to their names like 80% of the time.

hope this helps!! if u (or anyone else) have other questions/scenes ur wondering abt, feel free to ask, i’m always down to talk translations. and if you want to see more of my beef w netflix subs a;lskjdf, all of my cql gifsets with dialogue on them have either been translated from scratch by me or i’ve edited the netflix translations, and i usually put some notes abt my translation in the tags. any sets that i’ve translated from scratch are under my translations tag, though most of these are actually for word of honor/shan he ling and not cql.

edit: check my reblog in the notes for some more additions!!

[biomedmillie]

University tips for Freshers from a final-year student

1. Don’t study the course material the summer before the course start date

I’ve known so many well intentioned students to do this (including myself!), but it is a fruitless enterprise that ends up wasting precious relaxation time. For a start, lecturers and course coordinators are constantly changing the material that ends up on the exam year upon year, and so in most instances students end up studying subjects with little or no current relevance for the course they are about to embark upon. Furthermore, course prospectus’ are infamously vague, and on more than one occasion I have studied material based upon the course plan that has no relevance whatsoever! University is stressful no matter what year you are entering, and as a first year you may be facing many other new experiences, such as living on your own, being independent and self-sustaining, that bring challenges and difficulties of their own. So don’t spend the summer stressing; use it as a reset point to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed upon that first week of university, so you can face up to those changes! If you want to be proactive but not waste your time, I suggest looking at the reading lists for each course, and lightly looking over any topics that peak your interest. From my experience, reading lists are much less likely to change year to year, and can provide interesting background information for your course- but keep the stress to a minimum!

2. Try not to party too much in Fresher’s week!

This one is so tempting to do, but there’s a few reasons why this isn’t a good idea! First off, fresher’s weeks or ‘Fresher’s festivals’ are often very overpriced and aimed at getting naive students to spend as much of that new student loan as they can before they realise how expensive food shopping and laundry is (tip; it can get very pricey!). Also, in most universities, and definitely in my case, important orientation lectures are held where attendance is mandatory on that first week of term, and it is vital you attend. In the case of science students such as myself, this includes proper usage of microscopes, lab safety protocols, grading schemes and how markings work, your tutorial assignment and can even be work due the next week! I know you might be thinking ‘I’ve heard all this in A-levels’, but universities operate to a different calibration entirely; marking is ranked on percentages rather than a curve, there are no As and Bs, and lab protocols are ALOT stricter. You are working in a higher academic environment, and as such higher academic conduct is expected of you! And this does not just apply to science students; those studying classical subjects will have specific referencing lessons (science students also have this, but only use the Harvard format), new academic writing styles, research methods etc. With all this important information, you don’t want to be hungover or worse miss the orientation and start off on the wrong foot. But if you’re worrying that not going out every night will mean you won’t make friends, don’t fret; most students, including myself, made friends with those on their course after a few months, or through living arrangements. Freshers is by no means your only chance to make friends, there are plenty of opportunities at university to do that, and after a couple of weeks you’ll find great mates!

3. Wait a bit before buying all those expensive textbooks

I’ve been guilty of this, every single year! The fact is, you don’t need every single item on the reading list, and this can even rack up to hundreds of pounds! You can find out which books you might need to buy in the first few weeks of your course, depending on library availability, how much your lecturer relies on the text for course support and content, and your personal ability in the course. Books that are in high demand at the library and the ones you can never seem to get hold off you may need to pay for, but if the book is available the majority of the time you can often rent for weeks on end, and just renew the rent when the time is up. In that case, there is no reason to buy your own copy if the library has enough to sustain demand. In the case of course content and lecturers, the reliance on the textbooks recommended varies greatly; in one course the textbook didn’t feel necessary whatsoever, in another it was a great supporting body that followed the course accurately, and other times the lecturers had used the entire information within the textbook AS their lecture content. It is only when the textbook can be utilised as supporting information that it can elevate your study, otherwise it can be irrelevant or the exact information you just heard in your lecture. Get used to each teaching style in those first few weeks, and make an informed decision whether the information required by the textbook is already fulfilled, irrelevant or would prove to be an excellent resource. Furthermore, textbooks are dense in information, but lacking in higher qualities of information that can push your grade into those top marks, so adjust your need for the textbook according to ability. If you are excelling at a certain course, the information a textbook can provide will be too basic and I would encourage you to push yourself to reading academic journals and papers to earn those top-tier marks. However, if you are really struggling with a course, stick to the basics and give a good thorough read of the textbook; it is unlikely you will understand those higher materials without at least understanding the basics, and you can still get a good grade without reading those complex sources. Both of these scenarios occurred to me in second-year; I bought textbooks for both microbiology and molecular biology, and while I found my microbiology textbook too basic and looked to higher scientific journals, the molecular biology textbook turned out to be a godsend! Everyone has different natural abilities, so I suggest to adjust your study to those needs, and your wallet will thank you in the process!

4. Find a method of note-taking that works FOR YOU

I’ve seen so many peers struggling because they just haven’t found the right form of note-taking for them, and instead follow a method that most do which I highly discourage! The method in question is where the student preemptively downloads the lecture PowerPoint, and makes notes in the space below of details the lecturer may mention. Now, this method works great if you are really on top of your note-taking and have a lot of extra time, but there’s a few reasons why I don’t recommend it. First off, by only making notes on those specific details students often miss the main body of text that acts as the core material, and as such must complete this mass of information at a later date. From my experience, students don’t have the time to do this and as such the material never becomes completed, leaving notes weeks or even months behind. Another method is handwriting. EVERYTHING. While I do agree that you remember more when you are handwriting notes (because it takes longer), this is way too time consuming and results in the same backlog of the previous methods, where your notes are always constantly behind on the lecture material. What I would recommend is a note methodology that incorporates both handwriting and typing up lecture notes, in a way that is not time-consuming. My own personal method utilises a Cornell template, whereby I copy and paste or type up the main body of text from the lecture the night before, and handwrite details of what the lecturer is saying in the columns. If you have the extra time, try reading through the lecture the night before also, and thinking of questions you have for the lecturer about any information you don’t understand. There are multiple iterations of this that I’ve seen, such as using post-its or writing on typed lecture notes, but all the most efficient in terms of time and memory utilise both typing and handwriting. That way you avoid that nasty note backlog, and can experiment with structures and templates that work with your study style. So don’t follow the crowd, and find a method that works best for you!

5. Have Fun!

University is a life-altering experience where most find their independence, and make friends for life. Whilst you should study hard and invest in your future, I wish I had told myself to go easier in my first year; you can still get a First whilst having fun, and you’re only going to have this period of your life for a few short years before you enter the world of work, so enjoy it! Study should never be your entire life, and those rest days are just as important, so try not to overdo your first year and just focus on enjoying that university experience; you’ll have plenty of time for study and stress in those second and third years! (Trust me...)

Note from the author: I hope this article helped to quell some of those fresher nerves, and gives advice I wish I had known in my first year! Comment below if you’re a second or third year with your advice for freshers, and new students feel free to comment with your hopes for the new academic year! I wish you love and luck!

[alvsstudies]

Existential Crises & Terror Management Theory (TMT)

⚠️ Potential triggers: existential dread, mention of death, anxiety

Note! I’m just a student who loves to learn and am by no means an expert in any way whatsoever. I can’t guarantee 100% scientific correctness. Please fact check my posts and call me out if I’m wrong! We’ll all learn more that way 🙌

Source: Cervone, D., Pervin, L.A.: Personality: Theory and Research, 14th edition

Existentialism: a quick summary 

Existentialism is an extremely broad and multifaceted ism. It’s relevant in multiple different areas of human life such as religion, philosophy and psychology (albeit not mainstream academic psychology), and different existentialists emphasise different things. Some consider existentialism to be intimately tied with meaninglessness and dread while others take a more positive stance and view it in a light of optimism. 

What is it then that connects all these views into one single school of thought? If we were to boil existentialism down to its core we’d get:

A will to understand our existence

Acquiring this understanding through the point of view of the individual, rather than by examining larger social structures or abstract theories

The belief that we, as conscious beings with awareness of multiple potential courses of action and outcomes, have free choice

A focus on the “phenomenological experiences [i.e. the subjective experiences of the individual] of anguish and despair” that stems from reflecting upon “alienation from the world, a loss for meaning in life, or the inevitability of death” ...or, in less academic terms ✨~existential crisis~✨

Terror management theory

Now, what role does terror management theory (TMT) play in all of this? And what is TMT? Well, in the field of psychology it’s hugely important to scientifically test things. We can’t just go about accepting a bunch of theories without proving them! TMT is a contemporary theory that seeks to experimentally test one of the cornerstones of existentialism, namely humans’ fear of death.

According to TMT humans have a biological drive to stay alive just like any other animal. However, we also have a uniquely human experience: the awareness and concept of death. TMT states that the combination of these two factors results in a sort of death anxiety, or fear of death, the increase of which is called mortality salience. So, essentially: 

> will to live + inevitability of death = Yikes <

If all humans experience this anxiety, what then prevents us from going insane? Or, how do we manage this terror? This is the question TMT attempts to provide an answer to. The answer, according to the theory, might lie in our social and cultural structures - in other words in Society™️. What this insanity buffer looks like differs depending on what culture you look at, but one example is the belief in an afterlife, another a focus on the individual as part of something bigger, such as a group, a community etc. Thoughts and beliefs like these won’t get rid of the concept of death looming over us like a big, dark cloud (ain’t that a cheery image), but they can soothe the resulting anxiety. It’s like we’re bringing a bit of life with us in death, either by simply resuming life (in Heaven or through reincarnation for instance), or by having part of you live on back home through your children, or the things you did for your community, or in the memories of your loved ones.

High self esteem has been identified as another death anxiety buffer. All people are affected by mortality salience (increased death anxiety), but individuals low in self esteem even more so.

Experimental studies on mortality salience

Okay, yeah, that subheading sounds incredibly dry, but this is the interesting bit! Believe me! Because man people are weird. Or rather, brains are weird.

So far we’ve established that- 

a) humans have death anxiety (not desirable, aka Yikes) 

b) that anxiety is soothed by our culture (desirable, aka y e s please cure me of my existential dread) 

-and from this we can now form a hypothesis:

Morality salience should lead to greater commitment toward one’s own culture (soothes death anxiety) and greater rejection toward other cultures that threaten the beliefs of one’s own (increases death anxiety). It should also increase affinity for people who share one’s beliefs and increase hostility towards those who don’t.

Multiple studies have been carried out to test this hypothesis and various methods have been applied in order to increase the test subjects’ mortality salience such as...

 ...having them watch a video of a lethal car crash. 

...asking them to write down what they believe will happen to them when they die. 

...exposing them to subliminal death primes (i.e. flashing death-related words or images before them so quickly that they don’t consciously register them but their brains still manage to process them outside of conscious awareness. How cool is that!?)

The result of these studies? In support of the hypothesis! In other words, when we are reminded of our inevitable deaths and our mortality salience increases we become more committed to our culture (and more hostile toward other cultures). 

Effects that were produced as a result of increased morality salience include:

Greater number of donations to charities that benefit one’s own social groups

Increased physical aggression toward people who challenge one’s political views

Heightened sensitivity in regard to blasphemy toward cultural icons or religious symbols

Greater rejection of people from other social groups, but increased fondness for members of one’s own group

Rejection of sex when seen as a biological drive, but increased sexual interest when sex is seen as an act of love

...And that’s that! Isn’t this super interesting? I hope you learnt something together with me while reading this (hopefully not super boring) post! 🧠 Let’s get back to studying what we actually have to study now, shall we?

[sidecarghost]

Spn 15x18 spoilers below

Dean can’t reciprocate: Spn Meta on Romance as the language of the soul or alt theory Aro Dean

So the 15x18 script had line about Dean can’t reciprocate. And I thought hmmm.... prob just like everyone else and here are my two cents.

Dean can’t reciprocate because:

He only ever thought of Cas as friend and would never want to pursue any relationship more than that.

He is aro and he doesn’t connect with romantic attraction. And this is absolutely fine!

He has denied and repressed any romantic urges and numbed himself to them. Big diff between this and Aro because Aro is natural and valid but repressing romantic attraction is not.

He was like wtf is happening right now. I need time to process.

I am Destiel shipper so obviously hard no to #1, but that is a completely valid opinion just not one I share. But I refuse to even enumerate any opinion of Dean being offended by the declaration. #4 could be case and with more time Dean would have reciprocated. But for this post I’m really focusing in on #3 and maybe a little #2.

In my opinion, Aro Dean is not a Destiel deal breaker. I think Dean and Cas can still have beautiful relationship with platonic love and sexual attraction and low to none romantic attraction on Dean’s side.

Really the purpose of meta was to poke at possibility of romantically repressed Dean. And the convo Famine had with Dean way back in season 5 came to mind.

Notes: I am awful at meta, so take this entire dump with grain of salt. Just some things I noticed while thinking about Dean’s romantic identity and making metaphorical comparisons to heart, romantic soul, and will power from a couple scenes in Spn.

Metaphors under consideration from Spn scenes

Heart

associated with acts of caring that are selfless and kind (like saying someone has a big heart)

Will power

Driving yourself to get your shit done.

In Dean’s case his will power is typically fueled by hate and anger because he is a monster hunter and his anger keeps him going even when he wants to give up.

Romantic soul

your romantic connection to other people (i. e. soulmate) and doesn’t necessarily have to be sexual.

Spn 5x14 Famine talks to Dean about his broken, empty soul

FAMINE: hunger doesn't just come from the body, it also comes from the soul.

DEAN: It's funny, it doesn't seem to be coming from mine.

FAMINE: Yes. I noticed that. Have you wondered why that is? How you could even walk in my presence?

DEAN: Well, I like to think it's because of my strength of character.

FAMINE: I disagree. That's one deep, dark nothing you got there, Dean. Can't fill it, can you? Not with food or drink. Not even with sex.

DEAN: Oh, you're so full of crap.

FAMINE: Oh, you can smirk and joke and lie to your brother, lie to yourself, but not to me! I can see inside you, Dean. I can see how broken you are, how defeated. You can't win, and you know it. But you just keep fighting. Just... keep going through the motions. You're not hungry, Dean, because inside, you're already...dead.

Spn 15x18 Castiel talks about Dean including how he sees himself and how loving he really is

CASTIEL: you see yourself the same way our enemies see you. you’re destructive and you’re angry and you’re broken... you’re daddy’s little blunt instrument. and you think that hate and anger, that’s what drives you, that’s who you are. it’s not. everyone who knows you sees it. everything you’ve ever done, the good and the bad, you have done for love. you raised your little brother for love, you fought for this whole world for love. that is who you are. you are the most caring man on earth. you are the most selfless, loving human being i will ever know.

Romantic Identity Thoughts for Dean

I agree with popular opinion that Dean reads like a bisexual character, but his romantic identity doesn’t necessarily have to match. And I think so far he doesn’t seem to fit label of biromantic. Like biromantic is possibility if Dean is just repressing his romantic urges because he has numbed his soul to all feelings per Famine’s monologue. Or just we haven’t seen it on show but Dean does feel that way. But I think some other labels may be better fit for Dean.

Dean is really good at all the platonic aspects of love. Like Castiel said Dean has a big heart. platonic love is very selfless. It is driving to help a friend, sharing interests, caring about each other’s wellbeing, being there to support them, and protectiveness. At its purest it is selfless and expects nothing in return. Pure platonic love is not jealous love. You don’t get jealous about the recepient spending time with others. You are also typically okay when they are gone. And that plays back well with Castiel’s speech in 15x18. Just aside, Dean being really good at platonic love is important if you read Castiel as demiromantic because Castiel would need a strong friendship before he feels any kind of romantic attraction.

Dean also enjoys casual sex and shows signs of sexual attraction for men and women. Although the show has only established female sex partners so far, that does not mean he isn’t attracted to men too. And there have been instances in show that read as sexually attracted to men.

But even though Dean has had multiple sexual relationships on the show, Dean has no canon romantic attraction. Other than the weird witch sisters when he was hexed in 13x12. That curse was first time Dean was in romantic love, and it wasn’t consensual which sucks but non-con is a common spn theme.

Maybe it could be argued Cassie and Lisa were romantic love interests. But I dunno he kind of just left them without any noticeable regrets. So it seemed like Dean enjoyed protecting them, being a good friend, and having sex with them, but there was no soul yearning romantic aspect to the relationship. These weren’t woman that he couldn’t live without. Their loss didn’t crush his soul.

But then there is Castiel. And each time Castiel is lost Dean falls apart. This tough hunter that tragically gives last rites to his family and friends on a daily basis becomes a sop of hurt and angst when Castiel is gone. Those are very romantic feelings. Then Dean seems to bounce back to happiness once Cas comes back. So maybe Famine was wrong or lied because Spn monsters seem to get retconned into lying quite a bit, or maybe Dean has already started to explore and nurture his own romantic identity or in Spn Famine terms soul.

Also Romantic love often tends to be jealous and possessive. Like Famine said this is a hunger, and it can be this wild, ravenous thing. So by Castiel calling out all Dean’s selfless acts it kind of resonates with Dean not having a current romantic partner and that being something Castiel wants for Dean.

Anyway, romantic identity and sexual identity don’t have to match. So Dean can be bisexual and homoromantic or bisexual and aro. I am thinking demi-, or homo-, or biromantic, because Dean does seem to experience some very romantic feelings for Castiel (i.e. touches, looks, romantic squabbles, and the overwhelming need for Castiel to be around). If Dean tells Castiel that he just doesn’t feel the connection to love speeches and romantic thoughts then aromantic may actually be a better fit for him.

There is even a WTFromantic that is meant for people that can’t feel romantic attraction because the things in their life have overwhelmed them to the point that the concept of romantic attraction is just completely inaccessible to them. And I dunno, but that label seems pretty descriptive of Dean too.

So Dean may not be able to reciprocate romantic feelings because he has made a conscious decision to just repress all romantic attraction as much as possible per Famine monologue. Even tho Famine talk was 10 years ago Dean still has same problems. He is going through motions, as in 15x17 where he denies there even is a case to solve. He is fueled by anger and hate. Right before Cas’s romantic declaration, Dean is talking about all he feels is angry and bloodthirsty. So that empty soul that has been denied every desire may still be mangled and hurting. Dean just needs to confess he isn’t coping and get help.

Or Dean may identify as a character that doesn’t connect romantically, if Dean is aro then there was nothing ever wrong with him because that is valid and no one should push him to act in a way that isn’t natural for him. And I specifically tried to use romantic soul, because I don’t mean to make any kind of comparison to romantic attraction and the immortal soul like that is totally separate concept.

Anyway, I kind of feel like the show is setting it up as former and that by calling Dean broken it is describing him as repressed romantically and maybe the next couple episodes are him coming to terms with that aspect of himself. Like he’s been running on anger for so long maybe time to do some soul searching.

Disclaimer: romantic and sexual identity labels are not meant to be prescriptive, they are just supposed to help describe your truth so you can have a language that describes your own personal identity and you know you are not alone and you have a community. I would never apply them to other people, but Dean is fictional and interesting so I thought I’d try to dig at what the writers and actors were doing to either consciously or unconsciously give Dean his own romantic and sexual identity.

[hanbereviews]

Octavinelle Main Story Review/Analysis

Welcome to the next analysis/review of the twisted wonderland main story. Today we will be talking about a very popular dorm, Octavinelle! Home to the Leech brothers and Azul Ashengrotto. I have a few mixed feelings about this story, and we’ll be speaking about them whilst we speak about the characters! As always, warning for spoilers.

Azul Ashengrotto

The antagonist of our main story, Azul gets an interesting amount of character moments as well as a decent amount of speculation about him inbetween his appearances. It is apt to say that Azul’s temperament is discussed more than directly shown in most episodes, but I and many other people have managed to piece them together! 

To bring out an age old and corny metaphor, Azul thinks the pen is mightier than the sword. He was frequently bullied in elementary school due to not being as athletic and physically fit as the other children. He quickly realized there wasn’t exactly any fixing that aspect of him, but he had something even more important up his sleeve. Being smart! With Octavinelle being based on the little mermaid, of course each of the dorm residents were originally sea creatures. Azul was an octopus, and as such could use his eight legs to write a variety of spells. Eventually this allowed him to perfect his unique magic “It’s a deal,” a mimic of the sea witch Ursula’s contract she made with Ariel. 

In exchange for making their wish come true, Azul would have the unsuspecting person give up a part of themselves, most of the time it’d be their magic. It’s safe to say most, if not all of Azul’s self worth stemmed from these contracts, the belief that if he had a wealth of magical abilities and leverage over the student body that he could never be taken advantage of again. This feeling of his is so pervasive that it leads to what I personally believe is one of the most heinous acts in Twisted Wonderland, he ends up essentially tricking the student body into selling themselves into slavery. 

With all this in mind, it is no surprise that when the students are inevitably free from Azul’s control via destroying his contracts he immediately induces an overblot. What else could he do, when the only thing keeping his self esteem in check was the fact he had physical proof he wasn’t the same wimpy octopus from his earlier years? By the end of the story, he finds a much healthier replacement for that self esteem boost, throwing himself into monstro lounge’s business! Though, you have to wonder if his newfound interest in generating as much revenue for his personal cafe business as possible doesn’t present similar problems than his previous coping mechanism. 

Jade Leech 

The mediator of the Octavinelle dorm and a fan favorite, Jade is supposed to be the saner of the Leech twins. But that doesn’t exactly pan out in practice. Along with Floyd, Jade plays a more supporting role in the story. Which I believe is a bit of a flaw, as we don’t learn much about him or Floyd through their moments in the main story. Rather, we have to look beyond that into character stories, events and the chapter after Octavinelle’s. So what I am piecing together is mostly from that. 

Jade and Floyd met Azul in elementary school, deciding to stick with him up until now because his actions were deemed interesting. This begs a question, will they both leave him when he does something they think of as “boring?” While they say that, their words don’t match their actions. For instance, disgust is expressed over Azul so brazenly using his magic to steal people’s abilities and thus leading into him overblotting. Yet Jade stays with him until he wakes up, and makes no indication that he no longer wishes to serve Octavinelle. Thus you can make the inference that Jade is far too attached to Azul to leave him even over something this egregious. This behavior applies to Floyd too, which leads me to an explanation of the brother’s actions around each other via…

Floyd Leech

Floyd himself! Marketed as the “crazier” of the Eel duo, Floyd also plays a supporting role in the main story. However we learn his unique magic, “Bind the Heart” allows him to redirect people’s magical attacks. Floyd’s personality is displayed as a bit more aimless than Jade’s, wanting to do things he finds fun and his attitude fluctuating with his mood. He’s got a lot more “cutesy” moments, more likely to pout or whine when things don’t go his way. Well, not exactly cutesy when you hear it, but to some people it could be! 

Knowing Floyd, it seems baffling that he would follow anyone around, much less someone as “weak” as Azul. So what exactly bridges the gap between them? 

Jade does. Their whole relationship rests on Jade.

This is not to say Floyd doesn’t care about Azul in his own way, because he most certainly does. It is not like Jade controls his personal relationships. But as you learn more about the brothers and their habits; you begin to understand that Floyd takes a lot of his cues on how he should be acting from Jade himself. Recall that a bit earlier I said Jade is supposed to be the saner of the two twins. Well he is, and he isn’t. With Floyd’s behavior being so erratic obviously Jade would need to compensate by seeming more approachable. But everything Floyd does he has his twin brother behind him encouraging it. 

Thus it is no wonder Floyd took a liking to Azul. Jade liked him! So that meant he must be worth it. And at Floyd’s own admission he’s never exactly bored when around the both of them. So the expectation that he would want to leave Azul high and dry after his overblot is overridden by how invested he’s become in their relationship due to their dynamic. An injection of a personal theory here is also that Azul is the only friend Floyd’s managed to make on his own terms. If you take a look at his interactions with Riddle, Floyd pisses him off multiple times. Enough to get Riddle’s redfaced sprite! You have to wonder if Floyd means harm when he speaks to Riddle or if how he speaks to others just clashes with Riddle’s general temperament. Which then carries on to wondering if he has trouble making friends with others in general? But this part is all based on assumptions!

Final Thoughts

I give this story a 5/10. I think it did well in explaining Azul to us. But since his antagonistic act in the main story kind of overrode everything else going on, we couldn’t get much elaboration on Jade and Floyd themselves. Therefore whilst the plot itself was very gripping and well written, the characterization sucked! But as always, this is my personal opinion. And I won’t say the main story didn’t make me love Octavinelle, so maybe it did it’s job and I’m just being nitpicky.

[thecoleopterawithana]

Hi there! Just discovered your blog and I love it. I appreciate your in-depth analyses. But I have a question: I saw in a previous post that you think the line "I'm in love with a friend of mine," from "Dear Friend," is Paul saying he loves John. But, couldn't this line apply to Linda? It seems to me Paul could be telling John either, "Let it go, you know I'm in love with you," or "Let it go, you know I'm in love with Linda." What do you think? I'd love the line to be for John of course. Thanks!

Hey there, dear anon! I’m so happy you’re having fun with the blog and my sporadic thoughts!

Ah, yes! The famous conundrum: who is the friend Paul’s in love with?

I want to start off by making it clear that I have no doubt in my mind that Paul was in love with Linda.

In the same way, I don’t see it as too far fetched to think that Paul was in love with John. They both used it to describe their relation often enough.

The question, as always, is what exactly Paul means and what we mean when using the term. 

So the third point I’d like to make is that Paul being in love with John doesn’t necessarily entail him wanting to kiss him or be a typical romantic couple. It’s possible that this is simply the best term they found to describe the level of intensity and infatuation present in their relationship; how fascinated they were with each other, how interested in spending time together. Of course, we as a culture are very hung-up on the physical manifestations of these feelings, and often use this small constituent of very complex dynamics to categorize them into platonic, romantic, sexual, etc. But I think I’ve harped on enough about the illusion, limitation, and importance of language/concepts/categories in the previous post you referred to.

By all of this I just mean to say that maybe we shouldn’t decide who the line is about based on how plausible it would be for Paul to use “in love” in reference to John Lennon, as there are more instances him doing exactly so. 

So, assuming that Paul is just as likely to use “in love” to refer to his relationship with Linda as to his relationship with John, let’s see what he says about the song:

“Dear Friend” was written about John, yes. I don’t like grief and arguments, they always bug me. Life is too precious, although we often find ourselves guilty of doing it. So after John had slagged me off in public I had to think of a response, and it was either going to be to slag him off in public — and some instinct stopped me, which I’m really glad about — or do something else. So I worked on my attitude and wrote “Dear Friend”, saying, in effect, let’s lay the guns down, let’s hang up our boxing gloves.

— Paul McCartney, interviewed for Club Sandwich (1994).

Dear Friend was to do with John, a bit of longing about John. Let’s have a glass of wine and forget about it. A making up song.

— Paul McCartney, interviewed by Paul Du Noyer for Mojo (July 2001).

[Dear Friend] was written for John, to John. It was like a letter. With the business pressures of the Beatles breaking up it’s like a marriage. One minute you’re in love, the next minute you hate each other’s guts. It’s a pity, because it’s very difficult to cut through all that. So you do what we all seemed to do, which was write it in songs. I wrote “Dear Friend” as a kind of peace gesture.

— Paul McCartney, in Bill Harry's The Paul McCartney Encyclopedia (2002).

And then with ‘Dear Friend’, that’s sort of me talking to John after we’d had all the sort of disputes about The Beatles break up. I find it very emotional when I listen to it now. I have to sort of choke it back. I’m not going to cry in front of all you lot though! […] But, for me, it is a bit like that. I remember when I heard the song recently, listening to the roughs [remastering works-in-progress] in the car. And I thought, ‘Oh God’. That lyric: ‘Really truly, young and newly wed’. Listening to that was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s true!’ I’m trying to say to John, ‘Look, you know, it’s all cool. Have a glass of wine. Let’s be cool.’ And luckily we did get it back together, which was like a great source of joy because it would have been terrible if he’d been killed as things were at that point and I’d never got to straighten it out with him. This was me reaching out. So, I think it’s very powerful in some very simple way. But it was certainly heartfelt.”

— Paul McCartney, You Gave Me The Answer - ‘Wild Life’ Special (29 October 2018).

So, starting by stating the obvious, Paul has made it clear that the ‘dear friend’ the song is addressed to is John. Now, is the ‘friend of mine’ a different subject or the same? 

Conveniently, because they continue to mirror each other, both Paul and John are ‘really truly, young and newly wed.’ So the whole phrasing of the song is exactly the sort of “very non-specific way to say it” that Paul prefers.

Though, in 2018, Paul comments precisely on this line: “I find it very emotional when I listen to it now. [...] And I thought, ‘Oh God’. That lyric: ‘Really truly, young and newly wed’. Listening to that was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s true!’”

It’s worth to consider the context of the whole verse, as that specific lyric is the end of a sentence: ‘Dear friend, throw the wine, I'm in love with a friend of mine, really truly, young and newly wed.’

Paul tells us that this phrase in particular gets him choked up, but also almost awed in realization. I personally don’t feel like this kind of surprised amazement would be elicited by acknowledging that it’s him and Linda that were ‘in love’ and ‘really truly, young and newly wed’, unless out of a sense of nostalgia. 

But the thing is, Paul doesn’t bring up Linda or Yoko or their respective marriages even once while discussing the song. If the point he’s trying to make is, ‘Look, I’m in love with Linda, you’re with Yoko, why are we fighting?’, why would he never bring them up while discussing the song? Or state something to the effect of “We are individuals— all different. John married Yoko, I married Linda. We didn't marry the same girl.” (Which he did say in the autumn of 1969, to Life magazine.)

In actuality, he only mentions his metaphorical matrimony to John, and how “one minute you’re in love, the next minute you hate each other’s guts.” So, when discussing a song written to, for and about his ‘dear friend’ John, in which he declares he’s ‘in love with a friend’ of his, Paul explains how it’s like they’d been “in love” with each other. 

I think we might be making this needlessly complicated by bringing in his love for Linda, and so would like to invoque the law of parsimony.

But then, what does he mean?

Paul makes it abundantly clear that the ultimate goal of this ‘letter’ is an attempt at reconciliation, “a kind of peace gesture”, “let’s be cool”, “let’s lay the guns down, let’s hang up our boxing gloves”. It’s a “making up song.” 

It pays to point out that while Dear Friend was first recorded at the beginning of the Wild Life sessions, on 24 July 1971, the demo tapes date back to a year prior, estimated to have been made at home in 1970. So it’s unlikely it was a response to How Do You Sleep?, recorded on 26 May 1971, and released on 9 September 1971. So Paul seems to be answering some other slagging off in public that John did.

But let’s look at the song:

Dear friend, what's the time?  Is this really the borderline?  Does it really mean so much to you? 

Are you afraid, or is it true?

Dear friend, throw the wine  I'm in love with a friend of mine  Really truly, young and newly wed 

Are you a fool, or is it true?

Are you afraid, or is it true?

The first line seems to be pretty self-explanatory, with the same sentiment Paul expressed in 1994, that “life is too precious”; after all, ‘Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend.’

In the second line, the question could mean, ‘Is this really where we’re at? Is this where we ended up?’ Or he could be using ‘borderline’ to mean a division, in the sense that he asks ‘Is this really where the line is drawn?’, which could help explain the end of the verse and his bafflement at how hurt John is by having that line crossed.

Now, what might be the action that meant so much to John? What might be Paul pinpointing as the source of John’s hurt? The sources could be multiple. John himself said no one hurt him as much as Paul did, and he was quick to point out Paul’s insensitivity. Paul would later continue to ponder this issue:

I always felt guilty. Always felt guilty. But looking back on it, I keep thinking, okay, let’s try and analyse this. Now John was hurt; what was he hurt by? What was the single biggest thing that we can find in all our research that hurt John? And the biggest thing that I can find is that I told the world that the Beatles were finished. And I don’t think that’s so hurtful. [...] I look at it now and really kind of shudder. At the time it was me trying to answer some questions that were being asked and I decided to not fudge that question. [Note: Where John’s hurt is concerned, Paul may or may not be referring specifically to his answering “Do you foresee a time when Lennon-McCartney becomes an active songwriting partnership again?” with a definitive “No.”] And I say, looking back on it, I don’t think… I mean, if that’s the most hurtful thing I did, I haven’t really heard much else beyond that.

— Paul McCartney, interviewed by Chris Salewicz for Musician (October 1986).

Of course, there’s nothing to say that Paul would be aware of all of this back in 1970. So we may never know what hurt Paul was referring to, if any. Remember this is just my present personal interpretation; which can be completely incorrect. 

Now comes the part which I consider the most mysterious in the entire song: ‘Are you afraid, or is it true?’ and the variation, ‘Are you a fool, or is it true?’ The exact meaning for these inquires often eludes me. What is John afraid of and what is the alternative state that Paul wonders if it’s true?

One interpretation I’ve seen is made in the context of Dear Friend being an answer to How Do You Sleep? Here, the question ‘is it true?’ amounts to ‘did you really mean all those things you said, or were you just hurt?’ This seems a reasonable take and it works as a response to any attacks by John, not just necessarily How Do You Sleep? 

Of course, Paul uses the word ‘afraid’. And although I can see a post-divorce John Lennon slagging of his ex out of hurt, I don’t understand how he’d do it out of fear. But maybe there was something to lose still.

Personally, clarity arrived when I was exposed to the song A Love For You. Part of the RAM demo tapes made between May and August 1970, this track recorded in 26 October 1970 would only be heard by the public in 2003, in the soundtrack for the movie “The In-Laws”. 

The piece shares many motifs with other McCartney songs, as I’ve tried to explore before. But, to our discussion, I think the most relevant part of this contemporary of Dear Friend is the very last line of the second verse: 

Is it true, are you coming through, or were you just leaving?

Here we have it; around the same time, precisely the same question: ‘Is it true?’

Though in the case of Dear Friend, it’s as if what he questions as “true” is reversed, asking instead: ‘Is it true you were just leaving? Or are you afraid of coming through? Or are you a fool for not seeing that I really am, I really can, I really do, I really have a love for you?’

This interpretation seems to match my current hypothesis that the breakup was but a disastrous series of miscommunications, which both created and were created by fear, distrust and insecurity in the other’s love. 

If this is the case, the second verse seems to also make more sense. The first line is explained by Paul in 2001: “Let’s have a glass of wine and forget about it.” Assuming that the second line (the reason for this whole post) is referring to John, then it represents a clarification of Paul’s feelings. The verse culminates with a question that seems to reinforce the whole message: ‘Are you a fool for not seeing I’m in love with you, or is it true that you actually meant to leave and that you don’t feel the same anymore?’

I have to reinforce that, even with all of this, when Paul says ‘I’m in love with you’ to John, I don’t think it necessarily means ‘I’ll leave Linda, take me back!’ From my perspective, the way Paul’s in love with Linda doesn’t really infringe on the way he’s in love with John. He probably had totally different needs and expectations from the two relationships, which he doesn’t see as mutually exclusive.

So, in conclusion, for me Dear Friend is essentially Paul writing a letter to John saying, ‘Come on, are we really wasting time with this fighting nonsense? Let’s make up! I still feel the way I felt. Do you?’ 

[panharmonium]

Hey, do you ship merthur? I have conflicted feelings about it because Merlin does love Arthur but also their relationship is kinda shitty.

short answer: i do not

longer answer: i might not be the right person to ask about this, because i don’t really “ship” anything?  it’s not how i engage with fandom.  (disclaimer: this is not a value judgment of folks who do engage with fandom that way.  just an explanation of how my own brain works.)

extra long answer: under the cut, because i suppose it was only a matter of time before someone asked me about merlin/arthur, and i might as well put my entire response in one place so that next time, i can just link to it.

questions like this are a little tough for me to answer, because i am completely uninterested in romance as a premise.  if it’s not there, i don’t care.  if it is there, i often wish it weren’t, because it’s almost never developed in a way that lives up to my standards.  i don’t always mind if something contains romantic relationships (provided they’re written well), but i don’t want them to be the point of a story.  i honestly cannot think of anything less interesting to me than a story that has as its main plotline “x character falls in love with y character.”  for me, in my brain, it’s like, “okay...that’s it?  do you have anything else to say?”  there is literally nothing about that that i care about.

this can be a little difficult to navigate in fandom, because one of the oft-heard commendations of “fandom” is ‘gosh, fandom is so wonderful, we can watch the same two characters fall in love again and again and again in a million different scenarios!’  which is true, for the people who care about that sort of thing, but that’s not actually ‘fandom.’  that’s shipping.  and there’s nothing wrong with shipping, but shipping and fandom are not the same thing, and they’ve become so conflated that it can be very difficult to engage in the latter without being absolutely swamped by the former.

many times, for me, fandom can feel synonymous with shipping.  there was a post i reblogged recently whose tags described shipping as often feeling like a prerequisite to engaging with fandom, and that is often what it feels like to me, particularly in fandoms where one ship is so ubiquitous that any and all other material is utterly dwarfed by it in scale.  (for me, my last two major fandoms have been merlin and teen wolf, so - i’m sure you see my dilemma, heh.)

all of that said, in terms of arthur and merlin specifically...

disclaimer: everything i say here is relevant to me only.  these are my own feelings.  i am making this post on my own blog, in my own space, in response to a question about my own thoughts.  i do not want, expect, or need anyone else to share these thoughts.  any commentary i make about fandom trends is not equivalent to condemnations of individual people’s opinions or shipping habits.  i do not mind or take issue with folks who ship these two characters.  i am glad you are having fun.  please do not @ me about something you disagree with.  i promise you it is not necessary.

okay.  with that out of the way.  

part of me is reluctant to expound further on this question, because my personal philosophy is that merlin and arthur as a ship have had more than enough time and space devoted to them in this fandom (way more than their share, frankly) and i generally prefer to focus on merlin and the other people in his life, as a deliberate counter to that.  but, since you asked, and because i have been experiencing the “i’m tired of romance” bug more strongly lately, here is the long-form version.

the number one reason why i don’t ship arthur and merlin is what i already outlined above: i don’t really “ship” anything.  i have never looked at two characters who were not already together/on an obvious potential path to being together and said “i want them to fall in love.”  that has just never happened to me.  (again - it’s not a BAD thing to have this happen, it’s just not something that’s ever happened to me.  i can’t relate to the experience.)

therefore, when i do appreciate a romantic relationship, it’s pretty much always because canon has shown me something romantic (or clearly pre-romantic) that i find to be well-written and compelling.  (it’s rare - as i outlined before, i would usually rather not deal with romance at all - but it happens.)  

arthur and merlin, then, never had that effect on me, because arthur and merlin, as depicted in the canon, are not in love.

[to anybody reading this who just snatched up their keyboard and started furiously typing, i beg you - please go back and re-read my disclaimer.]

they’re not in love.  the truth about these two is that if i had watched this show without having grown up in fandom as a culture (and without knowing exactly what kind of ships fandom immediately sees EVERYWHERE) the idea of anybody shipping these two together would never have even entered my mind.

(and like.  because i DID grow up in fandom, and i DO know exactly what kind of ships fandom sees everywhere, i knew before i even started this show that arthur/merlin was going to be an inescapable thing.  but that would not have been the case, if i had watched the series in a world where i didn’t know what fandom was.)

arthur and merlin, in canon, are not in love.  the show never does anything to give me an inkling that either of them are harboring romantic feelings for each other.  that is never what is happening onscreen.  literally the last thing on merlin’s agenda is romantic attachment, ever, and arthur is never, ever shown to be in love with anyone who isn’t gwen.  the show, onscreen, never tricks me, teases me, or leads me on.  i was never under the impression that merlin and arthur were in love with each other, because they weren’t.

but that DOES NOT MEAN their relationship matters less.  just because they aren’t IN love with each other doesn’t mean they don’t love each other, and one of those things is not bigger or better or more powerful than the other.

i struggle a lot in fandom (all fandom, not just merlin) with the persistent idea that romantic attachment is the peak, the natural endpoint on a scale of “how deep is your love?”  i am constantly running up against posts where the commonly accepted structure is to cite a moment of devotion or caring or some instance of basic connection between two characters, and then add a caption or tag saying ‘because they are JUST FRIENDS, right?’ or ‘^^totally platonic interaction between characters who are not at all in love, sure jan.’  

and honestly?  i hate that.  that is one of my least favorite things about fandom.  it makes me so tired.  

i am completely disconnected from this idea that there are like...things you can do that are too caring to count as friendship.  like - that there is too much devotion you can show, and if you go over the limit, then it’s laughable that you would do those things for “just” a friend.  that’s so unpleasant to me.

(and i do think [when it comes to non-canon queer ships, anyway - straight ships unfortunately have no excuse, sorry y’all] that part of this probably has its roots in pushback at the tendency of people who try to “gal pal” actual queer ships (or literal real life relationships), so this, at least, is something i can understand.  i’m queer myself; i get that.  and that is why i will never like - attach myself to someone’s post and start complaining.  people can vent however they want.)

it doesn’t change my own feelings, though.  i hate seeing every meaningful friendship i’ve ever been invested in talked about like it’s just a romance in disguise.

other things: i am uninterested in romance as a motivator.  

truly, from the bottom of my heart, i don’t care.

we are, at least in my corner of the world, oversaturated with romance, to the point where any piece of media that doesn’t include it in some fashion is shockingly bizarre.  it is EVERYWHERE.  it is in EVERYTHING.  i cannot pick up a book without running into a romantic plotline.  i cannot watch a movie or a tv show without being forced into multiple romances that i don’t care about.  (rare exceptions apply, as always, but i’m speaking generally.)

this oversaturation, for me, means that romance as a storyline no longer holds any meaning for me.  i see it EVERYWHERE.  it is in literally EVERYTHING.  making merlin into a “love story,” for me, makes the show so much less interesting, because there are billions of love stories out there.  love stories are practically the only kind of story our media remembers how to tell!  why would i take a story that is so unique in its exploration of deep friendship (that isn’t even quite friendship, because it’s not real, but merlin wants it to be real, but making it real would also destroy it) and loyalty (that isn’t necessarily deserved, but is still offered, but is damaging to the person offering it) and love (that exists in spite of arthur’s position as the oppressor, but still cannot erase merlin’s oppression, and is patently not a magical fix for the very real problems merlin is facing), and then want to water it down to “and then they fell in love”???

merlin bbc has so much to say about the transformative, redemptive power of love (not just romance), and the bonds we form with each other despite the fact that we don’t always deserve each other, and what we can do to make ourselves better, and how do we make amends for the ways in which we hurt the people we care about, and it is so complicated and there is so much beauty there and i adore it specifically because it is one of the rare pieces of media out there that doesn’t prop up romantic love as the most important and powerful force in the universe.  romantic love is not what moves the story.  merlin’s love for the people around him is based on compassion.  it’s bigger than the familiar and overused ‘i am desperately in love with this one individual person and that’s what drives my actions,” which is a premise all of us know has been done to death.  merlin’s love is not about romantic attachment.  it’s a deep, abiding love for humanity.  it’s based on hope, and faith, and the inherent belief that everybody matters, even in their worst moments.

condensing that kind of story into “and then they fell in love” erases its meaning for me.  it makes it trite.  uninteresting.  i have seen “and then they fell in love” fully sixty thousand times.  “and then they fell in love” has been done so often that it is utterly devoid of power for me.  boring.   i literally do not care.

other people might feel differently, and find a romantic love story compelling.  i don’t.  

i’m guessing the message that prompted this essay is asking me to evaluate how i feel about the “goodness” of the merlin/arthur ship, aka whether it’s worthwhile to ship it or not based on how healthy/unhealthy it is, which i definitely can’t answer, because i don’t think whether it’s “good” or not really matters.  i am definitely too old to be riding the newer wave of, uh...idk, purity culture type stuff that is so oft-debated on here, lately.

but you’re absolutely right, anon - merlin and arthur’s relationship IS kinda shitty!  it 100% is.  it doesn’t mean you can’t ship them, though, if you want; otherwise i wouldn’t be invested in any aspect of their friendship, either.  

the fact that merlin and arthur’s relationship is kinda shitty is an essential element of the show; it’s the microcosmic representation of the macrocosmic problem merlin is trying to solve, and even with that being the case, we can see clearly that this also doesn’t preclude them from having real moments of connection and care and love.  this is the contradiction i have to keep in mind whenever i engage with them in the friendship sense - merlin has been wronged by arthur in so many ways, and yet he still loves him and believes arthur can do better, and yet his dedication to arthur really does destroy his life piece by piece, and you really have to walk a line between those extremes and be thinking: in what ways was this a noble, honorable path for merlin to take and in what ways was this damaging, and was it all worth it in the end?

we probably wouldn’t still be watching this show if we didn’t ultimately think the answer to that last question was yes.  but there are also equally valid ways in which the answer is, truthfully, no, and i think really the only important thing when dealing with merlin and arthur’s relationship (in whatever capacity you prefer) is to keep that dissonance in mind.

so, to more directly address your question, when it comes to my interaction with the source material, i don’t ship merlin and arthur romantically because i don’t see romance when they interact in canon, and i don’t think their relationship could be improved or made more interesting/more meaningful by adding extra-canonical romance into the mix.  that’s really it.

but the other side of things is this: even if i were granted someone else’s ship-goggles to somehow see romance between these two (eg, once, in the distant past i read a harry potter fic that was so well-constructed it sold me on a relationship i didn’t [and still don’t] actually see in canon), i still wouldn’t choose to ship merlin and arthur, and it’s not because they’re a “bad” ship (no such thing, folks - tag your stuff and let people live their lives, thank you), it’s because this fandom has already been swallowed by them and i cannot bring myself to make that imbalance worse.

trying to be in the merlin fandom without shipping merlin and arthur is just...a little bit difficult sometimes.  i think probably even people who do ship merlin/arthur are aware of that.  sometimes it can feel like merlin/arthur is a given in this fandom, not one of many options - as if you’re not in the merlin fandom, but rather the merthur fandom, and you know you really, really do not belong there.

and it’s not even a canonical ship!  it’s not even real.  and yet if you like this show, and you want to engage in the fandom, your experience is, without exception, going to be chock full of merlin/arthur content by default.

essentially, my struggle with the merlin/arthur dynamic in fandom is two-fold:

1) the strikingly imbalanced content distribution

the merlin fandom, in terms of content distribution, is a pretty accurate mirror of merlin’s own existence, to be honest, in that pretty much every aspect of it is eventually taken over by arthur pendragon, and in that there’s a reasonable debate to be had about whether or not that’s a good thing.

(spoiler alert: it’s not.)

even so, it is what it is, and as i said before, me commenting on fandom trends is not meant as a condemnation of individual preferences.  people like what they like!  that’s just how things are.  shipping arthur and merlin isn’t a Bad thing to do, by any means, and the fact that so many people do is just, you know, bad luck for me, lol.  but at the same time, the wildly unbalanced distribution of content does make it more difficult for folks who don’t ship merlin/arthur to engage in fandom with quite the same level of ease, and even though it’s nobody’s fault, it is still perfectly reasonable for people who don’t ship merlin/arthur to be frustrated about that.

fanfic is a pretty good case study for how this plays out.  i saw a post a while back that was titled something like ‘merlin bbc gothic,’ and the first bullet point was “canon ships are rarepairs,” and HOO BOY, that is true.  stats-wise, merlin/arthur makes up ⅔ of the merlin fic on AO3.  ~25,000 fics.  the next most popular tag after merlin/arthur is arthur/gwen, but arthur/gwen have ~2,900 fics in their tag.  and when you remember to exclude any instance of merlin/arthur from the arthur/gwen tag, that number drops by another thousand, to ~1,940.

that’s buckwild.  come on.  merlin/arthur has twenty-three THOUSAND more fics than the next most popular (and CANONICAL, i might add) ship?  and every other ship’s numbers are even lower than that?*

and if you don’t want to read shippy stuff in the first place, like me - the merlin “gen” tag has less than 8000 fics in it, by comparison, and then you STILL have to filter merlin/arthur out of the gen fics, leaving you with about 6300 - which number has to be filtered down further to remove OTHER ships that still make it past the gen filter.

in comparison to 25,000.

like.  i’ve been in fandom long enough that i’m not surprised - mean, i came into merlin directly off a teen wolf phase, and boy, that’s a whole other bowl of noodles right there, with added squick factors that are irrelevant here - but i’m still just...man. 

it still makes my head spin.  and it is still frustrating, every time.

*(there is a lot more to be said about how gwen fits into all of this, and i know it has been discussed more thoroughly in other places, but yes, another reason i am leery of arthur/merlin as a thing is that i’m just...not super comfortable with what that implies for gwen and her position in the story.  even if i personally am slightly more compelled by gwen/lancelot, technically - i still don’t quite feel comfortable taking gwen out of her canonical place.  she belongs at the top.  she deserves to be the love interest and she deserves to be the queen.  and like - people can say that her relationship with arthur isn’t “developed” or “convincing” enough to warrant retaining in fic, and i get it, the show really did fail gwen in S5 - but i still don’t buy that argument.  people literally INVENTED a romantic relationship for themselves and put 25,000 fics worth of effort into building it up; there is no reason why an “underdeveloped” canon romance couldn’t have gotten the same treatment.  except, of course, for the fact that one [Black, female] character was being shoved aside to make way for yet another two white dudes.)

(and i’m not saying that everyone is doing this deliberately or maliciously.  but we all know this is a cross-fandom trend.  there is literally no reason for the gap in content to be THAT wide.  a canon relationship with twenty-three thousand fewer fics than an invented ship?  just...that is a stat that bears thinking about.  it doesn’t mean that merlin/arthur is a “bad” ship, or that you can’t prefer lancelot/gwen, but it IS still important to recognize these patterns where they occur, across fandoms, and to really think about what they mean.)

2) the arthur-goggles

my second struggle with merlin/arthur in fandom is the ubiquitousness of the arthur-goggles, aka: the tendency in fandom, as in canon, to make everything in merlin’s life about arthur, and everything in the show about merthur.

this one specifically really gets to me.  i am very committed to the idea that merlin is a complete individual, whether arthur is there or not.  i write a LOT of meta about merlin being a whole person, specifically pushing back on the idea that merlin was “born” for arthur’s benefit - my motto is basically that “merlin’s life does not revolve around arthur pendragon,” and the way his life begins to revolve around arthur pendragon in later seasons is not in fact touching or romantic or beautiful; it’s a tragedy.  merlin does not exist only in the context of his relationship with arthur; he possesses worth outside of his mission to save the prince of camelot, and he was already a complete person before he ever met the prince of camelot, and one of the many issues we have to think about when dealing with arthur and merlin in any capacity is how merlin is told from the get-go that he is supposed to devote his whole life to arthur, but arthur is never given any such reciprocal responsibility.  

merlin and arthur’s relationship, just like the distribution of content in this fandom, is wildly imbalanced.  merlin spends all of his spare time thinking about arthur’s life; he ties himself in knots trying to help arthur develop as a person.  he is constantly working to keep arthur safe and happy.  but arthur, at the end of a long day, doesn’t spend his nights agonizing over how he can improve merlin’s life.  he just goes home and goes to bed.  he never once thinks, ‘my purpose on this earth is to serve and support my friend merlin.’  he is never told his life isn’t his own, that he is supposed to be one half of some two-sided coin.  only merlin is told that his entire existence is earmarked for someone else, that his life’s purpose is to be someone else’s better half.  only merlin is expected to devote his entire being to someone else’s betterment.  only merlin is expected to say demeaning, self-abnegating things like “i was born to serve you.”  

arthur, by contrast, is allowed to have a life of his own.  he is allowed to exist on his own terms.  he is never told that his worth is dependent on how well he can prop someone else up.  and while fic might like to imagine merlin being the most important thing in arthur’s life, in canon that is just not the case.  

merlin exists on his own merits, and the idea that he does everything he does just because “he’s in love with arthur” will never sit right with me, because it’s simply not true.  merlin and arthur’s relationship is important to both of them, yes, and of course it is undergirded by deep love and care, but it is also way more complicated than that.  merlin’s investment in arthur’s life - and his grief at arthur’s death - are NOT solely driven by his love for arthur as an individual; they are inextricably bound up with a sense of obligation and duty and self-worth and, eventually, failure, because he’s been told that protecting arthur is a) the only thing that matters about his own life and b) the only way to free his people and save an entire kingdom.  and i think ignoring this very real complexity in favor of “merlin does what he does and feels what he feels because he’s in love with arthur” cheapens the depth of the story and flattens merlin’s character.

arthur-goggles automatically make everything about merlin/arthur, though.  so the difficulty, for me, with merlin/arthur as a ship, is that it can be hard to make/find things about merlin that people don’t instantly, always try to link back to arthur in some way.  merlin is not allowed to have things that are just his, and he can’t exist in a state where arthur doesn’t somehow factor in - no matter how unrelated to arthur something is, or how non-shippy it’s meant to be - there’s someone out there who’s going to loop it back to merthur in some way.

just like - scattered examples of things I’ve encountered:

all of merlin’s non-arthur love interests on AO3 having massive chunks of their ship tags actually being merthur fics, with the non-arthur ship serving solely as a stepping stone on the way to getting merlin and arthur together

readers, on fics that are specifically designated as focusing on merlin+someone else and in which arthur does not appear, leaving comments asking “so how long until arthur shows up,” “can’t wait to see arthur,” etc

meta about how ‘merlin’s time in camelot was actually really bad for him as a person’ being reblogged and modified by someone else with an addition like “but merlin doesn’t regret a second of it because he wouldn’t have known arthur if he were anywhere else,” and the OP having to reblog their own post and explain that this is literally the exact problem they were trying to critique

in fic, merlin’s friends being utilized only as vessels with whom he can have discussions about his developing relationship with arthur

etc etc

it’s not always huge egregious things, but wearing arthur-goggles means EVERYTHING comes back to merthur in some way, which for me is just...really insulting to other characters, and really limiting in terms of story analysis.  

so, for example - this is a VERY specific example that few will relate to, because i am probably the only person on here who has ever tried to search the tag for merlin’s friend will from ealdor (a niche fave of mine) - but with him, especially, it is very hard to avoid bumping into a lot of people wearing arthur-goggles, because everybody seems to imagine him as merlin’s ex, who is only upset about what’s going on in 1.10 because he’s jealous about arthur appearing alongside merlin, never mind that will and merlin have known each other since birth and have a relationship that LITERALLY predates arthur by two decades.

so with him, as an example - the other day, i saw some post in the tag that was like “will gets teary when arthur makes his inspirational speech in ealdor because he finally understands what merlin sees in arthur and he can’t be mad anymore”

and that is just patently untrue.  it is not even remotely close to a legitimate interpretation of what is happening in that scene.  will hasn’t come around to arthur’s way of thinking yet; he literally still packs his things and leaves after this happens, and he is - i mean, first of all, he’s not crying, lol, and he stalks out of that scene weary, angry, and fed up, because he thinks the village is delusional and all of his neighbors are going to get killed in the morning.  his arc - his dissatisfaction with what is going on, his anger at the ignorance arthur wields as a nobleman with all of that wealth and privilege, his resistance to the big “let’s fight kanen’s men with sticks” plan - that is about him and his history and who he is.  it is not about an (imaginary) merlin/arthur love story.  

but when the arthur-goggles are on, all roads lead to merthur.  even when the other characters in question (*coughWILLIAMcough*) would be beyond mortified to have merthur, of all things, assigned as their motivation.

SO.  now that i’ve gone over both the canon and fandom aspects of my reasoning, the succinct summary in response to your question is just that no, i don’t personally ship merlin/arthur.  because:

a) i don’t see it b) the fandom is already trying to drown me with it and i choose to center other characters out of spite c) i just think merlin deserves better lol

however, as i said in my disclaimer - that doesn’t mean other people shouldn’t ship and enjoy it!   merlin/arthur is very much not my cup of tea, but that’s no reason why other folks can’t have fun with it.  i think the best portrayals of it, probably, will be those that keep in mind exactly what you said - that merlin and arthur’s relationship is “kinda shitty” - but this is fandom, so if what folks really want to write is just lots of happy AU’s with no issues, then they should go for it!  the point of fandom is to have fun connecting with people over a shared love of something, so i am happy to let others have fun doing their thing, and i will just be over here doing mine. 🙂

[violethowler]

The Things That Matter

I’ve talked a lot over the last two months or so about the many different ways that the characters, story, and themes of the Kingdom Hearts series align with the framework of the Heroine’s Journey. For the final chapter in this series of essays, I’d like to talk about what it means for this series to follow this narrative formula. Because the fact that Kingdom Hearts fits into this storytelling pattern is critically important now more than ever. 

The three most recent series I know of that aligned with the Heroine’s Journey framework all ended up missing the landing in various ways. Two of the three - Voltron: Legendary Defender and the Star Wars sequel trilogy - abandoned the formula in their final installments, while the third one - the Frozen movies - managed to fit into the formula almost completely, but suffered in the second movie from a lack of clarity as to which of the two leads is the main protagonist and which is the Animus. Two of these were under the Disney umbrella, and all three have had evidence found that executive meddling or other behind-the-scenes conflicts over story direction played a role in how the final installments ended. 

As I mentioned in my essay “Into the Unknown,” when a story deviates from the structure it appears to be following, it produces a visceral sense of wrongness in the audience. In stories which up toward the end aligned with the Heroine’s Journey, that effect is amplified. The framework of the Heroine’s Journey was designed to uplift the experiences of identities outside of what society considers the default option in storytelling. The lived experiences of those identities are mirrored in the narrative’s themes. So when a story set up around calling out prejudices and double standards about those identities that are ingrained into the audience’s culture deviates from that formula, the result inevitably ends up reinforcing those biases instead, on top of the brokenness of the narrative in general.  

In terms of how this applies to Kingdom Hearts, Sora and Riku’s individual character arcs have been noted by many LGBTQ+ fans to have notable parallels with elements of their own lived experiences:

Riku’s arc of learning to accept his darkness as something natural that’s a part of him and which he can express in a positive way mirrors how many LGBTQ+ people grow up with the idea that same-sex attraction is “sinful” and “unnatural” and have to unlearn that mindset in order to realize that there’s nothing wrong with them. Likewise, Mickey’s line in Re:COM about how spending time with Riku has positively changed his opinion about Darkness can be read as an analogy for straight people who are initially unsure of or hostile to LGBTQ+ identities changing their minds with education and first-hand interaction to become staunch allies. Esmeralda’s talk with Riku about how “There are just some things we need to keep separate from the world at large, at least until we have time to figure them out”[1], while on one level is referencing Riku’s Darkness and his inner turmoil relating to Ansem, can also describe the common LGBTQ+ experience of being in the closet and hiding that part of yourself from the people around you[2]. 

As for Sora, in Kingdom Hearts III he responds to Davy Jones’ comments in The Caribbean about the romantic relationship between Will and Elizabeth by saying that “I still have a lot to learn about love[3],” indicating he lacks understanding of his own feelings in the area of romance. This is supported by the official Kingdom Hearts Character Files book published by Square in February 2020. Short stories in this book featuring Sora’s POV depict him as actively confused about what romantic love is[4], and struggling to define the nature of his relationship with Riku[5][6]. This can be a common experience for LGBTQ+ youth growing up surrounded by media that only ever depicts romantic relationships as one boy, one girl. Many people who grew up like this—myself included—have had similar experiences of struggling to understand our own feelings about someone of the same gender because for our entire lives up to that point we had little or no exposure to the idea that being romantically interested in someone of the same gender as you was an option. 

Sora and Riku are each written in ways that speak to common LGBTQ+ experiences, and the fact that so many things—the canon parallels to Disney romances, the match with how love interests are portrayed in the Heroine’s Journey, the fact that one of the series’ Lead Event Planners Michio Matsuura was described by the Co-Director Tai Yasue to be “head over heels for the bond between Riku and Sora’s hearts[7]”, in connection with his enjoyment of “pure love dramas[7]”—are all pointing to the conclusion that these similarities did not happen by accident, but by design. 

It makes so much sense for Heroine’s Journey narratives to be used to tell LGBTQ+ stories because there are so many ways that homophobia and transphobia overlap with and are rooted in the very same gender and cultural norms that the framework challenges. Many countries have come a long way towards public acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities, but in terms of the stories that we tell, mainstream fiction is still skewed in favor of stories with protagonists who are straight and cisgender. Storylines with straight romance are treated as a society-wide default, while creators in countries like the U.S. who want to include even the smallest background references to LGBTQ+ relationships have had to fight and push back against corporate pressure to remove them. 

This is especially true for media aimed at children and teenagers, as the fact that being openly LGBTQ+ is still widely considered problematic in many countries is frequently used by entertainment executives in ostensibly more progressive countries as an excuse for censoring LGBTQ+ storylines and characters. Multiple creators working on animated shows for Disney and/or its competitors have spoken out in recent weeks about the resistance they faced to including LGBTQ+ relationships[8][9][10] and how they were told that openly acknowledging characters as non-straight was too controversial or “inappropriate for the channel"[9].

As a consequence of this environment, creators wishing to depict non-heterosexual relationships have had to resort to creative methods of getting the implications past the censors in a way that LGBTQ+ audiences would recognize while still maintaining plausible deniability so that the executives could make money off the story in anti-LGBTQ+ markets. The downside to this is that because these efforts are more subtle, most straight audiences will either not notice the implications, or else dismiss them as an accident. Some will go as far as coming up with alternate explanations to justify why any potential LGBTQ+ subtext about a character or relationship could not possibly have been put there by the creator intentionally. 

This extends not only to audiences, but also to people who interact with these stories in a professional capacity, such as translating and marketing a story’s international release. Animated shows that feature same-gender relationships have had international dubs change the gender of one character in the pairing to make it straight, for instance. Or there's the infamous example of how the English dub for Sailor Moon in the 1990s changed two girls from lovers to cousins in order to provide an explanation for their closeness that didn't involve acknowledging that the characters were not straight. In terms of the Kingdom Hearts series, the English localization has routinely downplayed LGBTQ+ subtext in the series while in some cases adding romantic undertones to interactions between a male and female character that did not exist in the original Japanese script. Kingdom Hearts III was one of the most egregious examples of this:

Hercules’ recollection of how he dove into the River Styx to save Megara’s soul in KH2 is thematically connected to Riku sacrificing himself for Sora at the Keyblade Graveyard through the phrase taisetsu na hito (literal meaning: “precious person”) when Hercules is talking to Sora in Olympus and when Mickey is talking to Riku in the Realm of Darkness at the beginning of the game. The English version translates this as “person I love most” for Hercules, while changing it to “what matters” for Riku and Mickey to call back to his meeting with Terra in Birth by Sleep, which the scene includes a flashback to. While Mickey and Riku’s original meaning can still be deduced from the conversation around it, especially with Mickey saying "sometimes you care about someone so much," changing the line for the sake of a callback downplays the evolution of Riku’s goals from protecting “things that matter” to protecting “the *person* who matters”. 

Donald and Goofy’s teasing Sora in the scene at Galaxy Toys where Sora comments on how much he or Riku resemble Yozora is framed in the English version as “Riku would be a great action figure because he’s cool, unlike Sora.” However the original Japanese indicates that the teasing is centered around the fact that Sora said a character who looks like Riku was good-looking.

When Kairi offers Sora a paopu fruit, she says in the original Japanese that it’s simply a good luck charm so that they don’t get separated, while in the English localization, she says “I want to be a part of your life no matter what, that’s all.” While “that’s all” still fits with how the parallels to Winnie the Pooh indicate her connection with Sora has weakened and she wants to maintain it, the first part of the English line calls back to the legend of the fruit introduced in KH1, which was openly referred to as romantic by Selphie in the original and localized versions of the first game. As a result, this adds romantic implications that contrast with Sora’s unreceptive body language and facial expressions[11] as he reacts to the initial offering of the paopu fruit. 

In the original Japanese, Riku’s words to Sora before his sacrifice at the Keyblade Graveyard translate to “I believe in you. You won’t give up.” The English localization changed it to “You don’t believe that. I know you don’t.” Not only does it remove a callback to the original game, but this phrasing dowplays Riku’s faith in Sora and ignores Sora’s very clear feelings of inadequacy. 

During the scene where Sora and Kairi are floating through the dark tunnel toward the Keyblade Graveyard, Sora’s line in English, “I feel strong with you,” was originally an acknowledgement of Kairi’s strength that called back to how he wouldn’t let her come along on the return trip to Hollow Bastion in the first game because he thought she’d “kind of be in [his] way”[12]. Removing this callback takes the focus away from Kairi’s growth and brushes aside one of the ways the game shows that Sora’s view of her has changed over the course of the series.

Some fans defend changes such as these insisting that the development team had to have approved of them. However Testuya Nomura himself feels strongly enough about the subject: he stated in a 2018 interview several months before KH3's release that “an incorrect or defective translation risks compromising the comprehension of the whole story,” referring especially to the Kingdom Hearts series[13], and the English localization of Re:Mind—which was much more accurately translated than the base game—directly references the original meaning of Kairi’s words during the paopu scene in one of the DLC’s Kingstagram posts. This all indicates that changes such as these that remove important connections or change the meaning of the conversation are ones that the development team very much do not approve of. 

LGBTQ+ fans of Kingdom Hearts who recognize their own experiences reflected in Sora's and Riku’s journeys know that Disney has not had a good track record when it comes to depicting LGBTQ+ characters in properties they are affiliated with. The most we ever get in their movies are background moments or nameless characters that are only there in one scene that easily can be cut out for distribution in countries with heavy anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. And that’s if the character’s orientation is even mentioned out loud in the film at all instead of simply being confirmed by interviews before or after release but never acknowledged on-screen. Television has fared better, but until recent years we never had any main characters who were confirmed in-show to be anything but straight. But things are slowly starting to improve. Within the last few years shows like "Andi Mack" and "The Owl House" have depicted major characters as openly interested in others of the same gender[14], and Pixar recently released a short as part of their Sparknotes program called “Out”, which openly centers on a man worrying about telling his parents he’s gay. 

This is why it is so important that the Heroine’s Journey of Kingdom Hearts follow through to a structurally appropriate conclusion, with the development team being given the freedom to tell their story in full without restriction or censorship. Deviating from the formula this late in the series would represent a continuation of the recent trend of Heroine’s Journey narratives being structurally broken by inference from forces other than the main creative team. But if the Kingdom Hearts story is able to complete it’s Heroine’s Journey without executives or localization teams getting in the way of the intended story, then the LGBTQ+ themes already present in Sora and Riku’s journey will break so many barriers,challenge people’s expectations of what is possible, and convey powerful messages of self-discovery and acceptance—just like the framework was designed to. 

Sources

[1] Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance; Square Enix; 2012. 

[2] Tumblr post by @blowingoffsteam2; December 3, 2019. https://blowingoffsteam2.tumblr.com/post/189461796759/blowingoffsteam2-dont-mind-me-over-here-just

[3] Kingdom Hearts III; Square Enix; 2019. 

[4] Translation of KH Character Files Beast’s Castle story by @lilyginnyblackv2; February 3, 2020. https://lilyginnyblackv2.tumblr.com/post/611420864489062401/character-files-beasts-castle-story-english

[5] Translation of KH Character Files Arendelle story by @lilyginnyblackv2; March 3, 2020. https://lilyginnyblackv2.tumblr.com/post/611490139845345280/character-files-arendelle-story-english

[6] Translation of KH Character Files Arendelle story by @notaseednotyet; March 1, 2020. https://twitter.com/notaseednotyet/status/1233993459670765569

[7] “Message from the KINGDOM” Updates!; April 11, 2012. https://www.khinsider.com/news/-Message-from-the-KINGDOM-Updates-2427

[8] “”Steven Universe” and “She-Ra” creators on Representation”; Paper Magazine; August 5, 2020. https://www.papermag.com/rebecca-sugar-noelle-stevenson-2646446747.html

[9] Twitter thread by Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch; August 9, 2020. https://twitter.com/_AlexHirsch/status/1292328558921003009

[10] Twitter thread by Owl House creator Dana Terrace; August 9, 2020. https://twitter.com/DanaTerrace/status/1292321440029478917 

[11] Frame by frame analysis of Sora and Kairi’s body language during the KH3 paopu scene by @notaseednotyet; September 14, 2019.  https://twitter.com/notaseednotyet/status/1172774158167506944

[12] Kingdom Hearts; Square Enix; 2002. 

[13] “Nomura stresses the importance of direct translations on story comprehension, and talks about world development as well as the Gummi Ship;” August 27, 2018. https://www.kh13.com/news/nomura-stresses-the-importance-of-direct-translations-on-story-comprehension-and-talks-about-world-development-as-well-as-the-gummi-ship/ [14] Disney’s The Owl House Now Has a Confirmed Bisexual Character; August 9, 2020. https://io9.gizmodo.com/disneys-animated-series-the-owl-house-now-has-a-confirm-1844665583

[diego-alvarez2001]

I would characterize social media as, A platform that allows multiple people to post. A myriad of different things Weatherby politics, life, etc. it also allows users to interact with other users whether it be public or private. And people can also follow another individual. I would characterize myself as a social media user, but I don’t post that much; every maybe five or six months, I” II post something myself. I do use social media to stay in contact with the news and other figures. in terms of my challenges with social media; I don’t have any; I understand social media pretty if I do say so, in terms of the most difficulty. I have with it I think would be the idea of lighting, when should something post, what’s an effective way to get out there. I understand it; I just have difficulty applying it if that makes sense. In terms of what I want in this class, I want to see a more philosophical discussion about social media and its role in society, and it’s evident that it’s apparent in the past ten years or so that society has shifted to more social media. Much more of our lives on social media commercials, celebrities, political activists, etc., have become more active online. I think it’s interesting to see from the philosophical perspective and even from a psychological perspective of its effect on people and if we should stop it/limit/improve it. Online we see a lot of discussions on social media in terms of bullying and harassment. I think it’s pretty interesting to analyze it, and the big one is what exactly is the line for free speech when it comes to social media; it’s apparent that they’re in multiple instances. Where people have problems with social media platforms and their rules, and I think that’s the most interesting as you believe in the next probably 10 to 30 years we’re going to see more and more legislation and discussion when it comes to the online conversation. In terms of my own position I believe that there should be a line when it comes to social media and wanting  to step in and obviously stop something bad from happening,  we’ve been seeing that a lot of radical groups are moving to online platforms because they’re bigger they can be more active on there and they can give out the orders more discreetly. And a very big thing is that a lot of their members can act individually,  I would definitely love to see everyone’s different position on what they feel is social media is role in society and what type of action should be taken against it and what we can do to benefit from it. I’m really glad I joined this class and I can’t wait to see where things are going to go and I can’t wait to continue this conversation with the rest of the class and you professor. Thank you for taking the time to read this and have a nice day!

[flying-elliska]

Hey, Ellie! hope this isn't disturbing but could you explain what's the difference between pansexual and bisexual that attracted to all genders? I've read your rb talking about it but there's this discussion going around in my country on twitter said bisexuality is attracted to multi-genders but not all the genders compared to pansexuality and it doesn't sit right with me

Hey, no problem ! If that's what is going around, it doesn't sit well with me either.

Bisexuals define their attraction in a myriad of ways : attracted to two or more genders, attracted to similar and different genders, sexual fluidity, attraction to all genders, attraction regardless of gender, etc. The common definition we can extrapolate from that is : bisexuals are attracted to multiple genders. That's it. Any definition that is more strict or limited than that will leave some people out, and personally, as a bisexual woman, I find that offensive. I like that bisexuality is a big tent of a label in which there is space for a lot of different experiences of attraction, and any attempt to rob the label of its encompassing power is by nature divisive, and disrespectful.

Pansexuality is more precise ; it means attraction to all genders or regardless of gender. Making it seem like bisexuality and pansexuality are somehow opposed or totally different is nonsense to me, because a lot of people could use either label.

Personally, for instance : I am attracted to people regardless of gender, and I mainly identify as bisexual. I have had people tell me that "actually, I was pansexual" and that was a deeply unpleasant experience because a) i am the one who knows my own identity best and b) bisexuality has historically definitely encompassed my experiences. I love being bisexual ; when I had this revelation that it was a real valid thing and it applied to me, it was such a magical happy moment. I won't let anyone take that away from me or redefine my own identity away from me.

Recently I have come to claim pansexual as a term fitting to me as well, and I consider it as a subset of bisexuality. But bisexual is still the main label I use for many reasons ; 1) it's the label whose discovery made me most happy 2) i find it more interesting politically and historically speaking and there is more of a community behind it and 3) i like the flag better lol. Some people with attraction patterns similar to mine may identify primarily as pansexual for their own reasons and that's totally fine and valid ! As long as we don't try to push people into boxes that are smaller than they need to be.

[masterweaverx]

Log MBO72(C)-Q!

Log begins. Subject: Magicat, unaltered female, feminine gender, age... unknown, actually. Will have to retrieve that data later. Adolescent at minimum, has been given responsibilities of an adult prior. Of course, given the prior situation was heavily militarized and socially manipulative, that could have contributed to negative psychological maturity and development...

Hmm. This data could be contaminated.

Still, better to have bad data than no data! I’ll just make sure to mark it.

Subject, referred to hereafter as ‘Catra’, is demonstrating standard behavior at this time. Note the regular breath rate, casual saunter. There is a demonstration of ‘purpose-absent interaction’ with the right hand, as it is engaged with the non-etherian spectral lifeform designated ‘Melog’. More specifically, it is engaged in mild grooming slash affectionate contact typically known as petting. This is an interaction Catra demonstrates often, due to emotionally bonding with Melog.

Side note: Conduct research into interspecies emotional bonding.

Further side note: Do robots count as ‘another species’ for purposes of above research? If so, I may be better at this friendship thing then I thought... I will inquire on this topic later.

Third subject has entered observational range. First One, female with She-Ra magical alterations--see folder ‘She-Ra Data’--feminine gender, age... also unknown. Reminder: Obtain date of birth of all social companions as soon as possible. Celebrations of existence are important social rituals for a number of reasons.

While not the primary subject of this log, third subject--designated ‘Adora’--is known to have developed intimate social relation called ‘romantic love’ with Catra and is thus a source of further data points. For instance, she is currently engaged in ‘sneaking’--which isn’t actually sneaking, but is clearly a play-like mimicry of sneaking, with exaggerated motions.

Note Catra’s ears at this moment. They have rotated slightly back, allowing her to detect sound without alerting any creature behind her. I did not have the camera pointed at her face, but there was a moment--roughly three sixteenths of a second--where her eyes widened and her neck tensed. This fear response is theorized to be a result of prior-mentioned life in a socially manipulative and militarized environment, but after determining the identity of the one sneaking behind her she has relaxed into an anticpatory state.

The curve of the mouth is known as a ‘smile,’ a generally positive expression. I am eighty-three percent certain this particular variant is called a ‘smirk.’ Which is apparently the kind of smile people get when they have a scheme.

I have searched high and low for documentation on smile mechanics. There has been limited success up to this point. Apologies to future scholars for my lack of terminological exactness.

Hypothesis: Catra is going to allow Adora to attempt to tackle her, in order to engage in action known as ‘play fighting’ and/or social interaction known as ‘teasing.’ It is interesting to note how context can shift what is and isn’t appropriate interaction...

...side note: Attempt to increase ability to determine contextually appropriate actions.

Adora has entered range for a proper lunge and is wiggling her fingers in some form of preparatory gesture. Catra has already adjusted her stance and--huh, that was a complicated motion. A combination of sidestepping and lightly raising her arm to redirect the inertia of Adora’s lunge, which resulted in her landing on Melog’s back.

She has now put her hands on her hips in a gesture that appears to assert dominance without presenting threat. Note the slow swish of her tail; higher speeds have been noted to accompany more energetic emotions such as panic or excitement, while total stillness is the result of cessation of emotional feeling, either deliberately or shut down due to intense distress.

While this log is primarily dedicated to observing the physical aspect of social expression, Catra is a language-utilizing sophant and some linguistic affects are gestures in their own right. For instance, the applied phrase ‘Hey Adora’ just demonstrated is not a typical greeting, but a personally constructed adage between subjects Catra and Adora. I am unclear as to its exact meaning, as it seems to be another context-variable action, but it does seem to indicate that Adora is currently the subject of Catra’s focus.

Hypothesis: Due to latent stalking and pouncing instincts, Magicats consider their current object of focus to be important on a subconcious level. This may explain some of Catra’s previous behaviors. It may not. I don’t have nearly enough data to tell!

It seems that the subject Adora is responding positively to Catra’s attention. Note the deliberately exaggerated relaxation she is demonstrating. It is interesting to see Melog allowing Adora to rest her body weight on them, for multiple reasons. It would appear Melog is supportive of Catra’s relationship with her in multiple senses of the term.

Catra is demonstrating amusement, bending forward at the hip to bring her face closer to Adora’s. The left eyebrow is raising as she speaks, and she has punctuated her statement by turning her face slightly to the left while keeping her gaze focused on Adora. The facial motions are not unique to Magicats, but I should note that Catra choosing such a deliberately unbalanced stance to stand in is relatively rare and should be considered a gesture of faith.

Side note: is this a Magicat thing or a Catra thing? This question permeates all the observations in this log. I really need to observe more magicats in their native environment. And actually locate magicats to observe. Work that into my usual scheduling method...

Huh. Catra has suddenly stopped smiling. She has returned to an upright position, with one ear swiveling. This appears to be an attempt to pinpoint a sound of some sort. Adora has also stood, and she is also no longer smiling. Note the hand on the shoulder, a common form of physical contact which usually indicates support, compassion, or other companionship.

Catra has responded to the shoulder touch by lowering her eyelids roughly three centimeters. I believe I can see a slight curve to her mouth, reminiscent of a smile, but at this distince I am not certain. Her ear is still swiveling. And now she is looking up.

Catra has jumped up to the ventilation shaft. She has gripped the grate and tugged it off. She is now looking at me. Her expression seems to be one of annoyance, with the--she has confirmed her expression is one of annoyance. She is asking why I am narrating what she is doing. Subject Adora is emitting regular rhythmic noise known as laughter, generally but not always related to amusement.

Side note: How does one converse with a subject of a log while making the log without awkward conversation structure?

Further side note: Behavior of subject is affected by knowledge of observer. Therefore for the purposes of scientific accuracy, I am ending this log here.

End Magicat Behavorial Observation Log Seven Two, Corrupted Data, Descriptive Marker Cute.

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE: 7 Times Anime Busted Out Pro-Wrestling Moves

  If you watch enough anime, you’ll begin to see that a lot of shows like to reference professional wrestling by having characters utilize various moves on one another. Sometimes, that will make sense within the context of the show, but other times, it might seem a little random. Regardless, it’s always a fun time when an anime decides to add in a touch of pro-wrestling into an episode. Two years ago, I wrote about six wild suplexes that were featured in a variety of anime, so let’s take a look at seven other instances where anime decided it needed a flair of pro-wrestling.

  Naruto Shippuden - Liger Bomb

    There’s something amazing about the Raikage using pro-wrestling moves as a way to fight against people using wild and ridiculous jutsu. There’s the intense double lariat he does with Bee against the clone of Kisame, and then him pulling out a Liger Bomb against Sasuke. This utilization is somewhat strange because it’s technically not the same Liger Bomb that Jushin Thunder Liger uses in real life (it’s more in line with a Batista Bomb/sit-out powerbomb in terms of powerbomb variations), but also creates a reference within a reference.

  Does the Raikage using this maneuver mean that Jushin Liger the wrestler also exists in some form in Naruto or is it Jushin Liger the manga by Go Nagai? Maybe it’s both, similar to how things happened in our reality? Now that’s a non-canon arc I’d be interested in seeing! Either way, the Raikage’s Liger Bomb is incredibly effective since not only does he cover himself in lightning, it’s a move that no one else had survived until Sasuke had to pull out one of his big techniques just to make sure it didn’t kill him.

  The God of High School - Stunner

    Seeing the most popular move from the US boom period of wrestling being done in an anime is still a wild sight. You know it’s a great move when it’s utilized in the opening as well. Mah Miseon utilizes pro-wrestling as her martial art in the confines of the tournament, which is the best. Perhaps my favorite bit about her character is when she goes up against Yoo Mira and tells Mira that using a weapon on her would be ineffective because she’s used to being hit by those kinds of items thanks to being a pro-wrestler and taking bumps regularly. That’s just brilliant!

  Mah Miseon’s version of the stunner is exactly what you’d picture if you ever saw Stone Cold Steve Austin do the move. She sets it up with a kick to the gut and grabs her opponent's head and sits down, jamming their jaw into her shoulder. It was effective enough to help her move onto the preliminaries, but maybe she should’ve pulled it off in her fight with Yoo Mira. Who knows, maybe that could’ve been the path to victory instead of defeat.

  Love Live! Sunshine!! - Crossface Chicken Wing

    Yoshiko at various points throughout Love Live! Sunshine!! will put other members of Aqours into an abdominal stretch which she’s effectively dubbed “Fallen Dragon Phoenix Hold.” In Season 2, Riko begins an unlikely friendship with Yoshiko, which sees some of Yoshiko’s fallen angel schtick rub off on her. We see this when Riko applies a crossface chicken wing on Yoshiko and calls it, “Silent Cherry Blossom Nightmare.” 

  The crossface chicken wing has been a staple in pro-wrestling for many years and became popular in 1994 when Bob Backlund utilized it as his finishing move in his heel run to capture the WWF Championship ten years after his last reign as champion. The move is also utilized today by multiple-time WWE Women’s Champion, Asuka, who redubbed it the Asuka Lock. What makes this utilization in Love Live! Sunshine!! humorous is there really isn’t any other indication that pro-wrestling exists in this universe. This makes me want to see a school idol group that acts like pro-wrestlers, or does pro-wrestling on the side, similarly to the idol wrestlers in Tiger Mask W. However, idols and wrestling being combined isn’t something that’s too surprising since back in the early '90s, companies like All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling were trying to do something similar by having certain wrestlers also do singing performances at shows as well. 

  Naruto - Canadian Destroyer

    Earlier we discussed when Sasuke was on the receiving end of a pro-wrestling move, but over 200 episodes before that, he was giving one out. In the midst of the Chunin Exams, Sasuke is able to grab a disguised Orochimaru, flip in midair, and then hit a devastating piledriver. Given that the episode this was featured in aired in 2003, this was just about when Petey Williams was beginning to popularize his front-flip piledriver known as a Canadian Destroyer. It’s certainly not like nowadays where it’s become a much more common move in pro-wrestling, so seeing it this early in Naruto is a bit shocking.

  Now, some people might say this is supposed to be just a regular piledriver, but Sasuke clearly is able to turn Orochimaru’s body 180 degrees to land in a piledriver position, so it totally counts. There was probably some old-timer ninja that got in a huff about Sasuke using it, but he shouldn’t listen to them. I still find it wildly entertaining that in the midst of this big fight early in Naruto, one of Sasuke’s key moves is a piledriver. Given the danger associated with that move, it’s smart since he’s able to smash Orochimaru’s head from quite a big drop. That should be an incredibly devastating maneuver. Too bad Orochimaru is a slithery one and won’t be put down that easily. 

  Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- - Dragon Suplex

    Hey, wait a minute. I was told this was a dragon suplex! Okay, yes, that is a dragon, and it is getting suplexed. I think we’ve been bamboozled here. In all seriousness, seeing a dragon get suplexed is such a bizarre sight, but a great one. I don’t even think you could utilize an actual dragon suplex — a move invented by Tatsumi Fujinami and currently utilized by Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kenny Omega — because how are you going to lock up a dragon to perform the move? They’d just slip out easily, and then you’d be in some serious trouble! Plus, even being able to use a normal vertical suplex on a dragon would be difficult since they’re so bottom-heavy, meaning you’d really have to use some strength to lift them up and slam them. So, while this is just a regular suplex, it’s still pretty impressive, and maybe one day we’ll get to see an actual dragon take a dragon suplex.

  Ahiru no Sora - Shining Wizard

    Guys in a sports club performing pro-wrestling moves on each other just makes the most sense, especially when you have a group of dudes like the basketball club in Ahiru no Sora. A group of mostly former delinquents who are used to having some knockdown, drag-out fights. Although, I don’t know if I would consider utilizing a Shining Wizard — a strike where you step off an opponent’s knee and slam your knee into their face — in an actual fight.

  The move created by Keiji Mutoh/The Great Muta that’s now used by basically everyone in pro-wrestling is fun to see used in a scuffle between brothers Chiaki and Momoharu early on in the series. Everyone that sees it gets really excited when Chiaki pulls it off as well, and he does so quite effectively. Since we see later on that those two would constantly get into fights growing up, this means the two of them throwing out pro-wrestling moves at one another is probably a common occurrence. The one downside to this is that using a Shining Wizard in an actual basketball game would be a very terrible idea and not something you’d want to try.

  JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure - Argentine Backbreaker

    Apparently Rubber Soul was really into pro-wrestling when he disguised himself as Kakyoin to try and take down a thief. That poor thief didn’t know what was about to happen when he got put into an Argentine Backbreaker Rack — otherwise known as the Torture Rack — to, well, torture the thief. It’s kind of surprising there’s not more random pro-wrestling moves in JoJo given the ridiculous nature of the series and that fact that everyone looks like pro-wrestlers from the 1980s.

  In the world of JoJo though, this move looks absolutely devastating because it looks like Rubber Soul is about to snap this thief’s spine in two just by the amount of torque and pressure he’s putting on his body. That’s probably what would’ve happened if it weren’t for Jotaro coming over to be like, “Hey dude what are you doing?!” Since this is the episode where this imposter Kakyoin does some very weird stuff, it’s safe to say that pro-wrestling is responsible for the famous meme of Kakyoin getting very into licking a cherry.

  This is but a small sample size of various instances where an anime has thrown in some pro-wrestling to shake things up, and I’m sure this will be by no means the last time it happens. As long as pro-wrestling remains popular in Japan and around the world, you’re certain to see at least one of your favorite characters pull off some wild and ridiculous wrestling move. The more that happens, the happier I’ll be, so let’s hope we get to see more pro-wrestling integrated into anime in each upcoming season.

  What are some other instances of pro-wrestling in anime that you believe deserve a shout out? Let us know down in the comments below!

      Jared Clemons is a writer and podcaster for Seasonal Anime Checkup where he can be found always wanting to talk about Love Live! Sunshine!! or whatever else he's into at the moment. He can be found on Twitter @ragbag.

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[lamaestramendez]

en route to fascism

Ok, class.

I am angry. I am words I cannot use on this blog out of the very remote possibility my actual students google me.

Our 45th president (henceforth known as 45 because I refuse to give him the name recognition that he wants) is a fascist pig. Let me teach you about this terminology so that you understand my full meaning.

Let’s begin with “pig” as it’s a more commonly known term than “fascist.”

Pigs, also known in English as hogs, swine, etc. Let’s look at my favorite the Oxford English Dictionary for a literal definition.

Notice that the 1st definition in the noun section is a literal definition, “an omnivorous domesticated hoofed mammal with sparse bristly hair and a flat snout for rooting in the soil, kept for its meat.” I’ve been told that pigs are delightful creatures with higher intelligence than many other small mammals. That is NOT my meaning. In defense of the pig, I share share some pictures of its beauty for you, class, to enjoy.

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/skeeze-272447/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1507208">skeeze</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1507208">Pixabay</a>

Look how clean they are! Want some more cuteness before we get metaphorical? Check out this pig swimming with a bird!

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/larsen9236-47917/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=171908">Lisa Larsen</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=171908">Pixabay</a>

Okay, now to all pig-loving friends, I beg your forgiveness. I cannot come up with better word choice. Pigs are not despicable creatures. I’m even somewhat fond of them. However, the only other terms that convey my full meaning when I say “fascist pig”, are inappropriate for my real life students to be reading when they inadvertently google me and stumble upon this post. I love them too much to expose them to that kind of English.

So when I say “fascist pig,” I am not referring to the many, many good qualities of the wild boar’s descendent. I am referring to those characteristics which humans find repugnant because we are wired differently than pigs are.

Yucky traits I am referring to with the term “fascist pig.” (Feel free to skip this section if you have a delicate stomach).:

Pigs, for instance, do not sweat, so they cool off by covering themselves in mud. Clever idea, right? Modern humans from my culture wouldn’t do that because the mud would dry out and stick to your hair; there could be something nasty in it; and dry mud under your nails is unpleasant. We also sweat, so mud as a cooling technique is rendered unnecessary. 

Pigs are not picky eaters. My dad is the son of a large animal vet. When I was a kid, he told me about how farmers have pigs go into a cornfield after the cows have finished the post-harvest leftovers because the pigs will eat whatever unprocessed corn is left from the cow’s droppings. Needless to say, the image stuck what me.

Due to the rooting through excrement habit, pigs stink.

Now on to the word, fascist. Following is a screenshot of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition for the term “fascism.”

The screenshot demonstrates that the definition of fascism is, “an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.” The next line explains a way the term is used generally to mean “extreme authoritarian, oppressive, or intolerant views or practices.”

Examples of 45′s fascist behaviors:

Children separated from their families in concentration camps. I have second-hand knowledge of this. The Gestapo Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) locked up a friend of mine for 45 days. He was taken from his uncle. He was 5 years old. Here’s his story: https://youtu.be/Xa6NYkQWF4I . It’s also been documented by many reputable news sources. https://apnews.com/9794de32d39d4c6f89fbefaea3780769

Children and adults placed in hieleras (ice boxes/coolers). I know people from multiple Central American countries who have suffered this at the hands of ICE. What happens is , the family turns themselves into ICE to apply for asylum. ICE locks them up and turns the temperature down to just above freezing. ICE lets them go within 3 days. There is no benefit to these families making up this story. Being from different countries, they did not know one another before telling me the exact same story. Here’s a similar story that happened to another family from a reputable news source: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-family-separation-policy-never-really-ended-why-ncna1025376

Flint, Michigan still does not have clean water. Yes that’s more in the hands of state government officials but I don’t see 45 using any political clout to help mitigate the situation. https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2020/07/30/michigan-supreme-court-rules-flint-class-action-can-proceed-over-lead-in-water/

45 is violating court orders in regards to DACA. ***Side note: Just like Andrew Jackson. Can we please take him off the $20 bill and replace him with Harriet Tubman already???*** https://www.npr.org/2020/07/28/896334928/trump-administration-will-reject-new-daca-applications-administration-official-s

Journalists are arrested and manhandled by law enforcement when covering protests which is a clear violation of the 1st amendment. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/arts/television/cnn-arrest.html

He’s attacking his own citizens. https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/07/27/895713277/tear-gas-fired-on-protesters-again-during-overnight-protests-in-portland

He thinks Kim Jong Un is awesome. https://www.npr.org/2017/05/02/526520042/6-strongmen-trumps-praised-and-the-conflicts-it-presents

He’s trying to lengthen our border wall - again, shades of North Korea. https://www.npr.org/2020/05/25/861837314/trumps-border-wall-would-go-through-laredos-historic-downtown

140,000 deaths from COVID keep getting minimized. Steps to mitigate the pandemic keep getting minimized. https://www.npr.org/2020/07/19/892787298/some-young-people-have-the-sniffles-trump-downplays-the-coronavirus-severity

I’m starting to work myself up into a state with this list. In order to preserve my sanity, I’m skipping the rest of the reasons and going to the most salient one.

45 is advocating for a delay of the 2020 presidential election. See this screenshot from twitter?

Delay the election?????????? A delay would inevitably extend the length of 45′s current term, no matter the election’s outcome. That’s not how a republic works. It’s how a fascist who is trying to make it look like he’s operating in the people’s best interests, steals absolute power for himself.

Post-Nazi Germany, Germans often said, “We didn’t see it coming.” I say that is a bunch of baloney. I say, Hitler’s contemporaries did not WANT to see what was happening, so they lied to themselves to make their own reality more comfortable.

You should not be comfortable right now. You should be sick with worry.

Get the word out about the evil that is happening in America. Our own citizens are victims of 45′s fearmongering. Do not let them be comfortable with his actions. If you are silent, you are complicit. Do not be complicit. A true American pulls all the stops to make this country that we LOVE a better place. Staying silent in the face of fascism has the opposite effect.

Oh, and in case you forget, today’s learning objective is to understand why I am correct when I describe 45 as a fascist pig.