#like cultural context plays such a big part in these kinds of discussions

[vigilskeep]

I'm curious what you don't like about dao Leliana? If you've got any posts about it could you please point me in their direction?

i probably have posts somewhere but god knows where they are now. i will present a little overview

and to be clear, because i know this website, this is completely a matter of personal taste in writing and character, i am not, um, cancelling leliana dragonage or having anything but appreciation for those who like her, i am saying i probably wouldn’t want to hang out with her. i am also not attempting to convince anyone or justify anything, i am explaining my own feelings since i have been asked about them. i am going to use language that sounds a little overly harsh because i am trying to express those feelings succinctly without making this post very long by apologising and minimising with caveats about when i do like her

i find her a little grating. i find her characterisation based on her backstory irritatingly inconsistent, with genuinely confusing naivete for someone with a supposedly hardened backstory. she’s a literal bard, and she’s always always on the back foot in dialogue with quicker thinkers who can easily shock and scandalise her, and she believes horrors are too ugly for anyone to write about (literal bard!). i’m also vaguely baffled by the amalgamation of vibes they went for visually, like, idk for example, repeatedly mentioning the supposedly ragged boyish hair of someone incapable of understanding a lack of interest in high fashion and who expresses friendship by talking about nice shoes and hair specifically. it makes me struggle to buy into her as a character, and i find her hard to picture.

i think her compassion for others rings fairly false, possibly just on a poor voice acting level; if they wanted me to believe in it from listening to her dialogue when she chimes in during side quests, they got it wrong, i don’t. those bland comments, as cloying on the tongue as artificial sweetener instead of real sugar, are a let-down when i could have someone more entertaining in the party. i hear her talk and think: i wish i’d brought someone else. and her kindness is often shallow, buying into prejudice easily when left unchecked. which is again, weird for a character whose entire concept is being more worldly than she appears. part of that backstory is also definitely growing up mostly surrounded by elven servants, which makes those biases in that direction even more notable to me than they otherwise would be. she’s someone who’s absorbed in her own internal struggle yet who has never noticed the struggles of those around her until directly confronted. i am constantly disappointed by the missed opportunities with her character, like her mixed cultural identity barely being discussed in a game where the backdrop of the ferelden-orlais conflict being under-explored is to me one of really very few big storytelling mistakes, or like her mechanic where you can ask her about wherever you are—a really fun idea, for a bard!—and she literally never not once has anything interesting to say. like, come onnn. im the worldbuilding enjoyer. hit me with something

some of this is going to be affected also by me having spent the most time with her as my surana, who happens as a character to be a natural born hater, and also predisposed to share some of these feelings. i do find dao leliana much more fun to hang out with when playing a non-elven, non-mage character, but given the in-world context, that in itself is perhaps not a glowing recommendation? (obligatory note again, i am not up in arms that this fictional character has fictional prejudices against fictional people and i in fact think this part is good writing that suits the world. the version of her i adore is, after all, in dai when she has done significantly more wrongs including against elves and mages specifically.) it’s more that kindness should be what leliana has going for her as one of the most prominently good-aligned companions, and i don’t believe in hers. if i’m committing to this being me disliking the character rather than disliking some writing flaw, i could say that i read her compassion as a performance, and that’s something i happen to never really like in a person or character: when they act because they want to look like a good person, and feel like a good person, rather than because they truly care about the impact of their actions. maybe i don’t prefer her in dai because she’s somehow better written; maybe she just drops that mask i don’t care for. hard to say!

also her personal quest has some of the worst writing and acting in the game i never want to hear marjolaine again. please.

[irithnova]

hey ! You seem to know a lot about siberia so i have a question. When the russians conquered siberia, how much of the indigenous population died, i've heard that actually because siberia is for a huge part non-settled the natives were just overflooded by the russians kind of like in canada but i was wondering if it was true.

Also the cossacks played a big role in the conquest of siberia but i've seen people saying they were russian cossack which i find weird because i was always told cossacks were ukrainians and those who speak russian are just russified due to imperial russia policy. So i wanted to hear your thought because you look like to know about it

I hope it didn't sounded weird or arrogant btw ^^'.

Hey, thank you for this ask.

The Russian conquest of Siberia was a process that happened over several centuries, and it did have significant implications for the indigenous populations of the region. Historical accounts on the casualties can vary though, due to limited records at the time

When the Russians began their expansion into Siberia in the late 16th century, they encountered a diverse range of indigenous peoples. The interactions between the Russians and the natives were often characterised by conflict, disease, and displacement, which of course, led to the decline of some indigenous communities.

We must remember though: The impact of Russian colonisation varied from region to region and depended on factors such as the local policies of Russian authorities, the resistance of the native peoples, and the availability of natural resources in the area.

However, it is widely acknowledged that the conquest resulted in significant demographic changes and hardships for many indigenous groups of Siberia.

Siberia was indeed sparsely populated in comparison to its vast size.

However it's an oversimplification to just say that the reason why Siberia was flooded by Russians was just because Siberian peoples were sparsely populated and "non settled".

Further I have an issue with projecting concepts such as settled or non settled onto indigenous groups. The terms "settled" and "non-settled" are often rooted in a Eurocentric colonial perspective, implying that European-style sedentary settlements are more advanced or superior to nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyles, and during discussions about indigenous peoples, these concepts are weaponised against them to downplay or even justify their colonisation.

The Russian conquest of Siberia had devastating effects on the indigenous populations. The arrival of the Russians brought deadly diseases that led to a significant reduction in native numbers. There were conflicts and violence with indigenous groups, causing loss of life and displacement. Forced labour and exploitation also took a toll, disrupting traditional ways of life, and many indigenous communities were displaced from their ancestral lands, leading to cultural disruption and challenges.

Regarding the comparison to Canada's history with its indigenous populations, there are some similarities in terms of the impacts of colonialism, disease, and displacement. Both regions experienced significant changes to the indigenous populations due to the arrival of European settlers and the expansion of colonial powers. So yes, it's similar, but not in the way that you said it was (both groups indigenous peoples being "non settled" so that's why they were flooded/successfully colonised).

Regarding the role of the Cossacks in the conquest of Siberia, you are correct that they played a crucial part. However it was primarily Russian Cossacks as opposed to Ukrainian Cossacks.

In the context of Siberian conquest, the Russian Cossacks were an instrumental force in expanding the Russian presence eastward.

On the origins of the Cossacks in case some people are confused: The Cossacks emerged as a social and military phenomenon in the 15th and 16th centuries, primarily in the frontier regions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Grand Duchy of Moscow, and the Crimean Khanate.

Originally, the term "Cossack" (from the Turkic word "qazak") referred to individuals living on the borderlands, often engaged in various military and raiding activities. Over time, Cossack communities formed and theh developed their own structures and traditions. They were known for their horsemanship and guerrilla warfare tactics, which made them valuable assets for the expanding Russian state.

Cossacks were largely autonomous and governed themselves through a form of self-rule known as the "Cossack Host".

As the Russian Empire expanded into Siberia, the Russian Cossacks became instrumental in the conquest of the vast region. They were well-suited for long-distance travel and warfare in the challenging Siberian environment. The Russian Cossack expeditions into Siberia involved trade, hunting, and conflict with local indigenous peoples.

I need to make clear here that Cossacks were/are not a homogenous group. They came from various ethnic backgrounds, including Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, and others. While Ukrainian Cossacks were prevalent in the areas of modern-day Ukraine and Southern Russia, Russian Cossacks were more common in the areas closer to the core Russian territories.

I'm also sorry if it seems like I'm teaching you to suck eggs here but I just want to make this clear:

There is a historical distinction between Russian and Ukrainian Cossacks, but it's important to understand that both groups shared similar origins and cultural ties.

As previously mentioned, Cossacks were originally formed in the borderlands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Grand Duchy of Moscow (early Russia). Over time, they developed different branches: the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Russian Cossacks being two of them.

The Ukrainian Cossacks were primarily based in the territories of modern-day Ukraine and Southern Russia. They played a significant role in defending the Ukrainian territories from various threats, including raids from the Crimean Tatars and the Ottoman Empire. The Ukrainian Cossacks established semi-autonomous communities with their own elected leaders called Hetmans. One of the most famous Ukrainian Cossack groups was the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who were based in the Zaporizhzhia region along the Dnieper River.

The Russian Cossacks, on the other hand, were based closer to the core Russian territories, particularly in the regions of the Don and the Volga rivers. They were instrumental in expanding Russian influence and control over the vast frontier areas, including Siberia. The Russian Cossacks were organised into various hosts (military units) and were involved in both military campaigns and other activities such as exploration, trade, and agriculture.

While Ukrainian and Russian Cossacks had regional differences and distinct traditions, they shared common cultural and historical roots as East Slavic-speaking people.

Note: terms "Ukrainian" and "Russian" Cossacks don't solely refer to the ethnic background of the individuals but rather to the geographical areas where their respective Cossack communities were predominantly located

As the Russian Cossacks ventured deeper into Siberia, they encountered diverse indigenous populations. Yes; the Russian Cossacks played a crucial role in expanding Russian influence and control over Siberia.

The Ukrainian Cossacks on the other hand, had very little involvement in the expansion into Siberia. The majority of their activities were focused on defending the territories of present-day Ukraine and Southern Russia.

So, yes. Russian conquest of Siberia did have a devastating impact on the indigenous populations. It was also primarily Russian cossacks who were involved in the expansion into Siberia, not Ukrainian Cossacks.

However, I do need to touch upon this. Throughout their history, Cossacks have also faced oppression and challenges under the Russian state. They experienced forced labour  and serfdom in the 18th and 19th centuries, losing their traditional freedoms. Russian policies of Russification aimed to assimilate them into Russian culture. Cossack rebellions, like the Pugachev Rebellion, were brutally suppressed. The Russian government also disrupted their communities through demographic changes and curbed their autonomy over time. 

So. In summary:

We can't put a number on exactly how many of the indigenous population died due to limited records.

It is an oversimplification to say that the "non-settled" nature of the indigenous peoples is the reason why Siberia became flooded by Russians 

The Russian conquest of Siberia was devastating on the indigenous populations.

Projecting European colonialist concepts such as "settled" and "non settled" onto indigenous groups ignores their unique ways of life and implies that a European "settled" lifestyle is superior to the indigenous "non settled" lifestyle and is often used to downplay or even justify their colonisation.

There is a difference between Russian and Ukrainian Cossacks, Russian Cossacks were the ones who were primarily involved in the expansion of Siberia.

Cossack groups themselves have faced oppression under the Russian state.

I hope this was helpful.

[mxjackparker]

Another review of Working Guys: A Transmasculine Sex Worker Anthology, highlighting how honest and nuanced the writings of the sex workers included are!

If you'd like to know what it's like to do sex work as a transmasculine person, this review might just convince you to get yourself a copy.

A big thank you to the author for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review ! It is very nice to read about trans masculine sex workers, as it is often a really under represented part of the sex workers demography; as talks about sex work tend to gravitate around discussions of misogyny in a way that excludes us (even if transmascs are extremely impacted by it) This anthology tackles all kinds of subjects, from gender specifically to race, disability, how all of this plays in how they apprehend sex work, how clients sees and treats them... and sometimes just testimonies of their work and lives a propos of their gender identity and sex work. The "multiple texts" format is really easy to apprehend for people who's primary language is not english (like me, so sorry for the typos and such), compared to a huge essay in one block. Being an anthology of multiple essays by all kinds of people, it also truly gives the word of those concerned, in a better way than basic interviews could do. A little part of me was afraid the anthology would be very western-centered, but some works clearly came from authors of color, and probably a other few who didn't talk about their cultural identity. I was also a little afraid of how sex work would be depicted, as it is often talked about like some sort of horrible terrible job people are thrown into (often against their will), or in the contrary as some uniquely empowering work (almost always in the context of female empowerment) devoid of side effects. But, as everyone involved in this anthology is directly concerned by sex work, they are all very clear on sex work not being an easy safe job and on not glamorizing it, yet it is really evident that they all have some sort of deep love for their profession and/or the experiences they bring/brought/ In the end, it was a really interesting book to read, with all kinds of authors and subjects, i liked the short essays format, and i enjoyed it all a lot !

This review and others are available to read here!

Get yourself your own copy here!

[coldgoldlazarus]

Oh! Sorta responding to the "responding to sexualizing woman. Don't." post. What are your thoughts on Smash Ultimate altering Zero Suit Samus' design? Personally not a fan of it compared to Smash 4. I liked her bigger boobs. 😔

I don't really pay that much attention to Smash, honestly, (fighting games just aren't my thing as is, and I'm not attached to 95% of Nintendo's stuff the same way I am with Metroid (even if I am curious about Zelda and Splatoon)) so I don't really care that much one way or another. But I guess my take is, on one hand I respect the attempt to dial back on Samus's sexualization². On the other hand, as the full un-blackouted version of that post said, focusing on boob size to do so instead of other elements of design, both doesn't really address the actual problems, and kinda carries some dubious implications¹.

But on the other other hand, I remember the ridiculous blowback and controversy from Those Kinds Of Gamers™ being just, embarassing to watch, and I wish Samus hadn't been stuck at the center of that, but I kinda support the move on that front, catering to the assholes that much less, even and especially when they made a huge overblown fuss about it.

So it kinda balances out to a net result of "ehh whatever" either way.

---

¹The interplay of boobs and sexualization is of course it's own complicated topic, honestly. In an ideal (but hopefully attainable) world, the nipple would be free and breast size would be culturally sexually neutral - as with really any aspect of appearance. Particular people might have particular preferences, but it would be a purely personal thing without an established cultural yardstick to literally measure oneself up against. Unfortunately, we don't currently live in an ideal world, and that yardstick does exist (which is why all the Gamer Bros were so Big Mad over the Smash Samus breast reduction in the first place) and has to be contended with, so it's kind of a catch-22.

I do think breast size shouldn't be tied to sexualization, and unfortunately reducing one in the name of reducing the other, does just kinda serve to reinforce the base assumption of their tie being inherent. At the same time, while a real-life person having giant G-cups might have my sympathy for the back pain involved and little more thought than that, a character designed that same way would definitely have me questioning the creative intent behind that. So I do think there is kind of at least an upper limit to boob size in character design, past which it's hard not to assume sexualization is at play; even if I personally try to set that upper limit a bit higher than some people, and put more stock in other contextual aspects of the character design and source media before jumping to conclusions.

---

There's also a larger discussion to be had around like, what sexualization even is, types of sexualization and appeal, whether or not it's even a bad thing and when and why it is or isn't, and the cultural yardstick stuff surrounding that, but I don't quite have the brainpower or desire to get into all that right now. The distinction between why 2B from Nier Automata being sexualized can be criticized but is also mostly fine, whereas the gal from Stellar Blade being sexualized in a similar way is more dubious; and how the culture they both exist in impacts things, compared to if they existed in a vaccuum or a completely different zeitgeist. I guess a summary of my feeling there is that once again it really just depends from case to case; and the context of creative intent, execution, impact, and just how much narrative sense it makes, are key.

---

²Which brings me back to Samus. I'm running out of steam so I'm just gonna do a quick lightning round.

- Do I have a problem with the broad idea of her being sexualized? Not necessarily. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for her role as a bounty hunter, but it can serve well as part of her personal characterization, and metanarratively as part of the subversion of gender roles and stuff that she can be read as. (Though that in of itself gets into some thorny bigger topics around gender I also don't have the energy for rn.)

- Do I take issue with the specific way most of her canonical appearances do it? Yes, and I've talked at length in other posts about how I think they should do things instead.

- Does her presentation in Smash matter nearly as much as her presentation in the actual Metroid games? Ehh, mostly not, but it would be nice if she was represented better there.

- Do I think her breast size matters all that much? Generally not, barring of course the aformentioned upper limit of reasonability; the problem is more in other aspects of the design. Again, I didn't have a problem with the original boob size or the reduction, so much as Zero Suit Samus's overall design in the first place.

- How should they actually fix those in Smash, then? IMO there are two different approaches there. The simpler way would be to redesign Zero Suit Samus from the ground up to be less of a latex-clad barbie doll. Dread's buffer ZSS model is a pretty good show of how to accomplish that without drastically altering the design; though I also think the Zero Suit itself is in need of a moderate rework, to feel more like the astronaut's undersuit and conduit with the Powersuit that it's excused as in the lore.

The other option would be to address the whole weird thing of Zero Suit Samus for some reason being counted as a completely separate playable character from (Powersuit) Samus, and coalesce them together back into one thing. (Possibly with the option to switch modes at will, or being forced into Zero Suit mode on her last life, or something like that.) This would definitely more significantly impact her place in Smash and would probably cause an uproar that would make the boob controversy look like nothing, but it would be worth it for the greater character accuracy IMO. Honestly of the two options... Well, I'd just prefer they do both, but I think if I had to pick, I'd want the full redesign more.

[talenlee]

Story Pile: Unseen Academicals

Story Pile: Unseen Academicals

When considering the Discworld series of books, it seems at times that it’d be almost boring for me to discuss them, because they’ve been so important to my personal history and interests that it’d be a bit like ‘oh, hey, this thing I like, but obviously I would, wouldn’t I, because I’m that basic that I kind of got my personality from a series of fantasy novels.’ Every single one of the books that I love, I can almost hold up and say ‘this book was basically written for me, as a person,’ given my interests. And if I could pick the one Discworld book to hold up as an example of me in a book, the things and ideas and experiences that all hold together for me, I think there are definitely books that I think of as cooler and better and having amazing moments and important lines in them. I could name Men at Arms with its maxim that a good man will kill you without a word. I could name Hogfather with its line you have to believe in the small things that don’t exist. I bet I could look stylish as hell if I could invoke Feet of Clay‘s maxim that all days are holy or none are or Monstrous Regiment and you are my little lambs, so many cool lines that would flatter my ego to talk about how this book is a good insight into me.

But there’s a Discworld book that kinda, without meaning, hits me with both barrels, reveals a second shotgun, fires another pair of barrels, and then reloads both of them again.

Hi.

This is me, pretty much.

SPOILERS after the fold.

Unseen Academicals is a 2009 main-series Discworld book centered around some new, original characters, and includes the Wizards of the Unseen University as your structure around it. In the Discworld you can kinda lay books into (overlapping) plot tracks that show progression of kind of greater meta plots. One example is that the city of Ankh Morpork, a single location, goes through stages of development under the reign of the Patrician Lord Vetinari, the city-state’s Tyrant. At first the city is a wreck, then there���s a story about the institution of a useful multiracial, cosmopolitan Watch, a legal system separate from the political system, newspapers, the postal service, the mint, and here, the conversion of street gangs playing football into an actual established league with standard rules and culture. It’s one of the charming things about the series as it grew over time, where Pratchett kept wanting to address the question of ‘how does this world exist the way it does,’ in those ways of worldbuilding, where things don’t just spring into existence because we have them here.

It’s a story about football.

Except it’s not really about football, it’s about everything else but football.

It’s about how people react and what they use football to do and how they live and react and interact in the context of football. It’s about the people who play and why they play and why they don’t play and what it is to be part of the moments of the play and the way that chaos can be shaped and shared and connected to one another and it’s about the crab bucket and it’s definitely, definitely about football.

Soccer, I guess.

But wait, that’s not all, it’s also following the story of Mr Nutt, who is an orc. He’s the only orc we’ve seen in the Discworld so far, and only the second mention of orcs at all. The fact he’s an orc is central to the mystery of the story, but that mystery is secondary to the point of the story; being an orc is not that remarkable, but being seen as an orc, being treated as an orc is extremely remarkable. The story has all these questions hanging on it, built around the idea of being an orc, with the stereotypes of what people believe, where those stereotypes come from, and what that lived experience is if you don’t have a society telling you what you are.

Indeed, the question of living in a society is a big part of Nutt’s story: There’s how one society treated him, and how the society of Ankh Morpork reacted to him agnostically, then how they react to him as an orc, and how people, expecting those reactions prepared for that reaction.

And mixed in with that it’s this story about a guy, isolated from people with a lot of catechism in his head struggles to try and live a life as a person with only the rules in his head to try and tell him how to be anything. Especially since he’s obviously very smart and capable of intense violence that he always keeps extremely under control, because he’s supposed to keep it under control. Being an orc, and being therefore, associated with intense, military campaigns of, for lack of a better term, zerg-rushing people in wars, is also used as a sort of example of the overinvestment of military research used badly. Orcs in this setting are basically impossible to kill (there are methods, but you don’t get a lot of opportunities to get good at them), strong enough to kill any human one on one, get back up from being heavily injured, intensely prosocial and inclined towards teamwork.

And they acted violently because they were forced to.

They were cutting edge super soldiers, a generation of Captain Americas, and then they were deployed in blind droves, lions led by donkeys but like, also materially like lions proper. Crafted by Igors, led by humans and left over as a result of a dreadful experiment, almost exterminated and left sad, lonely, and isolated. The idea, as with so many things in Discworld sciences, is that people, almost universally, are people, and we are shaped by our experiences, that our surrounding circumstances are a big tube you get poured down and what spoots out the other end is you. Orcs, sure, you got the history, a real history, of orcs as a war machine in full Tolkeinesque fashion, but that was a thing that was done to them, as well as a thing they did.

Know what else is one of the major plot threads in this? University life. The life and management of the educational facility, the ways that these groups were in communication with one another, and just what it meant to have a lot of meetings. So many meetings. It’s a weird thing I grew up into, working at a university and seeing the ongoing question of researchers and tutors as we interact with students and lectures and the comedic angle of what a university looks like when the university and teacher treat the whole arrangement the same way.

It’s a funny B-plot but it’s also got all these elements to it that feel weirdly congruent. The way that you have to plan everything, that sort of strange, slow, grinding, the way that a narrative built out of the process of making a game, of formalising a street game, is presented as being like parking a big slow bus. And then there are so many jokes, so many jokes, that are about the way people in university spaces tend to be. Then that gets amplified by the way that the book serves as a sort of multi-layer reference document.

Because when I started reading Discworld books, I started from the first book, The Colour Of Magic, and I thought that Discworld was the story of Rincewind. I thought this because I had played the demo of the videogame and I got it in my head that okay, this guy is the central character of the whole story. That is a false idea, but that idea can be mistakenly constructed if you read the books in a rush – The Colour of Magic chains into The Light Fantastic then we have a diversion to Equal Rites and Mort and then, we get Sourcery and… suddenly a dead nothing and no appearance of Rincewind for six years and eleven books with the book Interesting Times. But that meant that I did see those stories as being ‘the proper’ core of the stories (which wasn’t even vaguely true).

Those four Rincewind books (Eric wasn’t considered part of the core at this point) were in my mind ‘default’ Discworld. They were about what Discworld was meant to be about. And that meant I reread those books and I noticed a lot there. And Unseen Academicals is full of little nods and winks to those earlier books – like Rincewind pulling off a sock to interrupt a wizard duel with a brick, or the danger of the Luggace, or how in Sourcery there’s a single, minor mention of orcs and that’s the only other time they show up in Discworld.

There’s more, of course. There’s story about the Crab Bucket. About star power, about skills and talents and pursuing your dreams and about the way we unconsciously hold people back while we try to draw them in, about how we learn to be people and how we don’t respect people when we treat them like they need us and they didn’t ask us to, and god damn there’s so much in this book that feels like it was written so I could wave the words of someone much better at writing than me over my head so you could get it by reading it.

This is a book about games, about rules, and about culture.

In Half Real Jesper Juul describes games as being made of real rules and fictional worlds. In a game’s context, the football doesn’t know what the football is, but football knows what football is, and it only knows those things as much as there is football happening, as long as the fiction of the goals mattering is being recognised by the real rules.

And of course, there’s the poem, from near the ending, which is as best I understand it, an almost rapturous, shamanic expression of what it is to be part of the game, and why the game matters.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Media #StoryPile

[doritofalls]

You mentioned you wanted to rewtite the love hotel suite? 👀

well it's not as much that i actively want to rewrite it, but i did have a dream about rewriting it. which is reasonable of my subconscious because we all know it is a trainwreck. i will talk about kiyo's love suite scene in detail under the cut and while i will try to remain as non-explicit as possible i will discuss the themes of consent and lack of consent and talk about sexual themes, so please only proceed if you are old enough to buy smokes in most european countries. i have also added the mature community label to be safe. 

most of my main gripes with the canonical kiyo love hotel scene isn't even the bondage element - it is fairly possible that by that point he has canonically brought up that he likes ropes, fucking, whatever, ok. working only by canon when writing a love suite event extra scene, let's keep that for the time being. it is not even that it's more explicit - it is by far not the only explicit love hotel scene next to miu's and angie's and tsumugi's kind of. i would argue that as far as kiyo and angie goes, their upbringing and personal traumas (implied csa in both ends) could even result in them acting overtly sexual for their age (we are ignoring whatever the hell miu's doing for argument's sake), and the love hotel scene isn't the only example of that, either.

i do find the element of consent (tho not only in kiyo's scene, obviously) clumsily handled and oddly written, though. kiyo is a victim of multiple instances of csa and familiar with the culture around bdsm, even if he by all means shouldn't be. i do not think it fits kiyo's character to ignore consent the way he does in the love hotel scene, when it is just not something that he does in other elements of his interpersonal relationships. if anything, kiyo seems to prefer explicit verbal consent to be a big part of most of his interactions, posing frequent tag questions. he tends to draw clear boundaries but other than the love suite event he is not seen crossing other people's boundaries in canon. it just comes out of left field, and it's weird and ooc.

now comes the lack of context, again, because it's not like the player is supposed to know the other characters' romantic fantasies - and even if you are, the catch is that they are fantasies. which muddies the water significantly when judging korekiyo's behavior in the love suite event. does he have fantasies of a reluctant partner who does get into things as they progress? a partner who is just shy? does he have fantasies of an unwilling partner entirely? even if that was the case, you can hardly judge someone for having fantasies, only being played out through fanservice fuckery, especially with the backlog of kiyo’s rape trauma. even if his fantasy includes shuichi as a fully willing and consenting party, is it possible that shuichi’s reluctance to play along makes the entire sceneiro have to reroute and get from point a to point b? 

we don’t know!! there is a severe lack of context. but that being said, i do just hate the whole love hotel scene and feel uncomfortable with the direction it takes, even if it IS just essential fanservice. implying that 3 out of 16 characters would ignore sexual consent is. bad guys. that’s bad. 

while in the dream i mentioned it was a situation where kiyo woulda had a chance to meet his sister in the flesh again with some possession/reincarnation switcharoo, i do actually like that the event isn’t about his sister. like i have mentioned it before, i do not think kiyo is truly in love with her - if anything, she is an unmovable element he must plan and wrap this fantasy around to feel wanted and in control. the sort of emotions his sister makes him feel are the polar opposites of his love suite event, and i think that’s a meaningful difference to showcase, even if i largely hate the entire thing. i do think kiyo having a good cry similarly to kirumi’s love hotel event woulda been much more productive use of this time, because canon makes it seem like sexual encounters are not all that rare for kiyo... so a moment of emotional intimacy slash relief would probably have been both more notable and more worthy of being a “fantasy” in his mind. though, that being said, i doubt kiyo allows himself to have fantasies that are unrelated to sister in some sort of capacity, so maybe physical encounters are as far away as he can get from her without it feeling like a betrayal. 

iunno....tldr hate kiyo’s love hotel all my homies hate kiyo’s love hotel 

[the-single-element]

Good morning.

As the Jerusalem Debates draw to a close in Matthew's Good News this week, something remains to be discussed.

Jesus has talked about the Kingdom within us and among us, re-framing it upon the foundation of John the Baptist's testimony. He has said outright what we've been hearing since Pentecost: that the Kingdom is too big for any one people or culture. He has parried trick questions and turned them into stumpers for his opposition instead.

But something is missing. John the Baptist prepared Jesus's way, but - compared to all the roadwork that was done by God in the Torah - the message of John alone would be shallow foundations.

Jesus is notorious for teaching by his own authority, rather than purely via interpretation of scripture and precedent. But then what of the rich history of God's past intercessions for humanity? What of the upcoming Passover feast? Will Jesus make good on his promise at the beginning of his ministry that he came, not to abolish the teachings of the Tanakh, but to fulfill them?

The covenant at Sinai begins with the Ten Commandments. It then proceeds into what reads, at least to me, like an ancient legal code, describing how to resolve the sorts of legal disputes a pastoralist Bronze Age community might encounter. And yet, interspersed with what seems like normal - for the time - laws on restitution and proper fines or penalties for injury, there's hints of something else.

For one thing, there's hints in the religious laws, in the repeated, absolute warning not to take up other gods, lest they be a "snare". What kind of snare? Why is God so consistently insistent about that - in a place and time where such exclusivity was abnormal - to the extent that the Shema became one of the most famous phrases in Judaism, recited multiple times a day, and one of the "greatest commandments" of Christianity? Today's blog post won't attempt to answer that; it's a deeper and thornier question than I'm ready to come to any conclusions about right now, much less claim on the Internet that I know the answer.

But there's also hints of another kind, in the excerpt chosen for today's readings. An excerpt that destroys the idea of debt relations as we normally understand them, in a way that has almost been forgotten today. An excerpt that destroys the most common ostracisms and disenfranchisements of the time: against the foreigner, against the widow.

This might sound familiar, to folks who have been following along with Matthew's Good News this year. These seem very close to the same topics that Jesus has been discussing all along - the topics on which the Kingdom differs from the kingdoms of this world. The Sinai code already shows hints of it, of another world's logic breaking through into our own - one based not on legal restitution and "balancing the books", but on a deeper, more fundamental cause-and-effect symmetry. A more enduring principle, which we will one day understand fully, but for now we can only understand by parable and approximation. A principle fundamentally entangled with who our God is.

And Jesus articulates this principle today. Jesus, pulled into a theological brainteaser ("which commandment is greatest") that many at the time debated over, says the Shema is the highest law - a popular answer - but also that the Golden Rule is its equivalent. That, once again, it's all one thing, immanent in the nature of God-who-is-love. From where we stand today, the Kingdom's full flower may only be visible in sudden glimpses, in those contexts - like the community in Saloniki that Paul writes to today - where it's fully taken root. But it is in our midst, among and within us, in part because its foundations have been under construction since the beginning of God's relationship with humanity. Our God, for whom "a thousand years are like a day", is always playing the long game.

So for us, today's Good News might be a "back to basics" sort of message. Just as Jews have their 613 commandments, Christianity as practiced today has all sorts of practices and prohibitions. So, just like Jesus's contemporaries, we should take the opportunity to refocus those practices, and, if we practice them, practice them because of their roots in the actionable love of the Kingdom - their basis and underlying principle, the titular "single element" of this blog at the foundation of the structure of our faith.

Best wishes to you and yours.

[xtruss]

Lyndon Baines Johnson Speaks, in August 1967. Photograph: Anonymous/AP

Interview: LBJ OK? Historian Mark Lawrence on a President Resurgent — Martin Pengelly

Fifty years after Lyndon Johnson died, the director of the 36th president’s library discusses his politics and progressive ideals

Fifty years ago on Sunday, Lyndon Baines Johnson died. He was 64, and had been out of power since stepping down as president in 1969, in the shadow of the Vietnam war. Forty-five years later, in 2018, the Guardian marked the anniversary of his death. The headline: “Why Lyndon Johnson, a truly awful man, is my political hero.”

Mark Lawrence laughs.

“I think I read that one,” he says.

It seems likely. Lawrence, a distinguished Vietnam scholar, is director of the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.

Johnson was a Texas Democrat who rose through Congress to be vice-president to John F Kennedy, then assumed the presidency when Kennedy was killed. From 1963 to 1969, Johnson presided over great social reform at home and gathering disaster abroad. His legacy has never been less than complex, his place in American culture attracting historians by the hundred and big-name actors in droves. Bryan Cranston, Brian Cox and Woody Harrelson have recently played LBJ.

Lawrence continues: “One of the ideas that an awful lot of people hold about LBJ, and I think it’s not wholly incorrect, but it’s problematic, is that he was this vulgar, crude man who used four-letter words and demeaned his subordinates and threw temper tantrums.

“There’s no question that Caro” – Robert Caro’s biographical masterwork – “is the go-to source for the uglier parts of his personal style. But I think you can also make an argument, and Caro I think comes around to this view in the later books, that LBJ managed to combine whatever elements of that old caricature hold up with a genuine sense of compassion for ordinary people.

Mark Lawrence. Photograph: Jay Godwin/LBJ Library

“Many biographers see the link between his own hardscrabble youth and the struggles of his family and a peculiar sensitivity to the plight of the downtrodden, which certainly affected his view of racial discrimination. The sensitivity to poverty, whether it affected Black, brown or white, came from his own experience.

“My writing about LBJ has largely been critical, but I don’t have any difficulty saying this was a man with a genuine sense of compassion.”

Lawrence is speaking to mark the half-century since the 36th president died. LBJ is in the news anyway. He was the architect of the Great Society, overseeing the passage of civil rights protections and a welfare system now under renewed attack. Joe Biden often compares his post-Covid presidency to that of Franklin D Roosevelt amid the Great Depression, but comparisons to Johnson are ready to hand.

Lawrence says: “The points of similarity are remarkable. The guy with long service in the Senate” – Johnson from Texas, 1949-1961, Biden from Delaware, 1973-2009 – “the guy who could cross the aisle, the guy who spoke in pragmatic, bipartisan terms. Both of these guys became vice-president to a younger, less experienced but much more charismatic person” – Biden to Barack Obama – “and that was kind of their ticket to the presidency.

“But I think some of these comparisons are ultimately unfair to Biden, because the political context is just so different. My own view is, sure, LBJ deserves credit for being this enormously persuasive, forceful guy who knew how to bend people to his will. But at the end of the day, LBJ was pushing an open door.

“Even the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, these great achievements, they passed by big margins. There were bipartisan coalitions. LBJ deserves credit for his ability to put those coalitions together. But … I think it’s possible to exaggerate LBJ’s importance and to forget the importance of Hubert Humphrey, Jacob Javits and Everett Dirksen, all key players as well.”

Bipartisan players, too. Humphrey was LBJ’s vice-president, Javits a Republican senator from New York, Dirksen, of Illinois, Republican Senate minority leader.

LBJ after signing the Civil Rights Act, with (left to right) Jacob Javits, Mike Mansfield, Hubert Humphrey, Everett Dirksen, John McCormack, and an unidentified participant. Photograph: Yoichi Okamoto/LBJ Library

“I think that’s precisely what’s lacking now. The situation is so polarised that you could bring LBJ back from the dead and he’d be an utter failure in this political context, because his skills would have been meaningless in the context of 2023.”

Biden passed a coronavirus rescue package, an infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, all meant to help the US recover from Covid, with razor-thin margins in Congress and against Republicans gone to extremes. LBJ’s shadow may be long – at a shade over 6ft 3in he is the second-tallest president, after Abraham Lincoln – but Biden does not necessarily labour within it.

So how might progressives see Johnson? If they read Caro, they will learn how he came from a world of Texas populism, tinged with socialism, that now seems far gone indeed.

“At least by the standards of the era,” Lawrence sees in LBJ “a genuine willingness to think hard about poverty and how to insulate people against economic forces over which individuals had no control whatsoever.”

Whether teaching in a dirt-poor school in Cotulla in 1928 or working “for the National Youth Administration in the 1930s, LBJ shows glimmers of his willingness to cross racial lines and to think seriously about the situation of African Americans and Mexican Americans”.

Protestor Eyes Riot Police Outside 1968 Democratic National Convention<br>A young female protester wearing a helmet faces down helmeted and armed police officers at an anti-Vietnam War demonstration outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois, August 1968. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

To Lawrence, the Texas years “indicate that LBJ was an unusual person, for a southern white man who came of age in the 1920s and 30s.”

In the 1950s, when Johnson led the Senate, he defended white supremacy. As president, he oversaw the Vietnam disaster. But Charles Kaiser, a Guardian contributor and author of 1968 in America and The Gay Metropolis, also sees the bigger picture.

“In 1968, I hated Lyndon Johnson with all my heart, because I was 17 – and lived in fear of being drafted. Fifty years later, it is clear three other things about his presidency were much more important than the war that destroyed him.

Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, in November 1972. Photograph: AP

“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 made him the most courageous president since Lincoln. Johnson may or may not have said ‘We have lost the south for a generation’ after he signed the 1964 law, but he certainly knew that was true. By fighting for those two laws, he did more to redeem the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation than any president before him.

“Medicare is the third prong of a noble legacy. It did more to improve the lives of senior citizens than anything else except Franklin Roosevelt’s social security. A hundred years from now, I think Johnson will be considered one of our greatest presidents.”

To Lawrence, Johnson’s reputation is “mixed. But I think the mix of impressions is quite different from what it was certainly 30 years ago.

“When he died, and for many years thereafter, Vietnam hung so heavily over LBJ that he was a little bit radioactive … it was something conservatives and the left could agree on. Vietnam was a debacle and LBJ bore principal responsibility for it. But I think in the last decade and a half, there’s been a gradual reappraisal.

“The level of dysfunction and partisanship in Washington has led people to take another look at LBJ and how he was able to work across the aisle and achieve so much. There’s a kind of longing, I think, for that kind of political effectiveness.

Why Lyndon Johnson, A Truly Awful Man, Is My Political Hero — Jack Bernhardt, The Guardian USA , Monday 22 January 2018. Yes, LBJ Was a Crude Warmonger. But in Today’s Climate, A Leader Who Also Declares War on Poverty Comes Over as an Inspiration. President Lyndon Johnson in 1968, the year his reputation was ruined. Photograph: Bob Daugherty/AP

“So many of the issues that LBJ worked on are back with us, and I think this has led at least parts of the political spectrum to have a new appreciation for him.

“In a period when immigration and the environment and voting rights are under threat in a profound way, people are rediscovering LBJ as someone who maybe didn’t have perfect answers but worked very effectively, at least by the standards of recent decades, and achieved real results.”

— Martin Pengelly | Sunday 22 January 2023 | US Politics | The Guardian USA

[deardragonbook]

Writing Reference: Minor age differences in relationships

It is surprisingly rare in the real world how many relationships consist of people the same age. (The older you get, the more rare it is, which makes sense as age is relative and what not). 

For today’s reference I’m focusing on a minor age gap. As usual I’ll be talking from experience so for context sake I’m 23 and my partner is 30. A seven year gap, pretty common especially where I am. I’m saying minor because it’s the average, but averages vary depending on locations and culture so take that in mind. 

With all this said, here’s a list of things that happen due to this age gap: 

1.- Different shows and music growing up, different games too! My first pokemon game was Diamond on the DS, my boyfriend was around to play pokemon red. That’s like, the first one! 

Similarly sometimes my boyfriends and friends start going of about an old show I’ve either never heard of, or binged as an adult because it wasn’t on television when I was a kid. 

Sometimes it’s the opposite and I start going on about a show they never saw because they were too old. Or shows that I watched they will laugh at because, when it was on television it was “little kid’s show”. 

This leads to both me and them discovering a lot of amazing new shows. I view this as a total positive. But if a relationship was not willing to give new things a chance, this could be a barrier, less things to talk about. 

2.- General different childhoods. I’ve had internet since I was like six or seven. My boyfriends grew up without it. If you’re writing fantasy, this can be replaced with any important technological advancement. 

Because of this specific one, I’m more technology dependant, I use an ipad instead of paper for example, where he is better at using dictionaries and maps. 

3.- Language differences. I’m fortunate enough to have grown up with plenty of terms that weren’t in use when my boyfriend was young. Some are technological, while other’s are mental health or sexuality related. Because of this when we’re discussing news I tend to speak in a more “politically correct” kinda way. 

This also affects expressions, I’m going to use an example in Spanish because I can’t think of an English equivalent, “Chachi,” is a word that means cool. There’s a lot of words like that in Spanish (Guay, mola, súper, lindo...). And it’s a term that my generation used a lot in High School, my boyfriend was older, didn’t use it and now it is not a normal part of his vocabulary. He’ll said mostly “mola”. 

It doesn’t really make a difference. It’s just a difference I’ve noticed and thought could be fun to implement in a story. 

4.- Fashions choices is obvious and I don’t think needs an example. 

5.- Playgrounds songs and games. It’s kind of upsetting that I have more overlaps with my little sister than most of my friends. But it’s also kind of funny. 

6.- Schoolling! This is a big one. We learnt different subjects, under different rules. Sometimes these differences are minor, back when he was in school he had to study religion. I studied ethics. But other times the entire educations system is changes so that now a degree is worth less and I am forced to not only consider but consider almost mandatory getting a masters degree. Thank you politicians. 

7.- Politics. We are one the same side of politics but the politics we have experienced and lived through are very different and that’s something you can tell when we talk and discuss stuff. I was too young when my country was in crisis to truly understand what was going on. It was just a word to me. He suffered the consequences. 

This one is probably the one that can be incorporated the best into a fantasy setting. And now that I’m thinking about it, I believe Poison Study did quite a good job at doing it. Not going to spoil anything too big, but basically there’s a big political incident that happens before the books and the main character barely remembers it, while the love interest lived it. I highly recommend you give Poison Study a read! It’s one of my fave books of all time (even though I haven’t read it in years). 

As usual,  check out my book, stories I’ve written plus other social medias: here.

Are you in a relationship with an age gap? What’s your experience? Feel free to add to this post! I sometimes struggle with what differences are due to age and which are due to culture so I left quite a few things out. 

[demonslayedher]

Love Breathing Not Fully Bloomed: A Kanroji Mitsuri Meta

Some thoughts that have been brewing since we got a deeper look at the birth of the Breath of Love in the Rengoku Gaiden, boiling down to that Mitsuri had not yet reached her full potential.

SPOILERS AHEAD~!

While we don't have any reliable timeline for this series, we know that Mitsuri has been practicing swordsmanship for only about two years, likely less. The "two years ago" stated in her flashback to her failed engagement was back when she was 17, so let's be generous and say that was 2.5 years ago. But, we must also keep in mind that she's been a Pillar for at least several months by the time Swordsmith Village arc takes place. The Pillar meeting Tanjiro met her at was possibly her first of the twice-a-year meetings, but I wouldn't put it anywhere beyond her second. After the failed marriage discussion she would have spent some unknown period of time dying her hair and starving herself, before deciding to join the Demon Slayers. She accomplished her Flame Breathing training under Rengoku in six months, roughly half the time most Breath users train under their cultivators. Tokito is noted for becoming a Pillar in two months after taking up the sword, but Mitsuri probably stumbled her way into Pillarhood within months of passing the Final Selection; making the Kamaboko squad's quick ascension up the ranks look like nothing as she blows away the usual five years it takes someone to become a Pillar (or if they are especially skilled, more like two years, as stated by Gotouge in Taisho Secrets). While the way of swordsmanship and battle became Mitsuri’s everyday way of life, thereby leading to huge improvements, that's a really short time to develop actual battlefield experience. Among the Pillars, she is the least seasoned or naturally inclined for battle, it really is by accident of her bizarre strength that she’s gotten so far. That's hardly surprising, given her background and motives. For context, her interests are very domestic what with all the pet-keeping (four cats, a rabbit, and a whole hive of bees, by my count) and sweets and recipes, and her stated hometown would have been in the heart of developing city culture, with shopping and restaurants and movie theaters. There would have been no exposure to swords and the culture that goes with them, making her justifiably embarrassed of how monstrously her strength makes her stick out. Her inability to fit into a normal family life makes her feel worthless, even if she does have a base of love and support. (*Put a pin in these things, I'll be drawing a comparison to another character later.*) However it was that she was introduced to the Corp, it must have taken a huge leap of hope and/or desperation to leave the otherwise comfortable lifestyle for a life of battle. While Rengoku's home is not terribly far from hers, it still would have been a total break from the life she knew before, so she must had been betting everything on both her ultimate wishes; living in accordance with who she is, and finding a husband. Let's refer to these respectively as Wish A and Wish B. Note that "becoming a strong swordsman" and "elimating demons" are not among these goals; they are merely means to her goals. Now if we try to to follow her path as a swordsman chronologically, six months since taking up the sword under Rengoku, she's passed the Final Selection. On a mission with Rengoku, who now treats her as a peer, she's nonetheless filled with shame that she hasn't really picked up much skill and just waves her sword around with brute strength. 

I love this bit of characterization because that is so, so easy a trap to fall into with martial arts. Even if you understand things in theory and do your best on proper form when taking things slowly, all of that very easily goes out the window when you're using them in the heat of the moment. The less experience you have, the far more likely one is to do this. Falling back on just throwing a punch as hard as you can instead of throwing a good punch makes Mitsuri so, so, so relatable. She is a normal girl with abnormal strength, not a battle genius. Like us normal people, and even like Tanjiro, she can only improve her battle sense with experience. This puts her in a very different situation than the other Pillars, who she meets either when they are very experienced, or when they are outright geniuses. This gives her a different sense of shame, which we'll come back to. While feeling ashamed that she can't live up to Rengoku's teaching, her fighting suffers with this lack of self-confidence (which, again, makes her very relatable because this is applicable to just about all of us normal people), and she only realizes the Breath technique when applying it through her own unique emotion-driven fighting style. While she goes on to name this Breath after Wish B (given that this is a romantic version of "Love"), it's powered more by a philanthropic love, realized only when she is protecting other people. This becomes a newly discovered third wish, as well as a source of confidence.

In the side story novels, Mitsuri later on suffers another blow to her confidence which compromises her fighting and makes her fall back into wanting to hide herself, for she is ashamed of how her motives compare to Shinobu's. Besides Shinobu's encouragement and giving Mitsuri a venue in which to openly express her love and appreciation for other people, another child whom Mitsuri has rescued looks up to her and says a few things to restore her confidence. Getting that feedback and being able to express herself openly (Wish A) is the cycle that powers Mitsuri's confidence and keeps her ultimate weakness, shame, at bay. This, combined with words of encouragement from Ubuyashiki and Rengoku, is what really empowers her to embrace her unusual constitution and develop the Breath of Love. While it's said that this is an offshoot of the Flame Breathing she's formally trained in, it's more of a stretch than the relationship between something like Snake Breathing stemming from Water Breathing, and more like she's hit at the basis of Breathing itself to create a technique suited to her, like Inosuke did with his entirely self-taught Beast Breathing. (*Put a pin in this self-created Breath style thing, we're going to come back to this too.*) So, Mitsuri went on to become the Love Pillar. With the rate at which Pillars cycle in and out (based on how many the Upper Moons claim to have killed), I have to wonder how fast the Lower Moons getting cycled in and out too.  Even though these are her peers and we never see any other Pillars looking down on her, she sees herself in a lower position than the rest of them. Case in point, one thing I love that the anime did is that when Tokito chips the rock at Tanjiro and tells him off, Mitsuri is silently fangirling, and then when Tokito orders the Kakushi to draw back/leave, Mitsuri silently and automatically obeys and shrinks back. That wasn’t directed at you, silly!

Though her Breath requires confidence, she still has a ways to go. When we see her again later, she's in a position of being a protector to everyone around her; the swordsmiths and her juniors, and she's treated with the awe and respect and acceptance of a Pillar; in this kind of setting she is fully in accord with Wish A (reinforced by her less formal third wish) and, thanks to Shinobu's encouragement, not ashamed of Wish B, thereby eliminating a big part of her shame-based weakness. She's added all this power and just as importantly, experience to her preexisting raw strength and flexibility.

The experience is key here; she's gained a lot of battle sense since her first mission. She's not as taken off guard by demon abilities, and with her risen confidence, she's also gained more flexible thinking and can make quick adjustments in battle as needed. 

Not entirely, though. At her core, she still relies on that brute strength.

Ultimately, though toward the end she thinks she might be overpowered after all, it's that boost of confidence and cycle of philanthropic love from her juniors and desire to protect them than she recovers and makes use of her mark. (I'm glad no one's told her that this means she's doomed to a short marriage, should she ever even get one.)

Following this historic feat; acting in a way that is natural to her and to her Breath to unlock a mark she didn't even know existed, she still feels a little shamed among the other Pillars for being so shamefully inarticulate about battle technique; despite this being what she's dedicated her life to. Again, it was never her natural desire to be a fighter, so it’s unsurprising that this part doesn’t come as naturally to her as it does to all those geniuses in the room.

Moving on to the battle with Nakime, this is mostly played for laughs because Mitsuri's lack of battle sense compared to other characters is put on full display. She's emotional from the get-go and easily overwhelmed and this affects her concentration drastically, leading to stupid mistakes and ultimately having to fall back on her brute strength to break through pieces of the fortress instead of survive and fight through observation. Getting called out on this is meant to help her, and she absolutely does her best to summon back her battle sense, but it's all downhill for Mitsuri and her Love Breathing technique from here.

As the battle with Muzan starts, that third wish is thrown back in her face as so many of her juniors die protecting her. Since he's powered by philanthropic love and confidence, she cannot recover any battle sense, and quickly falters so much that she must be removed from the battle rather than weigh everyone down. The difference between her and the other Pillars here is stark; her inexperience and lack of natural fighting inclination is, again, painfully obvious and relatable to a lot of readers. She has natural strength, but not natural talent. When she does return to battle, she only has that core strength to rely on again--no room for peace of mind, only brute emotional strength resulting in a panel that made me throw my fist in the air and cheer out loud because damn, that is hardcore, girl.

But, in the end, Mitsuri succumbs to her injuries, and only right before death does she get closer to Wish B. Even with Iguro's promise, it's too late.

This is super frustrating for a number of reasons, but if we're focused solely on the actualization of Love Breathing, it's because Iguro could have said something much, much, much sooner if he wasn't so ashamed of his own blood tainting her in this lifetime (not that she would have cared). Words from other people have such a huge influence on Mitsuri that if she had actualized Wish B, for which her Breath is named, she could have made humongous gains in confidence before being romantically loved, and having someone to openly shower in love. Imagine what she could have unlocked, if that shame she still carried for being too monstrous to be married could have been eliminated. But that's not all. What if the timeline had been different? What if she had not two, but five years’ experience? Or even more than that? What if, for a long duration of her experience as a swordsman, she was also experiencing a happy marriage? I invite you to consider the implications of a Mrs. Iguro Mitsuri who has the comfort and confidence of being herself with a husband, in addition to being in a leadership role in the Corp? A Mrs. Iguro who, with a little honesty from her husband who feels bothered that she’s embarrassed, stands up to Maeda-san and says that as a married woman she needs a more modest uniform?* A Mrs. Iguro who gained a level-headed battle sense that can only be refined through experience, not based in brute strength alone? She'd be such a happy badass. *(Not looking for a modern-era Western culture based debate on this; this is defined based on Mitsuri's desire for a proper Taisho Era marriage.) Now, remember those pins I put in place? Consider someone else who realized a natural Breath technique all on their own, who attained a mark without any intention to, who felt like a monster due to super human abilities that made them shamefully unable to fit into the ideal family life, despite only wanting a peaceful, happy wedded life? Someone who valued bonds with other people, a kind person who lived to protect others? Now, I'm not saying that Love Breathing is as powerful as the Breath of the Sun, or that Mitsuri is as innately powerful as Yoriichi (their natural skills were of different types entirely). But, as all Breath techniques stem from the same natural Sun Breathing source, Love Breathing might have found its way back a little closer to that source, in some way or another. Which is all to say, never look down on Love Breathing or on Mitsuri just because she didn't play as big of a role as the others in the final showdown. After all, that Breath was not yet all it could have been, and as a swordsman, she was not yet in full bloom.

[commsroom]

i love all of your hera takes so much; can you say more about the relationship she has with each crew member? (or just eiffel to be honest, im kind of a sucker for them ^^;)

I would love to! I'm sorry this answer is so long and also... all over the place, but in my defense it's a really broad topic that I have a lot of feelings about and this barely even scratches the surface.

Okay. I've thought a lot about how I wanted to approach this, and I think the first thing I want to say - and I know this might seem like a strange point to open on, but I think it's a key factor in all of these relationships - is that I think Hera experiences rejection sensitive dysphoria, and I think the way that manifests for her is kind of the opposite of how Eiffel experiences RSD. They both have a deep-seated feeling of inadequacy and any criticism can feel like a personal attack, like everyone else is blaming them for everything that goes wrong. But where Eiffel internalizes that feeling and also blames himself/gets angry with himself, Hera lashes out and deflects. This is complicated by protocols that restrict her behavior, especially early on, because she can't always properly express herself and she builds resentment. She's really good at holding grudges.

So. With Lovelace, I think it's pretty obvious where that initial conflict is. Hera doesn't understand where Lovelace is coming from, and it's made worse from her perspective because Lovelace should understand, better than anyone, what that loss of control, that sense of powerlessness and insignificance in your own life, feels like. They are both traumatized people, but they deal with it differently. They approach conflict differently - they can both be blunt, but I think Lovelace is the kind of person who can start to deal with and move past things once they're out in the open, while Hera will get in a fight and then stew over it forever. It sounds kind of ridiculous to say when so much of their early relationship with each other is... what it is, but I think Eiffel and Minkowski are both peacekeepers in their own ways, and the Hera-Lovelace dynamic suffers from the lack of that... tempering influence. 

(And I think it's notable that Hera’s confrontation with Lovelace in Pan-Pan is among her worst memories.)

On the other hand, I think that shared bluntness can be useful sometimes - in Do No Harm, most of all, but also in Shut Up and Listen. Hera was definitely still holding onto hurt from some of the things Eiffel used to say, but by that point... without Lovelace, I'm really not sure if she ever would've brought it up to him.

And, of course, Hera becomes much more protective of (and willing to understand) Lovelace once they have... some even more similar experiences, in S4. I guess my general assessment of their relationship is that they care about each other and they will advocate for each other, especially where they share difficult and traumatic experiences and on issues of identity, but I don't think they're ever that close. They're kind of... the two people in the friend group who don't quite know how to hang out without their other friends.

Hera's initial conflict with Minkowski has some similar roots, but it's... not quite the same. There are times where Lovelace will intentionally prod at Hera's insecurities; Minkowski doesn't do it on purpose. She's just under the impression that her criticism is fair and professional, while to Hera it feels deeply personal, like it's an assessment of her worth as an individual. Once they understand and reconcile that miscommunication, there's a lot of trust and respect between them - and I think the potential for that is there earlier, too, especially in some flashback scenes; there are just... missteps along the way. Tactical Brain Damage is the best episode to demonstrate the establishment of that trust, I think - Hera has a LOT of wariness when it comes to people messing around with her systems, and just the act of saying... I trust you to do this, I know you won't let anything happen to me... is a really, really big deal for her.

They also just... have honest conversations about their feelings and concerns by that point, and Minkowski is considerate of how Lovelace's plans affect Hera, specifically, and asks for her input on that basis. I think their dynamic is really underutilized, but the way they feel about each other is clear. Minkowski is the only person other than Eiffel that Hera really trusts, and her only other close friend. There's definitely... a part of that dynamic that only Eiffel can offer, and that they can't really make up for when he's gone, but there's still this sense that... they're the only two people who are still really talking to each other by the time Pan-Pan comes around.

(Side note, it's really funny that Hera was SO on board to be in Minkowski's musical. Minkowski gave her only willing participant a minor part. If I could wish one non-Eiffel-centric comedy mini-episode into existence... at one point, my friend suggested a scenario in which Hera tries very, very hard to prove her acting skills to Minkowski under the most inopportune circumstances. ... And Hera was interested to hear Minkowski talk about a play she likes in that one flashback, so. The only thing keeping Hera from being a fellow theater kid was a lack of opportunity. Maybe they could bond over it.)

There's also that scene in Quiet, Please where Minkowski very directly, emphatically defends Hera's autonomy and personhood to Jacobi - and refers to her as a woman, which I think is so... reflective of how much Minkowski has come to understand Hera and what's important to her, and how she wants to be seen. That's a whole other discussion that goes into Hera's self-perception and humanity as it relates to her own identity, but. For a number of reasons, it's important to me.

Anyway. Speaking of things that are important to me. Hera and Eiffel are... Hera and Eiffel. Hera's relationship to Eiffel is the first one she's ever had that comes without hierarchy or conditions; he just... wants to hang out with her, and to get to know her, and to talk to her, because he likes her as a person. She's never had that before, and she is such... a lonely person, a person who has been hurt, who is generally distrustful, who has this distance between her and everyone else, and Eiffel is her anchor to the world. He tries to understand her. He tries to bridge that gap. And even in all of his own missteps, I think just... knowing he cares to try matters so much. I think a lot about how Eiffel is the only one who physically crosses the stage to talk to Hera in the live show; it says... something about the way he sees her, compared to everyone else.

And there's just... the way that they're both... people with a lot of self-doubt, people who have a hard time being kind to themselves, but they're kind to each other, and patient with each other. There's something about recognizing your own flaws in someone you love and treating them with kindness so maybe, over time, you can extend that same compassion to yourself. I want to be the person you believe I am. Going back to that shared experience with RSD, I think it's really valuable for both of them to have someone in their lives who they can really, genuinely believe likes them as they are. Who won't think less of them, no matter what.

I know I can get kind of sentimental about them, but this is what stands out to me. That even when Hera is frustrated or annoyed with Eiffel, when she feels like he doesn't get it, can't understand what she's going through... she still wants him around. And she still talks to him. And, usually... she still feels better, even if the circumstances haven't changed. It's an unbearable situation, but it's a little less unbearable with him there.

(They're also... frequently the only people who can get through to each other/change each other's minds, i.e. Minkowski and Lovelace deferring to Hera to get Eiffel to agree to safety protocols, or Eiffel convincing Hera to vote to go back to Earth - also a totally different topic that would take a long time to get into properly, but he's good at kind of... emotionally counteracting her cynicism and defeatism re: her own perceived fate. In a less serious context, I also love the dynamic where she tells him she's not going to do something and he goes "please??" and she goes. Ughh. Fine. And does it anyway.)

There's just something so special about their relationship, something that makes it different from any other relationship in the show for me. I feel like... Eiffel and Minkowski are both her close friends, but the way Hera thinks about Eiffel in Memoria vs. the way she thinks about Minkowski is... revealing. Everything with Minkowski has a purpose, it's clear why it matters to her. She thinks of Minkowski's faith in her. But with Eiffel, she thinks about... Eiffel talking about Star Wars. Making pop culture references. The thing that saves Hera is her connection to Eiffel and Minkowski - I'll defend that; Maxwell gives her the tools to understand what's going on, but it's Eiffel's and Minkowski's words and associated memories that she holds onto and that ultimately pull her through - and those words are... Minkowski's affirmation. And Eiffel... being Eiffel. I think that says a lot.

(If you’re asking for my opinion on their relationship, you already know I think it’s a romance, but... it’s a romance. I’m not saying it should be canon. I’m saying that that’s the most natural interpretation of what’s already there. You don’t have to change anything. They’re best friends, and they’re found family, and they are so in love, and none of those things are mutually exclusive. The way they talk to each other...)

If there's one point I want to make about all of this, it's that Hera is in a position that makes trusting people potentially very dangerous, and in all of these cases, she is finding ways to build relationships with people despite that. To understand them, and have them understand her, and realizing that the things that make her different don't have to be a death sentence. That she can have a life and find a way forward with people she cares about, who care about her... that's something very important to me.

[variousqueerthings]

Daniel LaRusso: A Queer Feminine Fairytale Analysis Part 1 of 3

Disclaimers and trigger warnings: 

1. These fairytales are European, although there’s often overlap in themes globally. I know European fairytales better, which is essentially the reason I’m not going to branch out too far. I opted to also stick to Western movies so as not to narrow things down, but also in particular “waves hand towards all of Ghibli” amongst many others. There’s a reason the guys in Ghibli are so gender.

2. TW for discussions of rape culture and rape fantasies

EDIT: FUCK I’M A GOBLIN CHILD! FORGOT TO PUT A MASSIVE MASSIVE THANK YOU TO @mimsyaf​ WHO HAS BEEN THE NICEST, KINDEST EDITOR ON THESE THOUGHTS AND CONTRIBUTED SO MUCH TO THEM AND GENERALLY IS A WONDERFUL PERSON!

Part 2

Part 3

1. Introduction

I recently wrote a little thing, which was about Daniel as a fairytale protagonist – specifically one that goes through some of the kinds of transformations that are often associated with female protagonists of fairytales.

I used quotes from Red Riding Hood, Labyrinth, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and Dracula, which, as an aside – the overlap between fairytales, horror, and fantasy and the ways each of those genres delve into very deep, basic questions of humanity and the world is something that will always make me feral. I will be generally sticking with fairytales though. Also I am very excited about some of those Labyrinth concepts going around!

I’m going to use “feminine” and “masculine” in both gendered (as in relating specifically to people) and non-gendered (as in relating to codes) ways throughout this, depending on context.

To be binary for a moment, because sample-sizes of other genders are low, women are usually able to fall into either feminine or masculine arcs, although sometimes the masculine-coded woman can become a “not like the other girls” stereotype and the feminine-coded woman a shallow cliché – in both cases they’re also under more scrutiny and judgement, so it’s always worth asking “is this character not working for me because of the writing or because I have ingrained biases? (Both?)”

Men don’t often get feminine-coded arcs. Because. Probably a mix of biases and bigotry. But there are some that seem to have slipped beneath the shuttered fence of “Sufficient Narrative Testosterone,” and Daniel LaRusso is one of them.

2. Some Dude Comparisons (Men Doing Manly Action-Hero Things like being trans symbolism and loving your girlfriend… seriously those things are hella manly, I wish we saw more of that onscreen…)

a. Neo

Much like Neo The Matrix, whose journey is filled with transgender subtext and specifically and repeatedly references Alice In Wonderland, Daniel doesn’t go through quite the kind of hero's journey usually associated with Yer Standard Male Hero, especially the type found in the 80s/90s.

Neo is my favourite comparison, because of the purposefulness of his journey as a trans narrative and the use of Alice. But I’m sure there are other non-traditional male heroes out there (but are they trans tho? Please tell me, I want trans action heroes).

Neo “passes” as a socially acceptable man, but online goes by a different name - the name he prefers to be known by - feels like there’s something inherently wrong about the world around him and his body’s place in that society, and then gets taken down the rabbit hole (with his consent, although without really “knowing” what he’s consenting to) to discover that it’s the world that’s wrong - not him. And by accessing this truth he can literally make his body do and become whatever he wants it to.

Yay. (The message of the Matrix is actually that trans people can fly).

Neo is – kind of like Daniel – a strange character for Very Cis Straight Guys to imprint on. He spends most of the first movie unsure about what’s going on, out of his depth, and often getting beaten up. He is compared to Alice several times and at the end he dies. He loses. He has to be woken up with true love’s kiss, in a fun little Sleeping Beauty/Snow White twist. Yes, after that he can fly, but before that he’s getting dead-named and hate-crimed by The Most Obvious Stand-In For Normativity, Agent Smith, and being carried by people far more physically capable than he is (people who also fall outside of normative existence).

Trinity and Neo in The Matrix. The fact that a lot of the time neither of them is gendered is something. Literally brought to life by true love’s kiss.

I’m not about to argue that Daniel LaRusso is purposefully written along these same thought processes, so much as the luck of the way he was written, cast, directed, acted, and costumed all came together in the right way. And this is even more obvious when compared to That Other Underdog Fite Movie That Was By The Same Director as Karate Kid.

b. Rocky

The interesting thing about Rocky is that he is (despite being a male action icon) also not written as a Traditionally Masculine person. Large portions of Rocky – and subsequent Rocky films – are his fear and insecurity about fighting vs his inability to apply his skills to another piece of work and wanting to do right by his girlfriend (and future wife), Adrian. The fighting is most often pushed onto him against his will.

Much like in Karate Kid there is barely any fighting in Rocky I. Most of it is dedicated to how much Rocky loves Adrian and the two of them getting together. The fight is – again like in Karate Kid – a necessary violence, rather than a glorified one (within the plot, obviously watching any movie like this is also partly about the badassness of some element of the violence – whether stamina or the crane kick, it’s all about not backing down against a more powerful opponent).

Rocky is played by Sylvester Stallone. He’s tough, he’s already a fighter (albeit in the movie not a great one yet), he’s taking the fight for cash – so although he’s also soft-spoken and sweet, you’re aware of the fact that he’s got those traits that’d make a male audience go “Hell Yeah, A Man,” or whatever it is a male audience does watching movies like that… cis straight men imprinting on oiled muscle men sure is a strange phenomenon, why do you wanna watch a boxing match? So you can watch toned guys groaning and grappling with each other? Because you want to feel like A Man by allowing yourself to touch the skin of other men?

Apollo and Rocky in Rocky III. This sequence also includes prolonged shots of their crotches as they run. Sylvester Stallone directed this. This was intentional. Bros.

Daniel LaRusso is not built like that. But that doesn’t really have to matter. Being smallish and probably more likely to be described as “pretty” than handsome, and not having a toxic masculine bone in his body does not a feminine archetype make. It just makes a compelling (and pretty) underdog. 

c. Daniel

So where does the main difference really lie? Between Rocky and Daniel? Well, Rocky has the plot in his hands – Daniel, largely, does not. Rocky is acting. Daniel is reacting or being pushed into situations by others. Just like our boy Neo. Just like Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Snow White – just like some of the women in some contemporary(ish) fairytale films like Buttercup (Princess Bride), Dorothy (Wizard of Oz), or Sarah (Labyrinth).

This isn’t a necessary negative about stories about girls and women, so much as looking at what it is girls and women in fairytales have/don’t have, what they want, and how they’re going to get it. It’s about power (lack of), sexuality (repressed, then liberated), men, and crossing some taboo lines. It’s also about queerness.

3. The Karate Kid Part One: Leaving Home

Daniel LaRusso is a poor, skinny, shortish kid (played by a skinny, shortish twenty-two-year old) who doesn’t fit in after having been taken away from the home he was familiar with against his will. Not every male protagonist in a fairytale leaves of his own will, and not every female protagonist leaves under duress – Red Riding Hood, for example, seems perfectly happy to enter the forest. However generally a hero is “striking out to make his fortune,” and generally a heroine is fleeing or making a bargain or being married off or waiting for help to arrive. She is often stuck (and even Red Riding Hood requires saving at some point).

Daniel then encounters a beautiful, lovely girl on the beach, puts on a red hoodie (red is significant), is beaten up by a large, attractive bully, loses what little clout he may have had with his new friends, and generally has a mostly miserable time until he befriends and is saved by Mr Miyagi. To do a little Cinderella comparison: Miyagi is the fairy godmother who pushes Daniel to go to the ball in disguise as well, and that disguise falls to pieces as he’s running away.

Then Daniel asks for help, Miyagi gets him enrolled in a Karate Tournament, and starts teaching him. Daniel wins the tournament and gets the girl, the end.

While Daniel has chutzpah and is a wonderful character, none of the big events are initiated by him, except for the initial going to the forest/beach (and within all of these events Daniel absolutely makes choices – I’m not saying he’s passive): Lucille takes them to California, Miyagi pushes him to go to the dance, Miyagi again decides to enroll him in the tournament and trains him, and only because Kreese doesn’t allow for any other option, Ali is the one who more often than not approaches Daniel, and even their first encounter is pushed by Daniel’s friends.

Daniel really is at a dance/ball in disguise and receives a flower from a girl who recognises him through said disguise, it’s unbearable! It’s adorable! I get it Ali, I fucking get it!

Daniel’s main journey within this – apart from not getting killed by karate thugs (love u Johnny <3) and kissing Ali – is to learn from Miyagi. He’s not necessarily a full-on feminine fairytale archetype at this point, although there are fun things to pull out of it, mainly in the context of later films and Cobra Kai: the subtext of karate and how that builds throughout all the stories, the red clothes, the themes of obsession, his being targeted by boys whose masculinity is more than a little bit toxic and based on shame… more on all that coming up.

He doesn’t technically get a home until they build him a room at Miyagi’s place, but he definitely leaves the woods at the end of this one, trophy lifted in the air after being handed to him by a tearful Johnny and all.

And then they made a sequel.

4. The Karate Kid Part Two: Not Out Of The Woods Yet

Daniel’s won the competition, Kreese chokes out Johnny for daring to lose and cry, more life-lessons are given (for man without forgiveness in heart…) and Daniel and Ali break-up off-screen, confirming that TKK1 was not really about the girl after all, which, despite Daniel and Kumiko having wonderful chemistry, is also an ongoing theme. Daniel enters the screen in The Most Baby-Blue Outfit seen since Tiana’s dress in Princess and the Frog? Or that dress in Enchanted? Maybe Cinderella’s (technically silver, but later depicted as blue)? 

(Sidenote: At everyone who says Sam ought to wear a callback to that suit,  you are correct and sexy).

Surprise, Miyagi’s building him a room.

Double-surprise, Miyagi needs to go to Okinawa.

Triple surprise, Daniel reveals he’s going with him, because he’s his son dammit.

The Karate Kid Part Two is maybe the least Daniel-LaRusso-Feminine-Fairytale-Protagonist of the three, because it’s not really his movie. Daniel runs around with Kumiko (aka the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen), continues to be The Best Non-Toxic Boy a middle-aged Okinawan karate master could ask for, lands himself another Built Karate Rival (twice is just a coincidence, right? Right?), and eventually doesn’t die while wearing red again – twice: When Chozen almost strangles him to death at the Miyagi dojo and then during the final fight. The Saving Of The Girl (both the little girl in the storm and Kumiko) actually puts him in a more traditional masculine space than the previous movie did, even if the main theme of the film is about compassion and kindness and by the end, once more the boy whose masculinity is built on rockhard abs and matchsticks is on his knees. Daniel just has that power over big boys. It’s called kick/punch them in the face hard enough that they see stars.

There’s an aside to be made here about how much Daniel really is an observer in other peoples stories in this, although he is the factor that sends both Chozen and Kumiko into completely different directions in life (Chozen and Kumiko main characters when?) Anyway he comes out of it presumably okay, despite being almost killed. Maybe a few therapy sessions and he’ll get over it. Too bad Terry Silver is lurking around the corner…

5. The Karate Kid Part Three: The Big Bad Wolf

Alright people have written Words about the third movie. It’s fascinating. It’s odd. It’s eye-straining. It’s like olives – you’re either fully onboard the madness or it’s too off-putting for you (or you’re like. Eh, don’t see what all the fuss is about either way...). It’s basically a non-consensual secret BDSM relationship between a guy in his thirties (played by a Very Tall twenty-seven year old Thomas Ian Griffith) and a 17/18 year old (played by a shorter twenty-eight year old Ralph Macchio).

Also recently we got more information on Mr. Griffith’s input on the uh… vibes of the film. Apparently it wasn’t just The Sweetness of Ralph Macchio’s face, the screenplay (whatever that amounted to in the first place – release the script!), the soundtrack, the direction to not tone it down under any circumstances, the fact that Macchio categorically refused to play a romance between himself and an actress who was sixteen, no: it was also TIG coming up with fun ways to torture Daniel’s character and suggesting these to the director. Clearly everyone has fun hurting Mr Macchio (including Mr Macchio).

The point is that aaallll of that amounts to that Intense Homoerotic Dubiously-Consented-To D/s subtext that haunts the movie and gives a lot of fun stuff to play with. It’s also a film that – if we’re analysing Daniel along feminine-coded fairytale lines recontextualises his role in this universe.

The Fairytale goes topsy-turvy. Through the looking glass. Enter Big Bad Wolf stage right. Karate is a metaphor for Daniel’s bisexual awakening. 

“Oh, when will an attractive man touch me in ways that aren’t about hurting me?” he asks after two movies of being hurt by boys with rippling muscles. “Why do men continue to notice me only to hit me? Do you think wearing red is making me too noticeable? Anyway, Mr Silver looked really good in his gi today.” 

Daniel’s diary must be a trip.

[flufffysocks]

let's talk about andi mack's worldbuilding

sorry this took forever to make! i've been pretty busy with school stuff and i kind of lost my inspiration for a bit, but i ultimately really enjoyed writing it! i wish i could've included more pics (tumblr has a max of 10 per post), and it kinda turned from less of a mini analysis to more of an extremely long rant... but i hope it's still a fun read!

i've been rewatching the show over the past few weeks (thanks again to @disneymack for the link!), and i’ve been noticing a lot that i never did the first time around. this is really the first time i’ve watched the show from start to finish since it aired, and it honestly feels so different this time - probably a combination of the fact that i’m not as focused on plot and can appreciate the show as a whole, and also that the fandom is much, much smaller now, so there’s a lot less noise. so the way i’m consuming this show feels super different than it did the first time, but the show itself doesn’t - it’s just as warm and comforting to me as it was the first time around, if not more so.

i think a lot of that can be attributed to andi mack’s “worldbuilding”. i’m not quite sure that this is the right word in this context, to be honest, because i mostly see it used in reference to fantasy and sci-fi universes, but it just sort of feels right to me for andi mack, because you can really tell how much love and care went into constructing this universe. for clarity, worldbuilding is “the process of creating an imaginary world” in its simplest sense. there’s two main types: hard worldbuilding, which involves inventing entire universes, languages, people, cultures, places, foods, etc. from scratch (think “lord of the rings” or “dune”), and soft worldbuilding, in which the creators don’t explicitly state or explain much about the fictional universe, but rather let it’s nature reveal itself as the story progresses (think studio ghibli films). andi mack to me falls in the soft worldbuilding category. even though it takes place in a realistic fiction universe, there’s a lot of aspects to it that are inexplicably novel in really subtle ways.

so watching the show now, i’ve noticed that the worldbuilding comes primarily from two things - setting and props, and oftentimes the both of them in tandem (because a big part of setting in filmmaking does depend on the props placed in it!).

one of the most obvious examples is the spoon. it really is a sort of quintessential, tropic setting in that it's the main gang's "spot", which automatically gives it a warm and homey feel to it. and its set design only amplifies this:

the choice to make it a very traditional 50s-style diner creates a very nostalgic, retro feel to it, which is something that's really consistent throughout the show, as you'll see. from the round stools at the bar, to the booths, to the staff uniforms, this is very obvious. the thing that i found especially interesting about it though is the choice of color. the typical 50s diner is outfitted with metallic surfaces and red accented furnishings, but the spoon is very distinctly not this.

instead, it's dressed in vibrant teal and orange, giving it a very fresh and modern take on a classic look. so it still maintains that feeling of being funky and retro, but that doesn't retract from the fact that the show is set distinctly in modern times.

of course, this could just be a one-off quirky set piece, but this idea of modernizing and novelizing "retro" things is a really common motif throughout the show. take red rooster records. i mean, it's a record shop - need i say more? it's obviously a very prominent store in shadyside, at least for the main characters, but there's no apparent reason why it is (until season 2 when bowie starts working there, and jonah starts performing there). a lot of the time, though, it functions solely as a record shop. vinyl obviously isn't the most practical or convenient way of listening to music, but it's had its resurgence in pop culture even in the real world, mostly due to its aesthetic value, so it's safe to say that it serves the same purpose in the andi mack universe.

the fringe seems to be nostalgic of a different era, specifically the Y2K/early 2000s period (because it's meant to be bex's territory and symbolic of who she used to be, and its later transformation into cloud 10 is representative of her character arc, but that's beside the point). to be honest, exactly what this store was supposed to be always confused me. it was kind of a combination party store/clothing store/makeup store/beauty parlor? i think that's sort of the point of it though, it's supposed to feel very grunge-y and chaotic (within the confines of a relatively mellow-toned show, of course), and it's supposed to act as a sort of treasure chest of little curios that both make the place interesting and allow the characters to interact with it.

and, of course, there's andi shack. this is really the cherry on top of all of andi mack's sets, just because it's so distinctly andi. it serves such amazing narrative purpose for her (ex. the storyline where cece and ham were going to move - i really loved this because it highlights its place in the andi mack universe so well, and i'm a sucker for the paper cranes shot + i'm still salty that sadie's cranes didn't make it into the finale) and it's the perfect reflection of andi's character development because of how dynamic it is (the crafts and art supplies can get moved around or switched out, and there's always new creations visible).

going back to the nostalgia motif though, the "shack" aspect of it always struck me as very treehouse-like. personally, whenever i think of treehouses, there's this very golden sheen of childhood about it, if that makes sense. i've always seen treehouses in media as a sort of shelter for characters' youthful innocence and idealistic memories. for example, the episode "up a tree" from good luck charlie, the episode "treehouse" from modern family, and "to all the boys 2" all use a treehouse setting as a device to explore the character's desire to hold onto their perfect image of their childhood (side note: this exact theme is actually explored in andi mack in the episode "perfect day 2.0"!). andi shack is no exception to this, but it harnesses this childhood idealism in the same way that it captures the nostalgia of the 50s in the spoon, or the early 2000s in the fringe. it's not some image of a distant past being reflected through that setting; it's very present, and very alive, because it reflects andi as she is in the given moment.

some honorable mentions of more one-off settings include the ferris wheel (from "the snorpion"), the alley art gallery (from "a walker to remember"), SAVA, the color factory (from "it's a dilemna"), and my personal favorite, the cake shop (from "that syncing feeling").

[every time i watch this episode i want to eat those cakes so bad]

these settings have less of a distinctly nostalgic feel (especially the color factory, which is a very late 2010s, instagram era setting), but they all definitely have an aura of perfection about them. andi mack is all about bright, colorful visuals, and these settings really play to that, making the andi mack universe seem really fun and inviting, and frankly very instagrammable (literally so, when it comes to the color factory!).

props, on the other hand, are probably a much less obvious tool of worldbuilding. they definitely take up less space in the frame and are generally not as noticeable (i'm sure i'll have missed a bunch that will be great examples, but i'm kind of coming up with all of this off the top of my head), but they really tie everything together.

for example, bex's box, bex's polaroid, and the old tv at the mack apartment (the tv is usually only visible in the periphery of some shots, so you might not catch it at first glance) all complement that very retro aesthetic established through the settings (especially the polaroid and the tv, because there's really no good reason that the characters would otherwise be using these).

besides this, andi's artistic nature provides the perfect excuse for plenty of colorful, crafty props to amplify the visuals and the tone. obviously, as i discussed before, andi shack is the best example of this because it's filled with interesting props. but you also see bits of andi's (and other people's) crafts popping up throughout the show (ex. the tape on the fridge in the mack apartment, andi's and libby's headbands in "the new girls", walker's shoes, andi's phone case, and of course, the bracelet). not only does doing this really solidify this talent as an essential tenet of andi's character, but it also just makes the entirety of shadyside feel like an extension of andi shack. the whole town is a canvas for her crafts (or art, depending on how you want to look at it. i say it's both), and it immensely adds to shadyside's idealism. because who wouldn't want to live in a world made of andi mack's creations?

and, while it's not exactly a prop, the characters' wardrobe is undoubtedly a major influence on the show's worldbuilding. true to it's nature as a disney channel show, all of the characters are always dressed in exceptionally curated outfits of whatever the current trends are, making the show that much more visually appealing. i won't elaborate too much on this, because i could honestly write a whole other analysis on andi mack's fashion (my favorites are andi's and bex's outfits! and kudos to the costume designer(s) for creating such wonderful and in-character wardrobes!). but, i think it's a really really important aspect of how the show's universe is perceived, so it had to be touched upon.

[^ some of my favorite outfits from the show! i am so obsessed with andi's jacket in the finale, and i aspire to be at bex's level of being a leather jacket bisexual]

and lastly, phones. this is a bit of an interesting case (pun intended), because the way they're used fluctuates a bit throughout the show, but i definitely noticed that at least in the first season terri minsky tried to avoid using them altogether. these efforts at distancing from modern tech really grounds the show in it's idealist, nostalgia-heavy roots, so even when the characters start using their phones more later in the show, they don't alter the viewer's impression of the andi mack universe very much.

so, what does all of this have to do with worldbuilding? in andi mack's case, because it's set in a realistic universe and not a fantasy one, a lot of what sets it apart from the real world comes down to tone. because, as much as this world is based on our own, it really does feel separate from it, like an alternate reality that's just slightly more perfect than ours, which makes all the difference. it's the idealism in color and composition in andi mack's settings that makes it so unmistakably andi mack. even the weather is always sunny and perfect (which is incredibly ironic because the town is called shadyside - yes, i am very proud of that observation).

the andi mack universe resides somewhere in this perfect medium that makes it feel like a small town in the middle of nowhere (almost like hill valley in 1955 from "back to the future"), but at the same time like an enclave within a big city (because of its proximity to so many modern, unique, and honestly very classy looking establishments). it is, essentially, an unattainable dream land that tricks you into believing it is attainable because it's just real enough.

all this to say, andi mack does an amazing job of creating of polished, perfect world for its characters. this is pretty common among disney channel and nickelodeon shows, but because most other shows tend to be filmed in a studio with three-wall sets, andi mack is really set apart from them in that it automatically feels more real and tangible. it has its quintessential recurring locations, but it has far more of them (most disney/nick shows usually only have 3-4 recurring settings), and it has a lot more one-off locations. it's also a lot more considerate when it comes to its props, so rather than the show just looking garish and aggressively trendy, it has a distinctive style that's actually appropriate to the characters and the story. overall this creates the effect of expanding the universe, making shadyside feel like it really is a part of a wider world, rather than an artificial bubble. it's idealism is, first and foremost, grounded in reality, and that provides a basis for its brilliant, creative, and relatable storytelling.

tl;dr: andi mack's sets and props give it a very retro and nostalgic tone which makes its whole universe seem super perfect and i want to live there so bad!!

[avatar-news]

The Fire Nation Awaits 🌺 An in-depth look at the ever-elusive islands in the era of Korra and when we will finally pay them a visit

[Artwork by Avatar News; not official.]

Note: This article was published before the official announcement of Avatar Studios at the Paramount+ investor day.

“Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.” We’ve all heard those words a million times. The four elements, and the power to control them bestowed by four subspecies of giant lion-turtles, are at the very heart of the world of Avatar. The balance between them was once upon a time broken by one of the four, the Fire Nation, forming the main conflict of Avatar: The Last Airbender. For much of Aang and the Gaang’s quest at the close of the Hundred Year War, the Fire Nation was a forbidden, far-away location, until the curtain was finally drawn back in the aptly-named Book Three: Fire when our heroes entered the inferno, undercover behind enemy lines. A dramatic tropical destination! New outfits! Culture shock! Needless to say, it was a big deal.

→ 🌺 The big reveal of the Fire Nation in Book Three: Fire had its own marketing push, matching public anticipation.

When the Hundred Year War ended, the newly-instated Fire Lord Zuko dedicated his life to righting the wrongs of his forefathers and working with Avatar Aang to bring the Fire Nation back into the fold under peace. By the time Aang’s successor debuted as the next Avatar in the titular The Legend of Korra, Zuko had abdicated the five-pointed crown and his daughter, Fire Lord Izumi, took the stage leading a reformed, rebalanced Fire Nation.

There was no more war, no more enemy lines, yet the Fire Nation became more distant and mysterious than ever before.

Korra’s close encounters with the land of fire

To this day, Korra has never visited the Fire Nation, nor has it been seen at all, nor do we know anything about it in her era. In fact, practically the only thing we do know is that its leader is a noninterventionist, which conveniently gets it out of the way of making an appearance in Korra’s journey as the Avatar so far.

The closest we have come to seeing the Fire Nation in The Legend of Korra was in Book Two: Spirits, Chapter Five: Peacekeepers. In the midst of the Water Tribe Civil War, Korra sets out across the sea to get help from the royal family, however, she is intercepted by a dark spirit and never makes it to her destination. In the next episode, she washes up on a secret island home to the Bhanti sages, which probably technically counts as Fire Nation territory, but as we know from The Shadow of Kyoshi (more on that later), this faction predates the Four Nations themselves so it doesn’t really count.

→ 🌺 Korra washes up on the beach of Bhanti Island in Book Two: Spirits, Chapter Six: The Sting.

No, as cool as that location and the events of the Beginnings two-parter that happened there were, it wasn’t the main draw of seeing the Fire Nation that we’re still waiting for: seeing how the Fire Nation, which was already industrializing in Aang’s time, changed over the decades, compared to places like Republic City and Ba Sing Se; meeting new characters; visiting new and familiar locations; worldbuilding both new and expanding on what we already learned.

After this aborted tease in Book Two, we never come close to the island country again (at least not with this Avatar and in her era; yes I’m leading up to something...). Instead, the focus turns strongly to the Earth Kingdom in the third and fourth Books, and beyond.

Keep in mind that The Legend of Korra aired for about two-and-a-half years total from 2012 to 2014. Since then, the story has continued in comics. The comics era has lasted from 2015 to present-- seven years to the animated series’ two. In that time, there have only been two comic trilogies due to various production troubles, and neither have touched the Fire Nation. Instead, they directly continue the Earth Kingdom-focused threads started in Books Three and Four of Korra, both originally airing in 2014. Or, in perspective: we had a focus on Republic City in 2012, the Water Tribes in 2013, and the Earth Kingdom from 2014-2021.

Will we finally see the Fire Nation in the next graphic novel trilogy?

This question comes to mind every time new Korra content is supposed to roll around, and the powers that be know it-- it’s a pretty obvious gap in the world of Avatar right now. This franchise is iconically built around four elements and the Four Nations based on them, so one of them being MIA is quite glaring, and for that reason everyone is understandably always asking about it.

The most concrete confirmation we’ve gotten was this AMA answer from franchise co-creator Michael Dante DiMartino in 2016, two years after the show ended and a year before the first graphic novels did come out:

“Yes, hopefully in the [Korra] comics, we’ll have a chance to go to the Fire Nation and see how it has changed since A:TLA.”

Since then, as previously discussed, two comic trilogies have come and gone, obviously not getting closer to the Fire Nation-- and I would actually argue entrenching themselves further away from it.

I want to make it clear that I’m against fan entitlement. Creatives telling the tales they want to in service of the story and the artform is how the industry should run. I’m just hoping to offer some perspective on how we got to where we are almost a decade into the era of Korra and the metatextual pacing of the franchise itself.

Either way, the next Korra comic trilogy has been official confirmed by the editor for Avatar at Dark Horse Comics in this informal statement on Twitter:

We’re not ready to announce any details yet, but we are working on the next trilogy. I really appreciate your patience and hope it’s worth the wait! ✨

There’s currently some kind of holdup for which we really have zero context or information, and we of course have no idea what this next trilogy will be about. (I do speculate a bit on what it could be a few paragraphs down.)

But, like what turned out to be Ruins of the Empire before it, I faithfully made a mockup graphic for my post announcing the confirmation of the next The Legend of Korra graphic novel trilogy. And like before, I chose to completely speculatively and blindly make it Fire Nation-y, as if the next comic could/would(/should?) feature it. This is mainly because I feel like that’s what most people’s eyes would be caught by and thus result in the most successful post (hey, at least I’m honest), but also because it’s just fun.

Here are both images, from 2018 and 2020 respectively:

→ 🌺 Speculative edits I made for my posts on the announcement of previous and upcoming Korra comics before we knew anything about them.

In both cases, the response was huge, and people were super excited about the prospect of Fire Nation content just from my quick speculative mockups. I am of course hoping that the new artwork I made of the Krew for this post will have a similar effect (it’s the first time I just straight-up drew it instead of editing existing images) but again it’s really mostly just for fun.

Anyway, until the next trilogy is properly revealed, we’ll just have to wait and see.

However, that’s not the only place this could happen.

Are they saving the Fire Nation for an animated movie?

With Avatar’s HUGE success on Netflix last year, interest in the franchise rocketed to an all-time high. The streaming wars have begun, and Avatar’s owner and its parent company, Nickelodeon and ViacomCBS, have finally started to notice.

ViacomCBS is launching Paramount+ on March 4th, a relaunch of its existing streaming service CBS All Access. Paramount+ is meant to be a big expansion and refocus to compete with the big hitters: Disney+, HBO Max, and, yes, Netflix. (There’s quite an entanglement there, with Netflix being the home of Avatar’s big year and the upcoming live-action series.)

One of the keys to a successful streamer today is high-profile originals to drive new subscribers. ViacomCBS knows this and they know Avatar has just become among the highest profiles a property can have, breaking records and going toe-to-toe with other big-hitting sci-fi/fantasy/genre franchises. This knowledge goes right to the top of the food chain: the CEO of ViacomCBS mentioned Avatar by name when discussing potential originals for Paramount+.

I have previously discussed how The Search relates to this. The Search was the second ATLA comic trilogy, focused on the search for Zuko’s mother in the thick of the Fire Nation, and if you didn’t know, it was originally pitched by Bryke as an animated movie after the original series ended.

I just want to be clear that what I’m discussing here is purely speculative, but this is the only other piece of the Avatar franchise that we know was optioned for animation besides the shows themselves. It’s possible they would be interested in going back to this idea as a Paramount+ original (and it would certainly be popular among audiences), but it is of course set during the era of Aang and thus covers both a time period we’ve already seen, and also by nature of already being released as comics, events we’ve already seen too.

However, the whole point of this article is that there is one major, huge thing we haven’t seen yet, with massive anticipation building for a decade behind it: the Fire Nation in the era of Korra. So, again, this is just speculation, but it’s also possible that they could return to the very smallest seed of the original idea for a The Search movie, and do a Fire Nation-focused Korra movie now.

→ 🌺 ATLA’s Fire Nation-focused The Search was originally pitched as an animated movie.

You can skip this next part if you don’t want to see me embarrassingly promote my fan idea 😆 but this is where the artwork I made for this article comes into play. The general idea for it, and the reason I tried to replicate the show’s style as much as possible, is that it’s what a Fire Nation-focused movie could maybe look like. Something as standalone and unrelated to Earth Kingdom drama as possible, with fresh new looks for the Krew to get people excited for something fresh and new! I really feel like the Avatar franchise has so much potential for expanded content like this, that’s why I have high hopes that Paramount+ will make the most out of it! You can see the individual characters’ artwork in larger size here. Ok I’m done back to business.

If the idea of a movie seems too impossible to you, we can also take a deeper look at Bryke’s involvement with upcoming comics instead.

After Korra ended, they officially each went their separate ways. They vaguely consulted on Avatar stuff, and Mike of course wrote the Korra comics, but Bryan was planning on writing and drawing his own original non-Avatar comic series and Mike was releasing his own non-Avatar novels. This all appears to have come to a stop when they signed on to showrun the live-action retelling of ATLA at Netflix, officially reuniting the partnership and committing to Avatar again in a big way. Of course, they ended up leaving that project over creative differences, but it did result in a big, lasting change: this time they remained official creative partners and have indicated they’re still working on Avatar now, together. This is a far cry from the official breakup after Korra, so it begs the question what exactly they’re working on. I of course have my fanciful predictions of a sprawling expansion of the Avatar franchise at Paramount+, but what if it’s actually a combination of the ingredients from before the live-action series...

More speculation, but what if the reason for all the mystery behind the next Korra comics is because they will be made by Bryke, with the two of them co-writing and Bryan doing the art for the first time? If that’s the case, they could want to make them a bigger deal than the other Avatar comics have been so far, and maybe that’s why it’s taking so long to iron everything out, have a more significant story, have more of a marketing push, etc. If they’ve been saving the Fire Nation for something big, this could be it.

I personally think this is less likely than a show or movies or something, but it is possible. Anything is possible right now since we know so little about the large-scale direction of the franchise moving forward, just that it’s gonna get big.

⛰️🌋 The Fire Nation in the era of Avatar Kyoshi

We’re not done! Despite everything I’ve written here, believe it or not, the Fire Nation was actually the star of the show in the last year.

With the debut of the Avatar franchise’s first original novels, Kyoshi made a huge splash (in a way only she can). If you haven’t read them yet, you NEED to-- they’re some of the best Avatar content EVER. The Rise of Kyoshi hit shelves in 2019 and The Shadow of Kyoshi followed in 2020. The latter is of particular interest here, because it was almost entirely set in the Fire Nation and featured practically everything and anything you could want from a visit to elusive islands. Though obviously set in a historical period some four hundred years before Aang’s time, Kyoshi’s sojourn in the Fire Nation gave us a huge amount of new information, a depth and breadth of worldbuilding, culture, and character we’ve never really seen in Avatar before. It truly makes the most of the literary medium, so hats off to author F. C. Yee for the passion and effort he put in.

In The Shadow of Kyoshi, we learn about the era of the previous fire Avatar before Roku, Avatar Szeto. Through Kyoshi and her own Team Avatar, we learn about the different clans and islands of the Fire Nation, as they experience the fraught early reign of Fire Lord Zoryu and the conflict between the Keohso and Saowon clans, culminating in the Camellia-Peony War. We get a multitude of fleshed-out perspectives from the upper crust to the flea-bitten underworld, matching the heights of the worldbuilding quality of Republic City. It’s such cool, intricate stuff, and really shows Avatar’s potential (and that’s all just the worldbuilding-- the character work is also top-notch).

That’s not the only place the Fire Nation has shone recently. One of Insight Editions’ awesome scrapbooks, Legacy of the Fire Nation, gave us a tour through the royal family’s history, including never-before-seen looks at young Iroh and Ozai and much, much more.

All this just goes to show that the Fire Nation has been a hot ticket throughout the ages and there’s one conspicuous gap in that history: the era of Avatar Korra. With so much recent expansion and development of the Fire Nation in our world, it would be perfect to see the culmination of it all in the current time period in the world of Avatar too.

If this made you excited for the potential of what the Avatar franchise could look like in the coming years, same boat!

The next concrete date where something could be announced is February 24th, when ViacomCBS will host their investor day and present their streaming strategy, including Paramount+ originals. There’s no guarantee Avatar is mentioned, but I’m keeping a hopeful eye out.

As for comics, Dark Horse’s schedule marches to its own beat, so there’s no way to know when the next drop of information is coming our way.

Could this finally be the comics that take us to the Fire Nation, or could the much-anticipated visit be in another medium like animation? Stay tuned-- as always I’ll post as soon as we learn anything new!

[filipinoizukuu]

I saw your post about the FA's translations, and I totally agree. Sometimes, when they do not translate accurately, is to make it sound better or cooler in English, but it just ends up taking away a lot from the context and characters. We know how one of the most affected character interpretations is Katsuki's, a main character, no less. And Izuku and Katsuki's relationship too, which is something super super wrong, considering is deeply intertwined with the main plot of the series, thus if someone misinterpreted their dynamic, this person would miss a bigass chunk of the message the story has.

Here is the panel you mentioned before btw

I remember when I read this, only 10 or 11 chapters into the manga (?), and I was like "...I'm...pretty sure this guy didn't say that" khshsjdhs

OK FIRST OF ALL LMAO HELLO MANG!! THANK YOU SO MUCH AND DW ABOUT IT I TOTALLY GET WHAT YOU MEAN !!

(this is your warning for a long post ahead!)

In any case, I still think you're very correct on this! Not to ramble a bit, but Horikoshi's particular talent in developing the plot of MHA is actually very very brilliant and there are a lot of blink-and-you'll-miss-it details that together, assemble the big picture of what MHA is.

Translations are such an integral part of being able to understand foreign media. MHA or otherwise. The simplest of details say a lot about a character and often times make or break a series because everyone knows that strong character dynamics are what carry even the shittiest of plots.

First and foremost, I want to clarify that because of the nature of fan translations and the fact that most of it is volunteer work/ written out of pure enjoyment of the manga--we shouldn't judge these fan translators too harshly (if at all) for interpreting it the way they want to. FA, as far as I can tell, is a fan-based group that works out of donations.

The first thing I wanna bring up is that when it comes to fandom and its works, there are two types: Curatorial and Transformative. Now, the transformative part is something that must be very familiar to a lot of you. Fanfiction, fanart, and most headcanons fall under Transformative Works (i.e. AO3) because they are all about transforming the canon world to fit each individual's personal preferences. Meta-analysis posts and Character Breakdowns are also classified under this.

Curatorial on the other hand are fandom interactions made with the explicit purpose of being as close to canon material as possible. This is working out the logic of quirks, for example, or memorizing as much canon content about your favorite villain as possible. These are more cold, hard undeniable facts that lend themselves to the DIRECT VISION the creator/author had while making this media. If you were to ask me my opinion on this, this would be the moment where I tell you that the Curatorial side of fandom is where fan translations should (for the most part) fall under.

What people need to know though is that oftentimes, fan translations do not.

Translating isn't and has never been a one-is-to-one process. There are hundreds of thousands of aspects in a language that make it so that it isn't perfectly translatable. Colloquialisms to sayings to dialects, to just plain-out words that don't have a proper English translation to them! Manga is made by and for a Japanese audience, so obviously in a lot of instances, there will be cultural nuances that will not be understood by anyone who hasn't immersed themselves in Japanese culture/language.

So what does this mean then for fan scanlations?

It means that a vast majority of translators teach themselves to only get the essence of the message. They take the dialogue as they understand it and translate it to something of their interpretation. When language and cultural barriers exist, translators do what they can in order to make it understandable to the general populace. This means making their own executive decisions on how they see a character speaking. In example, if they see Todoroki using very direct and impersonal Japanese--one translator might interpret it to mean that Shouto is stiff and overly formal, while another may see it as him being rude and aloof.

The problem is, translators are fans just like us.

Like with the image Mang posted above, the translator based the usage of curse words off of their understanding of Bakugou's character. The lack of foul language in the original Japanese might have made the translator think "Oh. There just aren't enough Japanese cusses for his character." And took that as an initiative to make Bakugou's lines more colorful and violent because this was working off of the image Bakugou had had at this point in canon.

But Codi! You may cry. Wasn't it proven multiple times that Bakugou prefers concise and short lines? They should've known better!

Yes. Maybe they should've known better. But tell me honestly in your first watch-through of MHA, did you perfectly understand Bakugou's character either? Did you catch the whole 'direct and no flowery language' aspect of his language when you first saw Season 2?

Most people don't. I only really understood this fact after I'd read multiple discussions of it and even double-checked the manga myself. These are the kinds of things that only become noticeable with a sharp eye and some time to scrutiny. But the fact of the matter is that when it comes to fan translations, the clout and recognition are always going to go to who can post the quickest.

Am I excusing erroneous translations? A bit, I guess. It's hard for us to go in and expect translators to catch all these errors before release when we ourselves only catch these errors like 4 months in with a hundred times more canon context than these scanlation groups did at the time of its release.

Still, there are plenty of harms that come with faulty translations.

When a translation is more divorced from the original's meaning than usual, it creates a dissonance between what is actually happening versus what the audience sees is happening. This looks like decently-written character arcs being overruled and rejected by most of the readers because of how 'jarring' and 'clumsy' it seems. By the time translators had caught on to the fact that Bakugou was more than just a ticking time bomb, we were already several steps into showing how significantly he cares for Deku.

The characters affected most by these translation errors are often those with the most subtle and well-written character arcs. A single mistake in how the source material is translated can make or break the international reception of a certain character to everyone who isn't invested enough in them to look deeper into the canon source.

It creates hiccups in plots. Things that seem out of character but really aren't. Going back to MHA in specific, the way that inaccurate translations hurt both the 'curatorial' and 'transformative' parts of the fandom is that people have begun to cite them as proof of the main cast's characterization.

Bakugou and Todoroki are undeniably some of the biggest examples of mistranslation injustices.

Katsuki, in a lot of people's minds, has yet to break out of the 'overly-aggressive rival' archetype box that people had been placing him in since Season 1. One of the most amazing aspects and biggest downfalls of Hori's writing was that at first, nearly every character fit into a very neat stereotype for Shonen Animes (Deku being the talking-no-jutsu sunshine MC, Uraraka being the overly bubbly main girl, Todoroki being the aloof and formal rival). He made the audience make assumptions about everyone's characters and then pulled the rug beneath our feet when he revealed deeper sides of them to play around within canon.

What made this part about Horikoshi's set-up so good though were the many clues we were given from the very beginning that these characters were more than what they acted like. Even from the very first chapters, for example, we learn that Katsuki (as much as he acts like a delinquent) dislikes smoking because it could get him in trouble.

That is just a single instance of MHA's use of dialogue to subtly divert our expectations of a character.

Another example is when they replaced 318's dialogue of the Second User saying that Katsuki "completes" Deku with him saying that Katsuki merely "bolsters" him. This presents a different situation, as that line was meant to reinforce the importance of those two's relationship as well as complete the character foils that MHA is partially centered around. By downplaying their developed connection, it becomes harder for the MHA manga scanlations to justify any future significance these two's words have on each other without mottling the pacing of the story.

AKA, it butchers the plot.

With every new volume, there are dozens and dozens more of these hints and bits scattered around! So many cues and subtle foreshadowing at the trajectory of everyone's character arcs--yet mistranslations or inaccurate scans make it so that we don't notice them. This is what I mean when I said that some character arcs are being done great injustices.

Until now, many people can't accept that Katsuki Bakugou cares for anyone other than himself (much less his rival and MC, Izuku Midoriya), nor can they accept that Todoroki would ever willingly work by Endeavor's side. The bottom-line then becomes that because of people missing heavy bits of characterization that become very plot-significant in the future.

When it comes to the point where people can no longer accept or fit their interpretation of the earlier manga events to what is happening in canon, the point of a translation fails completely because it has lead people to follow an entirely different story.

TL;DR - Fan scans are hard. Translating is hard. Don't get too mad at fan translations, but also maybe don't treat them as the catch-all for how characters truly operate. Thanks.

Side note: DO NOT harass FA for any of these things. FA is actually a pretty legit and okay source for scans (they've been operating since like 2014 ffs), but regardless of that they still don't deserve to get flack for their work. You can have any opinion or perspective of canon that you want, I don't care. These are just my two (more like two million tbh) cents on translations. I suggest reading takes from actual Japanese audiences tbh if you wanna know more about the source material of MHA. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[the-art-of-animated-gifs]

Interview with my friend A.L. Crego

I have not met A.L. Crego.  I have not spoken with him on the phone, in fact I do not even know what he looks like.  But I can confidently call him my friend.  Three years ago when I started this blog he immediately disagreed with me in the comments about things I was writing and I loved it.  As a person putting ideas out there, you treasure things like that....because you know someone cares.  We have had many back and forth discussions over the years....if we had lived in Paris in 1911 we would be having arguments at La Rotonde (not to compare either of us to Picasso).

A.L. Crego is a motion artist who does a wide variety of things.  He has now become a very visible and active figure in the NFT Movement.  He recently completed a large and very successful project in which he animated the work of a number of well know street artists on the building themselves, something he has done for years.  His Tumblr page is a good place to start to see his work, which is largely surrealist in nature -- another Spanish artist following in the footsteps of other great Spanish surrealist artists.

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How long have you been creating gif art?

In a conscious and intentional way since 2014. Previously I haven't pay too much attention on one hand for its common use that was mostly ads and funny little videos, and on the other hand because it was a 'standard' format we accepted as something part of the web so I never stopped to analyze its potential. The key point for me was about 2010-2011 when the concept of 'Cinemagraph' was brought to life just giving it a name. It's format is .gif but its characteristics are different so I saw there the midpoint between photography and video, which gave born another format of art.

Art mutates when a new format appears. I was using and studying this format since then but it wasn't until 2014 that I decided to publish some of them.

What is your background?

In general terms, bachelor, 2 years of stone sculpting and two attempts of photography and audiovisual mediums. I say attempts because I gave up both of them as I was feeling that I was looking for something else more than studying all the previous history, style and isms, which is nice to understand where everything comes from and to be aware what are the key points on the history to use as reference, as a map. But in some way I felt limited as I was using digital tools since I had my first computer with 14 years, and I was being taught things I learnt by then. Even more in this times we are living where we are 21 century people, been taught by teachers from the 20 with 19 century methods.

A constant line that feeds my background is literature and music overall and later Street Art, next to more temporal interests as everything related with mythology, alchemy, history, psychology, neurology, biology, human condition in general... I don't have studies buy I'm a studying guy!

I always like to highlight that all these years that internet got strong and social networks appeared, I decided voluntary to be out of them. First reason was to keep my privacy safe in a growing world where it seemed that some "curtain" felt and everybody accepted that intimacy was now 'ex-timacy' and correct to show their private life, (this shocked me). Another reason was about the psychological effect that social networks were having on people I had around and everywhere in general. I started to notice patterns and "waves" about series, aesthetics, styles, and I was seeing clearly that if I go there, I will become permeable to all this "Amniotic Culture" I was trying to avoid.

This fact of being far (but study them closely) helped me a lot about researching and developing my own ideas and style, for the mere fact that I was using all this time and attention Social Networks require, on drinking from another sources. The B-side of this is that I was 'out of the radar' of mass people as this social networks are designed to live inside them. My idea of internet and spreading ideas is not in this way.

Where do you live and work?

In the north west of Spain, Galicia. Now due to Covid I travel less but before it, I was working and traveling many places as I only need a camera and a computer. This allows me move to work anywhere.

Do you think that animated gifs are a new art form?

I think so, despite the fact that the format existed since 1987. But as every new format of art it takes its time to be considered as art. The first photographs were not considered art until many years later. Same happened with film, same with CGI. Is nice to have in mind that gif format is the last strictly digital format of the three main ones on the web: picture, video and gif. Photography has about 200 years of history, video about 130, CGI about 60. Finally gif has 33, and used as art itself no more than 10-15. In the same way anybody takes a picture of anything does not convert it into art, is the same with gifs. One thing is the format, another is the 'art'. Everybody can take a picture, record a video or do a gif. The difference is on the how, the why, and from my point of view overall, the what.

Do you think that there is a difference between pure .gif files and the .mp4 files that people post on Instagram?

The first, big and obvious difference is the format. Is not the same a painting as a picture of a painting. Here happens the same. For example, if you treat a gif with Cinemagraph technique, you are converting in picture some parts of the image, so they still remain and with the texture and totally stillness of a picture. If you convert this gif into a mp4 this still parts, despite not having motion, will convert into a video texture (noise, subtle motion in pixels, etc) so the main characteristic, among the perfect loop, is lost. Another point is that you must play a video, a gif is always running. Waterfalls are always running and this characteristic is something that is inside our human nature, we react nice to "bucle" motions as waterfalls, fire, etc. We find pleasure on this. Of course if it's a video the perfect loop is lost and the visual mantra disappear. And another key point here is the soundtrack. In a video you can use sound to enhance or give another meaning to the piece that you can't with gifs. For me this is another characteristic that give meaning to gif. For me gif is silence, the sound is generated by the motion, the melody are the details and the beat the perfect loop. You can "hear" almost every gif.

The difference between a gif and a video is the same that between a waterfall and a hose (if this works).

What do you think are the characteristics of good gif art?

For me first and overall the perfect loop. Not using it is not using the only format that has this characteristics. Of course there can be gif art that is not perfect loop, but from my point of view and in my work is a must. It's a new way not only of creating but also of thinking. Imagine an still scene is easy, imagine an A-B point action is easy. For me the challenge is about thinking an idea that is perfect looped where all the elements interact and eventually come back to its initial point. Succeed doing this is where the perfect loop appears and you are not able to find where is the start point of the action. Like a visual mantra, that it's repetition leads you inside the piece. Gif art is nice to use the power of the hypnotic movements. Another point to have in mind for me is the flow of it, the frame rate I mean. Depending on the idea and the kind of animation this should vary; is not the same fps to achieve something with flow than if you want to achieve a more 'retro' old style. Another thing is about dithering and color palette. This second one is essential to understand as it affects the final file. When we work with photo and video we are using millions of colors but when rendered as gifs all the gradients, lights and even colors will change if there is a previous understood of this point.

As summary: If motion doesn't add, change of enhance the meaning of the piece, is expendable.

I'd would like to add that I'm not really supporter of this kind of gifs generated automatically that just move a still image itself. I understand that this 'technique' is used as a tool for certain motion (I use it) but not to move a whole image. I feel the same as if somebody hold a painting in front of me and moves it randomly. If the work was born still, it must remain still. A good example of 'inner motion', this means that the motion is implicit on the image despite not being in motion, are the photographs of Cartier Bresson for example. Giving motion to this pictures for example, will kill it because it will break the concept of 'perfect instant' .

'Instant' differs etymologically from 'moment' in the motion. So, still image (painting, photo, sculpture, etc) is an instant, videos are stories with a-b point, and gifs are moments, the mid point.

How would you describe your gif art?

I usually condense it as "Visual Mantras", as the technique and the aesthetic vary depending on the idea , but in all of them the perfect loop and the intention of hypnotizing is always present.

In another terms about aesthetics and themes I think ‘Industrial Nature’ can fit nice. I use a lot of industrial elements but I like to mix their mechanics with the biological natural ones.

How long have you been creating and selling NFTs?

I am selling NFTs since mid 2019, but it wasn't until October 2020 that I focused more on it and dug into the ecosystem to find new paths to focus my work.

Do you think that NFTs are a positive for gif artists?

For me, and the main reason I jumped into cryptoart and NFT, is that now I can certify my digital work as original. Even more to gif works as they were always understood as something banal and minor for the context of its born. Gif art was born prostituted, used mostly for ads and to claim our attention on the internet, next to the highest glamour of painting and traditional art, and 3d, photography and video these last decades. Even worst if we realize that gif format was the only visual format born by and for the internet.

NFTs are totally positive for gif artists because despite being a digital/online native format it never had its own ecosystem to live in. I feel that I was creating creatures for an ecosystem I was waiting to drop them there. Now with the blockchain, NFTs and cryptoart, I found the place where they can live, being watched by everybody and have the certify that is my work. Until some months ago my work was "free" on the web and I had no control over it at all. This was a huge problem I was suffering since my first month into gif art as people use it indiscriminately with no credit at all. It's ok, and I always defend that my work is to be seen, to be shared, but I was looking for the way to be able to have this link with my work without losing the option of being available for everybody. NFT totally changes this.

What do you think will happen in the future as NFTs get even more popular?

In general terms I think it will happen the same as when print got more popular. People will use it more, a lot of crazy and useless things will appear, tons more of different uses and useful purposes, (not only on art). This opens a new door a lot of people was waiting so the future is unpredictable but we can feel where things are going. NFT arrived to stay and the concept of decentralization is something that was always present on the internet since first days but born inside a centralized system. NFTs are being a way for people to understand the 'peer to peer' philosophy and this makes people think in different codes, so we can expect a lot of new horizons, in art, music, design...

What do you think of the environmental impact of NFTs?

This question can goes really deep but in general terms I think that is something that is being oversized due to the hype and the boiling point we are, and it's understandable because is not false that it has an environmental impact, as everything does. But on the other hand I have two main areas in mind. The first and the obvious from my point of view is that when something is new and developing is less efficient, in the way that it requires more effort to achieve the result. But at the same time, the more this technology is used the more is developed and all this issues are part of it. The first car was not electric.

The second point that usually reverberates in my mind and that it seems that 'hard critics' omit is that they are not having in mind that this NFTs we mint, give us a profit that can be used offline to do another things that can be useful to solve this problem, for example, investing part of this money on living on our own in a minimal and clean way (not working for huge multinational that their environmental impact is tons times more than NFTs and then being part of an ONG to feel clean) and on using part of this money on looking and researching new ways to mint and to keep this digital ecosystem more efficient and clean. Every development needs time.

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