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ruakichan · 3 years

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Memorial Saga - Ramge (2/2)

The first log can be found here!

HOLY SHITHOLY SHITHOLY SHIT Y’ALL

Continuing with Memorial Saga - Ramge, the story answers quite a few questions about what happened on that fateful night the Emperor was killed and oh my god.

But before we continue on, same disclaimers as before: long post, lots of screencaps, lots of squeeing and complaining about destroyed heacanons, and LOTS OF SPOILERS with implications on the main story itself

So we left off with a budding romance friendship.

But when Ramge returns to the inn, he’s a bit in a gloomy mood.

Sia tries to reassure him that’s not the case, but Ramge remains unswayed.

As a side note, the story has a number of sidequests. Most seem to be for flavor (there’s no reward for doing them), but a few of them make obvious parallels to Ramge’s own feelings about family, especially motherhood. It’s a very subtle theme, especially during one sidequest where Ramge mentions that he has a memory of his mother crying over him, but telling him that she loved him and thanked him for being born and that she was sorry.

there’s also one sidequest where you have to help some guy confess to his crush by getting him a flower that only blooms in moonlight and ramge is given a spare flower as a “reward” and OH BOY THE MOON IS BEAUTIFUL TONIGHT HUH

But back to the main story.

Ramge goes to the first day of training, and Xiakhan gets started on hassling the newbies before they even start.

Unfortunately, he’s a bit right in this case, as despite the “light” exercise, Ramge is completely and utterly exhausted by the end of it.

Everyone sans Rachel and Rudley are suitably unimpressed and leaves. Rudley asks if Rachel is going to leave too:

man he’s not even trying to pretend he’s lying

Rachel then approaches Ramge and asks if he’s okay in a scene that made me think of my now-very-much-jossed fanfic.

Ramge is ... extremely disheartened.

And pretty much reveals the absolute core of nearly all his self-esteem issues:

But Rachel won’t hear any of it, and despite Ramge’s self-depreciating protests, just makes a decision for him.

He leaves with the absolute confidence that Ramge will do as he was ordered because Rachel’s a spoiled brat who always gets what he wants lol.

literally this kid is too hard on himself and sia tries to give him some encouragement cause she is more patient than my own cats that’s for sure

Ramge doesn’t believe her though, so Sia decides the best way to prove it’s not as bad as Ramge thinks is to to hear what the others have to say about him. So he does the Thing where he eavesdrops on the other Guards to see what they have to say and OF COURSE NONE OF IT IS ANY GOOD:

Baraka then joins in on the gossip.

hahaha baraka really has his eyes on rachel a lot, i thought he was supposed to be spying on ramge wwwwwwww (score another point for me totally thinking rachel and baraka have a FWB type relationship)

Ramge also finds Bathory and Rera in the forest, where Rera hopes that Ramge doesn’t come back so they can get to more “fun” training (except she likes Ramge’s cat so he can come back but only cause of Cat cause Rera is a woman of culture nya).

Ramge is now just positively, utterly gutted.

He returns to his room at the inn where he spends a restless night, anxious and depressed. Looks like he totally forgot someone while wallowing in his misery... ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

The next morning...

But Ramge is reluctant to go back, already feeling the weight of the others’ judgment on him.

Sia once again tries to encourage him, but Ramge’s feeling too miserable to buy into her words this time.

Well damn, with those words just you’re asking for a certain someone to show up.

Which he does. With enough exclamation points to let you know that he’s SUPER PISSED despite the cute chibis.

well i mean the man did get stood up

that totally reeks of desperation rachel please stop omfg

Anyhoo, Ramge and Sia are surprised (and a little scared, since angry Rachel is pretty intimidating), and Ramge asks why Rachel came.

So now both of them are playing hooky...

Then Rachel orders him to follow him to the woods. Ramge and Sia, not wanting to anger Rachel further, oblige.

Rachel Logic at work here, folks.

Rachel then tells Ramge to draw his weapon, of which Ramge and Sia mistake his intent, but Rachel’s like ??? we’re gonna train together and prove everyone wrong

Ramge’s STILL doubting everything and rachel’s like ffs just TRY and the two cross weapons and i’m totally reading this in a sexual way LOL

ufufufufu

ANYHOO Rachel gives him some last encouraging words and makes Ramge promise he’ll show up to training tomorrow and the day ends. Ramge sleeps well that night but the next morning, the anxiety is back.

But he made a promise to Rachel and Sia agrees, saying that Rachel is waiting, so Ramge forces himself to go to training.

Straight up Xiakhan starts off with that Mean Girl shit. It’s getting comical at this point lol. Rachel tells Ramge to ignore him, so Xiakhan sets his targets on Rachel and hooooo boy

man this is one of those times i wish this wasn’t done with the chibi format cause i can totally picture rachel’s unhinged smiling expression in that last panel (xiakhan’s not wrong though lol... rachel definitely does whatever the fuck he wants)

Luckily Rudley shows up before any violence erupts. And since he sees everyone is just so FULL OF ENERGY he decides it’ll be PT today. And going by the veterans’ reactions, his physical training isn’t for the faint-hearted.

After they finish PT, Ramge is missing so Xiakhan takes this time to lob another snide remark at an easy target, but Rachel scoffs at him and tell him to look again: Ramge arrives, also exhausted, but he completed the training.

christ rachel really believes in ramge

Rachel and Xiakhan have some more back and forth (looks like the vitriol that Baraka and Xiakhan had in Saga was transferred to Rachel and Xiakhan instead) and then everyone leaves. Rachel comes forward to congratulate Ramge on his hard work, but these results aren’t good enough for Ramge.

He’s had a taste of success and now he feels like he can do more. He asks Rachel to train him some more. Rachel is pleased and more than willing to help. (god he has it bad)

The two meet later that night for sword sparring since Rachel predicts this might be the next day’s training. heheheh sword sparring.....

As an aside RAMGE WITH A SWORD IS A SURPRISINGLY HOT IMAGE and i hope some fanartists do some art with this cause oh my GOD????????

From the shadows, Rudley proudly watches his ship starting to sail. lol.

The next day, after the usual opening Mean Girl volley from Xiakhan, he and Rachel make a bet: if Ramge can prove his skills, then Xiakhan would apologize. If Ramge can’t, then Rachel would quit the Guard.

Since duels are disallowed between Guard members, Rudley suggests that the measure of skill be done through sword training: the Guard need to copy Rudley’s movements and he will judge their technique. He shows off the tech and Ramge is surprised to see that it was the very move he was practicing the night before.

Xiakhan starts off and Rudley finds it unsatisfactory. So Rachel goes next and while it’s not perfect, it’s quite impressive—Baraka pays him a high compliment and Bathory even admits Rachel’s a level above herself (... she’s a sorceress anyway?). Rudley also recognizes Rachel’s skills.

Ramge’s turn comes and he psyches himself up with some of the sweetest but cheesiest thoughts oh my god:

holy shit man you met him like, literally three days ago, what is this LOL true love

So through the power of friendship, Ramge passes.

Rachel showers him with embarrassingly effusive of praise LOL, and the other Guards accept Ramge’s not as bad as they thought. Xiakhan does one of those faux apologies: “I’m sorry if you were offended” but Ramge’s magnanimous enough to accept it.

All’s well that ends well. Ramge is now accepted as a member of the King’s Guard.

The following day is a day off, so Ramge thinks perhaps he should start thinking about his original mission: stealing Exestruk. But Sia thinks Ramge should take a well-deserved break; they’ll still be here for a few more weeks, so another opportunity will definitely pop up.

Cue Rachel showing up.

HOLY SHIT HE DIDN”T FORGET THEY HAD A CANCELED FIRST DATE ROFLMAO

Ramge did though, until this moment. He still wants to look into Exestruk, but Sia butts in and with Rachel, the two tag-team Ramge into having a day off.

Sia indignantly introduces herself and then says that she always is with Ramge.

lol i’m so, so happy to see my headcanon that these two snipe at each other is 100% legit

But honestly Rachel can be a bit of a dick lol. he’s totally not jealous

So the two have a date by wandering around town and taking in the sights until evening.

And when the night has come, Ramge is ready to head in cause it’s dark (cause he’s never been out late since he’s a good little boy), but Rachel is like no, this is when the real fun starts and says he knows a great place to party after dark.

Like. It’s a bar, isn’t it? oh my god rachel don’t tell me

LOL YUP THEY HEAD TO A BAR

And I proceed to suffer extreme secondhand embarrassment as Rachel tries to act super adult but god it’s so painfully obvious he’s a bit out of his league here and this has basically ALL THE ENERGY OF TWO KIDS HEADING SOMEWHERE WITHOUT PARENTAL SUPERVISION FOR THE FIRST TIME

Oof. Another blow to headcanon; I characterize Rachel as being fond of sweets after that one 4-koma where he had a huge mountain of shaved ice but looks like the game is saying nah. Course, he could also be trying to look adult by not asking for anything sweet since sweets are often seen as childlish...

... i’m keeping that headcanon regardless, but mostly cause i like the idea of ramge constantly getting distracted by rachel sucking on hard candies wwwww!

Anyway, they sit to wait for the orders and have a bit of interesting small talk as Ramge inquires how Rachel found out about this place and Rachel reveals it’s from servants and other working class folk that nobles wouldn’t normally associate with. (Yay, at least this headcanon of mine wasn’t jossed!)

Course, Rachel’s mom being a commoner probably skews his preferences as well.

After this the barkeep brings their drinks: ginger ale. The secondhand embarrassment creeps up again, especially with Rachel’s hilarious reaction:

But Ramge takes it and downs it and finds it most satisfactory.

Rachel sulks a bit though.

When Ramge asks for clarification, we get Rachel skirting some of his backstory; find it pretty interesting that Rachel apparently has never talked to Ramge about what happened to him (and matches my headcanon, hooray!).

But I guess it’d be weird to drop all the Game of Thrones shit going on in your family on someone you only met a few days ago LOL. Ramge only responds with ellipsis, which confers his empathy and similar familial issues.

And there it is, this right here. Coupled with Rachel’s earlier line about the wounded understanding the wounded, this is basically the ship lol. Two lonely boys with wildly different personalities but similar hardships finding solace in each other.

And Ramge drinks to that and orders a second round. And Rachel’s like, well, what the hell, it ain’t alcohol but eh, when in Rome and chugs down his.

When the two finally leave, Rachel remembers he promised Sia a treat, so he orders some dried fish. The barkeep warns him that the stuff can get pretty smelly and Rachel’s like, it’s fine, it’s for a cat.

Sia gets indignant, reminding him that cats have a much more sensitive nose, so Rachel reconsiders:

... yeah she’s totally gonna sleep with her butt on your face later on, bro

Things are now going swimmingly for Ramge. At training he’s faring well, becoming more accepted by the others and getting stronger as well.

(ww find it amusing that ramge is apparently pretty competent with a sword but rachel is absolutely shit at magic wwww!)

As an aside, this is around where you can do that moonlight flower sidequest. Apparently this is a Lenombe custom to present this flower to someone you want to ask out. ... I 100% hope someone writes up something about this since Ramge was given the extra flower! If nothing else, since the sidequests are meant to parallel Ramge’s feelings and events, I can’t help but lennyface at the timing of this particular quest.

Anyhoo, after that day’s training, Rachel says he’ll bring Ramge some food since he’s friends with the royal chef (LOL), which surprises Sia and Ramge (Sia: He’s truly a free spirit), and that he’ll meet them back at Ramge’s place with the delicious grub.

But because literally the gods hate Ramge, just when everything is going well and he’s starting to feel happy, a Dark Souls courier delivers a written message from Shufraken.

Ramge realizes that this entire time, his every move has been observed and reported upon. He demands to know if his father had anything else to say, especially about the changes Ramge has tried to bring about for himself.

But when the courier has nothing to say, Ramge understands that means his father had nothing to say either and dismisses the courier.

Heartbroken that he still doesn’t have his father’s approval (this legit was a well executed scene even for being chibi), Ramge reads the message.

Sia tries to reassure him that this isn’t true but...

We don’t get to know the exact contents of the letter, but the general gist is there: Ramge acted unexpectedly and this is a problem. So Ramge has to fix it: by getting Exestruk ASAP.

This all seems suspect; it’s pretty obvious Shufraken is once again manipulating Ramge.

Realizing what he has to do, Ramge takes a final tour around Khuntara. As he leaves, we see that Rachel was eavesdropping all along.

At the bar, he reminiscences the fun he had with Rachel.

At a bridge overlooking the city, he thinks of how warm it is compared to his homeland. Sia tries to say there can still be a way to fix things, but Ramge wonders if that’s really true.

And definitely another hit to a headcanon, whaooooooo. Looks like I actually had Rachel’s and Ramge’s feelings about their homelands mixed up LOL! whelp

The final stop is the inn they stayed at, and Ramge said it was more home to him than home ever was—that he slept better here than he ever did in his fancy bed at Obliana. And he says after they finish the business with Exestruk, they’ll return here, to home.

After Ramge has Sia make an excuse to Rachel on why they wouldn’t meet (”If I see him, I’ll fall apart.” OH MY GOD THIS IS A BL AT THIS POINT), the pair leave—unknowingly tailed by Rachel.

They then approach the palace, ready to steal Exestruk. And Ramge reassures a worrying Sia that he’s not stealing Exestruk for Daddy, but for himself: that once this is done, he can return to being King’s Guard. (... that’s if you don’t get caught, honey, but WE ALL KNOW WHAT HAPPENS ANYWAY)

As the two sneak into the palace, they spot a shadow (this is Iris, following the storyline of the main game) heading toward where Exestruk is kept in the palace chapel and tail her. Meanwhile, the Emperor, feeling something is awry, decides to head toward the chapel to pray. He spots Ramge and Sia heading toward the chapel.

Ramge and Sia arrive at the chapel to find Exestruk is gone and begin to panic. Ramge takes out his staff, believing that the culprit can’t have gotten far: he has to get Exestruk, no matter the cost. And the Emperor shows up at this moment, having recognized Ramge as a King’s Guard, and treats him kindly, thinking Ramge also needed a moment of prayer. Ramge and Sia are internally panicking, worried that they’ll be blamed for stealing the sword.

Then the emperor notices Exestruk is missing and that kind mood immediately turns hostile. He strikes at Ramge, accusing him despite Sia’s protests that the sword was already gone when they got here and they were looking for the culprit too.

He tries to strike Ramge again but Sia takes the hit (SHE IS OK! THE CAT LIVES!) and this angers Ramge. He lashes out with a wave of magic at the Emperor. But it’s weak and ineffective and he collapses from the effort. The Emperor simply scoffs at Ramge’s pathetic attempt.

He approaches Ramge, believing (rightly) that Ramge is acting under orders, but when Ramge refuses to answer his interrogation, the Emperor decides to strike down Ramge for good when Rachel wordlessly runs up for the heroic rescue.

Only. Well. I guess he does technically rescue Ramge.

BY MURDERATING THE FUCKING EMPEROR WITHOUT A WORD OR HESITATION WHILE GRINNING HIS SLASHER SMILE

THIS MADLAD SAID FUCK THE WORLD ONLY RAMGE MATTERS

And since I know tumblr resizes to tiny, here’s a link to a fullsize. his scar is on the correct side hallejuah

I needed a legit moment, I actually screamed and it was 4am.

So. One of the biggest mysteries in the game. Has one of the biggest twists.

Rachel killed the Emperor.

if you have any doubt about how much rachel loves ramge

i don’t know what to tell you

And man, he’s not even bothered by it. Just steps over the dead body (DEM X_X EYES ROFLMAO) toward a shocked Ramge and proceeds with a plan on How To Commit Murder and Treason and Get Away With It:

Ramge questions why Rachel helped him, and Rachel reveals he overheard Ramge’s angst. He then urges Ramge to take Exestruk back to Shufraken (with the implication that if this will make Ramge happy, this is what must be done).

oh well at least rachel’s aware of the implications of his actions lol

Ramge and Sia explain they don’t have Exestruk and that it was missing when they got here, so Rachel’s like okay, Plan B:

Rachel’s basically telling Ramge that the motivations Ramge had for even going this far need to be abandoned. Ramge, understandably, questions if Rachel just wants Ramge to live the rest of his life as a fugitive.

But no, Rachel has a Plan for that:

holy shit rachel is just so next level LOL what is this

Sia, of course, thinks Rachel is trying to set them up for the Emperor’s death, but Rachel explains there’s a bit of a loophole with the authority of the King’s Guard:

... that coup d’etat that happens in saint west is gonna put a bit of a wrench in those plans but rachel doesn’t know it yet LOL

guess we know the real reason he guns heavily for that throne (it’ll be real interesting to see how this plays out if/when it ever comes out he’s not John’s real son)

holy shit i really think rachel is gonna get a huge tragic ending at this point, and it’s all cause of ramge oh my god

And as batshit as this all sounds, Ramge agrees to Rachel’s plan because of the alluring thought of finally being free from his father.

Rachel reminds Ramge to run away toward Saint West where Rachel’s authority can save him (although we know he doesn’t make it through North von Frosty before Shufraken catches him and Ramge returns to Daddy).

The guards finally show up and the three make their escape, with Iris also escaping with Exestruk afterwards, which starts the main storyline for the game when she meets Zeon.

And end.

Wow. Just. wow.

So upon finishing Memorial Saga - Ramge, my overall thoughts:

... they literally knew each other for like a week but are totally BESTIES4EVA♥??? This feels so Romeo and Juliet LOL. ngl with the emphasis about them having familial politics and bonding over this, i wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t some sort of reference to that Still, it’s really hard to buy into them having any sort of meaningful bond over such a short time, but I guess that’s also the point, in a way. Incredibly intense feelings over a short period of time. This is some weird fucked up co-dependent shit I love it.

The main story canon had Sia stating that Ramge left her behind when the assassination happened so she didn’t know what occurred. Looks like this is her lying to cover up for Rachel and not at all a plot hole.

Rachel... isn’t named leader of the King’s Guard at all in this???? so timeline is a bit wonky????????? since it seems like he’s still very much a rookie that only barely got accepted, so how did he get the leadership role? he gets deferred to in his fated meeting King’s Guard ep too. Did this happen very recently, aka with the new Emperor slapping the role on him as I’m sure he very eagerly volunteered to “find” Ramge to “bring him to justice?” or did the devs just straight up forget this shit in their haste to deliver us this beautifully tragic love story

but holy shit fellas is it gay to burn down the world for your best friend? i am still literally absolutely shook that rachel is the culprit. he was the last person i ever suspected until it was building up to that point (”they are seriously not going to have rachel kill the emperor... oh ... rachel showed up... armed... oh god he’s going to HOLY FUCK HE FUCKING DID IT AND HE’S SHOWING HIS TRUE PERSONALITY IN THIS GODLY ART HOLY SHIT”)

i am 100% here for this though, THIS is the rachel i love. y’all he’s so messed up.

Does literally put all of his interactions during Chapter 9 in a whole different light though (half of it also now doesn’t make sense? more plot holes!), and definitely puts his final words to Ramge in ch10 on a whole different level. though the way ramge so quickly abandoned him lol

Now I’m really curious if Baraka came to the conclusion that Rachel did it when he questioned Ramge and got non-answers, cause there’s very few people in the world Ramge would take the fall for. (Pretty sure he did, especially since he was like “I will see you again when the true culprit comes to light.”) Really wanting to know how that goes since Wasted Red’s royal family seems pretty loyal to the Emperor, so I’m wondering if Baraka really would let Rachel get away with this, King’s Guard or no.

just make rachel emperor he’s already the general for lenombe nation

However, looks like Iris also saw the murder? And that Rachel was the culprit. I might have to go back to Ch9 again cause I don’t think she reacted like she had that knowledge??? yet more plot holes?! did they really plan for rachel to be the culprit for the beginning or was this just for shock value as a twist few, if any, guessed LOL

Man, and you know the final cherry on all of this? Shufraken probably planned all of it to happen this way, especially after that brief scene after Rachel and Ramge’s date where the Dark Soul spy noted he had to tell Shufraken about the Prince of Saint West hanging out with Ramge. fuck man sins of the fathers

and oh my god they’re actually murder boyfriends/husbands now, consecrated in a church no less HA HAHAHA lolol this is great bait

Anyway, glad to say I was not disappointed by Ramge’s Memorial Saga other than one main point: I wish sidequests actually gave rewards since they feel like padding otherwise. 5-10 xes per quest would’ve been nice, since you get literally nothing but a title for doing the mode, but even exp books or abrasives or hell, even gold, could’ve been a nice treat.

Was pleasantly surprised by an actual illustration cut-in and I hope the game utilizes such things more since they’re so weird about the 3D cutscenes.

I dunno if I’d enjoy other Memorial Sagas as much as this one, since I’m really really invested in these two characters (and the twist at the end is what nailed it for me) and this is a huge dump of backstory for them, but I’m glad to see that the writers are actually taking time to flesh out more of the story since the game’s unusual setting of focusing on politics is part of what makes it interesting.

holy shit though, rachel is the BEST character. i hope he comes back into main story soon aaaaaaa♥ also buff him please or fix his fatecore ugh and give him some updated art

also ahahahaha i hope someone does some kinkfic where ramge does escape to saint west to be ‘captured’ by rachel and gets ‘punished’ oh ho ho ho hooooo

#roo gaming #exos heroes #ramge #rachel #screenshot #kerunji #i cannot love rachel any more than i do now oh my god #eh memorial saga

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fallcolorspringrapid · 3 years

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alright rest of the final episode screencaps go!

these are nearly all from the dad scene, for crying-related reasons

lan zhan is so cute when he’s hesitantly trying to confess his love tell wei ying about a-yuan. and i love that dizi twirling, it looks so effortless

wei ying’s face! poor baby still can’t catch a break

can’t remember what happens in the dialogue here, but wei ying’s face is again sending me, as is the whole tableau. sizhui all earnest, lan zhan snapped back into hanguang-jun mode, wen ning being the cutest little zombie, wei ying leaning on pinguo, and pinguo looking so done with these idiots

ah wei baby, don’t cry!

this is the cutest family reunion. i can’t handle this much cute. this is where i started to cry a little

what he means is “we somehow seem to have adopted a child together and i think it’s wonderful of us”

then wei ying gets into strict dad mode...

...and lan zhan looks like he’s thinking “this better not awaken anything in me”

whoops, too late

he’s honest to god flirting here

and just experiencing so much happiness he’s overflowing with it

but then oh god oh no

responsibilities

i bet at this point lwj already knows that his brother will step down and the clan leader’s burden will fall on him. and if he’s not there to carry it, if he’s not there to make sure the cultivation world doesn’t fall into chaos with the new power vacuum, can he really say he’s fulfilled his promise to stand on the side of justice? not going with wei ying will bring regrets. going with him would bring even more

this is where i started to cry a lot

before being overcome by tears, i managed to snatch one last pic, from the scene where they talk with clan leader nie

i’m honestly losing my mind over this pic

this is his excellency the chief cultivator looking at the former public enemy no 1 and...they’re in public?? and there’s just so much tender yearning on his face and he doesn’t even try to hide it?? he’s so soft! he’s so much in love! and he’s already missing wei ying more than he can bear

after this i just cried and cried. wei ying’s poetic goodbye lives rent-free in my head, as does lan zhan’s charmingly defiant “way ahead of you”

i love this ending. it’s complex. it’s bittersweet. it leaves so many possibilities.

my post-canon headcanon goes: lan zhan leads his clan at cloud recesses and wei ying travels the world, and they meet up every now and again, and it’s not an easy way to live, but there is still much happiness

#the untamed #wangxian #my screencaps #my fics #thinking of starting a rewatch today

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isisparker · 4 years

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“Your 500-year resentment wouldn’t have been settled with a few words. You probably would have thought I was lying to you. And you probably wouldn’t have let me stay next to you. If I couldn’t stay by your side or protect you, the truth wouldn’t matter at all. I wanted to show you with my actions this time around. Not as the weak prince who made empty promises, but as the Guibanjang who protected you. I know it’s late but I really wanted to make good on my promise. I’m sorry it took so long.”

Mystic Pop Up Bar [2020]

So this scene has been giffed and screencapped before but I wanted to make a post that included my commentary on why it’s one of my favorite parts of their [Weol Ju and Gwi/Yi Hon] entire relationship. The images highlight exactly why I adore it and it all comes down to How Gwi Loves Weol Ju: by following, supporting her, observing, waiting, and letting her make the first move.

From the beginning of the series when you’re introduced to these two, you assume that Gwi does whatever Weol Ju orders because despite being the “manager” of her bar, she’s his boss and he’s just an employee. A worker that [for whatever reason we had yet to find out] used to be a big deal prior to being sent to work for Weol Ju. Early on they established that Weol Ju was in charge and Gwi just follows her lead (often snarking, bickering, and bemoaning BUT ALWAYS FOLLOWING).

Gradually you start to sense that there is more to how Gwi regards Weol Ju because no matter how many times he complains or picks a fight with her about her temper or looks put out due to her antics, this man continues to not only follow her lead but stands by her side, observing and anticipating her moves, and tries his best to help her or stand to the side if she wanted to handle things on her own. You begin to notice that he’s basically the best type of partner you could ask for: someone that calls you out on your bullshit, but also supports you no matter what, someone that watches your back but is also willing to stand in front and take the beating, someone that openly sees your flaws and accepts and loves your flawed self.

On this journey of discovering why Gwi cares so much about Weol Ju, you also discover who he is and in that truth, you realize the heartbreak that will come from it. Thus why Gwi and Weol Ju eventually got to this point of not just hearing his side of what happened in their Former Lives, but whether or not to forgive him and move forward.

When Gwi/Yi Hon gave her the jade ring he had once planned to propose with, that ring was a symbol of his love, his devotion, and asking of forgiveness for all the pain he had brought to her. Gwi could have reached over and placed the ring in her hand. Gwi could have proposed to her once more. Gwi could have given that ring in various cliched ways, BUT he did it in the most IN CHARACTER WAY by placing it on the table and allowing Weol Ju to decide what to do with the ring.

He placed the ring on the table and waited for her to decide what to do with it and, knowing how he is, would live with whatever action she took regardless of what his own heart wanted. Because that’s how he’s loved her for the single year that he’s been by her side; by putting her first and letting her lead.

And Weol Ju sees in his eyes and how he bowed his head, waiting for her to decide, that what she does next will truly matter to their relationship. You can already start to see that she’s forgiving him for his sins of the past, but now what to do with the love that he’s literally laid on the table for her. Obviously, she doesn’t hate him anymore because she would have tossed that ring back at him. No. She still loves him. And that ring is a physical manifestation of his love and devotion to her and, sure, she could pocket it or put it on her own hand, but...

She slowly raises her left hand and extends it out for Gwi to properly place it on her ring finger. Weol Ju silently offers her hand to him. It is a simple gesture of trust and in a way, it’s an act of acceptance. An act of accepting his apology, accepting the truth of their past, and accepting of his long-hidden and patient love for her.

Bonus thought that I could add in another post but I was on a roll so instead, it’s hidden after the jump:

I’ve seen a few people [on various forums and reviews] that would have liked to hear Gwi verbalize his love for Weol Ju, especially after that scene in the finale where she cried “I love you” twice, but honestly, I didn’t need him to nor want him [at this point, unless we miraculously get a second season]. Why? Because we already KNOW that he loves her. As he said, he [Yi Hon] once made the mistake of words and empty promises, so instead he [Gwi] now lives to SHOW HER that he loves her. I didn’t need that man to wax poetic about how much he loves her when for nearly 12 episodes we’ve SEEN the beauty of that love. We’ve seen it in how he protects her, in how he follows her like she was the sun [or the moon], in how he nags at her to eat when she’s drinking too much, in leaving her be if she wants a moment of solitude, in observing her when he suspects she’s going to kick someone’s ass, in trying to help Kang Bae understand why Weol Ju acts the way she does, in breaking Afterlife Law because her compassion is crying out for help... Even if he was never the Crown Prince (which thankfully he was!), you cannot tell me that Manager Gwi wasn’t in love with Weol Ju.

Like honestly, I could not have asked for a better love story...

#mystic pop up bar #mpub rewatch #technically a rewatch?#more like an analysis of a scene #despite the series ending...#listen I LOVE THIS OTP SO MUCH #i'm not ready to say goodbye [obviously]

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overthinkingkdrama · 5 years

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Jona’s Top 10 Dramas of 2019

A couple words about how I do these lists. Firstly, I only count as “2019 dramas” shows that finished airing in 2019, therefore dramas that started airing in 2018 but finished in the early months of 2019 have been included in my process, but dramas that are currently airing and will finish in 2020 have not been included. Secondly, this list is more based on my subjective experience with each of these dramas than my objective assessment on things like acting, writing and production values, though naturally I take the latter into account when forming my opinions.

Also: Yay! This year I managed to write a full review on every drama that wound up in my top ten, so feel free to click the link on each title and check those out if you want to read my detailed thoughts.

10. Hotel Del Luna

I have a somewhat Stockholm Syndrome-y relationship with Hong Sisters dramas. Though a lot of them are not excellent, or stumble a bit in the execution, I can’t seem to stop watching them. And yes, I’ve seen them all. Something about their particular blend of fantasy, romance and camp just works for me. I do think Hotel Del Luna plays to their strengths. Somewhat like if they got to take a second run at Master’s Sun but with their dream budget, and it’s just fun. This drama is gorgeous to look at. However, it is Lee Ji Eun, aka IU, who carries the entire drama on her lovely shoulders with her mesmerizing presence as Jang Man Wol.

Bottom Line: It shouldn’t be this way, but it’s so rare to get a mainstream drama where the female lead is allowed to be truly dark and flawed, or for a drama to fully focus on its heroine’s journey through the whole run.

9. Encounter

I was somewhat disappointed by the ending of this drama, and I think that might have made me unduly harsh when I looked back at it earlier in the year. However, I got the chance to rewatch episodes with a friend and was reminded of the soft, romantic escapism of this drama. Ultimately that’s the reason this ended up in the list. I like that it plays the rich woman/poor man, noona-romance tropes entirely straight and I liked the quixotic fairy tale it was unapologetically trying to sell me. Park Bo Gum and Song Hye Gyo are a noona-romance dream team up that I’m glad I got to see at least once in my lifetime.

Bottom Line: If you don’t like your dramas slow-paced and highly sentimental then this might not be the show for you, but I can appreciate a drama that knows exactly what kind of show it is and tries to do one thing well.

8. The Light in Your Eyes

If there’s any common theme to these favorites lists in previous years, it’s that they usually include dramas that took me by surprise and did something I haven’t seen before. The Light In Your Eyes fits that description so well, not just because of oddly dark tone or the quirky premise it presents in the first episodes, but because it’s a drama dedicated to showcasing the talents of the veteran actress, Kim Hye Ja, with whom the lead character shares a name. Of the dramas on the list this one made me cry the hardest.

Bottom Line: The Light In Your Eyes is a drama that has a greater emotional coherence than it does logical sense. In fact, if you think about the plot too hard it falls apart entirely. But it feels true, and that’s why it hit me so hard.

7. Search WWW

In my review I called Search a “female power fantasy” and I still think that’s a good description. It’s also sexy romantic fantasy, twice a noona romance, and a corporate drama focused on the very contemporary issues of powerful search engine companies and how they affect the information we see and the way we view the world. I think any of those is an interesting enough angle to make a drama about, maybe several dramas. If this show has one major flaw, it might be trying to wear too many hats at once. But I salute the creators for trying to make us something different than the typical pretty boy chaebol story, and giving us not one but three female characters filling those typically male roles.

Bottom Line: I do believe this drama deserves more love and respect than it got from a fandom that at least in theory cares about women’s stories. But I also understand why a lot of people didn’t connect with the lead character or the business stuff. But for me there was something about the lead couple that rang true and resonated with me.

6. WATCHER

Every time I watch a thriller, I’m hoping for something like WATCHER. Something with deep, complex, gray characters and a story full of twists and turns that keeps me engaged and guessing from episode one until the finale. Add on top of that a powerful cast who can really do justice to these substantial characters, you’ve got a winning recipe. OCN produces a lot of dramas in this genre, and they seem to be more prone to produce sequels than most other networks. Unfortunately, that also means a lot of the dramas they make feel paint-by-numbers and empty on the inside. WATCHER is one of those shows that reminds me why I keep coming back to this network and this kind of story time and again.

Bottom Line: This is one of those dramas that has you second guessing yourself even when they come right out and give you the answer, keeping you in a perpetual state of distrust along with the characters. But it’s built on the strong backbone of complicated and dynamic character relationships, which is why it is one of this year’s best.

5. Be Melodramatic

The higher I get up this list the harder time I have boiling down my thoughts on these dramas to one pithy paragraph. Often even I don’t know what kind of dramas are going to steal my heart. I have a particular weakness for dramas that can make me both laugh and cry, and then laugh through the tears. Dramas like Go Back Couple and Matrimonial Chaos that have deep heartache folded into the shenanigans. I love a funny drama. I like to laugh, but that doesn’t count for much unless I really care about the characters and their lives at the end of the day. That’s what makes me go from liking a drama to loving it, and that’s ultimately what I’m going to remember about a drama when it’s over. Be Melodramatic is special for the way it deals with heavy subjects in a gentle and lighthearted way, and somehow without losing the emotional impact.

Bottom Line: Be Melodramatic is a drama with tongue firmly planted in cheek, lots of laughs, lots of clever dialogue as well as a meta look at the drama industry from the inside, but the reason it works so well is the vein of heart, love and loss that runs all through the story.

4. One Spring Night

It’s so gratifying when a drama delivers exactly the experience you hoped it would. One Spring Night was a drama that ended up on my radar on the strength of the previews and posters, which promised me understated, romantic slice-of-life. I’d really enjoyed Han Ji Min in The Light in Your Eyes and have been fond of Jung Hae In since While You Were Sleeping. The pairing immediately seemed to have potential, but because the drama was picked up by Netflix, in the US I had to wait until it finished airing before I could give it a shot. A lot of the time when that happens, I see enough of the drama through gifs and screencaps that my interest fades. In this case I was only more intrigued. I’ve still never watched Something In The Rain but watching this drama has made me consider that might have been an oversight on my part. And yet I worry that if I watched it now I wouldn’t be able to help unfavorably comparing it to One Spring Night. This drama is truly something special.

Bottom Line: Because of the restrained, faithful realism of this drama and the two leads who seamlessly embody their characters, this drama has the almost voyeuristic quality of peeking into something intimate and private. It’s a palpable and thoroughly involving love story.

3. Nokdu Flower

I can hardly recommend this underrated gem of a show enough. I know nearly every historical gets compared either favorably or otherwise to Six Flying Dragons, which is kind of the recent high-water mark of sageuks, and I’m going to do that again here because Nokdu Flower is really the first historical drama I’ve watched since SFD that is at the same level of quality. One thing that sticks out about my experience watching both dramas is getting actual shivers watching these charismatic leaders rally their followers around them, and understanding at least in some small part why someone would leave behind everything they knew, pick up arms, and risk their lives for an ideal. Nokdu Flower captures the fearful power of revolutionary ideas in the hands of common people, but doesn’t descend into mere jingoism or sand off the rough edges or try to white wash the dark parts of human nature while it’s at it.

Bottom Line: At its most basic level Nokdu Flower is a story of revolution, and one of flawed characters either finding their humanity or having it burned out of them in the crucible of war. As that description would suggest it’s not an easy watch, but it’s a good and worthwhile one and definitely one any sageuk fan should check out.

2. My Country: The New Age

Compared to the far more traditional and grounded Nokdu Flower, My Country is almost fantastical in tone and at times eschews logic and realism for set pieces, sword fights and close range shotgun blasts of pathos. That’s probably why I love it. The larger-than-life sensationalism of this drama is what pushes it higher on this list than the carefully crafted Nokdu Flower, because this drama appealed to me on a more primal way. It’s so unrestrained and epic in everything from the set design, the soundtrack, the cinematography to the characters themselves and the performances of the actors playing them. Lurid, melodramatic, passionate, intense, suspenseful, romantic, raw, angsty, dark...I’ve basically run out of new adjectives to use while describing this drama elsewhere on this site. Basically, My Country is my id on a plate. Bon appetit.

Bottom Line: While there are definitely misguided and flawed elements to the writing and execution in this drama, somehow all of that is swept away in the sheer pleasure of watching it. If it had been specifically designed to appeal to every narrative kink I have, they couldn’t have made a more perfect drama for my tastes.

1. Children of Nobody

I finished my favorite drama of 2019 back in January, and then got to wait around 11 and a half months to see if anything else I watched last year would knock Children of Nobody from the top spot. It’s a mixed blessing to peak that early in the year. On the one hand, there was nowhere to go but down from here. On the other, I’ve had a lot of time to digest this very heavy show, which is something I definitely needed. I mentioned in my original review of this drama that each of the characters is an iceberg, so much more going on beneath the surface than what we can see. And what I’ve realized over the course of the past year is that the whole drama is like that, in a way. It’s an iceberg of a story, and I was able to pour a lot of myself into it, to try to understand it, and that’s part of the reason it was such an emotional watch for me. I don’t know when or if I’m going to be able to rewatch Children of Nobody, but I hope I can do it some day because I feel certain I would appreciate it even more upon a second viewing. The fact that this is a murder mystery and a thriller is almost incidental to the emotional core of the story, which is deeper and more lingering than that. The secrets, once revealed, do not diminish the story but only turn it slightly so that you can see it from a different angle.

Bottom Line: This drama is certainly not going to be for everyone. I don’t know if I would say it was underrated so much as it’s niche. The difficult subject matter is naturally going to narrow its appeal. But I do think that dramas that require the most from me, mentally and emotionally, are often the ones that stick with me the longest and make me bend and grow as a person.

I sure hope you’ve enjoyed my top 10 list this year and I wish you joy, success and profound wellbeing in 2020. Thank you again--and thank you always--for following me. I’ve got great things planned for us this year.

Jona

#kdramas 2019 #end of year reviews #top 10 #children of nobody #my country #my country: the new age #nokdu flower #one spring night #be melodramatic #melo is my nature #WATCHER #search: www #the light in your eyes #encounter #boyfriend #hotel del luna

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ioannemos · 4 years

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Preferred character, multiples of 2

for fun and contrast, i’m going to do greg from csi and muninn from allwinter

What are they like on social media? (What’s their username, profile pic, etc.)

greg: username is something minorly embarrassing (he’s carried the same username from his freakin myspace and geocities over for like. continuity purposes), profile pic is a headshot on fb/linkedin/anything else public and at least semi-professional and a goofy picture of his face anywhere public but less professional (twitter). very interactive. fb is mostly shared content from dog- and cat-spotting pages, anything noir or vegas history, and science breakthroughs. his twitter is full of dumb jokes, nearly-impenetrable science jokes, dog- and cat-spotting, retweets from daily positivity accounts, and occasionally @s a friend in random stuff (he is CONSTANTLY @ing nick in literally ANYTHING cowboy or cowboy-adjacent) ([pic of a child’s size bright pink bedazzled cowboy hat in a thrift store] “@ nick how could u give away my bday present to u like this 😢”). he definitely has an insta and a tumblr, under a different username, profile pic unrelated; insta is dog- and cat-spotting, sunrises (even the less picturesque ones), the occasional snap of unusual science results (any identifying info blacked out) with no caption except for emojis, and poorly-lit headless thrift-store selfies. tumblr is stories from work (identifying info redacted), both the funny and the tragic. he either uses no tags, or he uses tags instead of commentary. he uses so. many. emojis. on every platform

muninn: username is boring as hell anywhere public; his profile pic is a professional headshot. he posts like. nothing. he has a completely unrelated twitter (including an email unconnected to anything else) (profile pic probably a raised middle finger or something) that is solely for cat-spotting and screencaps of his texts with his cousin, especially his cousin not understanding normal life

Preferred weather?

greg: sunny and hot! he prefers cloudy nights, tho- he likes the reflection of the city lights

muninn: windy, and not wet. sunny, cloudy, hot, cold- whatever. he’ll layer accordingly. he just likes the wind and doesn’t like being wet

Favorite music?

greg: he likes lots of different kinds of music- rock, metal, jazz. whatever he’s listening to, he likes it loud

muninn: post-teen pop. he will die before admitting this

It’s movie night, what movie do they pick?

greg: classic noirs! or the occasional screwball comedy

muninn: a thriller or a spy movie

What’s their sleeping position?

greg: starfish, probably

muninn: he tosses and turns a lot, but he generally conks out on his stomach

Something small that they enjoy?

greg: chocolate. something as simple as a snickers or kit kat from the vending machine can make him feel better after a hard day

muninn: getting a ‘fancy’ coffee (i.e. anything other than just black coffee)

What is enough to bring them to tears?

greg: it... takes a lot. something like a long, hard, frustrating day is more likely to make him fume than cry. pretty sure the only time he cries canonically is after he sees a man getting beaten, hits someone with his car to prevent that man from getting killed, gets beaten badly, and realizes that this is how his over-protective mother is going to find out he’s in the field. so... a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day involving psychological trauma and getting the shit kicked out of him

muninn: ...also a Lot. a bad enough shock might do it, like barely surviving something and knowing other people weren’t so lucky. he’d probably have to start crying without realizing it to actually shed tears tho- if he realized he was getting choked up, he’d wrestle it into anger

How well do they take care of themselves?

greg: pretty darn well 😌

muninn: pretty darn badly 😞

Do they consider others family?

greg: oh definitely!

muninn: the allwinter practically has to beat him with a bat before he will even consider this

What’s their idea of a perfect vacation?

greg: going somewhere he’s never been or doing something he’s never done- he wants to Experience Life

muninn: he’d say something like “a week without responsibilities so i can sit at home and watch cable” but i think it’d actually be something like an alaskan cruise or one of those finnish northern lights trips. the beautiful places, being away from big cities/crowds, northern lights, and food/activities he’s never done before would pull him out of his mental rut and make his brain finally shut the hell up

The strangest thing they have ever seen?

greg: *pulls out list* *it unrolls for seven minutes*

muninn: *pulls out list* *it unrolls for seven minutes*

How much do they swear?

greg: not very much but when he does, oh boy, he’s mad

muninn: all the fu*kin time

Do they like being in pictures?

greg: yes!

muninn: NO

What’s their morning schedule?

greg: get up, shower, style hair, eat breakfast, go to work

muninn: hit ‘snooze’, get up, shower if he hasn’t in the last three days or so, drink coffee, think about eating, run out of time to make food, get food on the way into work

Something that disgusts them?

greg: i feel like something mundane, like peanut butter, is the funnier answer here (given his job he’s run into a lot of disgusting things)

muninn: grasshoppers (ditto)

#thank you #mirainawen #let's talk #ask #asked and answered #greg sanders #my favorite #csi #tv shows #muninn #you pierce my soul #i can't believe i've never tagged him before #guess i gotta go back and find him and tag him #au: allwinter #personal #abbie needs a twitter #eta every post muninn is in is not applicable for character tagging #oh well

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smolie · 4 years

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in december i wrote a 2020 year music review for myself that i intended to post here BUT...because i was infamously restricted twice last year, i didn’t bother since you wouldn’t be able to read it anyway because it was not possible to view my blog hjfdhfd

now that my restricted era is (hopefully forever) over i just want to post it here for the sake of completion since i want to do the same thing this year

this is really long so if you actually read it ... idk you are insane in the membrane and i love you... but i genuinely don’t expect anyone to read this hjfdhjf i just like reflecting on the music i have listened to and be able to look back on what i enjoyed in certain stages of my life! okiiii bye 💗

january

mac miller - circles (album) it’s a bit funny that i worried putting my thoughts down about this album and now it turns out to be first on the list, chronologically of course … oh bittersweet irony </3 listening to this album is such a double edged sword, either way i am always hit with a truckload of feelings when i turn to this release.

this album came to me in a time of my life where i was slowly but surely sliding down towards rock bottom again just after i got out of it and thought i was okay. the times i’ve listened to this crying in the bathtub with a glass of wine….girl let’s not lol…. it’s almost strange how much i can relate to the thoughts another person brought to paper. the comfort this album brings me is otherworldly, i feel so understood by mac’s words and it’s my go-to “wallow in self-pity for a bit then come out stronger than before” album. then again, i feel a little sting when any of mac’s songs come on shuffle. a friend of mine said she cannot listen to artists who have passed because it feels too strange and most of the time i agree but this time, it’s so so different. this album would have been mac’s salvation, i can feel it. everything would have been a bit brighter and lighter for him after this, it would have had to be. i feel like i would do him a disservice if i did not listen to this album, so i will cherish this final gift from him as his legacy and my comfort. i miss him incredibly and am all the more thankful he shared his heart with us.

album favs: circles, good news, surf

tiny meat gang - broke bitch (single) MAN I TELL THAT BROKE BITCH IF YOU WANNA GET IN TUNE BETTER CHANGE YOUR WHOLE PITCH LIKE WOAH !!!!!!!!!! did that give you whiplash? hehe funny to say this about a song called broke bitch by a duo called tiny meat gang but this song actually means a lot to me! it came out shortly before their show in berlin and i almost exclusively listened to it on my 7+ hours train ride from one side of the country to the other to see my meat boys. this played out of the fat ass speakers at the venue when they stepped on the stage and i will never forget meeting them :’) also the song fucking slaps obviously

february

loona - [#] (mini album) ah yes, the most controversial loona release to date! i’m not gonna lie and say this sounded anything like i expected it to. but also, i have come to terms with the fact that loona release noise music now and personally i am here for it. why not did not have the endless energy of hi high or otherworldly vibe of butterfly, but it’s a hype song and i am always there for hype. i also have to say the b-sides were not as strong for me as on previous releases but i think i have to come to peace with the fact that loona will never top their debut mini for me. though if i can wish for one thing…… let loona have title tracks with a chorus in 2021? pls? crumbs?

album favs: so what, oh (yes i am)

tame impala - the slow rush (album) *lights cigarette* i’m listening to pretty underground music….i don’t think you’ve heard of this band….they are called tame impala *intro of the less i know the better starts playing* yes i am a basic white bitch and listen to like 3 alternative bands but damn i listen to them religiously. like any other basic bitch on this planet i found out about tame impala through the less i know the better and checked out their music. i wasn’t too much into this album as i was into currents but towards the end of the year, i was in a moody alternative music slump that took me back to this album and i like it a lot more now! most importantly, tame impala fulfills my primitive urge to listen to songs that exceed the 4 minute mark. something clicks in my brain when i see a song that is like 6:34 and chances that it ends up as one of my faves on a album are high. i enjoy tiktok like everyone else but this trend of 2:50 long songs needs to be stopped immediately.

album favs: borderline, lost in yesterday, it might be time, is it true, posthumous forgiveness

honorary mentions: onlyoneof - dOra maar, everglow - dundun

march

nct 127 - neo zone (album) ah, yes. the album that fundamentally changed me as a person <3 i’ve been listening to nct for a while, matter of fact i checked my top tracks 2019 playlist on spotify and cherry bomb was on there lol. i remember trying to get into them in 2018 when they released their regular-irregular album but the endless member & unit concept scared me off, so i only listened to a handful of songs without looking into them march 2020, the fateful month in which they released kick it and screencaps of jaehyun’s sexy ass tiddies in the kick it mv landed on my tumblr or twitter and i HAD to look up who this man is…...remember when i thought jaehyun was my ult for like, 2 weeks? me neither, johnny suh only in this house <3

anyway, i checked out this album and by god, is this pure kpop perfection. last time i listened to a god tier no skip album like this was … maybe the perfect red velvet? hype songs, well crafted ballads, love songs that make me wanna learn the lyrics, genuinely fun and interesting pop songs, this album has it all. somehow, the way this album is crafted greatly reminds me of brown eyed girls’ sound-g, it has the same vibe, concept and mix of genres to me, i’m not entirely sure how to explain. anyway, this album is one of my favorites of all time and even though i’ve obsessively listened to it (lastfm says 1.4k scrobbles as of today, december 7th…) i am still not tired of this. i recommend this to anyone who loves kpop tbh, you will have a good time with this!

other than being just a musically solid album, the emotional ties i have with this are …. isabel stop making albums your emotional support 2021 challenge. i’ve listened to this release all spring lockdown, this basically played at every waking hour for all of march and april. the promotion time of this era and lockdown are deeply intertwined for me and so i am always remembered of all the nct content i consumed during that time which inevitably cheered me up so much. this album really means a lot to me :’)

album favs: kick it, mad dog, love song, boom

honorary mentions: itzy - wannabe,

the weeknd - after hours (album) my dear melchanoly, was one of my favorite releases of 2018, so i had been desperate for a new release by abel and boy did he not disappoint. the perfect thotty, dirty emo 80s, making it clap while crying in the club album! this is a no skip from top to bottom and all i can say is that the grammys can go to hell <3 abel aoty! there is really not much i can say about this album, the flawless production, lyrics and sound speak for themself. my only criticism is that i feel overwhelmed by 14 songs, especially when some of them are really long. a few songs greatly overshadow the weaker tracks on the album for me but i still love this to death.

album favs: escape from LA, blinding lights, after hours, faith

dua lipa - future nostalgia (album) after the weeknd’s masterpiece of an 80s inspired pop album i was really looking forward to this. i greatly enjoyed the pre-releases, i played don’t start now and physical up and down, they are still some of my favorite songs released this year! when i first listened to the album i really liked it, songs like boys will be boys or pretty please sound like fillers to be but the rest is solid. yet a month after release you couldn’t catch me listening to this and i cannot even really tell you why. i think it was a combination of the following: 1) i greatly overplayed dsn and physical to the point where i didn’t want more of the pop 80s sound that the album has 2) there were other releases at the time that caught my attention and interest more like neo zone or after hours 3) dua herself….girl….she really gave it her all this year to make herself as unlikeable as possible. nationalist propaganda and the constant traveling during a fucking pandemic were really the kicker. i can barely stand seeing her on my instagram feed anymore, much less listen to her album. her having the nerve to go “we’re in a pandemic lol” when people asked about an animated music video …. if you don’t shut the hell up lmao … also, she takes the crown for the corniest album opener of all time. i nearly closed spotify when i heard future nostalgia (the song) lmao

album favs: don’t start now, physical, levitating, hallucinate

honorary mentions: megan thee stallion - savage

april

apink - dumhdurum (song)

listen, i’m not gonna sit here and pretend like this mini album interested me in the slightest but god, the title is such a banger.i’m so sick, eung eung and dumhdurum are a holy trilogy that i will defend until the end of time! i really hope apink stick to this mature, elegant concept, it suits them so well and goes well with their new sound. come back soon queens <3

rina sawayama - xs (song) i feel like i’m gonna catch some hands here … xs is an absolute banger, the guitar riffs and disruptive sounds really get me going every damn time! but the rest of the album … tell me why it doesn’t catch me?! i literally cannot explain. i need to take an hour, sit down and do nothing but listen to the album from top to bottom once again and see if my thoughts change but right now i only care about xs.

chungha - stay tonight (song) drama! vocals! dance break! choreography! this release served it all. i listened to this obsessively during the time of the release and it still holds up today. can we talk about the run chungha had with gotta go > snapping > stay tonight? lord have mercy.

honorary mentions: april - lalalilala, nct dream - ridin’

may

lady gaga - chromatica (album) the immense disappointment i have in this album is tough to put into words lol. any other artist might have gotten away with this release but gaga having the discography that she has, well … she doesn’t get away with it. this has underwhelming all over it. i enjoyed the pre-releases and my hope was high but the rest just doesn’t live up what i expected, i can’t even say why. it’s just underwhelming pop for someone of gaga’s calibre. i listened to this album during release week and then never again till december to write this list and i can see why.

album favs: rain on me, sour candy ft. blackpink, stupid love

baekhyun - delight (mini album) it’s confession time … this is a name i never would have expected on any of my music lists to end up. exo has always been one of those boy groups i casually listened to. i greatly enjoy their title tracks and a handful of side tracks, i have a few members that i keep an eye on more than others but that’s about it. baekhyun was never one of those members i had any interest in, matter of fact i always thought he was kinda vanilla and boring 😭 i didn’t even plan on listening to this release if it wasn’t for his association with superm and thus nct, so i gave it a shot and we have no choice but to stan. his voice is like butter and can cut sharp at the same time, his versatility is insane. i dived a bit more into baekhyun related content and he is so likeable, it’s almost ridiculous. this production is absolute god tier, not a single skip on this mini. late spring/early summer i had this weird urge to listen to songs with mellow voices but still a banger instrumental and i wholeheartedly blame this release. matter of fact, this album is so good, i had to buy a physical copy. Y’ALL. THIS IS A BIG DEAL. i haven’t bought a kpop album of anyone that’s not holy top 3 (brown eyed girls, loona, nct) in like … idk, 5 years?! baekhyun’s impact. i’m a fan now <3

album favs: candy, r u ridin’?, love again

ak aussenkontrolle - in meinem benz (song) this … is very unrelated to this entirely list but i had to put it on here. i miss my ex boss and our 3 hour drives to meetings in the south of the country where we would blast trashy german rap music </3

nct 127 - neo zone: the final round (repackage) *airhorns* REEEPACKAGE TIIIIIME!!! my first nct era that i experienced from start to finish! i remember watching nct 127’s beyond live with luna where these mfs performed punch and we finished the concert having no idea what this song sounded like. the structure is so unusual and the intro catches me off-guard every time just to hype me up beyond compare. not gonna lie, the fact that johnny has exactly one (1) line hurts but! it’s my favorite line of the entire song! possibly related to the fact that it’s his line but let’s ignore that ….

album favs: punch, make your day

kim woo seok - red moon (song) i’m not even gonna lie to you. i have not a single idea who this man is. you could put him right in front of me and i wouldn’t know … all i know is that he has a banger song. i saw him perform this on a music show that i watched for nct and i ended up loving the song … thanks for your service sir, whoever you are ...

june

stray kids - go live (album) 2020 was kind of the year of boy groups for me, i’m so sorry … stray kids promoted simultaneously with nct 127 so i ended up hearing their title track and holy hell, is that a song. god’s menu is hype from start to finish. it reminds me of good ol’ 2nd gen noise boy group song a lá b*g b*ng fantastic baby. just pure hype and fun noise. i am forever grateful to witness the birth of the line cooking like a chef, i’m a five star michelin. the title track impressed me so much that i ended up checking out the entire album which i rarely ever do with boy groups and what is even rarer is that i enjoyed the b sides lmao!!! it’s not an album that i would put on and just enjoy from start to finish but it has some really solid tracks! this release made me want to keep an eye on stray kids, they seem like a really fun bunch.

album favs: god’s menu, TA, airplane

seventeen - left & right (song) the boy group run continues … same thing with stray kids, seventeen promoted during punch era so i heard their song while watching some music station show for nct and i heard this and was sold. solid, fun pop with the catchiest pre-chorus in history and a banger chorus. i listened to the entire mini and can’t say it really caught my interest so this is a title track only release for me.

dishonorary mentions: twice - more & more (i hate this song so much lol)

honorary mentions: ryu sejeong - tiger eyes, monsta x - fantasia, chloe x halle - do it

july

irene & seulgi - monster (mini) this is a weird release because it’s good. the title track is fun enough, the b sides are dope. but my issue with this is that it’s nothing new. this sounds exactly like a red velvet release. i get that they didn’t want to a joy, seulgi, irene, yeri release only and went for the sub-unit route instead, but why not be experimental and stray away from the usual sound of the group? also, whoever made monster and not naughty the title track deserves to be spat on. at least the choreography here is more interesting and “experimental” for kpop standards. also, why only a seulgi solo and no irene? i have no idea how reveluvs reacted to this release but this has rushed written all over it.

album favs: monster, naughty (i’m counting this to the mini idc), uncover

exo-sc - 1 billion views (mini) doing my part as a filthy casual exo listener. this release goes in the same category as baekhyun’s delight where i like the album so much that i HAD to get a physical copy. i don’t know what they put in the title track for it to be so diddly darn addictive but it clearly worked. the only bad thing about this release is how criminally mismanaged it was by sm, when i get you lee sooman ...

album favs: 1 billion views, on me, say it

baekhyun - garden in the air (song) i told you i’m a loyal baekhyun fan now <3 king releases and i listen, that’s just how it goes now! this is a cover of a boa song and i really love his version. there is not much to say except that it’s a really smooth song and his voice absolutely carries the track. i enjoyed this much more than i thought i would!

hyoyeon - dessert (song) YOU KNOW WHAT I DESERVE??? DESSERT!!!!!!! *insert tik tok challenge here* imagine if miryo featured on this instead of the ethnic hip girl … why can’t we have nice things. anyway, a banger!

johnny - sunny side up episode 1 set (spotify playlist, actual set) johnny being the skilled, talented, multi-faceted king that he is has been dj-ing since before debut (not me acting like i was around at that time lmao) and thus he decided to bless our quarantined, lockdowned asses with an online dj set! that was the most turned up sunday morning i ever had in my entire life. this set kicked off an edm/house/techno affinity that i had for the following couple of weeks. this set is an absolute banger, i would go insane to this in the club. he has an amazing ear for transitions and drops and i still just put on this set on the regular when i have cleaning to do or so. he could fill the void that rona and thus no clubbing in 2020 left in my heart and i’m so happy he decided to share this with us <3 now … john … sunny side up episode 2 pspspspspsps

honorary mentions: gfriend - apple, jessi - nunu nana

august

cardi b ft. megan thee stallion - wap (song) late summer 2021. we are vaccinated, icu beds are free, barely any new cases, clubs are open, this song plays and i can finally make it fucking clap.

troye sivan - in a dream (mini album) a cute mini album! nothing life-changing or as exciting as previous releases but easy (haha!) to enjoy. i really, really enjoy easy, can always count on troye for a dreamy sound.

album favs: easy

honorary mentions: itzy - not shy

september

wonho - love synonym pt. 1: right for me (mini album) honestly? i know like, 3 monsta x songs. i never bothered to get into them and maybe i never will, but it was difficult to ignore the whole wonho & monsta x mess that went on. i have absolutely no memory of why i decided to check out this release, i guess i was curious what he was going to do and … i was positively surprised lol. open mind is the exact time of song i had been so desperate all summer (remember mellow vocals with banger instrumentals? yeah) and uhm … can’t ignore the obvious … mr wonho is fucking fine. sir, you just gained a fan … now, where is love synonym part 2?? huh?????

album favs: open mind, i just, losing you

joji - nectar (album) this one is on tiktok. i heard gimme love in a bunch of tiktoks and had to look up the song and here we are. what an album! it came right as seasonal depression started to hit and accompanied me for a good chunk of autumn. at this point one has to ask if joji can ever really miss? the entire album is a no skip, it’s almost difficult to narrow down my favorites if my favorites weren’t so damn god tier!!!

album favs: gimme love, ew, tick tock, pretty boy, your man

super m - tiger inside / 100 / drip (songs) okay, listen. technically tiger inside & 100 were already released in august. instead of those three songs i was gonna write about the entire album until i realized i really don’t give a fuck about it 😭 i really only care about those three songs. and YES, i unironically like 100. is it a good song? no. but neither is jopping and that fucking bangs. i don’t turn to superm for life-changing, profound music, i turn to them for a good time LOL and that’s what they deliver every time! that being said, taeyong’s VROOM VROOM, UHMM UHMM, GRRRAHHHH verse is life-changing and profound! speak your truth king! also i wish drip was a b side for nct 127 that song is so damn sexy

taemin - never gonna dance again act 1 (album) this isn’t kpop, this is taemin pop. taemin never misses and the fact that hw*s* won dance performance over taemin is a literal hate crime. i will never forget the industry for this daylight robbery … anyway, nice album!!!!

album favs: criminal, black rose, waiting for

stray kids - in life (repackage) *airhorns* REPACKAGE TIIIIME 2.0!!!! i was on the edge of my seat waiting what stray kids were going to deliver after i greatly enjoyed god’s menu. i was still not over listening god’s menu when the repackage came out so i didn’t listen to it right away and now i greatly regret the few days i could have listened to back door earlier </3

album favs: back door, any

jackson wang - pretty please (song) i’m not gonna pretend like i ever listened to a song by jackson ever before. he is short king from got7 in my head and that’s all! i don’t even remember why i listened to this song but all i know is that it slaps severely. i love the wong kar wai inspired music video and the choreography is fun too! i’m gonna check out more of his music <3

honorary mentions: fromis9 - feel good, knk - ride

october

blackpink - the album (album, duh) i don’t even know what to say about this … this might be the weirdest release on the list for me. there are song i absolutely fucking hate (ice cream …) and songs i get my life to (pretty savage) on here and the discrepancy just gives me massive whiplash. i would never put this album on and listen to the whole body of work, i just cannot with the brain damage it gives me. i am still stuck in 2016, begging for bp to release music like whistle/boombayah/stay/playing with fire but i think i need to give up on that wishful thinking … i am just grateful we a got a title track with actual lyrics in the chrous for once.

album favs: pretty savage, lovesick girls

nct - nct 2020 resonance pt. 1 (album) this era was … a ride. nct 2020 happening was near inevitable but with covid it got pushed back so far, i started to believe it wasn’t even going to happen. i was semi-terrified of what was going to happen during a comeback with 21 (now 23!!) member group since i only experienced nct 127 comebacks so far and uhh … a LOT happened lmfao but let’s keep this about the album … i had no idea what was going to hit me. johnny having effectively 3 lines in nct 2018 did not give me much hope and after he got denoted to no line treatment in punch again, i was ready to not even have any expectation but this release changed everything. make no mistake that most of my favorite songs are units with johnny, we knew that was gonna happen lmaooo they dropped the teaser video for misfit and i thought i had my favorite song in the bag and then faded in my last song happened. y’all. JOHNNY SINGS? LIKE? ACTUALLY SINGS? DOESN’T GET FORCED TO RAP OR TALK-SING? MY MAN’S VOCALS??? OH MY GAAAAHD! this song is dramatic, theatrical, emo, it serves vocals and rap, it has catchy english and korean lyrics, this is THE song, the ULTIMATE song. i love this song so much, i want to belt it on top of my lungs in the pouring rain. apart from fimls, i also loveeee misfit, that was to be expected after i was going completely insane over the track video. johnny has like 3 lines but again they are iconic (WARNIN’! NCT WE MOBBIN’!) and i just enjoy the track too much to be upset over that. nectar. holy fuck. nectar!!!! wayv never disappoints with their thotty songs, they now have an absolute god tier hoe-ly song trinity with love talk > bad alive > nectar. the first chorus and hendery’s first verse (CHOP CHOP CHOP!) get me every time, this song is so insanely good i am severely upset i cannot sing along to it :( music, dance has nct 127 written all over it in bold letters, it’s so inherently 127’s sound!!!! i love this song so much, it’s so fun, upset and has massive dance-ability, i wish we had gotten a stage for it but i guess you can’t have everything in life </3 make a wish……………………………..the cursed unit. i don’t want to say anything about this except that, unfortunately, the song is fun and i enjoy it. the end. overall, this album is so insanely solid. i know i talk about my favorites A LOT but i genuinely do not dislike a single song on here, this is an absolute no skip album! that’s it. see you for resonance part 2!!!!!

album favs: FADED IN MY LAST SONG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, misfit, nectar, music dance, make a wish

loona - 12:00 (mini album) controversial loona release 2.0! i don’t know what it is, but somehow they managed to lace the words di da dam di dam di dam dam dam dam di dam (yeah) with pure crack. i fucking love why not, i would even go as far to say it’s my 2nd favorite title track. that is right, i think it’s better than butterfly (btw: hi high > why not > butterfly > so what). so much was strange this comeback, from the inexplicable concept + teasers, the outfits, the styling (yves….i mourn your hot girl era) but the title track is just SO good, SO fun, SO catchy that i am willing to ignore it all. i also enjoy the b sides much more than on #, they are much more memorable to me. and now … HASEUL RETURN…………….i purely live to see the next loona comeback at this point

album favs: why not, voice, universe

twice - i can’t stop me (song) thank fuck twice released a good song this year. if more & more had been the only 2020 release, that would have been the real tragedy. not gonna lie, i still haven’t listened to the full album, it just keeps slipping my mind. but! i’m going to! until then i’m gonna bop to i can’t stop me.

ariana grande - positions (album) the way this album has people upset is so funny. i am a huge dangerous woman fan myself, it’s my fave ariana album to date but she has said repeatedly that this is not the sound she is striving for. now she has her coin and can do whatever she wants in music and if that is r’n’b then fuck! we have to live with it! lmao! i can live with the sex theme of the album because it’s delivered in a fun way? but it’s getting a bit old...if the next album is about riding dick only too idk how much i would enjoy that. i would probably always come back to ari because i like her voice so much but girl, there are other topics to sing about, i promise! anyway! i like this album, it’s one of those where i can hit shuffle and enjoy it in the background while doing other stuff.

album favs: positions, 34 + 35, love language, my hair, pov

tiny meat gang - sofia (song) ayyy, it’s my meat boys :’) ending the year the same way they started it, with a banger! i absolutely love the guitar instrumental, the melancholic love song type sound paired with the theme of singing about loving a robot … yup, that’s creativity and talent right here! this makes me so freaking desperate for a new ep and i genuinely have no idea how far or close we are to one but!!! i am always waiting!!!

noel - push (ep) this is something i absolutely did not expect. noel (of tiny meat gang!) released his first ep ever and i was absolutely wowed. noel has it all, the voice, the talent, the creativity and all it took him was the confidence to finally put something out and i’m so happy he did. he gets real personal on bus back, more than ever before and i always get a bit emo listening to this track </3 this man is gonna go places and i’m so happy to witness his journey.

album favs: crow, head sunk, bus back

honorary mentions: sam smith - diamonds

november

taemin - never gonna dance again act 2 (album) i’m gonna say it. idea is better than criminal. the chorus drop???? when he goes MY AH AH MY AH AH MY AH MY IDEA MY MY IDEAAAAAA A-A-A A-A-A???? bitch … tell me you can sit still, i won’t believe you. i like part 2’s title track more, but part 1’s b sides are more interesting to me. either way, taemin delivered as expected!!

album favs: idea, impressionable, exclusive

nct - nct 2020 resonance pt. 2 (album) part two, baby! we made it! part 2 had more mellow, ballad-y songs with my everything, i.o.u. and all about you, overall less drama than part 1 but i still enjoyed it. work it is one of those controversial songs where you despise it with your entire being or you defend this top tier noise till the end and i am absolutely the latter. the agony of not being able to listen to it and seeing the timeline so divided nearly killed me, but i have concluded that people who hate work it have never felt joy in their life <3 honestly my opinion cannot be counted because i eat up anything johnny participates in … biased ass… what i’m not gonna talk about is resonance (the song), this absolute mess of a “remix”. the audacity sm had to release this as a single is insane. anyway!! this era was a rollercoaster ride. all the interactions truly made me interested in members of other units more. hendery (the rise and fall …), yangyang my beautiful son, jeno aka blue hair guy, chenle the chaos kid and xiaojun after he made make a wish his bitch in particular! all the interactions between the units were so fun to witness and it was fun while it lasted but i am … so glad it’s over lol. i miss nct 127, i miss some peace, i hope the boys get to rest for a bit and so does my bank account.

album favs: work it, 90s love, i.o.u., raise the roof

miley cyrus - plastic hearts (album) not in a thousand years would i have expected a miley release to be on here. this girl does everything to be absolutely unlikeable in my eyes but after severely banging out to her heart of glass cover, i was really excited for this and it did not disappoint. what is disappointing is that it took her so long to find a sound that fits her like a glove. i believe many people miss out on this release after her previous history and i nearly would have done the same. this alt/rock influenced pop does her voice so many favors and i really hope she sticks to this direction, i love this album greatly!!

album favs: heart of glass, midnight sky, night crawling ft. billy joel, wtf do i know

kai - kai (mini album) just. imagine debuting with an album like that. lol. what a god tier big dick move. we all knew whatever this release was gonna be, above all it was going to be sexy and boy were we RIGHT!!!! mmmh is exactly as thotty as i needed it to be and the b sides give me everything from r’n’b to trap. i love this release and i love that it’s only the beginning of kai! like!! he is only gonna gain even more experience and become even more powerful!! what the fuck!!!!!

album favs: mmmh, ride or die, hello stranger, nothing on me

honorary mentions. gfriend - mago

december

nothing? wtf?? 😭 no interesting release happened,,,,half the time i listened to christmas songs anyway lol

pre 2020 releases i only found this year

mgmt - little dark age (album, 2018) & oracular spectactular (album, 2007) another tiktok serve. i found little dark age through a tiktok trend and ended up really liking mgmt. they fit perfectly into my autumn/winter moody alt/rock mood that i had going on and i’m happy they have so much more music that i can check out!

artist favs: little dark age, electric feel, time to pretend

tame impala - currents (album, 2015) everyone’s favorite basic alt bitch album! i enjoyed this more than the slow rush for a good chunk of time, it also fit right into my alt rock autumn mood. i really love this album, like previously mentioned it has my favorite long ass tracks on there but also a good amount of short or medium long tracks. i’m still busy enjoying currents and the slow rush but i can’t wait till i finally take the leap to dive into their other releases because i’m loving everything i’ve heard so far.

album favs: the less i know the better, let it happen, new person same old mistakes

joji - ballads 1 (2018) after liking nectar so much, checking joji out was a given and i just love this album. only when i listened to this i realized i heard slowly dancing in the dark a few times on tiktok lmao that cursed app man … i would say i love nectar a bit more but this is still a fantastic album!!

album favs: slowly dancing in the dark, attention, test drive, yeah right

jus2 - focus (mini album, 2019) in my “mellow moody bangers” phase i was scouring playlists for more songs and i think i found focus on me first which fitted right into the niche i was looking to fill and i ended up enjoy this whole release! only later i realized this is a sub-unit from got7 lmao how come i enjoy solo or unit releases by got7 members but their group discography never interested me? anyway, very sexy ep!

album favs: drunk on you, focus on me, love talk

knk - sunset (song, 2019) part of my mellow bangers playlist. very sexy, i can imagine this as a runway song! i have no idea who knk are but given the fact i enjoyed two of their songs so far maybe i should look into them lol

baekhyun - city lights (mini album, 2019) i am repenting for my sins of missing out on baekhyun releases by consuming his music at an exorbitant rate. un village is one hell of a title track that i didn’t appreciate before, but i feel like in 2020 my music interests started to vary and i love the groovy r’n’b and string sound of this song so much. i also love stay up to death, the vocals baekhyun serves here are unreal. his BABY WE CAN STAY UP!!!!!!! gets me every single time!!!! what a mini!

album favs: un village, stay up

mac miller - swimming (album, 2018) i’ve listened to this album before 2020 but i had the urge to put this on here. this is going to sound so corny, but if i had to pick one song to be my life’s title track, it would be ladders. the hope this song gives me is unreal, it feels like a light at the end of the tunnel. this album is so fantastic, i love the upbeat instrumentals paired with sometimes gloomy lyrics are so incredible, mac was truly one of the greatest artists of our time. this album is so outstanding and i miss him every day.

album favs: ladders, jet fuel, 2009, self care, perfecto

doja cat - hot pink (album, 2019) i can never decide if i like doja or not but the album slaps lol that’s it come on tiktok queen

album favs: say so, juicy, like that, streets

my fav 2020 playlists

slapping mellow

neo culture technology

malcolm

why go to therapy when this playlist exists?

top songs 2020

(by spotify)

#again a heads up: this was written in december 2020 and there are a few names mentioned here that....i want nothing to do with anymore lol #like h*ndery of gfr*end #but i'm not gonna delete them because at the time i enjoyed their releases and no one knew they were ignorant asswipes <3 #also not me thinking i'm gonna get vaccinated this summer LMFAOOOOOOO #i can consider myself lucky if i even get them this year #german government my detested <3 #about me

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dying-suffering-french-stalkers · 5 years

Text

Katabasis Patterns in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Or, in which I make use of my official Classics minor (and my unofficial film nerd minor) while ignoring my French major altogether.

Howdy, everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of Extremely On My Bullshit! Today we’re going to talk at length about how the trip to Davy Jones’ Locker in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End borrows elements from various classical narratives containing a katabasis, or a trip to the Underworld. This will be a slightly Tumblr-ified version of an actual paper I wrote for my Classical Antiquity On Screen final.

Shoutout to this post by @charlesdances, which allowed me to infodump about Hades/Persephone parallels in Barbossa and Elizabeth’s relationship across the trilogy, and to @aye-tortuga for requesting this longer post, which I teased at the end of the aforementioned meta.

Right then, let’s get started! Under a cut to spare your dashes from long post made longer still by screencaps and works cited (yep, it’s that kind of meta). For the purposes of this meta, only the first three Pirates films will be considered canon as the later sequels contradicted elements of the established lore.

I touched on this in the first paragraph, but I’ll begin by defining two words which will appear throughout this meta: katabasis and anabasis. Katabasis and anabasis are Ancient Greek terms which refer to “that narrative . . . that portrays the hero’s descent into, and ascent from, the underworld—the journey to hell” (Holtsmark 25). (If you want to get etymological about it, kata is down, ana is up, and baino comes from the verb meaning “to go [on foot].”)

This katabasis narrative takes place in the first act of At World’s End. If you’ll recall, Dead Man’s Chest ended with Elizabeth chaining Jack to the Black Pearl’s mast: she knew the Kraken was only interested in Jack, so she sacrificed him to give herself and the others a chance to escape. However, at the very end of the film, Elizabeth and the crew of the Pearl pledge to retrieve Jack from his resting place in Davy Jones’ Locker (the Underworld), and Tia Dalma offers both herself and Barbossa as guides to those “weird and haunted shores.”

So, after the cinematic fucking masterpiece that is the opening “Hoist the Colours” sequence (I also wrote a paper on that lol), we find ourselves in Singapore, where Elizabeth, Barbossa, and co. meet with the pirate lord Sao Feng in hopes of obtaining a map to the Locker. The Singapore segment opens with Elizabeth piloting a lone craft along a murky river, evoking images of Charon with his ferryman’s pole:

As she poles the boat along, she sings a pirate tune with decidedly death-centric lyrics, tuning us in to the symbolism and themes at play: “Some men have died and some are alive / Others sail on the sea / With the keys to the cage and the Devil to pay / We lay to Fiddler’s Green.* / The bell has been raised from its watery grave / Hear its sepulchral tone . . .” (*A form of afterlife from maritime folklore)

At the end of this scene, we see something odd: Tia Dalma dressed as a blind organ grinder.

Plot-wise, this serves to divert the colonial soldiers’ attention from the pirates’ activity, but metaphorically, here she represents the blind seer Tiresias, whom Odysseus encounters when he first enters the realm of Hades (Odyssey 11.187-149).

When the pirates meet Sao Feng, the imagery starts to mix a little. The filmmakers present Sao Feng in a somewhat Hades-esque (Hadean?) manner (steam, flames, and warm tones, with a skylight to imply subterranean depths):

However, while he is a powerful figure, he does not keep the Underworld itself (that duty falls to Jones); he merely keeps the knowledge of its entrance. Barbossa attempts to gain this knowledge by presenting Sao Feng with a silver coin: a reminder of his duty as Pirate Lord as well as another Charon parallel. Barbossa’s tactic does not work, but like in the previous scene, the imagery prepares viewers for the descent to come.

After getting Sao Feng’s navigational charts another way, the pirates’ journey to the underworld continues in earnest. When Will expresses doubt about their path, Barbossa nearly quotes the Aeneid outright: “Trust me, young Master Turner: it’s not gettin’ to the Land of the Dead that’s the problem; it’s gettin’ back.” This echoes the Cumaean Sibyl’s famous words to Aeneas: “Easy is the descent to [the Underworld]: night and day the door of gloomy Dis stands open; but to recall one’s steps and pass out to the upper air, this is the task, this the toil!” (Aeneid 6.126-129, tr. H.R. Fairclough). Aeneas, guided by the Sibyl, passes through the mouth of a cave as part of his descent (“A deep cave there was, yawning wide and vast, of jagged rock” (Aeneid 6.237-238, cf. 6.262-263, tr. Fairclough)); likewise the pirates, guided by Barbossa and the charts, pass through a cave as they travel into stranger climes:

(Buuuut to be fair, this one is possibly just incidental or else more of a reference to Gustave Doré’s art for Rime of the Ancient Mariner rather than a reference to any specific classical text. Doré’s artwork is used elsewhere in PotC, so it’s prolly just aesthetic. Also caves are cool and the ultimate symbolic doorway.)

Next they come to a distant, shadowy realm with a misty sky and a sea tranquil enough to reflect starlight:

Again, this could also be incidental (and/or just a really cool homage to the sailing-to-the-moon scene in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)), but it does have a classical counterpart: “The ship took us to the deep, outermost Ocean / And the land of the Cimmerians, a people / Shrouded in mist. The sun never shines there [...] Nor bathes them in the glow of its last golden rays; / Their wretched sky is always racked with night’s gloom” (Odyssey 11.14-19).

Both of these qualities—the cave and the darkness—fit Holtsmark’s observations on katabatic patterns: “The entryway to the other world is often conceived as lying in caves or grottoes or other openings in the earth’s crust into the nether regions, such as chasms or clefts. . . . The lower world is generally dank and dark, and the journey usually takes place at dusk or during the night” (Holtsmark 25).

At last, the pirates’ ship goes over the edge of an enormous waterfall and the screen fades to black. Voices from the original Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride echo over the dark screen, ending with the ominous phrase “Dead men tell no tales.” However, we shall soon see this proved very wrong, for the pirates encounter several souls with tales to tell. As for these nameless voices, they may represent multitudes of “bloodless shades” (Metamorphoses 10.42) left to languish in other parts of the Locker/Underworld.

At this point, the narrative cuts from the pirate band to Jack in Davy Jones’ Locker. Jack warrants special punishment from Jones for disobeying the rules of a bargain they’d once struck (*yells forever about the good parts of The Price of Freedom and the crimes wrought by the DMTNT retcons*). Jack’s own special hell, recalling the punishments of Tantalus and Sisyphus (Odyssey 11.611-629), does include his beloved Black Pearl (explicitly stated, by Jack himself, to be a symbol of personal freedom), but now it rests completely beached upon an endless, windless salt flat. Jack is utterly alone in this wasteland, save for a crew of his own imaginary doppelgängers.

(I’m gonna be real with y’all: I don’t care for this scene at all and it brings the narrative to a screeching halt, so let’s just take a moment to angstily reflect on how profoundly this affects Jack-the-character’s psyche/mental state for the rest of the film and move on to better things. God bless RPers and fic writers who deal with this scene and its effects in a deliciously Watsonian way.)

Tia Dalma/Calypso’s crabs eventually come to bear both captain and ship back to the sea. This could be seen as classical-type divine aid/favoritism (a semi-literal deus ex machina) or as awkward, oh-no-what-do-we-do-now screenwriting, take your pick. The crabs take Jack and the Pearl directly to the rest of the pirates, who have washed up on the Locker’s desolate shore. In a twist on the classical formula, Jack initially thinks his rescuers the dead ones as they recount their past experiences. Additionally, Jack represents a sort of Eurydice figure as the dead-in-need-of-rescuing, while his Orpheus, Elizabeth, is ironically the one who “killed” him in the first place. All the pirates (Jack included) finally set sail in the freed Black Pearl and attempt to escape this Underworld: the anabasis has begun.

On their way out, when the sky grows dark, the crew encounter scores upon scores of shades floating aimlessly upon the sea:

This parallels Odysseus’ experience (“Then out of Erebus / The souls of the dead gathered / . . . They drifted up to the pit from all sides / With an eerie cry, and pale fear seized me” (Odyssey 11.34-35, 40-41)) as well as that of Aeneas (“Hither rushed all the [ghostly] throng, streaming to the banks . . . They stood, pleading to be the first ferried across, and stretched out hands in yearning for the farther shore” (Aeneid 6.305, 313-314)). Tia Dalma reveals that long ago, Calypso had charged Davy Jones “to ferry those who died at sea to the Other Side,” but he has since abandoned his duty, hence his current eldritch appearance. This explicitly posits Jones as a failed psychopomp who has now left these souls stranded like the unburied men of the Odyssey and Aeneid.

The crew leave these shades in peace until Elizabeth spots a familiar face: her father.

At this point I must ask you to rewatch this scene so you can fully appreciate the parallels without me including a lengthy transcript in this already long post.

This scene comes directly from classical literature, as both Odysseus and Aeneas encountered dead parents in the Underworld. Odysseus saw his mother: “. . . At once / She knew me, and her words reached me on wings: / ‘My child, how did you come to the undergloom / While you are still alive? It is hard for the living / To reach these shores. There are many rivers to cross, / Great bodies of water, nightmarish streams, / And Ocean itself, which cannot be crossed on foot / But only in a well-built ship’” (Odyssey 11.151-158). Like Elizabeth, Odysseus had no prior knowledge of his mother’s passing (11.170). His mother warned him of the dangerous situation which had sprung up during his absence, just as Weatherby Swann warned the pirates of the dangers of Davy Jones’ Heart. Aeneas likewise encountered the spirit of his father, Anchises: “‘Have you come at last[?] . . . Over what lands, what wide seas have you journeyed to my welcome! What dangers have beset you, my son!’” (Aeneid 6.687-693). Anchises, too, offers some advice for the future, for he “tells of the wars that the hero next must wage . . . [and] how to face or flee each peril” (6.890-892). Having Elizabeth be the one to encounter a dead parent in the Underworld confirms her as the series’ protagonist, in case that wasn’t patently obvious from the rest of the trilogy (and the failure of Pirates 4 and 5). Weatherby Swann’s warning also serves to remind the audience of the stakes.

Finally, the pirates make their way out of the Locker. While the remainder of their journey takes more inspiration from Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Western European folklore than classical literature, the latter’s influence on the film remains quite clear. When the pirates return to the land of the living, it is daybreak:

(*Lawrence of Arabia theme, but on a cello*)

So, too, does Odysseus emerge from the Underworld into a new dawn: “Our ship left the River Ocean / And came to the swell of the open sea / . . . Where Dawn has her dancing grounds / And the Sun his risings” (Odyssey 12.1-5). The pirates thus complete their katabasis/anabasis, and with rather more luck than Orpheus.

In review: The pirates begin their katabasis in Singapore, which boasts a plethora of Underworld symbolism, including a death-centric song and images of Charon, Tiresias, and Hades. They cross various waters in their descent, mirroring locations from Homer and Vergil, and Barbossa quotes the Cumaean Sibyl. Elizabeth and the pirates retrieve Jack from the Locker’s punishments in a twist on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. Like Odysseus and Aeneas, Elizabeth sees her dead parent in the Underworld, who warns her of things to come. In the end, the pirates emerge from the Underworld into the light of dawn, signalling their return to life. By borrowing from Homer, Vergil, and Ovid, At World’s End presents an Underworld narrative which is familiar in structure and yet easily incorporated into a new mythology: “Same story, different versions.”

(Please message me if you’d like to quote/reference this post in a paper and I can give you my name + details on the official version! Plagiarism is shitty and unnecessary!)

WORKS CITED

Crispin, A.C. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom. Disney Editions, 2011.

Fairclough, H.R., translator. The Aeneid. 1916. By Vergil. Theoi Project, www.theoi.com/Text/VirgilAeneid6.html. Accessed 4 May 2019.

Holtsmark, Erling B. “The Katabasis Theme in Modern Cinema.” Classical Myth & Culture in Modern Cinema, edited by Martin M. Winkler, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 23-50.

Homer. The Odyssey. The Essential Homer, translated and edited by Stanley Lombardo, Hackett Publishing Company, 2000, pp. 241-482.

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Stanley Lombardo, Hackett Publishing Company, 2010.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Directed by Gore Verbinski, performances by Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Bill Nighy, Chow Yun-Fat, Geoffrey Rush, Tom Hollander, Jack Davenport, and Jonathan Pryce, Walt Disney Pictures, 2007.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Directed by Gore Verbinski, performances by Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander, Jack Davenport, and Jonathan Pryce, Walt Disney Pictures, 2005.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Directed by Gore Verbinski, performances by Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, Jack Davenport, and Jonathan Pryce, Walt Disney Pictures, 2003.

#dear god i hope this posts #pirates of the caribbean #potc #tagamemnon #meta #classics #long post #loooooooong post #katabasis #my meta #if you steal this i will physically manifest in your home and hand you the black spot

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professionalfixator · 5 years

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Death Cure Commentary (Part 15, the final part)

Sis: ...Thomas’ chest hair is poppin’.

Me: Yes, hug your boyfriend.

Sis: Bro hug.

Me: i can’t believe the Asian guy survived.

Sis: Also, Brenda looking cute.

Me: Dex is looking fine as wine. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Sis: Ooh, yeah!

Sis: Wait, is that Aris?!?

Me: Whoa!

Sis: When did he get so hot?!

Me: Is this from reshoots or something?

Me: No. No letters.

Sis: I don’t want to know what is says.

Dear Thomas...

Me: SHIT.

Sis: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

But from that moment you ran into the maze, I knew I would follow you anywhere. And I have.

Me: Oh no.....my heart.... (starts crying like a whole ass child)

Sis: Oh my God...

If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. And I hope that when you’re looking back years from now, you’ll be able to say the same.

Me: Frick. (wipes eyes furiously)

The future’s in your hands now, Tommy. And I know you’ll find a way to do what’s right. You always have. Take care of everyone for me, and take care of yourself. You deserve to be happy.

Both of us: (in pain)

Thank you for being my friend. Goodbye, mate. Newt.

Me: MATE. HE CALLED HIM MATE. I HURT.

(end credits start)

Sis: That was heavy.

Me: (blows out a breath) Shit. That shit hurted. Ouch. (wipes eyes)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just so you know, I nearly started crying 5 days later making this. Hope you’re happy. This movie should have gotten way more attention than it got, it was absolutely amazing and I really enjoyed watching it.

But at least I have over 30 beautiful screencaps on my computer, so that’s a big plus.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

#the maze runner #the death cure #i'm sad #i wanna watch it again

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duhragonball · 5 years

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Dragon Ball Z 222

The recap for this episode includes a cutaway diagram of Babidi’s spaceship. I think I messed up the screencaps here to make it look like there’s five stages instead of just four, but you get the general idea. The big chamber at the bottom is where I think Babidi monitors the fights, and then below that is the room where Buu’s ball is stored.

The thing I never understood was why so much of Babidi’s ship is devoted to this gauntlet he’s having our heroes run. Each “Stage” is equipped to absorb energy lost by intruders as they do battle with the stages’ defenders, which is handy for Babidi’s current project of reviving Majin Buu. But this is probably the first and only time this has ever come up. Would Babidi even have need for stolen energy other than reviving Buu?

Come to think of it, has Babidi ever had any other agenda before this? My understanding of his life is this: He was created as a duplicate of his “father” Bibidi, probably to do some side work for him, and when the Supreme Kai killed Bibidi he eventually started plotting to take over where Bibidi left off. So I would assume he’s spent his whole existence trying to recover Majin Buu, though much of that was preparation, I’m sure. He had to learn more magic, assemble a crew, acquire this spaceship, and figure out Buu’s location.

Anyway, up on Stage 1, Vegeta has to fight Puipui before they can proceed further into the ship. If Puipui hurts Vegeta (or Goku or Gohan, if he ever gets to them), the damage will feed Buu’s ball. But that doesn’t seem to matter, since Vegeta utterly dominates the guy in his base form.

To improve Puipui’s chances, Babidi uses his magic.

Now, the Supreme Kai claims that Babidi only used his magic to change the room, but later episodes will strongly suggest that they’ve all been teleported to a new location outside of the ship. I’m not clear on this, but one way or another, they’re now standing on what looks like Puipui’s homeworld, the planet Zoon. The subs spell it “Zun”, but I feel like “Zoon” is right. “Zuun?” I kind of like all three. Skip it.

Whether they’re actually on Zoon or a reasonable facsimile, Vegeta is surprised by the change, and Puipui brags that he now has the advantage, because the gravity here is ten times that of earth. Oh, you sweet summer child...

Punch.

Kick.

Titty grab.

>:^D

Closed casket funeral.

The Saiyans head for the next deck, while the Supreme Kai is gobsmacked by Vegeta’s performance. Puipui never even touched Vegeta, and Geets wasn’t even using Super Saiyan.

Watching this fight again, I notice that Vegeta’s style has changed dramatically since his battles against the androids and Cell. He taunted Puipui a few times, but he wasted no time in putting the guy away. I’d suggest that the only reason the fight lasted as long as it did was because Vegeta wanted to scout him out a bit before he committed to a finishing blow. This is a far cry from when he fought 19, and he basically gave 19 a bunch of free hits just to show him how outclassed he was. He horsed around with 18 and Cell in a similar fashion, thinking he had an advantage that he really didn’t. But against Puipui, he was all business.

I point all this out, because it’s tough to square Vegeta’s stoic gruffness in the 2010′s with his manic bluster from early and mid-DBZ. When he first showed up in the Saiyans Saga, he was very cocky, but also quiet, letting Nappa do most of the gloating. Then Goku got under his skin and he became downright nutty. On Namek, he acted like a total lunatic sometimes, which I always chalked up to his desperation to beat Frieza to immortality, and the rich rewards he would achieve if he could pull it off.

Most of the Androids and Cell period was him trying to prove his superiority, to be the man he had always claimed to be. His big problem was that he thought turning Super Saiyan was a destination instead of a journey, and that it would solve all his problems. This is why he kept losing in that arc, because he went into every fight thinking he’d already won by showing up.

The Puipui fight is the last time we see him win a fight in DBZ. If we want to count the later series and movies... let’s see. He killed Nappa in Dragon Ball GT, but how big a deal is that? He beat Golden Frieza in Movie 15, but he was practically beaten anyway after fighting with Goku. In Dragon Ball Super he took out Captain Ginyu, then several fighters from the other universes. Toppo was the big win for that series. Dramatically speaking, though, all of these resemble the Puipui fight more than the battles he had before that. Much more focused, no nonsense, and shutting out distractions.

Maybe that’s what Whis meant when he told him he was wound up too tightly in Movie 15. If Whis could have seen Vegeta’s fight with Semiperfect Cell, he would realize that Vegeta used to be way too sloppy and self-assured, and the “overthinking” approach he used afterward was his attempt to compensate for that.

Anyway, Babidi and Dabura are shocked to find anyone this strong on Earth, because they scouted the planet 300 years ago and didn’t find anyone nearly that powerful. Okay, but what I don’t get is that they must have realized the Saiyans were unusually powerful, because that’s why they lured them on board in the first place. They wrote Krillin and Piccolo off as useless, and I’m betting either of them could have killed Puipui.

Back at the stadium, Chi-Chu suddenly realizes that she has no idea where Goten is. For some reason, Bulma doesn’t seem terribly concerned about Trunks, though.

Turns out, they’re both in the... lounge? I have no idea what this room is for, but it’s some place for the tournament fighters to hang out, because when the World Tournament Announcer comes into find Mighty Mask, he finds the boys instead, and tells them they aren’t allowed back here. See, Goten was tired of carrying Trunks on his shoulders, so they came in here to take a break.

WTA wanted to tell Mighty Mask that they’re still figuring out how to proceed with only five fighters, and then he notices MM’s costume on the floor, so Trunks uses super speed to turn on the shower. WTA almost walks in on the guy, but Goten insists that he’d be mad about that. WTA’s like “Oh, yeah, those masked fighters hate for anyone to see their faces.” Okay, yeah, but more importantly, maybe you don’t just walk in on somebody while they’re taking a shower? Geez.

So he calls out to MM from there, and Trunks has to pull the crappiest ventriloquism act ever to respond. The Announcer buys this completely, just like he buys that Trunks and Goten only came in here to find Mr. Satan and get his autograph. Then again, WTA’s seen a lot of weird shit in his time. I get the sense that he’s a dude who gets along by not asking too many questions. If you served him Steamed Hams, he’d be all excited to sample authentic Utica cuisine.

Piccolo and Krillin update: They’re still statues.

In the ship, Babidi decides to send Yakon down to Stage 2. Dabura thinks that’s a bit extreme, but Babidi doesn’t want to take these intruders too lightly, not after Puipui got killed without landing a single blow.

Dabura’s all worried that Yakon will kill them all before he gets to have any fun with them, and Babidi has to remind him that he’s his mind-controlled henchman, so he’s not here to have fun, dammit.

That’s kind of the interesting thing about the dynamic between these two. Babidi seems to give his slaves a lot of leeway, either because he can’t control them absolutely, or because he prefers to let them think independently. In Dabura’s case, he seems to enjoy having him as a dependable second-in-command, offering counsel and relaying his orders to the crew. It gets to the point where even Dabura gets a little too comfortable with the role now and then.

And it becomes easy for us in the audience to forget that Dabura is one of Babidi’s victims. He only wants to awaken Buu because Babidi told him to want it. Would Dabura even care about this goal otherwise? I mean, it’s an evil agenda, but maybe not his brand of evil, you know?

I think this is why Toriyama designed him to look so much like a classic interpreation of the Chrisitan Devil. He’s not like Frieza or King Piccolo, where he’ll have time to establish his credentials as a major villain. Dabura has to look like a major villain up front, because we’ll never really get to see how he earned the role. His job is to look like a big deal, to emphasize that Babidi has turned him into plaything. He could make this guy swab the decks with his tongue if he wanted to. He only lets Dabura play first-officer because it suits his purposes.

So some of the henchmen got to summon Yakon for Stage 2 duty, and he kills them as soon as they open the door to his room. Awesome! This guy ain’t fucking around.

Then Babidi calls to him, probably though telepathy or something, and it’s clear that this guy is Babidi’s plaything too. It kind of makes you wonder why Babidi even bothered having minions go fetch Yakon in the first place, if this was the only way to get him to cooperate. But it makes a lot of sense once you realize Babidi is a sick fuck and all of his servants are expendable.

In Stage Two, Vegeta suggests forcing the door again, and when the Supreme Kai argues that this might release Buu, he asks how big a deal Buu really is. After all, Puipui was helpless against him, and Dabura’s not that big a deal either.

Shin’s like “Whaaaaa?” and Vegeta’s like, “Yeah, Dabura’s not that tough. Your friend Kibito only got killed because he’s a bitch.”

Shin asks Goku if this is true, and Goku’s like “Yep, Kibito’s shit tier, Supreme Kai.”

Goku estimates that Dabura’s about as strong as Cell was, and Cell was a big deal... seven years ago. Now, being as strong as Cell doesn’t mean jack to these guys. That’s awesome. I love this.

And this makes the Supreme Kai look like a real geek, because he only seemed to know that Goku and the others were very strong, but he had no idea how strong. My impression is that he had no idea the Cell conflict ever happened, which kind of makes sense, seeing as Cell came from the future. Perfect Cell was never really meant to be, when you think about it. In his own timeline, the androids he had to absorb to become perfect were already dead, so without time travel, no one would ever have to deal with him at full power. As it was, he fought the Z-Fighters umpteen years before he was born, so it sort of forced the heroes to get stronger than they would have been normally.

My guess is that the Supreme Kai knew about how strong Frieza was, and that Goku beat him, so he estimated his power based on this. Still, you’d think he could have asked around before today. He knew Goku would be at the tournament, so he must have had some advance notice on this. All he had to do was talk to King Kai and go “Hey, how do you think Son Goku would stack up against, say, Dabura?” And King Kai would go “You know, I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think Goku could take him, sir. He’s improved dramatically since he beat Frieza.” And at least then he’d know what he was dealing with.

Something else I wonder about is why none of the Kai’s seem to know anything about Saiyans. I mean, they’ve all been around for millions of years, and Goku wasn’t the first Super Saiyan. Maybe he and Vegeta are stronger than all the ones who came before, but you’d think some of the Kais would have noticed when the last Super Saiyan was running wild a thousand years ago, or the Super Saiyan before that, and so on.

My point is that both the Supreme Kai and Babidi seem to think these guys are key to their respective plans, and yet they seem surprised to find out how strong they are. Let me throw out a suggestion here: If Shin knew exactly how strong Goku is right now, do you think he’d just blow up this spaceship and have done with it? I mean, if Buu wakes up prematurely, in his weakened state, Goku could probably beat him, right? It’d be a gamble, but no worse than what ends up happening in this story.

Anyway, Yakon finally shows up on Stage 2, so we can finally get on with this thing.

And it’s Goku’s turn to fight, so we get to see what he can do after all these years. Doncha dare miss it!

#dragon ball #2019dbliveblog #babidi saga #goku #vegeta #puipui #gohan #supreme kai #babidi #dabura #yakon #goten #trunks #chi chi #world tournament announcer #ox king #yamcha #marron #master roshi

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history-freak1 · 4 years

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alex + nat watch: 1917

nat (@spartan-in-a-b-25) and i got buzzed/slightly drunk tonight and here are the live tweets from it: feel free to read the whole thing, but here’s the most important part of it:

- we started out strong, we were gonna drink, here i am with a light up disney sippy cub filled with pink moscato and nat with her classy, stemless wine glass with cabernet sauvignon. let’s see who the REAL adult is here.

- "I WILL PERSONALLY EAT YOU." - Nat defending Blake when he accidently pushed over the injured guy.

- Me, joking: i am baby. Nat: you ACTUALLY are. you're drinking wine out of a SIPPY CUP.

- "He's got an ass and I'm not mad at it." - Nat about Blake. At this point, I, internally, have resigned myself to thinking about Scho’s ass and A R M S. the words nat uttered may have been, “politely looking”

- Schofield getting cut up by barbed wire and then his hand falling into a corpse. SEPTIC SHOCK DO DO DO DO DO DO DO. (yes this is the baby shark song).

- We've progressed to talking about how important the score is. The little nuances here and there, the addition of strings into the song’s movement. It’s important to know we are sometimes serious.

- Nat’s face when I told her Will looked like Jaime Lannister under the pile of rubble (she’s def dead inside and immune to my chaos):

- my stuffed animal ‘orange puppy’ made an appearance and here she is, once again, accusing me of being baby:

- i resent this.

- "I really appreciate all these low shots from behind. Thank you Roger Deakins" said Nat. “We all do.” thought Alex.

- Nat is slowly descending into madness watching Blake and Sco get the German out of the plane. She’s trying to distract herself. I know it’s not working.

- blake's death hit and this is the screencap:

- we got pretty quiet for a bit. it’s a tough scene. we talked about who milked the cow so the milk was fresh. we also talked briefly about how toilet paper was utilized in 1917 and modern technology. fun stuff, but not nearly as good as the above screencap.

- “Sam Mendes is a reason I have an alcohol problem.” - Nat.

- THE NIGHT WINDOW SCENE IS POETIC CINEMA.

- me talking about the way the germans cant shoot and are like stormtroopers. nat has proceeded to make fun of me. we are having a good time and maybe starting to get a little buzzed?

- nat has upped the ante and has started to make fun of me whilst pretending to cry/be overly dramatic. (that’s meee):

- "Sco has big Dad energy" "Daddy" "Dad, not daddy", I bet y’all can guess who said what. (i said daddy, it was me).

- NAT SOUNDS SO PURE AND BEAUTIFUL SINGING POOR WAYFAIRING STRANGER.

- "We're the Devons." W H O M S T?!?!?!? is heard from Nat.

- BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH NATION. “You just like him because he’s in uniform and has a scar over his eye.” YOUR POINT.

- at somepoint, i tagged richard madden and said: “ .@_richardmadden is the reason my best friend has a drinking problem on account of 1917.”

- we've finished watching the movie. She's now carrying on about the red wedding and robb stark. Her words: "sad."

- "ENDGAME" shes about to go O F F. an absolutely feral, terrible sound overtakes her. i am taken aback, but it’s amazing. NO FILTER, NAT.

- "Nobody wanted to talk to me after Infinity War, because I was so P I S S E D."

- SHE JUST DOWNED THE WINE LIKE A SHOT.

- "Richard Madden stuff is YOUR fault." She's more drunk then she let on, i say. "Nahhhh"

- fin.

#1917 #1917 review #william schofield #tom blake #1917 movie

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jeebie-sims · 5 years

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DeBateau: Fall 1

After the Rutherford house comes the DeBateau fam!

Armand is nearly late to work. Just because he lives on the top floor of the lofty, beautiful apartment building he lives in. argh it makes him late almost every time but I’m not gonna move them out just yet

AN: if everything goes according to plan this will be the last time my screencaps upload all crispety crunchety like this.

Aaaand Armand got a chance card too! Lady Luck was not on his side that day though. He gets demoted to President, which he is understandably upset over.

In fact, he’s so upset that the first thing he dies when he comes back to his apartment is to start an argument with his neighbor, Shea Johnston. All with some jaunty oldies tunes blaring in the background.

Armand: Criminals should be punished! Especially those burglars who do nothing but steal from hardworking sims!

(NP: Armand stalks off to his apartment, without letting Shea get a word in.)

Armand did nothing but cry for the hour between him coming home and Tara coming home from school. He decided to do something to take his mind off of the unpleasant news, and what better to do than take a trip to Pepe’s Pets in Pleasantview? Nothing beats looking at pretty birds and petting soft kittens. Plus, Tara would definitely enjoy it.

While they’re there, Tara quickly makes a new friend with this townie girl that I’ve sadly forgotten the name of. They danced together to the salsa music Pepe liked to play through the speakers.

(Not pictured: She was actually Tara’s first kiss!)

Meanwhile, Armand found one beautiful, playful, and cheerful cat in the store. He names her Butterscotch, because that’s what he had left in his secret nightstand supply of candy.

Was she an impulse purchase? Yes.

Is she going to be absolutely SPOILED? Also yes.

She sleeps soundly in Armand’s closet, next to his fine leather shoes and under his expensive silk ties.

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#armand debateau #shea johnston #tara debateau #sims 2 #sims legacy #legacy #ts2 #sims 2 legacy #sims 2 gameplay #ts2 gameplay #simblr #doom:bdcp #doom:bdcp fall

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thegeminisage · 5 years

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top 10 merlin episodes a list by me

2.08 The Sins of the Father - this is the pinnacle of this whole entire show. this episode changed me as a human person. i went from “arthur sucks” to “WE STAN” so fast i got whiplash. watching arthur snap and try to kill his own father once he FINALLY understood who uther really was made me love him forever. here’s a whole-ass post i made about this episode & here’s a nice little screencap set that i love

5.03 The Death Song of Uther Pendragon - if there is anything on god’s green earth as excellent as watching arthur try to kill his father it’s watching his father try to kill HIM, first with criticism, and then literally. screamed thru this entire episode especially when merlin DID THAT! daddy issues literally haunting poor arthur...what more could u ask for?? here’s a whole-ass post for this one too

4.10 A Herald of the New Age - we got to see SO MUCH DEPTH from my boy arthur here...we got to tackle the true fallout of the crimes the pendragon monarchy has committed...this episode got very “fullmetal alchemist” near the end (tackling war & genocide) & i’m into it. wouldn’t you know it, there’s a post for this one too

5.12/5.13 The Diamond of the Day - i have mixed feelings about season 5 and the finale overall but there’s no way i can’t include this when arthur and merlin finally got to have an honest conversation. bonus: that shit with merlin being magic itself really almost made me lose it. yes, there is a post - there is also a second post

4.12/4.13 The Sword in the Stone - not ONLY am i a total nerd for sword-in-stone imagery but this episode also contains merlin DOING THAT!! every time he gets to be a badass my heart soars. two posts for this one too. i actually didn’t like the first half of this two-partner as much because of the Very Creepy Spell but yk whatever whatever

2.13 The Last Dragonlord - each and every thing involving arthur’s mom or merlin’s dad mcmurders me dead. i almost wept during this episode. i don’t have a post for it but that’s because i don’t think i can ever watch it again. merlin having to pretend he wasn’t crying when he was crying ENDED me - it’s so unfair he can help arthur bear his pain but not the other way around. HE DESERVES TO GO THROUGH THE ORDEAL OF BEING KNOWN TOO :(

4.01/4.02 The Darkest Hour - arthur and merlin spend this entire episode 1. scared shitless 2. ADMITTING WITH NO IRONY THAT THEY ARE SCARED SHITLESS 3. trying to die for one another 4. shit talking one another to keep their morale up. in addition i think these episodes had the scariest motw in the entire series, PLUS i am always grateful for an uptick in lancehot content. good all the way around. yes there’s a post

3.11 The Sorcerer's Shadow - it’s so funny that right before i watched this one (like LITERALLY the night before) i was complaining about merlin as a character, how i didn’t understand his motives, why he would repeatedly risk his own life to save someone like uther, and then the very next day i was given this. i have a few mixed feelings about the execution of it but overall this episode was the mini-version of merlin’s “arthur trying to kill his own dad” moment for me...i felt like for the first time i really understood who he was through and through. there is a very long post for this one

1.04 The Poisoned Chalice - i don’t have a post for this one but like what else can POSSIBLY be said about this episode...i said once “if you’re interested in merlin try the first four eps” because this is where it gets good. FOUR EPISODES IN and they’re ready to die for each other...this is also the first time arthur stands up to his father and does something selfless...the first time he sees magic used for good...it’s where we start to get to know who he really is without uther’s influence, what kind of show this is going to be, what we can expect from the antagonists (especially uther), and it even hints at the larger mystery surrounding the history of what started the purge and why uther hates magic and nimueh in particular SO much...this episode is SO IMPORTANT and actually it was being told the basic plot of this episode that swayed me into giving merlin a go to begin with so without this episode? i would not be writing this post.

4.06 A Servant of Two Masters - while i would have rather seen this concept (brainwashed merlin tries to assassinate arthur) played for high drama instead of hijinks (what can i say, i have a weakness for brainwashed assassins...), the hijinks were PRETTY GOOD and the parts that WERE dramatic were also quite good AND it was merlin and arthur’s FIRST AND ONLY HUG. there’s really nothing not to love. i do have a post about this one too

HONORABLE MENTIONS INCLUDE: 1.10 (arthur going back to ealdor to defend it from bandits and feeling human empathy), 1.11 (arthur learning humility via murdering a unicorn and also nearly dying for merlin), 3.04 (introduction of gwaine), 3.12/3.13 (gwaine content, ROUND TABLE KNIGHTS ASSEMBLE), 4.03 (uther’s death AT LAST oh babey), 5.01/5.02 (arthur spends the entirety of two episodes running around in the snow looking nice and having an absolute BLAST on his suicide mission to rescue his captured/enslaved men)

#personal #merlin blogging #liz's meta #liz's merlin stuff #my fever broke for a little while so i got up to eat cereal and type this post #im going back 2 bed #i'll have you know it took me DAYS to make this list. like a single day #trying to weed them out was like picking children #my initial list started at like...17 or 18 so almost half got the cut #it was agonizing #1.10 and 3.13 really are some of my favorites.#liz makes stuff

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kirinda-ondo · 6 years

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Rant/tell me about Cobalt and why u love him so much??

Ok so this is probably going to get very long, and very, very cheesy, and I hope y’all are ready for this.

Cobalt is a very special character to me and is absolutely my favorite character of all time, from anything in the history of ever. It doesn’t matter what other fandom I’m hyperfixated on or what character I’m saying is my son at the moment, if you bring him up at any time, in any context I will be there.

So you’re probably wondering how I got here.

Once upon a time, it was 2009 and I was a young weeaboo, constantly absorbing everything anime or manga I could. I had just come out from the Astro Boy movie, and I immediately wanted to watch the source material. I’d already seen a bit of it on adult swim when they were running an Astro Boy marathon, but I had to go to bed at 11:30 then so I didn’t get to see much. So this time, I went to youtube and I found all the (dubbed) episodes of the 60s series. (Sadly you can’t find them all there anymore and it’s a crying shame).

I basically marathoned them, but over in the sidebar where the recommendations were, I kept seeing the thumbnail for part 2 or 3 (this was back when youtube only let you post 10 minute videos and you had to watch anime in 3 parts) of the episode “Brother Jetto.” You could plainly see him, and so it was clear this was supposed to be Astro’s brother. I thought it was neat that Astro even had a brother, as I’d only known about Uran before. I wanted to know more, but I promised myself I wouldn’t skip ahead. Though it was very tempting at times, I stuck to my guns and watched all 83 episodes up to that point.

However, it was not actually love at first sight. When I finally got to this episode 84, I wasn’t really impressed. “Wow, he’s kind of annoying, what’s the point?” I had thought like a fool, but I was still willing to accept him as part of the canon, as I figured I’d be seeing a lot more of him now that he had been introduced. After all, that’s what they did with Uran! But then…. that pretty much didn’t happen at all, which I thought was kind of weird. After all, why introduce a new sibling if he’s not going to show up again?

But then I got to the episode “A Deep, Deep Secret” about 6 episodes later, and I found myself a little relieved that he wasn’t completely canned. Upon watching that episode, I’d found that he’d started to grow on me a bit, but he still wasn’t my favorite. However, the trend of him being gone for several episodes only to show up once in a blue moon continued until I’d run out of episodes. I moved on to the 80s series next (and then the 2003 series) having learned that Cobalt had been replaced by Atlas as Astro’s brother. While I enjoyed those series (the 80s one a bit moreso than the 2003 one), I found myself kind of missing Astro’s dingus brother that had barely seemed to get a chance. After marathoning all the series (at the time), I started doing some googling and found out he had a slightly better run in the undubbed Japanese episodes (which was also how I discovered AB-O! Hi fandom!) and I’d learned a lot more about him. But the most important thing I’d learned was that I was in fact very emotionally invested in this character now and I was in deep.

Mind you at this time the undubbed Japanese episodes were nearly impossible to find without purchasing the complete DVD set and a player that could play them (on account of the fact that the set was region locked from western DVD players) so for years I sat wondering more about what those Japanese episodes were like, as the forums only had plot summaries with a handful of screencaps to go off of. Nowadays you can watch all the undubbed (and sadly unsubbed) episodes here but 13 year old me did not have the knowledge to do foreign language googling at the time.

But still, my Cobalt-loving heart wanted more, so I scoured the English speaking internet for whatever I could find, official or fanmade. Official content was virtually nonexistent, and the amount of fanmade content, I could count on one hand. The general fan consensus at the time seemed to be “Who the hell is Cobalt” or “Eh, whatever,” which was a far cry from how it is now. But being horribly deprived back then, I did the only thing I could: I combed through the dub for every episode he was in, coming up with a whopping total of…..four (well technically five but in that one he’s literally only in the last five seconds with no animation or lines), and I watched them religiously. I could pretty much quote Cobalt’s debut episode by heart. (For the record I can no longer do this to the extent I used to, but should the opportunity arise, I can still quote large chunks of it).

As I did this and learned more about him in my desperate googling, I started developing jokes for what would become my first silly comics, for which I am known in this fandom for. The art and writing for these was….. painful, to say the least, so I don’t even like to think about it, but as I’d already had a decently sized following from drawing silly (read: bad) Sonic comics, they caught on decently well, and I’d even managed to drag my friend and son down with me into Cobalt Hell™. Together, we made a group for Cobalt fans on deviantart (which is still up, but I no longer run it, as I deactivated the account that modded it without transferring ownership, so now it’s likely a wild west hellscape that I’m a little scared to look at).

This seemed to help do the trick though, as Cobalt fans were slowly coming out of the woodwork and appreciating this good boy. On and off I’d spread my yelling about Cobalt (and my silly drawings) to different platforms like the Astro Boy forums and tumblr, and even as I got into different things, after awhile, things kinda grew without me. Now I’m not gonna be out here claiming I built this city myself with my own two hands, as a lot of people got dragged into this hell of their own accord, but I do like to think my, umm….passion at least helped generate some interest, and I can’t help but be proud of how far this fandom has come from “Who the hell is Cobalt” to “Look at this good boy, I love him” and literally all the other Cobalt fans I’ve met have been the coolest people (in general, not just because of their good taste).

I think what really changed my life though was when AprilSeven, a mod on the Astro Boy forum and also probably the original Cobalt fan, as she’d seen the 60s version back when it was originally airing, finally got a hold of the undubbed Japanese episodes, and graciously allowed me and a few of the other big-name Cobalt fans get in on that action, and boy howdy, the screenshots and plot summaries really did not do these episodes justice (at least in terms of Cobalt content). My understanding of him as a character expanded like tenfold, and my appreciation of him expanded even more than that.

…Which brings me into a nice segue in which I shift more into just exactly why I like Cobalt so much. Yes, there’s more. I warned y'all, this was gonna be a Pandora’s Box that could not be closed once it was opened.

I honestly just find him a joy to watch. A lot of what made him grow on me was just how funny he is. I’m a sucker for comic relief characters in general, and he has a personality that lends itself to comedy. In the anime version, he’s literally introduced right out the gate as being kind of a dingus. He’s naive, he’s way too trusting of obviously suspicious people, he’s easily confused, he’s easily distracted, he’s a klutz, and he just… regularly destroys the laws of physics and/or the fourth wall just because. Sometimes he also gets weird ideas in his head to do things that could have been done a completely different, easier way and weirdly enough, it actually kind of winds up working? It’s so fun to watch him approach problems because he’s just… so far out there sometimes.

But beyond being absolutely weird and hilarious, he’s just a really sweet kid. He doesn’t like to fight, he wants to make friends with everyone and everything, he will drop literally anything he’s doing, no matter how important it is, to help someone in need, he’s good with babies and small children and puppies (sometimes), he would fight (and sacrifice himself) for his family, and just means well even if he tends to bungle things up and make them worse sometimes. Honestly, and this is gonna sound dumb, but he helped me be a better person. I used to be an absolute asshole when I was younger, but once I’d gotten into Cobalt Hell™, I was like “I wanna be that sweet and good (but with a better sense of stranger danger)” and I made that effort and did that shit.

That being said though, he’s not perfect, and I wouldn’t want him to be. His flaws, though they kind of give him the short end of the stick in life, are a lot of why I find him so endearing. All the naivety and confusion and general lack of coordination I mentioned before aside, he’s honestly just really relatable. He’ll say jokes so bad that Uran wants to punch him, he’ll opt out of the plot because he doesn’t want to get out of bed, he’ll fight with his siblings over silly petty things, he’ll get frustrated if he tries something and it doesn’t go his way, he’ll absolutely partake in his siblings’ mischief (if not start it sometimes), and just so much more. He just feels like a kid you would know (or maybe a kid that you were at one point) and I really appreciate that about him.

Unfortunately, the canon was not kind to Cobalt, and I think a lot of that comes from Osamu Tezuka just… not knowing what to do with him after making him? Like in the manga, he was just kind of created as a really rushed contingency plan because they thought Astro was missing. Sure, he was taken in as part of the family afterward, but not many appearances later, he was killed off in a firey explosion… Until Tezuka decided to change his mind and let him live in the end. His grave’s still there though. He gets to see it. I know it’s a framing device to explain the circumstances of Cobalt’s retconned death but it’s kind of fucked up to let a boy see his own grave..

Even being brought back, Cobalt didn’t get to do very much. He’d get some good scenes with Uran, but a lot of the time, he was sort of just relegated to filling up space in the background, provided he actually survived til the end of the chapter. When he wasn’t getting forgotten by the plot and thusly zapped out of existence, he would wind up sacrificing himself in some way that wouldn’t allow him to continue to take part in the plot anymore (be it parts, energy, etc.) The most painfully egregious example of this is in the chapter “Youth Gas.” Astro and Cobalt are convinced to fight each other to the “death.” They’re not really dead, but Ochanomizu says they are and can’t be repaired. At first, there’s mourning for “two of the world’s greatest robots,” but then we see a funeral service in which only Astro’s body is shown and his parents are only mourning him, completely forgetting Cobalt exists. He’s never seen again for the rest of the chapter. Now I would assume this is just a writing mistake, but it really does make it look like Cobalt’s own parents wouldn’t even bat an eye if he died, so there’s that.

The anime isn’t quite as horrible, and it is kind enough to give Cobalt a more prominent role once he finally shows up (even getting a handful of focus episodes!), but he doesn’t go unscathed either. In this version, he has the misfortune of being created by Dr. Umataro “Father of the Year” Tenma before Astro was made and was scrapped because, to quote dub!Ochan, “his electronic brain wasn’t as perfect as Dr. [Tenma] wanted.” (read: he thought Cobalt was a dumbass). Cobalt is eventually found and brought into the family, but because he still winds up not being relevant to the plot a lot of the time, he is once again zapped out of the existence and looks like a victim of child neglect. As a result, he gets left out of family vacations and holidays, even in favor of Chi-tan, who is usually even higher on the scale of irrelevant Astro Boy characters. Unlike Astro, Cobalt doesn’t have any consistent friends to even remotely justify what he could possibly be doing offscreen by himself, so it just kind of implies a very sad and lonely existence in-universe.

And of course, the final, meta blow that literally every fan of Cobalt is still despairing about to this day: basically being yeeted out of the canon. After the 60s series, he disappeared off the face of the earth until 2015 when some lovely soul decided to bring him back for Peeping Life TV: Season 1?? (The question marks are part of the title). He’d be referenced again a couple years later in Atom: The Beginning, and will be here for the game Eshigami no Kizuna sometime in 2019 as a… moe anime girl. That’s a little weird, but I’m hoping these sorts of weird appearances will mean a trend toward putting him back in the canon (and hopefully being treated better).

It just hurts my heart to see such a good character get treated like this by canon. He deserves way better and it just seems really clear to me that Tezuka didn’t really know what to do with him. I feel like he has a lot of potential as a character, though. Regardless of what origin you pick for him, Cobalt is essentially existing as a worse version of Astro. I feel like you could have some good character development regarding how he would feel about himself in relation to Astro in sort of a parallel to how Astro might feel about himself in relation to Tobio, the person he was based off of. You could go some neat places with these sort of questions about identity and expectations, I think. Or if you want to just do something funny because your character arcs are getting too real now, you can just let Cobalt do some silly shit. He’s a versatile character!

I’ve done all this rambling and now I’m not really sure how to wrap all this up, so umm

Cobalt is a good boy and deserves better, please hire me Tezuka Productions, and thank you for coming to my TED Talk

#cobalt collection #kateh rambles #i feel like there's probably more i could have rambled about believe it or not but this is already so long.......

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sutekiyomitsu · 6 years

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The Tragedy of Uchiha Sasuke: An Analysis of the Music of Akatsuki no Shirabe

One of the reasons that I love 2.5D adaptations so much is because the story and events that are portrayed can be nearly exactly the same, but the staging and direction of it brings out certain nuances of the character that might not have been brought out so strongly before. For the character Uchiha Sasuke, Live Spectacle Naruto ~Akatsuki no Shirabe~ (or, as in the English title, Live Spectacle Naruto ~Song of the Akatsuki~) is interesting in that it tends to focus more on the softer, more vulnerable side of Sasuke that is not usually brought out strongly in the original anime and manga. One of the more obvious ways it does this is through its choice in music.

(Over 1500 words of me lovemailing Live Spectacle Sasuke Naruto under the cut)

The 2017 production of Live Spectacle Naruto ~Akatsuki no Shirabe~ was notably different from the 2015 and 2016 production in that (more) musical elements were added in 2017 (besides, of course, the obvious difference that Akatsuki no Shirabe, being the sequel, had a vastly different cast due to the arcs portrayed in the play). The music is thus one of the important aspects that added to the texture of the Akatsuki no Shirabe. (Also, their English title for it was Song of the Akatsuki.)

Of course, the music takes inspiration from the anime, with many elements of it being translated across creatively, coming up with new motifs while retaining the general feeling of the music used in the anime. The Akatsuki, for example, are introduced with a heavy, strong bass sound and a thumping beat. This might allow for some connection to the soundtrack in the anime, like in the OST Crimson Skies, which also has that same feeling to it.

(I wanted to include multiple short audio clips in this post but Tumblr isn’t allowing me to do that, so I’m using screencaps of the stage at the point when I am referring to instead.)

For Orochimaru, the organ sound that was characteristic of his OST wasn’t used in Akatsuki no Shirabe, instead being replaced with a more mystical sound of strings and a slow drumbeat, like a snake that is slithering its way to its prey. Even so, the notes used still seem somehow reminds us of that same sinister sound (and they also make use of Yumi Hiro’s beautiful vocal range).

It then becomes obvious that the music choice for Sasuke was a departure from the music in the anime. In the anime, Sasuke is often associated with music with an electric guitar (hence all the jokes about a very Old West sound, because of the twanging sound). The strong bass also adds to the feeling of strength, forcefulness, and ‘coolness’. This can be found in both in Sunspot (Kokuten) and Wandering (Hyouhaku).

However, in Akatsuki no Shirabe, Sasuke is constantly associated with the sound of a piano instead. Of course, he gets his moments of badassery with that strong beat and electric sound for him, but in nearly every sequence, Sasuke is shown in quiet moments of the music.

This might arguably have even started in 2016. In the most pivotal scene for Sasuke, we hear the sound of a piano.

This is then repeated throughout Akatsuki no Shirabe. It starts even in the Opening to depict the relationship between Naruto and Sasuke.

This is repeated in “Sagashidase”, where the piano comes in as Naruto and Sasuke sort of “speak” to each other (actually saying the lines from their fight at the Valley of the End).

In “‘Akatsuki’ Mokuteki wa..!”, the song builds up gradually to Sasuke’s singing part, where it gives way to a soft piano sound.

The same motif happens in the song before the end of the first act “‘Wakare’ Mokuteki wa..!”, which, this time, begins with Sasuke’s part with a soft piano sound that later builds into a climactic ending.

In “Naruto vs Orochimaru”, when Naruto thinks about Sasuke, prompting Sasuke to appear upstage, a piano melody interrupts the intense battle music, which then smashes back into the battle music once he vanishes.

In “Kessei Shoutai ‘Hebi’”, when Suigetsu asks about Sasuke’s intentions for creating Hebi, the piano can again be heard interrupting as Sasuke mentions having a goal.

Even in “Tensei no Gishiki”, Sasuke taking over the control of Orochimaru’s jutsu is first indicated by a brief piano sound that interrupts the sound of strings.

Finally, the piano is, of course, used in the duet (that made everyone cry), “Itachi no Shinjitsu”.

Okay, okay, you get it. Akatsuki no Shirabe associates Sasuke with a piano sound. But why? Why not stick to the usual twangy guitar sound that Sasuke has often been associated with?

I believe the answer lies in the angle that Akatsuki no Shirabe took on Sasuke, and on the story as a whole. Due to the constraints of being a time-limited-not-500-episode-long stage play, there needs to be a coherent flow in the events that lead to a final climax (and conclusion). Since the climax of Akatsuki no Shirabe is the fight between the Uchiha brothers, and the events leading up to it are depicted from Sasuke’s perspective, Akatsuki no Shirabe places Sasuke as the heart of the play, in a way, almost like he is the main character (even though Naruto is in the title of the performance. Sorry, Naruto.). In fact, Naruto’s character in this play is almost static, with no huge developments besides learning the Rasenshuriken, becoming even more motivated to save Sasuke, and learning to get along with Sai. The real character arc in the play belongs to Sasuke. Of course, this differs from in the anime, where the position of ‘hero’ is always centred on Naruto (obviously).

Because of Sasuke’s (almost) protagonist status in Akatsuki no Shirabe then, he becomes a more sympathetic character. Instead of emphasising on Sasuke as the cool, heartless, suave character foil to dorky Naruto, Sasuke’s vulnerability and softer side is emphasised on stage. Instead of putting Sasuke’s anger and hatred in the spotlight, it is his pain and grief that is highlighted.

The use of the piano enhances this image of Sasuke. Instead of the ‘cool’ sound of a guitar, it is replaced by the melancholic sound of a soft piano. The piano also brings out Sasuke’s ‘innocence’. This is contrasted against first Orochimaru, as his youthful body is what Orochimaru wants, and then Itachi, as Sasuke is the younger brother. Also, this innocence can be taken in the sense that Sasuke has been kept in the dark about the truth of the Uchiha massacre and is thus oblivious to it until the end, when it is revealed to him as a “plot twist” by Tobi.

Furthermore, the sound of the piano can be used to draw links between brother(ly) bonds. As previously mentioned, the piano is heard in the Opening during the moment between Naruto and Sasuke, as well as in “Sagashidase”, and it was also heard in “Naruto vs Orochimaru” with the brief appearance of pre-Shippuden Sasuke in Naruto’s memory. This associates that piano melody with the bond between Naruto and Sasuke, which is often compared to a brotherly bond.

In fact, the use of the piano as highlighting brotherly bonds is further enhanced by Sai’s arc in the play, as during “Ninmu ~ Niisan no Kioku”, when Sai is reminded of his older brother, the piano is played. When contextualised in the context of the structure of the play, Sai’s arc in Act 1 is positioned almost like a prologue to the relationship between the brothers that are at the heart of the play, the Uchiha brothers, leading into Act 2’s confrontation between the Uchiha brothers. (It’s different in the anime where Sai’s arc is just, well, his arc.)

This connection with brotherly bonds is later emphasised again through the piano melody in the song “Mangekyo Sharingan”, where Itachi tells the story of Madara and Izuna, meant to mirror the ‘cursed’ relationship of the Uchiha brothers. It serves to highlight the burden of the blood bonds within the Uchiha clans and the ‘curse’ that comes with it, pitting brother against brother for power.

The piano therefore takes on an association with the brotherly bonds that are the centre of this play. Sasuke’s affiliation with the piano serves to highlight that his fate and destiny has been decided in his position as the younger brother. As Rachi Shinji put it, Sasuke is bound by his blood ties and constantly feels the burden of the responsibility that his blood and his clan has put on him. His own sense of self has been tied to his role as the avenger of his clan and has pushed him to extreme ends to fulfil his duty.

From this angle, Sasuke becomes a more sympathetic character – we see how his identity has become entangled in the responsibility of being the survivor of his clan, and how this has weighed on him and shaped his destiny and his decisions. His anguish upon realising that everything that he had based his identity on is false becomes much more striking. This isn’t a departure from the Sasuke in the anime and manga, but instead, Sasuke’s pain at the final revelation becomes more palpable, and this makes his declaration to destroy Konoha for what it did more believable and even understandable.

Of course, the music direction was only one of the elements that brought this aspect of Sasuke out so strongly, but it is a display of how powerful a simple change can be in the shaping of a character. For a character as complex as Uchiha Sasuke, it was certainly a welcome take on his story.

#live spectacle naruto #akatsuki no shirabe #uchiha sasuke #sasuke #sato ryuji #esther analyses #naruto

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