One thing for those who have watched The Boy and The Heron or will watch it. The Japanese title for it is How Do You Live? And Miyazaki stated he was leaving it for his grandson, saying, "Grandpa is moving onto the next world soon but he is leaving behind this film".
The deaths of contemporaries and friends such as Satoshi Kon and Isao Takahata and also the expected successor of Yoshifumi Kondo were things that have always weighed heavily on the back of Miyazaki's mind.
He recognizes the industry and the occupation for how soul crushing it was, grinding up either the spirit or the physical body of those who work in it. He loves and hates the industry he stands on the peak of and fully recognizes how it will probably be the death of him. And he knows it'll leave him unable to say a lot of things to his Grandson.
So How Do You Live? is a lesson. For his grandson. For himself. For his two sons. And probably for anyone else willing to pay attention.
Hayao Miyazaki is a flawed man that makes things so important to so many people. And I think more than any other film of his, in this you get to pull back the curtain a bit and see him at work. And what should be this giant unblemished titan can be seen for what he is, a sad old man who had higher hopes for himself and has even higher hopes for the people he makes his work for.
It's a beautiful thing to see another's humanity in their work. To look past the artifice and glam of commercialized art and find humans behind it. And humans willing to show their humanity and mortality is even rarer. And something to be celebrated. So when you watch it. Or if you've watched it already. Understand that this film is Miyazaki kneeling down, weary after years of weaving dreams and making mistakes, reaching out and saying to you that he hopes you can do better. It's an old man who's made all the mistakes of the world passing it on to you, hoping you do better, and making sure you know it's okay if you don't.
How do you Live? By making mistakes. By messing up. But still moving forward. And still reaching out.
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“When toxic behavior is portrayed as romantic, it’s problematic. When problematic behavior is portrayed as a character flaw for a character to work through, it’s good storytelling.”
Katsuki Bakugou, my friends.
His behavior was problematic but never once portrayed as romantic at the same time. Katsuki said and did awful abusive things, and he also chose to be better when he was given the chance. If you’re still hung up on chapter 1 Katsuki now then I don’t think you’ve been reading the same story I have.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m not shipping Izuku with an irredeemable abuser. I’m shipping him with his most important person. His narrative foil. His childhood friend who made awful mistakes and then made it right when he saw he was wrong. The person Izuku looks up to and strives to emulate, despite their past struggles.
Bakudeku is so good because of how flawed these boys are, and how hard they’ve worked to get over it, and how much they matter to each other after it all
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The Bats Are Fighting (Distaff Edition)
some conflicts I enjoy:
Babs is pretty hostile/judgy toward Helena at first & is bitterly upset and hurt when Helena starts wearing a Bat costume - apparently a Batgirl costume - without asking her. Later on, Bruce chases Helena out of the costume, and Babs gives Cass the Batgirl costume with her explicit blessing. Helena and Cass never have a rivalry over this exactly, but I don't think they ever really get along, either
Babs and Helena eventually make up when Babs lets Helena join the Birds of Prey but it's rocky in the beginning - Babs dislikes Helena's methods and doesn't entirely trust her; Helena resents being kept on the outside
Steph is super-impressed by Cass and tries to get her to like her and they eventually get close, but Cass has a pretty low opinion of Steph-as-a-vigilante and doesn't hesitate to boss her around or knock her out, and she's super-hurt by Steph lying to her about what's going on during War Games (probably not unrelated: Cass is the only Bat to blame Steph instead of Bruce after Steph dies)
Babs and Cass get very close but also have tensions because Babs wants Cass to have the 'normal' life that Babs thinks she should've tried harder to have when she was younger, and Cass isn't entirely comfortable with this pressure, plus - this one I think is a bit more well-known - Babs spends a lot of time tutoring Cass and looking after her (awww), BUT ALSO in a tense moment she gets really nasty and harsh about Cass's reluctance to learn to read and calls her "stupid"
Dinah finds Steph REALLY annoying and wants her to stop tagging around after her... until she finds out about Steph's miserable home life, and then she appears like an avenging angel and kicks Steph's dad and his cronies out of the house
Babs decides to work with a guy who tortured Dinah because she thinks he's capable of redemption and Dinah is NOT HAPPY about it
Just generally, Steph and Helena are very much outsiders who don't get brought into the "core" Batfam and who aren't trusted with info like Bruce's secret identity. By contrast, Babs is an insider almost from Day 1 - she may have conflicts with Bruce, but she's also got his absolute trust - and Dinah is as insider as it gets, with a mom who was also Black Canary and a stint on the JLA
other general characterization notes that cause Conflict (TM):
Babs is pretty much a classic Bat - she's got a ton of control issues and she's an instinctively secretive workaholic
Helena is an adult who will kill people if she damn well feels it's necessary and she doesn't appreciate being lectured about it
Steph is a defensive teenage outsider with a bucketload of family problems - deadbeat evil dad! addict mom! - and when she's upset she's got a reckless self-destructive streak
Cass is very much like Bruce in that
1) she is wildly super mega good at fighting,
2) she's an instinctive loner who's comically bad at people AND YET she can nevertheless effortlessly manage to head off to a foreign country for a weekend and have a passionately-felt mutual love affair with some random criminal or something, and then that person dies & she goes home like nothing happened,
3) she cares about other people but completely sucks at communication & when in doubt will just go silent & take off or refuse to have conversations,
4) because she hates talking sometimes she'll just knock you out or hit you so that she won't have to do it,
5) she will spend an entire year planning to have a fight to the death with someone for Reasons and tell no one about it because why would she tell someone
anyway they're all terrible <3
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On the “it was supposed to be a joke!” theme, is mustard!trey your favorite?
Back when all I knew about Twst was fanart I thought things like fairies not being able to resist Leona (fairy gala), Jack wagging his tail and then denying it while it is actively happening and Rook hunting his classmates for sport was just fandom hivemind stuff.
Every time I come across something from art that turns out to be real I am delighted, like Jamil’s towel conversation with Kalim before GloMas, I was 130% sure you’d made that up and could not stop giggling.
Trey's Mustard Mania is up there, but I think my favorite will always be Azul's robes story, in which -- I know I've talked about this before, but honestly we should be talking about this 24/7 because really -- it turns out the secret ingredient in Vil's fancy high-end moisturizer is Floyd. Vil has been spending the entire story walking around with Floyd Juice rubbed into his face. what does that mean? who knows! they just wring Floyd out like a towel (somehow?!) offscreen and put the drippings into a cute bottle and sell it to Vil for an exorbitant price! this is just something that happens in canon! why not!
also, the birthday boy sashes. for some reason no one ever believes the birthday boy sashes are real at first, and it's always a sheer delight to see "WAIT, IT ACTUALLY SAYS BIRTHDAY BOY?!" on my activity page. :D
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