#to be absolutely clear all of this is satire from a person who has been denied a wheelchair because of these exact reasons

[giantkillerjack]

You shouldn't get a wheelchair, walker, cane, shower chair, or any kind of assistive technology mobility aid because then you might become dependent on them. Just like how you also shouldn't get glasses if you have bad eyesight because then you might become dependent on those.

For instance, if you end up stuck using corrective eyewear, you could actually lose your ability to tell what things are even when they are extremely blurry! You need to get used to having migraines from seeing unclearly because if you wear glasses all the time, you are basically giving up!! You don't need to see things coming at you from far away! You just need to get good at dodging, and if you can't, then you have no one to blame but yourself!!

For example, I read a really heart-worming article recently about a girl who was stuck using glasses - just absolutely, tragically trapped in her eyewear from dawn to dusk, even though she was good and never ever complained; and I heard she trained herself to discern the blurry faces of her loved ones with 60% accuracy! - she was even able to walk down the aisle at her wedding WITHOUT forcing the discomfort of seeing a woman in glasses on all her guests!!

Sure, she had to give her vows with a splitting headache, and she couldn't see her husband's expression when he said "I do," but overall, SO inspi-ration-al!!! So up-lifting!!

(She didn't even have to use a seeing eye cane, which would have been the worst-case scenario, obviously, because she worked hard to make sure she looked LESS disabled, not MORE disabled!!! Everyone knows blind people exist solely to be a cautionary tale to sighted people!!)

Also, did you know some people get glasses when they only need them a little bit?? How selfish of them! Sure, there's not a shortage, and an increase in demand would result in overall increased accessibility to glasses--but emotionally it's like taking glasses away from someone who needs them more! After all, if everyone who needed glasses got them, then...... um...... more people would have glasses! Which is probably bad!!!!

I also had a friend who was trapped in glasses who saved up all her money for laser eye surgery, and I don't know why everyone doesn't just do that! Sure, some doctors say some people don't "qualify" and it "won't help" those people, but that's why you can't give up!! You don't want to be one of those people!

After all, what's the worse thing that could happen with an unnecessary laser surgery to the face that comes with crippling debt??? It's worth the risk to gain your FREEDOM back, and I'm so proud of my friend!!

Tragically, she did die later that year while driving Uber and squinting at street signs, but at least now I know my friend is finally free from the shackles of her terrible eyesight. #ripAshley #rippedAshley #justripit 😌😌😌❤😇😇😇

And that's why you shouldn't get used to using a mobility aid!! Because, like glasses, they are inherently embarrassing to be seen with; and - like glasses - it is more noble to silently suffer than to depend on unnatural technologies that force you to rely on them!!! (Besides, everyone else will be SO much more comfortable if you look normal!)

I hope you learned something today. 💖

[avelera]

Thinking about blasphemy and Good Omens right now and I can't help but notice an interesting phenomenon around some discussions I've seen about the Second Coming and Jesus Christ being a character in S3.

Namely, I see much more underlying discomfort around the possibility of the show poking fun at the figure of Jesus Christ than I do with any other prediction discussion or discussion around religion in the show.

On the one hand, I completely understand how poking fun at the Antichrist dogma from Revelations doesn't feel particularly blasphemous, where poking fun at Jesus does. The Antichrist is a stock character of horror at this point. Many more disrespectful teams than Gaiman and Pratchett have played with that story. It's barely even considered poking fun at Christianity to have Adam, the son of Satan, be a good kid in Good Omens. But Jesus is a very important figure to Christians all over the world. There are devout Christians who truly love Jesus and no one wants to be a jerk by just outright disrespecting a figure that is dear to so many.

But on the other hand, expecting Good Omens to not make fun of Jesus is a bit absurd to me. Literally saying, "I don't think the satirical religion show is going to satirize religion because it might upset people." Gaiman hasn't shied away from messing with religion or religious bigots before. He gleefully shrugged off attacks over God being a woman, or Adam and Eve being portrayed by people of color.

The Book of Job is lampooned in Season 2. I know it doesn't feel like it to many people here, but the reinterpretation of the Book of Job in S2 definitely registers as blasphemy on some religious scales. It is satirizing a religious text after all.

Saying that angels and demons fall in love and worse, have that love be portrayed by actors of the same sex could be seen as blasphemy at the very least on the level of saying God is a woman. And by the way, it's not like these religious texts say "God is whatever you want the entity to be" or "God is a woman if that makes you happy". Hell no, the Bible is extremely damn clear on God being male. The official position of the Catholic Church is that God is male. Official Catholic dogma is incredibly anti-female in terms of inherent holiness, women cannot become priests, even nuns are dependent on a priest to deliver the Sacraments, it's a huge deal and they are not planning to change any time soon and it is totally unambiguous.

Making God explicitly female might not seem like a big deal since films like Dogma, another religious satire, did it in the 90s but to True Believes in the official doctrine, that is a form of blasphemy.

Good Omens is by definition a blasphemous work. How offensively blasphemous it is really depends on the devoutness of the viewer. And I find it interesting the extent to which there's something of a knee jerk, "Oh they won't do that!" in terms of further satirizing religion in the show about religious satire. As if Jesus hasn't been satirized in other mainstream movies before like the aforementioned Dogma or Life of Brian.

And here's the thing, my personal opinion is? Blasphemy is good! Blasphemy laws on the books mean it's ok to punish, hurt, or even kill a person for making fun of religion or just doing the religion wrong. Human progress has been frozen in place by blasphemy laws, sciences have progressed when blasphemy laws ease or often while deliberately concealing their efforts from authorities in places where blasphemy laws or laws that were otherwise based on the dominant religion exist.

If anything, I am actually a bit uncomfortable with the idea that Good Omens should hold back on lampooning a figure like Jesus Christ. If devout Christians will make laws that determine what other humans can do with their bodies based on their religion, then their religion should absolutely be open to outright mockery without punishment or ramification to anyone. Of course on an individual level I wouldn't wish to be offensive to someone sincerely religious but at the same time, I am also violently anti-censorship of any kind. And blasphemy and religious mockery are often right at the heart of censorship debates.

The world is a better place when we can openly mock religion.

I'm not going to caveat that as an opinion. Being able to openly and without fear discuss, criticize, and mock religion is an incredibly important part of any free society. The battles over this right have been vicious and bloody and are actively ongoing around the world. Just as an example, anti-blasphemy laws were on the books in Ireland until 2020, there was a huge campaign to have them removed because other countries were pointing to them as an example of why they should keep and exercise such laws.

My point is that I suppose this is something of hyperbole or alarmist or overly strident. I can understand people wanting to be decent about not openly mocking a figure of such importance to so many like Jesus. But quite honestly? I hope Good Omens does whatever it pleases with mocking Jesus. I hope they don't hold back. I hope people remember that being able to mock religion is really important, especially when representatives of that religion are actively trying to clamp down on the rights of others.

And honestly, if religious people are offended they should just not watch or they should develop a thicker skin if they expose themselves to such discourse. Religion and Christianity in particular is an active part of the public sphere. It is worthy of discussion. Public discourse often includes mockery, especially of the powerful and of powerful forces that steer the course of nations, like Christianity.

And I think it's important for Good Omens fans, who are a very progressive group, not to cherry pick and moralize over what satire or blasphemy is permitted. All satire should be permitted. All blasphemy should be permitted. The religious bigots don't care if you think God being a woman is ok but making fun of Jesus isn't. It's all the same, anything but glowing praise is criticism to some of these forces. Open discussion is far more important and yes, that includes mockery, and silly discussions in a silly show about an angel and a demon who avert the Apocalypse and fall in love.

[horse-girl-anthy]

Hyperreality and Ikuhara: Art for the Postmodern Age

hyperreality, a term coined by Jean Baudrillard, describes the state of people living in postmodernity, where we are so inundated by signs, symbols, and representations that we have lost touch with the real. I was born in 1997. since I was a baby, I have seen advertisements every day of my life. I was watching TV before I understood what TV was. under these conditions, simulations begin to feel more real than reality.

for those trying to make art, hyperreality has been a challenge. this video uses the American cartoon The Simpsons as an example; the show had a subversive edge when it was first created, but capitalist forces pulled it away from that direction. there is the contradiction that any TV show must face: it needs to be produced and then be aired by a TV station, and it has to make a profit. the more money The Simpsons made, the less meaning there was to the story.

the video discusses how under hyperreality, the "code" is substituted for the "reference." in the case of Homer Simpson, his characterization originally had ties to reality. his character was a subversion of the typical sitcom father, and he was portrayed as lazy, ignorant, and incompetent to make a point about American culture. however, as the show became iconic, it was increasingly self-referential, and thus Homer's traits grew to be mere symptoms of who he was rather than satire.

referentiality was the death knell of parody. as the video discusses, the media landscape of the 21st century has collapsed in on itself. when The Simpsons began, there was a clear cultural script it was parodying, as well as a sociopolitical hegemony it was subverting. the world of today is too confused for that; there is no norm to imitate, as everything is already an imitation. thus, there is an infinite regress of self-referential media, a black hole of meaning.

perhaps this is why Ikuhara was so worried about RGU being seen as parody. he didn't want it to be written off, easily categorized, meaningless and part of the status quo. at first, he tried to make the work "like nothing you've ever seen." this, however, wasn't easy, nor was it what he actually wanted. he decided instead to try to "round up all the animated stories made with girls as the main characters up till then into one story." This meant that the visuals of RGU "must be parodies."

to keep his story from being subsumed into the hyperreal, Ikuhara created his own style, one which turns referentiality against itself. all Ikuhara works are metatextual and heightened. rather than portraying a "reality" to the viewer, they communicate directly by playing on recognizable scripts, symbols, and signs. consider this brief exerpt from a Be-Papas interview:

Interviewer: Are you being playful with the visuals using Chu Chu? He seems like a relaxing distraction. Ikuhara: I didn't put much thought into it. I figured it's an anime so there'd be a mascot.

Chu-Chu has no explanation in the "reality" of the story, no origin. he is there because of the medium of anime. as in, Chu-Chu exists because he is the kind of character that appears in these kinds of stories.

that artificiality is absolutely everywhere in Ikuhara works. many events are conveyed through canned representations, signifiers which communicate by rote. for instance, in Yurikuma, domination is expressed by a girl putting her leg in between the legs of another girl. this is a recognizable action which communicates both the plot and affect of the scene. however, the action itself is determined by the work's genre. in Utena, the scene would look more like Touga pushing Utena up against a tree and getting into her personal space, which is what would happen in a shoujo. the act itself has no meaning outside of being a referential symbol.

without this style, I don't think Ikuhara works would be as subversive. firstly, by making a point of their own artificiality, they can break through hyperreality. secondly, there are moments when the artificiality shatters. even in those moments, his style is still there. for instance, in Penguindrum, the "child broiler" scenes are communicating to the audience through recognizable signs; there is no diegetic level. but the most pivotal, emotional moments in Ikuhara works do not follow cultural scripts. the "it's that way because it is that way" mentality falls away.

Ikuhara characters follow the opposite tragectory of hyperreal characters. they start out as floating signifiers, characters who are parodies of themselves. Anthy is the shy, quirky girl who must be protected. Himari is the cute, innocent little sister. the fact that his characters are meant to be walking tropes is self-evident--it's blatant, a constant in-joke. but then, the stories broaden, developing the characters and complicating their narratives. this cuts against the grain of hyperreality, forcing the audience to consider how they may have let their lives be scripted for them, how they may be living in artificiality, "dying without ever being born."

[septembersghost]

since you are both harry and Taylor fan do you think Stockholm syndrome is about taylor? Harry said it was about a 'nympho' so I always thought it wasn't about her because I didn't think he would call her that in an interview. But after complicated freak was released I am on fence about it. SS sounds like having a kinky chained sex and some of tay's song about harry has a sexual element. And I can't imagine complicated freak being about anyone else as he was pining so hard for her during that era. (Also ignore this if you got my previous ask. I sent the same one but my phone had trouble so I don't think you got it)

i got them both! in the previous one you said, "I also saw someone saying it's from a pov of the guy in blank space(she is the predator he is the victim so a satire)," and i've never thought about it that way before, that's actually a really fun interpretation!

short answer is yes i do think stockholm syndrome and complicated freak share her as the muse. definitely agree that complicated freak is pretty unquestionable and that there wasn't anyone else at that time that he was pining so hard for or would've described in that way.

i consider a lot of the stuff thematically in stockholm syndrome (an absolute banger btw) to be more metaphorical "who's that shadow holding me hostage? i've been here for days," "baby, look what you've done to me. baby, you've got me tied down" to me are like, he's so in love with/infatuated by/attracted to her that he can't escape constantly thinking about and wanting to be with her. i don't think it's literal *rihanna voice* ~whips and chains excite me~ as much as it's like, "you're always on my mind and it's overwhelming (and when we're together it's really good)." the song has a lot of elements about fear of commitment and how she's flipped his world and that's exhilarating but somewhat frightening too ("i fear i'm getting used to being held by you," "used to sing about being free but now he's changed his mind." harry also borrows her trick of referencing themselves in the third person there, which she does again in question, i'm just noticing that!). there's a clear sexual component and he, well. he made that joke, but there's a deeper aspect to that too, where he feels like he and his world are being reshaped by the intensity of what he feels for her. ("all my life i've been on my own/i used the light to guide me home/but now together we're alone/and there's no other place i'd ever wanna go" - notice he goes from being on his own to alone together). he sung stockholm syndrome and if i could fly regularly when touring hs1, and of course that's because he wrote them, but the themes also fit well with some of the other songs about this from his debut record.

i think where do broken hearts go is another aspect of this as well and his side of things referenced in ootw/iwyw (counted all my mistakes and there's only one/standing out from the list of the things i've done/all the rest of my crimes don't come close to the look on your face when i let you go/so, i built you a house from a broken home, and i wrote you a song with the words you spoke...the taste of your lips on the tip of my tongue is at the top of the list of the things i want/mind is running in circles of you and me/anyone in between is the enemy/shadows come with the pain that you're running from/love was something you've never heard enough).

the allure/attraction/sexy element definitely appears a lot in her music about him too, even in a softer, more romantic way, the idea of the tide of that love pulling you back in shows up too (lanterns burning, flickered in my mind for only you). definitely why, when you lay their songs side-by-side, they take on that element of unspoken dialogue.

[adultswim2021]

UPDATE!

Hey everyone! I’m sorta back. If you didn’t read my last update, here’s the rundown: My computer shit the bed and on it I had weeks worth of write-ups that I didn’t wanna have to do-over. I still don’t! And I lucked into taking my computer to the most unresponsive repair shop in the universe. Would you believe I called them last week and they, for the seventh-or-eighth time they told me they were too busy to talk to me and would call me right back and didn’t? I’m literally this close to showing up with a [PARODY/SATIRE] and [PARODY/SATIRE] up the place.

Anyway, this blog has always been about covering Adult Swim comedy originals and ONLY Adult Swim comedy originals, opting to skip acquisitions and anime all together. But, in a perhaps vain attempt to make it seem like the blog isn’t dead, I decided to come back with a little something to hopefully tide the four-or-five people who read this. I’m gonna review the first Adult Swim acquisition: Cowboy Bebop. What? You think I should’ve done Family Guy, maybe? 

So strap in for the first installment of: “THIS IS WHY I DON’T REVIEW ANIME”.

Cowboy Bebop #1: “Asteroid Blues” | October 24, 1998 | S01E01 Adult Swim premiere: September 3, 2001 - 12:00AM

Okay, I need to be VERY CLEAR HERE: I’m not even particularly that good at reviewing shows I care about, but I think I am definitely predisposed to wanna talk about genres I actively enjoy more than ones I actively don’t. So I’m guessing my write-ups for Cowboy Bebop won’t be quite as robust as my comedy write-ups. Also, I’m doing my customary thing of making the first episode write-up consist of mostly preamble with a short actual episode synopsis tacked on as an afterthought, so don’t let the length of this one fool you. I’m about to go on a lotta tangents.

Back when Adult Swim was young, an anti-anime sentiment began developing almost immediately. That’s because the block consisted of 80% abrasive comedy shows for fans of somewhat specific comic sensibilities. Then there was anime, which appeared to be the polar opposite in almost every way. Cowboy Bebop was not only beautifully animated, but it was also primarily NOT comedy: It was more traditionally nerdy in that it was about science fiction, brooding badasses performing super-heroics, cool action scenes, etc. etc. These were all things I was specifically NOT into in 2001. I tend to have an aversion to almost anything that is presented as COOL, in the proactive/heroic sense of the word. COOL to me just meant being funny and mean and/or being a shithead punk. To be more succinct with an analogy: I didn’t think Han Solo was cool because he did stuff.

Despite being an obnoxious individualist I got swept up in anti-anime sentiment to the point that I actually identified as anti-anime and gleefully posted about it on a message board called ANIME SUCKS. The board was started by a mentally-deficient online ex-friend of mine who started it on a service called Ezboard. On Ezboard you could start your own message board very easily and would-be posters could register “global” accounts, which meant that you could post on any public Ezboard without having to re-register. That meant if you were a public board you were always a few clicks away from being discovered by a random person who had no barrier of entry from browsing and posting if the mood struck them. There were only about a dozen of us anti-anime heels that posted on ANIME SUCKS, but we attracted literally over 1000 angry anime fans who would come to the message board just to argue with us. The banner for the board was a found photo of a trio of absolute dorks cosplaying as various anime people, taken at an American comic book convention. One of them was Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop albeit doughier, bespectacled, and sporting a flat-looking bowl cut. 

Internalized racism much??? Eh, we went to that well sometimes, sure. We were, and still are, huge shitheads. But usually we tried to be as aggressively dumb as possible when we argued with people, which was the best way to frustrate them. Also, I think the single most revolting thing to us was the idea of American anime fans. Dorks who were so alienated by the culture they were born into they gravitated towards what might as well be alien. I too grew up alienated by the culture I was born into, and I only embrace technology to the extent that it can show me my old shows I like to watch from before I lost my heart. Clearly, I’m not the loser here, right? RIGHT???

When that first night of Adult Swim premiered I remember how important it all felt, and how mandatory the viewing of all the shows seemed to me at the time. That is, until I got to about 5 minutes in on the first episode of Cowboy Bebop. Then it was time to turn off the TV. The amount of time that’s passed by between that moment and this moment is now old enough to drink (I missed Adult Swim’s birthday on the 2nd. Sorry!). I’ve done a little bit of growing since then, not to brag. So now I have more patience for media where people don’t get kicked in the nuts and then you see a close-up their face going cross-eyed while they fall. So now it’s time to watch Cowboy Bebop FOR REAL. 

In Asteroid Blues we get the premise of the show: Spike is a bounty hunter flying around in Space on a large spacecraft. He and his partner, a burly android type of guy, are scraping by, even though their last job brought in the bacon all the property damage they caused put them back in the red. 

This episode is about them going after a fella who is smuggling a synthetic drug that you spray in your eye. It seems to have PCP-esque qualities and it also makes time perception slow down for those who use it, making them almost superhuman. It also gives the user big bloodshot eyes. His pregnant, big-titty GF is also along for the ride.

I’ve seen one other episode of this show and both of them had this in common: it’s the future, and presumably it’s fairly early in the timeline of humans colonizing space; therefore the space colonies (I assume many of them are on asteroids [shoulda paid closer attention, sorry if I’m wrong]) are pretty crude, and resemble the old west. So the show hops back and forth between being on a futuristic spaceship and being on a dusty wild west planet. I don’t know if EVERY EPISODE follows this formula, but the two I saw sure did. 

I still maintain that this isn’t entirely my thing. I can appreciate more about this show now than I did then. There are cool actiony moments and I appreciate the craft that went into this. But I’m still waiting to be wowed. But the music is great and the show is fun and I get why people liked it.

I rented the box set from Movie Madness in Portland, OR, and I’ll probably hang onto it long enough that I’ll wind up paying late fees. But--and this is just a heads up--I’ll probably be way briefer on future write-ups so I can get through these quicker on my end. In other words: you’re being cheated. Still, better than nothing, right?

[luuurien]

Little Simz - NO THANK YOU

(UK Hip Hop, Neo-Soul, Jazz Rap)

Stripping her sound to its barest and centering the music around loss both personal and economic, Little Simz's surprise release is a confident - if intentionally understated - dive into the core of her artistry and what she wishes to embody.

☆☆☆☆

The detour NO THANK YOU takes Little Simz in the aftermath of her enchanting 2021 opus Sometimes I Might Be Introvert isn't a surprise, but what she decides to do in this quieter space surely is. Diving into these introspective spaces after bold and heavy statement albums isn't all too rare in the hip hip space - Kendrick Lamar's done it with untitled unmastered; De La Soul dropped the satirical and lowkey De La Soul Is Dead after the paradigm shift that was 3 Feet High and Rising - but it often comes with a shift in intention as well, something that is absolutely not the case for Simz, continuing down the road of industry exploitation and artistic freedom SIMBI's grandness had her defiantly rejecting but now with a darker, more intimate feel to it all. NO THANK YOU has her clinging onto independence even as the entire industry seems to continue pushing back against her - her AWAL distributor was just bought by Sony for 430 million dollars and the cost of touring has only become more and more destructive for musicians - but it's this clear and close-up view of all that stress and anger NO THANK YOU pushes forward with some of her most commanding and passionate songs to date. Again produced by close collaborator Inflo, NO THANK YOU pulls SImz into the stripped-back and soulful sound of her 2010's projects while tweaking it with hints of the orchestral and gospel sound Inflo's been refining the past few years under his SAULT moniker. There's her usual jazz rap fare with a punchier feel to it like Angel and Silhouette, but she brings back grime and trap with a surprise lushness on early highlights Gorilla and No Merci, Inflo sneaking bright horns and crisp orchestration into themrespectively while the core beat is thick and sturdy. It's this gray area between elegant songcraft and a defiant exposé of industry games NO THANK YOU adores, Heart on Fire's drama spurred on by both its dramatic choral backings and Simz's newfound opportunities and fears with wealth and fame while the watery back end cut Who Even Cares sees her in a warmer melodic space where anxiety is submerged in hopes for the future as well as Simz's acknowledgement of the fight for her artistry ahead. The album lacks the broad strokes of social and personal commentary SIMBI used for its expansive yet insular storytelling style, but the focused energy she brings to NO THANK YOU results in a tighter tracklist that leaves no chance for her message to be missed. It can, at times, lead to a strangely understated message that doesn't always land with the impact SIMBI was able to support, the seven-minute Broken a beautiful narrative tale of immigrant poverty and social struggles yet its grooveless, airy orchestration seems to never shape Simz's lyrics in a supportive fashion, and even strong cuts like No Merci and X can have their intricate production take away from Simz's rapping at points. Her disillusionment with the wider music world is found more in her words than the music itself, often complementing one another with the plush landing pad Inflo provides for her harsh stories of broken communities and mental crises of Angel or X, but the minimalist stylings of Gorilla and gospel finale Control hit higher highs with even less instrumentation surrounding Simz, NO THANK YOU a strong album where the extravagance isn't always the most beneficial. It's never a big enough issue to cause tears in the album's experience and she has more than enough memorable lines and beautiful performances to carry her to the end, but for an album where much of its weight is found in Simz's writing thanks to Inflo's slimmer production, a little less decoration could've helped keep the storytelling at the forefront. As exhausting as the past few years have been for Simz, NO THANK YOU is a reassurance that she's not straying from her mission a bit, as direct a response to the modern music industry and the troubles within the community she grew up in as any of her previous releases but dropping much of the embellishments for an even more direct route to those answers. You can hear her frustration through her words no matter how smoothly she's floating on the beat, able to mix cool-headed raps and the issues plaguing her most better than nearly anyone else around her, NO THANK YOU is quintessential Simz during one of the most important parts of her career, refusing to let the staggering peaks of her previous album startle her and instead release a project where intimacy and expression take center stage. She knows exactly what she wants, and nothing will get in the way of her pursuit.

[ukaiknowsbest]

Who is(are) your fave antagonist(s) in gintama?

A.) 18th IKEDA YAEMON

This guy is everything I want in a Gintama villain:

Late Edo Period Accuracy and Attitudes

Two-faced jerkface who knows what he's doing and is still going to do it

Direct Connection to Gintoki's past- this is the kind of persona I always wished to see in Gintama, someone who will truly use Gintoki's past against him.

That face which screams that he's absolutely up to No Good.

Uses everyone and everything for his own goals/for the good of the clan, no matter how dirty.

Concrete and clear raisons d'etre which is to make his family look more favorable to the new ruling faction (heck yeah)

vigilanteism/cleaning up old criminals who'd been allowed to escape? - [chef's kiss] THAT'S HOW THINGS SHOULD BE DONE, BABY!

Bonus is that this is the arc is the missing piece of the puzzle of the person Gintoki has become after the Joui war.

I think this arc should have been played up more. However I also think that its short length is what makes it intense.

Yep. YES. I LOVE THIS GUY. BEST GINTAMA VILLAIN FOR ME.

B.) UTSURO

I like the hopelessness Utsuro inspires and how it always cues in the ominous organ music. Also his arc kind of answered all my questions on why every Amanto country is trying to destabilize earth politics so much. Interesting payoff.

I'm still annoyed at the unexpected deus ex machina moment that defeated him at the end of Silver Soul Arc.

His villain origin story is pretty interesting and having one of his reincarnations rebel against him was a fun trope to see again.

C.) HOSEN

Acted like a true Yoshiwara mama-san. A+++ i wished he didnt die. Would've made Yoshiwara sht more fun and fckd up the power dynamics even more.

D.) SADASADA TOKUGAWA

Idk about his real life counterpart but heck yes. I love the guy. Such a good villain/political figure almost rooted in accuracy. I like that he uses Shigeshige as puppet while he controls everything from behind. That is a very real thing that kept happening in jp history (tho i dont know much about the tokugawas of the late edo period).

E.) NOBUNOBU

He's so consistently deserving to be punched. It's great. He's an obnoxious total stupid idiot who's so sure of himself. He's redemption arc was excellent. I hate the ending that he met. Really the more I read Gintama, the more I gain a soft spot for him. Love his outfit too.

............

unpopular opinion: i wish we had a serious lady villain too :(((( Otohime was interesting but she was kind of boring at the end. Seriously, inflicting the people of Edo with old age as if it's a curse to beauty?? maybe it's an satire to Japan's ageing population and stubborn sticking to impractical traditional values? I wish that were the case. Then again, GIntama has an ageism problem anyway...im probably reading too much into it. It's probably a rule in Shonen genre never to have true bonafide female villains.

[mk-wizard]

Big Hero 6 The Series: It could have been better

Hello, friends. Today, I will be analyzing a TV series based on a movie that I fell in love with for its colourful themes, deep plot, compelling characters, great CGI and memorable messages. Before I get into it, I want to take a moment to say that I have quit doing videos. They are too big of a pain in the petunia to make and I write better than I speak, so I will stick to writing essays, reviews and more. Anyway, onto the analysis.

All I can say about Big Hero 6 the series is that it had a great concept, it presented some great ideas and tried hard to be a cartoon of the times, but it could have and should have been a lot better. The show’s downfall all centers around trying too hard to be kid friendly which makes the shame sting all the more because Big Hero 6 was already kid friendly even with its dark themes, sharp edges and intelligent writing. If anything, even the brightest kid friendly cartoons (Steven Universe, She-Ra, etc.) had those things and actually benefitted from them. By needlessly trying too hard, character development got scrapped, the edges were all smoothed out, storytelling was subpar, the humour was too silly and the executive meddling in the end produced a dismal final season. However, I don’t want this analysis to be one lengthy negative rant about how awful the series was because in its defense, awful is an unfair word. It did have potential and ideas which are worth carrying over to a reboot that I hope will be done someday in the future. Also, we should root for a reboot because Big Hero 6 would not be the first story that needs it before striking gold. Just look at how many times Spider-Man was rebooted in film before MCU found the version that worked. Anyway, I will list all the things in Big Hero 6 that could have been better in my opinion;

1- Go easy on the laughs and be more generous with the action. - I love adding comedy to my own writing because I think a good sense of humour makes everything better, but Big Hero 6 is not a stand up comedy routine. It is a superhero story where we expect action, suspense and life or death situations that are to be taken seriously first. The comedy should be for relief and with the right timing. Also, the chibi cutscenes and having characters act like fools aren’t funny. Ren and Stimpy are the exception not the standard and their way of making you laugh doesn’t fit an action series. In a show as big as Big Hero 6, real life physics and danger matters.

2- Make the villains menacing and gritty. - I admit that after having a movie villain like Yokai who was the stuff of nightmares, it is going to be a challenging act to follow, but it was obvious that the writers were trying especially with some villains who could have easily gone into some dark relatable territory. For example, Mr. Sparkles (the gentleman in the photo above) embodies social media and Internet personalities. Right off the bat, you have a long list of things which embody the dark side of that like scams, fraud, using social media to dox or harass, driving people to suicide, online predators, the Internet personalities being very depressed people in real life, and much more horrifying things. When you stop and look at it, Mr. Sparkles even looks like the Joker which hints how dark and scary he could have been if the stops were removed. The same goes for enemies like Hardlight who embodies online gaming, Liv with cloning, Obake an amoral and insane scientist, and Trina and Noodle Burger Boy (more on him later) being evil robots. Globby especially should have been painted and written in much darker colours rather being played off for laughs because he has many parallels with Clay Face. The only two villains who I can say were supposed to be campy, charming and comical were Baron Von Steamer and Supersonic Sue because they were a satire of the Adam West style villains.

The rest of them needed to be dark and threatening including Mr. Sparkles. In fact, I would love a rebooted version of Mr. Sparkles who gives me the heebie-jeebies. Going back to Noodle Burger Boy, I must confess that I was actually excited when I heard that he was going to be the main villain of the final season because I thought he was going to fulfill his master’s final wish and as a reminder, Noodle Burger Boy was based on a super robot for military purposes.

It would have been fantastic if Noodle Burger Boy was upgraded into a full military war machine with a new threatening look. For that, I think all of the villains deserve to be rebooted and have their full potential unlocked for better or for worse.

3- A show about geniuses merits genius level art quality. - I am usually forgiving towards art styles, but in the case of Big Hero 6, the oversimplified style with minimal details and lack of textures did not suit the show. The characters blend in with the background which makes them look flat and the special effects were extremely dulled down. I also know for a fact that Disney can do a lot better than this because I saw how superbly Tangled the Series was drawn.

You can see and almost feel the difference in quality, the number of layers and level of detail between the two styles. I think there was no excuse Big Hero 6 was not done in the same style and at the same level if not better as Tangled.

3- Don’t dumb down or flanderize amazing characters. - I absolutely detest it when characters are flanderized because it makes them one dimensional and grating. For example, Go Go is tough as nails and extremely calm, but she is not cold or hesitant towards helping her friends. She doesn’t require very special episodes for us to know that. If anything, the movie version of Go Go reminded me a lot of Garnet in how she deconstructed the broody character. She isn’t cold or emotionless. Just calm and mature. Another good example was how Honey Lemon was rewritten to be overly positive to the point of toxicity, naïve and oblivious with a juvenile obsession with stickers. Then you have poor Fred who was rewritten to be an incompetent fool. The spark that makes Big Hero 6 shine is that they are a team of geniuses meaning they are all intelligent. Even Fred is genius in his own way just not a scientific one. He has a vivid imagination, he is resourceful and can get himself out of tight spots. Please, don’t turn characters into dummies especially if their intelligence is a part of them. It doesn’t make them better or funnier. It ruins them.

4- Tadashi needs closure and honour. - I am all for Hiro making peace with the loss of his brother, but Tadashi is to the Big Hero 6 team what Uncle Ben was to Spider-Man. His loss was the catalyst if not the reason. He should never be forgotten. Moreover, there was never any true closure to him especially with the possibility that he may still be alive up in the air. After all, like Callaghan, his body was never found and it turned out that Callaghan was still alive.

With that said, who is to say that Tadashi was not secretly still alive and just hiding or being hidden? This is something that Disney really needed to clear up if not for the fans, then at least as a service to such an important character. Never just forget about them.

5- The format can only be episodic with a deep plots, continuity and character development. - Random episodes with a mere monster of the day is an outdated format which doesn’t fit Big Hero 6′s modern and bright setting. In seasons 1 and 2, when the episodes were plot heavy with character development, the series shined brightest. It also helped move the story along, but with the final season, plot was removed, closure was abandoned or poorly written if any was given, and characters were disallowed from growing. A good example at how plot and character development could have made this series and its characters better was the relationship between Hiro and Megan. Would it have truly survived or would they have broken up?

Would Richardson Mole have eventually lost interest in his obsession with besting and bullying Fred or would his obsession consume him compelling him to become a super villain? I do see quite a few similarities between Mole and Reverse Flash.

Then you have Karmi who is in my opinion, the biggest wild card of the bunch. She was intentionally introduced as an arrogant, prickly and unlikable yet complex character who rivaled Hiro bitterly.

Yet had a huge crush on his alter ego and as time went on, started to grow up and even form a friendship with Hiro. What would have happened further down the road with her? Would she have become a super hero herself? Or maybe even another love interest for Hiro kind of like how Black Cat is for Spider-Man?

Is Obake really gone?

What does the future hold Diana (Liv’s clone), Liv herself or the Sycorax the genetics company?

Is Alistair Krei going to become an ally to Big Hero 6 or an antagonist? There is also the issue at how little we know about the other Big Hero 6 characters other than Fred, Hiro and Baymax. What are Honey Lemon, Wasabi and Go Go’s backstories? These questions matter and while not every mystery can be solved, leaving none of them solved is lazy writing.

6- Executives, kindly stay out of the writing and any other part of the creative process. - I’m sorry, execs, but there is no nice way to say it. History itself proves that every time executives got involved in the creative process of any media, it got worse not better. Leave the writing to the creative team and the execs should only handle the legal stuff. Please. We understand that TV is a business, but writing itself is not. It is an art which you just don’t have a talent for. Let the creative people do their thing with the freedom necessary and you do your thing, deal? Deal.

7- Focus on Hiro and Baymax. - The are the main characters so keep them at the heart of the series no matter what happens around them. That is all I can say.

And that sums up all the things that could have made Big Hero 6 the series better, but this is all just my opinion. What is yours?

PS: I am well aware that the Big Hero 6 series is being retconned because a new series called Baymax is in the works as well as the long awaited sequel to the first movie. I am looking forward to both with an open mind. PPS: I also am aware that some people liked this show the way it was including the art style and I am cool with that. An analysis for art that includes cartoons is never right or wrong. It is solely based on opinion. I may have thought this series could have been better, but there are people who make arguments that it could have been worse.

[itsclydebitches]

The thing that feels disingenuous about Miles answer about Ironwood is that he was part of the writing staff that framed the general as a cool character to start with. I do think that the signs about Ironwood's evil were clear since V2 and in V7 he was an outright dictator from episode 1. Nonetheless, he was still consistently framed as a cool character, someone you can trust and rely. You don't get to blame the fans for liking a genocide if you was the one framed him as cool in the first place.

I actually don’t think being cool is the problem. If we’re satirizing and/or making a  statement about the toxic masculinity that leads to something like a dictatorship, then being “cool” is a crucial part of that. People don’t leverage the power they have by looking lame, they do so by appearing desirable, enviable, awesome. Being in the military is supposedly “cool.” Being a white guy with a giant gun is supposedly “cool.” Having power over an entire nation is supposedly “cool,” etc. If you only make such characters look revolting  — even when they are  — then you miss one of the main recruitment tools for this kind of rhetoric. Any version of Ironwood that’s meant to make a point about the dangers of following someone like him needs to make him look “cool” and then deconstruct that, pointing out the ways in which this cool veneer is a lie meant to pull you in. To do otherwise is to claim that evil people are always easy to spot. Making your villains “uncool” implies that the people who do appear cool in real life must be fine then. That good looking, charismatic leader is great. Why would I look critically at his actions? He’s too cool to be evil. 

My personal problem is not that “They made the dictator look cool and we can’t possibly expect the audience to tell the difference between someone who is truly good and someone who is just using various Cool Points to skate by” because that would be the point of such a character  — the work the show needs to do. My problem is that RWBY didn’t do that work. At least, not to the extent they needed to. Rather than making Ironwood a truly heinous character (prior to Volume 7 ‘s shooting, I mean) and allowing the audience to learn how appearing cool can’t hide that, they just made him good person. Straight up. Flawed, absolutely, but no worse than any of the other character on screen, particularly post Volume 6 when our heroes are frequently putting people in danger, seizing power, telling lies, keeping secrets, and generally acting in the ways we’re supposedly meant to condemn Ironwood for. Since talk of Miles’ vid last night I’ve seen three separate “Ironwood was always bad, idk how people can miss the signs” posts and those people are half right. There 100% were signs we were meant to pick up on. The problem is RWBY then went and deconstructed those signs. Ironwood didn’t just bring an army to a peace festival, he brought an army to an event he had good reason to believe wasn’t peaceful  — and he was right. Ironwood didn’t wrest control from Ozpin (using a series of checks and balances that exist for this very purpose...) because he has an obsession with being in control, he did so because he honestly believed Ozpin was putting people in danger  — and he was right. Ironwood didn’t step up post-Fall because he arrogantly believes he’s the only one capable of saving Remnant, he did so because he’s actually the most qualified: a fully trained huntsmen leading an Academy (like Ozpin) with an army and knowledge of this secret war. What, was Ironwood supposed to read the script and wait for the group of dropout teenagers to arrive and save the world instead? To say nothing of how his power and responsibility are framed as sacrifices, not something he sought out. Ironwood doesn’t want to be the sole ruler here. His desperate relief at having allies again proves it. Good setup for the rise of a dictator would have been Ironwood being cagey with his information and exerting control over the group... not telling them everything, not giving them more power, not letting them keep the Lamp, not taking arrest off the table so as to keep them in line, and generally doing the opposite of everything he did do to share that responsibility and power. RWBY got very good at giving us the first half of these red flags  — he has an army, he’s stubborn, he’s hurting Mantle, etc.  — but then time and time again introduced a context that changed that flag dramatically: they are fighting literal monsters, he’s no more stubborn than our title character, hurting Mantle is a consequence of a plan he thinks will help the whole world and our heroes back this. Those who insist that Ironwood was 100% a villain in the making (or a villain already) prior to shooting Oscar are working from their assumption of what his archetype represents, not what RT actually put on screen. Because RT is just really bad at writing a dictator character. They didn’t have the skill to manage someone who only appeared good on the surface, let alone a character with the complex nuance of wielding “coolness” to their advantage, which is why in Volume 8 they had to resort to cartoon villainy with literal, evil spotlights. It’s not that the audience is too dumb to pick up on those red flags, it’s that RT couldn’t manage to plant them without continually introducing valid justifications. You can’t say, “Bringing an army is a bad thing. Look at this dictator coding!” without me going, “Yeah, except in the fictional world you created an army does not represent the problems it does in our real life societies. This isn’t a guy amassing soldiers to go after oil, he’s trying to protect people from monsters. Not even metaphoric monsters acting as stand-ins for a minority group. Literal, evil monsters!” RWBY ignores its own context and a good chunk of the fandom ignored it too. 

The problem with that (besides the general frustration of someone ignoring parts of canon to forward a particular reading) is that the fandom’s go-to claim is that everything is meaningful  — and it’s a reading the writers very much support. Fans do not, as the above attests, push for a simple reading of, “Don’t think too hard about it. Just take the surface reading and run with it” which, while still frustrating, would have at least been a valid stance. Rather, they insist very strongly that nuance and depth are what drive the show. From the song lyrics to a tiny detail in the opening, everything is important and if you don’t accept that then you can’t appreciate RWBY’s complexity. 

“Okay,” I said. “Then in that case Ironwood coming around to Ozpin’s position is meaningful too? Glynda  — one of our best and most faultless characters  — supporting him is meaningful? Flipping his gun, defending Weiss, Qrow writing to him, the group working with him for months on end... all of it is meaningful to his characterization? You said so yourself.” 

“No, no, no,” comes the reply. “He’s just bad. But he’s also nuanced. He’s tricked you into thinking he’s a good person by acting kind sometimes, by getting support sometimes, but none of that is true. His actions are what matter and his actions are simplistically bad.” 

“Ohhhh. So then does that mean this story is really about the creation of a villain?” 

“Huh?” 

“Well, Ruby. She’s ‘nuanced’ in the same way. She acts kind sometimes and gets support, but her actions are terrible. She endangered an entire city because she couldn’t wait to see if Ironwood got his letter. She condemned Ozpin for keeping secrets about Salem and then kept those same secrets just two days later. When the kingdom was under attack she sat around drinking tea, crying on a staircase, just hoping someone would come fix things for her  — all while actively sabotaging the one person who was trying to save people, even if that action seems silly to us (let’s fly really high). So if we’re looking at the impact of someone’s actions outside of their intent, as we just did with Ironwood, then she’s a bad guy too, yeah?” 

“No! She’s the hero!” 

“... these characters don’t know she’s the hero from a meta perspective. If we’re supposed to judge the meaning of RWBY based on these details — ” 

“But it’s not just the details. It’s also the allusions. Everyone in RWBY is based on another person or character. It’s very complex and that inspiration drives their story, so if you don’t have that information it’s no surprise you’re confused. For example, this is why Penny had to get a human body. That’s what happened to Pinocchio!” 

“Oh! So then Ironwood is destined to be a good guy!” 

“What?” 

“Well, you just said the allusions drive their stories, right? The whole point of the Tin Man is that he always had a heart and just needed to realize that. So clearly — “ 

“No! He’s supposed to be a classic dictator, he’s only bad!” 

And ‘round and ‘round we go. RWBY’s writing is atrocious yet the fandom pushes this narrative that it’s all a complex, multi-layered story that requires taking every part into account to understand the “real” message... but when you try to do that with certain characters like Ozpin and Ironwood it’s, “No, actually, they’re just simple archetypes of Bad Men.” Nuance exists for the bees, but not other ships. It exists for the characters fans like, but not the ones they don’t. And RWBY’s inspirations have to predict the ending for this character... but not that other character. It’s a nonsense grab bag! 

Fans are right that Ironwood had a lot of red flags to set up this downfall. Fans are also right that those red flags were severely undercut, thus reversing their impact. Fans are right that Ironwood becomes a 100% bad guy who kills because he can and threatens to bomb a city. Fans are also right that this characterization feels absurd for Ironwood, both in terms of his morality and his intelligence (how does bombing Mantle help you now??) Ironwood is badly written. He was badly written in 7 and 8, if he was always meant to be a dictator in the making then he was badly written in 2-6, and he’s conclusively badly written when it comes to lacking a backstory and a canonical semblance  — two things are are supposedly driving all of this characterization. That’s the answer: not that he’s good, or bad, but that RWBY can’t write a consistent character, let alone a nuanced one, so it’s no surprise the fandom can’t decide on anything. What’s there to decide on? It’s that nonsense grab bag. In a different show I think making the dictator appear cool would be a crucial bit of commentary, but RWBY doesn’t have the skill to pull that off. 

[concerningwolves]

Question for you! I see Fae show up a lot in the fantasy genre, and I really love it and want to play with those ideas in some of my own works, but I was wondering — is this something that can be mishandled? I’ve seen some discussion on things to look out for in terms of insensitive portrayal of neurodivergence, but I’ve also just been mulling over the fact that there is a lot of very rich folklore that varies depending on what culture you’re looking at, and that there is potential to disrespect that out of simple fascination for the trope. Being extremely American with no cultural ties to the folklore, I’m just not sure. Is there harm that can be done by sicking solely to the tried and true tropes, or alternatively, by trying to put a new creative spin on those ideas? So sorry if this doesn’t make very much sense, this was harder to put into words that I expected. I was just wondering if you might have any thoughts or advice on this

Oh, this is a nice question for me. Thank you, Nonny :3

Full disclaimer: folklore and mythology, particularly relating to the fae, is my special interest. That doesn't mean I'm an expert in myths and folklore (or the linked history/anthropology). I'm just a person who spends inordinate amounts of time thinking about these things and am exceedingly happy to infodump on the drop of a hat. So, my word isn't law, I'm always happy to hear other opinions, please correct me if I make a mistake etc etc.

"Can you mishandle writing the fae?" is something i have many thoughts on. If you'd asked me this a few years ago, I'd have been all "yes you can, the fae have been appropriated and butchered by popular culture blah blah blah" because I was insufferably anal about things being Correct. But lately, I've come to really love just how vast this – I guess you could call it the popular culture faerie mythos – is. So much of it isn't what a folklore purist would consider correct, but I'm fascinated by how these folkloric figments have evolved and become ingrained in the general psyche nonetheless.

I think writing the fae can become harmful if writers use Welsh/Irish/Scottish folklore as their base without properly researching or without an awareness of the historical context. There's this trend of ignoring centuries of actual history from these countries and instead creating a very warped idealistic fiction. For example, if a writer presents a fantasy world with faeries and says "This is based on Welsh mythology" and then goes on to perpetuate such bunkum as "they all worship a mystical moon goddess" then that's Very Not Good. Similarly, if a writer says "here is my fantasy faery race, they're based on Celtic [Irish] mythology" then I'm going to have some Problems with that, because Celtic mythology and Irish mythology aren't the same thing. (The Celts were an Indo-European people comprised of many cultures and tribes, spread from Ireland to central Europe. While their influence in Ireland is clear, not everything Irish is Celtic and vice versa).

Irish, Welsh and Scottish cultures have historically been persecuted by the English, and that shows in how the English retconned their respective folkloric beliefs to create the British fairy mythos. It's something writers ought to be mindful of but generally aren't imho. This "British" faerie mythos is actually a melting pot of Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Nordic folklore with a healthy dose of medieval romanticism. It's what gave us the popular images of the Seelie and Unseelie ("good" and "bad") faerie courts, wherein the fae are generally more "civilised" (read: like Proper British Victorians) and have humanoid appearances. I don't think that any story which uses this bastardised fairy mythology is automatically bad, but I do get wary when writers plunge into it without giving any thought to why the British fairy image is Like That.

I recently listened to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke and I was absolutely enthralled. Clarke's fairies are based on the medieval romantic image of them, particularly medieval children's tales. They exist in the realm of Fairy, which is near to Hell, and have a society that falls somewhere between feudalism and the Victorian. What gripped me was how Clarke used the Bastardised British Fairy Lore to create this... almost satirical criticism of "Englishness" and what the English identity actually means (without tiptoeing around xenophobia, arrogance and racism). It's very much based on this bastardised British "folklore" but it works because that's the whole point. I found it thoroughly fascinating and enjoyable and basically haven't stopped thinking about it for a month.

I do get very excited when writers take a new angle with faeries, too! Like, Eoin Colfer's faries in the Artemis Fowl books were so cool. (Bearing in mind it's been ten years since I picked up an Artemis Fowl book, and I never read the whole series so most of what I know I've absorbed via late night Wiki reads and Tumblr osmosis, but anyway—) They live underground, which is a very neat take on the Irish Aos Sí. Irish fae folklore has the faeries living in mounds, as in, every mound in Ireland is its own faerie "court". Colfer's faeries call themselves the People, again, a play on the Irish because their name means People of the Mounds. I think what Colfer did was an extremely neat way of calling on Irish mythology to create a cool new fairy concept.

What you say about being American is an intriguing point in itself, too. I've said before that the American cryptid culture is simply delightful, because although it isn't what one would think of when you talk about folklore, that's exactly what it is. American culture is a melting pot. Which is to say, yes, as an American you won't have a lived cultural experience of, say, Irish folklore and how it impacts modern day life there, but there are elements of it all around you! Think about how in states where it's common to see vast fields of corn, it's also common for tales of corn demons. Sure, maybe that sounds like a weird tale some kids tell to scare one another, but to me it sounds a lot like the feldgiester of Germanic folklore.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman explores this concept that immigrants and settlers brought their own gods and mythological/folkloric creatures with them. I often think about this part of the book that talks about a faerie man who followed an Irishwoman to America because she always left out cream for him. I found that really heartwarming in this way that I can't quite explain. If you're into contemporary fantasy epics, I definitely recommend American Gods!

Sorry, I know this answer is getting quite rambly but I guess I... don't have a solid answer. Like I said, this is very much in my special interest wheelhouse BUT I'm not an expert. When I started out reading more about faeries and their various mythos I consumed a lot of nonsense, and I'm slowly sifting back through and unlearning much of what I took as gospel fact. I don't want to sound like I'm telling you what you can or can't do because that isn't my place (nor is it anyone else's). Really all you can do is listen to people from the cultures you're drawing from and research carefully and critically.

Happy writing! (*^▽^*)

[jeannereames]

Is is true that Alexander used to perform dressed as the goddess Artemis? And, if it is, why do you think he did that?

Finally getting to this question. I wanted to double check some things before tackling it.

First, the story of Alexander dressing up as gods comes to us from Ephippos (Athen. 537e-538b). Ephippos of Olynthos was a hostile source, writing On the Death and Burial of Alexander and Hephaistion, which survives only in fragments. He was Greek, not Macedonian, and from the town Philip had razed to the ground in 348. He was probably a contemporary of Alexander, but if the Ephippos mentioned in Arrian is the same guy, he was left behind in Egypt as a superintendent when Alexander left—so he was not hanging out at his court. IOW, his reports are not from a long-term courtier. At most, Ephippos visited Babylon.

Anyway, I wanted to give a little context for who this person is, and that we cannot trust he knew what he was talking about, or had seen any of it first-hand.

Second, remember that Macedonian kings weren’t just military and political leaders, they were also religious symbols and the high priest for their people, required to conduct specific rites related to the health of the kingdom. For instance, he made a libation when leaving or returning to the capital city (whether just Aigai or also Pella is not clear), leaving the bounds of Macedonia, crossing certain rivers, regular morning sacrifices (ATG was still doing them when he could do nothing else prior to his death), etc. Spartans kings had similar roles, as did the elected “king” in other Greek city-states. When kingship ended in S. Greece, the religious role he had filled remained critical, and so they began electing a king by lot each year! We also know that the elected “basileus” (king) of Athens played dress-up as Dionysos at the Anthesteria, where he had sex (?) with his wife (as Ariadne)—although not in front of a crowd! LOL. But the idea of a king performing as a god at a religious rite is common enough. (Similar roles were required of ANE kings.)

We’re told that Alexander dressed up as Hermes, Artemis, Herakles, Dionysos, and Zeus-Ammon. Who they are is significant: especially Hermes, Herakles, and Dionysos, all of whom were important deities in the region, with connections to the Solar Deities (Dionysos) and The Rider, or Hero the Horseman (Herakles/Hermes/even Artemis, as hunters). And, of course, Macedonian kings were descendants of Zeus via Herakles. A lot is made of Alexander as the New Achilles, and he does seem to have courted that at points—but folks, there is TWICE as much about Alexander and Herakles in the sources. In the Hellenistic period, Macedonia had a huge cult to Herakles Kynegnidas, Herakles the Hunter, which almost certainly was older yet. (There was also some sort of office for young men as “hunters” but we have absolutely NO clue what they did, as it doesn’t seem to be actual hunting. Local police force has been suggested.) The Rider below:

We hear a bit about Thracian royal role-playing via Theopompus (Athen. 12.531e-532a), who also doesn’t seem to understand what he witnessed (and likely didn’t care) where a king, as Dionysos, performed a sexual rite with an earth mother figure. Kings as Riders or other divine figures is backed up by some iconographic royal representations. (Check out the work of Thracian scholars Fol and Marazov for more on Thracian religion.)

As noted, the deities Alexander is accused as “dressing up as” have significant connections with The Rider and, of course, Dionysos…also venerated in Macedonia and connected with the kingship. Coin of Alexander I with The Rider below

So almost certainly Ephippos didn’t know what he was talking about, and/or his source didn’t. Instead, it gets used as more proof of Alexander’s growing hubris as an Oriental Tyrant.™ SO many of our Alexander texts have moralizing overtones typical of Greek historiography that we have to be super-duper careful with their assessments of Alexander’s motivations. (Anytime you read something about his corruption by those Evil Oriental/Persian Ways, roll your eyes and move on.) Want a perfect example? Check out Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead 12: a conversation between dead-Philip and dead-Alexander. Obviously fictional, certainly satire, and rife with anti-Asian bias.

Anyway, even without the moralizing, it’s possible that whoever originally observed whatever Alexander was doing simply didn’t understand it. This isn’t uncommon even in the same religion. If you were raised Southern Baptist and attend mass with your Catholic buddy, you likely won’t have a clue what’s going on half the time—never mind if you attend an Orthodox Shabbat service. Worshiping (basically) the same gods does not equate to the same rites. Greek religion was not homogenous, and all sorts of regional differences existed.

As noted with the Anthesteria, a “king” dressing up as Dionysos isn’t even alien to Athens.

If you’d like to read more about this in particular, let me recommend “Thracian and Macedonian Kingship” chapter 22, section 4 (Ideology and Religion, 344-48) by William Greenwalt in A Companion to Ancient Thrace, Julia Valeva, Emil Nankov, Denver Graninger, eds.

[alexsfictionaddiction]

Review: The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

I have only read one other Grady Hendrix book, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, but I absolutely loved it. I love horror and I’m always on the lookout for authors who aren’t hugely prolific names. In recent years, Grady Hendrix has been becoming increasingly more well-known and I can’t wait to read more from him.

Lynnette Tarkington is a final girl, who survived the brutal home invasion that killed her family and boyfriend over 20 years before. It still haunts Lynnette every single day but she has the monthly support of therapist Dr Carol Elliott and five other final girls, who all survived their own horror movies. But then one of the original girls fails to turn up to a meeting, Lynnette knows what’s happening. Someone has returned to finish these girls off but they didn’t count on the strength of six women, who simply refuse to die.

Lynnette understandably has severe PTSD and paranoia. It seems that she has spent the majority of her life in this state of constant heightened anxiety and I can’t imagine living like that. Every little noise seems to spook her and she doesn’t trust anyone at all. She indulges in some very erratic and unhinged behaviour but so much about Lynnette makes sense. 

One very clear sign that Lynnette isn’t exactly on the same plane as most of us is her intense attachment to a houseplant called Fine. She speaks about the plant as if it were a pet or a child and openly tells us (without any kind of irony or humour) that she has long conversations with him. Fine is her best friend and I think that illustrates Lynnette’s state of mind perfectly.

I cried a little when Lynnette recounts the massacre that she lived through. I don’t think many of us can really imagine the amount of both physical and mental pain that she went through that night. However, it’s inevitable that such a traumatic event would shape the person that she became. By bravely trying to save her fellow final girls, she is trying to make up for not being able to save her family.

I’m not sure I’ve ever read a more accurate description of what severe trauma does to a human. When you’ve witnessed violence at the level that Lynnette has, those images never leave you. No amount of therapy or medication will erase the horrors that played out in front of you. Your life becomes the monsters and therefore, a living hell. 

There are images of therapy notes, police interview transcripts and letters referring to the final girls’ cases at the beginning of every chapter. It’s through these that we get to know a little bit more about what each woman went through. Each of them have dealt with their ordeals in different ways from activism to addiction, from isolation to helping others’ recover and it was fascinating to see how each of these coping mechanisms panned out for them.

Julia is wheelchair-bound and a total badass. She is incredibly fierce and witty with the power to withstand multiple attempts on her life. During the big tension-filled showdown, she really shows us why she is a final girl. I think I audibly cheered when she launched her chair up and down flights of stairs. I would fully believe a theory that she is an immortal deity!

A staple in every horror story is the final chase towards the end and this one is very cinematic. I could picture Lynnette racing and twirling through the buildings of Camp Red Lake in slow motion to a loud, crashing orchestra. Hendrix does a great job of writing visceral, morbidly beautiful scenes that would translate perfectly to an artistic, slightly satirical, screen adaptation. 

By the end of the book, I was reminded of the constant rhythm of simply being alive. The fact that no matter how monumental our life events are, it’s highly likely that we’ll still be living when it’s over. It’s easy to think about the brevity of a single life compared to the vastness of the universe and time but actually, the idea of life will never go away. Even when humans have stopped living, it will be time for another life form to take our place. The mundane churning of every day life is unlikely to ever fade from existence and that’s a pretty powerful thought.

There is also commentary on the vulnerability of women as well as some exploration of why there is such an intense fascination with the violence and murder of women. Slasher films and many high profile murder cases always involve the horrific slaying of young women and yet these stories capture us in a very unique way. Is it because some sick part of us enjoys hearing female screams and seeing female bodies butchered? Is that nauseating level of misogyny ingrained within all of us? The book makes you question yourself so very deeply and I really appreciated it.

The Final Girl Support Group is a twisty, suspense-filled horror novel with some excellent characters. There were several possible avenues to the truth and the big twist completely knocked me for six. Ultimately, it’s a story of survival, friendship and incredible courage. Put it on your Halloween TBRs!

[neverdoingmuch]

now hear me out,,, an au where lan wangji is an editor who works for an erotica publisher and wei wuxian is essentially chuck tingle. (also lwj writes romance novels on the side)

wei wuxian didn’t plan to write erotica he wants to make that really clear, he was actually studying like biomed or something equally “oh wow my parents can brag to the other parents about this”

but, as frequently happens in wwx’s life, he got drunk with nhs, like really drunk and they woke up the next morning with a laptop on the floor beside them and loose paper strewn everywhere

they don’t really remember what they were doing or thinking last night but they’ve both drawn a bunch of really shitty and weird porn (the less said about the anthropomorphic version of wen chao’s pet turtle the better) and wei wuxian has like 20,000 words of an erotica story on his laptop

when he starts reading it, at first he’s like haha what the fuck this is so weird but then it turned out to be really good??? and nhs blushed at some of the ~sexy~ scenes so that’s how wwx knew he was writing the good stuff

anyway they’re sitting there, eating their hangover food and wei wuxian goes so uh my story was good right? and nhs is like yeah it was, top stuff i would buy it and wei wuxian goes what if i actually wrote it,,, haha just kidding,,,,, unless?

and in his defence he doesn’t actually write anything for the story for another like three months but then he finds himself in the middle of exam season and he’s like fuck it stress relief let’s write some erotica

he finishes the book and his exams (which he does well in but whatever) and then spends his summer holidays editing the book

when he comes back, he slaps down a paper copy on nhs’ desk and is like i finished it. nhs, thinking he meant his latest lab write up, opens it up to a random page and starts reading it out loud which was a Mistake

he trails off mid-sentence, and whips around to glare at wwx with all the wrath he can muster. it’s raunchy nhs says and just read it wwx tells him so nhs does

like 2 hours later nhs turns to him and says if it wasnt for you and the librarian staring at me the whole time i definitely would’ve felt something and wwx is like so it’s good? and nhs is like fuck yeah it is but i dont get what you want from me?

pretty much wwx passed out after exams, slept for like 20 hours and then woke up and went i should publish this and decided that nhs should draw the cover art.

nhs agrees of course and a month later wwx self-publishes bc there’s no way he can walk into a publishing house with his porn and not just combust on the spot and he decides to go by the name yiling patriarch

wwx clicks the final button to upload the fic and nhs just toasts him and goes yknow what,, this is the closest you’ve ever gotten to having sex and i’m proud of you

wei wuxian is the man who guarded his first kiss for the first twenty years of his life for someone special,,,, wwx definitely wants his first time to be special and there’s no way he’s putting out for someone he doesn’t think is important & despite having dated before, he’s never gotten close enough to someone to go yeah let’s do it so our boy is still a virgin

so wwx’s entire erotica writing inspiration comes from porn, nhs’ way too in-depth answers as to how his latest date went and uh more porn

wwx blusters about a bit bc how is he meant to respond to that and nhs is like maybe you’ll finally move on from reading those trashy romance novels and read something more exciting and wwx is like how dare you call them trashy!! hanguang-jun is a master of the romance novels!! he understands the heart in a way that no other person has ever!! 

and nhs just chugs a bunch of wine and is like yeah hon okay, do you still blush when the main characters hold hands? and wwx is like no! of course not! (it’s a lie, he blushes a lot)

so nothing really happens with the book at first and wwx forgets about it for the most part but then he wakes up one morning and he’s got an extra like RMB 1000 (i dont actually know much about currency so it’s roughly $200 if my quick interneting is legit)

wwx is like wtf? and once he finds out it’s from his novel he’s doubly like wtf? but then he finds out that someone had purchased his book and did a dramatic reading on youtube bc wwx decided that regular erotica was boring and decided to make it satirical or whatever and people loved it??

he’s got nothing better to do so he just goes hm yeah remember that Author i dated who had an “incredible idea that would absolutely amaze The Critics and helped explore his own convoluted mind” let’s make something of that and he writes another book kinda mocking that idea in a very horny way.

he publishes it and someone writes a review of his two books on their blog and now he’s actually starting to get popular - he’s got more money from those two books than he did by working at the local cafe for the whole week

wwx is poor and broke and semi-disowned anyway by this point so he goes fuck it and spends every moment he’s not studying writing erotica. 

he publishes another like five books by the time the year is out (i know the maths isnt working here but this is a book world where wwx can just do that via the power of loneliness and friends who egg you on)

also?? he varies his books. some of them are porn parody things a la chuck tingle and some of them are genuine porn and one book was just him writing a recipe book but making it sound as horny as possible

by the time he’s published his like 8th book or so he starts getting reviews that are critiquing his book and most of them boil down to the fact that he needs an editor or something 

he ends up asking nhs for help and he’s like oh sweet my brother’s boyfriend works for a publisher who does that sort of thing

cloud recesses actually specialises in erotica and i hate the idea that lqr has spent years reading and editing erotica but sacrifices must be made

(side note that i know nothing about the writing or publishing process so pls don’t judge me too harshly)

wwx goes in with his latest manuscript and ends up arriving like ten minutes late, he rushes into the room sweaty and hot, takes one look at the guy sitting on the other side of the desk, flushes an even brighter red and runs back out of the room. he checks the plaque on the door and walks back in slowly and goes hm i didnt expect you to be so hot

cue lan wangji

lwj has always enjoyed being an editor. what do editor do specifically? idk? edit? regardless, he enjoys it. 

while most of the time he’s happy working from this side of things he also likes writing

lwj fucks. he deserves it tbh. but, while he’s had a tonne of one night stands and fuckbuddies, he’s never actually dated someone. so the fact that he’s writing romance novels under the pseudonym hanguang-jun makes his friend jzx laugh a lot

he tried writing porn once and he just couldn’t do it. it was always too clinical or vague and lacked any actual passion bc he was always going oh okay mc sucks a dick but the guy i slept with last week was like a 6.4/10 when it came to sucking dick so maybe mc should also be bad at it or whatever and it just ends up falling apart,,,, but romance he can do

as an editor lwj has pretty high standards for good erotica but he’s really found himself enjoying yiling patriarch’s work even though he’s clearly just been editing himself so when the guy sent cloud recesses an email asking whether they’d be interested in his latest book lwj was ecstatic. 

he also didnt expect wwx to be so hot

anyway,,, we now get to enjoy a week of lwj thinking that wwx is super hot but even more annoying and then him deciding that annoying is hot and now wwx is just absolutely amazing and wwx is just panicking the entire time 

i want my publisher to rail me so hard wwx texts nhs and nhs just responds has he read the bdsm scene with the alien who has a tentacle dick and a knot yet? and wwx is like no??? nhs just goes shame, it will give him so ideas for if you ever grow a backbone and just ask him out

they publish one book together and nothing happened between them the entire time other than yearning and horniness,, of the heart and body. 

when wwx realises this means that he won’t get to see lwj again he immediately writes a new book and like a month later he’s back in lwj’s office, lying on his couch while whining about the cafeteria prices at university

lwj is very enamoured by the fact that wwx is writing erotica and studying biomed bc wow

they do this for like another three books and wwx’s eroticas evolve from here’s a dinosaur man fucking a politician while a mary sue watches on to be like here’s a dinosaur man with black hair and golden eyes and a stern look to his face fucking a politician while a mary sue watches on

and hanguang-jun’s latest book?? i dont want to say that this au’s version of wangxian is hanguang-jun finally finding inspiration to write porn (his muse is wwx of course) and writing the most amazing porn with feelings and plot novel ever,, but it is. 

wwx read it five times in the first week and when nhs finally tried to read it he was like uhhh wwx are you a narcissist, the love interest is exactly like you? and wwx is like ??? no???? he’s nothing like me??

anyway one day wwx gets called into lxc’s office and lxc is like so i’ve read your latest book (not the dinosaur man, a serious one with like normal people and not overly humorous thank fuck but still full of lwj yearning) and wwx is like okay? and lxc goes yes, see i was worried that you didn’t care very much for my brother but after reading your book i’m not so sure and wwx gets the weirdest shovel talk ever which is interspersed with like compliments for his porn writing skills

anyway lxc accidentally mentions that lwj writes books too and before he can take it back wwx is like who??? and lxc is like are you fucking stupid?? you told lwj to his face that you loved his books,,, he broke his theme of tender romance to write kinky sex with a character that’s a lot like you and wwx is like .,,,,,,,,, hanguang-jun??? HANGUANG-JUN???!!

lxc barely manages to confirm it before wwx is sprinting out of his office and across to find lwj.

regretfully for everyone else, lwj is in the lobby so thirty people get to hear it when wwx comes in and shouts LAN ZHAN!! back then, i really wanted write porn about you! ... i think i have actually? but i want to write porn about you and i want to be able to do the research to make it accurate! and i also want to go on dates and hold hands and feed each other food! and i love you a lot! 

lwj is dying inside bc his brother’s bf is there, his uncle is currently waiting for the elevators and a whole bunch of staff are also there but also wwx likes him??? dinosaur man was lwj??

he goes over and they make out for a really long time right there in the middle of the lobby but no one wants to get between them when they’ve been pining for so long

after that they start dating and they do all the romantic stuff but also,, let’s just say that the next book wwx publishes is a lot more creative than all of his previous books

and they become some writing power couple with horniness of the heart and body and sometimes wwx will be like hey lwj i don’t really know how the logistics of this sex scene will work and lwj will be like we could try it out ourselves? and wwx just pats him on the head and is like im sorry but you dont have enough dicks for it to work ),: better luck next time

[princess-leia-organa-solo]

Dr Strange into the Multiverse of Madness

So I watched the movie and... I have some thoughts. Mostly negative ones since I haven't really been a huge fan of Marvel anyway but I still found some of the movies to be enjoyable.

For a start, the whole thing feels like a frat boy learned a new word and is repeating it mindlessly. Like, okay Marvel, we get it, you discovered the concept of the Multiverse. And now in the next decade so many movies will probably revolve around that concept that it's honestly gonna become a headache. But to be honest this is the least of this movie's problems.

Moving on from the fact that we won't be rid of the multiverse concept for at least a decade in any movie. To me it felt like Dr Strange: Into the Multiverse was way too heavily inspired by Inception. Like borderline plagiarism imo, especially when it comes to the visuals. I mean, it's my fault I expected an ounce of originality from a superhero movie but come on, with the technology that exist nowadays when it comes to visuals and special effects in movies, they could have at least made an effort to not rip off Inception - from the poster to the visuals it was pretty much 1:1. I understand drawing inspiration from a movie/director you admire but that should not stop you from making something original and good.

And while we're on the topic of visuals and special effects and CGI etc, that movie barely had anything aside from those things. And again, I realise that it's a superhero movie and it is all about the special effects but would it fucking kill them to have *some* meaningful dialogue between the characters? Everything that was said, everything that happened was extremely underwhelming and predictable. Especially the last ~20 minutes of the movie where the dialogue was so flat and cheesy that it makes you wonder whether it's satirical and making fun of how predictable movies have become or if they're being for real with the banality of it. And to clarify, even if it is satirical, if that does not become clear to the audience that means the idea flopped.

Honestly, because of the excessive amount of special effects the movie felt way too fast paced to the point where I actually found myself thinking 'Am I supposed to care about any of these new characters?' Take America for example, she was introduced way too quickly, given no backstory and barely any purpose. Strange's character felt extremely two dimensional - like he had absolutely no personality whatsoever. In the first movie he did have a personality - he was cocky, snarky, sarcastic and here he was just your basic superhero. You could put anyone else in his place and the movie wouldn't change a bit. Sure, they tried to save that with a few snarky remarks but they felt forced and kind of... fell flat. And I am honestly not even going to criticise Cumberbatch because he is a brilliant actor. It's just that he wasn't really given much to work with.

And don't even get me started on the AU avengers x illuminati bullshit. Like what the fuck lmaooooooo. When you get to the illuminati plotline unironically is when you've not only hit rock bottom but gotten the shovel and started digging down more. That part of the movie genuinely made me wanna leave the theater and go home istg.

And now I really wanna get to the part that genuinely bothers me the most - the character of Wanda Maximoff/the Scarlet Witch. I will begin by saying that I don't feel like she was given enough screen time in previous MCU movies to justify the decision to make a separate show for her but go off I guess. Despite feeling like she doesn't have enough backstory either I watched the show. It isn't my favourite but I liked it, it was good. Wanda is someone who has lost everything and everyone she loves - her psychotic break is justified and actually understandable to the point that I was actively rooting for her both in the show and in the movie though for different reasons. In the show they managed to showcase her insanity in a chilling and captivating way and they had the opportunity to make her so much more terrifying in the movie. She had the potential to be an actually horrifying villain but, like all Marvel villains, they turned her into barely an inconvenience.

At the beginning we find out that Wanda wants to kill America, a child, for personal reasons. And if you don't know the personal reasons your like okay damn she's really gone crazy. They hype her up so much and make her out to be this terrifying villain but... at the end they still defeated her fairly easily? I am in general frustrated with Marvel because their female characters reaaaallly lack any depth. But I am genuinely angry cause it looked like they were adequately developing Wanda. They had started shaping her into this great villain and then... her motivation to kill a child was because she wanted to go to an AU and be a mother to her kids? The reason this frustrates me is because she would have been so much more scary if she just wanted to kill and be evil just because - she's lost everything and everyone she loves so she has nothing left to loose; might as well do whatever the fuck. But noooo the *female* villain's aspiration is to be a mom, to be with her kids. That's why she is gonna kill another kid. If the villain was a dude would they give such a lame excuse? Not to mention how she suddenly decided to do the right thing and stop being evil at the end. She saw one example of what devastation her actions would cause to her children in another universe and... she suddenly gives up what she had fought for the entire movie and just... collapsed the Scarlet Witch's temple on herself? That isn't very believable lmaoooo. And we have two options here a) they did actually kill her off in this pathetic fucking way or b) they did not kill her off and she will keep appearing but is gonna be good or at least morally grey or something? And I honestly don't know which one of these options is worse.

Like I feel like we were lead to believe that Wanda is too far gone in her insanity so for her to be presented as so evil and scary the entire movie for her to be like 'oops sorry lemme fix stuff real quick' in the last five minutes just felt so fabricated and unnatural? Like it broke the entire flow of the movie and there was no true character development. Which is genuinely sad because despite Wanda being the 'evil' one she was still the most likeable character in the movie. She was still pretty two dimensional but at least she had some shading. Until the end of the movie, that is. I dunno, it's just mind blowing to me how we got this pretty cool show showing Wanda spiraling and then an entire movie hyping her up as this strong villain/strongest magic possessing character and then have the ending of the movie be so underwhelming and anticlimactic.

And then as a post credit scene teasing the next Dr Strange movie... I was genuinely like seriously? You made this shitty ass movie and you have the audacity to advertise the next one?

Overall I went to watch Dr Strange into the multiverse without any expectations and I still walked out of the theater pretty fucking disappointed. Imo this movie feels like a filler episode in some tv show, and a bad filler at that. I genuinely feel like this it does not contribute anything to the MCU whatsoever. For all I care it could have never existed. But you know... I get it... Disney bought Marvel and you gotta do what you gotta do for the greedy mouse. Still, Marvel and all its actors are complete sell-outs imo. Ang again, it's unrealistic to have high expectations for a superhero movie but this one didn't even meet the bare minimum in my eyes. Overall, I'd say it was really not worth the money to go see Dr Strange into the multiverse in the theater. Now excuse me while i go bleach my brain with Inception.

[cto10121]

Mercutio and Romeo’s Battle of Wits: Or, the Mercutio-Romeo-Benvolio brOTP

Or, Mercutio Misses Romeo Something Fierce As His Main Bro Because Romeo Is Not A Whiny Wimpy Stick-In-the-Mud and Is Actually Very Fun To Be Around and Benvolio Is Good and All, but He’s Just Not The Same(tm), You Know?

So the first half of Act 2, Scene 4, when Mercutio and Romeo have a game of wits before the Nurse enters gets cut or abridged a lot, for obvious reasons. The double entendres and witty Elizabethan wordplay are very difficult for even great actors to convey them to an audience, and they don’t seem to serve a narrative or thematic function apart from “two bros just being bros!!!” That bit of the scene just feels like filler safely cut or abridged in order to jump to the Nurse’s entrance and thus the plot. R&J the play, after all, is long; the whole play done completely is usually touching three hours. Cuts are always necessary, and for the most part it’s justifiable.

But I’m not going to lie, I like this bit a lot. Always have. Not only do we get Mercutio’s attitude toward Tybalt and his growing concern over Romeo’s love doldrums, but we get another side of Romeo hitherto unknown to us: Romeo being witty and fun and actually roasting Mercutio good, even besting him in a game of wits. And Mercutio actually being happy about it and just surrendering the battle to Romeo (!!!) What is this cinnamon roll of an exchange, too pure for this world, doing in an otherwise heavy tragedy? Are Romeo and Mercutio out of character just for some punny times? Not at all! The punny times are entirely necessary narrative and thematic-wise, sets up the tragedy, and shows needed nuance and dimension to both characters and the Montacrew in general.

Where the Fuck Is Romeo Seriously, I’m Getting Kinda Worried

So we begin the scene with Mercutio right away wanting to know where Romeo is:

Mercutio. Where the devil should this Romeo be? Came he not home tonight?

Benvolio. Not to his father’s, I spoke with his man.

Mercutio. Why, that same pale, hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline, torments him so that he will sure run mad.

It’s really hard not to read even a little bit of concern in that first question past the bluster, but in case you missed it, Shakespeare makes it explicit by having Mercutio blame Rosaline and worrying that Romeo’s love for her is driving him crazy. Once again, we get the sense that Romeo was not really himself pre-Juliet, and that, according to Mercutio, this is something to be concerned about.

We then segue into news that Tybalt has challenged Romeo via letter. Benvolio expresses confidence that Romeo would fight him, but Mercutio has doubts:

Mercutio. Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead! Stabbed with a white wench’s black eye, shot through the ear with a love song, the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow boy’s butt shaft—and is he a man to encounter Tybalt?

Once again Mercutio switches to troll mode and characterizes Romeo’s love angst over Rosaline as him “being dead” (“the ape is dead!”)—which would be dramatic, to say the least, except that the tone is humorous/satiric. But it does betray an anxiety on Mercutio’s part and gives the understanding that whatever Romeo’s infatuation with Rosaline was, it was not “typically” Romeo, at least according to Mercutio and by implication Benvolio, since he doesn’t challenge it. When Romeo finally enters, Mercutio continues his satiric portrait:

Benvolio. Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo!

Mercutio. Without his roe, like a dry herring. O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!

We get it, we get it, Romeo has turned a lameass pussy by ~love. But unbeknownst to Mercutio but knownst to us, Romeo is not the same guy of previous acts. How will Julietsimplord!Romeo react to Mercutio? This is going to be good.

Mah Bruh is Back and He’s…Fucking Roasting Me?

So we get the first encounter.

Mercutio. Signior Romeo, bonjour! There’s some French salutation to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night.

Romeo. Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?

Mercutio. The slip, sir, the slip. Can you not conceive?

Romeo’s greeting is polite, open, but unconcerned, perhaps a bit breezy, perhaps humoring. Notice how Romeo before has given Mercutio a ton of slack for his satiric mocking—his only critical comment so far in the play is “He jests at scars that never felt a wound,” which can read almost as dismissive (this in contrast to Benvolio’s worry that Mercutio would anger Romeo by talking about Rosaline lewdly). Either way, he responds to Mercutio’s acerbic queries about him ditching them straightforwardly and without heat.

Romeo. Pardon me, good Mercutio. My business was great, and in such a case as mine a man may strain courtesy.

Mercutio. That’s as much to say, such a case as yours constrains a man to bow in the hams.

Notice how Mercutio doesn’t ask Romeo directly about what his business was, but rather assumes that it was sexual (“bow in the hams,” to flex his butt cheeks). Again, typical of Mercutio, but it does justify a little why Romeo, at this point in the story, does not immediately tell Mercutio and Benvolio about Juliet. And also why he says this instead:

Romeo. Meaning, to curtsy.

Mercutio. Thou hast most kindly hit it.

Romeo is 100% trolling here, doing a Mercutio, in fact by pretending to take another meaning—oh, yeah, you obviously mean curtsying, right???? This marks the first reply in which he doesn’t answer openly, but instead answers slyly. Mercutio answers accordingly with an equally troll-y, “Oh yeah, that’s definitely what I meant, super PG” *snort*

Romeo. A most courteous exposition.

Mercutio. Nay, I’m the very pink of courtesy.

Romeo. Pink for flower.

Mercutio. Right.

Romeo. Why, then is my pump well flowered.

My Burton Raffel edition, infuriatingly enough, only gives one definition of “pump” as shoe, but make no mistake—Romeo also obviously means “dick” (the pump, I think, being the “head” part of the shoe, and thus….you get the idea). Mercutio is immediately excited—Romeo is speaking his language now.

Mercutio. Sure wit, follow me this jest now till thou had worn out thy pump, that, when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may remain, after the wearing, solely singular.

Romeo. O single-soled jest, solely singular for the singleness!

Mercutio. Come between us, good Benvolio, my wits faint.

Romeo. Swits and spurs, swits and spurs, or I cry a match.

Mercutio. Nay, if our wits run the wild goose chase, I am done, for thou hast more of the wild goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five.

Barely does the game of wits begin when Mercutio seems to give up, and now Romeo is the one urging him playfully to keep going or else *he* wins. Mercutio could just be joking about needing to be “rescued” by Benvolio, but he does say explicitly that nah, Romeo is just too witty today to continue to “chase” the joke, or the goose (“wild goose chase” eventually became a cliché all on its own, and it’s really just a throwaway line).

And now for my absolute favorite Romeo retort:

Mercutio. Was I ever with you there for the goose?

Romeo. Thou wast never with me for anything when thou wast not there for the goose.

“Was I ever with you for the game?” “Bitch, you weren’t with me for anything but the pussy!!!!!” “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!”

Mercutio. I will bite thee in the ear for that jest.

Romeo. Nay, good goose, bite not.

“I’ll fucking jump you for that” “A pussy jump on me??? Oh no, I’m ~scared” 🤣

Mercutio. Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting, it is a most sharp sauce.

Romeo. And is it not, then, well served in to a sweet goose?

“Your game has some spice, bro” “Like the spice they’ll put on you after cooking your ass????” 🤣

Mercutio. O here’s a wit of cheveril, that stretches from an inch narrow to an ell narrow to an ell broad.

Romeo. I stretch it out for that word “broad,” which, added to the goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose.

“You’re stretching that joke so damn much it’s going to break” “As much as I’ll stretch your stupid ass out because you’re the joke, bro!!!!!!” 🤣

And then comes the end of the game of wits with the final twist:

Mercutio. Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo, now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature.

“Jokes on you, bro, I’m into that shit!!! (Seriously, though, glad you’re back, bro, omfg, finally)”

Conclusions

So now for some wrap-up:

Mercutio in the beginning of the scene thinks the Romeo he knew is lost or “dead” by love. This has been established before in the after the ball scene, but here it is explicit—The Romeo he knows is gone and replaced by a pussy all over Rosaline’s pussy. Not good. There is also more than a trace of concern and worry—Mercutio is the one who asks for Romeo, and not Benvolio, the guy’s own cousin.

Mercutio is not upset by Romeo beating him at the game of wits and in fact gives in rather too easily. It’s not too clear why Mercutio does this. Mercutio has been established as a witty, satiric character. Romeo is as verbally dexterous as he is, if not more so, but his wit is warm and expressive, not satiric. His roasts and shade are playful and good-natured for the most part. By all accounts, Mercutio should have won the skirmish. It could be that he is too happy with Romeo actually making witty puns to care about winning, but personally I think Mercutio would be too proud of his verbal acrobatics, to concede that easily and make himself a willing target for Romeo’s roast (especially since he has roasted Romeo so damn hard these past scenes). It’s not like Mercutio to go easy on Romeo or even anyone, as he proves with his roasting Tybalt and even ragging on Benvolio. It could be Shakespeare is slyly characterizing Mercutio as a character who can give it out, but not take it, hence his backing down so easily, (“Okay, okay, you win!”) but usually that type of character responds with impatience and even anger. Mercutio’s replies are too amused for that. Perhaps he was too surprised by Romeo suddenly taking a page out of his book after scenes of him just angsting—to his perspective, but not ours, this does seem to come out of nowhere. But his replies don’t sound like someone who is surprised at all by this show of wit by a good-natured friend—on the contrary, it is taken as proof that the friend is back.

By the end of the exchange, Mercutio believes Romeo is more himself again. Not entirely, as he does cast further shade on his infatuation with Rosaline, but he is genuinely glad to see Romeo act more like himself again. We are once again reinforced with the notion that the mopey Romeo with Rosaline and even the radiantly lovestruck Romeo with Juliet is not the Romeo his friends have known. We receive proof of this: Romeo can and will throw shade over you for a song.

Not going to lie: I am here for all of this.

So I think it’s fair to conclude, based on the above information, that Mercutio has missed Romeo, perhaps something awful. His constant ragging on him for Rosaline and being mopey (lovers aren’t even supposed to be sad, wtf man) and his asking for him and just generally talking almost exclusively about him (that could just be his supporting character role, though) supports that. His joy at Romeo roasting him also characterizes a key component of their friendship and dynamic hitherto missing or not as present: Jokes, teasing, puns, wordplay, outright roasting when called for.

Not only is bro bonhomie clearly established (brohomie!), but also the macho culture—this exchange is far from locker room talk, more focused on wordplay than crude expression, but it does set up the dynamics of the duel scene and Mercutio’s motivations. Mercutio is most happy when Romeo performs masculinity through puns, wordplay, and roasting; when he doesn’t, or refuses to take stand in the defense of his honor, that’s when Mercutio gets frazzled. This is not because he believes Romeo is inherently a wimp—far from it, as he clearly expects Romeo, once he seems unstuck from the quagmire that is Rosaline, to duel Tybalt. He is unsurprised when Romeo throws shade on him right back, and is even pleased. So it’s shocking and disturbing for him when Romeo refuses to step up as he had done in previous scenes to fight the likes of Tybalt, for seemingly no good reason.

On a related note, expectation is noticeably absent in Mercutio’s own dynamic with Benvolio, whom he sees as helper and abettor of his wit and decisions, a soundboard, and a quasi-sidekick (“come, shall we go?” “Come between us, good Benvolio, my wits faint” “Help me into some house, Benvolio, / Or I shall faint”). When he does rag on Benvolio for his supposed sword-happy temper, Benvolio does not rise to his bait or roast him back, but gives only mildly amused replies, if gently pointed, to Mercutio’s surly displeasure.

Benvolio. An I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any man should buy the fee simple of my life for an hour and a quarter.

Mercutio. The fee simple? O simple!

Mercutio may want to fight someone badly enough to go after Benvolio, but he also wants a challenge, the excitement of a back-and-forth of wits—hell, even for someone to tell him he is full of shit if so he could hit back. Perhaps that’s what Mercutio needs and perhaps secretly desires: Someone to roast him and tell him to shut the fuck up every once in a while. But would Romeo do this?

Nurse. I pray you, sir, what saucy merchant was this that was so full of his ropery?

Romeo. A gentleman, Nurse, that loves to hear himself talk and will speak more in a minute than he would stand to in a month.

The answer is yes. Yes, he would.

R&J Adaptations’ Weirdness with This Exchange

So why the difficulty retaining this fun exchange? Well, Romeo talking about well-flowered pumps and Mercutio just happily taking his roasts goes against the usual romantic!Romeo and charismatictroll!Mercutio characterization of earlier scenes. Even in adaptations that do keep this part of the scene, they tend either to brush it by (Baz Lurhmann) or even mischaracterize it a bit to keep it consistent with the interpretation of the characters as established (Zeffirelli). McEnery’s Mercutio in the Zeffirelli is in control and dominant all of the way through, and one of his lines (“Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting, it is a most sharp sauce”) is given to Romeo instead. The Baz Lurhmann plays it only broadly in terms of group male camaraderie and not so much Mercutio-Romeo dynamics; Benvolio does not participate in the game of wits and is by all accounts just vibing (my personal troll headcanon is he is keeping track of the game of wits on a slate. 2 Romeo, 1 Mercutio, that sort of thing).

Also, perhaps due to Mercutio being on Romeo’s case for most of the play and his being a lil’ shit at points, some adaptations take a weird Ho Yay approach to the dynamic, especially productions that make Mercutio gay or queer. If so, then productions have to do a lot of heavy lifting to interpret Mercutio’s gleeful/amused roasting of Romeo, his lewd blazon of Rosaline, and his anger at Romeo’s loss of honor in refusing to fight Tybalt as signs of romantic love towards Romeo. Romeo’s own emotional independence from his friends and his willingness to roast Mercutio also works against this interpretation. Thus another reason why this exchange is often cut or abridged (although the Globe Theater just decided to go ahead and have Mercutio roll all over Romeo while Romeo is roasting him as a shameless pussy chaser in this scene, because of course that makes perfect sense. Is it any wonder why I don’t like most R&J productions and adaptations?).

The only adaptation I know that gets the camaraderie and dynamics even close to right is the French musical (and to a certain extent, the Hungarian version) through that earworm and evergreen bop, Les Rois du Monde. It captures the spirit of their friendship and youthful zeal so delightfully. Mercutio, Benvolio, and Romeo were so well cast you can identify which is which at a glance—and they are literally as far as from my personal faceclaims for them as you can get, and it’s great. Presgurvic didn’t have to go that hard, but he did and it was glorious.

TL;DR

Mercutio roasts him, Romeo enters, they trade quips and wordplay, Romeo roasts him, Mercutio is too happy to gaf, and everything is character-building fun that will pay off very nicely later on, except that versions and productions can’t make the puns and wordplay comprehensible so they prefer to cut or abridge it (ten points from Gryffindor). And all because Mercutio actually misses Romeo and wants his bro back. Bruh.

[blorbosexterminator]

what's your opinion on the argument that gandia already knew how to escape from the handcuffs because he was an elite soldier?

My opinion is that it's, respectfully, one of the stupidest arguments in the fandom. Worse, it's one that doesn't and wouldn't exist at all if Martín wasn't the betraying perpetrator and it was anyone else, like Tokyo for example, and it didn't trigger this part's of the audience desire to absolve the gay tragic baby from any thing he canonically did.

I fundamentally disagree with every single layer of this argument, including a lot of things that concern my personal approach to fiction and media. I'll start with the basics. I personally don't adhere to the idea of holding a blade on the writer's throat; this is no way, in my personal believe, to deal with fiction, stories and/or media. I see no reason to deal with things this way. Not all work is going to be realistic from A to Z with all the little details and divergences in between. (And really, when you start watching a show like La Casa de Papel, you already agree to a certain extent of suspense of disbelief.) And it has no reason to. You meet stories half-way. You see, fucking clearly regarding a point like this one, what the writer is trying to do. I personally strongly adhere to 'the intention of the author', I care about the writer's intention even if the way is somewhat clunky.

Especially in a point like this one, that storyline was a vehicle and not an end of itself. Are the cogs and wheels of this vehicle somewhat malfunctioning? Yes. Do they look a bit broken and glued together? Yes. Does this mean it's not apparent what they are supposed to be? Absolutely not. Everyone who has watched season 4 knows exactly what is this supposed to be. The intention and the endgoal of this scene are clear. They aren't about whether someone like Gandia, an elite solider, knows how to escape handcuffs or not. If that were the case, the scene and storyline would have looked completely different and we would know that's the intended discussion of the scene. Knowing that this is not the case as we all do is nothing but sidetracking the story focusing on stupid shit, literally just Cinemasining, but rather than satirically, we do it seriously and call it respectful criticism lmfao. And for what? To prove that the uwu gay baby did nothing wrong, all horrible things would have happened either way uwu.

This is my second point. This scene and storyline have two abundantly crystal clear goals in the show: 1) To set up the conflict of the season of course with Gandia as the clear villain inside the bank, proving to us his danger that they've been setting up. 2) Character exposition for Martín, the anti-hero, and the cause for the extreme internal conflict inside the banda. This character exposition is clear. The writers wrote Martín as an egomanical character obsessed with his plan and set up the idea that he would go to any limits for it, to the extent of unleashing a literal assassin on his fellow teammates. This is the main thing, that if not for this way, the writers would have eventually found any other one. The one suspense of disbelief the showrunners ask of you is that to believe an elite solider didn't know how to unlock himself and Martin did. The point here isn't what an elite solider know and doesn't know; saying this would be willful ignorance. The point is that Martín would metaphorically and literally unleash a killing force on his own team if things don't go his way. (and you can argue that Gandia unlocking himself at this moment had less to do with his knowledge and more to do with figuring out that the team has reached the ultimate moment of internal fracture if their own leader is willng to unleash him on them and taking advantage of it. But alas, this is neither here nor there.)

So the thing is, if you've already watched three season of La Casa de Papel, and willingly accepted all the ridiculous plotholes and assumptions and unrealistic moments leading up to this one, but found only issue with this.... then lmfao, I don't know what to tell you, but it's obvious to me where you're coming from, and it's not a place I honestly have much respect for. The one and only reason anyone argues this out is to absolve Martin from his responsibility. This is the only context I've ever seen this argument in. And I personally disagree with it lmfao. It's in his canonical description that Martin is volatile and pretty much ready to go to all lengths to achieve what he wants. If it wasn't Gandia, it would have been somethinge else. And yes, I agree it was clumsily and hurridly written and everything, and whatever other plotline the writers would have put instead of this one would probably still be, but this doesn't really matter; not when it's still very clear what they are trying to do. Even if they haven't done it perfectly, it's fine! We meet writers half-way, because otherwise, stopping at every little thing with a sin counter, is honestly no way for me to enjoy media or to even enjoy criticism itself.