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life-rewritten · 4 years

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Saying Goodbye to Flower of Evil

So it's finally here, time to say goodbye to my favourite kdrama so far of 2020. This is my post to say goodbye and also go back on all the positives and negatives of the show. It's been a long, beautiful and heartfelt journey. This show means a lot to me, and I had so much fun analysing it, every single week. Let’s start the review:

Ratings: Plot: 8.5/10 Directing: 8.5/10 Acting: 8.5/10 Satisfaction: 8/10 Overall: A Rewatch factor: 7/10

Opinions and Criticisms

What can I say about this show that hasn't already been mentioned and discussed? What an amazing show. At the end of it all, Flower of Evil is a love story to the core, it focuses on the marriage between our main characters, and we the audience end up invested in watching the layers and truth of the marriage unfold, the psychological circumstances and the external circumstances that lead us to the factors that will end up either breaking the marriage into pieces or end up bringing an opportunity for healing and unconditional love.

Characterisation

This show in my opinion subverted character tropes, in the first episode we're left feeling confused about who to root for; Do Hyun So starts of a scary personality but we start to see him break down and we understand that we didn't have all the information about him. In the first episode we feel the exact worry and fear Ji Won also ends up feeling as she slowly uncovers her husband is not who he claims to be. But we also like her start to look deeper for clues to help find the real truth about the psyche of Hyun So.

We're introduced to characters at the beginning such as Moo Jin (very ableist at first, and problematic) only to see him become 3D and learn from his mistakes and show care for Hyun So and his ex love Hae So. Like with him, we also feel weary about every character when they first appear, even Hae Su who we even feel led to believe is the mystery serial killer accomplice at the start ends up being a character broken, we see how it actually affected her mind and patterns as the guilt ate her up for what happened to her brother. These are just a few of the characters the audience grapple to understand and start of mistrusting.

Subverting Expectations

The tropes are subverted because this is a thriller, expectations are thrown out the window and changed, when one of our main cops find out about Hyun So's real identity (the show built this up so well since we know from the beginning that he's curious and very intuitive with cases), we expect him to take in Hyun So and be prejudiced,. It’s a surprise to see he's not , he listens and understands that Hyun So isn't what everyone thinks he is. The other cops do the same as well when Ji Won is 'held hostage' by Hyun So. They don't blame her immediately as an accomplice and only worry about her safety. The cops end up becoming like a found family, the warmth, loyalty and trust with everyone including the chief was shocking to see, and yet the show made us hang on edge for a while to see these characters stories unfold. Yes they're more 2dimensional than 3D but they are important to the story and end up being characters we love and enjoy on screen.

I don't have anything bad to say about this show, I even enjoyed the reveal of the villain, Baek Hee Sung, his storyline whilst seemingly making him a very straight forward psychopath, the subtext of the show suggested even more dimensionality and depth to understanding his family's psyche, circumstances and reasonings for why they aided him. He's also a brilliant foil to Do Hyun So who was using his identity without knowing he's the real accomplice we were waiting for. The actors do such a good job in this show, the main couple have great emotional ranges needed to carry the painful, hurtful, alarming scenes. Props to my two favorites, Lee Joon Gi as Do Hyun So was such a perfect casting choice for this show and Kim Ji Hoon as a villain was so delicious to watch, he made me scream and squeal a couple of times. Both so addicting and entrancing to watch on screen.

Lacklustre writing for Females

Eunha

As much as I am satisfied with the ending I do feel there are parts that a bit lack luster. The use of the daughter in the story of Do Hyun So regaining his memories and choosing to accept Ji Won yet again could have been used more, in fact I thought she was going to run away or do something defiant causing Hyun So to panic and realise he does have feelings and care. (I thought that was what they were building up to when they showed the food in the fridge he kept buying for her without knowing why) But she's pushed to the side, and almost forgotten about until we get a reunion. Eun Ha was such an interesting character to look into and I would have loved more depth and use in the storyline especially when she's connected the most to the humanity of Hyun So. Instead we got the diary scene and the title of the metal workshop being connected to Ji Won and his love for her all along. Don't get me wrong the romance was the basis of the show, so it makes sense we end with it being the most focused part on the conclusion of the show, I just wanted more Eunha.

Do Hae Su

As much as I enjoyed the characters in the show, I felt the female characters apart from Cha Ji Won were written to be very stupid, emotional or just an obstacle to their male counterparts. This irked me for a while, Hae Su's best part is when she sacrifices her life for Hyun So but before that she acts rashly and keeps on doing things that no one wants her to, I almost face palmed when she went straight to the director after finding out someone in his hospital is the accomplice. Like it's not hard to put two and two together. I enjoyed her as a character but did feel like she was underused more than her male counterpart Moo Jin. I'm glad we get her resolution and she survived

Director’s wife/ Unmother

The director's wife/Baek Hee Sung mother shows potential of being a character with depth and aims, but she also becomes sidelined once her son wakes up, her struggles in her psyche for her new fake son and grand daughter vs her guilt of hurting her real son, was a really good dynamic to explore, but she ends up becoming weak and panicking and being taught by both her male counterparts her son and husband. She just ends up being in the background and seen as the less smart, cunning and clever one compared to them. Didn't really like that, I thought she would be part of the downfall of our villain but she just ends up wasted instead.

The maid of the Baek’s

Don't get me started about her maid, another female character who is fridged on the show, I thought she was written so stupid towards the end for the convenience of the plot, and I hated that she reacted the way she did knowing the truth she knew. Her outburst and blackmail tactics just felt so out of the blue, it annoyed me to no end. I wish she had a reason that was hinted throughout the show, quotes or scenes that hinted she would betray them for money, more depth shown with her relationship with her and the wife, but no she just reacted out of bounds and got murdered. It was just a bit blase.

However I'm not saying this show did not also have powerful women characters, well character, Ji Won was smart, cunning and I enjoyed watching her actions after she discovered who her husband was. But for me I would have preferred more females written the same way she was that's all.

The final moments

I did enjoy the message of the show, especially when looking at what made our characters become/ turn into percieved psychopaths, the connection of Do Min Seok with both Baek Hee Sung and Do Hyun So was interesting to look at, and the way the world treated Hyun So because of his disorder was also painful but written well in the show. One of my favorite scenes in this show, is episode 15, (i wished the show's ending was episode 15, it would have left a haunting effect on the audience but i like happy endings too), when Hyun So proclaims he sees dead people so he can't believe Ji Won is alive. It was a brilliant build up as the ghost of Do Min Seok had been all along a foreshadowing device for this moment, immediately he said that it shocked me and made me realise what the writers planned all along. It was always right there in front of us that this will be an issue, and they used it so well for episode 15. One of my favourite moments so far in kdramas of 2020.

The message of the show is simple don't judge someone based on their mental disorder, they're just like everyone else if given the right opportunity to feel, and be treated like normal people.

Analysis and Devices used

Onto the devices used for analysing this show:

The themes

I enjoyed the topic of Psychopathy, Trauma and Mental Health that was relayed through out the show, what makes a psychopath a psychopath nature vs nurture. I enjoyed how each character's needs and wants is revealed to us subverting tropes and keeping the audience questioning the reasonings and truths of each of them.

The parallels

I also liked the directing parallels when they show both Hyun So and Cha Ji Won doing different things but it connected to the actual plot/storyline of the show for example him uncovering who his dad worked with to get raw materials, and she also uncovering a fake employment scheme with the someone connected to the same person who Hyun So is meeting. They do this all the time, and it's a great way to make the audience feel on edge and worried that soon both her and Hyun So's path will have to meet and she will have to confront him on the truth of their marriage.

The Foreshadowing

There's heavy use of symbolic foreshadowing, dramatic irony and withholding of information all used to keep the audience on their toes with bated breaths. The genre was part thriller, so each cliff hanger was deviced well enough to show case some realisations (some painful and horrifying) and also used to make the audience go back on their own expectations and wait to see the story unfold. At first the show starts of like a murder detective show, and I liked how each of the murderers/crimes were connected to unveiling the truth about Hyun So and his father.

Some foreshadowing devices I enjoyed is when Ji Won's identity card gets smashed and handed to Hae Su, at first we don't understand why there was such a scene but it uncovers and we find the horrifying conclusion that Hae Su will get stabbed because the killer misunderstands her to be Ji Won. Each of the devices used end up coming full circle in the plot to keep the audience on edge or hurt and broken at the realisation of what it meant. I look foward to watching another show with this writer and director again.

In Conclusion

This Kdrama surpassed my expectations and even beat my predecessor Psycho but it's okay as my favourite shows. While I did have some issues with parts of it, even with those issues I was left emotionally invested in this show, the characters, the story unfolding. I enjoyed every little thing in this show, I ended up being so effected I cried many times. As a writer, it taught me how to write a good love story, a couple against the world, and how to keep an audience invested.

#flower of evil #kdrama #lee joon gi #analysis #wrpup

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partnersatfazbear · 3 years

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I’m... salty? Fazbear Frights: The Cliffs anaylsis

My initial thoughts about The Cliffs under the cut (contains spoilers):

The Cliffs - My favorite story of the bunch, but mostly because I really liked the main character. Not TOO much to write home about, but I will pick apart a few lines from this one. In my first set of similarities, the wife dies in childbirth. Not only is this a huge fear of mine (for my wife, in the future), but I wrote this happening in William’s backstory in RS. I generally loved the protagonist here, except when he didn’t realize the obvious: the Freddy was telling him not to kill himself, but where is son was. That doll got burned (yes, burned!), run over, and tossed off a cliff for nothing. I wouldn’t be surprised if that thing came back to kill them :V

Only thing that annoyed me was a few paragraphs wasted on a female co worker, because for some reason that was relevant. (No really, it wasn’t.) Why does this series insist on writing PAGES about useless love interests that do nothing for the plot, nothing for the MC, AGH. I know it’s a kids book series but Christ it’s annoying and I’ve been skipping this sort of stuff and the long action sequences.

The Breaking Wheel - This was the story I liked the least, but honestly, the one I’ll be writing the most about. I think it parallels William and Henry a little and I was a little irked how similar a specific part was to my Springtrap-springlock chapter in Resurrection Seeker.

So first, the story focuses mostly around two kids and they are rivals in a robotics class. One kid a huge douche (Julius) but competent and the other is struggling to put his ideas on paper (Reed). Then there’s Reed’s friend, Pickle, who is a genius.

I’m just gonna bullet point stuff I thought was relevant:

- Reed describes his relationship towards Pickle as: “He was so used to Pickle out performing everyone around him that praising him for doing something well was like praising him for breathing.” (This really reminded me of William’s admiration for Henry, although there isn’t any jealousy here.)

- Reed is described as having a “monkey face”. This reminded me of William, mostly because of the criticism from the fandom towards The Silver Eyes GN’s design. It could be a jab or coincidence.

- Julius’ robot is an exoskeleton (like the power loader from Aliens). When showing off, he becomes trapped in it:

- Reed leaves Julius to be trapped in the exo all night, including locking him in place so he can’t move. This is initially to get back at Julius for being a dick, but then the guilt starts eating away at Reed. Also, Julius getting locked in: “Julius jerked his arms, yanking to free them from the restrains of his skeletal suit....” Julius says: “Unlock me!” and “Do what I tell you! Unlock me!”

Reed tells him, “I’m going to leave you here in your suit overnight... so you can get an idea of what it feels like to... [be treated the way you treat others]. Maybe your robot can teach you a thing or two.”

Julius says, “Get back here you stupid ape! Do you know what you’ve done? I’m going to kill you! ... I’m going to tear you apart, limb from limb. Get back in here and unlock this! ... You can’t leave me in here like this!”

So, yeah. It reminds me a lot of Springtrap. As for the actual story... I was disappointed. The story starts off good (albiet with that poor kid trope this series LOVES) and reminded me early on of The Tell-Tale Heart. Then it defies stated logic to make a real, edgy ending that I didn’t care for. If the entire thing had been in Reed’s head it would’ve been better (more akin to Blackbird, which did the “in your head” trope poorly. If these stories were switched around, I think they’d work better.) So this story was meh. Such a promising start.

Another thing that annoyed me was a few paragraphs wasted describing Orey (fml I don’t care if I spell it wrong. Who the hell comes up with these names). He barely shows up in the story and is just a background character... story could’ve worked without him.

He Told Me Everything - If you love Goosebumps style stories, this ones for you. I really enjoyed it, but it had almost nothing to do with FNAF. The Chris name is obviously a giant troll (and to make matters worse his father’s name is Dave). The sister and wife don’t have any name parallels, although the wife reminded me a lot of my design for Mrs. Afton. The backstory of Chris’ family reminds me a lot of Afton’s backstory for Resurrection Seeker. Like. A lot. It’s spooky how close it is.

“The houses were small, identical little boxes, which had originally been built for workers at the steel mill...” “His dad... ...had gone on to vocational school to learn how to work on cars.”

Another thing to note about the Dad is his weight is specifically touched on several times. Seemed like a callback to the novels’ mention of an earlier version of William.

All in all, a solid entry into the books and some weird coincidences I can’t overlook.

The story did drag a little, but honestly, not nearly as bad as the others. It was good.

Now, for the epilogue.

I don’t know if I wanna fume or not. I’m DISAPPOINTED. Afton essentially dies in the end of it, only to have a piece of his soul in a female endoskeleton escape into the factory. Also, the fucking... the fucking PUPPET shows up (and is actually why Afton dies). [Note: I didn’t realize that Left-E isn’t shown burning in the FNAF 6 ending, which many people are using to justify this. Read below for how I feel about that.] I just. I don’t know. I mean, William always comes back, but... I don’t know how I feel about this. I have a HUGE suspicion that the female endoskeleton is what becomes Vanny. I definetly still see this sort of leading into Security Breach EXCEPT for the fact: The Puppet is still alive.

Okay, so those were my initial thoughts. Upon looking around / rereading people say the female endo is Eleanor (Baby). My wife pointed out I missed the long necked detail. Woops. I wonder if Eleanor/Baby MIGHT be our Vanny stand in in this universe, though. And yeah, still not happy.

Afton is pretty much dead outside of a small part of his soul existing in the endo that escaped (this is an assumption on my part, I don’t think it’s stated, so essentially he’s dead, dead). There are parts of this I liked (and William only had ONE line: “I am Agony.”) Like, no shit? I couldn’t tell! SMH

However, despite some of the parts I thought were interesting (we get a thorough description of AlmagAfton and when he dies its pretty pathetic and I had all the FEELS), I think overall I’m disappointed because we may be at the end of Afton’s story. I have a suspicion that Vanny will be replacing him and possibly even betraying him in Security Breach, if this is anything to go by. Another odd duck is that Jake, in the remnants of the Stichwraith (that everyone insists is the GF parallel) is still wandering around too. I’m assuming Puppet went down with the ship, quite literally, since he [William] falls apart into a lake. Thanks, Charlie. You continue to ruin my day.

My wife pointed out the lake reminded her of OMC’s lake and I’m like... Why are we backpeddling?! This entire epilogue is a fucking mess. Another thing that irritates me (and apparently quite a few people) is if this IS the way the story is heading, then it makes FFPS pretty much USELESS to the story, nullifies Henry’s sacrifice / wishes... and that sucks! ESPECIALLY the fact that the Puppet SURVIVED the FNAF 6 fire! I get she just wants William to pay for what he’s done to her and her father, but... Henry wanted her to rest. To move on. She didn’t do that. That’s shitty to me.

Also, apparently souls have a smell. So that’s canon now.

#the cliffs #fazbear frights #spoilers #security breach theory #william afton #almagafton #the puppet #vanny #stichwraith #henry emily #ffps #fnaf 6

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sophieakatz · 3 years

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Thursday Thoughts: The Unfridged Woman

So there’s this awful story trope I’ve blogged about before, called fridging. Fridging is when a character – usually a female character – is killed off for the sake of a usually-male hero’s angst. The fridged character isn’t really a character in her own right. She is another character’s motivation.

Today, I’d like to point out a new trope I’ve noticed: unfridging. Unfridging is when a female character who originally had the sole purpose of dying to provide sadness and motivation for a male character, and lacked any story or motivations of her own, is brought back in a sequel as a complex character, vital to the plot and with her own motivations.

I can give you three examples off the top of my head, two of which I’ve already written about in Thursday Thoughts posts.

Here there be spoilers for the following film franchises: How To Train Your Dragon, Ant-Man, and Toy Story.

1. Valka

The first How To Train Your Dragon film focuses on Hiccup’s relationship with his father just as much as his relationship with the titular dragon. Hiccup’s mother is nowhere to be seen, and only mentioned once. When his father, Stoick, gives Hiccup a horned Viking helmet, he says, “Your mother would have wanted you to have it. It's half her breastplate,” he adds, pointing to his own helmet. “Matching set. Keeps her close, you know.”

The moment is played for laughs, but the implication is that Hiccup’s mother is dead, and the viewer is left to assume that this loss is part of why Stoick is so harsh on his son. But the mother has no name, no personality, no traits at all. Just a boob joke.

In the sequel, Hiccup follows a mysterious masked dragon rider into a cave to discover – surprise – it’s his mother! Valka is not only alive (and, at long last, named!), but she very much has a story outside of Hiccup and Stoick. We learn that she always believed that humans and dragons could get along, and she was taken from the village by a dragon who saw her as a potential friend. While everyone thought she was dead, she decided to stay with the dragons, and she resists the idea of returning to the Viking lifestyle she left behind.

While Valka barely existed at all in the first film, in the second, she is an essential part of the world. She’s an integral part of dragon society, proof that humans and dragons can coexist, and the reason why the viewer learns what we need to know about dragon alphas for the plot. Also, her agenda runs counter to that of the men in the film, but is portrayed as just as important and justified as anyone else’s goals – which is something I always love to see.

2. Janet van Dyne

I’ve blogged at length about Ant-Man and the Wasp before, but here’s the short version. In the original Ant-Man, we see in a flashback that Hank Pym’s wife sacrificed herself to stop a bomb, shrinking herself between the atoms and becoming lost to the quantum realm. As a result, Hank is incredibly protective of his daughter Hope to the point of keeping her from reaching her full potential and overall straining their relationship. It’s why he brings in Scott to be Ant-Man in the first place, rather than letting Hope do it.

In this film, we don’t learn Hank’s wife’s name. We don’t even see her face; she has the mask of her suit down the whole time. She only exists to have died in order to make Hank sad enough to make the decisions he does in the film.

In Ant-Man and the Wasp, Scott, Hank, and Hope realize that Hank’s wife – who is finally named Janet – is still alive in the quantum realm. Rescuing Janet is one of the film’s two main plotlines. What’s more, Janet is not simply a damsel waiting to be saved. She has an active hand in her own rescue, planting messages in Scott’s head to start the plot, and at one point even taking control of Scott’s body to correct her family’s equations to make sure that they can come get her.

And when Janet is finally brought back to the full-size world, she steps in to solve the film’s other main problem: she is able to heal Ghost when no one else could. Janet van Dyne goes from existing only as motivation for her husband to being an essential character in both plotlines of Ant-Man and the Wasp. The sequel film literally would not be the same without her.

3. Bo Peep

In Toy Story and Toy Story 2, Bo Peep doesn’t do much. She’s established as Woody’s love interest, and she has a few cheeky quotes, but that’s about it for her role in the films. Then, in Toy Story 3, she’s fridged. Rex mentions her as a part of a list of toys who have been given away over the years, and Woody has a moment of sadness. She may not be dead, technically – if it’s even possible for toys to die – but she’s gone, with very little fanfare and no indication of what she herself wanted out of life.

Toy Story 4 blows the three previous films out of the park in regards to Bo. Again, I’ve blogged about this before, but here’s the short version. Toy Story 4 establishes Bo as a leader in her own right, both in Molly’s room in a flashback and among the Lost Toys in the present. While Woody is frequently a purposeless fish out of water in this film, Bo is the one who knows how the world works, making her essential to the plot. She also has her own agenda – she doesn’t want a kid to own her; she wants to be free, and for Woody to come with her. Best of all, in the end, Bo gets everything she wants. She goes from being a nobody to being one of the most important people in the movie.

Why Does This Matter?

It’s not enough for women to merely exist in films. As I’ve said before, it matters that female characters matter. It’s important that they have motivations which the film treats as important, and it’s important that they exist as more than just a small part of a male character’s life. If the vast majority of films we see show us that men have important adventures and women only exist to motivate men, we internalize that message. Girls learn that they don’t go on adventures, and boys learn that what they want matters more than what girls want.

It’s very interesting to see film franchises apparently realizing in hindsight that their female characters need to matter and developing women more in sequel films. Once is an exception, and twice is a coincidence, but three times is an intriguing trend.

I hope to see more sequels which correct their prequels’ fridging, and fewer films in which women are fridged at all. (Remind me to rant at some point about L3-37 in Solo: A Star Wars Story – an example of a prequel going out of its way to insert a fridged woman to the franchise.) Or, hey, maybe we could fridge a few men for a change.

Have you noticed any other unfridged women in films? Can you think of any female characters who deserve more development than the original film gave them? Retweet, reply, or reblog with your thoughts!

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komatsunana · 4 years

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My Reincarnation Isekai Villainess Rec List

So. I’ve gone and found myself in Isekai/Reincarnation/Villainess hell. For those who don’t know Isekai is a genre in which character(s) are transported to a different world. Initially you might be thinking “oh, she’s gonna share a both a series like Sword Art Online.” Oh no. You have underestimated the amount of taste I have. By which I mean I have none but that SOA is a taste I’m not here for.

Now a very specific sub-genre of that is the reincarnation one, particularly in which a character is reborn as a character from one of their favorite books or games from their previous, modern life. An even more specific sub-genre of that one is in which the MC is reborn as a villainess from that book or game, thus creating a bit of a challenge as villainesses usually are destined to die in the source material.

So! Here are my favorites, many of which are all 3 but some combine one or two of the above tropes. It’s my list so I do what I want. And most of my faves have a shojo genre tag, or at least a romance tag, because that’s where all the good stuff is:

Survive as the Hero’s Wife by Nokki

Canaria is reincarnated as the villainess of a popular cliche novel. Based on the novel, she is destined to be executed but can she prevent this from happening before it’s too late?

Why *I* like it: So this one was the one that really got me into the villainess reincarnation isekai genre! And it remains the top of my list. The huge draw for me in this one is that I actually really like the main couple! Like not even just lukewarm, I really like it! I’d read fic for it, if that existed. A lot of the villainess genre tend to portray the original heroine as vapid, unworthy of their status of heroine, or the actual villainess but in this case Gracie just turns out to be just an amazing strong woman who doesn’t actually need a man. (In fact I ship the three together full stop tbh lol). In fact, it’s a subplot that Gracie realizes (because of MC’s words) that if she wants to inherit her father’s title even though the law says a woman cannot... That she just should strive to change the law rather than be a tool with no use outside of marriage. And not to spoil anything, but she will definitely do just that.

And since I’m mainly finishing the rough draft of this list out of absolute RAGE at being made fun of for being into this genre.... A compilation of the main love interest, Cesar, because he’s absolutely beautiful. Look at those eyes! He’s such a great example of the sullen, dark love interest because he’s not those things when he’s with his wife, the MC!!! He’s so soft for her. And the whole point is that the love interest shows a different side to their lover right??

And like the great thing is Canaria, the MC, totally doesn’t notice for the longest time. She read the novel in her previous life so she’s *convinced* that one day Cesar will fall for the novel’s original leading woman, and she makes plans accordingly throughout their early days of their marriage. She completely hadn’t thought about the fact that since she’s not being a villainess this time around and not abusing him and everyone around her, and makes friends with Cesar... Like of course the course of events change. It utterly baffles Cesar when his wife keeps bringing up divorce because he’s so completely in love with her and you just gotta eat that shit up with a spoon because it’s so good and perfect drama but also funny.

There’s even a Halloween chapter where everyone wears costumes and basically I believe I was pandered to specifically.

Tbh, the arc going atm is sorta losing my interest but that’s because there’s political intrigue and I’m like just here for the romance lmao. So someone looking for substance and not just fluff might be more pleased than I. But it’s still on-going so. It’s just all in all a fun and great introduction to the genre imo.

I Reincarnated into an Otome Game as a Villainess With Only Destruction Flags by Hidaka Nami (Art) and Yamaguchi Satoru (Story)

Eight-year-old Katarina Claes is the only daughter of a duke, living her life peacefully and without incident until she hits her head on a rock... and then remembers that she is not actually the duke's daughter. She used to be an otaku who died on her way to school after spending the entire previous night playing Fortune Lover, her favorite otome game. After noticing that her current surroundings seem oddly familiar, she is shocked to discover that she has been reincarnated into the world of Fortune Lover as the villainess.

The villainess in the game usually winds up dead or exiled, so Katarina decides to use her knowledge of the game and its routes to avoid any bad situations. But is it even possible for the villainess to reach a good ending?

Why *I* like it: Ok ok ok, lol. So this one is probably one of the most well-known of the villainess reincarnation isekai genre atm! Particularly because of the anime currently running. And for good reason... the MC is so brilliantly stupid in the best of ways. While she plots on how to escape her fate of being killed or exiled by learning to sword fight and how to garden, she’s more or less seduced every capture target in this dating game... AND all the female rivals to boot AND heroine. The thing is that she is completely unaware and continues training for the day she is inevitably killed or exiled, as per the game’s original ending.

It’s just a silly, fun series and all the women’s feelings for her are taken about as seriously as all the guys’... Which isn’t much because absolutely no one really has a chance of getting this woman to understand they are all madly in love with her. Not a series to take seriously which is part of it’s charm, but it retains a lot of heart especially when it comes to the MC Katarina (affectionally called Bakarina by fandom) remembering her friend and family from her past life.

This series also has a manga spin-off about what if she’d been reincarnated while already in high school and bullying the heroine instead of a child... So basically she’s in hard mode, and yet she still succeeds in getting even more people into her little harem she has for herself.

Whether you chose to watch the anime or the manga (or the LN, which I haven’t got to) you can’t go wrong.

It Seems Like I Got Reincarnated Into The World of a Yandere Otome Game by Hanaki, Momiji (Story) and Setsuri (Art)

As a precocious child, Lycoris suffers from a strange sense of deja vu. On the day her father told her about her fiancé, she realizes that her fiancé was a character from an otome game she once played in a previous life.

“I am the heroine’s rival from the game?

And in the bad ending, I get stabbed to death?

What a joke.”

A story in which the protagonist is determined to avoid a yandere situation.

Why *I* like it: Hear me out! I know what you’re thinking... Yanderes??? But here’s the thing... Just by the MC being kind and getting 2 of the “yandere” characters out of abusive environments, they no longer end up as yanderes as they grow up. They aren’t those tropes any more! While the characters remain protective, they aren’t possessive and are happy to see MC branch out, if a little lonely. And the yandere that remain aren’t treated as hot, but annoying. So like sorry to disappoint if you think yanderes are hot but this isn’t the series for you.

Additionally, unlike other series of this trope, the MC is pretty quick to realize she just needs to trust her lover, that he will not turn on her and kill her as he did in the game nor will he fall for the heroine instead of her. It’s somewhat refreshing, as a huge part of the trope is the MC typically doesn’t realize until it’s spelled out that by not acting as a villain.... the rest of the characters don’t want to harm them... And might even have fallen in love with them.

Another fun aspect is how MC doesn’t remember things immediately, but only remembers things from her past life (and of how the game went) until it comes up. Additionally, she wonders some interesting things that aren’t even mentioned in other series like... What if she’s destined to be exactly like the game character? Will she be forced to be exactly like her? It’s a fun exploration of some common reincarnation isekai villainess tropes if you have experience with the genre!

Ascendance of a Bookworm by Shiina You (Art) and Kazuki Miya (Story)

A book-loving student and soon to be librarian ends up crushed to death by the pile of books during an earthquakes and wakes up as a five year old girl named Main in another world where books are scarce only available to the elite. Main, retaining her memories of her past life, decides to create and print her own books so she can read again.

Why *I* like it: So here is we depart from solely the villainess sub-genre (but only briefly!) Because there is another sub-genre of reincarnation isekai and that’s in which the MC uses the things they learned on our planet earth to re-invent things like shampoo and the printing press. And no other isekai does it better than Ascendance of a Bookworm imo. Main’s love for books leads her to recreating things she took for granted on Earth and starts selling them from a young age... Which might just end up saving her life as she ends up having a terminal disease that ordinarily she’d only be able to survive by being a slave to a noble... But by selling her products she has a chance to save herself!!! And the products she creates are available to commoners, not just the nobles who of course make it impossible for the poor to have nice things.

Additionally, a majority of this trope centers around nobles and royalty (and all the best ones are historical settings)... The fun thing about this one is that it actually centers around a povert stricken family. It’s a good break from the noble hierarchy within most isekai.

Finally, this series is the one that hits most closely to my feelings if I were to be reincarnated in another world... Which is to cry at the realization that I will never finish any of the on-going books and manga I had going on. That’s absolute hell, I don’t know how any of these MCs deal!! ;_;

btw there is an anime and manga both. Also LN but tbh almost all of these have LN.

Isekai Omotenashi Gohan by Shinobumaru (Story) and Medamayaki (Art)

Akane, an ordinary office lady, gets summoned to a different world along with her younger sister and pet dog. There, she ends up treating rare guests one after another with hospitality through meals!! Can she satisfy the citizens of a different world with home cooking...?!

Why *I* like it: Continuing our brief deviation from the villainess trope, Isekai Omotenashi Gohan is my favorite example of another subgenre of isekai - one without reincarnation - but one in which a “hero” is transmigrated to another world to save it... The problem? Oppsie, 2 people were taken. Sometimes in this sub-genre there is a question who the true savior is but in Isekai Omotenashi Gohan’s case they figure that out pretty quickly. They quickly figure out the MC’s younger sister is the savior. At first the older sister (Akane) is set aside as unimportant... But her sister only wants to eat the food her sister makes and it quickly becomes obvious that Akane’s role is important.

Akane makes lots of allies and friends by sharing the food from Japan and of course has a very subtle romance going on with her guard. But honestly I just enjoy this series as a person that likes food manga, like that’s it lmao, so much so that don’t be surprised when I make a best food manga list and yeah sorry Food Wars won’t be on it.

But fr, even if you don’t love the food manga genre try it!! It’s a sweet series and mixes domestic with fantasy in a great way. Plus only a few series are complete, with the rest being on-going, so if you want a complete and finished series try this one!

The Duke's Fiancee, Why She Had to Go to the Duke by Milcha (Story) and Golae (Art)

When Park Eunha dies in modern-day Korea, she awakens in the body of Raeliana McMillan, the eldest daughter of a nouveaux riche baron. However, this is no ordinary world; it's the exact same one as a novel she once read. Beloved by her family, it would seem as though she is in a fairy tale. But Raeliana is far from the main character—she is a mere plot device, whose murder at the hands of her fiancé instigates the entire story.

Raeliana has no intention to accept her fate quietly. She sets her eyes on someone in a position of great power—the vieux riche male protagonist Duke Noah Volstaire Wynknight—aiming to completely change the original story. Using her knowledge of future events, Raeliana offers information to Noah on the condition that he acts as her fake fiancé, but the Duke's two-faced nature throws a wrench in her plans!

Why *I* like it: This one is a fun one!! It really plays with different concepts that don’t often get explored in reincarnation isekai like where did the original consciousness of the character the MC became go??? Because MC only remembers her life on earth and is otherwise treated as though she has amnesia.... But is it amnesia? Is she another person entirely?

Also the humor is... great. Listen I refuse to give the best joke in the series just to make you read it but... the series is worth it just for this running joke.

Of course the romance is good too. The dude is kinda an asshole but she gives as good as he dishes out and it quickly becomes flirting anyway. I don’t want to say too much and give any thing away... but s’good!

Who Made Me a Princess? by Plutus (Story) and Spoon (Art)

The beautiful Athanasia was killed at the hands of her own biological father, Claude de Alger Obelia, the cold-blooded emperor! It’s just a silly bedtime story… until one woman wakes up to suddenly find she’s become that unfortunate princess! She needs a plan to survive her doomed fate, and time is running out. Will she go with Plan A, live as quietly as possible without being noticed by the infamous emperor? Plan B, collect enough money to escape the palace? Or will she be stuck with Plan C, sweet-talking her way into her father’s good graces?!

Why *I* like it: Ok, big sigh. How do I explain the pull ‘Who Made Me A Princess?’ has on me? Now a lot of the pull for many people is how cute the budding father daughter relationship the MC (Athy) has with her dad. But like, her dad is the worst and I want to fight him. On the other hand, most of the fandom hates Jeanette, the MC’s sister who has done literally nothing wrong except make everyone around her miserable but it’s not her fault ok, and I’ll fight the entire fandom in her honor. So it pains me to rec this series knowing that more than likely anyone who picks up this series because of me might have Wrong Opinions and I invite you to tell me just so I can shake my head about another wrong person existing in this world.

Never the less, this series is very cute! All the other series I have recced had the MC remember their past life at early childhood at the earliest, if not as a teenager. Athy? She has the misfortune to remember as a *baby* and it’s exactly as hellish as it sounds for an adult to be stuck growing up as a baby and suffer through the absolute embarrassment of having people feed and wipe her ass.

The MC was an orphan in her previous life and the book that she wakes up in is a shitty book even by her standards but then she really only skimmed it it sounds like that’s what interests me. As Athy makes changes to the original events of the novel and depth is added to the world, I start to wonder if the added depth was in the original novel or if the world had to add its own depth to stand as an actual lived in world?

Additionally, since I made the cover image Athy and her dad you might as well see her with her 2 love interests (and Jeanette!). People need to know who to ship, I get it.

Also I need a moment to appreciate, up close, the beauty of Athy’s eyes. So gorgeous.

Living as the Tyrant’s Older Sister by Aperta (Story) and Chyobab (Art)

When I opened my eyes, I was inside a fantasy novel world! The beauty I see in front of the mirror is the future tyrant’s older sister, Alicia! She’s not even a protagonist or an antagonist, but a character that doesn’t appear much and gets beheaded by the (upcoming) tyrant little brother. My life is all about escaping that fate from the novel. In the end, I seduced the male lead’s merchant friend who also doesn’t appear much and was about to leave the country with him. How-e-ver. The face of the man who spent the night with me was extraordinary, and was the male lead himself!

Why *I* like it: ……………...keke. Ok so this one is one I like just for the laughs. The love interest is an arrogant asshole, but see… The important detail the summary leaves out is that the MC’s… cousin (?) wrote the book that she woke up in! Moreover she’s the one that told her cousin to change the MC of her novel and make him good at everything and also make him a freak in the sack. Like who is really at fault here??? Lmao. Especially when she goes out intending to seduce a character she remembers being rich from the novel and accidentally bags the MC from the novel, aka the dude who kills her and her brother in the original novel.

In seriousness though, it really is funny. The facial expressions of the MC is just… chefs kiss. She’s got a pretty face but then she makes all these goof ass faces and I love it. If you need any more reason to at least give it a go, just know that at one point the male lead comes to check on her, expecting to find her crying and instead…. Walks in just as she screams FUCK at the top of her lungs and then begins a tirade of very creative curses including "Bitch oompa loompa ass bitch" which how can you not love her? Anyway the face the male lead makes after that has me maintaining that’s the moment he fell in love with her lmao.. but this is not Confirmed so it’s not a spoiler!!

EDIT: as of August 2020, I’ve since dropped this series. It remains on the list since I’d still rec it to people looking for a laugh.

Seduce the Villain’s Father by bia and dalseul

Upon opening my eyes after a bus accident, I found myself in the fantasy world of a webnovel I enjoyed reading... the only catch is, I reincarnated 20 years before the novel begins! Reborn as Princess Yerenica of the small Lebovny kingdom, I'm determined to change the future in order to prevent the series of unfortunate events that will soon occur!

Why *I* like it: How many times have you yourself had a suuuuuper side character be your favorite in a series and be depressed to see them done dirty? Well MC has a chance to fix that, to save a character that basically one appeared in prologue and basically prevent the birth of the villain character that later kills his own father… by seducing his dad, before he can marry the villainess!!

Yerenica is just adorable in her attempts to thwart the original novel. And like, I have to give her lots of respect for seeing the villainess character and having herself a good moment where she had to consider seducing her instead lmao. She knows when to let well enough alone though so she immediately boards back on the dad train, much to his chagrin because she keeps calling him father……………….. Even though he’s like…. Not a dad yet.

The characters are still relatively early on in their romance, but I have high hopes for it yet!

Edit: As of August 2020, I’ve dropped this series. It remains on this list because I think it’s a cute series and I think anyone who feels really strongly about the main couple will enjoy it.

Death Is the Only Ending For The Villainess by Gwon Gyeoeul and SUOL

Penelope Eckart reincarnated as the adopted daughter of Duke Eckart and the villainess of a reverse harem dating sim. The problem is, she entered the game at its hardest difficulty, and no matter what she does, death awaits her at every ending! Before the "real daughter" of Duke Eckart appears, she must choose one of the male leads and reach a happy ending in order to survive. But the two brothers always pick a fight with her over every little thing, as well as a crazy crown prince, whose routes all lead to death. There's even a magician who's enamoured with the female lead, and a loyal slave knight! But somehow, the favourability meters of the male leads increase the more she crosses the line with them!

Why *I* like it: So this one is another relatively new one added to my list, but it’s shot high up rather quickly!! The other otome game isekai’s that I have on my list are just like the real world, but the interesting thing about this one, is that it also retains otome game mechanics such as she can see the love interests love meter and also she can chose to use the video game script choices to reply to the characters, in the hopes of raising their love meter. This adds challenge, since she knows that if she gets any of the dudes to -10 she’ll be killed even as she sort of wonders if she truly would die or wake back up in reality.

What’s interesting also is that while she is the villainess character in the game… It ends up that the character was actually abused for years and that her title as a villain is unfair and that the game can be played as the villainess as even a player as a ‘hard’ mode compared to the heroine character. It’s up to her to turn things around and it’s actually a fun take on the villainess genre. I’m really looking forward to how things proceed even as my fears about which dude she’ll end up with continue to increase.

Finally, another layer I enjoy is that the MC lead a similar life in her previous life. She’d only just escape her own abusive family before she’d ended up here and MC just desperately wants to escape once again… using any means necessary.

The Villainess Reverses the Hourglass by SanSobe (story) and Ant Studio (art)

With the marriage of her prostitute mother to the Count, Aria’s status in society skyrocketed immediately. After leading a life of luxury, Aria unfairly meets death because of her sister Mielle’s schemes. And right before she dies, she sees an hourglass fall as if it were a fantasy. And just like that, she was miraculously brought back to the past.

“I want to become a very elegant person, just like my sister, Mielle.”

In order to face the villainess, she must become an even more wicked villainess. This was the new path Aria chose to take revenge on Mielle who murdered both her and her mother.

Why *I* like it: If you thought that this list might be in descending order, guess again! This one is one of my favorites. Now this one lacks isekai, but is a reincarnation of a villainess!! Rather the MC was an absolute horrible person in her past life, but finds out at the last minute that her ~pure~ sister had been leading her by nose into acting like a brat just seconds before she is executed. Now that she has a second chance, she’ll be a proper villainess and turn the tables on her sister.

In her last life, Aria never bothered educating herself so now that she’s a teenager again she actually has to learn things again (it’s not just like she gets to act like she’s a genius and good at everything) but she works hard at maintaining a sweet image and making everyone love her, even as she snickers behind their backs, all the while subtly setting her sister up for failure.

This is a proper revenge story, I’m promised by those who read the LN!! Revenge stories about women are rare to come back, especially one that doesn’t make revenge look like a total evil thing lol. What can I say, I have my interests. Anyway, it’s super cathartic to watch Aria slowly unfold her masterplan to foil her sister’s plans and take everything that her sister had cherished in her previous life. And all that not to mention the certain powers that Aria later discovers she has at her disposal... :3c

Beware of the Villainess by Bbongdda Mask (story) and Pureunkanna (art)

I became the villainess of a novel! Do I hate it? No! I find it rather nice. A duke’s daughter equals a jobless rich person. How can I miss out on a chance like this?! This is the best chance to just enjoy life. I should throw out the main plot and just live life how I want to! Not long after waking up as the villainess, I witnessed my fiancé, the crown prince and the novel’s male lead, cheating. I saw him embrace a lady other than I and he was smiling so bright. I was brought to tears… Just kidding, I didn’t cry! My tears are worth too much to be wasted on that garbage. Instead of tears, I yelled out, “Your highness, are you trash?”

Why *I* like it: Listen there are 2 ways to react to waking up as a villain of a series you once read… Either you turn the tables and become a good guy OR you can embrace it! The world the novel is based on has the basic premise of the pure and good heroine winning the affection of 4 bratty, horrible men. MC is the fiance of one of them and says fuck that. She also has some thoughts that none of these dudes deserve the heroine of the novel but this one is still pretty early on so the jury still out on if she’s going to save this poor girl from her fate of ending up with any of these absolute assholes.

This one is along the veins of the previously mentioned Living As the Tyrant’s Older Sister, in that the pull for this series is even less of the romance and more about the comedy aspect… Also MC’s facial expressions are…. Choice. Just so good. Enough with pretty girls making pretty faces!! We need more girls being ugly. It’s what we deserve. Yell at cheaters!!!!!! Tell them to fuck off!! Yes please.

Accomplishments of the Duke’s Daughter by Reia (Story), Umemiya Suki (Art)

Although she had reincarnated as the daughter of a Duke's house, by the time she regained her memories, the Ending was already here.

"After he cancels my engagement, the story would have me confined to a church. Where can I find my happy ending?"

Why *I* like it: I never read or watched Wolf and Spice but I imagine this is isekai Wolf and Spice… Well it’s got a lot about the economy at least lmao. That’s literally the only thing I know about Wolf and Spice. Anyway!! The twist in this one is that the MC remembers her past life just as she’s about to be exiled, the end of the original game. What the series focuses on is her life afterwards, as she scrambles to grab at any semblance of a good life… And she does so pretty quickly!

Her past life comes in handy as she sets to work managing a dukedom and fixes the economy!! Moreover, even though it pains my heart whenever two women are pitted against each other… It does a great job of putting into question the original heroine’s pure shtick as she spends extravagantly on dresses and would rather just donate to the poor one day, instead of Iris the MC who sets to work on fixing the economy and creating jobs for the poor and putting money into bettering their lives in the long run, rather than throwing money at them and running. Also, she’s grabbed the attraction of a mysterious man who takes a job helping her even though he is a prince aka the brother of her ex-fiance who he is fighting for the crown for.

And that’s it!! My list for now!! Tbh by next month there’ll likely be even more faves as I continue to add more and more series to my read list lol. Because this isn’t even a fraction of all the reincarnation isekai series I’m into, just the best for certain reasons.

BTW, if you’re like... wow this list sure is straight then true unfortunately. I’m waiting for the day “I Favor The Villainess” gets adapted somehow. Also there are several isekai in which a straight girl reincarnates into a yaoi novel but I haven’t found a true gem among them yet.

#isekai #i scream #long post #recs #this post was sponsored by pure spite #but frankly yes i know i didn't have to go this far #but this is just who i am... which is too much

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selfawarejester · 3 years

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5 shows that make me happy:

I was tagged by @magellanicclouds, thank you so much! So, in no particular order, 5 shows that make me warm and fuzzy on the inside! (Mostly cartoons, but whatever)

1. Teen Titans (2005)

This was one of the shows that I watched when I was a little bby, and I loved it! The character development, the dynamics, the soundtrack, the humor — 20/10, definitely recommend watching. The way it flicked from stupid banter about waffles to real life issues like racism, identity and so much more was so amazing to me as a tiny tot. Also, ROBSTAR FOR THE WIN!

2. Ben 10 (including Alien Force, Ultimate Alien, Omniverse — NOT the Reboot, because I haven't watched it yet so I dunno what's going on there.)

Benjamin Kirby Tennyson was my first ever crush, and he will always hold a special place in my heart. These characters were amazing, and intelligent, and funny (and so not heterosexual, but that's a different post) Sure, there were certain aspects they could have done better (BenKai, Benlie, BenElena, basically Ben's relationships as a whole) and there were some plot holes, but overall this was a mind-blowing show; when they needed to be witty and funny, they were very much so. When they wanted angst and sad stuff, they were tear-jerking. When they wanted something disturbing, they brought it. The aliens and lore were (mostly) incredibly interesting and engaging. Nice artwork, lovely soundtrack and I like that up until Omniverse, they didn't treat any of Ben's relationships as the one that would last forever because, like, he's fifteen/sixteen. He's gonna date for a bit before settling down. And outside of fanon, he isn't some womanizing superhero douchebag, he just plays at being arrogant and is honestly super clueless around women.

You can see how much I love it from this long para. 10,000/10. (Wink, wink)

3. The Flash

The show that brought me into the Arrowverse. The earlier seasons were the best, hands down. I haven't watched s6 fully yet, but it won't compare to S1 I know already. The characters go through so much trauma, and it's never talked about, but god, these actors bring their A-game! I never fail to get misty-eyed at the emotional scenes they deliver. Their humor is on point, and sure, some storylines seem recycled, but hey Barry screwing up the timeline never gets old! 10/10.

4. Castle

*Pterodactyl screaming* Caskett was the one that introduced me to shipping characters! No ship will ever, ever come close to Caskett for me, because that's the kind of relationship I want to have: one of mutual respect, adoration and a-grade banter! Their chemistry was off the charts, and the story was amazing (excepting the last seasons) because it was centered around the female lead, for the most part, despite the male lead being the name of the show. The cast had great dynamics, and great character development, and I've watched it 20-30 times and I can watch it again easily.

5. The Mentalist

Simon Baker's Patrick Jane is the one of the most charismatic assholes I've ever seen and I love him (He's not as obvious as bastard magician John Constantine <3). His mind games never cease to amuse and piss off his team. He's wicked and incredibly intelligent, and he wants you to know. He's always ready to make a fool out of someone while drinking tea and subscribing to borderline/full on illegal feats that make his police co-workers scream and pull out their hair. His tragic backstory consists of a dead wife and child, which is an overdone trope, but they carried it off well, and Baker delivers a sobering performance each time. I like that they didn't pursue the main relationship until he gets justice for them. While I don't like the conclusion to Red John, the characters are able to hold their own against Simon Baker, charismatic and interesting in their way.

I know people were expecting Lucifer (I love buddy cop dynamics, and I love his development but also, he's literally one of the most powerful beings to ever exist, next to y'know, GOD and I'd like to see more of that), Arrow, Agents of Shield, Merlin and The Originals (they kinda biffed it at times, but mostly very good (except Klaroline, screw that mess)) but yeah, it's these guys!

Tagging @catxsnow @justagirlinafandomworld @spacesnappy @mrs-chief Hope I didn't double tag anyone!

#teen titans #ben 10 #castle #the mentalist #the flash #this is so long i'm sorry #but i had fun making this

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rachelbethhines · 4 years

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Tangled Salt Marathon - The Way of the Willow

Now here’s a controversial episode from season one. Let’s delve into the discourse, shall we.

Summary: It's Queen Arianna's birthday, and she receives an unexpected guest: her estranged sister, Willow. Willow and Rapunzel quickly bond, sharing a lot of the same personality traits (most notably them never wearing shoes), and Arianna feels a bit left out. To add to her aggravation, Willow has given her a pet with an annoying rattle. Eventually, Arianna explodes at her sister, letting her know her irritation with her and throws away the rattle. The pet starts to multiply and rampage over the countryside. Meanwhile, Lance and Eugene take the King camping.

More Filler, More Poor Pacing, More Fatigue

This is yet another episode that was moved around. Noticing a pattern yet? It doesn’t effect the plot much, but it kills the pacing dead. By the time you get to this episode you’re just tired and bored and ready for the show to just get on with things.

Let's Talk About Representation

So we have here a show that is marketed towards pre-teen little girls run by two middle aged white guys and written primarily by men. The creators have claimed that female relationships are the focus of the show, but only to give us one female friend for our main hero, no other friendships with women in them, just two sister relationships, and only one mother that is even alive.

Furthermore they go on to break up that single female friendship, refuse to give any focus to the only mother in the show, and then wrap the plot around the dead abusive mom instead, making her unnecessarily even more horrible than she was in the OG film. (just to make the equally abusive father in the show look better)

Meanwhile we get four father figures, all of whom are just some variant on the ‘overprotective estranged dad’ trope. Even though at least two of them could have been easily written to be mothers instead and it’d not change the plot one bit.

When women talk about about poor representation in media, it’s things like this we are often complaining about. That’s not to say that men can’t write women. Miyazaki, of Studio Ghibli fame, has made a lifelong career out writing movies for and starring women. Nor is this a claim that the TTS crew are misogynist. You can be well intentioned and still screw up. As is most often the case in films.

But nevertheless, if you are writing for a demographic that you are not a part of then you need to either include those voices in the development of your story or reach out and consult people within that demographic. And no, you’re wife/niece/daughter/mother does not count here. You need to go beyond your personal social circle, as people who either don’t know you or have worked in the industry can be more open about what is needed in the writing process.

Sadly there are rumors, (and please keep in mind this is only rumor, and we’ll never know the actual truth due to the fact that production artists are under contract and can’t share things without fearing for their livelihoods) but there are stories of the head showrunner shutting down the opinions of the female storyboard artists who warned him of some these creative decisions.

Moreover said creator responded to criticisms of how his female characters were written by claiming he ‘knew strong women in his life’ as if that actually had anything to do with his writing skills. It’s a poor response and smacks of ‘Well I can’t be misogynistic, I love women. See, I married one’. Dear, male creators, please don't ever do this. It makes you look bad.

So Where are Arianna and Willow From, Again?

The show keeps dropping hints that they’re from Corona itself and are born princesses, but that makes little sense. Because if Arianna was the rightful heir she’d have far more political power then she actually does in the show. If we’re to buy the idea that only Rapunzel will be in charge, and not her and Eugene, or even just Eugene. Then we have to accept that it’s because she’s the rightful heir by birth. If so, then Frederic must also be the blood heir or otherwise he wouldn’t be able to do all the things he does in the show.

TTS is so determine to not have any real world markers in the show and keeping things a ‘fantasy’ that it winds up swinging too far in the opposite direction. To the point that it undermines its own worldbuilding.

The Conflict Between Willow and Arianna is Good, but Unnecessary

I’ve seen some debate over ‘who is right’ here, along with tons of unwarranted shade thrown at Willow, but the truth is, it doesn’t matter. Neither side is right or wrong, and for once the conflict in TTS is real, complex, not easily solvable with a ten minute conversation, and is presented evenly so that you know where each side is coming from. But in the end, it doesn’t add anything to the series.

Willow is never seen outside of this episode. This is the only story that gives Arianna any kind of focus. Rapunzel learns nothing useful from witnessing their squabbles and it’s all build up to a be bad parable/parallel in the series finale.

It’s a waste. A waste of conflict. A waste of character. A waste of time.

Had Arianna been treated as an important character to the narrative, like she should have been, then maybe the episode would have fared better.

Arianna is Reduced to a Pointless Parallel

We talked about it before but this might be the most grievous example of Tangled’s useless parallels.

Willow and Arianna are meant to be ‘foreshadowing’ (and I use that term loosely) for Rapunzel and Cassandra’s conflict in the finale season. Let me count the ways of how bad this actually is..

For starters Willows and Arianna’s conflit isn’t actually the same as Raps and Cass. There’s some overlap, but ultimately theirs is actually deeper and more complex than the Raps vs Cass stuff. It’s also only between them and does not involve ruining the lives of other people. So it’s a weak comparison to begin with.

Cassandra isn’t even here to make the parallel complete. She barely interacts with Arianna and has never met Willow on screen.

Rapunzel learns the wrong lessons from this. She gets encouragement from her aunt to go traveling and a pep talk from her mom during the show’s finale, but she doesn’t actually apply any of the actual context of the arguments being made to her own life. Making the parallel shallow.

Reducing a character from the original film, one that you did not create and who has reasons to be have more plot importance then they are given, to a mere ‘parallel’ for your favorite OC is just bad fanfiction. This is something that I would expect from a seven year old setting out to write their first ever story. Not from grown adults, who are supposedly professionals, who've worked for years in the industry and are employed by the largest entertainment studio in the world.

Now before you jump down my throat, there’s nothing wrong with fanfiction itself, nor with children exploring their favorite stories in ways they find personally fulfilling. But I happen to hold mass produced media to a different, and ultimately higher standard. As well should we all. A television show made by the mouse has more real world impact than a little girl posting on Ao3.

Critiquing stuff like female representation, the behind the scenes hiring processes that leads to either good or bad rep, and the impression these stories can have on people still developing their worldviews is important. Questioning things are needed in order to make change happen. If you never acknowledge how giving a show targeted to women to a male showrunner can cause problems then you’re never going to push the big companies for more female lead shows. Which means more women are left without work.

This is Subjective but...

I don’t like the Uumlaut being used as the main conflict. Look, if you like the Gremlins references, good for you, but I was promised sword fights and adventure according to the pilot and all I got was a parody of a 80s horror comedy that decided to skip out on the ‘horror’ part. The Uumlaut isn’t threatening enough to be interesting and the lack of real threats and challenges in this show is really starting to weigh things down. Plus it just distracts from the far more interesting human drama going on with Willow and Arianna.

Like if you don't want action to be the focus of every episode, that’s fine, but commit to that. Don't just half-ass it because you feel the need to shoehorn in an action sequence where it isn’t needed.

Conclusion

I like Willow as a character, but not this episode. They needed to do more with her to justify her existence, and they needed to do more with Arianna while at it. Sadly, you won't really miss out on much if you decided to skip this episode and that’s a shame.

Also...

I’ll forever headcanon that Willow is the wife that Stan mentioned back in Rapunzel’s Enemy and that she’s his and Pete’s beard. You can’t change my mind. Poly relationships for the win!

#tangled #anti-tangled #willow #arianna #repersentation #critique #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #tts #rta

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cosmiciaria · 4 years

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Castlevana S 3 Scattered Thoughts - SPOILERS!!

SPOILERRRRSSS again just in case

SPOILERS ok??

I didn’t trust Suki and Taka for one second, there were many instances in which they exchanged looks and they left me wondering why would they spend precious seconds of a 21-min episode in those exchanges, so - As Anton Chejov would’ve loved to say, if you show a gun (those weird looks) use it for something (the betrayal at the end). I saw it coming miles away. Am I angered/sad by it...? Actually, I’m disappointed by Alucard’s whole story arc. I expected more of it, Suki and Taka were the last thing I expected for it. I... don’t know what to think of his plot, I do think he needs a hug. Now.

At first the animation seemed a bit stiff. Coming from the second season, where everything was AMAZING, it kinda struck me as weird. Also the voice acting seemed a little off at first, like the actors didn’t match/synch completely well with what we were watching?? I guess?? But then it changed towards the second half of the season and MAN those last two episodes were glorious. Trevor with the dual whip??? AAA’<??!!?

Overall, plot-wise, this season felt quite barren. We only had a handful of Hector’s moments (ooooh in a sec, just in a sec) and Isaac being the husbando we all want. But both Alucard’s and Trevor/Sypha’s storylines left much to be desired. Yes, plot twists here and there, but seemingly non-consequential with the over all grand scheme of the series. I mean, you have to top last season’s finale, that’s no easy feat.

I think Sain Germain’s dream was a bit too long. I understand he powerful he magic he wizard he historical person but it kinda dragged on for too long for me. I did like what I saw in that dream huh

OST still good here

Hector and Lenore. Now, I love Hector, I don’t think he’s dumb, I just think he needs a hug, like Alucard does. And I hate myself because I shipped Hector x Lenore, but saw her betrayal coming miles away - this one is more obvious though, because it seems that Hector getting backstabbed is a running gag at this point. I also read somewhere here that there’s a nice parallelism between Lenore and Hector: she’s basically what he was in the second season, with the same ideals and such. Hector being treated like a pet by the end, when in the past he only wanted pets (dead humans...), it’s, uh... almost divine judgement, let’s say.

I do hope Lenore betrays her gang for Hector - or Hector beats the shit out of them, I need something good to happen to him. Once. Just once. Please, creators.

I kinda like Striga x Morana, felt like a nice addition, their dynamics are goals (like, scheme an evil plan together?? please). Also Trevor x Sypha were like a panacea too, they’re so fun together and just dsajkdasdsa they make me go uwu.

ALSO idk why I’ve just remembered this BUT as soon as I saw that this season was 18+ and read “violence, sex” i was like - wait, are they gonna fuck in this season?? and they’re gonna show it to us??? whaaaa?? And it wasn’t just that - It’s the first time I saw a man completely naked in an animation. Like, completely. It’s more common to see female breasts, it was a nice change of pace. I don’t even know why I add this item, it was shocking when I realized it. Now you’re all gonna say that I didn’t watch enough animation - believe me, I did, it’s just that generally genitals are kept in the obscure you know

I don’t want’ Dracula or his wife to return. I don’t want it. Yes, given, it’s gonna make up for a huge and amazing scene if it happens, but truthfully I’m tired of the trope that when an important character dies, they get to be revived. Please don’t. Also, it takes away all of Alucard’s character arc’s weight. It’s the best and fastest way to destroy his character. Please don’t. Edit: I KNOW Dracula dies and comes back many times in the games, I just don’t think it’s a good idea. I’m only commenting on the show, not the games, sadly I haven’t played them since I never owned any Nintendo console and yes some of them are on the PS4 now but I don’t think that type of game is for me. I only own Curse of Darkness for the PS2 and I tried to get myself into it but I just couldn’t with how slow Hector walks in that game. So, sorry if I seem a little off with that item: it’s because YES i’m not a fan of the games, i’m only a fan of the show so far.

Well I guess it’s pretty obvious I didn’t like it much, at least I didn’t like it more than the second. Watch at your own risk.

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365days365movies · 3 years

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February 23, 2021: His Girl Friday (1940) (Part 1)

Oh, we’re going BACK for this one!

Yeah, this is smack dab in the Golden Age of Cinema! Post-depression, the cinematic culture boomed like CRAZY. Obviously, this age had started before this point, but there was no stopping Hollywood here. I mean, in 1940 alone, Disney came out with Pinocchio AND Fantasia, films like The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Dictator, and Rebecca came out, and some of those were prefaced by short cartoons featuring a brand new certain someone.

Oh, also, there was some war of the world 2 thing going on overseas, I dunno. But anyway! Another well-known film that came out that year was The Philadelphia Story, a George Cukor-directed film starring Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, and one of a subgenre of comedies called the screwball comedy.

Arguably starting with the 1934 film It Happened One Night, these are romantic comedies that usually feature a self-confident and stubborn female protagonist inevitably falling in love with the male protagonist, who’s probably initially mismatched with her, personality-wise. You should also throw some slapstick comedy, disguises (cross-dressing’s a feature of a lot of these, weirdly), and class struggle. Yeah, also apparently a trend of these films, that were CRAZY popular from 1934 through the ‘40s.

And in case you’re thinking, “That plot structure sounds familiar, where have I heard that before?”, well, I just watched a later-era screwball comedy, Pillow Talk.

But today, the screwball comedy’s mostly disappeared. Some tropes survive, but the reason for the genre’s extinction is simply because of lack of demand. Part of that is because the genre emerged due to questions of class struggle post-Great Depression. Yeah, seriously, the Great Depression is involved in this shit! Obviously, though, that’s not currently as much of a stressor now, so this genre is dead save for some conventions.

But OK, screwball comedy. Why not look at older members of the genre, rather than this film from smack dab in the middle of it? Well, a few reasons. One, this film stars leading man Cary Grant in his prime. And two, because this film was directed by the one and only Howard Hawks.

Hawks directed yet another Grant-Hepburn vehicle, Bringing Up Baby. And yes, that IS a leopard in a car! I’d watch that this month, but I’ve already seen it. Anyway, Hawks is an understated but excellent director, and his female characters are an archetype in and of themselves, known as Hawksian women. They’re tough-talkers, and the main characters of most old screwball comedies.

OK, but Hawks had a lot of romance films with these characters, so why His Girl Friday? Well, other than knowing it from pure reputation as a good movie, it’s also been called one of the best romcoms of all time, and it’s one of his highest rated films as well. And honestly...I kinda just wanted to watch it based on the premise, which is...interesting. But OK, enough navel-gazing. On with the show! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

We start in a newspaper office in the year 1940, where “Hildy” Johnson (Rosalind Russell) has arrives with her fiancee, Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy), a sweet man who clearly loves her. Shit. He’s the guy destined to be left behind for the actual love interest of the movie Goddamn it, OK.

Anyway, Hildy apparently used to work here, although I’m not sure of the capacity as of yet. She’s only here now to visit her ex-husband, chief editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant). Their reunion is a bt icy, although Walter still seems to be in love with her still, while Hildy’s absolutely not interested. For now.

And as the two have a back-and-forth, I gotta say, GODDAMN is this some snappy dialogue! Fast-paced, but well-written and understandable all the same. It shuld also be noted that this film was adapted from a 1928 play, The Front Page, and it shows in how these two are playing in front of the screen. Their chemistry’s basically immediate, and you sense an unseen history between them easily.

What I’m saying is, it’s great. Anyway, the two have gotten divorced, and while Walter originally agreed, he’s now fighting the divorce to stay with Hildy, even though she doesn’t want that at all. He’s been calling her constantly, and bugging her. He also talks over her, trying to prevent her from getting a word in edgewise, and Hildy ain’t fuckin’ HAVING that shit!

He asks her to come back to work for him as a reporter (THERE’S the connection to the office), and if that doesn’t work out...they can get married again? Yeah, Walter, Jesus, take a hint. She tells Walter that she’s not coming back to him, and not coming back to work on the paper.

The two, through increasingly impressive dialogue, argue intensely, which is capped off by this well-timed and impressive dodge by Walter, followed by a crack that her aim used to be better.

This movie...holy shit, this movie. Anyway, through the argument, Walter gets a call and pretends that one of his reporters called out sick, in order to get Hildy to work one more job for him. Whoof, that’s manipulatiiiiiiive. But she breaks through his constant pressing to finally tell him that she’s now engaged, and is quitting the newspaper business.

Walter insists that quitting would kill her, s she’s a “newspaperman,” which is interesting. But she’s tired of it all, and wants to live a respectable, normal life, as she says. Her fiancee is an insurance man, which Walter notes is too boring. But Hildy notes that he’s kind, sweet, and considerate, and wants a home and children, and her mind is made up.

Walter relents (seemingly) , and gives Hildy his blessings. However, he decides that he wants to meet Bruce in person, and goes out to say hello, That results in...what is legitimately a VERY funny interaction between Water, Bruce, and a random-ass dude named Pete Davis. It is...it is funny.

youtube

So, for the record, Walter’s a verbally-manipulative asshole, and...I kind of like him? Like, he’s an ABSOLUTE DICK, but also a charmer. He quickly coerces Hildy and Bruce into getting lunch at a local place. There, we learn that the two are planning on moving to Albany, where Bruce is confident that the insurance business is strong. I’ve been to Albany, and I can see that.

Walter, during the lunch, is once again a DICK, doing his best to intimidate Bruce and sabotage their plans to leave for Albany that day. He makes his way to the phone, where he schemes with Duffy (Frank Orth) to keep her in town. Back at the table, he tells her of the case of Earl Williams.

Williams is, apparently, a man recently convicted of shooting a police officer...who was black...and they use a word to describe him that begins with a C...that makes me uncomfortablllllllllllle. But it’s 1940, so it could be FAR worse. Anyway, he’s going to be executed, even though he claims that he’s innocence. And while Hildy’s intrigued by the case, she refuses to cover it for Walter.

UNTIL, that is, Walter offers to buy an insurance policy from Bruce for $100000 in 1940 money, which means a commission for $18,000 in today’s money. Uh...yeah. Yes, please. And yet, Bruce says NO, not wanting to involve his future wife in his affairs, like a GODDAMN GENTLEMAN. But Hildy don’t give a FUCK, and basically accepts the deal for him. And, uh, I DO NOT blame her, that’s a lot of goddamn money!

Understandably not trusting Walter, she has Bruce give her all of the money that they have, to his equally understandable reluctance. Because there is NO WAY that she isn’t gonna lose all of that money. We find out from a group of reporters staying near the prison that Williams is to be hung tomorrow, and that he’s a bookkeeper that was recently unemployed.

Meanwhile, after a doctor’s check-up, Bruce and Walter write up the life insurance, and Walter tells Bruce to make Hildy his beneficiary. And Bruce is understandably awkward about that, but Walter ends up convincing him, the smooth and conniving DICK that he is.

Duffy walks in to give Walter a check for more money than originally intended, and it’s even been certified! Which is...odd, but OK. Bruce calls Hildy to let her know, and she’s very suspicious. She tells Bruce to put the check in the lining of his hat, claiming that it’s an old journalist’s superstition (it is not). Looks like she’s right to be suspicious, as Walter brings in a short gentleman for unknown reasons. He follows Bruce out as he leaves the office.

Meanwhile, Hildy brides a prison guard to speak with Earl Williams (John Qualen) before his execution. He’s a shy and bookish man, who was thought to become radicalized by people speaking in a pubic park, where he went after losing his job. This, it’s believed by the press and court, eventually drove him to go insane and kill the policeman.

But Earl seems perfectly sane, and committing murder goes against his morals. He also wasn’t won over by said radical park speakers, although he admits one of them made some good points. But still, he had a gun, and he apparently did shoot the policeman.

In their interview, Hildy learns that the man in the park was talking about “production for use”, which is the idea that everything produced should be used, basically in a way that production meets demand, and profit is less important than product. Which, granted, is an interesting idea. But Hildy uses that to convince Earl that he shot the gun because he had it in his hands. And since the gun was produced, it needed to be used, so...

Well, that’s...something. We also learn about Mollie Malloy (Helen Mack), who’s been unfairly labeled by the press as Earl’s mistress and the witness to his case. And she gives a very passionate and heartfelt plea with the male journalists, who are...vicious. And Mollie’s hurt indeed. And while she’s there, they all treat her terribly.

But she breaks down in front of them even further when she sees the gallows being prepared outside. And as Hildy takes her out, the men left behind actually do seem ashamed. And in a single stroke, in a single scene, the film uses an immense moment of drama to show exactly why Hildy wants to leave, and the things that it makes people in this profession do. It’s...masterful.

Good place to pause! See you in Part 2!

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asexualchad · 4 years

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I fucking hate manpain as a horror trope. even in decent films it’s just distracting because I, personally, do not care about men, but also because it’s like... cheap writing. you don’t have to dig up anything to tell the sad side of the story of a man, and the audience is always going to have sympathy for the guy, like no matter what. we just assume his sadness is worth caring about... even when it is totally comparative chickenshit.

so manpain always gets to be central to the plot. but like, it’s not really relevant to the male characters’ actual lives. it’s something they just choose to dwell on, though very little is ever indicated to suggest things aren’t going well for them because of it. but we’re still sad for them, for some fucking reason (unless you’re me, who is above it all). like in The Invitation. I completely did not give a fuck about that guy boohooing about his dead son. his feelings on the matter could have been cut out of the film completely and it would have been SO much more compelling. making it some big reveal that His Boy Is Dead was a dumb choice because the dead child thing was only relevant to why the ex wife had gone so off the deep end! like in the most generous light his ~reserved manpain~ made her balls-to-the-wall, let’s-join-a-very-effective-murder-cult reaction MORE compelling because she just straight up had a more proportionate reaction. he didn’t live with it like she did! why the fuck would I give a shit about him then? it’s unfortunately a perfect example for an otherwise very nicely creepy film; he presents the manpain, but she’s the one actually suffering for it. the real centerpiece, the whole plot, is HER suffering, but we only see it framed through his stupid bullshit. it’s the most basic writing choice to make even important women unimportant by taking the man’s side. narratively.

and it’s entirely possible to NOT do that! Us did it with very little manpain whatsoever. Ex Machina did it with decoy manpain so well I don’t think a lot of people realised what a slap in the face to the trope it was. “oh he was very sad for her! why did she do that to him!” because to truly evolve the genre you have to move beyond the initial sympathy we’ve all been having for men’s feelings. manpain isn’t REAL sympathy. manpain is a never ending cycle of problems that create horror in the first place. we learned her story though his (his’, kind of, but only the worst people were going to feel any sympathy for the other guy) bullshit but she actually used it to her own ends. her tragedy was his downfall instead of her own. he was there to be a voyeur to her suffering but for once mr. manpain didn’t get away with it!

meanwhile, like, Prometheus, right? everyone hated it except me but it’s one of my favourite movies of all time for how it just doesn’t give a fuck about how you’re supposed to present manpain versus female pain in horror. the manpain is presented as objectively, flagrantly, almost offensively silly. and the real male protagonist is a great foil because he is literally incapable of manpain. like they actually very heavy-handedly joke about how unaffected by everything including getting his head blown off he is. there’s silly womanpain (womanpain is EXCLUSIVELY about infertility of some sort, across all genres, if you hadn’t already noticed) in there, too, but it obviously motivates our protagonist to go about her very exciting life in a way that she wouldn’t be able to otherwise. being sad about infertility is a normal part of her life that is by no means all-consuming, and in a way it’s kind of treated like... manpain. it is not a major facet of her personality but it definitely serves as a way to deepen her relationship to the themes of the film. unlike the coincidental human connections characters happen to have in other manpain-motivated films, her status as the protagonist seems chosen, not incidental. if Prometheus had gotten an actual sequel, her evolving relationship with Creation and how it is definitely not the mammalian snugglefest we often think of it as would have been one of the most profound feminist science fiction themes ever explored in film. so instead, of course, we got torture porn to remind men that their dicks shall always be hard and women that our intelligence shall always be insulted.

#would have been a great follow up to alien's rape theme but no... ridley the idiot got too close that first time #don't even get me started on what a waste of time moon was though oh my good #i would not have wasted two hours of my life had i known ed was just gonna cry about his wife and daughter the whole time

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thefieryeclipse · 5 years

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Hero(in)es

Appreciation post of how Heroes handled its many great female characters

Claire Bennet

She could easily have been the Dumb Blonde Teenager, the bully, the girl who dies gruesomely in the horror movie, or the hyper sexualized cheerleader.

Instead we got a strong, stubborn, confident young woman who was kind and (at least for the most part!) good. Yeah, she was spoiled at times, but more importantly she was brave, she was resilient as hell - and can we appreciate that the creators gave the power of regeneration, to literally bounce back from any physical damage, to the character who in any other show might have always been just the pretty, young victim? Claire got one of the strongest abilities of the bunch, given to the teenage cheerleader rather than someone like, for example, Wolverine.

Niki Sanders

The single mother, the alcoholic, the internet stripper, struggling so badly to support her son that the utilities in her house are shut off.

Niki could far too easily have been a mass of cliches and stereotypes that we’ve all seen before: a struggling damsel who just happens to be drop-dead gorgeous, and all she needs is a man to take pity on her, woo her, and suddenly all her problems disappear. Instead we got a fierce af, compassionate woman who does it all by herself (not including Jessica, of course), who has what it takes to do what she must, even if it’s not pretty. Not to mention the archetype of poor, vulnerable, stripper eye-candy was given super strength, arguably the most conventionally masculine power out there. Just think of Mr Incredible vs Niki Sanders!

Angela Petrelli

Now where to begin with Angela Petrelli...? Instead of just a selfish, sock-stealing wealthy widow or a clueless mother, we get this fabulous force not to be reckoned with.

Not only has Angela known about abilities and the exploding man the whole time, but she’s got a hand in everything - including events that haven’t even happened yet. Where Angela could have been sidelined as just ambitious for Nathan’s career or over-looking Peter and his dreams, instead we get the most tenacious, deliberate, intelligent, powerful woman who isn’t hindered in any way by being older than 50 (cause y’know, in TV land, god forbid). Angela is a league above and ten steps ahead of everyone else in-world, and seemingly does all this effortlessly without bothering a hair on her perfectly styled head.

Elle Bishop

The quirky, pretty, sweet but deadly, damaged and slightly crazy “bad girl”.

But she’s so much more than this. She’s a survivor of horrendous abuse growing up, she’s strong enough to go off on her own and get sh*t done. Elle is damaged, yes, but she’s not ruined. She still cares, she still feels remorse (sometimes XP), and she’s not a victim. She’s her own person, conflicted and still growing, she’s not totally jaded by her past or so tortured that she’s been turned “evil” by it. Elle has the capacity to be badass, to be wounded, to giggle in delight, to cry, to hate, to love and to be all of these things at once, most of which we wouldn’t normally get in such dimension from the “crazy cute girl” trope.

Tracy Strauss

The ambitious, heartless career woman who sleeps her way up the corporate ladder.

Only, she isn’t that character. She’s confident, yes, hard-working, extremely good at her job and doesn’t feel the need to apologise for this. But she’s also much more than her career: Tracy upends her whole life after the revelation of her ability. She’s capable and can be ruthless, but also struggles with guilt and belonging. Secretly she’s remorseful, and just wants somewhere to feel like home. She doesn’t need a love interest, she doesn’t need her fancy job and over-priced martinis. And when scorned, Tracy becomes one of the most capable killers in the show. So much more than just a pretty woman in a pencil skirt.

Monica Dawson

The struggling young waitress who’s saving up money to get out of town and start her own life.

Instead of an empty trope, we get a kind young woman with a big heart, who’s dealing with the recent loss of her mother and helping raise her brother and cousin while supporting her family financially. Monica isn’t bratty or ungrateful, she’s generous and hard-working and tough as anything to keep powering on like she does. And that’s before we even factor in her ability to copycat everything she sees. Monica is unparalleled, unrestrained, unstoppable if she wants to be. She could do anything and imitate anyone in a fight. She won’t be beaten. And she won’t stand by and watch horrible things happen to good people. Her difficulties at home haven’t ruined her, and she’s never once portrayed as just a “poor soul”. Plus, remember this kick???

Sandra Bennet

She could easily have remained as just a ditzy housewife who’s always kept out of the loop and obsessed with her, insanely adorable, dog.

But Sandra blossoms as a character. She’s thoughtful and shamelessly loving (and is the only person who even remembers Lyle exists), she puts herself in danger to protect a perfect stranger from the authorities, and is strong enough to leave the husband who she’s loved and been mentally abused by for decades. Sandra was lied to, manipulated, under-estimated, held at gunpoint more than once, had her memories wiped without consent so many times she was hospitalized, and still she doesn’t stay down. She can and has raised two kids practically on her own, runs a warm and comfortable household, owns an award winning show dog, lives through the “death” of her daughter (twice) and husband, and the revelation of a secret world she didn’t know existed. And the show was good enough to give her a happy ending with a sweet guy who loves their dogs just as much as Sandra does, rather than keep her sidelined as a heartbroken divorcee put on hold for Noah forever.

And there’s so much more:

Daphne, not just her disability

Emma, not just the grieving deaf woman in need of saving

Heidi, not just the cheated-on politician’s wife

Maya, not just a naive victim who falls for Sylar’s tricks

Plus Molly, Charlie, Simone, Lauren, Gretchen, Eden, Lydia, Kimiko and all the others who were never treated as “just the women” to the male superheroes’ stories, but as their own, often subversive, characters who each drove the plot forward at one point or another.

This show deserves all the love, and made all this seem effortless even back in 2006.

#primatech #nbcheroes #feminism #appreciation #claire bennet #elle bishop #niki sanders #jessica sanders #tracy strauss #angela petrelli #sandra bennet #and more #all the women of heroes #gifs aren't mine #writer thoughts

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ladyproserpinas · 4 years

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2, 11, 17!

shows up two weeks late with wine.

2) talk about three of the most important ships throughout your life

river/doctor (doctor who): it’s literally the time traveler’s wife but in space … and the wife is also a time traveler. like literally the episode they first meet she dies, but she comes back because time travel. and they kind of keep circling each other and keep meeting out of order, it’s literally a fourth-wall break joke that you need a flow chart to keep up with how they know each other. it’s so angsty because on one side literally the day he meets her she dies, which y’know super makes you want to have a relationship with someone, and on the other side she knows she’ll get to a day where he won’t recognize her in some way. and god the flirting, i miss the flirting, they had some of the best flirting any of my ships have ever had. they were so unnecessarily affectionate and flirty with each other even in the early days on both of their ends. and now it’s supposedly officially over and has been since christmas 2015 and i’m so mad because there just wasn’t enough of them and sad because i’m probably never gonna have river back on my screen again and she is quite literally probably my favorite character of all time. literally my love for her/them is so bad that i saw .02 seconds of matt smith in the morbius trailer and i just went feral and spent $90 on a whole bunch of doctor who

hades/persephone: so like… beauty and the beast is my favorite favorite fairy tale and like if a relationship ends up in any way under this trope you bet your ass i attach myself to it and don’t let go. and hades/persephone do so much mainly because of the negative connotations of hades being lord of the dead, which we all know is wrong because he’s more the god of wealth and plenty than of the dead but y’know. but it does have so many of the same beats as beauty and the beast. a young and beautiful goddess goes to live with the scary lord of the dead, and she’s held prisoner as most retellings say, and then she eats three-six pomegranate seeds (again depending on the retelling), a tree sacred to the goddess of marriage and becomes bound to hades, and she stays. the fact that it’s widely accepted that hades was a faithful husband when both of his brothers are the first fuckboys of the world is also amazing. persephone additionally being considered equal to hades in her role as queen of the underworld, whereas hera and amphitrite are pushed aside in their roles as queens. there’s also the fact that their story is one of life and death, persephone leaves and the world blooms while the underworld grows cold, persephone comes home and the earth dies while she’s in her home.

philinda: so like i actually don’t have many marvel otps in the mcu at all. but when i watched agents of shield what drew me in was their dynamic. they were mom and dad of the team and watching them be in love but not admit it for like five seasons was so great. and i will probably never ever forgive the writers for taking it away like right after it happened. like what was even the point? i don’t know, but thanks for the bone marvel. it lasted literally an ep.

i literally just realized that all of the ships i talked about are out of sync in one way or another and i’m like …. yeah my type are middle aged couples who have communication issues but would literally die for the other.

11) talk about your favorite first kiss

i have literally just now forgotten all of my otps first kiss…. technically river/doctor have two first kisses ….. and philinda’s actually was like really good….. ummm harry/ginny’s actual first kiss in the book is Iconic tbh. ummmmmmmmmmmmm

y’know let’s talk about hanleia’s actually. because han and leia’s first kiss is still *chefs kiss*

i loved it so much when i was a kid (and now i’ve realized that hanleia has been my otp longer than i’ve even known what shipping was and i’ve loved them since i was like 3-4 lmao so that’s actually my first otp whoooops) but now that i’m older and i understand the tension and frustration between them it is just so much better. because leia and han play with each other. no leia’s not concerned or angry that han is leaving at all even though she’s the one who chases after him when he’s just about to leave. no han doesn’t get all sappy eyed whenever leia enters the room… except he does.

so when they finally have that moment in the falcon where he’s not trying to impress her (he still acts like his wannabe smooth self tho) and she’s not trying to be in control. it is just. so. nice. like honestly i don’t think anything will ever and then jj had to try to cheapen it by making their son a fuckhead and no i will never not be mad about that THEY HAD TWO GOOD CHILDREN IN THE BOOKS DAMMIT

17) talk about a pairing you’ve stopped shipping romantically

this one was really hard because i’m normally like someone who doesn’t let go of ships????

and i literally just can’t think of one??? at all??? i guess like i’m gonna go with olic*ty because yeah i liked them like at times but the fandom really turned me off to them with how they treated …. basically every other female character who even breathed in oliver’s direction. acually olic*ty isn’t a good example because i always had my issues with them. but i did ship felicity with barry allen and they were cute af but i’ve moved on from that. so yeah felicity/barry.

#1975kira #asks #ask requests #i think it's been almost two weeks since you sent this dkjfndskjdsvd #holy shit i wrote you brief incoherent essays #this is why i can't be trusted to answer questions #how did my hades/persephone paragraph end up longer than river/doctor when river is literally my favorite character of all time

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clairen45 · 5 years

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About that Dark Visions comic...

I think it’s fair to say that when Marvel’s Dark Visions miniseries about Vader as seen from a different perspective was announced, everybody was excited. We have been hammered on the head since ROTS that “there are heroes on both sides” , and with the expectations concerning the end of the saga as a massive redemption and hope plot, you were bound to be curious about what they would come up with. TBH, I was not expecting to see a softer side to Vader. It would be wrong to expect anything like that, and it would somehow diminish from what happens to him in the OT. He is supposed to be more machine than man. So, no, I definitely did not expect him, or wished him to be the kind of guy operating as the Death Star Secret Santa, knitting socks for the poor and needy, or rescuing people’s pets. It was not my understanding that he was much loved by his Imperial “colleagues” either. When we first see him in ANH; he is derided and dismissed both by a colleague (sorry, forgot the name but you all know whose faithless person I am thinking of) and Leia. Respected for sure, because of the fear he instills in people. So if awe is obviously the right word to use, in the most etymological sense of the term, that is to say “ a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder”, how many people found Vader awesome? Besides the audience. There had to be. And as a concept, it was pretty cool.

That being said, if you think of the title for the series, there were already many ways of interpreting it. Dark Visions... Visions of the power of the Dark Side? The way some people saw Vader? The way Vader thought people saw him? Did the stories happen for real or are they just what the title imply they are: visions. Images. Fantasies. Daydreams or nightmares? Possibly just the imagination of some deranged mind. There is something there that implies that we are not dealing with something too objective. But rather something unhinged and disturbing.

Now, I intend to keep this in mind about the issue that has been raising so much concern: “Tall, Dark, and Handsome”. I think malaise is really the word we should settle for. This issue is problematic in many ways.

For those who haven’t read it or just heard about it through social media and people complaining about it (possibly people on the other side of the spectrum fanning about it), this is how you can sum it up: this is the first person narrative of an unnamed nurse, working on the Death Star for Vader’s personal doctor. The nurse has developed an obsessive infatuation for Vader that has her snoop around him and collect bits and pieces about him (mostly gorish remains of his time at the medical bay) that she hides in her room. She keeps on daydreaming about him and the connection she thinks they have, until one day she musters up her courage and goes to talk to him in his private quarters in order to let him know of her love for him. He cuts her off in all the meanings of the word, both interrupting her speech of eternal devotion and undying love, and piercing her through with his saber. Last moment we see her is lying dead on the floor while he moves away and asking for the sanitation to rid him of the “garbage”.

Ok, that’s a tall order. Here are points that I find entirely problematic.

1.The Question of Agency:

The authors decided to give a voice, a narrative agency to a character that is presented as inconsequential to the story. She is an anonymous nurse, a dot, in the bigger picture of the Empire. Much, let’s say, like our current ST heroes: Rey, Finn, and Rose, who started as “nobody”, even more so in the case of Finn and Rey who have literally been deprived of their identities. You could think it’s cool to thus give a voice to this nurse. Even more so when you consider that throughout the comic, she is presented as downtrodden, poor, pushed over, abused physically and verbally, dismissed, and despised. Her employer disrespects her constantly, calling her “fool”, “idiot”, or “stupid”. He shoves her around, and also diminishes her job, calling it “not a real job” or insinuating that she does not do her job correctly. Cases in point:

And what do we get in this story? A female nobody who starts asserting herself. Wow.

She tells her own story. First person narrative. She becomes an agent.

Look at the evolution of her daydream fantasies. She starts from damsel in distress who needs a man to protect her from her daily abuser

From nurse whose job means something, to a solid professional, and equal partner to her fantasy Lord:

And finally a powerful woman in her own rights, even overshadowing her partner, and who is able to defend herself.

Which then matures into her mustering up the courage to speak for herself, and tell her feelings to the (unwilling) object of her affection.

Except that.... well...she is just presented as a massive psycho. And, ok, it’s fair, we all know that there are female stalkers, and that her obsession for Vader is totally crazy because she doesn’t know anything about him, and she actually fell for someone who was treating her as poorly as the others. But there is the malaise there... The mix of female empowerment and batshit craziness. That’s what put a lot of people ill-at-ease. I wouldn’t even call that subversion, because, dudes, what are we subverting there exactly. It’s not like women are not daily abused and treated poorly at work and in their relationships on a daily basis... And are we supposed to take that as a cautionary tale about fangirl craziness? Because, there again, why did they need to have that girl get such a shitty treatment all through the comic. It is like the comic says that she deserved it. In the end it’s not just Vader calling her trash. It’s also the doctor calling her trash for most of the comic, and even have her literally waddle in a trash compactor. Cause this was supposed to be subtle?

Like, fine, if it were only Vader calling her garbage because the man is just dead inside, which, fairly, is represented in the comic. But it’s just not Vader, it is the way the character is presented through the eyes of the doctor AND even through the eyes of a cartoonist who keeps on representing her with the stupidest darned faces.

And there is no other viewpoint. Family, friends, other nurses or colleagues who could give us another idea about her. Or explain why she is like that. Nope. Basically, this woman is given a voice just so she can be cut off mid-sentence and made... fun of... I guess? Was that the author’s goal? Is it what we are supposed to feel? About this pathetic character and her pathetic life, dreams, goals, feelings, and eventual demise?

The “Subversion” of Female Romantic Tropes

Like ... LOL... How is that “subverted” anyways? But, ok, let’s go through them. It has all the classic elements of female literature.

The Cinderella story: nobody falls for high lord and expects to be swooped off her feet. Complete with ball scene, because, yes, why not? I give them a point, though, for the cool reflection on the ground which has her in her regular scrubs... BTW, Beauty and the Beast in the mix as well.

the nurse complex! Otherwise known as the Florence Nightingale effect. You know, woman is going to take care of the guy... They even made her a real nurse! Again, so subtle. Couldn’t make her any other profession and still be victim of this complex.

the reference to so-called “trashy” female lit, think bodice ripping, Harlequin, and their infamous covers. Even the title of the comic: “Tall, Dark, and Handsome”

The effing Phantom of the Opera!

and of course all the female discourse about love, because, yep, trashy: “kindred spirits” etc...

And again, how are we supposed to interpret it? Well, hang on, this woman, remember, is a bat-shit crazy deluded psycho, who has delusions about life and love. Oh, and the doctor says she is trash. And he throws all her stupid gory, disgusting trickets in the trash. Oh and also Vader says she is garbage. Well. Ok. So, I guess all of that which mattered to her, all her ideas, all that she loved, was just that. Trash. Garbage. Well, take that, you female reader!

But wait, it gets even better...

Star Wars is just trash!

Yep, because on closer look, most of the fantasies this woman has are very Star-Warsy. I am floored that they are actually trashing these:

Anakin and Padmé’s Naboo scenery, green, lush, terrace, nightgowns...

The scene when Anakin learns about Padmé’s death:

and of course, the one that you were not expecting... Reylo... “You are not alone”

Again, why is this problematic? In itself, it is fine and fair to be making fun of trashy female literature and campy romance novels, it is also fine to make fun of crazy stalkers, and it is also fine to be making fun of Star Wars. So why does it feel so icky in this comic somehow?

You can’t help but feel disgusted when you consider how poorly this woman is represented. There is not one aspect of her life that is not ridiculed. And again, this is about a woman who has NOTHING. They could have the girl fall in love with Vader and being killed by him because he is a cold-hearted machine. He killed his wife, the love of his life, so yea, of course he will feel not a pang of remorse or hesitation at killing this nobody who thinks she is in love with him. But they did not need to make fun of the very little she had in her life: her dreams. Her effing dreams. Plus the crazy stalker psycho. And the crazy face. And the fact that again we are talking about a woman, who had NOTHING. No family, no connection, no friends, no respect at work, not many possessions except her sad little Vader treasure chest.

And again, context. Here we are, reading a Star Wars comic where a lot of fanboys have been using the EXACT same terms to ridicule women in the fandom. Especially in the Reylo context. Trash. Garbage. Crazy bitches. Ridiculing theories about ... well, well, ain’t it a sweet surprise... Phantom of the Opera, or Beauty and the Beast parallels with Reylo. I’ll be damned. It feels crazy awkward, if you ask me. I mean, again, it’s all fair, but you don’t do that when you are in the midst of a toxic fandom war.

So why do I give zero F... about it in the end?

If some antis in the fandom saw that as validation, well, let them have their moment of happiness. It won’t last. We can give them that.

One, I don’t think for one second that it means anything about what will happen in the ST as far as Reylo is concerned. Again, they are even making fun of Anidala in the comic, and dude, that thing happened. As my good friends from @lordsofthesithpodcast would tell you after their glorious SWCC panel : Romance, these ships belong in Star Wars.

Two, as I highlighted in the introduction, this belongs in the Dark Visions series. It is meant, in my own opinion, to be disturbing and unhinged. Not sugar coated. So maybe the whole point was shock value. Mission accomplished. It was poor taste again given the context and the awful treatment THEY (and not just Vader) give their female character, but yea, dark visions. Not Star Wars Adventures. You have to look at the target audience and everything.

Three, if it were not for the in-your-face references to female tropes, I actually took most of it as a critique of fandom in general. The problem is not that she is a fangirl. There are some crazy obsessive fangirls, mind you. The problem is that they are making fun of all things female on top of that. But, remove the romantic aspects. Couldn’t that apply to fanboys as well? I could totally picture a cadet, or some other young imperial, developing the same crazed obsession over Vader. And it was just as toxic. And, tbh, it could very well be. Collecting trinkets is not just a girl thing, and after seeing with my own eyes the tons of merch purchased by fanboys at the recent SWCC convention, or the obsessive way some guy could talk to you about Vader and the minute trivial details in his life, or that they are the only ones understanding the guy, well yea... it works...

I’ll even go a step further. I wondered for a sec if the whole thing was not even a critical meta about the franchise as a whole. Let me explain. Some fanboys have complained about the femininization of the franchise, that is “polluting” the shades of Pemberley, I mean Star Wars. Claiming that what is happening right now is utter garbage. Also also, I have another possible reading which has the nurse representing the current state of the fandom and how crazy obsessed they can be over a franchise that some currently view as tired and dead inside (especially since it has fallen into the fold of Disney). Representing the unhealthy relationship between the two. And guess what, it doesn’t end well for the fandom. Who will never get what they want.

I will finally quote this from Chuck Wendig who was fired from the project and came up with that particular comment on Twitter, and which actually seems to go with how I tried to read it myself:

Apropos of absolutely nothing, my issue three of SHADOW OF VADER was about a toxic fanboy (a morgue attendant on the Death Star) who became obsessed with Vader. (And it didn’t end well for him. Er, obviously.) I thought it was good and I’m sorry you won’t see it! Onward we go.

I think they kept some of the original idea from Wendig, but it took a turn for the worse. It would be great if the authors cared to explain about their intent for this piece if any. I am not saying they should. I actually totally respect and support full freedom of speech and authorial choices. It is our choice, then, as a reader to read or not the material we don’t care about. I am just curious to know their opinion I guess, and I was not able to find any comment online. If anyone has a reference, I am interested...

In any event, I think everyone should read the comic for themselves if they are curious about it. Better to make your own opinion about it.

#reylo fandom #star wars comics #dark visions #darth vader dark visions #tall dark and handsome

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gascon-en-exil · 5 years

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Lords and their Knights: When FE Chivalry Goes Gay

@mwritesink prompted me to write about my favorite tropes in FE and how they evolved over the course of the series. I already crossed a few others off in an earlier post, but this one is a particular favorite of mine where M/M romance in this series is concerned and one I felt had enough examples to constitute a piece of its own. Let it not be said that this is merely the gay variation on the well-worn heterosexual romance trope of a lady and her knight (ex. Eirika/Seth), because negotiating the fundamental power imbalance in this type of relationship takes on different dimensions when both parties are male. I draw a closer comparison to courtly love, which in the traditional sense is also socially transgressive (being adulterous) and not consummated via marriage or other public means...which in FE terms means an S support and possibly a eugenics baby. A vassal in love with his lord rather than his lord’s wife is not only cutting the female intermediary out of what can already be a very homoromatic scenario, but it’s directly tangling together a kind of martial romantic love and ideas about what knighthood/vassalage even is or ought to be - two topics FE loves to explore. I’ve therefore compiled a few of the most notable examples of this trope across the series to talk about in more detail, because if one is willing to be liberal with subtext there’s surprisingly quite a few to pick from.

(And yeah, this is also in part because I like hot rich men who take orders, and this series already has plenty of gay or otherwise ambiguously non-straight mages, thieves, archers, and their ilk without my help.)

The Sad Gay Knight: Quan/Finn

This one I’ve talked about before in a fair amount of depth, from my hopes for how a Genealogy remake will treat Finn to speculation on just what Quan got out of this relationship besides a devoted retainer and (we may assume) a nice piece of ass. The summary here is that Finn’s love for Quan supersedes anything he’s shown to feel for any of the various women he can hook up with and quite frankly astonishes in its ramifications for the future of Leonster and Thracia as a whole. It’s poignant, adulterous (but Ethlyn’s probably ok with it?), and messy as all hell once you factor in whatever’s up with Glade and whatever Lachesis wasn’t feeling about the whole situation. It is also, naturally, very sad; Finn loses his lord when he’s only around eighteen, and with their kingdom collapsing around him and the entire continent consumed by war he dedicates the next twenty years of his life to raising Quan’s son to be the king Quan himself had wanted to be. And for all his labor he apparently derives no lasting satisfaction, spending his epilogue wandering around the Yied desert and at last returning only to (possibly) pen the history he’s helped to make.

Finn is the embodiment of knighthood loyal unto and beyond death, and that paired with all the romantic and erotic subtext surrounding the two of them - Finn as Quan’s treasured favorite, his catatonia after Yied, the obsessive polishing of the brave lance that Quan gave to him, his inability to satisfy women in some vague way - makes them the defining example of this trope in Fire Emblem. I look forward to seeing how remakes will handle them; Finn’s presentation in Heroes is definitely cause for hope there. As for the issue of yet another story in media of gay men beset by tragedy and death, I did draw up a long headcanon on the technically crack pairing of Diarmuid/Tristan that specifically plays into the lord and knight trope while also allowing Finn a chance to pass his experiences on to a later, happier generation. IS is free to take notes, just saying.

Pretty Blond Twinks and the Men Who Love Them: Perceval/Elffin and their lasting influence

Moving on from Jugdral, I’ve got to say that I’ve really been sleeping on the original gay Elibean duo. Before Raven and Lucius (but chronologically after, because these games are out of order) there was another feminine young man with long blond hair beloved of a severe-looking warrior. Binding Blade gives us the bard Elffin, who in another life was Etruria’s Prince Mildain and Perceval’s liege. The Knight General takes Mildain’s alleged accidental death about as well as Finn takes the death of his lord and lady; he turns grim and humorless, and without a dying dream to guide him he follows the command of the corrupt revolutionary faction of Etruria with little protest. It takes learning that Mildain is alive and in Roy’s army for Perceval to drop the halfhearted Camus routine and switch sides, and the strength of his fealty not to his nation or even to his king but to the prince he’d thought dead is absolutely touching in the moment not to mention incredibly useful since the guy is one of FE6′s best units.

Binding Blade doesn’t give anyone but Roy and his harem paired endings, but there’s still a fair bit to be gleaned from their support lines, both what is in them and what isn’t. Perceval and Elffin each have supports with women, but nothing remotely romantic - Perceval’s support with Larum is particularly amusing since he clarifies that her, ahem, dancing does nothing for him. Also worth noting is that neither of them can support with Clarine, even though one would think they’d make fine romantic choices for her given their statuses and physical resemblances to her beloved brother. Their own support line is quietly intimate. Elffin has changed since his near-death experience, and Perceval is still struggling to accept that their relationship can’t be as it was, that in fact for the time being they can’t now be a knight and his prince. Perceval also frets over Elffin’s refusal to see his father the king, and he later extracts a promise from Elffin to come home to Etruria after he’s done traveling the world as a bard, in one of the series’s several instances of writing what sounds like a marriage proposal in ambiguous terms. Per Elffin’s ending, he’s only gone for a few months after the war, so their promised reunion isn’t long delayed. I’m interested to see what a remake would add to their relationship, because as it stands Perceval/Elffin has an established romance arc that deserves a paired ending or at the very least more suggestive epilogues.

Further compounding their underrated signficance, it’s not too difficult to trace a line from Perceval/Elffin to a number of other M/M pairings in the two later GBA games and in Tellius that present some variation on this theme:

As mentioned above, Raven/Lucius is physically similar and performs a nearly identical gameplay function, with the pretty blond waif again responsible for recruiting his surly but protective boyfriend from the ranks of the enemy.

Gerik/Joshua meanwhile borrows the character of the end of their support line and turns it into a genuine paired ending, with a prince incognito recruiting a swordsman to come work for him. They being who they are however, it’s all handled a bit rougher, with Gerik being impressed by Joshua’s “swagger.” Take that as you will.

Ike/Soren may be the defining seme/uke dynamic in Tellius’s overflowing fount of queer subtext, but Tibarn/Reyson smashes that trope together with this one and FE’s power couple unit archetype plus a dash of whatever the avian equivalent of furries is for wholly unique results. Although both of them are technically royalty, only Reyson is a prince by heredity whereas Tibarn presumably became king of Phoenicis by beating the crap out of any rival contenders as most laguz prefer to do. One can therefore read shades of a courtly relationship in Tibarn’s decision to zealously take up the cause of justice for the Serenes massacre in Reyson’s place. Combine this with Reyson��s characteristic edge that even Tibarn is forced to rein in at times and their relationship comes off as surprisingly more egalitarian than the sum of its parts. Oh yeah, and blond waif dancer + premade OP unit with ludicrous physical stats and movement again.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the conflict of the Tellius games Zelgius -> Sephiran explores what would happen if a gay Camus archetype chose instead to dedicate himself to an antagonistic lord. Sure, you can still recruit Sephiran via a convoluted and unintuitive process, but Zelgius is doomed no matter what.

They Can Say It, But They Can’t Do It: Awakening and Fates

Ugh. If I must....

I’ve made no secret of my ambivalence toward FE13 dragging the series into open acknowledgement that same-sex attraction is a thing that exists, handled as it was with a lot of explicit homoerotic denial and an assortment of cheap gay panic jokes and...whatever the hell Victor and Vincent are supposed to be. Chrom/Frederick, hot though it may potentially be in fanon, is one of those jokes, making a parody out of a knight enamored of his lord and leaving it to mean absolutely nothing since Awakening’s relationship endgame is invariably S supports for time traveling eugenics babies. FE has taken cracks at the overly dedicated knight before - see just about everything involving Kieran from Tellius, up to and including his overzealous devotion to his superior officer - but Awakening plumbs the depths of Frederick expecting Chrom’s nude image to raise the army’s morale. Just..what do you even say to that, apart from the awkward sputtering that comprises most of their support line?

FE14, for all its stumbling steps toward something less completely offensive, fares little better in this particular regard. Leo/Niles is a deeply troubled albeit thought-provoking callback to the subtextual lord/knight relationship, one where it’s hard to imagine them finding a healthy way to navigate the power differential. Then there’s Ryoma/Saizo. It’s nothing special in localization, but the never-localized festival DLC involves Saizo’s ardent desire to warm Ryoma’s clothing in his cleavage. That sounds like absolutely normal behavior for a servant and not a rehash of Frederick’s shenanigans, uh huh. Fates may indeed be said to be slightly better about playing palpable homoerotic tension for drama rather than comedy...but only slightly.

Paving the Way for an OT3: The Deliverance

This is, incidentally, yet another reason to appreciate Echoes for doing so much to redeem the 3DS games in the realm of (male) queer content. Yes, there’s a large and unaddressed divide between the openly gay and very modern Leon and the heavily subtextual faux-historical queerness of the Deliverance, but taken independently the two presentations work for what they’re each separately aiming to be. Among Clive’s gay entourage are not one but two men who’d dearly love to be the knight to his lord, and Forsyth’s strong desire to put Clive on a pedestal evokes the earlier spoofs of this kind of relationship precisely because Forsyth is that kind of vassal, the kind that would read Ribald Tales of the Faith War and cry like a heavily erect virgin bottom getting his first taste of dick at the brief interludes of tender manly love between Quan and Finn. He’s played for comedy just as much as Kieran or Frederick are, and yet Echoes comes across as less down on the concept as a whole for several reasons, being that

1) Python’s snark over Forsyth’s attraction to both Clive and Lukas is genuinely funny, much more so than when it’s the object of these affections quietly groaning his way through them,

2) Lukas is also there, and his desire to be Clive’s beloved knight is not played for comedy at all but is allowed to be unrealistic and unsatisfying because Clive will never get it,

3) everyone wants to screw Clive for some reason, not just his subordinates but also his sister and the estranged BFF who dies in his arms...and the guy is shown to be unworthy of all of them, and

4) all the characters involved are allowed other avenues for romantic attraction outside of a lord who’s just not that into them. Forsyth has Python, Lukas has both of them as friends and possibly more later, Clair has Gray (...at least he’s not her brother?), and Fernand has a bad rebound that goes to hell in the manner of Zelgius and Sephiran but at least ends with him getting to reconcile with his former friend before he dies.

The setup for the Deliverance’s overarching queerness is a bit strange as it rests on all these characters somehow finding Clive attractive, but nonetheless it makes for an unexpected and refreshing critique of the lord and knight trope, given a situation where the lord just isn’t that into it and in fact doesn’t seem to realize that he can be into it. It’s a good reminder that this isn’t a particularly good dynamic for a stable and lasting relationship, and that as hot as it can be it takes more than impassioned one-way devotion to make it work in the long term.

The good news if you’re into this kind of relationship like I am is that it’s a trope with some life in it yet. Echoes came at it strong, and prerelease information on Three Houses suggests a few possibilities for this dynamic in that game. I’m especially keeping my eye on Dimitri and Dedue, whose relationship appears to contain echoes of the original duo of Quan and Finn. I highly doubt there will be anything on the level of S supports acknowledging this type of attraction, but I’ll settle for some suggestive A supports.

#Fire Emblem

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asexualbookbird · 5 years

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THE PERFECT ASSASSIN BY KA DOORE ★★★★☆

Divine justice is written in blood. Or so Amastan has been taught. As a new assassin in the Basbowen family, he’s already having second thoughts about taking a life. A scarcity of contracts ends up being just what he needs. Until, unexpectedly, Amastan finds the body of a very important drum chief. Until, impossibly, Basbowen’s finest start showing up dead, with their murderous jaan running wild in the dusty streets of Ghadid. Until, inevitably, Amastan is ordered to solve these murders, before the family gets blamed. Every life has its price, but when the tables are turned, Amastan must find this perfect assassin or be their next target.

Remember a few months back when I reread The Way of Shadows and was severely disappointed with how female characters were treated? Remember when people yelled at me because “that’s just how it is!” and I grumbled because I couldn’t think of many examples of assassin fantasy that treated everyone well? Here it is, friends! The Example I needed! I wouldn’t say this had everything I’m looking for in an assassin fantasy novel, but it came dang near close. Plus it was such a fun read, I don’t care too much about its shortcomings. With a wonderful cast of characters and a quick paced plot, this was just the book I needed and a great way to kick off the month.

GOODREADS

Amastan is different than most assassins, he’s not motivated by revenge, or poverty, he’s not forced into this lifestyle and can leave whenever he wants. He goes through the process because he was chosen to, and he wants to keep up tradition, but it’s not his first choice! He’s reluctant, and he would rather not take a life. He’s admirable, compared to other assassin’s I’ve read. Sure, reading about a bloodthirsty assassin who enjoys the kill is fun, but like anything else, it gets boring. And I didn’t realise how boring until I read about Amastan. When he does have to kill someone, he’s reasonable about it! He’s not quite conflicted, but he recognises the place he has in this world, the place his work has in this world. He still doesn’t enjoy killing, but he’s at peace with what he needs to do. I respect him as a character, and love how he’s written. Amastan was the main character, and the one who was most well rounded. Menna was a close second, and I would have LOVED to see more of her and see a book from her perspective. She’s so interesting to me! She has an opposite character development to Amastan and I’m here for it. She started out wanting nothing more than to be an assassin, and saw her birthright work as secondary, but as she worked more with it, she realised she preferred magic to assassination. I would have loved to see how she progressed to that in more detail, would have loved to see this book from her point of view. Not to say this didn’t work from Amastan’s point of view, it very much did, but knowing what Menna was going through when she wasn’t with Amastan would be an amazing extra to have. The story itself isn’t so much of an assassin story. It’s more of a mystery plot that features assassins. It follows a lot more mystery tropes than assassin tropes and that worked against it as much as it did for it. I wasn’t surprised at the twists, but I wasn’t disappointed for figuring it out either! It was fun to watch it unfold and piece everything together, and it felt more like I was picking up clues rather than relying on what tropes I knew. I do wish there was more assassinating going on in a book called The Perfect Assassin, especially since most deaths happened off scene. It was more Amastan and Menna stumbling on bodies and having to figure out the killer, rather than assassination plots. This wasn’t necessarily bad, I thoroughly enjoyed this book! But when you go in expecting one thing (assassins), and get another (a mystery novel), there is a feeling of disappointment. The magic and monsters in this book were probably my fave, reminds me of my own monsters in a scary I’m Going To Kill You Way, and I appreciate that! The worldbuilding could use a bit of work, I’m not sure how this city on stilts in the middle of the desert fits in to the rest of this world. They seem pretty isolated, and maybe they are! It felt muddy, in the grand scheme of things, and i hope future installments fleshes that out. The politics were pretty easy to follow, which was a relief after reading Amberlough, and I appreciate not only the casually queer characters, but that this world had NO homophobia or sexism. No one batted an eye at Amastan falling for a boy, I’m pretty sure Menna is also gay, there is an important leader in this world who is a woman with a wife and children, and no ones rude about it! No one is assaulted or raped for shock value (or at all for that matter!), people are beaten and die, but it’s not violence for the sake of violence. It can be done, and I appreciate it being done, and I want more. Unfortunately this has probably ruined all future assassin books for me, because I doubt they’ll be as pleasant as this. Overall, I definitely enjoyed this book! And I would recommend it! Especially if you like the idea of assassins, but are not a fan of all the gore and misogyny that comes with Classic Assassin Fantasy. I impatiently look forward to the other books in this series, especially since book two seems to focus on a small, sarcastic, assassin child.

#books #booklr #book review #ka doore #the chronicles of ghadid #the perfect assassin #my reviews #my review #bookbird babbles #ezra reads the perfect assassin

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peepeethepissking · 5 years

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FILM NOIR REC LIST

THE MUST SEE’S—DETECTIVE NOIR:

[‘44] Laura: Follows a cop investigating the murder of a well loved socialite as he questions the people closest to her—notably an esteemed writer that helped advanced her career, and her fiancé, a fellow socialite with a poor reputation. The lead is very endearing and the film pulls off one of the most natural twists I’ve ever seen in a whodunit. My only real complaint is that the romance felt a little rushed, but it’s a small price to pay for an otherwise delightful movie.

[‘44] Murder, My Sweet: It’s unsurprising that this is a good film, because it’s based on a book by Raymond Chandler, one of the founding fathers of the hard-boiled detective genre that paved the way for film noir. Humphrey Bogart notably plays the same character, Philip Marlowe, in the Big Sleep. This is one of few films that I think really successfully utilizes an in-media-res frame. It follows Marlowe through two intertwined jobs—a search for a thug’s old girl and the truth behind a jewelry fence. I was surprised with how well it handled the two simultaneous storylines without letting them become too confusing.

[‘46] The Big Sleep: As the above film, this is based on a Raymond Chandler book. This is the only time Bogart depicts Philip Marlowe, and he’s considered one of the best depictions of Marlowe to ever hit the silver screen. This one doesn’t handle it’s plot quite as delicately as Murder, My Sweet, and I honestly ended the film with…a lot of confusion. But even so, it’s a very fun watch, and it feels like a true noir classic. It starts off with Marlowe getting a job from a sickly old colonel to poke around a gambling debt his daughter has acquired, and it follows Marlowe poking his nose in all kinds of businesses he’s not welcome in. [this notably has been recommended by kevin vibert himself!]

[‘47] Out of the Past: I’m not sure what it is, but this is by far my favorite noir I’ve seen, to date. Poor Jeff Bailey gets an unwelcome reminder of his dark past as an amoral P.I. one day after he’s reestablished himself as a small town mechanic. Cornered by an old client that’s much too powerful, he takes on one last job while trying to protect his new life, and his new love. It’s half flashback half real time, but it handles that quite well. My biggest complaint is that the ending is pretty far from what I had wanted, but it’s all for the sake of art, I suppose.

THE MUST SEE’S—TRADITIONAL NOIR:

[‘45] Mildred Pierce: This film starts with a murder, and then within the frame of an interrogation tells the story of Mildred Pierce’s life after divorcing her first husband. This film doesn’t quite feel like a noir—it’s brightly lit, it features a female lead and no real “fatale” character, the murder isn’t really the focus of the film—but when you look at the real “message” of the film it lines up with the traditional noir pretty neatly. It’s about the disillusionment of capitalism as a fix-all, it’s about how heartbreaking unconditional love can be, it’s about how hard life will always be for some people. It’s a very frustrating film to watch because of how poorly Mildred Pierce is treated, but it’s a very cathartic film to watch because of how transparently realistic it is.

[‘46] The Blue Dahlia: This one’s a real classic, but I personally can’t decide if it was outstanding or forgettable—which I’ll grant, to have that strong of a discrepancy, it must’ve done something right. It’s a trope that we haven’t seen otherwise on this list, the unreliable memory of a freshly grounded war veteran. You get the facts immediately, with an opening scene that shows one of the gang is just a little troubled from his time overseas. It’s a whodunit that follows a mostly ensemble cast after the ‘lead’ runs out on his wife, then finds out she’s been murdered. What really makes this film worth watching is the end scene, which of course only works at all because of the groundwork laid in the first hour of the film. It keeps you on the edge of your seet with an unreliable narrator kind of confession and then whips you around and wraps everything up with what really happened in like, ten minutes. It’s absolutely dizzying and a real explosion of an end.

[‘50] In a Lonely Place: Another delightful Bogart movie, because, well…I like Bogey, what can I say. This film doesn’t really feel like a noir until you get about halfway through, and everything starts to build up and gain tension. It has a very satisfying ending for a film that almost feels like it isn’t about anything. I’d say it’s especially worth watching because of Miss Jeff Donnell’s absolutely wonderful performance as the-best-friend’s-wife. As far as the plot, it follows a screenwriter that happens to be the last person to have seen a murder victim alive, and is therefore a suspect in the muddy case. It does a great job of making you doubt every character, and the truth of the murder is successfully withheld until the very end.

THE B-SIDES:

[‘47] Crossfire: This one’s split between being a police procedural and a veteran noir, but I think it follows the vets around more than the cops in the end, so I’m putting it here instead of under “detective.” Fair warning—this film deals with antisemitism, and the central murder is revealed to have been a hate crime (don’t worry, though—the overall message of the film is that we shouldn’t judge our fellow man before we get to know him). We follow Sgt Keeley while the police question him and try to find his best friend, the prime suspect in a recent murder. Played by Robert Mitchum, notably the lead in Out of the Past, Keeley is a breath of fresh air—as all of Mitchum’s characters seem to be. He’s charmingly a sort of father figure to the other soldiers, and you find yourself rooting for his friends simply because their his friends. This film has probably the weirdest setup for an arrest I’ve ever seen, and I doubt it would hold up in court, but it’s a classic noir ending, nonetheless.

[‘47] Dark Passage: This movie is just incredibly fun to watch, because it’s such a product of it’s time. It has some of the goofiest filming decisions I’ve ever seen in an A-Lister! The beginning is shot in first person, through the eyes of the lead. It feels like playing a dating sim, almost. It’s made very sincerely, though, which really carries it through the humor, and makes it very fun and strangely light hearted. It follows a man wrongly convicted of murder as he escapes prison and tries to find out who framed him, with the help of a local fanatic that followed his trial and believes he’s innocent. Bogart is delightful to see in such a strange role, and Lauren Bacall has an incredible performance that would’ve just felt insincere from anyone else.

[‘49] D.O.A.: This movie follows a guy as he tries to find the man that fatally poisoned him. It’s an interesting twist on the whodunit where the “murder victim” himself is the one trying to find out whodunit. It uses a flashback frame in order to start immediately with that “who’s been murdered?” – “Me!” twist, but beyond that shock value, the frame is really unnecessary. This one’s would’ve been much more fun to watch if the main character wasn’t such a dick to women. The answer to “who did it and why” was also…a lot more confusing than it had to be, which left the end feeling a bit muddled. As a side note—here DOA stands for “dead on arrival.”

[‘53] The Big Heat: Follows a cop as he investigates a suicide that should’ve been an open-and-closed case. The closer he gets to the truth, the more trouble he gets into—and before long, it seems he’s gotten himself wrapped up in a world of crime that infiltrates even the police station, and the men in charge will do anything to keep his nose out of it. This one’s really classic, and it conforms so well to the genre that it almost feels forgettable—but it’s the fact that it is so true to the genre that makes it worth watching.

NOTABLE ABSENCES:

[‘44] Double Indemnity: I watched this movie in three separate parts because I fell asleep each time I tried to finish it. It’s a kill-the-husband-so-we-can-be-together type of movie, and it’s also notably an insurance adjuster film instead of a detective film. This one’s a real classic that almost everyone says is a must see, but personally I thought all the tension was killed by the unnecessary flashback frame. If nothing else, this one is worth watching because it’s absolutely dedicated to the well known tropes of the noir, but for me that just wasn’t enough.

[‘46] Gilda: Gilda was almost a good movie. Glenn Ford did an incredible job acting against his typecast—this time portraying a charming crook that got his job running an illegal casino by counting the right man’s cards. The movie was just too unorganized, though. It’s a sort of 3 act show that just goes further downhill the longer it goes on. There’s a couple of song-and-dance scenes that feel all but thrown in simply because Rita Hayworth does indeed know how to sing and dance, and the end kind of blows up in its own face without a proper set-up. It’s cinematically a beautiful movie, but I was disappointed by how messy the plot ended up being for something with so much hype.

[‘58] Touch of Evil: Allegedly the last classic noir made in the true film noir era. I watched about a third of this film before calling it quits, which I will admit, is rare for me—I like to suffer through to the end just incase there’s that one scene that makes a movie worth it (see the Blue Dahlia, for example.) This film is about “marijuana, murder, and police corruption,” and it takes place in a California-Mexico border town—which is a big part of what made me quit out. It felt tired and cliché in way that was just a little too close to racist, and I found myself without a real reason to root for the main characters.

as I continue watching noirs, I will update this here to include new recommendations, my watch list, and an “honorable mentions” section

#the penumbra podcast #im sorry this is SO LONG but it really doesnt suit a read-more #feel free to drop in my inbox or dm with questions or conversation!

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