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antiloreolympus · 3 years

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8 Anti LO Asks

1. as a mythology buff, i honestly think it was really weird of rachel smythe to take Hecate, a goddess who helped Demeter search for Persephone after she vanished and heard her screams and shared in Persephone and Demeter's joy after reuniting... and then just make her into Hades's like... total bro who plays aggressive matchmaker to h/p to the point of trying to break up Hades's current relationship. but honsestly i refuse to believe rachel smythe did literally any research before making this comic judging by how she depicts the mythology she's taking inspiration from so honestly im not suprised

2. I don’t know if anyone on here has discussed this, but LO very much plays into the idea of “good victim vs bad victim”.

A “good victim” has suffered many things, but despite it they still remain cheerful and happy and pleasant, they do not put others out or lash out at them even if they are triggered, they do not become petty or angry or hold onto negative emotions. They, in essence, “get over it”. Thus, the narrative rewards them: they get many friends, a love internet they’re happy with, and a happy ending. This is what Persephone is. She’s the “good victim”. Despite her many hardships, we know she will not suffer in the end. She will get everything she wants and more.

Then there is Minthe, the “bad victim”. They too have gone through many hardships, but they’ve become cold, angry at the world, they lash out and have trouble opening up and connecting to others, they even hurt others, themselves victims to the toxic pain they can’t get rid it. They do not and have not “gotten over it”. Thus, the narrative punishes them, even when they try to better themselves. It’s never good enough. These characters often are lonely, the cast are large do not like them if not outright hate them, and they more often than not end up dead. This is what Minthe is. She is not a pleasant person, she’s a victim of a manipulative older man and a cruel, unjust society and system, and we know how her story ends. It’s in pain, her maiming/possible death framed as a joke and not even a genuine hint of sympathy towards her fate. She was a “bad victim”, she “deserved” what she got.

Now, you only often see this in fandom, since the actual works that deal with victims of trauma and how they react will often try to give more nuance to every shade of victim they may have on cast, but it’s very disturbing to me that Rachel seems to eagerly play into this idea, like she gets joy out of punishing a victim she created and watching them suffer even more at her hands. It’d be one thing if she kept Minthe a shallow, one dimensional character who was just evil for the sake of it, fine, but her showing us her actual complex nature and the very real struggles, trauma, and manipulation she went through, especially at the hands of our supposed “heroes” of the story, just to have her demise framed as a win for Persephone and a joke for the audience to laugh at? That’s highly disturbing to me. It’s one thing for fans to act that way, but the writer themselves? It’s very dark, to say the least.

3. "I'm invested in working with fairy tales and folklore for my next project" oh no no no oh god please no. Fairy tales have been through enough hot takes and modern "betterments", they really don't need Rachel "Apollo is bad, actually" Smythe to add to it

4. Quick question

Greek Mythology is mostly incest.

So what if someone who is actually good at writing and storytelling and consistent artwork

Kept it in

For example Zeus and Hera arguing like the married couple they are

And Hera uses older sibling card

With Zeus dumbfounded face

I don't know why but I want it but would it be weird since it's incest

Most fanfics always keep it out. Just keep it in if you want it to be closer than the actual methods you know

Hera is youngest daughter of Cronus and Rhea and older than her brother Zeus, who was also her husband.

I want to do it but like I have no clue how to start a webtoon so you know💀

5. Oh god, Hades not needing therapy because Persephone's "love" is enough? To quote my lord and savior Kennie JD: "not the p*$$¥ being therapy!"

6. uuuuuh sexual trauma warning.?

So I was writing a comment on the "Re: bpd" ask and i had a realization about persephone

She reminds me of how I was about the idea of sex

I'm demisexual and have sexual trauma and the idea of sex excited me but I wasn't able to like, do it. Me and my partner would mess around but because Mctrauma i couldn't do it cuz I hadn't exactly worked through my trauma and i wanted to get through that because i was finally experiencing sexual attraction.

Kinda reminds me of Persephone. The problem is at that point it had been 6-7 years since my trauma occurred and persephone's happened like last month.

Considering how everyone talks about persephone being a self insert i think Rachel has some things to work through

Also made the realization literally as im typing that Rachel's attitude towards asexuality could be because she's demi and doesn't fully understand what that is or means

becuase if you're ignorant enough you can 100% end up describing demisexuality as "being asexual and then like, slowly turning gay."

this ask weirdly personal so fuck it this is gonna be anonymous feel free to delete if it makes u uncomfy

7. That’s also a part about Hubris Rachel clearly doesn’t get: it was always committed by rich, often people in high authority, NEVER lowly farmers or the poorest of ancient society. They always knew better. Niobe was a queen! Minos was a king! Arachne was the rich, spoiled daughter of a really successful merchant. Sisyphus was a cunning king. The trojan war was kicked off by royal drama. The list goes on and on. You have to notice these things and genuinely study the myths or you become like Rachel, who seems convinced the poorest people would be stupid enough to not only defy their bosses, but the gods themselves? They would be the last people to do such a thing! They don’t have the ingrained sense of entitlement and arrogance like the rich and powerful to even dare act like that towards the gods, as is the case with hubris. Because of this, Rachel ends up creating a narrative that the rich and powerful (literal GODS) are the real victims to those cruel, uppity poor people, going as far as to say in comic they deserve to be slaves for hades’ benefit and they’re wrong for ever hating Persephone for, you know, murdering them because she had a bad day! They should know their place! It’s absolutely insane that she doesn’t actually seem to realize what she’s writing. Unless she does, which is an even bigger issue, and shows a really dark look into how she views the world and society and how it should be run. It’s all a bad look.

8. Have you seen the "The demon, is here in the room right now?" meme

Welp, that's literally Persephone and her "feeling"

I legit saw that video about a dude faking a mental illnes (and seeing a demon that made him do bad things) after he commited a crime and that was so cringy and I can't stop thinking about Persephone confessing her AOW like that

#anti lo #anti lore olympus #lore olympus critical #lo critical #anti lo art

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mettywiththenotes · 3 years

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Thoughts on Bones and the bad decision making

The thing is about how MVA is being handled is that, generally, other animes that cut stuff out or have not as good animation as other seasons (which idk its literally only been one episode so we’ll see what else comes out of it, but I’m just stating the animation thing as one of the problems too) seems to be due to the time limit of an episode + how many episodes you have to fit in the season and evenly space it out + animation budget

Thats what I reason anyway. When I watch an anime and then read the manga, I notice stuff that didn’t get put into the anime, but I usually reason that “oh maybe it was the time limit of an episode and how many episodes they have left to put it in. If they couldn’t add that in but put this in instead, it’s probably due to what they think is more necessary to fit into the season before it ends. I can kinda understand that, and if its the case, I’m not really gonna hold it against them”

Same with animation, because adaptations usually try and space out the animation quality between Oh My God This Looks Ugly during a minor scene to Oh My God This Looks Incredible during an important scene. Again, I can understand that with budgets and the limit of available staff to animate. If you’re gonna hold back on some pieces of animation, I can definitely see the reason for sparing the Good Animation for the really important and impactful parts

But that doesn’t seem to be the case here

Bones cut out stuff that was actually quite important to understand the character. The League finding that racist cult and killing them was part of showing that they are decent enough to not be totally evil, and plus it tied in with Spinner’s arc of discrimination and that “empty feeling inside” which was actually caused by the people who lived in his town. Getting rid of his narrating too totally gets rid of that introduction to his arc, because when you first read that part in the manga, you think “why spinner? why spinner of all people? what distinguishes him from the rest?” and that question you ask yourself gets answered by his following development with Shiggy

Sure, Bones added in his narration in the forest, but the point of the initial narration is to make it feel personal. Spinner narrating in the forest is more like observational narration, rather than something personal. With 220, it felt like “Oh are we getting to Spinner’s arc? Are we getting his development or smthg? That sounds interesting, since he’s a background character. I wonder what will happen” but with the narration in the forest, it kind of gives off the feeling of “Why is Spinner narrating? Why did it switch to him? He’s just watching them, but is this important? I don’t understand”

There’s a difference between personal narration and observational narration. For example, lets compare a vlog and a documentary. A vlog is something personal, and when you watch it, you’re getting a glimpse into the persons life. That’s what I’d say Manga Spinner’s narration is equivalent to, because it literally starts off like “Whats up guys, I’m Spinner from the League Of Villains! We’re not in the best of conditions, as you can see, and we’re trying to work our way back to the top! Stay tuned!”

Anime Spinner’s narration is probably equal to a documentary, stating what has happened and whats going on now. And describing what Tomura’s face looks like. In fact, the description of the face is probably the only personal thing the anime put in from Spinners POV so far. I guess they were trying to keep that bit in to add that “personal” feeling we didn’t get from the initial narration, and since its such a small moment, it would quite easily fit into a few seconds of the episode without running over the episode limit but. there’s a big difference between “Whats up guys, I’m Spinner from the League Of Villains and we’re homeless, but we’re trying to get better!” and “His face looked like an eager child”

With the League in the shed scene, there was an awful lot there to be concerned about being cut. First we have Toga and Twice’s interactions, wholesome and sweet, which was supposed to cement their friendship which would make it all the more heartbreaking when Twice breaks down over Toga being in danger. For anime onlys, they could go off the past scenes from past seasons but idk that bit with them in the shed was supposed to be a recent reminder, to refresh your memory and such

Then we have Compress and Shiggy, because that mention of the sushi was supposed to be something Shiggy would remember and look back on, showing how connected he is with the League. With Spinner and Shiggy, that was meant to show the unrest and tension in Spinner and his ideals, and when he grabs Shiggy to yell at him, thats supposed to show you how much this matters to Spinner and how that moment tells the reader “Oh this arc is about Spinner and Shiggy”. The arc is about the League as a whole, but it’s meant to tell you as the reader that “This main villain and one of his background lackeys are going to have conflict”, and thats interesting!

Dabi’s entrance and what he said about recruitment was meant to be a build up to his conflict with Hawks. It was also meant to show how Dabi, despite seeming pretty aloof, still chooses to come back to the League and be a part of things. That despite Dabi trying to separate himself from them, he still finds a place to belong. Him bantering with the other members also showed how familiar he is with them, again, to show that this is a place he belongs

The Big Thing with Horikoshi is build up. The man slow burns to hell and back, and while it’s frustrating, it’s good. The Dabi Reveal’s burst of excitement in the fandom was because of that build up. It shows that Hori is willing to show little bits of development to really make the pay-off of waiting and reading worth it when something impactful happens.

Now, I can see why that would be a bit of an issue for the anime, because again, time limit of an episode and how many episodes/seasons you have to fit the storyline in and evenly space it out. Fitting it all in while still creating that feeling of tension must be hard, and I can see why it would be too.

But this isn’t about fitting in. This isn’t down to time limit or episode space. The simple fact is that Bones already screwed too much with it before MVA even started. They messed around with storyline, with the cuts, with dragging out scenes that really don’t even mean much - except for that scene with Enji thinking about his family, cuz that had meaning, but it was just way too dragged out. With dragging out scenes, both with and without meaning, I can see that as the studio trying to make fit the length of the episode but it just doesn’t work

And then there’s the Beach Episode for the girls, which wasn’t necessary at all. And I could also see that as them dragging out the season in order to potentially make S6 the League’s arc. But that didn’t happen

Instead, they rushed it, tried to fit it all in, while trying to keep in that Popular Characters Are Here So Please Watch element. Which AGAIN doesn’t work as good story telling because if you’re going to stretch it out for the Popular Characters, you need to evenly space out what scenes are used where and still be able to tell a coherent story. Which isn’t the case here because they prioritized Popular Characters Are Here So Please Watch instead of the actual plot

So I don’t think it’s about time limit of an episode + how many episodes you have to fit in the season and evenly space it out, not in this case. It genuinely is just bad decision making

Animation is kind of an exception because of that whole priority of saving the budget for Oh My God This Is Incredible scenes as opposed to minor scenes. We’ve only watched the first episodes so far and there is that whole concern with the characters height and Spinner’s face, but we’ve yet to see the rest of the arc, so I’m personally gonna hold out until its over to really judge the animation. With the heights and Spinner’s face though, I can see that it probably (probably) wasn’t the case of “We hate these characters fuck you”, it’s likely more about “We have to get this out and done on time so idk just quickly draw and get it over and done with”, you know?

Anyway lol I don’t think I’m saying anything that hasn’t already been said by the fandom, but I still felt compelled to talk about it. It’s such a shame, because anime onlys don’t get the full experience of what happens.

MORE THAN THAT, it’s all very well and good saying “Anime onlys please read the manga”, but for a lot of anime watchers, the only way they CAN follow the story is through watching it. I think I remember reading about how its hard for people with ADHD to focus enough to read the manga (I know thats the case for one of my irl adhd friends at least) and then there’s also the fact that they may lead busy lives. But it’s because of this rearranging of the arcs that I know it has to be frustrating for anime onlys too because they don’t get the full experience and they hear from manga readers that they aren’t getting the full story either! I’ve read some posts about how manga fans were excited to connect with their anime-only friends without spoiling anything, and the anime onlys just ending up confused and unimpressed. I feel for them and I know it has to be frustrating from both ends

Thats kind of why “being creative and messing with the storyline” doesn’t work in anime adaptations. Adding stuff in and having anime only episodes is nice for creativity and stuff but you have to be able to still have time for the rest of the story in order for it to work, otherwise you just end up confusing everybody, and again, those who can’t follow the story through manga miss out on the fun

I’m not an animator, nor am I entirely sure how production and such works, this is only based on the aspects that seem more logical with animes and why they do the things they do. So if anybody who actually is an animator or knows more about this than I do wants to come forward and tell me whether this is right or not, I’d be happy to be corrected with constructive criticism

Same with the ADHD stuff. I don’t know everything about it and there’s likely exceptions to the focus thing, but please don’t hesitate to also correct me on that

If you’ve made it this far, then thank you for reading my thoughts on Bones and how they’ve dealt with everything. Once again I’m sure I’m not saying anything that hasn’t already been said but still. I’m just putting my thoughts down

#bnha #boku no hero academia #mha #my hero academia #bnha season 5 #my villain academia #league of villains #studio bones

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incarnateirony · 4 years

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Hey dude! Do you have any recommendations for LGBTQ+ movies in the romance genre that have like a happy ending. I really don't care how old they are. I'm feeling the Gay™ hence I need the Gay™. You feel me?

HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII NONNIE

First sorry for taking so long, not only did I have to timeline this :) but :) my computer :) froze :) after writing like :) 2 pages :) and I had to do it again :)

So anyway let it be said, the LGBT dialogue is one of osmosis and shared growth and awareness. Some of these films will be very poorly dated, but as you (thankfully) mentioned that them being old wasn’t a *problem*, expect a lot of old stuff. Because one of the most important things to have under your belt when talking about the LGBT media representation battle is the actual journey from A to B – be that incrementalization, subtextual inclusion, text-breeching features, outright evocative and groundbreaking films at the time (which is what MOST of this list will be) and an improvement in our dialogue; let us never forget that while tr*nss*xual is considered a slur and transgender is proper, tr*nss*xual was at one point the politically correct way to speak it – things like that breach in our growing understanding of the spectrum of human sexuality.

I *WILL* disclaimer these aren’t all romance, so if you explicitly want romance, google them and take a look if it sounds to appeal, but I’m taking this as a general cinema history plug considering what a confused mess fandom conversation about LGBT history in film or modern text as applicable, accepted or not.

Wonder Bar (1936) (I wouldn’t really call this queer cinema, but if you have the time to watch it too, I think it was the first explicit mention of homosexual engagement even if it was fleetingly brief. You might even call it Last Call style. A blink and you’ll miss it plug that was still decades ahead of its time)

Sylvia Scarlet (1936) (Again, I wouldn’t call this queer cinema, but a lot of the community takes it as the first potential trans representation on TV due to the lead literally swapping gender presentation, even if the presentation is… not what we would modernly call representation IMO)

Un Chant d'Amour (1950) (Worth it for the sheer fact that it pissed off fundies so bad they took it all the way to the US supreme court to get it declared obscene.)

The Children’s Hour (1961) (also known as the 1961 lesson to “don’t be a gossipy, outting bitch”)

Victim (1961) (The first english film to use the word “homosexual” and to focus explicitly on gay sexuality. People might look on it disdainfully from modern lenses, but it really helped progress british understanding of homosexuality)

Scorpio Rising (1964) (Lmao this one deadass got taken to court when it pissed people off and California had to rule that it didn’t count as obscene bc it had social value, worth it for the history if nothing else)

Theorem (1968) (Because who doesn’t wanna watch a 60s flick about a bisexual angel, modern issues and associations be damned)

The Killing of Sister George (1968) (by the makers of What Ever Happened To Baby Jane)

Midnight Cowboy (1969) (…have I had sassy contagonists in RP make a Dean joke off of this more than once, maybe)

Fellini-Satyricon (1969) (AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA THIS)

The Boys in the Band (1970) (This… this… this made a lot of fuss. Just remember leather)

Pink Narcissus (1971) (a labor of love shot on someone’s personal camera)

Death in Venice (1971) (This is basically a T&S prequel but whatever, based on a much older book)

Cabaret (1972)

Pink Flamingos (1972) (SHIT’S WILD)

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) (The title doesn’t lie, be warned)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) [god I hope you’ve at least seen this]

Fox and His Friends (1975) (some really hard lessons that are still viable today, that just because someone acknowledges your sexuality doesn’t mean they give a shit about you as a person, and that some will even abuse the knowledge for gain)

The Terence Davies Trilogy (1983) (REALLY interesting history look it up, it’s sort of one of those “drawn from own experience” story short sets)

The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) (Documentary)

Desert Hearts (1985) (Pretty much the first film to put lesbianism into a good light as a true focus based on a novel from the sixties)

Parting Glances (1986) (the only film its creator got out before his death from the aids epidemic)

Law of Desire (1987) (two men and a trans woman in a love triangle, kinda ahead of its time)

Maurice (1987) (This one’s really interesting, cuz it was based on a book made about 15 years before it, but the book itself had been written half a century earlier and wasn’t published until after the guy died, he just thought it’d never get published Cuz Gay, so basically it’s based on a story written in like, the 20s finally getting screen time. It has a bittersweet but positive-leaning-ish ending without disregarding the cost that can come with it and even addresses class issues at the same time 100% DO RECOMMEND)

Tongues Untied (1989) (a documentary to give voices to LGBT black men)

Longtime Companion (1990) (This one’s title alone is history, based on a NYT phrasing for how they talked about people’s partners dying, eg longtime companion, during the AIDS epidemic)

Paris Is Burning (1990) (Drag culture and related sexual and gender identity exploration as it intersected with class issues and other privileges explored in a documentary)

The Crying Game (1992)( I should correct this that I guess it’s more, 1992 considered, “SURPRISE, DIL HAS A DILL!” – I guess I really didn’t do that summary justice by modern language and dialogue as much as how people in the 90s were talking about that and that’s a my bad. LIKE. SEE, EVEN I CAN FUCK UP MY LANGUAGE I’M SORRY CAN I BLAME THE STRAIGHTS T_T) #90skidproblems – I guess I should call it a trans film. And this alone tells me I should go watch it again to recode it in my brain modernly rather than like circa de la 2000 understanding.

The Bird Cage (1996) (So you mix drag culture, otherwise heterosexually connected lovebirds, and then realize the girl comes from an alt-rightish house and the guy comes from a Two Dads Home and does cabaret, how to deal with the issues OF this conflict when it’s between you and your happiness, even if the fight isn’t even your own as much as it is that of the person you love. The answer is PROBABLY NOT to dress in drag and pretend to be straight, but what are you going to do? – while played for laughs we’d consider modernly crude, the fact that they even dared to approach this narrative was pretty loud)

The Celluloid Closet (1996) (Ever heard of the Vito Russo test for LGBT representation? This is based on a book by Vito Russo.)

Happy Together (1997) (Ain’t this shit an ironic name; a mutual narrative, via chinese flick, of hong kong ceding to china and an irrevocably tangled MLM pairing as a giant mirrored metaphor)

Boys Don’t Cry (1999) (one of the most groundbreaking films about trans identity at the time)

Stranger Inside (2001) (As easy as it is to recoil to the idea of “black gays in jail”, the film makers actually went and consulted prisoners and put a great deal of focus into intersectional african american issues that really weren’t around even in straight films at the time)

Transamerica (2005) (While it made a bit of a fuss for not casting an actual trans actor, it was one of the first times a big budget studio really tried to tackle it which really pushed us forward)

Call Me by Your Name (2017) (since I’ve apparently leaned really heavy old cinema throw in a modern one lmaooooo)

Also honorable The Kids Are All Right (2010) mention for the sake of the fucking title alone.

And to any incarnation of “On the Road” by Kerouac, which

Was originally a book

Released a sanitized de-gayed edition because of the times

Later released the full homo manuscript

had a few film adaptations

Was one of Kripke’s founding inspirations for Supernatural once he left behind “Some reporter guy chases stories” and took the formula of Sal and Dean (and tbh later, Carlo) in a beat generation vibe gone modern as we know it today.

Reading both versions of this can actually help some folks currently understand that when you get confused over some shit (WHY IS CARLO SO UPSET? WHY IS HE ACTING LIKE AN UPSET GIRLFRIEND??? WHY IS HE SO JEALOUS AND SAD WHEN DEAN IS AROUND GIRLS???? WE JUST DONT KNOWWWWWWWWWWWWW) it’s because some big money asshat bleached the content, and sometimes, it takes a while for the full script to come out and again, surprise, it’s been GAY, they just didn’t want to OFFEND anybody. *jazz hands*

Now if you wanna go WAY WAY BACK, during 191X years, a bunch of gender role flicks came out like Charley’s Aunt, Mabel’s Blunder and the Florida Enchantment.

Also where is @thecoffeebrain-blog to yell about the necessity of watching Oz, for the next few hours? But no, seriously, just look into the entire LGBT *HISTORY* of Oz.

Beyond that though I’m gonna stop here cuz hi that’s a lot. I really don’t know how much counts as “happy ending” but if I had to give an LGBT cinema rec list, that’s it as a sum. I don’t really have like, a big portfolio of UWU HAPPY ENDING GAYS because 1. there aren’t a lot of those but 2. to me, it’s not about the ending, it’s about the journey. Be that in flick or through culture and history itself.

If you want more happy ending stuff, you definitely have to look at 2010+, but it’s not like we’re in a rich and fertile landscape yet so honestly just googling that would probably serve you better since I don’t explicitly explore romance genre or happy endings to really have a collection. LGBT life is hard and film often reflects that if we’re making genuine statements about it and really representing it, and we’re just now getting to a point of reliably having the chance at a happy ending. That or maybe someone can add like “Explicit happy endings” lists after this that has more experience in that subgenre.

Also, I can’t emphasize ENOUGH to remember what was progressive then is not what is progressive now, and frankly, what some people think is progressive now they’ll probably look back on what they said and feel really fuckin’ embarrassed. See: “It’s not text because by alt right homophobic dialogue, M/M sex isn’t gay if you do the secret handshake” MGTOW kinda crazy ass dialogue or parallel narratives they inspire that encourage self-closeting and denial based on the pure idea that being gay makes you somehow lesser, so It’s Not That. Like. I am. 99% sure. At least half of the people talking in this fandom. Are going to regret that the internet is forever. And maybe hope hosting servers end in the inevitable nuclear war that will annihilate this planet.

Also, edit: Speaking of mistaken dialogues and words aging poorly, I’d like to apologize from the poor description I rendered “The Crying Game” with, but that really goes to show how deep-seated the issue is we can so casually fuck up identifying a trans narrative as SURPRISE DICK IS GAY when we were all absorbing the content like 20+ years ago and HOW HARD it can be to de-code yourself from that kind of programming because here I am, writing a giant assed rep post and fucking it up because my brain hadn’t soaked that movie since Y2K. Guess what, time for me to go watch the Crying Game again.

#lgbtqia #representation #media #cinema history

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