#all you guys are getting for analysis is in Japanese until then.
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!!!!! tell me!!
OKAY SO
i couldn't sleep until 1:30 am for unimportant reasons but . at 1:30 am, i was suddenly haunted by a question, right. there are these events in tokimeki memorial girls side 3 and 4 called ADV events, where you get to see a short story from the point of view of one of the main love interests. but like. why the hell was it called adv. is it an acronym for something? what does it mean
so at 1:30 in the morning, i went to look up what tokimeki memorial girls side adv means
i do not receive an answer from search engines
instead, somehow, google heard me ask "tokimeki memorial girls side adv meaning" and gave me THIS.
it's insane, right. it's really insane. this is a 27 page essay claiming that tokimeki memorial girls side (2002), beloved romance simulator, is responsible for teaching girls to view themselves in terms of real-life stats, that rejection from anime guys will give gamers self-esteem issues, and how to view yourself through the male gaze to win love.
i look at this 27 page paper and pass out for the next 5 hours, because it is 1:30 am.
BUT. when i wake up. i am READING. i liveblogged it all to my friend in discord dms (HI @nenestansunsthings) and here are. some INCREDIBLE highlights
"the game teaches you that men expect women to change their clothes from time to time"
the author has cited japanese 123 website, livejournal, and tumblr
"japanese players are more receptive to the series' lessons on femininity than overseas players because of the constant affirmations of the japanese cultural setting" the daily affirmations of being in japan
"players are encouraged to save before making choices and reload if they do not satisfy the object of their affections, teaching women to discard their desires and preferences to please men" HAVE YOU NOT PLAYED A VIDEO GAME BEFORE?!
the author can't make up their mind over whether the game has 7 or 9 love interests
they are basing their analysis on the first game specifically but they bring up the second and third game if it supports their point. but information from the second and third games is ignored if it undermines their point
example 1: they complain about rivals mode portraying women as jealous and willing to throw away their friendships for the sake of a man's love, ignoring that game 2 allows you to calmly talk things out with your friend and game 3 entirely does away with girls being rivals entirely, the game 3 girls are always on your side 100%
example 2: they bring up tumblr posts of fans talking about how they'd date the girls to point out how heteronormative the games are. they are talking about the first game. the tumblr posts are talking about a girl from the third game
weird racism
"this game MAY cause players to develop self-worth issues" "this game MIGHT cause players to see themselves in real-life stats" THESE WORDS ARE DOING A LOT OF HEAVY LIFTING.....
the author is WRONG???? ABOUT THE GAME MECHANICS????
they claim that a guy rejected their invitation for a date because they weren't smart enough but once they were smart enough they launched themselves into a monologue about how this is PROBABLY a guy wanting a girl who is smart enough not to embarrass him but not smart enough to surpass him
THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS. IT'S RNG. THERE'S NO MINIMUM STAT REQUIREMENT TO ASK SOMEONE OUT HE JUST FLIPPED A COIN AND SAID NO
out of the four love interests they mention by name in this, THREE OF THEM HAVE THEIR NAME SPELLED WRONG
look at this fucking bibliography
they have cited, in order.
a shitpost
someone's entire blog
and all of tumblr's search results for tokimeki memorial girls side 3.
which is not even the game they're talking about.
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Identity(V) Headcanons: Norton Campbell
I'm starting off the writing blog with some of these character analysis-esque headcanons! (Starting with Norton bc he's honestly the reason I made this blog.) They'll serve both as practice for me, and examples for any readers on how I write different characters.
Again, I am new to the IDV fandom, and I have never played the game. These headcanons are informed by ongoing lore dives sourcing the wiki, japanese twitter responses, comics, stageplay, and more! Some of these may relate to or even contradict character backstory, and some of them are just pure vibes for me. If you like it, consider shooting a request ;)
-Norton had always been a moodier guy, but the mining accident (and the lack of mental and emotional support he received after it) resulted in a much more obvious split of his temperaments. Without trying to put a name to something I’m no expert in, Norton has two distinct personality states which are both aware of and inform one another. The First is the more common state, wherein he is more level-headed, but prone to melancholy and isolation. His melancholy tends to be more intense after an episode with his Second state, wherein he is very likely to exhibit anger, mania, and cynicism. Likewise, his Second state tends to be more critical when he’s been uneventfully mellow for a good while. He tries his best to balance and regulate the two, but this particular emotional roller coaster is one he never had any say in getting on and has never had any assistance getting off.
-The First state typically lasts longer than the Second, sometimes stretching several days at a time. During the First, he’s at his most amicable and chatty. This is the best time to get to know him as a person.
-When in his Second state, which is usually triggered by something that reminds him of the accident, it’s better to give him a wide berth. Even in the case of a friend or partner who has thick skin and handles harshness well, Norton can become hypercritical of himself for being cruel to them.
-His mother died in childbirth, leaving Norton with only his father, who also worked himself to an early grave. Norton had to start working immediately to keep himself fed (and sometimes didn’t even manage that) so he has next to no education. He does not read or write especially well. He is also not particularly tech savvy and struggles with new concepts. That said, he's never been one to back down from a chance to improve himself, difficult or otherwise.
-Norton was mostly genuine in his visits to the elderly and sick. Many of them were other miners and laborers who helped him find his footing after his dad died. Their help may not have amounted to much in the long run, but they didn’t just look the other way and he understood the loneliness they felt on their deathbeds.
-The one exception to this was Benny, who Norton had also once looked upon in an appreciative light…until he learned how to read. It was then that he scoured his father’s old letters and discovered an infuriating truth: after the birth of Norton and the death of his mother, his father had been about to leave the mining industry. Benny was the one who convinced him to stick around and join the obsessive hunt for gold. It was through a mix of spite and desperation that Norton decided to swindle Benny out of his maps and take the chance at riches for himself.
-Norton does not talk about the mining accident. At all. Not even if he’s paid. Part of it is self-preservation—since he IS the one who stole and illegally ignited the explosives. The other part is that he is well and truly wrecked with guilt. Norton did not get along with most of his coworkers in those final days, was bullied and harassed by them, but he wanted to get ahead of them, not kill them.
-Because he’s been self-reliant from such a young age, he’s naturally distrustful of other people. He has trouble accepting people at face value and often rejects compliments, and other words of affection. He’s the embodiment of “actions speak louder than words.” In general, if someone wants to get closer to Norton they have to put their money (and their labor) where their mouth is and show a lot of patience. Any genuine relationship with Norton is hard-won.
-In line with the above, the best love language to give Norton is Acts of Service. Physical Affection would also work well once you reach a certain threshold in his trust. Gift-Giving is a decent third, but you would need to tread lightly here, lest he start to see the budding relationship as purely transactional. Holidays and birthdays are the best time to really go in on gifts for Norton, since he has a harder time arguing bribery with culturally dictated gifts.
-He genuinely does not find himself to be attractive. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he’s insecure, as he really doesn’t think about it much, but he’s least likely to accept compliments about his appearance. The burn scars certainly don’t help. If you do compliment his appearance, it’s better not to mention the scars at all than to try and make him feel better about them.
-He wholly, genuinely, hates the rich. Which is obvious enough, I suppose, but I think it’s more extreme than people give him credit for. And really it just comes down to unadulterated jealousy and bitterness, which are not easy feelings to overcome.
-Norton is of the opinion that all life is equal—and when he’s at his most cynical, this means he’s willing to take the balance of “an eye for an eye” into his own hands.
-His sweet tooth is limited to donuts and a few other carb-y baked goods. He prefers savory flavors, or sometimes bitter, such as in the case of his black coffee. He doesn’t eat as much as you might expect for his size, but he always eats quickly, and hunched over his food like it’ll be taken away. Old habits die hard.
-He has a terrible sleep schedule, due in part to frequent nightmares about the accident. He’s also somewhat claustrophobic and dislikes pitch-black spaces, so a window is a must in his bedroom. He prefers to have it open whenever reasonable.
-He doesn’t do well with thunderstorms, as the rumbles of thunder sound too much like the beginnings of a cave-in.
-If he has one singular strength, it’s perseverance. Hardships don’t deter him because he’s seen and overcome plenty. He’s a loyal friend as well, once completely won over. If he cares for you, you’ll never have to tackle a hurdle alone.
#identity v#idv#idv prospector#norton campbell#norton campbell x reader#idv x reader#turbulentscrawl
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your real honest opinion on David's character. GO!
I feel like this implies I've been trolling everyone for the past 6 years about how much I love this silly lil guy. Is there supposed to be a /j at the end of that, anon??
Bestie I would not put this much effort into a troll ever 😭 like do you think I sat there and made a whole comic series for a funny little gag??
In case this is genuine tho:
LONG READ AHEAD
cuz of course. You give me the chance to talk about David and I'll TALK
My real honest opinion on David
Paradise
Silly funny fella. Goofy as hell. I think you can read David's attitude multiple different ways in Paradise. To some he comes off as just an asshole
To others he's just a kid being a kid
I personally read his character as somewhat sarcastic and spiteful towards Jakob. His smile? Sarcastic. His "it's been a while brother"? Sarcastic. "I hope I'm not the one who died tonight" while knowing full well it ain't him? Sarcastic.
I'll talk about this more later when I talk about Mr. Rabbit!David.
David has the characteristics of most youngest siblings; He's annoying, he's childish, maybe a little spoiled and needy for attention too.
Not to jump ahead in this analysis and all but in Birthday, the box he needs has text on it that reads "hungry ghost", "ghost who is unable to be reborn" or preta. They're often spirits of people who died full of greed and jealousy. In Japanese, a preta is also "a spoiled child" or "brat"
Based on that information I thought maybe David was jealous of Jakob cuz he wanted to be the golden boy, ya know?
Tldr;
Paradise!David is just a funny lil guy who most likely harbors negative feelings towards Jakob who overshadowed him despite not even being there.
Mr. Rabbit
Who David is now. An older more mature David. Something clicked in his brain and he realized 'okay actually we're all fucked. Peace out guys I'm looking out for myself.'
Brown Rabbit:
I feel like he represents the last bit of David's naivety, innocence, and child-like spirit. The white rabbit (David from the future) sees that rabbit get killed from the window. He can no longer deny what's happening. The child within him he used to retreat to when things got bad is dead. There's only the white rabbit now
I feel like that's also something represented in David's masks
The older he gets, the more devoid of joy he becomes
He becomes more and more aware of his situation.
As a child, you have the blessing of ignorance. That's why the world feels like a safer more colorful place to you until you grow up and you can no longer protected and shielded from the world.
To me, I think that's where David's trauma comes from. His ageing and how fast he's had to grow up and become a man, despite his attempts to remain a child.
In paradise, it's likely he was still pretty much "fingers in ears going LALALALALA" with his eyes closed tightly.
Brown rabbit is all that remained of his ignorance, and now it's gone, leaving behind only the White Rabbit. The David that knows and acknowledges the cruelty of his life. A ghost of his former self.
Speaking of:
White Rabbit
What are we but the products of our traumas and life experiences.
The white rabbit, David from the future, is on a journey to save his soul and be reborn. Obviously, the goal of all the corrupted souls. There is a soul we know succeeded in that and was, in fact, reborn. And that soul is Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was the collateral damage in a battle she had no hand in. She is probably the most innocent victim in all of this family feud going on, and I think because of that, Jakob allowed her to be reborn.
Something he did not allow David to do. I think it's safe to say Jakob and David do not like each other. Seems like David's plans clash with Jakob's and so he has to be taken out of the picture, and yet, David always seems like he has tricks up his sleeve.
Somehow, David is able to go back in time to save himself. What happens after that? We don't know yet
You could argue that he failed and died in the blue cube memory of Birthday. Or that he is simply still out there rn waiting for his story to be told. Both are true cuz that's the nature of Rusty Lake.
David seems to be on his own grand journey, stuck in his own Paradox, desperate to find a way to he reborn.
The thing that stands out of course is David's corrupted soul, or rather, the many different forms of it:
This is probably due to there being multiple different David(s) from the paradoxes he's lived through.
But what is the White Rabbit David if the brown rabbit is David's reborn Asura? Is the white rabbit not his Asura too?
Hard to say. We never seen a corrupted soul take form like David's white rabbit one before, and even more than that, one that retains autonomy. After all, David had enough control over himself to write and leave Dale a letter, meaning he is fully aware of what he is doing. Yet he is prone to violence the way regular corrupted souls are.
It's likely the white rabbit is an advanced form of a corrupted soul, probably the last stages before rebirth.
That or.... Well.... It's just a mask. After all, in Paradox, David spoke with a regular human voice over the phone, meaning he was not a corrupted soul.
In that case tho, if he was already reborn... Why did he say he needed to escape his current "hungry ghost" state?
Obviously Paradox is the most unreliable game narratively cuz you're just going through Dale's jumbled up memories. It's likely he's just recalling an actual conversation he had with David on the phone at the time (which still makes no sense cuz that would mean at the time David was still a human. Or it means he's recalling some conversation he had with David at some point in his life, not necessarily Birthday. OR... That's just a memory the machine is feeding him and it never really happened. Point is, paradox can't be used as a fact for anything)
Timeline is fuuuucked when it comes to David's story so uuuh
We don't know where he is now, what actually happened to him, or wtf is going on with him.
What we do take from his whoooole story tho:
Conclusion
(you did it, chat. You made it this far into my rambly post!!)
David is a really cool and very interesting character that might not appear to be so on the surface. You only really get how complex his character is when you think of everything that has happened in the games. He has a story that is either left for us to piece together or is still not yet fully explored.
To me, David is a character born of defiance and rebelliousness, as well as the need for survival and self-preservation. He is someone who has challenged his own fate, knowing damn well he's up against higher powers, but still taking the chance to save his soul. He is resilient, and stubborn, and just won't accept his fate and die. He has challenged his position in the food chain, a rabbit who is meant to be at the bottom, proving that he should not be underestimated. To me, that's worth loving and admiring. AND IM CHEERING HIM ON! GO DAVID! GO! IM SO PROUD OF YOU MY SON!!
And that's my real honest opinion on David
Thank you for reading.
#asks!#RL: lore and theories#fandom: rusty lake#david eilander#theres so much i have to say about this guy#you have no idea#i have so many thoughts#i wish i could structure this better#like a proper study#but 😭😭😭#hhh i love him sm
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why death note isn't copaganda
Since y'all seem to like my Death Note Metaposting, here's another nugget for you to chew on: I don't think Death Note is copaganda. Either in intent or execution.
I think that Death Note is a story from a very specific time and place, with a very specific target audience. It is a Japanese story from the 2000s, and it's aimed at edgy thirteen-year-old boys.
Japan does not, technically, have a rating system for TV. But most media outlets do choose to self-censor. (To give you an idea of how that looks in practice, I turned to Eirin- the Japanese film ratings board. Eirin splits movies into G, PG-12, R-15, and R-18. Most anime movies are somewhere between PG-12 and R-15. Drug use and abstract supernatural horror tends to get treated much less harshly by Eirin than by the MPAA, but graphic violence, criminal behaviour, and nudity/sex get a much harsher penalty in Japan than they do in the USA.)
A Japanese show for preteen boys in 2005 could not portray the cops as being fundamentally corrupt and violent, any more than an American show for preteen boys could have. So... assuming the writers of Death Note had Some Things To Say about the police, they had to make some choices. They had to figure out how to convey what they wanted to convey- "having the power to kill fucks you up, and cops have that power"- without pissing off their publisher or their TV company.
The easiest way- and the laziest- would have been to make one cop, perhaps Light's Dad, into the Designated Corrupt Punching Bag that the Good Cops have to defeat to catch their criminal. Maybe the Corrupt Punching Bag cop would use a lot of bureaucratic red tape that the Good Guys have to punch through to get their man, or slow down the justice process by insisting on Correct Procedure at all points.
That writing decision positions the failures of the police department as the failure of one man. That writing decision implies that forcing cops to follow the rules that are designed to keep people safe from them actually puts people in danger. I think you could definitely call that writing decision copaganda= and too many shows, on both sides of the ocean, choose it.
But that is not what Death Note chooses to do.
Another way Death Note could have handled the problem is to just... sidestep it. Completely take the focus off of the police, throw in a line about how they're baffled, and let our Genius Detective Hero-Antagonists handle the case completely. In this version of Death Note, we'd have no Aizawa or Matsuda, Soichiro would just be Light's father, and L/Mello/Near would be the only ones pursuing the investigation.
This writing decision positions the police as irrelevant in a way that means you don't have to think about them. The Police Are Baffled, and that's all you need to know; they've handed the case off, and the story goes into the realm of The Outsider Boy Detective Story. This isn't copaganda, per se; it acknowledges that the police are a flawed force that can need outside help... but it's not engaging with the social issues that make the police genuinely flawed. It's veering into pure fantasy. And that can be a valid decision...
But that is not what Death Note chooses to do.
Death Note chooses to actively present the police as being good, but deeply flawed people... who, because of the system they operate in, have no choice but to become bad people. The cops we get to know are kind, funny, ordinary people. But for one reason or another, they don't notice the monster in their midst, until it's too late. And Light's influence corrupts them- or forces them out.
I'll admit that I'm going off my interpretation of the anime here, which does make some significant changes from the manga, but considering that the big change to the ending that the anime makes from the manga is continued into every future adaptation? I feel comfortable including it in my analysis.
[oh, and, uh, spoilers for the end of Death Note, obvs.]
Soichiro refuses to believe that his son could be a criminal. He knows Light's a smart cookie, and he trusts Light's sense of justice. He comes to treat Light as something of a superior officer, even though Light is his teenage son. ...And Light repays him by sending him off on a suicide mission.
I mentioned this on a reblog of the original post, but when Soichiro gets his hands on the Death Note? He dehumanizes the criminals he's been sent to kill, the other members of his squad, and ultimately, himself. He treats everyone like they're an expendable cog in a big machine. No one is a person; everything is something to be used in pursuit of Justice. And unlike Light, Soichiro includes himself in that.
Soichiro falls into the ultimate trap of being a Good Cop. If you fight for justice as a cop, you wind up utterly expendable. If you're a Good Cop, you die, on command, and take as many people with you as your overlords see fit.
Matsuda also looks up to Light, though for slightly better reasons; they did more or less join the force around the same time, if you count Light joining the Kira Investigation as Light becoming a cop. Matsuda implicitly trusts Light, especially by the start of Season 2. He sees himself as naiive, weak, careless, and stupid- even though he's actually really good at his job. Matsuda is sympathetic to Kira, but thinks he's going about things the wrong way, and that surely there's got to be a better way to make a better world?
....And then Matsuda discovers that everything he thought he knew was wrong. That Light is Kira, and always was. That Kira wasn't a good guy doing things the wrong way, that he was callously manipulating the entire task force this entire time, and that Matsuda has been his patsy. And Matsuda goes out swinging.
Matsuda shoots Kira. And hits. More than once. If Ryuk hadn't decided to put Light out of his misery, it would be Matsuda's fault that Light died without real justice being done.
If Soichiro is what happens to you when you're a Good Cop, then Matsuda shows how a Good Cop can become a Bad Cop. A moment of anger at the wrong time, a realization that you've been living a lie, or a criminal the cop cannot see as a person anymore? He uses the power of life and death. The power that the viewer has just been told is murder. Only instead of coming from the inkwell of a pen, it's from the barrel of a gun.
Aizawa is... interesting. I'll admit, I remembered him as being The Cop Who Leaves, and that coloured my interpretation until I went back to check the wiki. It turns out he left and came back- what I remembered as "Aizawa working as a private investigator" was Aizawa working well within the bounds of the Kira investigation, but going behind Light's back to talk to Near.
But I do think it's significant that Aizawa, more than anyone else in the Kira investigation, is the one who's able to leave. When the Kira investigation gets defunded by the Japanese government, it's Aizawa who can walk- who feels like he has the duty to walk, because he has something to live for that's more important than Justice. Catching Kira is less important than making sure his wife and kid don't starve, after all. He moves to a different part of the police force, and considers leaving the force altogether. And even after he's come back to the Kira investigation, he's detached enough from it that he can see Light's transparent bullshit for what it is.
Aizawa is the Good Cop. He follows procedure when he can; when he can't- because the investigation is too corrupt, mostly- he still tries to do what would make the world a better place for everyone. He isn't violent; he isn't cruel; he isn't into justice as retribution. FFS, Aizawa tries to hold back Matsuda from shooting Light. The writers have said that if more people were like Aizawa, the world would be a better place.... And Aizawa is the guy who can leave. Who does leave. Whose loyalty is to his family and his own morals, not to the police as an agency, not to his comrades on the force, not to the thin blue line.
A couple of people have pointed out to me that in Death Note How To Read 13, the writers have said that they didn't have a theme they were going for. And honestly, that'd explain some of the hiccups with the writing.
But I can't help but feel like, even if it's unintentional, the way that the major cop characters' arcs play out is a very well structured critique of some common copaganda tropes.
I think that Death Note is only copaganda if you define "copaganda" as "there is a cop character who is sympathetic" without interrogating what the show is saying with its cops beyond that. And considering that Death Note is a show written for tweens, in a country where respect for authority is paramount? I think that the show's done as much as you can reasonably expect it to to subvert Being Copaganda.
(If anyone wants to say that the Autistic Detective Crew is somehow copaganda, a) I have another essay locked and loaded, do not test me, the short version of which is b) there are two genres of detective fiction, and the one that L/Mello/Near are part of is not part of the tradition that gave us copaganda, it's the other one.)
#death note#shoichiro yagami#touta matsuda#shouta aizawa#copaganda#< that doesn't even look like a real word anymore jfc#general malarkey#tumblr malarkey#fandom malarkey
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Trigun Bookclub: Trigun Vol.1-2, Chapter #08
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CW: Some of my analysis in this post touches the topic of suicidal ideation (there will be a warning around that portion).
I’m doing a deep-read of the Japanese original print (reread) and Overhaul 1.0 (first read) side-by-side, and writing down everything I notice from small details, version differences, translation differences, etc.
The volume numbers will be mismatched for most of the remainder of Trigun, since the Japanese first edition is 3 volumes while all later versions are 2 volumes.
As always, here are the non-analysis panels aka just my homosexual mumbling:
And the rest is under the cut.
[link for if the images aren’t in horizontal rows]
This chapter is the beginning of the Japanese Volume 2, which is from #08 to #13 (plus the pilot as a bonus).
Starting off with the cool as balls shot of Vash being shot a billion bullets at! I did write "rule of cool" here since I thought he was just magically evading the firing squad. However, on second thought, I think Neon specifically ordered the gang to not actually shoot him, judging by how he says "not bad" immediately afterwards. It's his way to test Vash, to see if he flinches.
[cw sui] The "You ain't afraid of dyin', are ya?!" line stuck out to me a lot... Many rereaders (and I assume first-timers too, at this point in the bookclub) know that Vash is... casually suicidal? I'm not sure if that's the right way to put it, but he doesn't have much of a sense of self-preservation. He's not seeking death, of course, but he's not exactly avoiding it either....
This becomes much more apparent and relevant at the end of Trigun and in Maximum, so I'll leave it until I get to those parts. [/cw]
Dear god the crotch shot. okay (squeezing this into a row because I don't really want this guy's balls to take up the whole screen lmao)
I've always loved how Nightow draws these circles to show spinning motion in his artwork!! It's simple but it really pops... it's just so so (chef's kiss)
I wonder just what Vash's next move was going to be here? He's pretty much cornered... but I guess he can always get out of any situation, as he usually does.
Vash's expression of sheer confusion is golden. I love him lmao
Meryl!!!!!!!!! Milly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We missed you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I love how immediately after he calls Meryl a little girl he gets spooked by the Big Girl instead.
This is not directly translatable, but I find Milly's line here very cute. In Japanese, she says「…私は―― ミリィ…トンプソンとゆいます えとえとイチオー スタンガンミリィとは私のコトをゆいます」
The correct word for "I'm called [smth]" here would be 言います(iimasu), but the pronunciation ゆいます(yuimasu) is a bit childish in this context. If I recall correctly, isn't Milly the youngest of many siblings? Maybe it's a little quirk showing that youngest-sibling aspect of hers.
Meryl asking Vash to be a "responsible adult" for once.... lol
This is the first time his name has been called since his encounter with Kaito and the beginning of the BL gang' hijack. I completely forgot that Kaito has no idea who he is!! Vash didn't give him a name; he's just been calling him あんた("you") the whole time!!
Excuse the messier handwriting from here on… I was working on this during a car ride.
A detail in the Japanese version - this line was originally written「おまえが消したって話んなってるJULY(あのまち)だが…」with "JULY" having a ruby pronunciation note of あのまち("that city").
This part was initially written to be a translation suggestion but I decided to just keep it a JP phrasing note:
「あのガレキが俺の見た最初の風景だ」
"That mountain of debris was the first thing I saw."
Translation suggestion - Here, Neon says「サシの勝負だ」, where サシ means "face-to-face" or "one-on-one."
I would say it's more like "This fight is between just the two of us," to show more of the respect Neon has for Vash.
More of this respect is shown in the next page, where they make a promise that Neon will step back if Vash wins the duel. Neon recognizes Vash's skill and ideology, and treats him as an equal.
And here's the action!
I found interesting that Neon's war-cry/exclamation "ha" was actually written in kanji as 派. The kanji by itself means group or faction, but considering Neon's character, maybe it's supposed to be a reference to the word 派手(hade), meaning "gaudy?"
This duel definitely isn't following regular duel rules... but no one said it was unfair or anything. Maybe this is just how they are in No Man's Land.
Neon shoots with his dynamo-gun (?) instead of his cool engraved pistol.... Anyways, his first strike is at Vash, and they all hit the rocks that are falling between them.
Vash then shields himself with one of those rocks by jumping in the same direction as it.
And he's doing another frontflip!! In sync with the falling rock!! With a wound in his gut!!
In midair and upside down, he precisely shoots five rounds into Neon. It hits his dynamo, but looking closely I can see that maybe he got his arm shot too.
damn....
A bit of a tangent - many of Neon's actions are reminiscent of old Japanese culture, which is very interesting. His pose during his first appearance in Chapter #05 (how did i remember that. i checked just in case and i was right), where he sort of squats and extends his open palm to the front, is a very stereotypical kabuki pose. Again, I don't know about the specifics of kabuki, but his pose on the the panel where Vash jumps also looks kabuki-esque to me.
Neon's respect towards Vash as a fellow gunslinger and his beliefs on dignity reminds me of bushidō. It's not representative of all aspects, of course, but there are definitely elements incorporated in his character.
This line (including the speech bubble after it) is a bit weird when translated so it will have to be tweaked, but a direct translation would be:
「このままではブレーキングはおろか… 船体ごと爆発する可能性があります！！」
"If it continues like this, the ship itself may blow up, let alone brake!!"
I'm pretty sure "brake" (miswrote in the image, will fix later) here means that they won't be able to put on the brakes due to the boiler malfunction. But I don't know shit about machinery or how to phrase this. (shrug)
That’s it for Chapter #08!
As always, the Japanese annotations are in the reblogs.
#btw take all my translation phrasings here with a grain of salt theyre all done in like 3 minutes#they're just raw drafts to get the meaning across lol#if i had more time and resources i could think more about details and making them sound natural but nah we doin this snap snap#anyways godddddd i love neon#trigunbookclub#trigun annotation#trigun#trigun manga
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Hi Vera<3
I had a dream.
It started out in a normal town where Steve Rogers found a store with very strange little passages that led to an otherworld where everyone was sick. With his analysis Steve drops a letter from the original world into the mailbox of the other world, restoring both worlds to normal.
Then it's Steve who arrives at a very religious church, (a multiplayer game this time), where the high and mighty Pope assigns everyone positions for pieces (White Queen, Black Queen, Knight, Bishop, Pawns, etc.), but they walk into the church to find that there is no chess board, it's a movie theater. The reader is the White Queen and Steve is the White Bishop, but Steve observes this movie theater and realizes that their seats are fixed, seated in the order of the board, and that the only way to change seats each time is to follow the rules of where the board goes. The Pope snickers that It's so hard to come by a smart guy who ends up reaching out and disrupting the board, and in the end it's the reader who gives steve a hint that she doesn't need to knock out the opposing team's pawns, she just needs to explain her marching patterns to the Pope to get through the game.
The next game is in a small village. The people here enjoy fishing and cooking fish for dinner. The game seems to be self-contained with no broken logic. The reader is the one who winks at him and points to the ground while walking by, and Steve wakes up to the fact that everyone in this village likes to fish, but it's actually a feud between fish and humans. Below the village is an underground river, and there was a big fish that grew a spirit because it ate a human and cursed the humans to die if they ate the fish, but the humans caught and ate its descendants, which amounted to half a fish, and so the hatred and resentment glued itself together until now. After Steve's statement to the village sheriff, the fish spirit (boss) breaks out of the ground, and it's the reader who pulls Steve so he doesn't fall down the pothole into the river. All the people in the village ran to fight with the fish spirit, Steve and the reader quietly hid, the reader told him that only people with unstable mental conditions will come to this game, and go through the various games, the lucky ones will be awakened back to the real world, the unlucky ones will die in the game permanently fall into coma.
Steve asks her which one are you then, and the heroine says she'll tell him next time we meet.
This time it's Shanghai in the 1920s, Steve, because of the blonde hair and blue eyes his identity is an influential businessman. The reader incarnation of his mistress (in fact, this mistress did not exist but because the reader arrived, the game automatically planned a npc spot). Steve asked her what the criterion for passing the game was, and she told him it was to find out which of the players was a spy.
Steve realized and said you're not a player, but you're not an NPC either, what kind of being are you? The reader smiles and says this game is run by her in a mental world, she's been given coma-inducing drugs by a mental hospital because her powers are so strong she's always putting people around her into hallucinations, and she sleeps except for her normal meals and activities. All the "villains" are avatars of parts of herself (the disease-ridden town, the condescending, chess-loving Pope, the fish spirit trapped underground, and the villain of this game).
Steve: I should hate you for dragging me into the game, but nevermind, you're a miserable person too. But what about me? Was I in a coma in the original world?
Reader: You fell into a slumber, but I can feel you waking up soon. This game is also the hardest - I hope I can see you in the real world.
Steve gradually discovers that the deputy sheriff of the police station is in the revolutionary party, that the secretary working for the Japanese is actually sent by another regime to steal intel, and that the operations department member of the military intelligence is a double agent, just to name a few. He analyzes it with reader and says: technically, all seven of us players are spies, because although I control half of the rented world, my secret is that I was sent to infiltrate and bribe the government. Everyone is a spy, how is this going to work?
That is, until Steve discovers that there is another player who is a college teacher, but he doesn't have any double identities. Steve deciphers that the "spy" in the game is actually the one who has no secret identity.
After the decryption, the city of Shanghai begins to crumble, and Steve asks the reader why this is happening, to which she says it's because your body is fighting me for control of your spirit - and then pushes him aside into a lake as soon as he's done so.
Steve woke up. Steve thinks he's forgotten something, but the nurse in front of him and the 1941 baseball game playing by the window make him feel out of place in the world. He runs out and realizes it's 2011.
（so yeah I dreamt of this :l now my brain is turned into scrambled eggs trying to remember and writing down the details
….the hell did you take before you went to sleep😂😂😂
What??? That’s just one dream???? How
Omg
So much happened there
And the ending like him after waking up from the ice???
What if that’s what had been going on in his head while he was frozen?:0
Omg
That’s so a new wip
Steve having weird dreams from the time he was frozen/in a coma
😂😂
I mean you even had a role for reader in it. That’s a new wip
He dreamed of her and then meets her after waking up from the ice
She’s a normal civilian or maybe Starks assistant!??😦😦😦
#veras venting#steve rogers#steve rogers x reader#steve rogers fanfiction#flood my inbox#inbox asks#inbox is always open#anon inbox#my inbox is open
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https://www.tumblr.com/madara-fate/739246648339922944/httpswwwtumblrcommadara-fate7386161854506434?source=share I think you are getting a little confused.
This ask isn't malicious but rather to clarify a little what this comes to. I'm not doing it to make you angry or anything.
That Sakura isn't a main character doesn't mean that she's not needed or that she can't appear. Shikamaru or Sai aren't either main characters and are much more involved in the story, despite Sai being an anbu without an anbu scene (because he's more like a freelance policeman than an anbu). The focus is on the new Team 7 but Mitsuki has a fandom behind him that complains about the poor treatment he gets in favor with others, and you can't deny that he is the one who's ignored the most.
Back to topic.
In Naruto, when a doctor or a medical pov was needed, Tsunade, who wasn't a main character, was used; until Sakura took over from her, but Tsunade always appeared like in the Pain arc doing autopsies, even Shizune, etc. Get the point.
Now we only have pov of Katasuke and Sumire with Amado. There's Boruto being wounded in the chest and no doctors, there's Boro's virus and no doctors (Sakura a master of medicine crafting and poison, the virus was never studied for plot), there are pills for Boruto's Jogan and no doctors, just Naruto trusting the guy that put a bomb on Shikadai's neck. I don't know if you understand what I am talking about.
Sakura is not only a simple doctor, because the only thing she does is to heal, with over simplified medical ninjutsu, two or three characters, preferably those that are nerfed and never a relevant character. Even worse.
She is an emotional support for Naruto, his best friend, a person with a mind and an ability to make decisions. We forgot that Sakura was for Naruto at all times, why is she treated as an unimportant doctor? She is supposed to be close to Boruto and the rest. Isn't it weird she's not involved as a friend and doctor and what happens to Boruto with Karma? Which is precisely the same as the Byakugou? Even haters are asking what is wrong with the writer that she's been sidelined in favor for other characters. Haters! Japanese people on twitter are asking the same thing.
With Kakashi, it's not like Hiruzen didn't have a figure like Shikamaru. Jiraiya and Tsunade could have been elected Hokage just like they did when Hiruzen died. Or did Hiruzen not have an advisor?
Regarding Ino, she has been sidelined and rightfully so. First of all, there is no Yamanaka clan. Inoichi's assistants in the Analysis Team and in the war weren't from his family, they were random shinobi, therefore the clan is 4 people and all dead already. Just her, Sai and the kid, like the Uchiha and Uzumaki.
And all this comes because the Barrier Team was never traditionally led by any Yamanaka, in the Pain arc it was a priest named Kakoi who was the leader, and his team. Kodachi made it all up because he made so many things up in the manga.
Let's see, the team is said in the manga and anime to have been redesigned to automatically detect any chakra signal. It's a machine. So what is Ino for? Every time she detects something so has the team at the very same time. So? Neither she nor the team detects things with one foot outside the village, since Delta and Kashin Koji were on a tree branch at the gates, so she's connected to the sensor barrier and detects what it detects? And what's the point of that?
Because when asked to detect something beyond the barrier, she said she can't, Boruto said that at least he could be detected when pursuing Kawaki but she couldn't either. It had to be Naruto. So if there's a team with random shinobi to blame, what's Ino for?
Because the team have special chakra helmets been used in the War by Inoichi and Ino in the movie for distant communication for great distances. So her telepathy is for what?
This is why she's been impeached. There's nothing to downplay. She was never meant to be there. Her abilities can be performed by a machine so why do we have to blame her on her awful performance when we can blame an npc? Because so far into the story and cohabitation mission, she's pretty replaceable.
Neither she nor her father have sensing feats in Naruto. They're sensor-type because they use their senses to invade another's senses and control them, mind-reading and telepathy. The sensing abilities are superficial, if she saya Sasuke's chakra is different or Kakuzu has dark chakra. I remember Sakura did the same thing in the Iron Bridge with Sasuke. And she's not sensor type. Orochimaru and Suigetsu did it. Kakashi did it. Basic sensory abilities are known to be had by every shinobi (minus Tenten and Rock Lee). So what feats are you talking about?
The fact that he has to use a bird to search for the Akatsuki who weren't far away (ch.332) confirms this, not just the databook. She doesn't have sensory abilities to search for Akatsuki's dark chakra but suddenly she has the ability to search a village symbiotically connected to a machine?
In the war, the Inoshikacho formation that makes her use a sensory relay, the enemies are right under their noses. You can see them in the manga, it's the clones in front of them. Do you understand what I am saying? There was never a single sensory feat.
In the Last? That helmet she wears, which is the same as the one her father wore in the war, is to increase the range of telepathy to wider areas. That helmet is worn by anyone and does the same thing. The reason she wears it is because Inoichi and his family share their chakra in one direction to talk to people, whereas in the war Ino transmitted her chakra continuously to the same one area. In fact, it didn't reach the other Kage until they got close. Inoichi was talking to many groups scattered in many areas around the map located by the sensory division. In the Last? Transmit the chakra in the direction of Kumogakure while Kakashi was having facetime meeting with the Kage, so her role is dubious and rather useless if Kakashi can get a Kage summit looking at the tv screen.
Writers finally read fans comments and removed her, but they also have been removing Sakura from many scenes where she IS needed. And now? Husband and bestfriend isolated but her pov is interesting to see and they don't want to? Suspicious.
Honestly, I don't really care enough about this topic to give a long response to all of that, so if you want to believe that the author hates Sakura and that Ino has no sensing feats in the manga, by all means. It's something you seem quite adamant or passionate about, so I doubt I'd be able to convince you anyway.
What I will say though, is that no Hiruzen had no Shikamaru figure. Jiraiya and Tsunade weren't residents of the village, at least not during his second reign, so they weren't available for selection since their whereabouts were unknown. Hiruzen had the Council, but they didn't serve as his right hand like Shikamaru did to Naruto. Once Minato died, there was no one new who could have easily taken over within the village, like Shikamaru was able to do for Naruto.
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Historical Document#2: The Stasi Biography.
//Greetings everyone, this is Mod Sam. I present to you the second history review of the bunch, the Stasi review. Now I'm pretty sure that most of you were expecting this review instead of the Soviet one, given that the Stasi are currently the biggest threat to the blog as of this season, It would make sense to do an analysis on them and what their tactics and operations are. But due to my poor organizational skills, I instead did the Soviet one first, and that review was... disappointing to say the least, but now I understand why it wasn't as successful: it wasn't relevant to the main story yet.
//That's certainly not to say every historical post should be connected to the story, but given the stakes that we have now, it makes perfect sense to talk about them now and explain why they are so dangerous. How I didn't recognize that earlier is beyond me.
//But anyway, I think I did slightly better here in comparison to the last review, where it got way too overcomplicated for anyone to understand, aside from a few aspects. But I think I managed to make it understandable enough for you guys to understand. An added bonus is that the review is shorter, thus you don't have to spend hours reading it, so that's a drastic improvement.
//Given that I've seen a lot of Stasi-related asks during the story, consider this a firsthand survival guide on the Stasi, and what they do exactly firsthand. Consider them a more terrifying version of the KGB and the North Japanese secret police force, at least for now.
//I just want to apologize for the lack of activity on this blog for a while, aside from answering asks and me complaining. I've calmed down since the last time I made that rant, and I eventually realized that I need to take it easy with you guys and not force you because if there is anything people don't like, it's being told what to do, and I feel ashamed that I tried to do that. I hope you all can accept my forgiveness and just no that I meant no ill intentions towards you guys. I was just... so stressed that day and I pretty much lost it.
//But besides that, I'm ready to possibly get back into the story. If all goes to plan, I should have the next story chapter by around Friday or Saturday at the latest. But in the meantime, you have this file to occupy your attention while I start working on the next chapter, so be vigilant for a new chapter coming out soon.
//To close this post off, let me show you the ID card of Vladimir Putin while he was in the Stasi. And before you ask, yes, this is 100% real and accurate, this was actually what he looked like when he was younger. Viewer discretion is advised.
//At the very least, he had some hair, so I'll give him that.
//This shall probably be the last historical post I do for now, as I prefer to continue working on the story since these posts aren't going to really matter to anyone unless we focus on the actual plot itself. I know I just said that before, but I wanted to add more context as to why. Plus, it's pretty much a slog for me to write these long essays in Google Docs since I highly doubt anyone here reads a Google Doc for a review. Still, though, I hope you enjoyed these reviews as that's all you're going to get untill the end of this arc or even the season, it's up to my own volition on how I shall conduct this type of strategy.
//This is Mod Sam from A Tale Never Told, signing out for now. Have a great rest of the day everyone ^^.
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Heard you wanted to do some analysis character, maybe you could do Yuri? Aside from his whole gimmick with him hating men and being loyal to women, I genuinely think he's pretty interesting guy if he got more screentime :0 (Plus, I remember LINUJ said that he's one of the smartest aside from Kanade, Kokoro, and Syobai)
Thank you for sending this ask!
Let's start with the fact Yuri is both Russian and Japanese and can speak both of them fluently. Having often spoken Russian mid-sentence before correcting himself to Japanese when he realizes others didn't understand him. Next we have the fact of he's gone so far as to be able to correct Kanade when she calls the island tropical, he's not afraid to correct information even if it's a girl who gets it wrong. Dipping a bit into Yuri's past, he's had to study so much in order to please his father who is the reason he would be considered "Ultimate Spaceman" in the first place. Being forced to study everything he could about space to prepare him for space flight he'd obviously know at least some things about space.
Having been part of his family with such a high status and having been kidnapped over 37 (Possibly more, 37 is just what he remembers at the time of the game!) has likely helped him gain more knowledge then most give him credit for too. Having the will to survive if half the battle in those sort of situations. The other half is having the knowledge and ability to stay calm. Yuri may act overly excited around women, but he's really only seem to have started that after seeing Akane's reaction to talking about Utsuro.
Even if it was only for a short time, Yuri didn't know what to do with his life until he asked Akane about her past, or roughly... Why she was working as a maid. Akane's face lit up with happiness and excitement for a brief moment as she went on to talk about Utsuro, that expression on her face sparked something within Yuri in the first place. He wants to be someone who when at least one girl thinks of him, they'll light up the same way Akane had.
Yuri was actually smart enough to recognize "Akane" inside of Sora. It's foreshadowing that happens so early on that most don't even realize it. He says that Sora reminds her of someone he's known a long time ago before going on to tell the story above. It's his final FTE we get with him. A piece of the puzzle that Mikado restates later on, Yuri having been connected both VIA Monocrow and through "Akane" herself.
Him remaining the most calm out of literally anyone while realizing they were trapped on the island while not only a nod to his kidnapping events; shows he's got a level-headed approach to things, able to take a step back and analyze their situation they're in. Figuring out how to work with what you got in any given moment can be something people often struggle with doing as the most common response is fight or flight in a situation like that.
Speaking of Monocrow.... It shows Yuri is incredibly smart with computers as well; at least enough to create his own AI. Even if they originally didn't look like Monocrow and was instead a girl. We don't know the original purpose of .... "Mono-san" prior to Mikado's changing of programming/appearance. I like to think there might be a chance she had been based off Akane and take on more of a therapist role to help out others.
None of the participants actually had any trouble with Monocrow the entire time when he was interacting with them, and they all seemed to figure out PRETTY quickly that Monocrow was following the AI written inside him, unable to deviate from it so they never seemed to get mad at the mascot when Monocrow played a bigger role directly then Mikado seemed to.
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Defending Shirou Emiya Being Sexist Mental Gymnastics
hi everyone. did you think i was going to post an extremely long analysis post defending my favourite character being a misogynist today? no? thats what you're getting! the reception to this post could genuinely either be "What the fuck are you actually talking about" or "i thought this was obvious?" i truly do think this is the intent behind all of this writing it just can be very easy to well...see it for what it is, which is incredibly fair.
first of all. fate is a product of its time. it is a 2004 japanese visual novel. it is astonishingly progressive in some aspects but it really, really isnt in others. so going in, the sort of. blatant Vn Protag Behavior from shirou really surprised me and made me uncomfortable and dissapointed at first. it felt out of character. until i thought about it a bit more.
its easy to get annoyed at him for being literally sexist because... he is. or rather, he is a character that exists in a sexist society, written by an author who also exists in a sexist society. but the one obvious thing about shirou is that all of his actions are based around projecting. forgive this text dump as i didnt screenshot it when i was first playing:
"That again? It is only natural for a Servant to fight. How about you, Shirou? Why are you, a Master, telling me not to fight?"
"Well, that's――"
I unconsciously hesitate to reply.
…Well, battles are inevitable as long as I've decided to fight as a Master.
I know I'm contradicting myself by telling Saber not to fight.
But still…
I can't let something like that happen again.
"Then I would like to ask you instead. It seems that you dislike battles, but do you really expect to survive the Holy Grail War like that?
It seems that we will only be defeated by other Masters if we follow your policy."
――Of course not.
I will repel dangers that come at me, and I don't intend to get killed helplessly.
But completely aside from that, I don't want Saber fighting.
"No.
I don't hate the fighting. I just, um――"
It must be much simpler than that.
In short, I…
"――Um, girls can't get hurt. As a guy, I can't let that happen. So if I'm going to let you fight, I'm going to fight myself."
"Wha――you are saying you will not let me fight because I am a woman…!?"
this entire conversation is blatantly because shirou has run out of excuses to throw himself into danger. if you only take the most surface level reading of this, he's just being obnoxious and sexist for literally no reason, but that's not what's actually going on here. note the parts i bolded. first of all, he's struggling to come up with something to deflect rin and saber's confrontation. keep asking yourself questions. okay, he doesn't want girls to get hurt. specifically, he doesn't want saber to get hurt. why does he not want saber to get hurt? he wants to protect her, as he wants to protect everyone, and in turn, make himself the target instead. he wants to be the one getting hurt protecting someone else because he sees himself in moral debt. this has nothing to do with gender, he's just using it as a cheap tactic to deflect, it makes saber and rin angry, which works because they're no longer talking about him being psychologically fucked up. right after, this conversation follows:
"…! Are you not the one getting worked up over insignificant things…!? Are you saying you do not want to be protected by a woman!? My body is that of a heroic spirit. Forget about such trivial aspects!"
"It's not trivial at all! Geez, it's not okay for me even if it's okay for you! It was a mistake from the beginning to have someone fight in my place. I can't――"
I can't allow someone to get hurt,
In place of saving me.
I should be the one doing the saving.
I have been working hard to become a person who can help others like my father, so――
"doing the saving" here is interchangable with "getting hurt". i'll make a full post about this later but shirou views himself getting hurt protecting someone as inherently positive, as using his body as a meat shield is one of the only things he can actually do to "help". in other words, hes fighting against his own sense of worthlessness here.
"…I am saying that you are mistaken. I have never thought of myself as a woman, and I have never been treated as one.
Saber's comment stops the conversation.
"―――――"
As I use the kitchen knife, I feel irritated by Saber's comment.
"…I've been wondering for a while, but just what does she think she is?"
For some reason, I'm getting annoyed.
shirou isn't getting mad here because of some misgivings about gender identity. he's hearing 'woman' and interpreting it as 'person'. frequently shirou will say things like "i'm a guy, so this is normal." this always felt to me like he was trying to reassure himself more than anything. he's trying to convince himself he's normal, just like any guy in his class, and still has normal emotions, just like any of his peers. just like he says right at the beginning. his body survived, but everything else about him burned up into ashes. to keep his body alive, his heart died. Can you still believe this post is about him being sexist? the POINT here is that "being a guy" and "being a girl" to him always has the invisible word "normal" before it. being a normal, ordinary guy, who goes to school and has friends and doesn't have something severely psychologically wrong with him. to him it means being young and innocent and having fun without all of the trauma he faced and the baggage he has. like an ordinary high schooler, having crushes, going on dates and stuff. he excludes himself from that, and yet he can't help but cling to it and insist he really is just like everyone else, especially in the prologue.
in the end, like everything else, it all comes back to him projecting on saber. because he sees her firmly deny being a woman, which is to say, being an ordinary person, like he does, and he sees it uncomfortably reflected back on himself, because he thinks he cant really live normally but at least SABER should be able to right? because that's what it means to protect someone. so when he gets upset that saber doesn't see herself as a woman, he's upset that she doesn't get to live as a person, and he's also upset at himself that he also doesn't have that.
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I read your analysis on Inukoko and Takemikey and I think they are very good! You make a lot of valid points that I haven't seen and you have a good understanding of Japanese culture to take it into account. That said, what are your thoughts on other characters that the fandom attributes to being LGBT? (example. Hakkai, Ran Haitani and Hina as trans) Sorry for the inconvenience, I'm from Brazil and I used a translator for the question. =)
WAHH THANKSSSS I try to be fair with things and keep a good separation between my canon-only perspective with language + cultural data I happen to know, and my personal interpretations and self-indulgence!! I'M VERY HAPPY WITH YOUR COMMENT HONESTLY AAAAAA
And well, WELL.
You guys know how it is with me, nothing's canon until it's bulletproof, no-ambiguity canon. But it's also true that Tokyo Revengers, in general, is pretty queer.
For one, when it comes to Hakkai…
(Fun fact about the last img: many translations online are missing that dialogue, having it cleaned out and possibly forgotten to typeset it in later? Anyway, it translates to "[Mitsuya, about Mikey] Feels kinda lonely when he's up ahead by himself." / "[Hakkai] But you've got me, Taka-chan?")
This sure reads like a crush, anyways. It's mostly out there as comic relief, but the admiration this guy's constantly showing for Mitsuya's coolness and specifically his physical attractiveness and everything, welp, that just about places him in the LGBT somethingsomething bag to me. Maybe it won't get anywhere - it probably won't, cause again, comic relief element - but it's there, his silly little crush on Mitsuya or whatever we should call it.
I'm cool with that! I enjoy and appreciate that Wakui comfortably includes interactions like this in his work. Y'know, along with everything else. With Koko, with Inui, with everything.
Like Chifuyu's feelings for Baji. That's another instance where I'm like "HMM. WELL HOW ABOUT THIS." 'cause, on one hand, the shounen genre sure loves its trope of "my dude, our bond is so deep I will die for you and live for you and I'm not naming what this means except that I'll call you my most important person in this life forever", but on the other hand, their flashback chapter is titled 'man crush' and… 12 years, Chifuyu? The rest of your life, Chifuyu? For his memory alone? Okay okay okay.
Personally, I find other characters to be very much up in the air. Too up in the air to call them canonly queer or canon-adjacently queer, though I do support most of those interpretations.
Ran? I love love LOVE a tall, evil, strong and effeminate bastard. Maybe he just happens to be straight and metrosexual and limp-wristed (I say this lovingly, admiringly), but that sure would be less entertaining than what I've decided in my head. Hanma? Even if you asked me, I wouldn't be able to say what he is, exactly, but if "queer" isn't part of it I'd eat my entire fist. Draken? My bisexual icon and also my beautiful wife. Don't get me started on all the other dudes with crushes on Mikey, we'll be here all night.
But all that is just my view, lmao.
I will say, though, the interpretation of Hina being trans is one thing I respect - as always - but I don't partake in. I don't think an "if I were a boy, I'd do _" moment is anything but conversation, specially in the context of a culture where being a girl or a boy does condition and limit your experiences a fuckton. I'm not saying she can't be trans, of course. I'm saying that her talking about how she'd kick more butt than Michi if she were a boy (because she doesn't see herself doing that as a girl) doesn't necessarily mean that. Can be, everything is fair game in fandom, just not necessarily.
Anyway, really fun question to answer, thank you!!
And PS: don't worry about your english with me ever!! It's not my first language either, I speak spanish, we're all doing our best DHFDH.
#asks#thoughts and talk and so#shiba hakkai#matsuno chifuyu#hakkai#chifuyu#hanma#ran#draken#hinata#tachibana hinata#tokyo rev#tokyo revengers
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Tracking away from my usual drama content for a moment to take you on a walk where my mind is going -- I’ve been thinking a lot about fashion lately and want to meditate on it a little bit.
I’ve been posting/cheesing a lot on my faves lately in my reblogs -- Machida Keita, Akaso Eiji, Seo In Guk, etc. -- not only in part because they are gorge, but also because I’ve long subscribed to the belief that Asian fashion magazines just DO fashion better than in Western content. Editorial spreads, analysis, a focus on fit and tailoring, mixing textures and styles, pushing the boundaries of what can be *carried* on a body (say, like, pairing a handbag with a large tote bag, or experimenting with hems and shoes), documenting a much wider variety of high and street styles -- and doing it in a way that doesn’t seem exclusive to each of the populations that the magazines are targeting.
This is, of course, related in part to the fact that Japan has quite a few more fashion magazines on their newsstands than typical American bookstores. In the States, for edgier content, we have, say, Hypebeast or V or Complex. The sheer slew of *men’s* fashion magazines alone is astounding in Japan, let alone the jawdropping number of women’s fashion magazines. Through my stanning of Japanese actors and actresses through the years, I’ve discovered some magazines that I love, but I’m also just generally drawn to HOW the fashion is depicted and styled. On my highly underutilized IG account, I devotedly follow a number of Japanese stylists and photographers, just for inspiration, while I troll vintage and consignment websites for my actual closet.
Anyway, besides cheesing on my Asian faves (holy crap, the number of covers Machida has had this year is mindblowing, and Akaso is getting more covers, too!), the reason why this is clicking in my mind is because one spread that really got me over the recent holiday weekend is NOT Asian in content or publication -- it’s of one of my fave bands, MUNA, in NME Magazine (London).
I mean, first of all, I just CAN’T.
So if you don’t know MUNA (the majority of Tumblr HAS TO KNOW MUNA, RIGHT?! AAGGHH THEY’RE SO GOOD), they are out of Los Angeles, and how else to describe them? The NY Times said that they’re “breaking out of their cult following and bringing its anthems about queer joy to a wider audience.” MUNA is unabashedly queer, their songs have always reflected this, and they’re just ridiculous pop magicians. They signed to RCA until the pandemic, then they were dropped, then they signed to Phoebe Bridgers’s indie label, Saddest Factory, where they released their self-titled third album this year.
Besides the fact that I’ve been utterly obsessed with their newest album from this year (and I got to see them on tour last month, AMAAAHHHHHZING), this NME spread really blew me away for a couple reasons.
All trends come back, right? There’s something deeply 1990s about what we’re seeing in the pictures -- the heavy boots, the boot-cut pants, the sheer midriff top on Katie (redhead), the sheer bodysuit AND low-rise miniskirt on Katie, the generally brown-red theme of the cover.
But. And. Naomi (curly hair) and Josette (short hair). I fucking don’t think I’ve seen a cover this year where people, either alone or in a group, just fucking owned the AIR of a cover. Not even my gorge Asian faves have owned a cover like this. Look at Josette! Hand on her THIGH, legs spread, owning the ROOM between her stance. Josette in the second pic, all black, muscle-cut shirt, heavy belt, the GAZE at Katie. It’s pure OWNERSHIP OF THE SPACE.
What I love about this NME cover and spread is that the air of the coverage is not about SEX or implied sex, which to be honest, a lot of my fave guy covers and spreads are kinda about. (I mean, look at this -- it’s SFW, it’s Machida on the cover of Nylon Japan. And Seo In Guk’s recent cover from Elle Singapore -- sizzling.)
(And, interestingly, many women’s magazines in Japan very often focus AWAY from sex -- I could meditate more on this vis à vis modesty, but I don’t want to overgeneralize until I can cite much more research.) (Tangent, sorry.)
This NME cover, to me, is about presence and awareness. It’s not about making a damn STATEMENT. It’s about capturing a MOMENT, a breath, a moment in time where MUNA, after a pandemic filled with uncertainty, have found their certainty. (And, honestly -- the spread IS SEXY. But you can tell that they, and the photographer, didn’t need overt signs of SEX to make this moment happen.)
And looking at this spread made me think on queer fashion for a second. Last year, THEM Magazine had an amazing article on what exactly “queer fashion” means. Is it that fashion is created by the queer community? Are there signals, values, visual ticks, that make fashion “queer”? When I read this piece for the first time last year, it really got my antennae up regarding what I would see, critically, in your regular Western collections (say, like, Balenciaga) and to try to see if I could spot a derivative cop from the queer lens.
But I think I understand “queer fashion” better, if the term isn’t already outdated, by seeing this NME spread. For me, at least, I see the presence of a project, of people coming together to make TRUE AND LASTING AND LIFTING ART, by queer people being utterly and unabashedly THEMSELVES. To me, MUNA here is showing themselves visually with the sheer power of their presence, in part by what they’ve chosen to wear, and how to wear it, along with representing and bringing with them the incredible music that they’re celebrating in this spread.
This is really powerful to me. It gives me a chill down my spine -- it makes me think that, as a timid girl in my teens and twenties, that I would have loved to have a little of this confidence growing up.
And I think this spread gives me joy because we’re at a moment in our world’s history where a queer band CAN DO THIS -- own the cover of one of the world’s most important music magazines, breathlessly, confidently, by staring down the camera lens and being their true and honest selves. And they just blow away the spread with layers and layers of deep confidence that, to me, is unbelievably powerful to see.
God, I am just so obsessed with this spread. It gives me so much confidence in being a person. I hope my daughter can be moved by amazing people like MUNA as she grows up.
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Also, like, not for nothing, but there was also a Chinese VIP, right? I'm not misremembering that? Given the history of imperialism there (I'm surprised there wasn't a Japanese VIP tbh), it would absolutely also have made sense for the VIPs to speak Mandarin or something instead. That would have been an equally valid option, and they would have had no shortage of native speakers!
...But they didn't do that. They made English the lingua franca. The singular Chinese VIP was the odd man out. This was on purpose. Even the French guy was white. I didn't even remember the French guy until I looked it up. But I remember the Chinese VIP and I remember that he had a strong accent. In order to communicate with the others, he had to speak a foreign language. That adds so many layers of possible analysis.
Despite the very intimate sort of imperialism Korea has experienced from neighboring countries, the people behind Squid Game made a conscious decision to make the majority of the VIPs white, native English speakers, and in order to cater to them, everyone else, including other VIPs, had to speak English as well, because the Anglophones sure as fuck wouldn't bother trying to learn Chinese. English is the international businessman's language, learning English or having an interpreter is almost necessary to get shit done with Anglophones because of the specific way imperialism has influenced language spread, and monolingual English speakers get catered to because they set the world up specifially in a way that meant they could export the effort and
Fucking...IT WAS ON PURPOSE. FUCK.
FUCK YEAH, IT WAS AND I AM SO PISSED PEOPLE DON'T TALK ABOUT THIS??? Like, fuck you all, you were all playing to be the big intelectuals to speak about how people weren't allowed to make shippy content because that was "missing the point", but then none of you even GET the fucking point of why the ultimate bad guy were written to be that way.
Like, people really understood "capitalism bad hur hur" and then fucking ignored completely what capitalism actually implies as a system from which only certain countries get to benefit the most. You all fucking ignored the context of this critique coming from a korean perspective and how does that affect it. You all can't be speaking about anti-capitalism without anti-imperialism, motherfuckers! You are all missing a big part of the equation here, literally the whole half of it!
And yeah, the chinese guy was the Deer-masked one and, guess what: that also makes perfect sense considering the relationship between Korea and China, but even with that in mind the Chinese man had to "submit" for the convenience of the gringos. The whole fucking event started because of a Korean multimillionaire being bored, but even then English has to be the norm because the financing was never going to took off otherwise and the fucking gringos had to be pandered to or else wouldn't do jackshit for anyone.
Like, the more think about it, the more I find amazing that this show metaphorically took the biggest dump I could think all over american imperialism and americans of all people fucking ate it up like chocolate puddin, said it was delicious and then other fucking gringos with money went out to make their own Squid Games to make themselves more money.
Like, that is fucking incredible for me that american brainwashing is so fucking effective that people only whined because "those were bad actors uwuw" or "why they weren't cooler", all the while patting themselves on the back for picking up on ONE of the themes of the show like the smarty cookies they think they are, as the fucking point was dancing the macarena on top of them.
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It’s one of your ContestShipping anons ✨🌹 and just wanted to be like,,, look if you haven’t listened to the song “Stray Italian Greyhound” by Vienna Teng before 11/10 if you have a moment and want to have feelings I recommend it cause it gives me hardcore yearning Drew POV vibes like maybe Battle Frontier Era roughly,,, ?? Like the lyrics “God I just want to lay down These colors make my eyes hurt This feeling calls for everything that I am Not” and “I’m so good at shooting down any notion This tired world could change … but you had to come along didn’t you Rev up the crowd, rewrite the rule book Where do I go when every ‘no’ turns into ‘maybe’ So what do I do with this?” It gives him, it gives blorbo. It’s given me some writing Inspo for them which who knows if it’ll come of something but wanted to share in case it might make you also see shrimp colors. Thank you for running a cool blog for us for are feral for these nerds again
Oh my god, I am in love with this song. I had never heard it before, but you're SO RIGHT. It just SCREAMS Late AG Drew to me. It DEFINITELY gives me shrimp colors!!!!!
I have MANY favorite lines from this song after many listens. I took a few days to answer this because I REALLY wanted to take time to digest this song, to fully immerse myself in it and understand it, eespecially when given the context of our favorite green dude. Under cut because all of my anons just get essays at this point. I imagine that's what you're here for though!!! If you guys are anything like me, you'll read SO MANY WORDS worth of analysis and opinions on these two. Ok let's go!!!
The biggest lyric that hit me like a truck:
So what do I do with this?
This sudden burst of sunlight, and me with my umbrella
cross-indexing every weatherman's report
I was ready for the downslide but not for spring to well up
OKAY. So, the biggest thing about this to me is this: Spring and Fall. May and Drew's japanese names reference spring and fall, respectively- May, a warm sunshiney prescence and Drew, a chilly autumn breeze bringing in rain with his umbrella (but under the chilly surface sits gorgeous autumnal leaves!). And obviously, this lyric reflects the spring to his autumn, spring that he didn't account for. (I have a theory on Harley and Solidad being summer and winter or vice versa, but this isn't about them and I'm still working on it).
The next set of lyrics that got me was this one.
I've just settled into the glass half empty, made myself at home
I think this lyric fits because Drew is someone who is very comfortable within his own walls, something I reference quite often with him. He puts up walls and they are very difficult to knock down- he settles into this guarded aloofness, this careful, precarious arrogance. Which fits the above quite well-settling into and making yourself at home in a guarded cynicism.
Until someone comes along and knocks it all down. Below lyrics, fragmented.
These inconvenient fireworks / this sudden burst of sunlight / a love that won't sit still.
GOSH anon your mind. it is large. May is this bright spot, this loud firework of heart-on-her-sleeve emotions, this juxtaposition to his cool and calm disposition. tv tropes red blue character symbolism and all that. She's that sun to his clouds, the wrecking ball to the walls he put up so carefully, knocking them over as if they were but dominoes precariously stacked. GOSH I think this song is perfect for him tbh.
Anyways, you have added another song to my contestshipping playlist. as if it needed another. but here we go ALSO GUYS SHARE YOUR CONTEST PLAYLISTS AND OTHER SONGS WITH ME I LOVE DOING THIS STUFF SO MUCH. I love that I ask you guys to send me anons and you actually do!!! I have a LOT of inbox activity for a blog my size and it fills me with SUCH joy, genuinely.
#not that I need to add more to my plate#but i've been rotating a character/ship song of the week thing in my head for a while now#idk if i'll do it#but there's a lot of ideas there and I would have it as like. a thing everyone could do with their own songs and blorbos too#if i did like. tuesday ship/blorbo of the week and everyone added their song for them would you participate???#you could reblog it with a song of your choice and all the symbolism and infodumping you wanted#idk. lmk in comments or on anon if you'd be interested#pokemon drew#contestshipping#ask#asks#taylor's tag#taylor talks#thank you anon!
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so i think i basically sealed away all my memories from when i was really a S////aito Soma stan because i really hate the idea of being slightly obsessed with a real life person, and so i basically just decided to seal every information i had about Soma somewhere so i never thought about it again
but this whole relapse thing that made me think again about all those things and now i’m just cursing myself because yeah no wonder i kind of obsessed about him who allowed him to be this talented, and now i have to cope with this reality that yeah, i knew that, why am i gasping
like dude recently started a novelist career, and i was there gasping surprised as if i didn’t know the guy graduated from ancient japanese literature schools and always had a passion for writing and that’s why he also started his solo musician career eventually outside of just seiyuu work
i think in my head i needed to preserve myself with “ahah yeah he’s a quirky seiyuu” so i could forget this type of things, but then he did a full essay the other day about why he liked his characters in a franchise and it was going in depth in characters analysis and i was just hold on who allowed you hold on
anyway this post is brought to you by the fact that i just remembered i had set up a Soma playlist in the way back and i decided to update it with his newer solo album (not seiyuu work) and put it on random, and the first song, from this year’s new album, just punched me in the guts immediately and i’ve been listening to it on repeat crying for the last hour and what the fuck is this. who allowed him. what. He WROTe and COMPOSED the song? what?
i should listen to all of his newer solo albums but this song genuinely destroyed me right away that i’m terrified to hear more and also i don’t want to move on just yet until i squeezed every possible tears i can get out of this song, which is still ongoing apparently so fuck me i guess.
#like at least when i was obsessed with him in the way back i only knew very seriously one or two of his roles#but now i am struggling so hard because Yelling Feather Boy Is Singing This Gentle Sad Song. What.#whole fist in my mouth biting it.#i'm sorry i'm back on my bullshit from like 3 years ago#ichatalks#mentioning for my own self that it's mostly obsession as an artist not as a person#though at the same time i'm just gnhhhh#anyway man. man. man!!!
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3, 8, 12?
3. What were your top five books of the year?
brutal, demanding question cos I read some good books this year
number 5, Cabbages and Kings by O. Henry. something about the humor in this book which goes from typical slapstick to black humor about the citizens and the government of the US's interest in South American Countries, and the irony that makes the plot go. this book was a minor personal revelation
number 4, Triton by Samuel R Delany. this book is so packed with detail about a society that doesn't exist. there are paragraphs and paragraphs about the fashion mores of male prostitutes on Mars, about an immensely complex fantasy tbs board game or about the political consequences of war in the 24th century. I think this also might be the only 20th century novel by a gay man about a trans woman that doesn't use the trans woman as an empty vehicle for the real guy's half baked theories on sex and gender
number 3, In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka. you guys heard of this Kafka guy? he had fucking abilities. powers
number 2, On Writing by Samuel R Delany. for a collection of essays, interviews and letters this a strikingly coherent book, much more so than many authors' collections of essays. there are sections describing the actual psychology of inspiration/begeisterung or the social mechanics of canon formation that are so so comprehensive; he's drawing on everything from minute grammatical analysis to all encompassing theories about sexuality and race. and he illustrates broader points with concrete examples of personal anecdotes or literary analysis so it's a very easy book to follow even if you're unfamiliar with the theories he's referencing. fucking excellent book
number 1, The Man Without Qualities vol 1 by Robert Musil. I lived in this book for half a year. there are some incredible things a person can do with prose
honorable mentions Toothpick House by Lee Lynch, Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre, the poetry of Mirza Ghalib, and Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon
8. Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones?
I told myself I was going to read more in Spanish and Japanese and not that I haven't done that, but I haven't done either of those as much as I would have liked.
12. Any books that disappointed you?
山田金鉄のあせとせっけん was getting talked up by some tumblr users as "not your mom's heterosexual romcom manga!!" and then it opened — first chapter — with one of the most heterosexual and cliched tropes in all of romance.
Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler was like, fine. coup de grace of contemporary literature was to make a "wan autofictional husk" that showed what's wrong with that kind of thing isn't the wan, the auto or the husk
Lote by Shola von Reinhold. man... some really good shit in this book right up until the end when it became clear the author had no idea what to do with any of the characters or any of the stylistic threads and the whole thing fell to pieces
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