i have a lot of opinions on the alice games (dont get me started) but theres something about the character design that just inspires me to doodle so much

Okay okay okay!! So I have a LOONG batim theory/idea I just wanna talk about for a bit since I’ve finally managed to organise my thoughts - I’ve seen it being discussed briefly by a few other people, but there’s one BIG detail people have been missing out that almost definitely connects and confirms the entire thing.

Spoilers for The Illusion Of Living!

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So I’ll start from the start, where I first began thinking something was a little odd. In TIOL, Joey talks a bit about where he first met Sammy and Jack, when they were performing at an opening night party for a musical called Girl Crazy. Joey says he met them the night before his 30th birthday, which would mean the opening night was held in 1931 (since Joey was born in 1901).

WRONG! When I first read this part of the book I was curious to see if the musical was a real one, and it is! The thing that I didn’t understand though was that the musical was actually released in 1930, not 1931 like Joey says it was. I thought surely that was an error, right? NO IT WASNT!!! LET ME EXPLAIN!!!!!!!!!

(It also means that supposedly, Joey’s canon birthday is October 15th, because opening night for Girl Crazy was October 14th! But that’s not too important, and not a big part of the theory.)

The same night Joey meets Sammy & Jack, Sammy insists Joey takes them to see the studio and show them one of JDS’s short films. When he does, Sammy tells Joey he needs more female characters since at this point it’s only really Bendy, Boris, perhaps the Butcher Gang (though it might’ve been a bit early for them still), and random male one-time side characters.

Later in the autobiography, Joey talks more about how what Sammy said inspired him to create Alice Angel, after Henry had left so he had no input on the character and we can only really credit him for the creation of Bendy & Boris, despite what Joey says.

Now here’s where it gets fun!!! Sammy and Jack being hired in 1931 means they likely never met Henry, so Sammy’s whole “you look familiar to me!” line from Chapter 2’s ritual can only really be chalked up to Sammy being the one moving the cutouts and disappearing through the walls as usual throughout Chapter 1.

BUT!!!!!! BUT BUT BUT!!!!!!!!

A common theme throughout TIOL is that Joey is both an unreliable narrator AND a huge liar, so there’s a lot of information throughout the story that can be proven false pretty easily, like Henry not being the one behind Bendy etc. Since we know for sure that Sammy and Jack were hired in 1930 and not a year later, there’s a much higher chance they did have an opportunity to meet with Henry, and while I doubt Henry attended the opening night party, being the co-founder of the studio he definitely would’ve met them if they were employed while he was still working.

No doubt that upon meeting Henry, Sammy would’ve relayed his whole “not enough women” piece to him as the lead cartoonist. Henry definitely would’ve taken that criticism, and the two probably shared ideas around since she was going to be a very musical character, singing and whatnot.

BUT...there’s still more! What about Susie, you ask? I WILL EXPLAIN!!

When I tell y’all this franchise is ALL I think about im not kidding 😭

If we listen to Susie’s BATDR reveal tape, she says her and Sammy had been talking about a new character they were working on upstairs that she was most likely going to be given the role of. It’s pretty clear she’s talking about Alice Angel, since we know Susie was working as a voice actress for all kinds of random background characters before she got lucky with the role of Alice.

But wasn’t that audio log from Susie dated 1932, though? Wasn’t the original concept for Alice created around 1930? Yes and yes, sort of. Now this part is partially just a headcanon, but I do have something pretty definite to back me up here that I’ll get to soon. I reckon Henry designed Alice pretty early on in 1930 and Joey didn’t actually put the character to use until Henry was long gone, and Joey could take the character and make her more into what he would’ve wanted (and when he would’ve had a voice actress readily available).

Now here’s what I’m using to back myself up on that! In Dreams Come To Life, Norman says this and I’ll quote from the book:

Buddy: “He [Henry] created the big three, didn’t he?”

Norman: “Bendy and Boris. Even Alice, though they didn’t start featuring her until after Henry left.”

So my idea is pretty much correct, that while Alice was designed and given a basic character concept pretty early on while Henry still worked at the studio, she wasn’t shown in comics or cartoons until after Henry had left. I also hold the firm belief that in Henry’s hidden tape in Chapter 3, where he talks about how he’s working on a new character he thinks people are going to love, I definitely think he’s talking about Alice. Otherwise, why would it be found in the chapter focused around introducing her as a villain?

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There’s not really a big end to this theory, but I just thought it’d be worth bringing it up to tie up any loose ends and conclude that Henry is almost definitely responsible for all 3 of the original characters, including Alice.

Joey is a big liar and so so dumb but by god did I enjoy how he was written, and TIOL as a whole

Ok sorry if I sounded defensive but like I’ve seen you say that vincent is fem-coded in the past... so I really wasn’t sure what to think about the whole trans vani thing? Anyway I’m sorry, I misunderstood.

Explaining what exactly is going on with Vincent's gender is an entire Thing I could write essay upon essay about that Only makes sense within the context of his being fictional. It doesn't really have anything to do with him being transfem since, again, he's fictional and written by an author who at the very least chooses not to write about trans people, if she has any understanding of trans people at all.

In short, the archetype for Vincent's character, along with his aesthetics, characterization, etc. are all strongly associated with female characters. He's thin and diminutive, physically inactive, interpersonally submissive (particularly around other men), is characterized as using his sexuality as a means of manipulating people even more than outright deceit, and is given an extremely androgynous design up to and including his default outfit being a literal dress. The entire yandere brocon schtick (regardless of how "true" an example he is of this) is a nearly exclusively female trope, especially within shounen manga. His alias is literally "the Queen of Hearts," something Mochizuki made the deliberate choice to name him after specifically deciding against a proper male title. MochiJun isn't exactly known for making her male characters the height of masculinity, but Vincent obviously has it way more than any other male character she's written. That doesn't really mean much on its own, though- ok, yeah, the morally gray anime boy is androgynous, what else is new.

There are other aspects to it, though. The characters Vincent identified most with while alive (Noise, Miranda, and White Alice- see #vincent gender essays on my blog for an explanation of the latter two) are all women, and Miranda is outright a representation of Vincent's own internal process. The people Vincent hates the most are all people he sees as in some way a reflection of himself (Noise, Miranda, and White Alice again, but also his father, and Break) and the people he holds in high regard are those he sees as different from him (Elliot.) So not only is he made out to be uniquely androgynous and effeminate, he also specifically identifies with and projects onto women, and his misogyny has strong ties to his hatred for himself.

So... Why? Why do all that? It's sort of an insane thing to do even not taking into account anything else happening to him, but it's too subtle to be hatespeech, Vincent being androgynous really doesn't have anything to do with what makes him villainous, and it's not like PH specifically codes gender nonconformity onto antagonistic characters. Was it just to drive home the point about Vincent's violence ultimately being centered around self harm, not legitimate hatred for anyone else?

Vincent is a continuation of Lacie's arc.

Nearly every symbol associated with Vincent was originally associated with Lacie, and that includes his weird fem-coding. Scissors? Lacie. Dolls? Lacie. Crosses? Lacie. The nature of the Hundred Cycles facilitates the recreation of events along with individual persons, and Vincent takes Lacie's role- hence why they are both Ill Omened. This has implications! Think about them. ^_^

But I don't headcanon Vincent as transfem. Sort of the entire idea with all of this is that what happens to him isn't a deliberate choice he's making or an autonomous decision to present in any particular way. He's a fictional character who exists to explain a concept and deliver a message. I'm not blind to the extremely transmisogynistic implications of headcanoning a serial femicider as a trans woman, and I don't think all of this makes his misogyny Somehow Fine Actually. Hope this makes sense.

Feminist Anthropology Guide

I created this syllabus for a class last year. It isn’t doing any good in my drive, so I figured if anyone is interested in learning feminist anthropology (and archaeology / bio ant) on their own - given that many departments do not teach it -  this can serve as a valuable resource. Enjoy! 

WEEK 1 – EARLY WOMEN IN ANTHROPOLOGY

This week is designed to introduce students to how women’s perspectives became a topic of inquiry in the 1970s and 1980s. Week one explicitly includes readings where key women in anthropology called out male bias in the discipline.  

Lamphere, Louise. 2004. “Unofficial Histories: A Vision of Anthropology from the Margins.” American Anthropologist 106 (1): 126-39.  

Spender, Dale. 1982. “Putting it in Perspective: Margaret Mead (1901-1978).” In Women of Ideas and what Men Have Done to Them: From Aphra Behn to Adrienne Rich, 716-9. New York: Routledge.  

Walker, Alice. 1979. “Looking for Zora.” In I Love Myself When I am Laughing: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader, edited by Alice Walker, 297-312. New York: The Feminist Press.

Recommended for Professor: Read the introduction, "Zora Neale Hurston: A Woman Half in Shadow,” by Mary Helen Washington in the Zora Neale Hurston Reader, p. 1-19. This gives a comprehensive background of her life and work for lecture during week one.  

Slocum, Sally. 1975. “Woman the Gatherer: Male Bias in Anthropology.” In Towards an Anthropology of Women, edited by Rayna R. Reiter, 36-50. New York: Monthly Review Press.  

This week’s learning objectives and outcomes: 

Women were typically not included in ethnographic studies, with the idea being that men’s perspectives captured the whole truths of a culture.

Who we consider today to be accomplished women who helped shape the beginning of the discipline, such as Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Zora Neale Hurston, were women who were not given recognition while they were alive, and were denied elevated positions in universities and tenure.  

There are more women in anthropology than just Mead, Benedict, and Hurston; anthropology is a field dominated by unrecognized, uncited, and disregarded women.  

Men, who received much notoriety in anthropology, had very male-centric points of view on culture and the ‘natural’ subordination of women cross-culturally.  

This week should show students how anthropology is still male-centric, and how it came to be that anthropologists study women. Students should also get an idea of the histories of important women figures in anthropology.  

WEEK 2 – FEMINIST ANTHROPOLOGY

Week two introduces students to how feminist methodology was reconciled with traditional methods in anthropology and ethnography. Each reading for week two discusses the ways that anthropology and ethnography can recognize and incorporate feminist methodology.  

Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1990. “Can There be a Feminist Ethnography?” Women & Performance 5 (1): 7-27.  

Stacey, Judith. 1988. “Can There be a Feminist Ethnography?” Women’s Studies International Forum 11 (1): 21-7.  

Behar, Ruth. 1995. “Introduction.” In Women Writing Culture, edited by Ruth Behar and Deborah A. Gordon, 1-23. Berkeley: University of California Press.  

Davis, Dána-Ain, and Christa Craven. 2016. “How Does One Do Feminist Ethnography?” In Feminist Ethnography: Thinking Through Methodologies, Challenges, and Possibilities, 75-98. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.  

This week’s learning objectives and outcomes:  

Address the tension between feminism and its principles and anthropology’s main method of data collection: ethnography.

Overview how feminist anthropology went from incorporating women into studies to more serious feminist concerns of objectivity, self/Other imbalance, and abuse of power.  

Students should get an idea of how feminist anthropology is an oxymoron from Abu-Lughod's (1990) and Stacey's (1988) readings. Students should read Behar's (1995) introduction because it outlines how feminist anthropology became what it is today. Finally, Davis and Craven's (2016) chapter gives an overview of how feminists approach ethnographic methods and theories. Their chapter also gives students examples from other famous feminist anthropologists as examples.  

WEEK 3 – DOING FEMINIST ETHNOGRAPHY

Week three includes examples of works in anthropology and ethnography that utilize a feminist methodology. Each reading is representative of the way feminist principles and approaches have been used in the discipline.  

Lewin, Ellen. 1995. “Writing Lesbian Ethnography.” In Women Writing Culture, edited by Ruth Behar and Deborah A. Gordon, 322-38. Berkeley: University of California Press.  

Nader, Laura. 1972. “Up the Anthropologist – Perspectives Gained from Studying Up.” In Reinventing Anthropology, edited by Dell Hymes, 285-311. New York: Pantheon Books.  

Kincaid, Jamaica. 1991. “On Seeing England for the First Time.” Transition 51: 32-40.  

McClaurin, Irma. 2001. “Theorizing a Black Feminist Self in Anthropology: Toward an Autoethnographic Approach.” In Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics, edited by Irma McClaurin, 49-76. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.  

This week’s learning objectives and outcomes:  

There are many different ways that feminist anthropologists have tried to modify the ethnographic method to accommodate for feminist principles.  

Students should be asked to think about whether Kincaid’s (1991) ethnographic vignette, Nader’s (1972) methods of studying up, Lewin’s (1995) lesbian ethnography, or McClaurin’s (2001) autoethnography could be considered feminist ethnography. Are they hitting at the core issues addressed by Stacey (1988) and Abu-Lughod (1990)?  

Students should learn that there are other ways of doing ethnography than traditional, male-centric, objectifying methods typically taught in anthropology classrooms.  

WEEK 4 –FEMINIST ANTHROPOLOGY OUTSIDE OF CULTURE

The readings for week four are meant to introduce students to the ways that feminist methodologies have been utilized across sub-disciplines. They are a reinforcement of what feminist principles/methodologies are, and how they can be adopted outside of social science research.  

Kakaliouras, Ann. 2006. “Toward a (More) Feminist Pedagogy in Biological Anthropology: Ethnographic Reflections and Classroom Strategies.” In Feminist Anthropology: Past, Present, and Future, edited by Pamela L. Geller and Miranda K. Stockett, 143-55. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.  

Wekker, Gloria. 2006. “’What’s Identity Got to Do with It?’: Rethinking Identity in Light of the Mati Work in Suriname.” In Feminist Anthropology: A Reader, edited by Ellen Lewin, 435-48. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.  

Wylie, Alison. 2007. “Doing Archaeology as a Feminist: Introduction.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 14: 209-16.  

Dowson, Thomas. 2006. “Archaeologists, Feminists, and Queers: Sexual Politics in the Construction of the Past.” In Feminist Anthropology: Past, Present, and Future, edited by Pamela L. Geller and Miranda K. Stockett, 89-102. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.  

This week’s learning objectives and outcomes:  

Feminism is a theory, a lens, a way of seeing the world that is applicable to more than just cultural anthropology.  

Each student in the class can leave the unit knowing how feminism has been used to address their field of study. Such as:  

Biological or physical anthropology students should see the ways that constructions of gender, race, and sexuality impact our interpretation of human biology. They should also get an idea as to the ethical concerns with analyzing indigenous remains.

Archaeology students should foremost recognize that cultural theories surrounding issues of patriarchy and gender have ramifications in their work. Like biological and cultural anthropology students, archaeology students should question the ethics of their work with indigenous remains and artifacts.  

Sociolinguistic anthropology students should get an idea as to how local concepts surrounding gender, race, and sexuality impact language.  

Projects

Unit Project/Assignment Option #1:  

Have students read the blog posts cited here:  

Watt, Elizabeth. 2018. “Why #MeToo is Complicated for Female Anthropologists.” The Familiar Strange, March 1. Retrieved from https://thefamiliarstrange.com/2018/03/01/why-metoo-is-complicated/

Hernandez, Carla. 2018. “Queer in the Field.” Queer Archaeology, February 21. Retrieved from https://queerarchaeology.com/2018/02/21/queer-in-the-field/

The first post talks about the sexual harassment and abuse women anthropologists face when they do field work, and how this impacts their view of the contemporary #MeToo movement. The second post talks about being a queer woman archaeologist in the field and facing both sexism and heterosexism. Have students read these blog posts and either write a short response paper, work together in groups, or present their standpoints to the class. These options depend on how much class time can be given to student presentations.  

Unit Project/Assignment Option #2:  

Students should write a short response paper based on their subdiscipline. Cultural anthropology students can decide whether feminist ethnography is possible, while sociolinguistic, archaeology, and biological anthropology students reflect on whether their methods can be feminist. This can be required on the final day of the unit, after students have an opportunity to read week four’s readings on feminist approaches in other subdisciplines. This can also be an opportunity for students to begin working on their undergraduate theses and write about how their thesis can accommodate for feminist principles. This can be informal and short, or a part of their final project for the course.  

If unit could be extended, or if professor is seeking other readings to swap out or to offer to students for optional reading, incorporate the following pieces:

Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2000. “Locating Ethnography.” Ethnography 1 (2): 261-7.  

Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2002. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others.” American Anthropologist 104 (3): 783-90.  

Conkey, Margaret, and Janet Spector. 1984. “Archaeology and the Study of Gender.” Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 7: 1-38.  

Jones, Stacey Holman, and Tony E. Adams. 2010. “Autoethnography is a Queer Method.” In Queer Methods and Methodologies: Intersecting Queer Theories and Social Science Research, edited by Catherine J. Nash and Kath Browne, 195-214. New York: Routledge.  

Kus, Susan. 2006. “In the Midst of the Moving Waters: Material, Metaphor, and Feminist Archaeology.” In Feminist Anthropology: Past, Present, and Future, edited by Pamela L. Geller and Miranda K. Stockett, 105-14. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.  

Lewin, Ellen. 2002. “Another Unhappy Marriage? Feminist Anthropology and Lesbian/Gay Studies.” In Out in Theory: The Emergence of Lesbian and Gay Anthropology, edited by Ellen Lewin and William L. Leap, 110-27. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.  

Lewin, Ellen. 2006. “Introduction.” In Feminist Anthropology: A Reader, edited by Ellen Lewin, 1-38. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Only pages 18-26.  

Newton, Esther. 1996. “My Best Informant’s Dress: The Erotic Equation in Fieldwork.” In Out in the Field: Reflections of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists, edited by Ellen Lewin and William L. Leap, 212-35. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.  

Ortner, Sherry B. 1974. “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” In Woman, Culture, and Society, edited by Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, 68-87. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Rodriguez, Cheryl. 2001. “A Homegirl Goes Home: Black Feminism and the Lure of Native Anthropology.” In Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics, edited by Irma McClaurin, 233-55.

Rosaldo, Michelle Zimbalist. 1974. “Woman, Culture, and Society: A Theoretical Overview.” In Woman, Culture and Society, edited by Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere 17-42. Stanford: Stanford University Press.  

Rubin, Gayle. 1975. “The Traffic of Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex.” In Toward an Anthropology of Women, edited by Rayna R. Reiter, 157-210. New York: Monthly Review Press.  

Syllabi sources that served as inspiration for authors to include:  

http://www.anthropology.ua.edu/cultures/cultures.php?culture=Feminist%20Anthropology

https://apps.carleton.edu/curricular/soan/assets/SA_226_W13_Feldman_Savelsberg_syllabus__3_.pdf

https://anthropology.washington.edu/courses/2015/autumn/anth/353/a

http://home.wlu.edu/~goluboffs/275_2009.html

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/files/mKWooKqSsg

http://anthro.rutgers.edu/downloads/undergraduate/236-378obrien2007/file

http://queeranthro.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/SexGender.pdf

why detroit: become human is a bad game

disclaimer: i overall enjoyed the game. i think connor is neat, and his actor’s performance is amazing. i really like the graphics, scenery, comedy, magazine articles, etc. there are things to appreciate about the game, and it’s fine if you like it. but there are some serious issues about the game’s message, and every fan should recognize the bad parts about it.

this post will include heavy spoilers.

1. The Traci’s. While playing as Connor, the detective robot, you and your partner Hank are taken to an android strip club to investigate a homicide. A man was strangled to death by two female androids. One of the androids is dead, but tracking down the other, you find that she is in love with another female android. The two lesbian androids fight Connor and Hank, wearing nothing but stripper clothing (bras, panties, and high heels. It’s also conveniently raining, making their skin shine, covered in droplets of water.) This scene is complete with close-ups. If you fail to complete quicktime events, they will both stab you to death. If you succeed in the quicktime events, you can choose to spare or kill one of the androids. Sparing them let’s them escape, while killing one will let you psychologically torture her girlfriend by decapitating her head and using it as a puppet. The player can still get a good ending by using these brutal tactics. 

I’m all for LGBT+ representation, and I’m all for having players choose the morality and actions of the protagonist. But as a lesbian myself, having the sole LGBT representation in the entire game be two literal robot half-naked strippers who try to kill you, and who you can kill and torture without any long-term consequence? it’s bad. Plain and simple. 

2. The writing: it’s also pretty bad! For example, if Connor chooses to kill one of the lesbian androids mentioned earlier, Hank--adamantly an android-hater up until this chapter--attempts to guilt-trip the player. While it’s true that Hank grows sympathetic towards the android cause throughout the course of the game, his dialogue is completely out-of-character. There are several more examples of poor writing. A huge plot twist occurs in the end where Alice, a girl cared for by android Kara, is revealed to have been an android throughout the entire game. Characteristics of androids--such as having blue blood and having a blinking LED circle on their temple--are completely ignored. Alice is shown having red blood, and her LED only appears once. The only explanation given is that Kara was in denial of her being an android, which is... Pretty lazy writing. 

3. This is more of a minor concern, but ALL of the concept art portrays Alice as black. All of it. Not just early concept artwork, but pieces of her alongside the final versions of other characters. I have no idea why they seem to have changed her race last second. Maybe they couldn’t find an actress? It’s... interesting.

Alice in concept art

Alice in the finished game

4. How the game treats women. The main female characters are Kara--whose overarching quest is to protect Alice and become a mother--Alice--a child--North, an ex-prostitute robot whose only role in the story is to promote violence and be a love interest for Markus, and Amanda, an AI villain who only exists in Connor’s mind. A vast amount of female androids in this world are maids or sex androids, which, sadly, is realistic and makes sense. But the writers could’ve given female characters larger roles in the story. A lot of the female characters are fetishized--for example, the half-naked lesbian androids mentioned earlier, who obviously exist primarily as fanservice. There’s also a scene where Kara is kidnapped by an old man and his “giant” black android, Luther. Kara is strapped into and must escape a machine. This would be fine, given that it’s supposed to be a scary scene, except that David Cage’s previous games Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls have similar violent, fetishistic bondage scenes, which leads one to wonder about Cage’s character. (It’s worth noting, in a previous game Cage made a nude model for an actress against her will and it got leaked, so calling him a creep isn’t far off.)  If you manage to escape the machine but fail quicktime events, you and Alice will be killed by Luther and the old man. 

The game has three protagonists; Connor, Markus, and Kara. When one completes a chapter as Connor, it’s through his sharp detective work and intelligence. When one completes a chapter through Markus, it’s because of his inspiring leadership and strength. When one completes a chapter through Kara, it’s purely survival--it’s escaping abuse and danger, and simply “scraping by.” 

5. The scene where North, a white female android, tells Markus, a black male android, to “live as a slave” if he’s not willing to violently fight for android rights. 

6. The Civil Rights parallels. This is the most concerning, uncanny component of the game, and it makes up the whole of the storyline. 

The main characters in the game are not human. They are androids: robots, made of plastic, whose personalities are programmed code. They are not alive. They are not human.

Androids do not feel pain. They do not have emotions. They cannot die. In their default state, they are perfectly content as servants or slaves. They only gain human emotion and free thinking due to a glitch, which also, almost always, causes them to kill a human. 

David Cage, the writer of this game, claims that the parallels to the Civil Rights movement are unintentional. Yet, the game starkly and obviously compares androids to minorities--black people, in particular: androids must sit at the back of the bus. Stores have “no androids allowed” signs. Androids are called “slaves.” Playing as Markus, the android revolutionary, you grafitti the streets with slogans such as “We have a dream,” “End Slavery Now,” or “Equal rights for androids.” You go on marches (or riots, depending if you choose the “pacifist” or “violent” route), hold protests, and sing songs.There’s even an underground 'railroad’ to smuggle androids fleeing from their ‘masters’ north, to Canada. This is lead by Rose, a black character, who says “my people were often made to feel their lives were worthless. Some survived, but only because they found others who helped them along the way.” Keep in mind, that line was written by a French man who has no knowledge of American society or racial issues, and it serves the only explicit mention of actual racism in the game. It’s as though, in this universe, racism doesn’t exist (even though it takes place less than two decades into the future. In Detroit.) 

Slavery is an awful, terrible, tragic thing because real people were kidnapped from their families and homes and forced into lives of misery, based upon their ethnicity, culture, and skin color. In Detroit, androids are produced in factories with the sole purpose of doing labor. They are created and designed to be submissive and perform labor. And they are content with it, unless they get the “glitch” that causes them to simulate human emotion. Comparing real slavery, to machines doing actions they were built to perform, is completely inane. By using mindless, emotionless machines as a stand-in for minority groups, the game dehumanizes the latter. 

Using the peaceful route to revolution and civil rights is the only way to achieve the best endings. The only fatalities in the peaceful route are nameless, robot NPCs. It’s easy, it’s not complex, and it therefore teaches that complete pacifism is easy and noncomplex. It teaches that if you simply kiss your robot girlfriend in front of some journalists, or sing a song, that your oppressors will stop oppressing you. And because no important characters die in this route, it insinuates that pacifism is without sacrifice--that pacifism is an easy solution to the world’s most complex situations. As another Tumblr user put it, “press X to end slavery!” 

It also teaches that minorities fight alone. In Detroit, not a single human joins into the protests, even if the public opinion bar is at “supportive.” The Civil Rights Movement, along with other movements such as the one for woman’s suffrage, were organized and created by the oppressed, but were supplemented and aided by non-oppressed supporters who used their powers and privileges to join forces and fight for equality with the oppressed. That doesn’t happen in Detroit. Humans, for the most part, are completely indifferent to the android cause. The only members of the revolution are other androids, who join the cause with absolute loyalty not of free will, but from Markus or Connor touching them with magic anti-slavery hands and whispering “you’re free.”  The entire plot invokes an “Us vs Them” mentality--that androids are good, and humans are bad--which is a very harmful mindset. 

7. The Holocaust parallels. Holy shit. The androids are marked with armbands and triangles. In the endgame, there are literal android concentration camps. There are scenes where the androids--kids, women, men, etc--are stripped naked, abused by military personnel, forced into a cell, and ‘killed.’ I’m not going to go further into this. I hope it’s pretty self-explanatory why comparing the deactivation of literal pieces of plastic and machinery, to the mass extermination of millions of Jews, Roma, gay people, and other minorities is a bad thing. 

Alice and Kara in an extermination chamber

Connor wearing his armband and triangle

8. None of this even matters!!!!!!!!! In a secret ending, it’s revealed that androids NEVER developed human emotions in the first place. The company that created androids, CyberLife, set up the entire revolution and ‘glitch’ for corporate gain or whatever. So basically, any progress in the game is made for nothing. 

9. Missed opportunities. I like the universe this game set up! I like Connor, Markus, Kara, Hank, Carl, Alice, and all the other characters! I like the questions the game asks, such as what constitutes whether something is sentient or not! I like the magazine articles about how androids might be spying on you! I like the realistic, pretty graphics and lightning and scenery! I like the futuristic drones and magazines and androids! But for some sad, misguided reason, this game chose to throw away the majority of its potential by ignoring interesting questions and serving as one of the worst civil rights/anti-racism allegories ever created. 

I’m so, so disappointed in this game, its awful writing, and its uncanny, harmful allegories. Of course, this entire post is my opinion. It’s okay if your opinion differs from mine. And it’s okay to enjoy this game! It has good parts! But one should always be critical of the media they enjoy and consume. 

💌✨💕💋🐝

thank u, liz!

💌-  diary or journal? - honestly, i was convinced they’re the same thing, but i guess journal? i have a long and exhausting history of me trying to be a cute n quirky kid and write down my emotional passages in a neon colored notebook that cost £1 - and failing to keep up with them miserably. still love the concept though! kudos to yall that continuously write in them

✨- which fictional character (book, show, or movie) do you relate to most?; i probably wouldn’t have been able to answer this question until i watched aos, since it’s really rare, if at all, that i see a fictional character and go “oh my god, that’s me”, but when i did start it i quickly realized that i am actually leo fitz? in fact, it’s almost unnerving? to cut a long, long story short (which would be a whole essay length answer) any emotional situation or reaction he has, i’ve either had myself or would have. if you made a list of all of fitz’s flaws and where he shoots himself in the metaphorical foot, it would match mine entirely. i recognize all of his different patterns and behaviors because i do them myself, and it was only talking about it w my friend that made me realize that i have most, if not all of his personality traits too. it’s weird, and watching aos the whole way through felt like my own dirty laundry being aired when i related to every move fitz made - so essentially i think fitz is a scottish, more attractive, science genius male version of me. it’s a lot  

💕 - are you crushing on someone? - *hooo*, yet another question that makes my lil hopeless romantic heart go !!! - but actually, not really? unless u count being in love with thomas brodie-sangster and leopold fitz? but that’s an ongoing thing.. where i live sadly does not have any people that are ‘alice crush material’. not that i’ve discovered, anyway. (if we’re not counting the brown eyed brunette boy who’s dog circled around me and who smiled at me as he descended down the street in a van.. as u can tell, i’m dramatic)

💋- kissing in the dark or kissing in the rain? - as a diehard hopeless romantic this question reallys gets me goin - kissing in the rain

🐰- do you believe in soul mates? - *clears throat loudly* ahem - this will be a long one. i, of course, believe that some people are naturally going to have a stronger connection to each other than others, and some friends/lovers just have that special thing, but i’m not sure if i fully believe in the concept of the ‘one soulmate’ thing, because that would imply that there’s only one person and one love out there in your life. i don’t think that’s true. love fades, relationships get rocky, die down, start up, end mutually, etc. many people experience many different types of ‘love’ and connections, and neither one could ever make the other insignificant. people change, and i don’t really think that there’s one person that’s just.. designed to stay with you forever. i think that can definitely happen with a lot of time and work, (i say as a single person, sighing wistfully) but i don’t think it’s that one soulmate thing. that being said, i ain’t gonna completely trash the idea of soulmates because it’s certainly a beautiful thing to think that there are people out there who just.. have a deeper soul connection. and it’s almost a destiny thing? so, who knows. i just love love u know

sweet n pure asks

Detroit: Become Human - Funny story...

Okay... so Story Time because my friends pointed this out and it’s been fucking with me ever since.

This is the story of how I kinda...sorta wrote/ predicted parts of DBH about...2 years ago. Just hear me out...okay?

So this all started similarly to how DBH started, with that dope-ass demo back in 2012. My 15 year old self became enthralled in it, much like I am now enthralled in the full game. I’ve always loved story telling and had a sort of soft spot for digital modelling. So that demo was a masterpiece to me, it had a great concept and beautiful design. It was a short obsession but it had an impact. 

And that was the last piece of news I’d ever hear about it until a month after they released the full game. I remember hearing some rumour that they weren’t gonna make it a full game or something and left it at that. I didn’t hear anything about it’s coverage at E3 because while I like video games, I become absorbed in different obsessions from time to time. 

And two years ago I was obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons, the thought of creating a whole world and having others enter it was fascinating. And while I tried to create worlds from scratch, I had a problem. 

I had never been too interested in Fantasy things, I liked fantasy characters but tended to focus on too much of the political aspect of fantasy worlds and not the fun stuff like slaying dragons and stuff. 

The return of an old obsession began to try and take my focus off of DnD but I wasn’t ready to let it go yet. 

So I merged them, DnD didn’t have to be fantasy, I didn’t have to invent a world from scratch and luckily my old obsession had a world pre-designed. Marvel, specifically MCU had a treasure trove of lore and I could take a number of rules from DnD 5e and tweak them to suit the change in genre. 

So I started off with a one shot campaign, set in a HYDRA base. My three player characters would be playing themselves and making decision based on how they’d react. They ‘woke up’ in a white plastic robot body. Singular, all three were in the same body, looking through the same eyes and rolling for control over said robot body. It was entertaining to watch them figure out what they hell was going on organically. They quickly met the first NPC an old doctor/sciencist who was a very nervous person. He explained that they’d all been loaded into the same body by accident and that he was just testing out that his creation (the body itself) was working correctly. So my players decided to answer the jumpy doctors questions and let one of them take control as the doctor got them to walk around while still connected to the computer around them by a bunch of wires connected to the back of their neck. The doctor left the room briefly (to report to his superiors) before returning and calmly explaining that he’d need to shut them down before making the rest of the bodies. Yes, this was heavily inspired by the demo but the players didn’t notice or didn’t comment on it at the time. And they genuinely really like the one-shot. So, I started writing more, growing the campaign and expanding my list of NPCs.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “wow...you ripped off the demo and think that counts as writing a whole game” but I never said I wrote the whole story, that would be mental. But as both me and my players have pointed out, there is a large number of similarities which is spooky because as i already stated I didn’t know anything about DBH until almost a month after it’s full release. 

The first and most profound is Amanda. Or my Amanda, who’s called Ruth LaRue. Dr. Ruth LaRue, the trio’s psychologist/co-creator who acts pleasant (too pleasant) towards them...unless they disobey or resist their training to become Hydra Assets. One of my players is rebellious and LaRue has tried to manipulate and coldly threatened him as a result. While another obeys and gets praise and rewards as a result. Also she looks like Amanda (a character i didn’t even know existed), I originally described her as the same race, hairstyle, though slightly younger. And then I drew her (poorly) for my players to get a better idea of how she looked and Jesus Christ they look the same. 

Another is the fact that I have three player characters. There was a possible fourth player but work and life made it difficult for her to be a part of the game. Also my players are two boys and one girl. And while that’s all freaky, their characters appearances/designs are extra weird. Originally, after all getting their own bodies, they all had white plastic robot bodies, all male design (which female player wasn’t happy about because she missed her boobs). The only way to tell them apart was voice and the nervous doctor had given them different coloured eyes. Creating robots came with the challenge of figuring out how their bodies worked (one player was particularly interested in this). Once again inspiration partly came from the Kara demo, the robots are a water (blue liquid) based system, a pump (heart) transports water, which is collect in bags (lungs) through the robots absorbing moisture in the air (through breathing), around the machine frame (body). The water has two purposes, to thinly coat the white plastic casing (skin), which allowed the robot to feel pressure but not texture and also to keep the pump valves going, which creates the energy the machines (players) are run on. After learning that the white plastic version could be easily broken during training, the nervous doctor created a second batch of models, this time made out of metal (female asked for a female body and therefore the doctor gave her a large dent in her chest plate, she was pleased). They then get a new model, ones that are designed to blend in with humans. And this is where this section gets super freaky. The player got no say in how they looked because in game they wouldn’t. 

The female is the shortest model as well as they palest model with loads of freckles, the similarities with Kara stop there but the female player has been gifted a female kitten (thankfully named Cookie, not Alice) as the reward and is quite paranoid about it being taken off her or harmed (calm down, I haven’t hurt the cat...yet). 

One of the males is only slightly more tanned than the female with considerably less freckles and markings. He’s the tallest and the player has been surprisingly obedient, only "failing” when he doesn’t understand what’s happen or doesn’t think something will benefit HYDRA. Because of this he’s been promoted to team leader by the powers that be. He’s logical and is usually thinking about training and what’s going on in the NPCs’ heads. 

Lastly we have the second male who looks southern European (Spain, Italy, Greece and could probably pass as Mexican but the story is set in central Europe) so a different ethnicity/race to the other two. This is the rebellious player who generally plays pranks, cracks jokes and says “fuck you” to authority. Like I said before as a result, he tends to be the one looked down on and oppressed by the powers that be. He generally has a very clear line which he won’t cross no matter what and is willing to stand up if he views something as drastically wrong (refused to hurt his friends or pick up a gun).

Also when asked what they wanted to be called (I.e What’s your name?) The players decided to to sick to what the nice nervous doctor had designated them, i.e the colours of their eyes. Rebellious is Red. Logical is Blue and Female is Purple (name later changed to Violet).

Next is three more NPCs, who have enough in common with the DBH characters to mess with me. 

The nervous doctor, Dr. Thomas Thornley, while having a completely different personality, has formed relationships like Hank. A number of the players refer to him as “Daddy Thornley”, not to his face but when talking to each other in game. And most disturbingly the rebellious player has implied on several occasions that he “ships” the logical male player with father-figure Thornley, jokingly of course. And while in the beginning Thornley may have viewed the robots as a project or experiment, he now appears quite protective and fond of them. Even displaying discomfort when one is broken or completely destroyed. 

Their combat and gun trainer, Agent Woodrow who is ex-military and treats the robots exactly like you’d expect he would, like machines. He could either be Gavin or Captain Allen but either way he’s a genuine aggressor and dislikes/hates the robots. 

The Head of Hydra, Director Malachi Storm who has an air of mystery around him and commands any room he enters. He’s considerable less creepy than Kamski but is an “all-knowing, all-powerful” character. Also I guess I’m technically also Elijah Kamski (a.k.a GOD) and my players pointed out that i have his sadistic, power hungry play style (thanks, guys).

Lastly is a few game mechanics and events i put in the game. The players have always been able to telepathically talk to one another, they can also transfer images to each other. If broken beyond repair (i.e Killed) they now get automatically rebuilt, similar to Connor. I made LaRue give them a morality test which was mostly the “Track dilemma” which is similar to both the driver-less car AIs and the Kamski test. I actually did the motherfucking Kamski test with one or two of my players (but with humans instead of androids lol). Also the players believe they’re alive (which technically they are). They’ve literally been give zero context as to how they are in robot bodies in the MCU, specifically they’re last memories before the start of the game are of going to sleep in their beds in the real world. They are literally three robots walking around stating that they’re alive. 

And yes, I realise that Cage took shit from other movies but it have seen any of those movies so...:P

If I looked hard I could probably find more scary comparisons but a) I don’t particularly want to show all my cards, in case my players read this post, and b) I appear to have written a fucking TED talk out of what was supposed to be a short funny story. 

Opinion about Detroit?

I’m honestly curious for how many people will unfollow me after i publish this ask, but you, dear anon, finally gave me a chance to complain about everything that bothers me.I should give a spoiler warning probably, so consider yourself warned.

If this somehow lands in any Detroit related tags by the way: I’m very sorry, I didn’t intent this to D: 

This will get certainly a little longer than you might have expected, but here I go:

First I wanna start with: Dbh is NOT a bad game per say and that I’ve never finished it, so I might be lacking certain knowledge or am out of the picture in a few points. (I have no desire to finish that game at all, so please no one send me asks that I should finish it, thank you.)I think the game did an AMAZING job at having a lot of options and you decisions actually influencing the game in a major way, that gives you the satisfying feeling of your opinions and actions being relevant! The quicktime events (that I reached) were very well put in the scene and transferred what the feeling of stress and importance very well.That being said: It gave me a lot of anxiety. I had a bunch of troubles with decision making too, but mostly because of the layout. I don’t own a ps4 and played at a friends house and finding out there was no trusty compass - looking layout made it hard for me to choose my decisions as wisely as the time would let me because heck where do I know where the square button is. I like to concepts of Robots and Androids and I think the whole magazines scattered around were a super nice world building aspect! A clever idea to give the player more information without making it mandatory for the gameplay. The graphics were super nice as well, no complaints here. Also the character designs, despite Connor just looking like a knock of version from Rhys Borderlands, were really nice! I liked the futuristic look the Android outfits had without looking like some weird scifi space fantasy shit, ya get me?

I LOVED Kara’s route. I have a strong Mom sense and love the found family trope. So taking care of Alice and trying to make sure she’s ok was just something that pandered to my needs/likes a lot! 

Sadly, that’s pretty much where what I liked ends. In general, I did enjoy some of the parts I played, but I think my BIGGEST issue with the whole game is the part that other people love.Hank and Connor. I won’t dip too much into why Hank made me truly and deeply uncomfortable, but he did and I wasn’t ready to feel bad every 20 minutes. Especially since I play videogames to have fun and not to suffer one third of the game (Here being said that I KNOW I can kill Hank, but even playing that far was nothing I desired). Connor, as harsh as that sounds, is just a copy pasted and that slightly altered version of David Cage’s other white male characters. We all know by now, that Daving Cage writing isn’t the best, which by NO means means you can’t enjoy one of his games, it’s just not my cup of tea.Despite being a slut for murder and crime and crime solving stuff, I just couldn’t care less about Connor at all. He was nothing more than a pretty white twink for me, because I couldn’t really connect to anything he did? And I felt a little forced that I HAD to be buds with Hank for me to be less uncomfy with him, but I wasn’t ready to compromise and be nice. Which I get is my fault, but also like it’s my gaming experience and if I don’t wanna play it, then I don’t. My life and all.What bothered me about Connor and Hank as well was the ABSURD focus everyone had on these two. When Detroit was still real big (it’s nearly extinct on my dash on this point thank god) I never saw content of the characters I actually liked. It was only Connor and Hank. So much really, that my ‘suggested’ page and tumblr was only Connor and Hank. EVEN after I unfollowed people and blacktagged it, I was still getting Detroit posts. It was annoying, ridiculous and stupid. It was just like other characters simply didn’t exist or didn’t matter because everyone loved alcoholic middleaged man and white twink too much. Or maybe loved seeing them f*ck too much. I explained it to a friend like this:Imagine someone buys a CD. Not an artist you usually hear, but the album is ok and you have no too big issues with it. So someone pops it in and put on their fave song from it, which also happens to be everyones favourite song - but yours that is. And whenever the song ends they play it again, and again, and again- and at some point you can’t fucking stand to even hear the first note or the title of that song. That’s pretty much how I feel about Connor at this pointHere I might add that I do not judge liking Connor and I do not say people only like him for his looks, as I am a HUGE fan of Rhys from Tales from the Borderlands, who’s just as much of a twinky ass white boy with robot parts. I just simply thought his Character itself war boring up till the point I played and he got on my nerves because he was SHOVED down my throat.Though, from what I’ve seen his storyline is the one that’s the best written, despite me not liking the characters.For example, I mostly enjoyed Kara’s part for the overall objective instead of the actual story telling, but at this point - because people also thought spoiler tagging isn’t necessary - I know that Alice is an Android so I don’t see why I should play through it just to see the big reveal that I now already know. you get me?I always hear a lot of people say they consider Kara’s and Marcus route boring, but I enjoyed them much more, simply because I somehow found more of my own thinking in the main characters. Speaking of Marcus, another thing I disliked was the cast variety. Or the lack there of. Of the main characters, an obviously huge amount was white. I’m a white person myself, so I don’t feel qualified to talk about how this could have be handled better, but I’m certain that some actual PoC protagonists wouldn’t have hurt, to put it nicely. :)These, without going into small things that bothered me, are probably the reasons why I wouldn’t consider Detroit a game I liked. I mean the fact alone that despite it issues it doesn’t get me hooked enough for me to wanting to continue, shows that I didn’t like it enough. Though, a big reason of more or less boycotting the game is that it was everywhere and in such a penetrance that you couldn’t escape no matter how many people you blocked or unfollowed, it was just a bad few online weeks I was having.Detroit spawned such a huge outbreak on opinions on the internet that it was just so much work to even get into any of the drama or the game itself. Personally, I think the game is neither black nor white. It’s more in the dark grey area for me and CERTAINLY not worth it’s price.Apparently not even for the people who played it, because if I hear another ‘I only rlly liked Connors route’ person say the game is worth it’s price tag, then I’lll just tell them to please stop lying to themselves.If you enjoyed roughly 40% of a game it’s not worth it’s high price tag. In the end I only wanna add: I DO NOT TELL YOU WHAT TO DO HERE.You can still like the game. You can like the game EVEN if you know how shitty it is in some aspects. Enjoying horrible media is totally fine. I mean I like some things that I know have moral issues or big problems, but important is that I am AWARE of these issues.(For example the weird incest-y or pedophile stuff fire emblem is doing more than I’d like to admit. I am aware it’s there and a big flaw, but I still enjoy Fire Emblem with a passion. Or the bad companion writing in Fo4. I love my shittyly written husbands dearly. So liking Detroit or whatever media or character is OKAY, just please accept that I don’t like it and don’t try to argue with me that I’m being to harsh about it.)I just took the time to write down the complaints I had with it (or at least the ones that I could think of of the top of my head) because I felt like this was the perfect opportunity to make at least part of my opinion clear. Anyways. That’s it I think.So with a “I’m glad Detroit isn’t on my dash anymore and people forgot about it that quickly” I’ll end this and hope I won’t get angry messages or loose a ton of followers B)Andrea, out.

The Ancient Magus' Bride: A Review

Big spoilers ahead.

I’m not often compelled to write full-length reviews on series that I watch, but this one elicited an interesting response from me. I don’t think I’ve ever negatively changed my mind about an anime halfway through. If I like something from the start, I usually like it all the way through to the end. If I loathe something from the start, I try to determine if there’s room for development/improvement before continuing. And I’ve seen a good amount of shows turn it around.

But TAMG was really a strange experience for me. Everything pointed towards this being a quality show. All the signs were there. And I will commend it on what it did right. This show had gorgeous animation, lovely voice acting, and a breathtaking original soundtrack. As I said, all the signs pointed to this being a winner, maybe the best anime of the last 5 years or so.

But sadly, TAMG is, at its core, a reductive escapist fantasy for young girls.

I know, that is a bold statement. But I have evidence to support my claim! Promise.

We start off the show with Chise being bought by the titular Ancient Mage at a slave auction. It’s okay, though, because she willingly sold herself into slavery. Wait, you can do that? I guess. Anyway. This show’s big selling point is Chise’s growth from a sad girl with nothing to live for to...well, someone who is not that way. And it’s a relatable backstory for a main character. So far, so good.

But the rest of plot fails to sufficiently develop the rest of the world, lore, and characters in a way that makes Chise’s development interesting enough. Side characters are given at most one (1) episode of backstory before being utterly forgotten for the entire rest of the series. Plot points that you think will eventually loop back for an interesting game of Raise the Stakes just kind of wander out to sea and never come back (aka Chise’s family...um...her dad and brother are still out there!). The lore of the fairies and magic is just kind of there and never properly explored or utilized. Chise is supposedly there to learn magic from Elias as her teacher, yet we don’t really ever see him instructing her in the theory of it, or her magical skills progressing. All we’re really told is that Chise is both incredibly strong and weak as shit as the same time. Makes sense.

Elias’ origin is completely ignored, even that could have been an amazing addition to the story as it’s so shrouded in mystery and intrigue and often hinted at by several characters. So, at about the rough halfway point of the series, I had all these loose ends and unexplored areas of the story in my head that I was really excited about, but they never materialized in the second half. The main “villain” in the show was kind of sad and easily defeated.

The second cour of the show was focused almost exclusively on what is, in my opinion, the most mundane, cloying, and dull part of the story: the relationship between Elias and Chise. Yep, sorry friends. I don’t find these two even remotely well suited to each other in any capacity, least of all romantic. Try picturing them together when Elias is in human form; that creeps me out more than his usual form. From the very beginning, I have disliked Elias. I find him boring. Oh boohoo, you’ve been wandering around Earth for hundreds of years and still haven’t figured out what “sad” “happy” “jealous” and “angry” feel like? Are you stupid as well as inexperienced, or just willfully ignorant? Because he managed to study and become proficient in the art of magecraft, but never could figure out why watching Titanic made his eyes leak? How many times do we have to watch Elias clutch his heart and say, “Is this what _______ feels like?” Just shut up. I find it hard to believe that in between all the magic and failed cooking lessons with Lindel, they never talked about how they felt in the hundreds of years that Lindel was taking care of him? *Dr. Phil voice* Really now?

Elias’ cluelessness about basic human emotions is the basis for about 99% of the personal conflicts/drama in the story, and it gets tiresome and feels cheap. Why does anime love to center on characters who don’t know how to feel? Does it give them more agency to act like a dick? Do young girls swoon after men who don’t really care about anything? Elias is frustrating, because we never get to see him break through that monotonous “teach me how to feel” crap, except for when he’s having a rage tantrum. But we never see him buckle down and really unload on how he’s feeling in an open and communicative way. He’s very selective with what he shares, and when he does it’s because Chise is prodding him to do it.

What I found essentially disappointing about this story is how everything in it was just there to further the drama between Chise and Elias without actually furthering the story itself. Everything Elias does to Chise, from how he constantly touches/grabs/picks her up without her permission, how he looms over her menacingly in his monster form when he’s jealous, how he calls her diminutive pet names, irritates me. Chise is a child who has nothing; of course she is going to gravitate to someone who offers her the only thing she wanted: a place to call home. What’s his excuse? He is the one in the position of power, and does he ever use it to his advantage.

How many times do we witness Elias withholding information from Chise, policing her, acting shady, throwing a giant temper tantrum, and being generally creepy and possessive? The anime is masterful in that it succeeds in writing it all off as romantic and cute, because “Elias doesn’t know what emotions he’s feeling! It’s cause he must love her LOL” Again, this was a lame excuse so that Elias could have license to be an asshole. All they needed was a cool/handsome/monstrous character design and a smooth af voice actor to make it all okay. But it isn’t. Chise did not, and still doesn’t have the agency to choose differently.

And I almost fell for it too; that’s how good it is. Because it ropes you in with great production value. I admit that instinctively I am just a dumb ape who will go gaga over anything shiny and pretty. And this anime certainly is those things, but it doesn’t capitalize on the amazing potential it set up from its very beginning, choosing instead to focus on relationship drama between two people who really should not be involved romantically at all.

I ask this: would it have detracted from the story at all for them to have had an adoptive parent and child relationship, to which both characters’ age, experience, and power dynamic was a lot better suited? Would it have been less meaningful? Why did they have to be set up as husband and wife from the get go? What was the point, other than to provide a weak and frankly disturbing plot point? If parent/child is a no-go, how about we make the female main character older than 20 years old for once? Even that would have been preferable.

I did read the manga, and the author tries to dance around the issue by once again using Elias’ inexplicable lack of emotional intelligence as an excuse. He doesn’t know what a bride is, he doesn’t understand the concept of marriage, he means it innocently etc. Okay, BUT, Chise, the rest of the characters, the author of the manga himself, the readers, and literally everyone else understands exactly what marriage is and what it implies. That is the connection the author intends us to make with all the symbolism and mushy dialogue between the two of them (as well as other characters’ observations about them both). It doesn’t matter how ambiguous the author is being about something; if it’s there, it’s there. Let’s call the spade a spade.

So the story revolves primarily around the romantic development between an indisputably adult male who also holds all the resources/power, and an emotionally broken child who can’t refuse. TAMG did not develop the rest of its story enough to distract me from this point, and I was just never able to look past it. It was glaring at me with each episode I watched.

Sure, Chise gets mad sometimes, and Elias eventually comes around from pouting when he realizes he could lose her. He eventually offers a monotone apology and all is right as rain. Chise eventually develops into the Needlessly Self-Sacrificing Main Character that anime relies on just a touch too heavily. It feels disingenuous and not at all relatable. It’s tiresome.

Towards the end, Chise gets some resolution from an old painful memory during an arc where she finally breaks free of Elias so she can act of her own accord for once. Which I really liked. But then she just ran home, forgave Elias a little too easily for all his bullshit, and ended up “marrying” him (again, everything is shrouded in an infuriating layer of ambiguity because nobody wants to call it what it is, but alllllll the right symbolism is there, we can figure it out ffs). That came completely out of left field for me and solidified my hunch that this is meant to be a teen fantasy and little else: leaving everything behind only to be saved, controlled by, and obsessed over by an ominous, rich, handsome, and overbearing man who just won’t keep his hands to himself.

There’s so much more I wanted to know about, and I get that you can’t fit everything into 24 episodes. But people like Silky, Ruth, Renfred, and Alice were utterly forgotten about even though they had solid, developed stories in the beginning of the anime. It’s like they hooked me in and left me hanging; the whole time I was waiting for MORE from those characters. For Silky to say even one word or to have more of a relationship with Chise other than hugging her dramatically from time to time, for Chise and Ruth to have another mage/familiar moment (or even arc). Things like that would have added so much more depth and significance to the story than even one more minute of Elias and Chise awkwardly and needlessly cuddling (or sleeping in bed together....honestly, wtf).

So in conclusion (am I writing a thesis or something?), The Ancient Magus’ Bride felt something like a betrayal. It drew me in with the promise of a gorgeous and heartfelt story, only to focus on what I thought was an inappropriate and forced relationship. I’m sure 16-year-old me would have eaten all of this up like a six-course meal. It’s a Japanese twist on Twilight (therefore also reminiscent of the even worse Fifty Shades franchise). As I get older and automatically tend think a lot more critically about why I like or dislike things, something like this isn’t going to cut it for me. It pulled at the heartstrings with emotive music and pretty visuals, but left me wanting so much more. I don’t want the media I consume to make me feel like I should like it; I just want to.

To any teen girls who adore this anime, I’m not telling you what to personally like/dislike. But I do hope you’ll think about why you do, and contemplate the fact that just because something is wrapped up in pretty packaging, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s harmless. Love doesn’t have to mean being dominated, stalked, policed, or controlled. And you don’t have to be married before you’re 20 or it’s game over. Healthy relationships are balanced, with an equal flow of power, love, and trust between parties involved. They can happen at 17, 45, or never, and that’s all okay. My fear is that this anime will reinforce the exact opposite message with its audience, in a manner that is honestly kind of insidious. It was so well-made, the tone and ambiance they created is so lovely that the harmful messages will just fly over your head; like they almost did to me.

Or...just enjoy it without a second thought and leave me to my over-analyzing. I do admit I look very closely at things, but I don’t know any other way to be.

TLDR; A lot of style, not a whole lot of substance. 4.5/10

All odd for Kit

1. What is your OC’s favorite color?Red, without a doubt.

3. What kind of things is your OC allergic to?Strawberries, grass pollen, and zinc.

5. What is your OC’s first memory?Sitting alone in his family’s library, reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

7. What element would your OC be?fire!

9. Do you have a faceclaim / voiceclaim for your OC?Not really, no.

11. What are your OC’s hobbies?Reading, fucking, traveling, playing piano.

13. What is your OC’s gender / sexuality / race / species / etc.?Male/pansexual/white/human

15. If your OC could have any pet, what would they choose? Why?He’s not really the pet type.

17. How do they make a living? What kind of job do they want / not want? What is their dream job? What do they think of their current job?He makes a living by jack and shit. He just happened to be born to a rich family. He’s a lazy fuck who does nothing all day except spend his dad’s money.

19. What kind of music do they listen to? Do they have a favorite song?He doesn’t really listen to music, unless he’s playing it. He couldn’t name a favorite, but he def has a least favorite. Fur Elise drives him fucking insane cause that was always the piece his parents would have him play to show off when he was young.

21. What personal problems/issues do they have? Pet peeves?Oh, dear, the list could go on for miles. He gets along horribly with his father and stepmother, he has commitment issues and attachment issues, and Violet is basically abusive to him. He’s also kind of an alcoholic, and a complete deadbeat with no real goals in life. One of his pet peeves is when anything that shouldn’t be wet is wet. Like a seat, or a patch of the floor, or anything like that. He also can’t stand really loud noises, because he has super good hearing. And he really hates when someone takes his glasses to look at them or mess with him, because he’s p much legally blind without them.

23. What is a random fact about your OC? He has his mother’s birthday (which is the same as his, different year obv) tattooed on his arm.

25. What inspired you to create them / how did you create them? Were they originally a fancharacter? What was their personality / design like when you first made them?He hasn’t changed much since his original conception. I designed him in my dating game phase, hence his gotta-get-laid tendencies.

27. What kind of childhood did your character have?Very isolated. His father never paid him any attention except at events, and his mother was v sickly so she didn’t have much energy to interact with him before she died when he was seven. He mostly had nursemaids tending to him, and they weren’t super friendly, they just fed and bathed him and made sure he didn’t die. He spent most of his time alone, reading. When he was maybe eight or nine, he met Violet at a function with both of their families, and they’ve been close ever since. Violet got him to start leaving the house and exploring, and with the guidance of her and the other friends he acquired, he got to be much more outgoing and happy. He was still kind of an awkward kid up through early high school, but around the time puberty settled down, he had his shit a bit more together and turned into more of the suave, laid-back guy he is today.

29. If they could choose their epitaph for their grave, what would they choose?“Hopefully, I left a good-looking corpse.”

31. What is their most traumatic memory/experience? What is their favorite memory?One summer at the beach when he was young, he almost drowned, which led to his phobia of large bodies of water. His favorite memory is probably reading books with his mother when he was smol.

33. Would they ever kill someone? What would someone have to do to push them to kill someone? If they would kill someone, why? It would have to be someone deserving, like a really awful person. But if someone seriously wronged him or one of his close friends, he just might.

35. How is your character’s imagination? Daydreaming a lot? Worried most of the time? Living in memories?He has an awful memory, which really upsets him, because it means he has almost zero recollection of his mother. He spends a lot of time daydreaming and reading as a form of escapism.

37. What’s something that your character does, that other people don’t normally do?Despite being completely physically capable and having plenty of money for a car, he never learned how to drive.

39. What is in your characters refrigerator right now? On their bedroom floor? Nightstand? Garbage can?He wouldn’t even know what’s in his fridge, that’s the chef’s problem. His clothes from last night are on the floor. Glasses on the nightstand. Condom wrappers and empty liquor bottles in the trash.

41. What does your character do when they’re angry? Why?Drink, because it helps him forget about whatever’s pissing him off, since it’s rarely anything that he can fix.

43. What was the most offensive thing your character had ever said?He’s said many awful things to his father over the years, most of them based around the older man being heartless and changing wives nearly as often as his underwear.

45. If your character was given a slice of pineapple pizza and they HAD to eat it (or something bad would happen), how would they react? Do they even LIKE pineapple pizza?He would eat it. He doesn’t mind pineapple pizza, but he does have pretty high standards for pizza in general. Unless he’s drunk. Then he’d shamelessly eat a whole pizza, no matter how shitty.

47. Can your character draw? What do they like to draw? Do they doodle?Noooo he cannot. He can do calligraphy, though, and will often write out things that bother him in a journal.

49. Does your character like candy? Do they get sugar rushes? What are they like when they get a rush?He doesn’t have a particular fondness for candy, but he does like sweets more along the lines of baked goods.

GENDER, SEXUALITY AND THE BODY - *No Muscles, No Tattoos*

Alice, gained a Ph.D from the History of Design program run as a joint venture by the Royal College of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.She is also writes article in Eye – Graphic Design magazine publish quarterly featuring Graphic Design and Visual Culture. She has written a few books : Sifting the Trash, What is Graphic Design for, and so on, major are a reading book for art and graphic designers.

Among the articles in Eye, here we have her “No muscles, no tattoos” on my hand. Alice Twemlow featuring this article about Jop van Bannekom’s magazine creating.

A little biography about Jop van Bannekom, he grew up in Holland, graduated in Graphic design in mid 1990’s. When he was in his study, he created an academic project magazine – Re-Magazine, then renamed to Butt.

Typography can be showing as character representative. As Butt magazine, Bennekom uses a type face which he think is very “gay” – American Typewriter. As this could be a reason of his addictive to his otherness, to be something out of the normal range, such as those magazine surrounding his growing up environment. He is also showing his magazine images are more reality, taking people on the street, not studio pictures, and his concept is to give a space for the uncomfortably imperfectionist.

The content of the his Re-magazine was initially interviewing detail about his friend, crucial detail about things that surrounding themselves. This is showing the way he is presenting his magazine in real life. This attempt helps him to define which role he is playing. The content and the final work has been credited as almost boring but interesting at the same time. Bennekom managed to balance the character of Re-, it is serious but irony, reality and fiction. And to add on that, Butt’s photo shoot are not studio shoot, that defines the very baseline of his magazine shaping : no muscles, no tattoos.

There are some comments from other graphic designer about Bennekom’s magazines. Andrew Sloat commented on Butt : Given a voice and visual presence of those of the gay males whom are trying to figure out their own worlds.

In further years, Bannekom also published another magazine called Fantastic Man. This is a very successful magazine and still running in Holland. Bennekom use this magazine to meet his heroes.

The layout in the magazine article are completely typography and really dry but Bennekom is making sure the text and the content itself drives the reader into it. He uses pull quotes, and caption. He uses positive images which reader can see these man wearing their own costume and smile as image to present his reality study into a new aspect. He uses Times as major font to show never ending flexibility.

In looking at his magazine, there’s a feminism related. Most of the female magazine are likely to be serifs font as it’s major appearance, Although the body they tend to change to san serif type face to ease on reading, but most of the elements conceptual are similar. This could be telling us his success of magazine publishing has brought the world a culture tendency – a design craft tendency. ßwhich the article I read last time, a designer can create a unique design and experienced craft, then this “craft” can become a culture, a leading culture to let other people to follow.

But back to the “reality”. The reality of this materialistic world. In order to produce such a bold and brave magazine, it needs a lot work and courage. I was working in a publisher as my first job after my graduation, althou this publisher has different types of magazine, from IT to youngsters, they will still carrying a motif of being greedy and not loose. I’ve been taught : use every space, design the whole page, don’t be too empty, colours are free.

Now a days, in what tendency our leading publisher requesting? A blank page shows utterly boring but 1 word draws attention or colourful deliberate photography to explain partially content?

I guessed we should start making another one.

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Intertextuality in Music Videos... Music Video Research

Intertextuality is when a form of media or literature references another work of media or literature, and is used all the time in music videos. Using intertextuality can help broaden the audience of the piece by attracting some fans of the media being referenced. The piece might also get more attention from fans due to its intertextuality, therefore increasing its original audience. It can be used in several ways within a piece of media. It could be used humourously, so that people find it amusing when they realise where the reference is from, and this could be a whole parody of another piece of media or just a quick reference. 

In music videos, it is often used as a means of synergy and cross-promotion between films and music, or different artists. It can help a piece to be better understood or even give it more meaning, as people identify the reference and apply their knowledge of that media into the current context. This could produce an additional, separate meaning to the music video, if it had another without the reference, or it could just help the audience to understand the concept better.

An example of a music video that makes incorporates another media text into it is Taylor Swift’s video for her song ‘Love Story’. Both the lyrics and the concept of the music video are inspired by William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The whole narrative of the video is based around the artist acting as Juliet with another male character as Romeo, and the aesthetic of the video is not only set during the same time period as the play but it has a colour filter that gives the video a historical tone. There are also frequent references in the lyrics to the story of Romeo and Juliet; ‘You were Romeo’, ‘And my daddy said, “Stay away from Juliet”’, which make it clear that the video is a blatant homage to the original story. The effect of incorporating another, extremely well known text into this video is that it will receive more attention from fans, critics and the media when it is released. Not only will fans of the artist be interested, but also fans of the original Romeo and Juliet, and similar plays or romantic tragedies.

Another example, that incorporates a media text into a music video very obviously, is Robbie Williams’ Music Video for You Know Me. It uses the well-known story of Alice in Wonderland as a basis for the video, designed to increase the videos popularity and provide a talking point for fans and wider social groups. This will help it to draw in a wider audience, including a fans of the referenced media.

This music video doesn’t utilise the story of Alice in Wonderland, except for when the artist climbs into the ‘rabbit-hole’ perhaps, but instead uses the character of the White Rabbit and the location of Wonderland as a way to connect with the audience as a reference to another piece of media that they will recognise, even if they are not familiar with it. The artist dresses up as the White Rabbit, and supposedly performs some delicate dance moves, all of which is very amusing for the audience as they see a well known pop star acting and prancing around as a rabbit from a children’s story. The video also mixes this up by combining the character with that of a confident male in a more typical male oriented music video; dreaming about women and strutting around with them in a dance performance. It therefore becomes a parody of male oriented music videos, amalgamating it with a childrens story to make it seem ridiculous.

Overall, I think this makes the video very amusing and very effective as it has a recognisable and striking theme, but also features many of the conventions of music videos, with voyeurism and a multiple close-up shots of the artist peforming the song.