🔥 Opinion on people who refuse to understand Cheavy’s character and people’s own interpretation of him because he killed Medic?

Like people who comment “But he killed medic!” on your posts? (That’s a really big problem for me whenever I draw him)

You're gonna have to be more specific.

Cheavy IS a villain the comics. He just is. He's a very one-note villain that's meant to call back to all the villains we used to love as kids. Firelord Ozai, Lord Garmadon, Aku, most of Disney's Renaissance lineup. And I don't say this with any malice. I fucking love how much of a shitter he is. And that's the point of it. Hell, that's the point of most well-written villains. They're meant to invoke a feeling of "kicking your ass is going to be FUN!" in the viewer.

He's a fun character precisely because of how much of a piece of shit he is. He's loud, angry, brutish, and only took Gray Mann's mission because he and his team would be paid a hefty sum. He - and by extension, the entire TFC team - are exactly what they need to be to oppose the RED's.

This is actually why Medic was placed with them from a meta perspective. He's there so the audience can get a first-hand look at how the TFC team contrasts with the RED's. And I don't blame anyone who wants to kick the TFC mercs down the stairs for what they did.

Why? Simple. Audiences are biased by nature and the quickest way to make them hate a particular character is to have that character kick the fandom's favorite person. Medic WAS that person, and the writers used this to great effect. We all like Medic, therefore having Cheavy treat him badly is a very effective way to get the audience on Medic's side. It's Writing 101.

It's what I'm doing with the Disciples in TBTF. You guys like Cmedic (or at least you're supposed to), therefore its very easy for me to get you on his side when someone else treats him poorly.

This isn't a misread of Cheavy's character. This IS his character.

Sure, in a realistic sense? Cheavy really isn't that much worse than any of the other mercs. His crimes are on par with Soldier and I personally take advantage of that in TBTF as the basis for a redemption arc (with liberal amounts of violence because Cheavy is still a shitter and ought to be whacked with a broom).

The only exception to this would be Cscout and Csoldier. But the reason we love to hate Cheavy is because he's cast in the role of villain. The writers are taking advantage of the fact that we LOVE the main team in order to establish who the villains are and who we should hate. If the team likes someone (Pauling, Hale, etc), then WE like them. If the team doesn't like someone (TFC mercs, Administrator, etc), then WE don't like them.

TF2 is interesting in that the bar for morality is set very low from the start. Medic is a horrible person, but we love him. Cheavy is a horrible person, but we want to yeet him out a window. This is because TF2's characters are very strong and its banking on the audience getting attached to the main team. And when you have an emotional attachment to, say, Medic? Yeah, you're not gonna like someone treating him badly.

And y'know what? That's damn good writing. It's a testament to just how well the mercs are written that the writers can get us on board with anything if the mercs are on board with it.

Anyways, this has been How To Write For Beginners. Please take these lessons to heart. Hopefully this will help people with media literacy and critical analysis.

Does everyone know that one found family post going around that's something like, "What do you MEAN they all go their separate ways after the journey??"

That's how I feel about Ted going back to Kansas.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that it's an unlikely ending to the series. I think it's very likely, especially when I consider a lot of the cool meta people have been writing lately, but that likeliness leaves a sour taste in my mouth because what's waiting for Ted in Kansas? "Henry!" the fandom cries and yes, obviously, but that doesn't feel like enough to me (which I realize sounds like a callous statement regarding a father and son, but hear me out). The only other things Kansas has are an ex-wife, a horrifically unprofessional step-dad in the making, and a long line of comforts that Ted has outgrown. I've noticed that this season in particular Ted has been moving away from his American roots: he misses his BBQ sauce but manages to find a perfect replacement in Amsterdam, he's finding solace in paintings for temporary homesickness, he's using "football" and "maths" naturally in conversation, many of his speeches lately have been about how he once WAS this American so-and-so but has changed significantly since then. From a canonical perspective, Henry is the only thing in Kansas that's good for Ted anymore and even if we put that aside for a moment (which I don't think we should) it seems quite significant to me that Ted has spent three successful years parenting from across the pond.

Is that ideal? No, but Ted Lasso hasn't gone out of its way to paint this separation as a failure, or a crippling blow to Ted or Henry, despite them obviously missing each other a great deal at times. I'll admit that this aspect is absolutely colored by my own bias. As someone who doesn't want kids herself, I dislike the implicit message that a parent must give up everything they want/need in order to be 100% available to their child. I'm of the belief that there's a big difference between loving/raising your child and lacking a life outside of them because Every Aspect of Your Existence Must Serve Their Direct Needs Until the Magical Age of 18, so I've never jived with the "Ted is a horrible father who abandoned Henry!" takes. Not just because I think the show has made it clear that Henry doesn't feel abandoned, but because it tells viewers that parents can't have anything for themselves once they've brought a life into this world... which feels pretty shitty to me. Thus, that whole Henry-based argument rings as unpersuasive both from my biased perspective and a canonical perspective: "In order to be labeled a good father Ted MUST go back to Henry in Kansas, leaving behind every bond he's formed here, despite the fact that he's spent a significant amount of time making this long-distance relationship work really, really well."

Putting Henry aside and going back to my original point above, sending Ted to Kansas requires the audience to imagine up a life for him that has never existed on screen. Sure, we can assume that Ted will form new bonds and rekindle old ones there, but that would exist entirely off screen. Like the story that asks you to ignore the family that's been built right in front of you in favor of the headcanoned one that the characters are separating for, a Kansas ending would ask us to toss aside three seasons worth of family, community, and still developing relationships for... whatever it is we'd personally imagine up post-series. Audiences (by and large) don't WANT their protagonist to end up with [insert OCs here], they want them to stay with the developed cast, whether that's a romance, a friendship, or a family. To me, there's nothing satisfying about imagining Ted in a location the series has never explored with people who don't exist yet except for, as said, an ex, a man who justifiably makes him incredibly uncomfortable, and his child whom he already has a fantastic relationship with in the community where Ted is happy.

There are a lot of other reasons why this ending would be a big disappointment to me, most notably the rejection of untraditional forms of parenting + the message that Ted was always destined to "reset," returning to precisely where he started out, like he's just a hope dispenser who isn't allowed to significantly grow himself. Sure, you can divorce and get better about managing your anxiety... but making a permanent, positive life change? Nah, let's act like this is an episodic show and toss you back to the beginning. I've seen a couple of people compare Ted to Mary Poppins and while a part of my does like that connection, another part cringes at the idea of him playing the role of magical benefactor, his own future happiness deemed insignificant compared to the lives he's already changed. Thanks for the help, Ted! Hope you manage to find some more happiness for yourself back among everything you've spent the series leaving behind. Open your umbrella and let the wind take you; wherever you land and how hard the fall is doesn't matter because the show is over.

So there's a lot going on for me, however, the found family bit is where I'm truly stuck. You're really going to build up this community and Ted's place in it for three seasons, moving him from "wanker" all the way to beloved coach, only to pack him back to Kansas after he's finally carved out a place for himself? Kansas, the place the show has consistently argued has nothing to offer Ted except for the child he hasn't actually lost? Yeah no, sorry, I'm not a fan.

Which doesn't mean I think Ted Lasso is going to become a terrible show if they choose this - again, very likely - ending... but I will personally be pulling a Nick Fury about it.

Earlier today, I watched a video by TheTake on YouTube, exploring and deconstructing the “Nice Guy” trope in popular media.

Basically, the trope explained the Nice Guy trope and how toxic it really is, devaluing the girl’s feelings in a relationship and promoting male entitlement. Now, I’ve heard many people in this fandom complain that Adrien Agreste is the embodiment of this trope. The underdog sweet boy, pining after a girl who has rejected his feelings multiple times, persisting in his romantic advances towards her despite her making her disinterest clear.

While I must admit that Adrien does check many of the boxes for the standard Nice Guy, I quickly remembered who else in the show, besides him, checks out many of the same boxes, and perhaps a few more than him. Someone who exhibits many of the same behaviors of the Nice Guy, but whose less-than-healthy attitude of love is often overlooked and/or pardoned by most of the fandom, while they bash Adrien for similar behaviors.

Can you guess who it is?

It’s Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

I know what you’re thinking. How dare I accuse Marinette of such a toxic mindset! She’s the hero of our story! She fights off the bitches that are bad for Adrien and yet he doesn’t even give her the love she deserves! Adrien is the one who should consider himself lucky that she adores him! Hashtag Marinette Deserves Better!

But you see that right there? That, my friends, is what makes Marinette Dupain-Cheng, in my opinion, more of a Nice Guy than Adrien Agreste.

The whole purpose of the Nice Guy trope is to make us root for the underdog. Because who doesn’t love a good story where the loser that everyone expected to fail spectacularly ends up winning it all in magnificent fashion? Almost every movie has it’s underdog. With sports movies, it’s the unathletic wimp with a skinny, small, and/or weak body. In high school movies, it’s the outcast weird kid who’s been ostracized by the popular crowd for their unusual interests and/or attitude. In romantic comedies, the underdog is the hopelessly romantic Nice Guy who adores the girl and worships her like a goddess, as opposed to the cooler, more aloof, more sociotially successful man who takes her for granted. And since the cardinal rule of feel-good films is that underdog must end up getting what he’s been wanting throughout the whole movie, the movie then directs the story narrative to favor the Nice Guy’s desires, manipulating the audience to cheer him on and, in the process, blatantly dismiss all his unhealthy behaviors and obsessive traits, like stalking the object of his affections or trying to edge out any competition he has.

Sound familiar? That’s because that’s exactly what many Marinette stans who are also Adrien haters do.

I’m not saying Marinette is a bad person, but as far as Nice Guys go, she has shown us many red flags. She often stalks Adrien, trying to sneak into parties she has not been invited to just to see him, or following him to his house when he goes to study with one of her enemies. She often tries to keep away any girls she sees as competition for Adrien. With Chloé and Lila, it’s semi-justifies, because they can be total bitches. But not Kagami.

Is Kagami kind of cold? Yes. Can she be competitive? Absolutely. But she is not evil. Many Adrienette shippers often hate on Kagami, saying she is a stone cold bitch who will stop at nothing to “steal” Adrien away from Marinette. They misinterpret what she whispered in Marinette’s ear during Frozer. Kagami said, “The reason you cannot stand on your feet is your hesitation. I never hesistate.” Adrienette shippers translate this to, “He’s mine, bitch. Back off, or I’ll kill you.” But what she’s ACTUALLY saying is, “I know you like Adrien, but I like him, too, and I’m not gonna just back off out of curtesy while you fumble the ball. So if you want Adrien, you’re going to have to win him from me fair and square. That means you have to suck up whatever insecurities you have and really work to win him over.” She knows Marinette loves Adrien, but Kagami loves him, too. And she’s not just gonna wait around for Marinette to get over her nervousness and ask Adrien out of curtesy. She’s telling Marinette that if she wants Adrien, she needs to get herself together and go after him while he’s still available.

Kagami is not a bad person. She is simply lacking in social experience to properly express her emotions and desires without coming off as an ice queen. And yet, many Adrienette shippers view her through the same toxic lens as many fans of romantic comedies view love rivals of the Nice Guy. If the rival is even the tiniest bit self-serving or emotionally detached, they are automatically dismissed as bad people and therefore, less worthy of the main love interest than the Nice Guy. Thus, viewers are quick to pardon any attempts made by the Nice Guy to sabotage or undermine his rival as a necessary evil, something that must be done so that “true love” can prevail. Like say, I dunno, setting the rival up to be humiliated at a fancy party, despite all that they did to supposedly deserve such treatment was show up to said event, which they were invited to, and act friendly towards the main love interest, because they ARE friends?

If the scenario seems familiar, that’s because that’s exactly what Marinette tried to do to Kagami in Animeastro.

One thing I’ve noticed about this fandom, is that people seem to have a double standard when it comes to Marinette’s negative behaviors vs. Adrien’s. In Glaciator, Adrien seems to accept Ladybug’s rejection, claiming that her friendship was what mattered most, then takes back everything he said in Frozer, acting salty towards Ladybug for her earlier second rejection. After that, the whole fandom was on his case, calling him a jerk and a liar.

Am I happy Adrien went back on his word like that? Of course not. But in that same episode of Frozer, Marinette accepts that she may not be more than Adrien’s friend, and even helps him on his date with Kagami, despite her heartache and despite how everyone thought she was crazy for doing so. Super sweet, right? Except when Animeastro happens, she goes back on her mature acceptance and teams up with her worst enemy, all for the purpose of embarrassing the same girl who she supposedly accepted Adrien might like instead of her. Funnily enough, no one in the fandom seemed to give her any flack for that, despite the fact that it was an exhibitation of the same possessive, hypocrital and selfish behavior that Adrien displayed earlier on, which everyone hated on him for.

Many Marinette fans are projecting the same toxic, biased mindset onto her that fans of romantic comedies project onto the Nice Guy. They excuse any negative behaviors done by the protagonist, insisting that it’s for the greater good, all while hating on the love interest for not immediately falling into their arms. They prioritize the needs and feelings of the Nice Guy/Marinette while completely disregarding those of their love interests.

Marinette stans insist that she deserves Adrien’s love more than anyone else, bashing Adrien for overlooking her in favor of other girls. After all, Marinette has done so much for Adrien, while all Ladybug does is reject him in favor of some other guy, despite how he’s put his heart and life on the line for her. That means he should just cast aside his feelings for Ladybug and settle for Marinette, right? Well, by those standards, shouldn’t Ladybug do the same? After all, Chat Noir has risked his life for her several times and made it clear he adores her, while all Adrien has done is ignore her feelings in favor of other girls, even though she’s been right there the whole time. If Adrien should ignore some of Marinette’s stalker tendacies and easily-jealous nature, shouldn’t Ladybug be able to overlook some of Chat Noir’s less-than-acceptable behaviors?

Marinette fans often share the mindset of Nice Guy stans of romance as a moral issue, harboring the idea that goodness and unwavering affection should automatically earn romantic feelings. They believe that being nice to someone automatically means they owe it to you to love you back. Sadly, life isn’t that clear cut. Love is often given to someone, whether they deserve it or not. It’s both the best and worst part of it. This close-minded, morally black-and-white mindset is given to fans by the Nice Guy, as it’s his expectation that his being kind to the girl and showering her with romance should mean that she should know he is the one for her.

Sadly, this thinking by the Nice Guy is often hypocrital in the movies, because the same Nice Guy is attracted in his crush at least in part to some sort of superficiality (ex. she’s beautiful, popular, dresses well, is the Cool Girl who drinks beer and watches sports while looking hot in a tank top and short shorts). He says she’s superficial for not wanting a dork like him, but it’s not like he’s looking around for some socially-awkward, plain-faced girl on his own level or lower and falling for HER because of HER kind treatment of him and the intensity of HER feelings. Fans get upset when Adrien the teen heartthrob doesn’t give Marinette her due attention, but it’s not like they’re clamoring for her to settle for Nathanael in “Evillistrator” or Nino in “Animan”, even though they had intense feelings for her and were kind to her.

Because of the partial superficiality of the Nice Guy’s attraction to his crush, he has this fantasy built up in his head. He puts her up on this pedestal, much like the pedestal Marinette puts Adrien on. It gets to the point that he’s in love with the IDEA of her, this image of a perfect angel that he’s made her out to be, and not the real her. He refuses to admit that she is flawed, much like how Marinette overlooks Adrien’s doormat attitude and overwillingness to forgive, seeing him instead as the perfect boy who can do no wrong. This is a set up for disappointment later on, as when the love interest does not do what the Nice Guy expects from her, like instantly return his love, the illusion that he has so carefully crafted for his pleasure is shattered, and everything goes downhill.

Many people blame the love interests for not instantly favoring the Nice Guy once he’s shown his romantic dorky side, thinking they should pick up on the feelings right away, like it’s their job to know who they should be with immediately upon meeting them, that it’s their fault they miss the signs. But this misconception shifts blame away from the Nice Guy for not properly acting on his feelings. This is where the Nice Guy becomes his own worst enemy. He automatically convinces himself that he’s below the girl’s standards and gives up before he even tries. He hesitates to act on his feelings, much like Marinette is so certain that Adrien is out of her league that she lets her insecurities get the better of her and avoids confessing to Adrien or even talking to him because she’s sure she’ll mess up before she even tries. Then when the girl doesn’t immediately realize that she is loved, despite getting no clear signs or even the words “I love you”, she is blamed for leading the Guy on, much like how Adrien is blamed for not recognizing the mixed signals from Marinette as affection.

Even after Adrien has told her that he loves another girl, Marinette still decides to keep pursuing him, much like Chat Noir kept pursuing Ladybug even after she told him she loved someone. Yet, while Adrien is bashed for not immediately accepting her choice and working to move on, Marinette is pardoned from not accepting Adrien’s feelings in the matter. Viewers excusing all her Nice Guy traits while prosecuting Adrien for displaying all the same traits is what makes Marinette, in my opinion, more of a Nice Guy than him. Because the Nice Guy is usually the one that shippers root for, despite the warning signs of their behavior and the fact that the love interest has said flat out that they are not into them that way.

Do I think that Marinette is a bad person? No. Do I condone Adrien’s behavior over hers? Absolutely not. But these are fictional characters. We can’t control their flaws or talk some sense into them anymore than we can change the past or rewrite the movies that have sold us this one-sided mindset. I don’t hold their flaws against them and act like their imperfections define their whole character. I focus on the good they do, and if the characters forgive them, I forgive them, because they’re the ones who choose who to forgive, who to love, who to be friends with. So kiss off, Adrien salters. Y’all are a bunch of hypocrites. Peace out.

The Romantic Era and the Rise of Sexism and Misogyny in Ballet

A note on this work in progress:

I was trained in the Vaganova method with Russian instructors, so I am biased in my passionate appreciation for Romantic Era ballet and Russian ballet in general. However, as a feminist researcher it is crucial that I still challenge my heroes and the internalized desire to be a tragic pretty princess.

Project Description and Annotated Biography:

The “prima ballerina”: an iconic title that conjures up images of a classic form of femininity—graceful, demure, witty, eye-catchingly chic. She is an unattainable sovereign, never seen publicly sweating or breathing heavily after exerting an Olympian level of energy. She puts out maximum effort with minimal disturbance to her audience. A cringeworthy description for most feminists, the archetype of a ballerina symbolizes what many would consider an outdated version of an ideal feminine. In my previous research on the evolution of ballet in a Russian and Soviet context, I have found many areas in this artistic medium where the culture has not quite caught up with twenty-first century ideals; perhaps not even the twentieth century.

For this project, I was curious about where this version of femininity began in ballet. The Romantic Era in Europe took place from the end of the eighteenth century through the mid-nineteenth century. This movement in art and literature was considered a response to the Enlightenment, an intellectual and philosophical movement that favored reason, logic, and the scientific approach to understanding humans and the natural world. Romanticism resisted this by encouraging works that embraced intense emotions, imagination, mysticism and creativity. It also served as an escape from the hardships of modernization due to industrialization.[1] For the ballet world, this ushered in a period that favored dramatic storytelling of love and heartbreak, with elaborate costumes and sets that would transport the audience to another realm. This period also birthed some of the most famous ballets in the classical canon, such as Giselle, Swan Lake, and La Sylphide. Each of these stories revolves around a woman’s theatricalized sacrifice, and always includes a moment at which the realistic portion of the story turns to surrealistic, whether through madness, sorcery, or death.[2]

Dance scholars believe that it was the Romantic Era that established the feminine character of the ballerina as we know her today.[3] In each these stories, the female protagonist was written to be at the whim of her deep emotions, often naïve and submissive to the male characters. While the star of the show was always the ballerina, it was men who were the company directors and choreographers, placing women in the position of subordinate both on and offstage. The primary and secondary sources I’ve compiled to support this patriarchal feminine standard in romantic ballet approach the topic from a few different angles. First, I collected a series of images from Giselle, Swan Lake and La Sylphide to show the similarities between them all, showcasing an almost stock supply of physical and choreographic frailty. All three ballets feature the ballerina in a virginal white costume that presents her as both pure and otherworldly.  Next, I situated these ballets in their cultural origins, which would allow me to better understand the gender norms of the time. I have included below the original work of German poet Heinrich Heine, whose poetry and knowledge of Slavic folklore inspired the creation of Giselle. I also included the writings of early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft so that I could gain insight to women’s roles and consciousness around their oppression at the time. Lastly, I included contemporary scholarly work and the autobiography of a current New York City Ballet soloist to demonstrate how Romantic Era sexism and misogyny have continued to reproduce themselves through today.

     Bibliography

 Ballet, Bolshoi. Year and Date Unknown. La  Sylphide.

Photograph of the Sylph and her lover,  James, from La Sylphide. James has left his bride on their wedding day to  pursue his obsession with the Sylph, who has been appearing at his window,  tempting him to come live with her in the forest. Once he's arrived, she  showers him with affection and delicious treats, and shortly thereafter disappears.  Frustrated with her elusiveness, he falls for a witch's deceitful proposal to  catch the Sylph permanently. The witch hands him a scarf that she has  poisoned and tells him that he can use this to trap the Sylph forever. When  the Sylph returns, James chases and catches her with the scarf, which  instantly kills her. We see in the pose in this photo how delicate the  ballerina is, with outstretched wiry arms that are a signature of Romantic  Era ballerinas. This pose between partners emphasizes man's intense desire to  own that which he can't have, and the woman's powerlessness against it. It  also perpetuates the idea of women being irrational, flighty, and fragile.

 Chalon, Alfred Edward. 1832. Marie Taglioni (1804-84) as  the Sylph in 'La Sylphide'.

 Illustration of Marie Taglioni as the Sylph  from La Sylphide. Taglioni was the first ballerina to ever dance in point  shoes; an aesthetic that both elongated the dancers' legs and allowed for a  more ethereal style. In this photo, Taglioni holds a coy, delicate stance, with  her feet notably shrunken-- a modification standard in the feminization of a  woman. In this ballet, the character of the Sylph (fairy) lures a man away  from his human fiancée with promises of a beautiful new life in the forest.  Tricked by sorcery as a result of the fiancée’s jealousy, the Sylph dies from  poisoning in the end. In my opinion, this character was an original  "Manic Pixie Dreamgirl" (term coined by film critic Nathan Rabin in  2007), a modern misogynist movie trope wherein a whimsical woman with  childlike traits is tasked with seducing a boring man, making herself  responsible for his sexual/mental/emotional awakening until something tragic  tears them apart.

 Daly, Ann. 1987. "The Balanchine Woman: Of  Hummingbirds and Channel Swimmers." The Drama Review: TDR , Vol. 31,  No. 1 8-21.

In  this article, Ann Daly challenges the widely held belief that choreographer  George Balanchine glorified women. She includes quotes from him that share  his philosophy on a woman's natural inferiority to a man's physical strength,  resigning her to a position of acceptance and passivity. Balanchine believed  that the ballet was the one place in society where women came first, and he  claimed to make it his life's mission to dedicate his work to them. As the  article continues and we read more quotes by the choreographer, a critical  feminist scholar will likely see this stance as less of an honor, but rather  a plain display of misogyny through objectification. What critics have called  "manipulation" of the female dancer in a pas de deux, Balanchine  sympathizers call "support": supporting the woman to be more  powerful and beautiful than she could possibly be on her own. Daly explores  the history of this brand of femininity in ballet, going back to the Romantic  Era. She then asks readers to consider whether his ballerina is actually the  star, or if she's on display, artistically preserving American toxic  masculinity where men are active and therefor valuable, and women are passive  objects of beauty.  

 Garafola, Lynn. 1997. Rethinking the Sylph: New  Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet. Middletown: Wesleyan University  Press.

In  this compilation of essays, dance historian Lynn Garafola dissects the  complexity of the Romantic Era of ballet, focusing largely on gender roles  and nationalism. She describes this time period of ballet as an international  movement, with its capitals in Paris and London. Innovations in technology  allowed for easier sharing of creative ideas, and the invention of  lithography allowed relatively inexpensive copies of ballet prints to be  distributed internationally. French prints were the most popular, and their  main subject was the ballerina. This was when the ballerina became an object  of desire and mystery, symbolizing an otherworldly, unattainable woman. Her  poise and airy costuming set her in a fantasy realm on the edges of European  civilization, charming the viewer with either her chaste or exotic nature. I  selected this source because I find the construction of the ballerina as the  objectified yet unattainable "other" who embodied feminine ideals  at the time very clever. The ability to possess her image made her seem  accessible, but to see her at the theater in a setting whimsically foreign established  an uninterrupted fantasy for those who sought her out. This tension plays  into men's conditioned need to compete with himself and other men to prove  himself worthy of acquiring the unattainable, while avoiding the discomfort  of actual risk.

 Heine, Heinrich. 1833. Deutschland: A Winter's Tale.  Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe .

This  book by Heinrich Heine inspired the creation of Giselle, one of the most  famous romantic ballets that is still a staple in today's companies'  repertoires. In it he shares the Slavic folklore of Wilis: ghosts of women  who have died from heartbreak before their wedding day. In his poem he  describes these tragic specters as having “dead feet, there still remains  that passion for dancing which they could not satisfy during life”. If a man  wandered into their realm, they would seek their revenge by making him dance  until he died from exhaustion. This poem hit several points for qualities  desired in a romantic ballet-- madness, tragedy, heartbreak, ethereal scenes  danced by ballerinas who seemed to transcend the limits of the human body,  and the centering of women around their relationships with men.

 Kenton, Tristram. 2018. "Vadim Muntagirov and  Marianela Nunez." The Guardian. Swan Lake. London.

This photo from Swan Lake shows the  ballerina at the mercy of her partner's strength, completely trusting (or  hopeless?), draping herself over his arm. While the choreography for this  ballet is very challenging and requires tremendous strength and control, the  character of Odette- the swan queen- dances a series of movements intentionally  designed to make her appear fragile, sad, desperate and submissive. The  prince is captivated by her soulfulness and peculiarity and pursues her.  She dances for her freedom, waiting to  break the evil spell that transformed her from human to bird. This can only  be done by a prince professing his true love and commitment. He is under her  spell, but maintains the upper hand but controlling her fate. Spoiler: it  doesn't work out. Another tragic ending.

 Lumen. n.d. "Neoclassicism and Romanticism." Boundless  Art History.  https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-arthistory/chapter/neoclassicism-and-romanticism/.

 Mann, Cheryl. 2007. Victoria Jaiani and Temur  Suluashvili in "Giselle" . Joffrey Ballet, Chicago.

Act II of Giselle in the graveyard;  the realm of the Wilis. Here the prince has been condemned to death by  dancing, as ordered by the Queen of the Wilis. The former lovers dance in a  tragic pas de deux. Similar to Swan Lake, the ballerina playing  Giselle has been choreographed to essentially look dead. Her movements are simultaneously  rigid and limp, signifying her departure from human life and her ability to  float and dematerialize at any moment. Her heartbreak places her at the whim  of her partner's desire to manipulate her body in an attempt to repossess  her. Yet she remains relatively cold, trapped in her memory of her sadness.  Another photographic example of the romantic ballerina living and dying for  her man, and then transcending her earthly body to become an unattainable  fantasy of unrequited love.

 Mohin, Andrea. 2018. David Hallberg and Polina Semionova  in American Ballet Theater's Swan Lake. The New York Times, New York.

More evidence of recurring themes in fantasy  and female submission.

 Pazcoguin, Georgina. 2021. Swan Dive: The Making of a  Rogue Ballerina. New York: Henry Holt and Co.

I  selected this autobiography by New York City Ballet soloist Georgina Pazcoguin  because she very boldly details her problems with sexual harassment, forced  cosmetic surgeries, and racist policies within the ballet company. This  demonstrates that the Romantic Era of ballet has reproduced its ideology and  imagery so many times over 200+ years that it has become normative. While  such behavior has never been okay, it certainly stands out as much more  unacceptable and outdated by 2021 standards. Yet the ballet world remains  isolated from much social and cultural progress past the early twentieth  century. The legacy of the objectified and exoticized ballerina subjects  Pazcoguin to male company members' entitlement to her body, touching her  inappropriately as a "joke" whenever she enters the studio. As an  already petite woman, she is harassed for being overweight and forced to  undergo a $10,000 liposuction procedure so she can fit the romantic image of  a delicate woman walking the line between life and death. Also standard to  the Eurocentric origins of ballet is an inherent favoring of pale, white  ballerinas. Pazcoguin was the first Asian American to become a soloist in her  company, but was still relegated to the B cast for most productions.

 Pennefather, Alice. 2021. Reece Clarke as Albrecht and  Natalia Osipova as Giselle in Giselle. The Royal Ballet, London.

Even though he lied to her, betrayed her,  and caused her untimely death, here we have Giselle attempting to save her  prince from the Wili Queen's ruling of his death. Even in her heroic act, the  man is still seen as being the strong one holding up her body, limp from  romantic devastation.

 Plisetskaya, Maya. c. 1976. "Swan Lake: Odette."  Original Unknown. Pride of the Soviet People.

Photograph of famous Soviet ballerina Maya  Plisetskaya as Odette the Swan Queen. Here we see another example of the  standard broken, bird-like shape that makes up the Swan Lake choreographic  signature. Odette is mourning her conditions, fearing that there is no hope  for her. She is quite dramatically giving up as she sits by the water,  periodically gazing at her own reflection. The unattainable ballerina is tortured  by her own unattainable desire for salvation.

 Scholl, Tim. 1994. From Petipa to Balanchine.  London: Routledge.

I  selected this book because its section on the Romantic Ballet Era breaks down  the standard structure in plot development, particularly as favored by French  choreographer Marius Petipa, whose original choreography is still danced in  revivals of romantic ballets today. Scholl indicated three main components: a  mad scene, a vision scene, a reconciliation scene wherein the protagonist and  her love interest reunite. The rise in feminization of ballet coinciding with  romantic themes underscores the collective association with women and intense  emotional states.

 Wollstonecraft, Mary. 1792. A Vindication of the Rights  of Woman. London: Walter Scott Publishing.

It  was important for me to find women's commentary on the social positioning of  women in Europe at the time of the Romantic Era. Mary Wollstonecraft's  feminist commentary validated many of the problematic tropes in the romantic  ballets, supporting that the ballerina's qualities were not developed in an  original artistic bubble. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,  Wollstonecraft voices the injustice of women being denied access to full  expressions of their intellect, with men being "ever placed between her  and reason". She goes on to say that women are forced to view life  through a limited lens, and required to "take things on trust". In  each of the three ballets I've used as primary examples for this research, the  ballerina protagonist was written to play characters that were dramatic,  emotional, at times irrational, and completely physically trusting of her  partner. In each production, there was a narrative shift that transitioned  from realistic story to surrealism, which can be symbolically perceived as  the separation between reason and irrationality/escapism-- the writer,  director and choreographer, typically being male, standing between the  ballerina and her ability to portray an autonomous, complex human.

 Yusupov, Damir. 2019. Olga Smirnova as Giselle and  Artemy Belyakov as Albrecht in Alexei Ratmansky’s reconstructed “Giselle” at  the Bolshoi Ballet. Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow.

Image of the frail, Romantic ballerina in a  wispy pose, portraying the ghost of a heartbroken peasant girl. Standing in  an imposing arabesque above her is her former fiancé, who has journeyed to  the graveyard to seek reconciliation. She is sad, crumbling and distant,  giving the impression that she could float away at any moment to escape. Her  partner sees this as a challenge and a chase, following her in an effort to  interrupt her space and repossess her attention. Seemingly washing over the  reality that the prince is the reason why Giselle is now dead and locked in  tragedy, the audience is influenced to believe that this pursuit is romantic,  rather than the bold display of entitlement that it is.

    [1] (Lumen n.d.)

[2] (Scholl 1994)

[3] (Garafola 1997)

The Things That Matter

I’ve talked a lot over the last two months or so about the many different ways that the characters, story, and themes of the Kingdom Hearts series align with the framework of the Heroine’s Journey. For the final chapter in this series of essays, I’d like to talk about what it means for this series to follow this narrative formula. Because the fact that Kingdom Hearts fits into this storytelling pattern is critically important now more than ever. 

The three most recent series I know of that aligned with the Heroine’s Journey framework all ended up missing the landing in various ways. Two of the three - Voltron: Legendary Defender and the Star Wars sequel trilogy - abandoned the formula in their final installments, while the third one - the Frozen movies - managed to fit into the formula almost completely, but suffered in the second movie from a lack of clarity as to which of the two leads is the main protagonist and which is the Animus. Two of these were under the Disney umbrella, and all three have had evidence found that executive meddling or other behind-the-scenes conflicts over story direction played a role in how the final installments ended. 

As I mentioned in my essay “Into the Unknown,” when a story deviates from the structure it appears to be following, it produces a visceral sense of wrongness in the audience. In stories which up toward the end aligned with the Heroine’s Journey, that effect is amplified. The framework of the Heroine’s Journey was designed to uplift the experiences of identities outside of what society considers the default option in storytelling. The lived experiences of those identities are mirrored in the narrative’s themes. So when a story set up around calling out prejudices and double standards about those identities that are ingrained into the audience’s culture deviates from that formula, the result inevitably ends up reinforcing those biases instead, on top of the brokenness of the narrative in general.  

In terms of how this applies to Kingdom Hearts, Sora and Riku’s individual character arcs have been noted by many LGBTQ+ fans to have notable parallels with elements of their own lived experiences:

Riku’s arc of learning to accept his darkness as something natural that’s a part of him and which he can express in a positive way mirrors how many LGBTQ+ people grow up with the idea that same-sex attraction is “sinful” and “unnatural” and have to unlearn that mindset in order to realize that there’s nothing wrong with them. Likewise, Mickey’s line in Re:COM about how spending time with Riku has positively changed his opinion about Darkness can be read as an analogy for straight people who are initially unsure of or hostile to LGBTQ+ identities changing their minds with education and first-hand interaction to become staunch allies. Esmeralda’s talk with Riku about how “There are just some things we need to keep separate from the world at large, at least until we have time to figure them out”[1], while on one level is referencing Riku’s Darkness and his inner turmoil relating to Ansem, can also describe the common LGBTQ+ experience of being in the closet and hiding that part of yourself from the people around you[2]. 

As for Sora, in Kingdom Hearts III he responds to Davy Jones’ comments in The Caribbean about the romantic relationship between Will and Elizabeth by saying that “I still have a lot to learn about love[3],” indicating he lacks understanding of his own feelings in the area of romance. This is supported by the official Kingdom Hearts Character Files book published by Square in February 2020. Short stories in this book featuring Sora’s POV depict him as actively confused about what romantic love is[4], and struggling to define the nature of his relationship with Riku[5][6]. This can be a common experience for LGBTQ+ youth growing up surrounded by media that only ever depicts romantic relationships as one boy, one girl. Many people who grew up like this—myself included—have had similar experiences of struggling to understand our own feelings about someone of the same gender because for our entire lives up to that point we had little or no exposure to the idea that being romantically interested in someone of the same gender as you was an option. 

Sora and Riku are each written in ways that speak to common LGBTQ+ experiences, and the fact that so many things—the canon parallels to Disney romances, the match with how love interests are portrayed in the Heroine’s Journey, the fact that one of the series’ Lead Event Planners Michio Matsuura was described by the Co-Director Tai Yasue to be “head over heels for the bond between Riku and Sora’s hearts[7]”, in connection with his enjoyment of “pure love dramas[7]”—are all pointing to the conclusion that these similarities did not happen by accident, but by design. 

It makes so much sense for Heroine’s Journey narratives to be used to tell LGBTQ+ stories because there are so many ways that homophobia and transphobia overlap with and are rooted in the very same gender and cultural norms that the framework challenges. Many countries have come a long way towards public acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities, but in terms of the stories that we tell, mainstream fiction is still skewed in favor of stories with protagonists who are straight and cisgender. Storylines with straight romance are treated as a society-wide default, while creators in countries like the U.S. who want to include even the smallest background references to LGBTQ+ relationships have had to fight and push back against corporate pressure to remove them. 

This is especially true for media aimed at children and teenagers, as the fact that being openly LGBTQ+ is still widely considered problematic in many countries is frequently used by entertainment executives in ostensibly more progressive countries as an excuse for censoring LGBTQ+ storylines and characters. Multiple creators working on animated shows for Disney and/or its competitors have spoken out in recent weeks about the resistance they faced to including LGBTQ+ relationships[8][9][10] and how they were told that openly acknowledging characters as non-straight was too controversial or “inappropriate for the channel"[9].

As a consequence of this environment, creators wishing to depict non-heterosexual relationships have had to resort to creative methods of getting the implications past the censors in a way that LGBTQ+ audiences would recognize while still maintaining plausible deniability so that the executives could make money off the story in anti-LGBTQ+ markets. The downside to this is that because these efforts are more subtle, most straight audiences will either not notice the implications, or else dismiss them as an accident. Some will go as far as coming up with alternate explanations to justify why any potential LGBTQ+ subtext about a character or relationship could not possibly have been put there by the creator intentionally. 

This extends not only to audiences, but also to people who interact with these stories in a professional capacity, such as translating and marketing a story’s international release. Animated shows that feature same-gender relationships have had international dubs change the gender of one character in the pairing to make it straight, for instance. Or there's the infamous example of how the English dub for Sailor Moon in the 1990s changed two girls from lovers to cousins in order to provide an explanation for their closeness that didn't involve acknowledging that the characters were not straight. In terms of the Kingdom Hearts series, the English localization has routinely downplayed LGBTQ+ subtext in the series while in some cases adding romantic undertones to interactions between a male and female character that did not exist in the original Japanese script. Kingdom Hearts III was one of the most egregious examples of this:

Hercules’ recollection of how he dove into the River Styx to save Megara’s soul in KH2 is thematically connected to Riku sacrificing himself for Sora at the Keyblade Graveyard through the phrase taisetsu na hito (literal meaning: “precious person”) when Hercules is talking to Sora in Olympus and when Mickey is talking to Riku in the Realm of Darkness at the beginning of the game. The English version translates this as “person I love most” for Hercules, while changing it to “what matters” for Riku and Mickey to call back to his meeting with Terra in Birth by Sleep, which the scene includes a flashback to. While Mickey and Riku’s original meaning can still be deduced from the conversation around it, especially with Mickey saying "sometimes you care about someone so much," changing the line for the sake of a callback downplays the evolution of Riku’s goals from protecting “things that matter” to protecting “the *person* who matters”. 

Donald and Goofy’s teasing Sora in the scene at Galaxy Toys where Sora comments on how much he or Riku resemble Yozora is framed in the English version as “Riku would be a great action figure because he’s cool, unlike Sora.” However the original Japanese indicates that the teasing is centered around the fact that Sora said a character who looks like Riku was good-looking.

When Kairi offers Sora a paopu fruit, she says in the original Japanese that it’s simply a good luck charm so that they don’t get separated, while in the English localization, she says “I want to be a part of your life no matter what, that’s all.” While “that’s all” still fits with how the parallels to Winnie the Pooh indicate her connection with Sora has weakened and she wants to maintain it, the first part of the English line calls back to the legend of the fruit introduced in KH1, which was openly referred to as romantic by Selphie in the original and localized versions of the first game. As a result, this adds romantic implications that contrast with Sora’s unreceptive body language and facial expressions[11] as he reacts to the initial offering of the paopu fruit. 

In the original Japanese, Riku’s words to Sora before his sacrifice at the Keyblade Graveyard translate to “I believe in you. You won’t give up.” The English localization changed it to “You don’t believe that. I know you don’t.” Not only does it remove a callback to the original game, but this phrasing dowplays Riku’s faith in Sora and ignores Sora’s very clear feelings of inadequacy. 

During the scene where Sora and Kairi are floating through the dark tunnel toward the Keyblade Graveyard, Sora’s line in English, “I feel strong with you,” was originally an acknowledgement of Kairi’s strength that called back to how he wouldn’t let her come along on the return trip to Hollow Bastion in the first game because he thought she’d “kind of be in [his] way”[12]. Removing this callback takes the focus away from Kairi’s growth and brushes aside one of the ways the game shows that Sora’s view of her has changed over the course of the series.

Some fans defend changes such as these insisting that the development team had to have approved of them. However Testuya Nomura himself feels strongly enough about the subject: he stated in a 2018 interview several months before KH3's release that “an incorrect or defective translation risks compromising the comprehension of the whole story,” referring especially to the Kingdom Hearts series[13], and the English localization of Re:Mind—which was much more accurately translated than the base game—directly references the original meaning of Kairi’s words during the paopu scene in one of the DLC’s Kingstagram posts. This all indicates that changes such as these that remove important connections or change the meaning of the conversation are ones that the development team very much do not approve of. 

LGBTQ+ fans of Kingdom Hearts who recognize their own experiences reflected in Sora's and Riku’s journeys know that Disney has not had a good track record when it comes to depicting LGBTQ+ characters in properties they are affiliated with. The most we ever get in their movies are background moments or nameless characters that are only there in one scene that easily can be cut out for distribution in countries with heavy anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. And that’s if the character’s orientation is even mentioned out loud in the film at all instead of simply being confirmed by interviews before or after release but never acknowledged on-screen. Television has fared better, but until recent years we never had any main characters who were confirmed in-show to be anything but straight. But things are slowly starting to improve. Within the last few years shows like "Andi Mack" and "The Owl House" have depicted major characters as openly interested in others of the same gender[14], and Pixar recently released a short as part of their Sparknotes program called “Out”, which openly centers on a man worrying about telling his parents he’s gay. 

This is why it is so important that the Heroine’s Journey of Kingdom Hearts follow through to a structurally appropriate conclusion, with the development team being given the freedom to tell their story in full without restriction or censorship. Deviating from the formula this late in the series would represent a continuation of the recent trend of Heroine’s Journey narratives being structurally broken by inference from forces other than the main creative team. But if the Kingdom Hearts story is able to complete it’s Heroine’s Journey without executives or localization teams getting in the way of the intended story, then the LGBTQ+ themes already present in Sora and Riku’s journey will break so many barriers,challenge people’s expectations of what is possible, and convey powerful messages of self-discovery and acceptance—just like the framework was designed to. 

Sources

[1] Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance; Square Enix; 2012. 

[2] Tumblr post by @blowingoffsteam2; December 3, 2019. https://blowingoffsteam2.tumblr.com/post/189461796759/blowingoffsteam2-dont-mind-me-over-here-just

[3] Kingdom Hearts III; Square Enix; 2019. 

[4] Translation of KH Character Files Beast’s Castle story by @lilyginnyblackv2; February 3, 2020. https://lilyginnyblackv2.tumblr.com/post/611420864489062401/character-files-beasts-castle-story-english

[5] Translation of KH Character Files Arendelle story by @lilyginnyblackv2; March 3, 2020. https://lilyginnyblackv2.tumblr.com/post/611490139845345280/character-files-arendelle-story-english

[6] Translation of KH Character Files Arendelle story by @notaseednotyet; March 1, 2020. https://twitter.com/notaseednotyet/status/1233993459670765569

[7] “Message from the KINGDOM” Updates!; April 11, 2012. https://www.khinsider.com/news/-Message-from-the-KINGDOM-Updates-2427

[8] “”Steven Universe” and “She-Ra” creators on Representation”; Paper Magazine; August 5, 2020. https://www.papermag.com/rebecca-sugar-noelle-stevenson-2646446747.html

[9] Twitter thread by Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch; August 9, 2020. https://twitter.com/_AlexHirsch/status/1292328558921003009

[10] Twitter thread by Owl House creator Dana Terrace; August 9, 2020. https://twitter.com/DanaTerrace/status/1292321440029478917 

[11] Frame by frame analysis of Sora and Kairi’s body language during the KH3 paopu scene by @notaseednotyet; September 14, 2019.  https://twitter.com/notaseednotyet/status/1172774158167506944

[12] Kingdom Hearts; Square Enix; 2002. 

[13] “Nomura stresses the importance of direct translations on story comprehension, and talks about world development as well as the Gummi Ship;” August 27, 2018. https://www.kh13.com/news/nomura-stresses-the-importance-of-direct-translations-on-story-comprehension-and-talks-about-world-development-as-well-as-the-gummi-ship/ [14] Disney’s The Owl House Now Has a Confirmed Bisexual Character; August 9, 2020. https://io9.gizmodo.com/disneys-animated-series-the-owl-house-now-has-a-confirm-1844665583

THUNDERBOLT FANTASY/AMAZING STAR☆KILLER ROUGE - Hoshigumi, 2018

Disclaimer: I can’t call this a review. I don’t really speak Japanese, and what I understand is sort of limited, so I don’t think it’s fair for me to put my thoughts and opinions out as a REVIEW. I absolutely did not grasp the entirety of this show and will not pretend I did.  I’m just someone who really loves Takarazuka, knows some Japanese, loves Hoshigumi more than air, is enthralled with Thunderbolt Fantasy as a show in and of itself, and was privileged enough to see this production four times. Here is a (very long) collection of thoughts!

THUNDERBOLT FANTASY~

This entire experience was a blast from start to finish.  When Thunderbolt Fantasy was announced as Hoshigumi’s tour show, I think a lot of us were rightfully CAUTIOUSLY CURIOUS about the entire situation, especially after we looked up the source material and found a PUPPET SHOW. I remember watching the first episode with a friend, having only the tentative top/nibante/top musumeyaku casting and thinking “wow that’s uh ambitious and confusing but I kind of love it.”  Well, reader, I can personally confirm that in the end, I more than kind of loved it.  I’m currently nine episodes into the TV series and what I can say is the Takarazuka production MOSTLY follows it so far, up until about episode seven, where they start making some sacrifices in order to fit a 13 episode TV show into an hour and some change stage production. Names are a bit confusing, and even the Takarazuka main website put up a glossary of terms, so you know you’re getting into Something before you even start. 

The BASIC, BASIC, BARE BONES PLOT is as follows (I am using the JAPANESE CHARACTER names for consistency):  

THE PLOT: 

Tan Hi (Kisaki Airi) and her brother, Tan Ko (Toudou Jun) are part of a clan that is tasked with protecting a sacred sword. Obviously, A Group Of Bad Guys™ led by Betsu Ten Gai (Tenju Mitsuki) followed by Ryo Mi (Arisa Hitomi), Cho Mei (Amahana Ema), and Zan Kyo (Ooki Makoto) ALSO want the sacred sword. Tan Hi and Tan Ko are ambushed and attacked by Zan Kyo, and Tan Ko (Airi’s character’s brother) is killed. Tan Hi escapes with the hilt of the sacred sword (hereafter: TENGYOKEN), but is in pretty bad shape. 

Meanwhile in the woods, Shou Fu Kan (Nanami Hiroki), a wandering swordsman, is trying to escape the rain and does so by taking an umbrella from over a Buddha Statue. Enter Lin Setsu A (Kurenai Yuzuru), a VERY CANONICALLY MYSTERIOUS AND VAGUE guy who immediately starts giving Shou Fu Kan grief for taking the Buddha’s umbrella, to which Shou Fu Kan replies, “If the stone Buddha gets wet, it will be fine, but if I get wet, I will catch a cold.” Touche, cute swordsman. Enter Tan Hi, still being pursued by Zan Kyo. Tan Hi is in very bad shape, and Shou Fu Kan fights Zan Kyo, Zan Kyo severs his own head.  After, in the land of evil, Betsu Ten Gai receives Zan Kyo’s severed head (really) and accesses his memory, the last of which is Shou Fu Kan giving his name immediately before Zan Kyo is beheaded. Betsu Ten Gai now is targeting Shou Fu Kan who obviously has something to do with the Tengyoken. Betsu Ten Gai sends his lackeys after Shou Fu Kan and co. 

I won’t go any more into the plot (and unfortunately Wikipedia can’t really help you), but if you’re interested I really recommend you watch the TV show, because it is INTERESTING. From there, Ken San Un (Rei Makoto) enters and joins the party because he is a classic cocky charming young boy protagonist who wants to make a name for himself, along with Lin Setsu A’s old “friends”, Shu Un Sho (an archer, played by Kizaki Reo), Kei Gai (a NECROMANCER played by Yumeki Anru), and Setsu Mu Sho, (a LITERAL SERIAL KILLER who wants Lin Setsu A DEAD, played by Mao Yuuki.) Every one of these characters has a complicated and not overtly stated motive, and NONE of them agree on any tactics which is further complicated by the fact that half of them aren’t even human and Demon Motives Are Different. The one thing they have in common is that they all want the Tengyoken out of Betsu Ten Gai’s hands. 

THE PLAY ITSELF:  This was an anime stage play. If you like anime stage plays, you will LOVE Thunderbolt Fantasy. If you have ever loved a video game, an anime, a fantasy story, or THOUGHT you might love a video game, anime, or fantasy story, this play is going to be FUN for you. I felt like I was INSIDE a game in the Final Fantasy series. The technical aspects of the show BLEW ME AWAY. The coolest lighting effects I have seen in my life are in this play. The set is effective at getting across where we are, and projections are used to pretty cool effect this time around, in my opinion. There are LITERALLY only three and a half sung songs in this entire musical, one being the title song sung by the main players, one being another T.M. Revolution song sung by Kurenai Yuzuru to introduce the rest of the characters, one beautiful sweet little half song sung by Kisaki Airi, and one being just something they gave Rei Makoto at the start of the show because she’s technically Hoshigumi’s nibante but you wouldn’t know it just from watching this show.  Which brings us to the cast!

THE CAST: PERFECT and weird. Kurenai Yuzuru as Lin Setsu A was honestly genius. I saw this production with a friend who knows only a little about Takarazuka, knows Beni tangentially, has seen one episode of Thunderbolt Fantasy and she said “that role was made for Beni.” He is sly and manipulative and FUNNY and his motives are ENTIRELY unknown. Beni sings what she sings fantastically, and it’s VERY good to see her slinking around the stage with a sly fox smile all the time.  Nanami Hiroki as Shou Fu Kan. I wouldn’t normally list her second, but in this case, she was the nibante role. I have NO idea why this didn’t go to Rei Makoto, except maybe because Kai can play a disgruntled but good natured adult man better than she can play a like spunky sixteen year old boy. Shou Fu Kan is the protagonist of Thunderbolt and they did NOT change that even ONE BIT for this play. The story directly relied on her action and without spoiling anything, the coolest stage magic and ridiculously anime moment I have ever seen in my life involved her center stage in the final battle, Making It Happen. She has pretty much The Last Moment in the show. She has one-liners and dry humor and handles stage combat INCREDIBLY. Shou Fu Kan is just a morally good guy who doesn’t want trouble and does want to Do The Right Thing. This role was AMAZING for her (I am biased.), and I can’t wait to see how the tour audiences take it. 

Kisaki Airi as Tan Hi. This is my favorite role I have ever seen Airi in. She was the best at stage combat in the entire troupe, and she acted her pants off. Her character goes through a lot of unecessary bullshit and suffering and she remains wholly likeable through it all. Her motivations are clear and her relationships with the other characters are believable and specific. She also has some really lovely comic bits.

Rei Makoto as Ken San Un. Coto was playing a spunky kid and honestly Coto was born to play spunky kids (but what wasn’t Coto born to play?) Ken San Un has an ego that IS backed up by skill, and he really just wants to Make A Name For Himself, Impress A Girl, and do the right thing. Her voice is as usual, killer, and her character is INSANELY charming, especially when interacting with Tan Hi. There’s a lot of complexity in this role too, and Coto handles it fantastically. They padded this role out a lot, which worked well and didn’t seem forced whatsoever, but even so, it was a solidly supporting role. Hopefully Coto got some well deserved rest in the process.

The rest of the roles were similarly well-cast. Hoshigumi’s focus on ensemble casts like they did here and with Another World REALLY do them all some favors. Tenju Mitsuki made short but crucial appearances as the MAIN VILLAN and got to show off the unhinged wildness that made her Mercutio so fantastic. Amahana Ema and Arisa Hitomi were good henchmen, Arisa Hitomi has a cool little fight and a costume with neat slits that make her movement interesting. The characters could have dealt with more development, but they’re also fairly one-dimensional in the show. Mao Yuuki as a serial killer was hard to buy, but she did what she could with a role that in the TV show is like stoic and, well, literally a puppet. Yumeki Anru kind of absolutely SLAYED being a hot demon with a whip, her interactions with fellow demonic entity Beni were true to the show, and she sings fantastically. Kizaki Reo is actually insanely handsome as the really gruff archer with (surprise) also dubious morals. Her voice also SHOCKED me in all the right ways. Other characters were played by everyone else, and the smaller cast meant that a lot of the kids got little moments in prolonged exposition scenes as storytellers or townspeople or evil henchmen. This troupe is in good hands with the younger ones, I think. Shoutout to EVERY ONE OF THE MAIN CAST (and Ruri Hanaka and Sumika Amane, playing TINY roles) for balancing weird puppet-inspired physicality and quirks from the show with like, actual human acting and movement.

AMAZING STAR ☆ KILLER ROUGE~

More of us have seen Killer Rouge, so this doesn’t need as much from me.  This production, as a tour, has gone through some changes. Notably, the postman number sung by Seo Yuriya/Honoka Kozakura/Seira Hitomi was cut (and literally none of those three were in this because of Bow Hall/injury (get well, Honoka ♥️ ). Solos sung by Toa Reiya/Hanagata Hikaru/Seo Yuriya were mostly distributed to Amahana Ema/Tenju Mitsuki/Kizaki Reo/Amato Kanon etc. The Nippon Seinenkan stage doesn’t make ANY sense for this revue, which originally made pretty nice use of stairs/the ginkyou/the SPACE they had in Mura and Tokyo.  Mask of Rouge got ANOTHER wig option and Nanami Hiroki seems to just be rotating through them entirely at her own chaotic will, which creates a really high stakes Russian Roulette Situation in terms of how Hot Mask Of Rouge Will Be.  The Rose of Versailes/Disgaea/Wonder Rouge section of the revue was SOLIDLY the most charming thing I have ever seen in my life.  Mao Yuuki has joined the Wonder Five audience participation bit in place of Seo Yuriya and Tenju Mitsuki is up there in place of Hanagata Hikaru. This troupe can ad lib like NO ONE’S BUSINESS or more accurately, Beni and Airi can ad lib like no one’s business, Coto occasionally has some bursts of inspiration, and Kai can’t begin to keep a straight face when put on the spot.  There are a lot of new numbers, and all of them are in my opinion, really Good. There’s also a LENGTHY Beniko/Aiko/Reiko ad lib section always beginning with some discussion about studying Chinese and always giving away the fact that Coto and Airi are working harder at that than Beni seems to be.  That said, Beni does have a REALLY BEAUTIFUL AND SIMPLE AND CLASSIC solo kuroenbi situation that is in Chinese and to my (English speaking ears) it sounds really good. We’ll see I guess.  Coto/Airi/Ema have a HEAVY METAL ROCK NUMBER that’s kind of hot and totally in all their powerhouse ranges.  The pegasus/everyone in multicolored outfits is really satisfying to me and would be to any other Hoshigumi fan despite the fact that I don’t love Toa Reiya’s taidan solo going to someone else (which I admit is just maybe because I loved Toa Reiya.)  There’s a cute little number (Timing) with Airi, Minato Rihi, and Yuunagi Ryou. Yuunagi Ryou is CUTE. The number is cute. The kickline was a little different and also involved some girls who weren’t in it originally because it’s not just the whole 104th class anymore and they needed to make up for THAT in a fierce way. Shoutout to all the girls who jumped in and killed it. ♥️ Ruri Hanaka specifically caught my eye and also had a nice solo in the whole costume party number.  Jounetsu no Arashi was replaced for whatever reason but the number thats in it’s place now is equally as hot and like involves some counting in Spanish and a lot of rowdy otokoyaku energy which is my single greatest weakness. 

For me, as a Hoshigumi fan until the day I die probably, Killer Rouge was incredible. So many people got little chances to shine, and the fun the actresses were having with it was PALPABLE. I loved the vast majority of the costumes and set pieces and little themed moments, and I loved the new numbers, and I did not miss the numbers that were cut (save for Jounetsu no Arashi because Coto licking her lips was pretty good.) I got to see the people I love most doing a revue that was so joyful and energetic and group-focused. I could not have asked for more. 

I’d give Thunderbolt Fantasy/Killer Rouge a 100/10, which will surprise no one who has ever met me. 

Thanks Hoshigumi, and good luck in Taiwan!

Part 3 of series ‘The 1st Hack-Anniversary അഥവാ ആൺഒരുമ്പെട്ടാൽ’

I.

on June 26th 2018, I was at the Precision Medicine annual conference at Harvard Med. i try to go every year, they are free-ticket events, and i feel a quiet, middle-middle class satisfaction once the free-ticket is booked and the email-confirmation is received. especially as the event tends to be quite the ചൂടപ്പം, being Harvard and all.

a year later now, I find myself keep going back to that session from last June. the one-hour talk was from the perspective of patient advocacy, on how patients can help drive optimal decision making and societal investments in effective treatment, and prevention of diseases. and that day specifically, patient advocacy from within the pharmaceutical industry and its application to oncology. the Keynote Speaker was a cancer survivor who had previously served as the Exec Dir. of the White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force, a position created by the Obama Administration. afterward, the concept of patient leadership was further explored by panels featuring citizen scientists, clinicians, and data-driven companies. the question on how to overcome the disconnect between patients and hospital care was next addressed by healthcare investors and the media. and later, innovator luminaries had offered to explain how technology can help complement molecular characterizations and to implement new precision medicine clinical workflows…

lingering on Patient-driven Health Economy, I had learnt about this particular idea for a Knowledge Network for biomedical research that is somewhat analogous to a Geographical Information System (GIS) such as Google Maps. GIS was launched following public access to GPS data and dramatic improvements in database technology — comparable to current advances in biomedical data generation and handling. like Google Maps, the Information Commons would consist of multiple layers of data that together provide insights that could not be gained from any of the layers alone. the Knowledge Network would impact all aspects of biomedicine and health care. traditionally, research laboratories have had little connection with clinicians’ offices. in order to find groups of patients or patient-derived samples for study, researchers have had to use informal referral networks to identify physicians working with diseases of interest. after contributing to the study, the patient is unlikely to remain connected to the research process, or be aware of the outcomes. because the Information Commons is continuously updated with new information, researchers would be able to conduct long-term follow-ups and better understand how patients respond to treatments over long periods.

another reason i must remember it all quite well must be because my life had begun to be on the Hack-Radar by then. distancing myself from the mindless entitlement, and instead listening and learning a thing or two at Harvard Med had rooted my self-assured at the time. knowledge banks are happy places for any geeky-nerdy-Dorkin to be at!

from purely personal health experiences through life, ill and well, I have stonewall-maintained the conviction that when it comes to medicine, ‘the treatment norm’ simply meant population averages, and not everyone. treatments that help some are ineffective for others, the same medicine may cause side effects in only certain patients and yet, healthcare systems around the world continue to deliver inefficient care that fails to help significant portions of the patient population.

Precision Medicine, Personalized Medicine, Predictive Medicine, P4 Medicine—words interchangeably used—is my favorite medical model that take an explicit multidimensional view of patients: not just one data modality such as genomics or environmental exposure and this perspective allows for more precise matching of humans to disease states (diagnosis), future disease states (prognosis) and appropriate therapies. they say this tailored approach of emphasizing that ‘it is far more important to know what person has the disease than what disease the person has’ is the same sentiment echoed from centuries earlier in the Hippocrates, Charaka Samhita…schools of thought. the buzz for Precison Medicine was created when Prez. Obama launched an initiative committing $215 million in to it, at least that’s how I started being intrigued about this space. wonder what Shailaja Teacher has to say about investing in Precision Medicine, especially as Ayurveda is favored by quite a good few in Kerala. i have on my wish-list to listen to an Arya Vaidyan someday keynote-speaking at Harvard and being on a panel with veteran Precision Medicine enthusiasts from different schools of medicine from around the globe.

June this year, I attended the annual conference again at Harvard Med. this time the panel that I took-home the most was on ‘Hyper-Individualized Treatments’ featuring the Undiagnosed Diseases Network Coordinating Center, a project funded by National Institute of Health. they work with people who have rare conditions and who cannot find cure anywhere in the standard places. for those conditions that are established and there may be known standards of cure, patients are provided recommendation guidelines for treatment. but if it’s unknown, they have a model organism screening center in the network that’s able to investigate the underlying mechanism of diseases. one of the major steps they then do is connecting the patients with support groups on social media. these may be just Facebook pages for a particular gene of interest. oftentimes, these groups, these families, are experts in rare conditions, and work with clinicians and researchers to collect clinical information necessary for research or therapeutic opportunities down the road.

all the varied Medical Chatter at the conference gave me an idea. so, from june 27th, i started to focus-follow the twitter handle @harvardhealth to maintain social media homeostasis. i did it for two reasons.

reason 1- i felt like taking notice of a health-related problem that the hacker seemed to have raised once. he seemed to have implied that the whatsapp medium ill-affects the global health of the world. and so i thought, which is a better place to seek up to date and accessible health-related information for the world at large? and came across the account handled by a world-class team that ensures the trustworthiness of the information that they tweet out. learning from the @harvardhealth account is better than relying on whatsapp-forward health finds, i say!

reason 2-  i was being hacked at first in 2018, to be taught lessons. then it was said that i was being continued-hacked through 2019 as I followed the hacker’s account, which I had thought was the optimal place to learn about the information from my world that was being hack-broadcasted. now when i do not follow the inactive account any longer, how can I be hacked and the victim blaming be continued still…? what is the reason now? when will the Hack-Broadcasting end? i’m looking forward to privacy and personal freedom. if I have anything to share with the world, I can very well write that on the blog here y’know. :)

II.

a favorite scene from ‘Kumbalangi Nights’ that I remember is sometime in the first thirty-forty minutes or so. the protagonist brothers have apparently made plans for dinner together on their Father’s ഓർമദിവസം. one of the brothers, Bonny who is physically disabled, arrives home by തോണി. as he reaches the shore-almost, he catches a glimpse of his family busy over a seemingly not uncommon battle scene at home. his face registers a brief so-what-else-is-new, and he takes a U-turn. i’m biased, i don’t think i’d have identified with Bonny if he wasn’t disabled in some manner. a year ago, I had re-shared the popular observation that കരയുന്ന കുട്ടികൾക്കേ പാലുള്ളൂ. Brothers Bobby and Saji come across as perfect കരയുന്ന കുട്ടികൾ. Bonny, comparatively, has sort of made peace with his difference-disabilities and he is relatively self-reliant. he seems to find himself through his art or a laid-back swim in the river. he is not someone to cry and get things done. he seems to seek more out of life than simply living the everyday steered by perpetual mindlessness. and naturally, he sometimes finds himself at his wit’s end on having to keep living a life where he has no choice but be around the brothers who seek daily narcissistic highs. so he takes a U-turn. the U-turn is justified IMO.

then there is the dynamic between Saji and Vijay, his Tamil-friend. i identified with Vijay, only because he is not a naturally-assertive person. after staying patient for a long while, when Vijay tries to open up about Saji mooching on him and how he cannot endorse it any longer, Saji goes berserk. Vijay probably goes ‘ശോ പറയേണ്ടിയിരുന്നില്ലാ, ഇങ്ങേരു നേരേയാവില്ല. പറയാതെ തന്നെ ഈ scene വിട്ടാൽ മതിയായിരുന്നു ’, but decides to be less cynical and instead tries to empathize with Saji, keeps aside his priorities in life and rushes to take care of കരയുന്ന Saji. Vijay is better off being by himself and distancing from Saji & co. but he makes the decision to cater to Saji yet again and meets with his death. and Saji? he now feels ‘guilty’ and attempts to live better. at least a few people around us must be like Saji, who hold the privilege to ‘postpone introspection’ until ‘tragedies’ happen. അനുശോചന പ്രകടനങ്ങൾ after all are surely easier!

the friendship is not the focus of the film. it’s more of a macguffin, something that affects Saji’s life-arc. since Vijay has lesser screen time than the other protagonists, the audience is not really invested in him. plus, he is an അണ്ണാച്ചി alien, so it’s easier to overlook his life-arc than that of the native’s. guess as a society, our empathy umbrellas must expand so that even if we do not ‘know’ someone or they have comparatively lesser screen times than others that we ‘know’, they must still never be made to go through more-shit in a personal dynamic. Vijay needn’t have died, wish the script could have employed a different macguffin than Vijay’s death to take the story forward. homogenous expectations must never be the ideal normal. but we don’t live in an ideal world, it doesn’t bother the audience that Vijay has been under severe surveillance and Hack Broadcast for the past one year, Vijay’s life has been turned upside down just so that കരയുന്ന കുട്ടികൾ can stay pacified day and night. we don’t live in an ideal world, so it doesn’t bother the audience that limited-expressive people such as Vijay seem to exist in films simply so that day and night attention-seeker കരയുന്ന കുട്ടികൾ can somehow ‘survive, sustain and improve their being’.

IMO silence is mostly always benign. എല്ലാവരും ഇടക്കിടക് കുറച്ചു നേരമെങ്കിലും മിണ്ടാതെയിരുന്നാൽ , ബാക്കി ഉള്ളവർക്ക് കൂടി ചെവി-തല കേൾക്കാൻ പറ്റും!  imagine if people took breaks and went away for weeks on. be solid MIA. i miss my invisibility. more people must embrace periodical invisibility, live and experience what it is to live invisible lives, similar to a lot of people in this world that don’t live privileged every days like the usual-suspect-social-media-platform-hoggers!

from a personal disability perspective: expression is a privilege. everyday social media expression, especially so.

but. overall, the film portrays a lovely society for population averages to live in. സാധാരണക്കാരുടെ ലോകം. democracy അത്ര മോശം concept അല്ല എന്നത് സത്യം. and for now, non-സാധാരണക്കാർ like the Alan Turings of the world live honored on Bank currency notes posthumous!  the world gets more inclusive and accepting of differences over truly tiresome stretches of time, not over a day, month or an year. :)

III.

in other news, i thought of Halloween 2014. BK had carved a pumpkin at one of his Harvard alley hallways. he had made an ‘അരിവാൾ ചുറ്റിക നക്ഷത്രം’. i had admired it’s awesome-creative back then, it had made me smile. but the pumpkin design did not quite connect with the comrade inheritance in me at the time. probably because, on my mothers side of the family, i have uncles who have been murdered by Naxalites and on my father’s side of the family, uncles have turned രക്‌തസാക്ഷികൾ. guess i had always thought of myself as naturally-inclined to be apolitical; with a lesser ability than most others around to pick-and-choose between political parties, because you can always empathize with people on any side, of any wall, anywhere.

fast forward, it’s 2019. i had a made a disability-politic statement a few months ago — the curse of Raghu— in which I had given away my imaginative invention, all my colors, to start living colorless. i realize now that it was similar to Nangeli’s modus operandi. Nangeli from Kerala folklore, who gave away her breasts in a manner of making a political statement against the inhumane female-body tax prevalent in the entitled and exploitative society of the time. there she was essentially saying ‘ഇന്നാ കൊണ്ട് പോയി പുഴുങ്ങി തിന്ന് ’ with her കരയാത്തകുട്ടി-steady-laidback.

owing to circumstances in life, i’m more around comrades than when i was in 2014. so i wish to be influenced by the Comrade modus operandi toward making another disability-politic statement. In BK’s tweet here, the degree of entitlement on the letter Y is definitely not as imperialistic as the Hacker’s superfluous entitlement on the color imagination, but the essence is the same. additionally, the lynch mob troll video in his tweet reminded me of a popular philosophical thought experiment known as the trolley problem, and made me read this, this and this. the concepts such as instrumental harm and categorical imperative mentioned in these articles, for some reason, then reminded me of an informative blog that BK used to write titled ‘Reclaiming Indigeneity’. and I felt like employing ‘the Mentor’s Tools’ to make a statement against his own casual entitlement on my alphabet imagination.

so here’s ‘The Act of Reclaiming Indigeneity’:

I was born Parvathy NarayananKutty. i’m preparing for pregnancy these days. i’m off my mental health meds, for almost a month now, as it may affect the baby adversely. my healthcare providers and I are making a plan on how to proactively handle any relapse in mental ill health. i have been living as Karthiyayini, keep of Kerala, for about an year now. if IVF turns a success, I may turn Karthiyayini Yohannan. Yohannan is the achaayan-name of my son Johan who is currently inside freezer. I am writer-Type. I have always lived Y-shaded, and will always too. like colors, alphabet imagination is my invention. I do not need to pay Y-tax against my will. but unlike Nangeli, unlike Ravi, who gave herself away in parts, in making a statement against patriarchal entitlement, I do not wish to give away my alphabet. I wish to reclaim it — on paper— here. at the same time, it’s not in my nature to posses. therefore, I grant all the Y in me to Diya (daughter of SH) and Sayomi (daughter of my sister) combined. as disabled woman who is imagination inventor, i believe that they both have it in them to preserve the Indegeneity of the letter Y. but as they are not of age 18 to kindly accept and honor the gesture on their own, I make an entitled-request here that Arya Stark be the custodian of Y. so, all the Y everywhere, the Ys before and the Ys after, get auto-forwarded to Arya Stark. she keeps absolute claim. every Y is Arya Stark’s. i deem that Arya be indigenous, as she herself is source-of-Y.

അനധികൃത-ബ്രാഹ്മണ-കയ്യേറ്റം is a time-worn concept. i’m employing this familiar concept here merely to draw attention to the lesser known cause of disability. health-inequality-indignation is niche and not a mainstream topic as much as caste-inequality-indignation is. just as much as being from a relatively-privileged caste makes life easier, being relatively-healthy and not having to live as a disabled make lives easier too. just as how it was ‘casteism’ that predominantly-led to rohit vemula’s suicide —RV is a life that lives on in mainstream-conscious, employing it to make a point here— disability once predominantly-led me to attempt suicide. at the end of having lived 30 years of relatively-fucked-up-life-in-general, an attempt was orchestrated by my neurodivergent brain that had had enough with the pointlessness of living in a blissfully, ignorant world. RV’s attempt and my attempt went different ways. my brain is not in that space anymore. what-doesn’t-kill-makes-strong is a good storyline for anyone’s personal arc in life. but as a society, we must expand our basic understanding of the many debilitating inequalities prevalent in the world, and not just the mainstream-majoritarian-topics such as caste, misogyny, language, wealth, education, gender justice, rural development etc.

let us be inclusive of disability— visible and invisible— too as part of how we navigate the world. what do i mean by ‘inclusive’? — include disability into our thinking, inside our little heads, once in every little while. that’s all. disability needs to be viewed as more than niche or an intersectionality, disability needs to be looked out as the core problem holding individuals back, identified and acknowledged in contexts, and in a more than mere cerebral way….. do mull on the privileges of living a relatively healthy and able-ist lifestyle, similar to how we are gracious enough to apply random other mainstream-majoritarian-privileges to our everyday lives. check the ableism. spectrum women matter. when A says spectrum women matter and B says all women matter, and C says spectrum lives matter is a divisive thought and therefore all lives matter, then the politics behind it all needs re-thinking that is overdue. following black-lives-matter, the all-lives-matter slogan had originally started with mere structural-denial-and-devaluing masquerading as valid-criticism.

i have always been an advocate of ലോക സമസ്ത സുഖിനോ ഭവന്തു, have identified as officially-apolitical, and have been a well-wisher of the lives of all sentient beings everywhere in the world. love, peace and harmony for ALL have been my sole politics, similar to that of many others’ around us, and I will hold on to this world view for life, but my contextual-politics have evolved. i had mentioned an year back that after the deluge, i’m apolitical no longer. when disability women speak of their extreme life experiences and about the politics born off of it, trying to enforce all-women-matter may not seem odd in a still deeply patriarchal society as ours where a sabarimala-wall makes news as mighty women’s advancement. back in december it had truly dawned upon me how as a society we still are only fighting for mainstream majoritarian topics such as religion, ableist women rights, etc., and that we can probably only afford to be fighting for population averages, and had wondered if the Karthyiyanis of the world may have no choice but to live through the foreseeable future, only as tortured Alan Turings of our times. spectrum women do not possess mighty privilege to assert themselves through life in general, anywhere in the world. disability women are only beginning to find their voices everywhere. so drowning it with all-women-matter and attempting to false-equalize all struggles, thus painting women monolithic… അത് ഒരിക്കലും relatively-ശരിയുടെ politics അല്ല.

when a child is about to be born we now mostly hear ‘ആണായാലും പെണ്ണായാലും, അല്ല ഇനി ഇപ്പൊ വേറെ എന്തായാലും, it doesn’t matter! we are all for gender equality. ആരോഗ്യമുള്ള കുട്ടി ആയാൽ മതി’. healthy അല്ലാത്ത ഒരുപാട് ദുരിതം പിടിച്ച ജീവിതങ്ങളുണ്ട് . അവരൊക്കെ എന്താ ആരോഗ്യമുള്ളവർക്കായി, better privileges ഉള്ളവർക്കായി,  കേവലം inspiration-ശശികളായി, ജീവിതകാലം കഴിച്ചുകൂട്ടുകയേ ഗതിയുള്ളൂ എന്നാണോ?! നിറങ്ങളും അക്ഷരങ്ങളും inception game-ഉം...എല്ലാം തന്നെ, ബുദ്ധിമാന്ദ്യം പിടിച്ച, chronic-മനോരോഗമുള്ള ഒരു തലക്കുള്ളിലെ ഭാവനയിൽ ഉണ്ടായതാണ്. the disabled have never had freeloader-ruling-class status through time as say, brahminical patriarchy. and if for some reason now, the world cannot come to terms with ‘perceived advancements’ made by the disabled, then it’s easily a case for equality-feels-like-oppression. hence, I reclaim indigeneity of Y.

നമ്മൾ കൊയ്യും വയലെല്ലാം നമ്മുടെതാകും പൈങ്കിളിയെ എന്ന്  ONV കുറുപ്  എഴുതിയത്, ഒരിക്കൽ എവിടെയോ വായിച്ചിട്ടുണ്ട്. എഴുത്തുകാരനായ ONV കുറുപ്പിനായും ചുറ്റുമുള്ള Comrade-കൾക്കായും, here’s sending out a lal salaam your way today! 

ലാൽ സലാം is for the relatively-ശരികൾ in contexts, in corners of the world everywhere.

IV.

i absolutely loved this video session. all the creative effort behind it gave me the kicks. i thought it was quite well-conceptualized and carried out. it felt good to listen to different perspectives. but i must say it was similar to how I admired BK’s creative design back then. i totally connected on the creative-level but did not exactly relate to the essence. in fact i even felt a little envious on how everyone seemed to be in an evolved space in life where one could hold menstruation in the palm of the hand…it must have felt quite lovely to both, get practical about it and romanticize about it. i briefly played with the idea of posting a tiny self-video to join in the womenhood. but i couldn’t. menses was, is, and may always remain a debilitating disability. there was this filler song segment between programmes on Doordarshan back in the days, on girl child labour and gender equality in general. ഓടിയാടുന്ന പെൺകിടാവ് ഇവൾ എന്തോര്ത് തല കുനിപ്പൂ ഇവൾ പാടി കളിക്കേണ്ട പ്രായമിതിൽ പല ഭാരങ്ങളോ ചുമക്കാൻ! see, i am able to get only offhand-witty about menstruation, i cannot speak of it detatched from how it has affected my life. i’m not anywhere near to being in a peace space with periods. i hold strong disability indignation.

thanks for this tweet-thread AD, this made me write all these words here. that chess scene was awesome, yes ha ha! i feel like sharing two observations here. i do not know to what degree kumbalangi nights have been discussed around, so perhaps, this may sound repetitive, and if that is the case, please shrug off… i liked how the character Shammy was written. he has peculiar traits…say, the comfy-familiar dinner plate that his friend brings over to proactive-detonate any potential ’scene’ at ഭാര്യാവീട്. discomfort at aesthetic dissonance in his field of vision like Simi’s standout sticker-bindi on a spotless wall mirror. in the climax, he disengages from surroundings and seeks comfort in the wall-corner at home when he feels sensory-overload from exacting interaction with others. did it occur that maybe it is easier to call out Shammy’s patriarchy because no one really relates to him? none of the men around us behave with this degree of oddball-weird. so, may be it was just easier to penalize the patriarchy in him than when we see the same patriarchy in others, albeit in non-standout formats.

i have disability-മഞ്ഞപിത്തം, when i watched the movie i wondered if he was on the spectrum. maybe he didn’t get diagnosis as a child. but because he is male, he started following institutional-rules to the T and ended up being on a mission of upholding male privilege which happens to be the most influential institution in his little world. so at least some of his peculiar traits, if not all, that are strictly seen as being patriarchy-weird, may actually have started out as benign mental ill-health manifestations. perhaps, if he had received treatment at a younger age, those traits would not have seeked out sanity and strength from solely dedicating himself to upholding the institution of patriarchy. these days when i watch films, i check if the ‘villain’ is demonized because of any health-access-disadvantage, and whether it could be any unchecked, ableist privileges of the script writer that created a timely and well-written story about smashing patriarchy, but at the instrumental-harm-expense of the disabled!

i wish to discuss Simi too with you. because over the past year i had referred to you as female-ally in warm humor and also because, once equally in warm humor, you had shared a troll tweet on writer K R Meera that read ‘ KR മയിരേ ഒന്ന് പോയി തരാമോ എന്ന് ഞാനും ചോദിക്കുന്നു’.  in Annayum Rasoolum, Anna rarely engages with anyone around mostly owing to the ever-accumulating poignant in her life. but Annayum Rasoolum is not strictly സാധാരണക്കാരൻ  film, it’s labelled ‘romance film’. why does it seem to me that hapless introversion is usually relegated to poetic, fiction realm? made me think of paragraphs on Estha’s silence in the God of Small Things. I wish the script writers had written Simi differently. Simi doesn’t grow up around a father figure. as she grows older, Simi has to settle for things or/and drag herself through life in general. so there’s character development scope for enough introverted disillusionment to cause gradual resignation inside her over time. if she were a disabled woman, in the climax when Shammy is all tied up, things would have reached a point in her life where she may start to seek neural homophily with Estha. as a disabled woman i can rarely relate to the portrayal of സാധാരണക്കാരി-സ്ത്രീ -aptitude, sometimes the disabled feel let down because it’s for population averages. i connected with Simi like i connected with the women-interview video on menstruation. on a creative-interest level. as i’m elder sister in my home, i auto-notice stereotypical portrayal of elder sisters. elder sister characters are mostly always victims of lazy writing. do read this essay i wrote a few years back—whenever you feel up to it— merely for sake of acknowledging spectrumwoman writer-types such as this K R മയിര്. you may not find connection other than on a creative-interest level. but that’s fine, it may still be the equivalent of highfive-ing with an E.T. alien.

p.s. thank you BBC for this documentary on Alan Shearer and dementia. 

The Most Necessary Element for Communicating Through Anime -- Interview With Tetsuro Araki, Director of “Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress”

The SUGOI JAPAN Award 2017 is a national voting project to award nominated works created in Japan in the four categories of manga, anime, ranobe (light novels), and novels through fans voting on which works they most want introduced to the world. This year marks its third holding, and things are heating up more than ever. In this featured series, world-famous creators nominated for a SUGOI JAPAN Award 2017 sit down for exclusive interviews. Animation director Tetsuro Araki is well known for his work on such anime as Attack on Titan and Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress. In this interview, Araki delves into the production of Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, and he had the following special message to share with TOM fans worldwide. Message to fans of Tokyo Otaku Mode: Out of all the themes I’ve included in Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, the most important one is my wish for Ikoma, Mumei, and also the other characters in the series to be loved by the audience. As a creator, there’s nothing that would make me happier. Anime is something that crosses international borders with ease. Regardless of the country in which you reside and the culture you were raised in, I believe it’s possible for a series to stir the same kind of emotions in all of its viewers. Therefore, I’m sure that fans overseas will love the protagonists as well. Please be sure to check out the series and show your love to Ikoma, Mumei, and all the other characters around them! Tetsuro Araki — Below is a reprint of the first part of the interview. To read the full interview, please see here. — With their involvement in titles such as Attack on Titan, Director Tetsuro Araki and WIT STUDIO have been under the spotlight, winning several Grand Prix awards in anime competitions. The two sides joined forces once again for Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, an original anime featuring a truly impressive team that has drawn plenty of attention. The composition and script for the series were completed by Ichiro Okouchi from "Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion. Continuing from Attack on Titan, Hiroyuki Sawano - who is also known for his work in Aldnoah.Zero” and “The Seven Deadly Sins” - handled the music this time as well. Original character designs were taken care of by Haruhiko Mikimoto, who was also involved in the Gundam series and “The Super Dimension Fortress Macross”. Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress describes the battle of a terrified human population against the threat of monstrous humanoids referred to as “Kabane”. With a compilation film set to open in theatres on December 31, 2016, we spoke with Director Tetsuro Araki to learn about how he created the deep and profound perspectives of the series. The moment we become willing to sacrifice our lives without hesitation, we become “something significant” - I wanted to capture that moment What’s important is to make Ikoma and Mumei lovable For that purpose, I realized that charm is required for each character -- “Kabane” are monstrous humanoids that cannot be destroyed unless their steel-coated hearts are penetrated. After being bitten, their victims become resurrected as Kabane themselves. In this series, the stage is set in Hinomoto, an island country in the far east, where Ikoma and other characters take their stand against the Kabane threat. The series is rich in elements such as steampunk, sword fighting, trains, zombies, and traveling. Araki - The series was loaded with themes that I enjoy, and everything just happened to turn out that way. There were only two main themes I had in mind when I was coming up with the basic settings. One was to make the series historical, and the other was to ensure that transportation took place in Hayajiro, a type of armored steam train. The vehicle allows for travel between stations that serve as fortresses in which people would take refuge. All the other elements are based on those two themes and came naturally as I continued to think. I thought about how the characters would live, and how they would fight. I also considered what kind of position samurai should assume if they were to exist in the story. It wasn’t like I was trying to pack in as many elements and themes as possible. On the contrary, the importance of preventing the story from becoming one where “anything goes” was always in the back of my mind. 　For example, I knew it would be important for me to create a clear rule about defeating the Kabane. After deciding that the only way to destroy one was to penetrate the coating of their heart, I was able to move onto the designing the characters who would invent weapons to counter the Kabane. If the rule wasn’t in place, there would be far too many possibilities, and anything would go. The protagonist swore to defeat the Kabane, but what would he do to reach his goal? What could he achieve? The rule served as a key leading to the dramatization of the story. -- In the very first episode, Ikoma - the boy who confronts the Kabane with his own weapons - is bitten by a Kabane. With his research and knowledge, he is able to save himself from being resurrected as one. However, his efforts convert him into a Kabaneri, something that is neither Kabane nor human. In this sense, Ikoma is comparable to Devilman, who is neither demon nor human. Araki - Basically, I’m a person who enjoys stories about the audible crumbling of ordinary life under the effects of a calamity. Similarly, I also like people who are driven into corners by the adversity they face. What makes Devilman and other related series so attractive is the change caused by inhuman forces that protagonists experience. The protagonists attain great power that compensates for the negative effects they suffered at the hands of the inhuman characters. There's something romantic about stories like that. Times of worry and grievance are what makes the protagonist a hero. I’m particularly interested in the moment when a young boy - who's full of anger towards the world - becomes a hero himself, and I always think about how much I want to work on such characters. In this series, the most important part was to portray the attitude of a boy who would give up his life to save a girl after he became a Kabaneri. I don’t think anyone can shine brighter than a person who is ready to give up their own life. The emotion in making the decision was all I wanted to portray. Before I knew it, the setting had already expanded so much that I sometimes wonder how it all became so complicated [laughs].  -- Mumei, the other protagonist of the series, is a twelve-year-old girl who really made an impression. She became a Kabaneri even before meeting Ikoma and decided on her own that she would stand up against the Kabane. She also possesses the strength to carry Ikoma forward. Araki - I thought endlessly about how to bring out her charm, and also about what would make her look as cute as she could possibly be. While working on the series, presenting the protagonist pair - Ikoma and Mumei - in an attractive fashion was one of the most important challenges that I wanted to take on. When you look at them separately, they might not give off the greatest impression in the beginning. However, by showing the conflict and encouragement they share, the two characters become increasingly lovable. I wanted to portray the charm that is complete when they work together as a pair. Up until now, I’ve created imaginary worlds, worked on zombie pieces, and generated mecha through CG. For this series and for the first time, I thought deeply about how I could create characters that the audience would love. In the end, nothing is possible when you can’t get the audience to fall in love with your characters. Whether or not a viewer will watch a series until the very end depends on the whether or not the protagonists have the right amount of charm in them.  　For that purpose, I depicted Mumei as a beautiful girl and made sure that Ikoma would also have his share of charisma, too. Ikoma lacks the cool and refreshing personality that people tend to favor. He shuns the world and becomes biased after having his efforts looked down upon by those around him. Instead of simply presenting good characters to the audience, I thought it would be much more appealing to show negative characters in a positive way. Ikoma has a straightforward sense of justice that encroaches on the border of insanity, and Mumei is a troublemaker who can be a bit dry and unresponsive to subtle emotional changes. I thought that if I could bring them together, prevent them from becoming even more negative, and show a relationship that reveals their true and likeable nature instead, they could both become even more lovable. Their visual appearances were something that I paid close attention to. Due to the story’s nature, the on-site animators would tend to make expressions a little grimmer and make characters a little more muscular. I asked them to increase eye sizes, slim down the body proportions, and do whatever they could to make Ikoma and Mumei more attractive. It was all done because I believe charm is more important than anything else. Read the full interview here © Kabaneri Production Committee