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demodraws0606 · 3 months

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What Cyberpunk DeadBoy Means and What it's Potentially Foreshadowing (aka very complicated analysis that makes a lot of sense and could happen depending on how colorpalet is feeling while writing the story)

Now I'm seeing so many people like running around wondering what this event could mean for the future for multiple reasons and like I've made like one post throwing my hat into the ring.

I've been frustrated with people's unwillingness to realise that this comm is prob foreshadowing because this is not the first time Colorpalet has hidden foreshadowing into comms weither subtely or not

Exemple's being :

-Akito's second comm foreshadowing his third event

-Lower's cover art literally foreshadowing what would happen to Mafuyu's phone in her event

-88 vocals being emurui and nenekasa foreshadowing the kind of dynamic the disbandement arc had with nenekasa wanting to move forward with emurui being scared of isolation

-Probably way better exemples that I forgot

I've seen people make Some assumptions which I don't agree with but there is one thing I think is true

There is 100 pourcent gonna be struggle between corporation/reality and WxS.

Purely because that's been WxS's entire theme since the beginning. They constantly bash you over the head with the theme of compromising with reality and the importance of dreams. In fact the pick of Maiki-P is not at all surprising as he basically has the same message WxS has just... well harsher.

The Big thing people have ignored however is by focusing on the lyrics, they've ignored something that's personally to me even more telling and that's the line distribution

We know for a fact colorpalet loves to mess around with line distribution, weither it's to make characters say lines that fit them or to kind of foreshadow their headspace.

Now something Big happens with the line distribution of Cyberpunk Deadboy that i've seen NO ONE notice and that's in the last chorus (that and also Tsukasa's lines which people have pointed out but it works less on it's own which is why I'm gonna analyse his lines afterwards).

This is the only time the chorus is like that, the others have a much more even distribution.

In fact the distribution choice makes it look like the rest of WxS is Talking to Rui.

It's even more evident considering the lines they chose to make WxS sing compared to only just Rui

Emu/Tsukasa/Nene saying kimi (you)

Rui saying boku (i)

Which honestly makes me think this is colorpalet foreshadowing some kind of issue reguarding specifically Rui. Remember Emu's second event ? The story of Rilley whose imagination was crippled by the industry to the point where he didn't really have any artistic vision until Emu's grandpa helped him.

In fact remember how the flashback that showcases that has Rilley working on a film

Now we get to Tsukasa's line which have been pointed out to be kind of sus but it's not just his lines.

Tsukasa refuses to sing with Rui (unless it's a line they all sing together but i consider those exceptions). In fact pretty much everyone has a duo line with each other except those two.

In fact in the section where Rui has duo lines with everybody, Tsukasa is the only one he doesnt sing with and the visuals make it clear that it's something that we're supposed to find strange

And then we of course have Tsukasa's solo lines

Tsukasa is the only one that say "fuzakeruna" outside of Rui (of course ignoring entire group WxS lines) and i've seen some people pointed out how it sounds like he's saying it in response to Rui's lines. Which I agree with.

Then we got his big boy solo lines

These lines will make more sense with my theory/analysis but right now if we go with the idea that WxS in the last chorus were speaking to Rui and Tsukasa in this comm refuses to sing with Rui then this implies those lines are Tsukasa speaking to Rui.

And this is where the insanity begins because people have pointed out a concerning trend with Ruikasa that I know some people use for shipping fuel but for me kinda feels more so like foreshadowing.

IGNORING all the ARG ass weirdness of the Fixer 2dmv, this choice to switch Ruikasa's colors have to mean something in my opinion outside of just wholesome shipping influence especially considering the two songs they do this are less than jovial.

What this kind of color switching signifies to me is that, Ruikasa somehow are/or will switch places.

And with that let me bring back Tsukasa's lines

These lines stand out because Tsukasa before remembering his dreams was extremely shallow only doing things for fame and probably the money that would come with it.

Now if you think about everything I've layed out I think you can gain a pretty clear picture.

Of Rui falling into the trap Rilley did, becoming jaded and losing the true motivation of his dream (or at least starting to have doubts). Becoming stuck with the struggle of managing dreams and reality.

Rui's costume even has a mask which can be a metaphor for his artistic voice and individuality being silenced .

Which now you get into the line distribution where WxS is implied to be talking to Rui.

And you get to Tsukasa, who is refusing to sing with Rui and in fact seems to be arguing with Rui if we really want to overthink it. In fact almost switching their roles from the main story.

Because Tsukasa has grown now and how else to show that growth than to switch Rui and Tsukasa's perspectives/roles.

Now how this would happen really depends since there are multiple ways they can go about it with the time they have.

There is obviously mystery dude dude (who i know now is sakaki) who still gives me bad vibes. However there is actually two way they can make mystery dude trigger this sort of plot :

-Mystery dude is malicious and actively manipulates/confronts Rui to make him rethink his worldview

-Mystery dude isn't malicious but instead is just jaded/has been through a lot of industry bullshit which ends up rubbing off on Rui accidentally

But you can even just not have mystery dude involved with this at all (which i doubt but still) because you know what loose plotpoint is still lingering over WxS, fucking Asahi

Rui still has not talked about Asahi to WxS, in fact Curtain Call ends on an explicit cliffhanger which is never really emotionally concluded (at least in Rui's own events, technically the arc ender did but there are still a lot of loose threads from that arc). Why would Colorpalet make Asahi come back after Rui graduates, they could've just had him disappear into the sunset but instead they hint at his potential comeback.

Unless Rui will be forced to again confront similar feelings he did during Curtain Call this time with possibly an added layer of whatever happens during WxS's freelance arc.

Anyways yeah this is overly complicated but then again colorpalet is not being easy with us so...yeah.

#project sekai #pjsk rui #rui kamishiro #wxs #wonderlandxshowtime #project sekai theory #project sekai analysis #rui kamishiro analysis #wxs rui #wxs tsukasa #tsukasa tenma #rui #cyberpunk deadboy #i'm sorry if this giant wall of text makes sense to nobody but me but i need this to leave myt mind otherwise i explode #and also i'm not looking at twitter for theories of this event because twitter is the breeding ground of bad takes so idk if i'm the only #one but it's very interesting #anyways i really don't want any “but what if the comm is not at all related to the event at all” because we've had active confirmation #colorpalet describe events and give at least on sentence prompts to commissioners (which we know pinnochioP and the creators of Mr.Showtime #I believe) and again even if it WERE the case and it was a fluke or a rewrite or whatever #it doesnt change the fact colorpalet made an active choice to make the line distribution and 2dmv like this #this is the motherfuckers that foreshadowed an arc ender years before through a fucking song cover art #complain about their writing all you want these motherfuckers love little detail oriented shit like this for better and for worse

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jesncin · 4 months

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A Failure of Asian Lois Lane: Pt 2: My Adventures with Superman, an honest discussion

If I had to pinpoint the fundamental problem with My Adventures with Superman's depiction of Asian Lois Lane it's in their attempt to subvert the classic two person love triangle: Lois loves Superman but is indifferent to Clark Kent. In MAWS, Lois insta-crushes on Clark Kent and hates Superman. In the show's attempt to make sense of this dynamic, Lois' Asian identity becomes at odds with a story meant to touch on xenophobia and immigrant themes.

Let's have an honest discussion about a show that made fandom cheer as an Asian character removed the one thing that made her most visibly Asian.

Disclaimer: While I am of East Asian descent, I am not Korean. I'll be discussing general Asian diasporic experiences but the specifics of Korean culture are outside of my knowledge (as usual I can't and don't speak for every Asian person ever, I am 1 opinion). Secondly, I'll be pulling from my personal experiences every now and then particularly pertaining to being a butch Asian person watching this show. It'll be a mix of formal analysis and personal anecdotes. Thirdly, this isn't an exhaustive analysis of MAWS Lois' character. We'll be sticking to what I consider is relevant to themes of Asian identity and immigration. Lastly once more, I do not believe the MAWS crew had malicious intent in any (of what I consider) poor writing decisions. We're here to analyze and challenge these writing decisions.

Please read Pt 1 of Asian Lois analysis that covers the comics, as it provides the groundwork for the ideas expanded on in this essay.

We need to talk about Lois' design. In the follow up to MAWS' release, people have been speculating on Lois' ethnicity. CBR writes that the show has "some fans believing that she's at least part Asian" and other articles have the show crew confirm Lois Korean heritage via her hanbok outfit in episode 4. The existence of these articles, my own anecdotal experience of streaming MAWS with Asian friends, and comments I receive from people asserting Lois' Asian identity was never explored in the show ("you'd only know she was Asian if you searched up articles about it"), tells me we have a case of an ambiguously designed Asian woman. Tangentially many people had no idea Livewire, the white haired and blue eyed woman, was meant to be South Asian.

There's a lot to be said about art styles that don't properly stylize ethnic features, but for the purposes of our analysis that means the writing has to deliver the heavy lifting where the design fails. This is the opposite case of American Alien: a comic that relied on the art to portray Asian Lois.

Let's start at episode 3. In it, Lois finally manages to conduct a private interview with the elusive Superman. When she asks where Superman comes from, how his powers work, etc- Superman comes up empty. In this version, Superman can't talk to his Kryptonian father (Jor-El)'s hologram because of a language barrier, so he knows very little about his alien heritage. He leaves Lois, assuring her he's here to help the people of Metropolis. When Clark Kent congratulates her for interviewing Superman, Lois rebuffs him. "Oh, he's [Superman's] a liar." smirking as she says it. This is the start of the Lois Hates Superman For Being a Liar arc.

I'd like you to consider the optics of an Asian American woman interviewing an alien immigrant who honestly told her he doesn't know where he comes from and is still figuring out who he is, only for her to think he's lying. Because she didn't get the answers she wanted. I can't help but think about my own experiences, where I was asked "but where do you really come from?" or "okay but what's your real name?" I think of my Asian American peers who would honestly say they're from Texas or Atlanta and get a vindictive "you're lying" as a response. People want to hear you're from China. They want their biases confirmed. I think about how I honestly can't tell you where my elders hailed from, because of cultural genocide and language barriers. This scene makes me uncomfortable, but let's press on.

Episode 4 is where Lois is most visibly Korean. In this episode the trio of Lois, Clark, and Jimmy are tasked with interviewing rich techbro Prof. Ivo of Amazo tech at an investor event. It's a prom episode. Lois wears a "hanbok inspired gala outfit" designed by Dou Hong and Jane Bak in a deliberate move to showcase Lois' Korean heritage. Bak comments "I remember feeling strongly about wanting to inject some aspect of her Korean heritage without disrupting her characteristic as a spunky and resourceful intern/reporter." while the wording poorly implies that Korean heritage is at odds with Lois' spunky personality- I do want to challenge a couple of the decisions that went into this design.

I want to acknowledge as an Asian butch that there are many ways to sport traditional garments and it's okay to mix and match to figure out what reclaiming culture (and your comfort) mean to you. However we're talking about the opportunity to showcase culture in an episode of a fictional animated show. I also encourage cultural gender expression that thinks outside of western white people's idea of gender (in both fiction and real life).

Whenever artists try to do a non-conforming spin on a cultural outfit, I always have to ask: "what standard of masculinity are we basing this on?" It's clear that MAWS is pushing for a "tomboy" Lois, and this gala outfit is an extension of that. But what's the standards of masculinity in a Korean lens? Men wear hanbok too, so why can't Lois imitate how Korean men wear hanbok, by traditionally accompanying her look with baji (baggy and loose pants)? This design notably has tight pants that hug the form, instead. I know the hanbok look has been modernized in and out of Korea in many ways, but in a show where you have the opportunity to showcase cultural non-conformity, I feel more thought should be put into the outfit outside of a potentially western lens- or the idea that cultural heritage of any sort "disrupts" a character's personality.

Now that we've discussed the design of the outfit, let's look into the narrative role it plays in episode 4. While we can celebrate cultural representation in media, I consider it important to ask "what is this media's relationship with the cultures it represents?" and the answer for Lois' hanbok in this episode is: nothing! It's an aesthetic acknowledgement of culture. "Hanbok" or "Korea" are not terms explicitly mentioned in the show. When Prof Ivo offers beautiful women as compensation for Clark to keep quiet about his company's corruption, Ivo looks over to Lois- who spills food on her clothes, and remarks that she's unclassy. She's not judged for wearing othering cultural clothes- which would have tied nicely into Clark choosing to be silent on issues of Ivo displacing a neighborhood, making Clark realize his complacency actively hurts marginalized people. Despite wearing cultural outfits being a political statement in America, nobody reacts to it. It's clear what the actual goal of this scene is: Clark looks cool for defending his "tomboy" crush.

In a scene blatantly made for fanservice, Lois offers to sew up Clark's ripped tuxedo by undressing her hanbok so she can reach her little sewing kit. Lois never wears her hanbok again afterwards. This scene haunts me. It's a scene that tells you that fanservice is more important than cultural representation. It's a scene meant to set up that Clark gives his tuxedo to Lois later on for warmth. Lois removing her hanbok is meant for not one, but two fanservice scenes.

Lois talks to Clark at the stairwell. She opens up about her estranged relationship with her father, how her mom has passed away, and how she's been an intern at the Daily Planet for a year with no sign of being hired. This makes the narrative decision for Lois to lose her hanbok far more tragic. Lois being a diasporic child with so few familial ties to her culture would mean garments like her hanbok would hold a lot of sentimental value! It's hard enough finding a cultural outfit that fits with your butchess (many of my cultural outfits are hand made to fit my form and gender expression), and yet Lois unceremoniously loses her hanbok. You would think in Lois opening up about being distant from her parents that Clark would be able to culturally relate with the distance he has with his Kryptonian parents. But the narrative opportunity to link their immigrant experiences is not taken, because the show simply doesn't recognize the parallel between the two.

Instead MAWS pushes for the Lois Thinks Superman is A Liar thing again. A far less narratively substantial and fundamentally flawed arc. This episode starts with Lois calling Superman a liar and has Lois ranting about him "dodging her questions" (remember, he was honest with her about not knowing his heritage) thereby rendering her interview unpublishable. She resorts to conspiracy tabloids giddily provided by Jimmy for information. She rather cruelly says "nobody normal believes in aliens". We are uncomfortably seeing the build up of Lois being allegorically xenophobic towards alien immigrants- a Lois on a quest to out an alien before he's ready. This is their justification for flipping the love triangle. Lois loves cuteboy Clark from work, and hates Superman for not confirming her biases that would help her publish an interview that would promote her at work. What a love story.

To wrap this episode up: Prof Ivo ends up challenging Superman to a fight so he can flex his Parasite suit to investors, only for it to backfire, destroy his reputation, and greatly damage the Amazo building (remember this it'll come back later). The episode ends with Lois discovering Superman is Clark Kent. Anecdotally, I was so frustrated with the treatment of Lois' hanbok in this episode, that I went online to search if anyone else felt similarly. All I was met with was fandom thirsting over the stairwell scene where Clark and Lois were undressing. Consider the optics of an Asian character who removed the most visible signifier of her heritage (the outfit far more culturally specific where her character design was racially ambiguous) and how people cheered because that meant they could see her in her undergarments. They can happily thirst over the body they desired now that the othering cultural garment was out of the way. It's just clothes after all. Diversity clothes. This show continues to be very uncomfortable, and a little too real.

In episode 5 Lois is passive aggressive to Clark and Superman, trying to get Clark to admit he's Superman and vice versa. She eventually confronts Clark by jumping off the roof of the Daily Planet, causing Clark to fly down and save her. She proclaims she doesn't want to be friends with him anymore for "lying" to her. This episode caused a huge ruckus online as people were divisive over Lois' actions. Some defended Lois, saying that "women should be messy" and "it's not Lois Lane if she doesn't do something crazy for journalism!". Ignoring that opinion's very flandarized view of Lois' character for a second, let's thoroughly discuss how this relates to themes of immigration and Asian identity.

By this episode, Lois had known Clark for 5 days. In that time she's entitled and angry to the point of friend-breaking-up with him because he wouldn't disclose his marginalized identity to her within less than a week. "A secret is another type of lie!" Lois says, regardless of her lying on sight to both Jimmy and Clark upon meeting them at work, and continued to lie in episode 3 (after promising not to in ep 1) about her intentions to interview Superman. Only Lois gets to lie in this relationship. The hypocrisy of her character is never recognized. Clark calls out Lois for having previously admitted to him that she wanted to dox Superman and "publish all his secrets. MY secrets!". Keep in mind that when Clark brings up Superman feeling uncomfortable about his secrets being published by Lois in episode 3, Lois' response was "yeah, but HE doesn't know that's my plan!". She explicitly admits that she would publish private information about Superman without his permission. But when she's confronted by Clark in episode 5 about that, her response is "I would never do that to you, I didn't know it was you until after the gala. How could you think that?" It's only through conflict of interest that Lois spares Superman of being doxed. He's supposed to magically know this. Extremely cool of Asian American Lois to be entitled to an alien immigrant's identity within four business days.

Episode 6 wraps up the Lois Hates Superman For Being A Liar arc, so let's quickly summarize what happens. Lois and Clark set aside their fight to find Jimmy in an abandoned scientific facility (he's being cared for by Mallah and the Brain). Jimmy admits (very smugly) to having known Clark was Superman all along because he kept breaking stuff. As the trio are chased by killer robots, they emotionally confront Clark for not trusting them with his alien secret- despite neither Lois or Jimmy creating a safe environment for Clark to come out to either of them (Jimmy outed Superman as an alien on his video channel). The moral of the story is Clark should have trusted his friends anyway, because lying is bad. Not once does the narrative hold Jimmy or Lois accountable.

We have Black Jimmy Olsen and Asian American Lois Lane being entitled to their white passing friend Clark Kent's marginalized alien identity. A joke is made at Jimmy's expense that he doesn't understand bigotry, and Lois clearly doesn't understand why an immigrant wouldn't be forthcoming about his identity to his hostile friends at work. This is how that arc ends.

I'd like to quickly compare this Lois Hates Superman For Being A Liar arc to my favorite scene in Superman Smashes the Klan. In this story, Superman debuts as a strongman superhero instead of an alien, suppressing his more othering powers to pass as human. He jumps instead of flying. Roberta, the Chinese American girl targeted by the Klan, calls Superman out for not using his full abilities to save people who could've gotten hurt. Yet, as she's calling him out, Roberta understands Superman's fear of not wanting to be othered. She sees the way her father dresses up to pass as an accomplished scientist, how he tells her mom to speak in English, how her brother makes racist jokes at their family's expense to fit in. She's not mad at Superman, she's mad at the world that would be scared of Superman if he flew.

"I wish it were okay for you to fly!" Roberta yells. This is a beautifully empathetic scene that shows a marginalized person frustrated at a systemic problem, instead of blaming the marginalized for being marginalized. It's the empathy and perspective we're missing from MAWS.

Episode 7 is a metatextual episode where MAWS addresses how their Lois isn't like the other Loises you've seen before. Lois and Jimmy are brought on to a team of alternate dimension Loises to find interdimensional troublemaker Mxy. In seeing the other more accomplished Loises in the multiverses, Lois ends up feeling inadequate about her self worth...in connection to being Superman's girlfriend, of course. Because Superman only loves Lois Lane after she wins a couple of Pulitzers, right?

I'm open to a version of Lois Lane that isn't as accomplished as she's historically known to be. I can like a Lois that's young and idealistic, like in Girl Taking Over. It's hard not to compare this episode to 2022's Everything Everywhere All At Once, another multiverse story about an Asian American woman who is the "greatest failure" version of all the parallel iterations of herself. But while that movie talks in depth about themes of generational trauma, expectations, and self potential within Asian immigrant families, MAWS uses the multiverse to say that while their Lois is less accomplished, she's still a good girlfriend to Superman! Why should I bother giving grace to a different take on Lois only to get such a superficial story out of it. This is metatextual-ly frustrating.

Why is it, the minute we get an adaptation of an Asian Lois in something as prominent as an animated show, we get "the worst Lois in the multiverse"? Lois is historically depicted as excelling in her field. She's an award winning journalist, jaded and mean from having to work her way to the top. She owns her sexuality, she's the experienced city girl. Instead of taking the opportunity to inform Lois' jadedness and excellence with her Asian American identity like in Girl Taking Over, instead we have an Asian Lois that's simply incompetent at her job. Why are we now adapting historically accomplished women into adorkable quirky screw ups? She went from being sexually confident to being insecure over sending a text to Clark. Is it more relateable to see an Asian woman that way? Is it too intimidating to see a butch Asian woman who excels at her job? Who's romantically confident? This is what MAWS would rather do than humanize her excellence or her failures.

Are you tired of an ambiguously designed Asian American woman reporter being xenophobic to Superman in MAWS? Well too bad because episode 8 introduces us to Vicki Vale, voiced by Andromeda Dunker (an Asian actress), with explicit notes in leaked concept art to design this character as "Indian American or Asian American" (as if those are mutually exclusive...) inspired off of real Asian reporter Connie Chung. Vicki wants to write a hit piece on Superman and interviews Prof Ivo's assistant, Alex, for a negative biased opinion on Superman (to Lois and Jimmy's dismay).

This episode is where it's abundantly clear the writers don't know how to talk about xenophobia. They'll make nods to xenophobic rhetoric, but they don't know what the rhetoric means. In response to Alex's derisive opinion on Superman destroying Amazo tower thereby bankrupting the company and putting "thousands out of work", Vicki responds "Superman wiped out good American jobs". This is a misplaced nod to Replacement Theory: the fear white people have over people of color, but particularly immigrants, coming to "their" country to "steal" jobs they're entitled to, ultimately becoming demographically replaced by non-white cultures and people. This rhetoric is also commonly applied to Jewish people.

The problem is, that's not what Superman did in the show. Amazo tech was going to go bankrupt because of Prof Ivo's poor business decisions. Prof Ivo made the mistake of antagonizing Superman and ruining his own image. Superman damaging the building came from his fight with Prof Ivo, not a deliberate attempt to get hired (if anything don't the building repair people have new jobs now?). No one's job is tangibly being taken by Superman. None of this is called out by Lois or Jimmy, who know the full story and were even the ones to attack Alex for helping Prof Ivo (let's be real the writers forgot this happened). In fact, Lois and Jimmy don't react to Vicki's Replacement Theory remark at all! It's like they don't even recognize she said something with racist implications!

Jimmy and Lois meet up with Superman who learns the people of Metropolis are becoming scared of him (from causing some recent property damage in an attempt to hunt a criminal down) and writing mean comments on social media. A user writes "he should go back to where he came from." This is a transparently xenophobic comment. It doesn't work in the context of the show because of a huge plot hole: Superman never publicly came out as an alien to Metropolis. No verified newspaper has explicitly made this fact known. The only source that mentions this is Jimmy's conspiracy channel, which the citizens of Metropolis are apparently treating as fact- therefore (if we're to believe this is how people knew) this means Jimmy absolutely outed Superman as an alien without Clark's consent.

So how does Asian American Lois respond to seeing her alien boyfriend go through xenophobia? She says "Take a break from being Superman and just try being normal." To be fair, the narrative does portray Lois saying the word "normal" as charged (only here at least, not in episode 4), and when she tells Superman to "take a break" it's because he had been overworking himself after suddenly unlocking the ability to hear when someone's in trouble. But was this really the response Asian American Lois thought to say? To her boyfriend going through such explicit xenophobia? At this point it's abundantly clear that racism doesn't exist in the world of MAWS. Being "normal" is to be human. And to be marginalized- or as the show likes to call it "different" is only reserved for white passing alien man Clark (along with gorilla and robot that was once a white man). Any hope of an immigrant parallel between Asian American Lois and Superman should be fully discarded at this point.

After the events of the previous episode where Superman is kidnapped by Task Force X, in episode 9 Lois regrets being allegorically xenophobic to Clark. At least I think that's what's happening. I often describe MAWS as a show that's extremely squeamish with getting political- and I believe the vagueness of Lois' Dark Night of the Soul moment reflects that. "I said awful things to Clark. I doubted him when he needed us most. I was wrong and now he's gone..." Lois says as she cries to Jimmy. Is this dialogue implying she shouldn't have told a sleep deprived Superman to take a break? What did she doubt about him? This dialogue is purposefully vague about Lois being xenophobic. They've universalized Clark's immigrant identity to such a point that they can't keep their argument consistent. Was Lois in the wrong for telling her overworked superhero boyfriend to take a break? Or was she being xenophobic for telling him to lay low for a while? Or is she regretful for hating Superman for Being A Liar? How is that possible when the narrative sided with her and Jimmy in episode 6? It's woefully non-committal. Regardless, the intent of this scene is to pay off in the climax of the episode.

In the end Superman has a showdown with Prof Ivo Parasite, who has grown into a large godzilla-esque kaiju creature. In typical MAWS fashion, the show is more interested in a surface level nod to Asian media instead of engaging with the specific themes of nature and post-war trauma kaijus and godzilla serve in Japanese culture. I digress. Using Jimmy's massive social media platform, Lois delivers a hope speech that instantly heals Metropolis of its xenophobia towards Superman.

Lois says to the people of Metropolis.: "People have told you to fear Superman because he's different from us. But we humans are capable of causing hurt and pain too. [...] Because we want to punish those who don't look or act like us." I mean this in the most polite way possible, but who on Earth thought this line was a good idea for Asian American Lois Lane to deliver when talking about white passing man Superman?? Why did the writers feel the need to specify Superman not looking like us. I simply don't understand how nobody considered the terrible optics of this.

After Superman defeats Parasite, episode 10 is about Clark, Lois, and Jimmy celebrating Thanksgiving at the Kents' house. At the Daily Planet, the trio of interns are promoted to finally being reporters. It only took Clark and Jimmy a few weeks while it took Lois a whole year! Now feels like a good time to remind you that Lois as a character was historically frustrated at sexism in the industry and despised how men were treated better than her (including Clark Kent). Well in MAWS episode 4, Lois has no idea why she isn't getting picked up to be a reporter. According to the narrative, and Perry White's dialogue ("you're terrible interns, so the only thing to do was to make you reporters")- she simply didn't break enough rules yet! Thank goodness she had the help of two men to show her how it's done! This is a pretty clear case of character regression. Keep in mind that in American Alien, at the very least that Asian Lois still underwent sexism, and I gave it the grace that the story could eventually expand to talking about both sexism and racism if it were to continue. But in MAWS? I don't think even sexism exists, let alone racism. Somehow Thanksgiving does, though.

Half the final episode is spent on Thanksgiving shenanigans where everyone's trying to be polite but they dislike Lois' stoic dad (Sam Lane)- who Clark recognizes as the Asian American xenophobic man who tortured him in Task Force X's government bunkers. A parallel is pulled between Sam and Jor-El, two fathers with different ideals when it comes to protecting their kids. There's a huge missed opportunity to have Lois and Sam speak in Korean with each other, to create a parallel in the language barrier between Clark and Jor-El. Maybe Lois isn't as fluent in Korean as Sam is depending on how culturally connected she is. Oh, but the existence of non-English human languages would imply some sort of minority, who would be marginalized, and we can't have anyone outside of aliens and a gorilla be marginalized in MAWS. Non-English languages in America are political, after all. Oh, but they also got a Filipino actor to voice Sam. Generously Lois could be Filipino-Korean but if we're being truly honest it's clear the MAWS crew think Asians are interchangeable.

Let's talk about Sam. In terms of optics, it's already not great that the main villains who represent the face of America's secret government xenophobia are Amanda Waller and Sam Lane- a Black woman and an Asian man. What's doubly notable is that of the antagonistic villains, Sam and Vicki are the most xenophobic. When Sam tortures Superman, he shouts "When is the invasion? How many of your kind will come through this time?" without a hint of irony. Reminder that historically, Asian immigrants were (and still are) considered invaders in America. They are the perpetual foreigner. MAWS loves making nods to Superman being an immigrant allegory, and yet they can't fathom the human beings that allegory is inspired by.

It's not impossible to portray people of color or even Asian American characters specifically being xenophobic. In Superman Smashes the Klan, Dr. Lee is initially antagonistic towards Superman but we understand why. We see him trying desperately to assimilate into whiteness, to the point he rejects assistance from his Black neighbors who help put out a fire in their backyard (that the Klan started as a threat). We understand why he's a character who would turn on fellow people of color, or fellow immigrants, in order to fit in. For MAWS, if we had a flashback scene where Sam was serving in the military and fought against Asian soldiers, showcasing his loyalty to America over his own people- that would narratively explain why an Asian American character would be xenophobic. Writing bigotry from within marginalized communities requires specificity. Otherwise, you've just got a diverse villain. In the end, Lois defends her immigrant alien boyfriend from her xenophobic Asian American dad.

Whenever I bring up how MAWS fails its characters of color but especially Asian Lois, I'm met with people telling me that "hopefully they'll make Lois more Asian in S2" or "they'll just retcon the bad writing in S1" and I hope this thorough analysis on the treatment of Lois' Asian American identity can help enlighten why I personally think that's impossible. The entire concept is flawed from the very beginning. The story MAWS wants to tell is at odds with Lois' Asian identity. In trying to justify an Asian Lois that loves Clark but hates Superman, they never considered what it means to hate Superman. To hate the alien immigrant. The alien other. What it means for an Asian American character to do all that. MAWS is a show that wants to have its cake and eat it too, they want a diverse world without racism or sexism but still want to reap the clout of lightly portraying Superman as "different".

They'll make the most surface level nods to Lois' Korean heritage- but remove all of the cultural context from them. They can't be bothered to acknowledge the inherit political identity being a person of color means in America, they're too busy doing that with Clark. I'm told "MAWS didn't have the time to go over Lois' Asian identity, it's a 10-episode series that focuses on Clark's alienation", and to that I say the potential of an immigrant love story and time frame was there, they simply chose to go another direction.

When I bring up things like Superman Smashes the Klan, Girl Taking Over, and Everything Everywhere All At Once, it's not to say MAWS should have used those stories as reference when crafting their allegory. All of those specific media were released while MAWS was deep in production already. Girl Taking Over was released the same year MAWS premiered. What I am saying is that we, as the audience, should have higher standards. Because better media portraying Asian American characters already exist. Better media portraying Asian characters relating to Superman mythos already exists. What we're doing when we celebrate the breadcrumbs of representation that is MAWS, is allowing mediocrity to exist uncritically.

Shows like Wednesday are known in the discourse for their portrayal of Black characters as being functionally white, yet that kind of scrutiny doesn't seem known for MAWS. The diverse reimagining of Lois and Jimmy is so poorly handled in MAWS that it would honestly make more sense if Jimmy and Lois were white here. The joke made at Jimmy's expense that he doesn't understand bigotry would be actually funny if it was calling out his white privilege. If, for whatever reason, the writers are compelled to write a xenophobic Lois that unlearns her bigotry and falls for Superman, I'd rather she be white for that kind of story. I wouldn't personally root for that kind of couple, but at least it'd make sense. It's a common joke among DCAU fans of color that we like to headcanon Lex Luthor as Black, or Lois Lane and Terry Mcginnis as Asian. It's a cruel irony that the one time we finally have a canonized Asian Lois in an animated show, she honestly feels and acts whiter than actual white Lois ever was.

I mentioned in Pt 1 of my essay that Asian Lois and Superman has the potential to be a definitive love story. One that considers both their backgrounds as immigrants, othered in different ways by American society. The story of a jaded but accomplished Asian city girl who finds hope to be herself again in an alien immigrant superhero. One where she gets the courage to wear traditional clothes again, to practice languages she once suppressed. The story of Superman, an alien immigrant, finding hope in someone with a painfully similar experience.

As of writing, we have yet to see this dynamic in any canon DC media. A second season of MAWS will not give us that story.

#ramblings #media criticism #jesncin talks maws #lois lane #warning LONG LONG POST #this is a 30 minute read for reference. read it in chunks if u like but this is a big lad fellas #as always please be kind!#jesncin dc meta

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tenebraevesper · 3 months

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Shadow the Hedgehog (Sonic Prime, Character Analysis - Part 1)

Welcome to the first part of my personal elaboration on the topic of why ''Prime!Shadow is peak Shadow!'', or in other words, why Prime!Shadow is one of the best written iterations of Shadow's character.

Will I try to make proper arguments for his character writing? Of course. Will I also be biased as hell just because he's my favorite character? Absolutely!

So, if you can handle both of that, we should dive in!

Before I start, I suppose I should give a brief overview of Shadow's character and how he had been handled through the years. The general consensus seems to be that Shadow was at his peak as a character from Sonic Adventure 2 to Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) (as well as Pre-Reboot!Archie Comics during Ian Flynn's run), being someone who was deeply traumatized by the death of his sister Maria Robotnik, had his memories manipulated to get revenge on humanity, only to sacrifice his own life to save the world Maria cherished, losing his memories in the process and trying to carve out his own path, only to finally solidify his role as a protector of the world, even if his methods aren't always the most peaceful ones.

So, where does the idea of edgelord Shadow come from?

Yeaaahh... let's just say that Shadow's own game, Shadow the Hedgehog (2005), didn't do him any good in the character department, because it seems that all that people remember was that one time SEGA decided to give Shadow a gun and let him deal with an alien invasion. The confusing story routes didn't help either.

In time, Shadow's character went from a complex and layered character to something akin to Vegeta (no offense Dragon Ball fans!), much to the disappointment of everyone who understood character before he underwent this transformation. Also, I'm not counting Boom!Shadow in this because Sonic Boom is a different universe and its own thing, but I won't argue against the fact that Boom!Shadow's characterization as a complete jerkass didn't do Game!Shadow any favor either. That's not even mentioning the Sonic IDW Comics, where Shadow had many mandates tied to him that even the writers found it annoying to write him (although with the most recent arc where Shadow was shown, it seems that the mandates have loosened a little).

Of course, I might be missing out on some information, but this is the general gist of the history of his character. So, when Sonic Prime revealed that Shadow would be one of the major characters, you can bet that I was nervous about how he would be written and I decided to keep a close eye on his characterization; and honestly, I went from genuinely pleased to excited when I realized that Shadow was being written as a very compelling character. Not only that, but he also appeared to have gone through subtle character development over the course of the show.

Starting from the very beginning, I'm certain that you remember how Shadow's first appearance was basically him punching Sonic at the end of Episode 01: Shattered, a very impactful first impression that left us with more questions and headaches. The following episode, Episode 02: The Yoke's On You, gives us more details in regards to why he punched Sonic, seemingly out of the blue.

Shadow's proper introduction kicks off with him searching for the Chaos Emerald... and I have to ask, when was the last time we even saw Shadow genuinely smile? Was in the Mario & Sonic at The Olympic Games franchise? I don't really remember.

In any case, being clearly happy about finding the Chaos Emerald, he speeds off, only to suddenly sense that something is wrong and is met with a giant blue pulse of energy (released during Sonic's fight with Dr. Eggman) and a vision of Sonic using the Paradox Prism energy.

''Sonic!''

This expression just screams ''Something bad is going to happen and it's Sonic's fault! I'm going to kick his ass before he does anything stupid!''

We then follow Shadow as he searches for Sonic, clocking him square in the face for something he hasn't done yet. Eh, I'd say that this one wasn't really deserved.

Even before Sonic starts explaining his relationship with Shadow, we immediately get an understanding of Shadow's character. He is serious, works alone, quite fast and powerful, prefers to fight over talking things out, is willing to do anything to protect his home and clearly has a history with Sonic. Sonic proceeds to add how Shadow is his biggest rival, a buzzkill and that he totally roller-skates.

''They're air shoes!''

Did... Did Shadow just break the 4th wall? Did he just make a joke? Dude, not even Boom!Shadow got to do that and Sonic Boom was the epitome of wall breaking!

Yeah, let's just say that my jaw dropped when I heard this, realizing that Shadow's character in Sonic Prime will be different than what we got used to see.

So, after knocking the Rings out of Sonic (I mean that literally), Shadow questions him about what he has done, with Sonic pointing out how Eggman is the bad guy, clearly confused about why Shadow is attacking him.

''You literally shook the world!'' ''That's because I'm good! And powerful apparently! Jealous?''

After a bit of teasing from Sonic, he and Shadow get into a race, during which I had noticed something. While Sonic keeps teasing Shadow (and also having fun fighting him), Shadow tells him to stop and listen for once.

''Clearly you're angry, which is normal,... but I'm supposed to be on a bit of a mission here, Shadow!'' ''What mission?'' ''None of your business.''

Sooooo, have you noticed it too? Because there is something very telling in this interaction. If you haven't, I'll let it play out until the end. Anyways, to continue, Shadow knocks Sonic into a rock, with Sonic confirming another aspect of their relationship.

''Ughh, I know, we're fighting again. Don't worry guys, I'll calm him down.''

We now know that this certainly wasn't the first time they had a fight and it won't be the last time. Sonic points out that, whatever beef they have, they aren't going to settle it this way. While Sonic is right, I will admit, I had to gush over the excellent animation and fight choreography. X3

Sonic then hears an explosion from the cave where the Paradox Prism is and tells Shadow that he needs to get to his friends, only to get punched for his troubles.

''Learn to focus!''

Now that the flashback is over, what exactly is going on between the two?

First of all, the main thing I have noticed is that both Shadow and Sonic seriously have a problem with communication. Shadow knows Sonic is about to do something stupid, and from his actions (aka choosing violence over talking) he is trying to prevent Sonic from doing whatever he was about to do. It does paint Shadow as a bit of a jerk, but Sonic isn't completely innocent here either.

An observation I had made was that Shadow probably knows that if he tried to just talk to Sonic, Sonic would either blow him off and run away or just tease him back, which was confirmed when Shadow asks him on what kind of mission he is with Sonic responding that it's none of his business. I imagine that there were previous events where Sonic was doing something stupid and Shadow tried to stop him from making things worse, and that violence was indeed the answer to Sonic's antics.

If Sonic had explained to Shadow what the deal is, I'm certain that Shadow would help him out. Perhaps Shadow could've told him about his vision, but going by Sonic's behavior, Sonic would probably not listen to him.

This brings me to my second point - this moment establishes that, if there will be character development for Shadow, it will be mainly through his interactions with Sonic and them learning to work together and listen to each other, something I'm really excited to talk about in later episodes.

The flashback continues in Episode 03: Escape From New Yoke, where Sonic does the old ''Hey, look behind you!'' trick and Shadow falls for it, hook, line and sinker. Sonic knocks him into a wall and speeds off to where his friends are fighting Eggman, leaving Shadow to recover and follow him.

I do like how Shadow just shakes his head here. Even if he doesn't say much, you can clearly see what it is going through his mind. He's angry at Sonic, but acknowledges that this is just typical for his blue rival.

in Episode 07: It Takes One to No Place, we see that Shadow manages to reach the Paradox Prism cave, just as Sonic is about to shatter it.

''Chaos Control!''

Unlike Sonic's friends and Dr. Eggman, Shadow manages to use Chaos Control, preventing him from being shattered just like the others.

''Sonic!''

Instead, he finds himself floating in The Void. I'll leave what happened to him in The Void for the next part, but what is important to note is that he cannot enter the individual Shatterspaces, but he can communicate with Sonic every time the latter gains enough speed to use the Paradox Prism Energy.

''Sonic, it's broken! It's all broken!''

Sonic is at first freaked out, thinking he's just hallucinating. I suppose that explains why Sonic keeps ignoring him in any subsequent appearances, despite Shadow trying his best to contact him and trying to explain him what to do, like telling him how he's lost in The Void and for Sonic to keep moving and to not stop (which also leads Sonic to find out how he can travel between Shatterspaces).

I suppose this can also be interpreted as ''Sonic leaves Shadow on read''. X3

Once Sonic accidentally gets out of No Place in Episode 08: There Is No Arrgh In Team, he is confronted by Shadow, who is absolutely furious. Not that Sonic notices, given how he had a really rough day himself.

''Shadow? Ugh, I don't have time to deal with whoever you are. I just wanna go home.''

''Home? Home doesn't exist anymore BECAUSE OF YOU!''

Considering what Sonic had done, yeah, this punch was definitely deserved.

As I said above, the first eight episodes are here to establish Shadow's character, his relationship/rivalry with Sonic and his own flaws (mainly the lack of communication on his part, choosing to fight Sonic instead) and it is clear that in order to overcome those flaws, he will have to work with Sonic (calm down Sonadow shippers, we didn't get there yet), something I'm excited to explore in the second part of this analysis.

#Shadow the Hedgehog (Sonic Prime, Character Analysis - Part 2)

#Sonic the Hedgehog Analyzer (Masterlist)

#Ten's Thoughts #sonic prime #sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #sonadow prime #sonadow

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showtoonzfan · 1 month

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Just want to preface this by saying i love ur analysis sm- u put my exact thoughts into words when i cant verbalise whats wrong with a particular writing decision 🥲🥲

Anyway, smth ive noticed is how... little time vivzie actually spends on writing or characterizing or fleshing out her characters.

Which has to be the weirdest thing so far bc every writer and artist ive met agree that its the best part of making an oc! Its so fun to think of backstories and tie that into their current personality and generally just figuring out random details to get to know your characters!

Like, my ocs are my best friends, i know everything abt them from their trauma and childhoods, to their favourite food and music.

But time and time again she proves that her characters are at best acquaintances... the fandom fleshes out the characters so well and with so much love and care and thought that vivzie herself cant do and its just sad.

Not even mentioning the hundreds of retcons and how characters will just change personality randomly or act out of character which results in the work feeling like a fanfic of itself. (Ironic considering some fanfics have better and more consistent characterisation)

It feels like shes making it up as she goes, instead of having an actual plan. Just shoving random ideas she likes or picks up from the much more creative fandom into the 2 shows without actually stopping and thinking abt the consequences or implications.

Theres so many decisions shes made that irk me so bad... the ideas individually have potential but they either dont fit the show or have to make huge retcons and result in the plot not making any sense.

Also, ngl but she has the worst case of tell dont show ive ever seen my god 😭😭 like... you realise you have to show things instead of just fucking singing it or having a character say it??? Or is that another thing that the fandom has to do so they can convince themselves that the show has good characters??

Atp idk how to salvage the show... i keep finding more and more plotholes and unless i literally turn my brain off and only focus on haha funny dick joke or pwetty colors, these questions keep popping into my head making it a painful unenjoyable experience.

Again, if the fandom has to justify your bad nonsensical hypocritical worldbuilding then you failed. Massively.

Anyway im very sleepy rn just wanted to rant a bit bc im a writer and artist myself and it pisses me off how someone gets their show on the air and still doesnt care abt putting in effort into their plot or characters beyond aesthetics and random ideas that dont go well together...

You’re speaking facts! And it’s honestly like..kinda funny too that people who have their own OC’s can flesh them out and deep dive into their arcs/backstories ect, yet a professional showrunner who’s had these characters for YEARS can’t even give the majority of her characters flaws or quirks, or even consistency, same goes for Helluva Boss.

Viv is a really good example at letting inspired writers know what not to do when making a story and characters so at least they have that lol.

#reply #ask #all facts btw heavily agree #thanks for ranting to me!#vivziepop critical #spindlehorse critical #hazbin hotel critical #anti vivziepop #Hazbin critical

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dresshistorynerd · 1 month

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Hi! I just read your analysis of the P&P 2005 costumes. I'm currently in the process of researching Regency-period fashion for fic purposes; I'm writing a f/f story in a slightly alternate Regency world in which on top of regular marriages, parents (especially in the higher classes) could and did arrange for gay marriages for those of their children who wouldn't inherit - the principle being that the parents could set these couples up with a part of the estate that, upon those couple's death, would revert back to the estate to be inherited onwards, and thus not mess with an entailed estate all that much.

Anyway, long story short, my thought was that in these marriages, there would *still* be a masculine and feminine role, just independent of gender - and there would be according fashions. So, for example, a man's three-piece suit for a woman who took the masculine role in a f/f marriage, just cut towards the female figure, and perhaps with other nods towards the wearer's gender too, and similar for a man who took the feminine role in a m/m marriage.

I just wanted to reach out and see what you think of this and see if you'd have as much fun thinking about this as I have!

Thank you for your message, this honestly sounds really cool!! I think it's very interesting idea to come up with reasoning how arranged same sex marriage would work in a Regency class and land ownership system. I absolutely had so much fun thinking about this, maybe too much fun because look at how long this post is :'D You are entirely free to ignore all of this, I just had a lot of ideas, since your story has such an interesting premise. If you any of this catches your fancy, use it however you like!

I think it makes sense that in a very patriarchal and gender essentialist Regency society the couple would be expected to perform heterosexuality even while literally being in a gay marriage. What you described, men's clothing fitted to women's undergarments, is basically what costumes for breeches roles were usually in theater, roles for female actors, usually as a young leading boy. (Reverse roles, male actors playing female characters, usually elder/motherly roles, were just as common.) Another approach could be to use the women's silhouette, skirt with empire waist, but otherwise the clothing is similar to men's fashion. While most women's Regency styles were particularly strongly contrasted with men's styles, there was quite a lot of masculine styles too, which might work for that purpose.

I think the approach that would make most sense depends on how you want the gnc people seen and understood in the althis society of your story. In Regency society cross-dressing, women wearing pants and men wearing skirts, was seen as stepping into the other gender role. Cross-dressing was not acceptable outside theater, and people who did it needed to be stealth. So if you vision them taking the role of the opposite gender fully and not just in their relationship - living as the opposite gender and treated like that gender (for example the gnc women are allowed men's education and gnc men are not etc.) - I think it makes more sense that they would be using similar clothing as the costumes of the cross-dressing roles in theater. In that specific position it would then become acceptable to cross-dress. But if you envision them more in the societal positions of their own/assigned gender, and just embodying some opposite gender roles, especially in their marriage, I think it might make more sense for them to use the basic silhouettes of the fashion of their gender but in style the opposite gender.

So if you're interested, here's some historical styles and some additional ideas that could work as inspiration.

Before Renaissance men and women's fashions were not separate, but they started drifting apart when wearing skirts became unacceptable for men (which I have a whole long post about). However, very quickly women's fashion started to take influence from men's fashion for certain styles. Riding habit was the first one of these masculine styles for women. It originated from 17th century as men's clothing but with a skirt. From very early on men's military uniforms were a huge influence. A distinctive feature compared to other styles is the long trail so when the woman sits on the horse, her legs are not too exposed. Here's some regency examples. First example is from mid 1797-98. The bodice is exactly in the style of men's fashion of the period. Second is from 1808 in a very militaristic style.

Redingote or pelisse was a long walking dress often in the masculine styles of the riding habit. It was adapted from riding habit to fashionable day wear for outdoors in 1780s. It started as very masculine in line with riding habits, but in 1800s styles without the masculine elements also appeared. Though masculine and military styles were still common. Here's first a redingote from 1800, which follows masculine fashion of the day very closely. The second is from 1810s and has collar from men's fashion and detailing and color are loose references to military styles. The third one is quite military inspired redingote from 1814. It has long train and was probably for carriage rides.

Spencer was a very short casual jacket, modelled after men's fashion again. It became fashionable in 1790s and in the following decades it gained many variations, some not at all masculine in style, and some for formal usage too. Here's very masculine styles as examples, first is from c. 1799, second from c. 1815.

One last trend I'll mention is very short hair imitating Roman men's hairstyles, which became very fashionable for men after the French Revolution, but very similar hair for women became a trend in late 1790s. It was a bold style but for couple of decades it was very popular. I think the woman in the first example above is growing out her Titus cut. There's a little tuft on top of her head, which makes it look like her hair isn't long enough for a bun but secured at the back anyway. Here's couple of actual examples. First is from early 1800s, specific date unknown, showing a slightly longer than usual version of the style. Second is from around the same time, 1798-1805, displaying very well how hair was cut to imitate side burns, which were fashionable for men. The third example from 1809 has the typical cut, where it's very short in the back of the head and little longer and curled in the front.

Many Regency sapphics did favour these styles, since they were acceptable ways to present in a more masculine manner. Anne Lister, perhaps the most famous Regency lesbian, presented very masculinely in her portraits. Below her outfit looks like a redingote in this 1822 painting. An infamous upper class Irish sapphic couple, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, lived together for decades in Whales. Here's an illustrations of them from 1818 in their older age wearing masculine redingotes and sporting Titus hairstyles.

I think in a society where gnc queer people are part of the system, they might have their own slightly different dress codes. For the gnc women/afab people I'm thinking their evening dress might have redingote or spence or perhaps open robe in style of men's evening wear which was black with white cravat (second image below). The open robe could be something like the first image below but fully black, tailored, with large lapels, high collars in the white chemisette and white cravat.

Men's gnc fashion is much harder problem since femininity in men was much less (and still very much seems to be) accepted than masculinity in women. I think it's the old patriarchal superiority of masculinity issue (even if women shouldn't break gender roles at least they are "upgrading", while men would be "downgrading"). I think it might be interesting thought to take inspiration from the styles previous to French Revolution. Regency men's fashion (all Regency fashion really) was result of the French Revolution. I talk more about it in this post, but previously manhood and womanhood had only really been fully available for the upper classes and they were based mostly on displays of wealth. The revolutionaries rejected the aristocratic gender construction and instead created their own. It was based less on class and more on the gender (and racial, but we won't have the time to touch on that here) divide. Aristocratic gender expressions were deemed decadent and the bad kind of feminine. (French Revolution may not have been the origins of the Madonna-whore complex, but they certainly cemented it to the public conscience.) That's how men's Regency fashion was stripped out of colour, detailing and luxurious materials, the overt displays of wealth. New masculine styles were all about evoking militarism, country side and practicality of a working man. Most of it was aesthetic and the class structure remained, but altered heavier in the lines of gender and race/ethnicity. To show you how the fashion was seen, here's couple of satirical cartoons both from 1787 literally calling men wearing the more courtly flamboyant styles women. (First source, second source.)

It's not entirely unrealistic that the outdated fashions would remain along the new styles. Courts were resistant to change (especially since the change had anti-monarchist implications) and upheld the outdated dress codes, so court suits were very much continuation of the fashion prior to the revolution (though court suits too started to become increasingly subdued by the 1820s). Here's examples from 1805 and 1813.

In an alternative historical world like this, I think the pre-revolution styles might have kept on and evolved as a more feminine version of the more general men's fashion. Since masculinity had been tied with rural areas and working class, I think the gnc men's style wouldn't have lapels or turned down collars, which originated from working class clothing, but upward collars like in the 18th century dress coats and Regency court suits (maybe downward collars in informal coats, but not lapels). Maybe they would keep on with the long hairstyles where they tie up their hair with a ribbon, though I don't think they would keep powdering the hair as it went out of fashion for women too. Instead they might style the front of the hair similar to women by cutting hair shorter in the front (basically a mullet) and curling the front of it to frame the face. I don't think they would be wearing the loose trousers, which were very strongly working class till the beginning of 1800s, when they started to be accepted as informal wear for upper class men. Though I think pantaloons would become informal part of feminine men's fashion after general men's fashion would start accepting them as formal wear around 1810s. Here's some examples from 1780s, which could be used as inspiration. First is from 1785-1790, second is from 1788 and the third is from c. 1770.

Dress coats were used still in the Regency era not just in court suits but also in morning dress. The cut and silhouette of men's fashion changed after the 1780s, most significantly with the shorter waistcoats. Here's couple of morning riding dresses (they have riding boots) from 1801 and 1806. I envision the feminine men's style as using the fashionable cuts and silhouette of the day, but combining them with the less structured and finer fabrics, patterns, colours and embelishments of pre-revolution styles. In evening wear I think they could wear white, like women, or at least light colours.

Okay, here's finally all my ideas, I had much more of them than I initially thought! It was so much fun to think about an alternative history like this, so thank you very much for your ask! I hope you found this fun or interesting to read at least, but please take my ideas as just my opinion and if any of it contradicts your vision, just ignore it. It's fiction and an alternative universe in addition so you can follow history just as much or little as you like.

Basically, your story sounds very cool, and I wish you good writing!

#historical fashion #fashion history #history #fashion #historical costuming #dress history #extant garment #costuming #regency fashion #fashion plate #painting #answers #queer history

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st-va · 2 months

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The latest Hunter: the parenting ep was so fucking cool, i think I was watching it for 2/2.5 hours with a friend cause we were analysing it so much. Forgetting the plot and all the amazing lore jam-packed into that ep, the ANIMATION? Holy shit! I didn't know that it could get better AND keep its quirkiness!

Who is the Ghoul analysis after the cut!

Okay so there are two forces at play in that house, throughout the whole episode there are hints of a werewolf - in the first room, that is the dinning room, there is a wardrobe that has scratch marks and the door underneath the first floor stairs(the one that big D came through) ALSO has them. Oh, it's also a FULL MOON.

Now, the ghoul and the warewolf could be working independently, completely unaware of eachother, but it is my theory that the warewolf is Matilda and the ghoul is Amanda.

There is a little time jump that skipped some interactions. After Elise stole the smokes and keys (staff access) from Giles, she must have given them to Grim. She, in turn, went to the Security room through the vents (she was said to be good at going through them and they said that the security room is the most ventilated room). In the map it is said that Matilda came to the kitchen from the security room and she has acquired Giles' smokes, meaning that she prob caught Grim sneaking and Grim gave her his smokes in exchange for silence.

Why was Matilda going to the Security Room? And moreover, when Kitten came to the kitchen Amanda said that they could let him in to the Security room (Matilda being against the idea). When the topic of the Hunting came around, neither of them really looked scared. Amanda was just standing there, looking a bit sad or maybe disapprovingly at Matilda, and Matilda was a bit disgruntled, but nothing more really.

Matilda also brought out the subject of "Is the Ghoul really that bad?", which is honestly sending red flags all around for me, to be honest. Sure, she might genuinely be afraid and is trying to be strong, but, honestly? She looked sad.

I honestly do not know how Matilda would have gotten access to the Archives. She couldn't have stolen Remoud's keys cause D stole them seconds before unlocking the door, sure as hell couldn't have stolen Occam's so that leaves Lord Fatigue and the doctor.

Lord Fatigue was with the boys and there was such a small window of opportunity to yoink the keys that it seems impossible, but the doctor is the other option and she hasn't gotten that much screen time, plus it would make sense to get rid of the Lord later. So I'm sticking with Lord Fatigue being the one who got mugged. Again, this part of my theory is very loose, I couldn't find any evidence.

I want to call attention to how fucking furious Matilda looked after they found Occam incapacitated.

I don't think that is the face someone being sad that her employer is knocked down a peg and won't be able to pay her on time hhh. Amanda's expression is on point, she looks terrified but I will choose to believe that she is seeing the consequences of her friend's actions, in order to help her. Remember, Amanda is the Ghoul and Matilda the Warewolf.

Matilda's expression could also be a symptom of a withdrawal. Now, I will be honest. I know the bare minimum of the lore surrounding Vampire: The Masquerade and my friend couldn't find the exact thing that happens to warewolves during a full moon in this setting, so I'm basing this on pure speculation, but she could be trying to refrain from transmutating and, without her smokes, that could be more of a mental feat.

Moving on, the most damning information that we got out of the episode was after Amanda was fried, she said Baba Yaga. Holy fuck. With how the Arcanum is, there is no way in hell they would let the "Help" know of such a powerful vampire. I really couldn't think of another way she would acquire this knowledge if she isnt connected to the Masquerade in any way.

When the gang went to the pub, Matilda looked tilted as all hell.

The Ghoul is currently incapacitated, there's no way in hell that Amanda did this. This kill was the work of the Warewolf, with how fucking violent it was. Connecting this with my previous conjecture that Lord Fatigue was the one that got his keys stolen, he is a fucking Lycanthropy professor! I think, in Matilda's eyes, he was a threat and she wanted to get rid of him because it was only a matter of time before he found out. Plus, she had to turn at some point and she would have already been furious that they have been torturing her friend.

It was a golden opportunity as well. From the beginning of the episode, we know that Spit has been experiencing Delirium, the fear that comes with seeing the supernatural and that fear is accompanied with memory loss of the actual event. Git was locked in the bathroom and so Matilda could go ham on taking her rage out on Lord Fatigue.

Whoo! This has been a long one, lastly I want to point out some small things that I appreciated.

Big D going into the Harry Potter room in order to investigate the claw marks.

Marcus and Harry being complete bros and going to lift instead of dealing with an emotion situation.

Boy

Brock not sitting down when they were all gathered in the Dining room at the beginning and later saying that his kneecaps were flattened.

D's booty shorts

Honestly, this series is amazing, I don't think I've ever watched something this high quality with this much love, thought and humanity being put behind it. The work that Alfabusa and the gang are putting into making every single frame a banger is phenomenal! I really do not understand how they keep on improving.

What did you guys think? Am I mentally deranged, or am I and my friend onto something? Please tell me what you think of my lil Game Theory and if I missed anything!

#hunter the parenting #htp #analysis #murder mystery #bruva alfabusa #Hunter the Parenting Chapter 4 #Hunter the Parenting Chapter 4 The Feuds of our Fathers #vampire the masquerade #vtm #crime solving

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helpfandom · 8 months

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Yandere Platonic Two-Face {TAS} x Reader HCs

Ngl, I'm thinking about doing an analysis on the TAS villains. ALL of the TAS villains with the same kind of reader.

It's just that realistically, this is the type of reader that would be the most likely with how Gotham is.

Honestly, I have no idea on why he would initially be interested in a kid, if it wasn't for a bad reason. Not saying that yandere isn't bad, but more so that, I can't see him stalking a kid or anything for any morally good reason.

But, in the interest of fanfiction, we shall say that this reader is of the 'uncaring' variety, much like my Riddler (also TAS) reader.

So perhaps, Reader initially met him in a dark alley, so of course, without realizing, he pulls out a gun and threatens you. He was shocked with himself that he would do that to a kid, but on the other side, no loose ends.

So, he flips the coin. But reader tells him that it's not a 50/50 chance like he has always believed. {It truly is not, by the by, it is ever so slightly tilted to the heavier side, making it a 51/49 chance.} This catches him off guard and he fumbles, losing the coin.

The two-toned man rumbles to you. "Go ahead. Leave. Take your chance and live." You stand up from your spot, having fallen from the spook of running into one of Gotham's infamous villains. "Cool. Thanks man." You walk off, feeling his stares, but letting it slide off your back.

Why would you walk from someone who is a villain? A scary person who could kill you, simply for existing in the same area as him?

And with that, you sealed your fate. He couldn't get your words out of his head. Was everything he believed in a lie? Was everything he's doing for naught? With that simple sentence, you broke his entire world in half. He needs something new to focus on. Too bad it had to be you.

Without even needing the coin to decide, he knows that he has to see you again. You've haunting him, it's so stupid that you've been doing this to him. WHY! Why are you haunting, why are you stuck in his every waking thought?!

Needless to say, he's a very quick yandere. I mean, he already has an obsession, it just moved to you.

I wouldn't say he's quick to kidnap. To me, he seems like more of a stalking type at first, but then, when he goes to flip his coin again to see what to do tonight, he thinks of you. He thinks of how you interacted with him and your words get stuck in his head all the time.

Would he be prepared for you? No. Not really. I mean, it's not like he sees himself as a dad either, it's more of just... He needs you there. You need to be there for him. His obsession with the coin flipped over to you, and now you're the one reason he's still here, able to articulate his words, be alive, and live his life.

Batman and Robin wouldn't be able to help you out either, for he wouldn't let any sign of you actually affecting him show, unless...

Set the scene: Two Face is robbing a bank, he flips the coin and right as it lands in his open palm, you walk by, unflinching at the alarms going off or anything. you. You. YOU. He drops the coin, everyone who knows him even a little bit is shocked at that. Why would he ever let it drop? Everyone knows that he's obsessed with it.

That would be the only sense in which Batman and Robin would ever find out of an obsession with you. The way he pauses when someone says something that sound like your name, the way that he purposefully selects the spots away from your home so you're less likely to be caught in the crossfire...

I can see Batman connecting the dots, but at that point, its too late.

He's already kidnapped you.

Goodbye.

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ghostflowerhotpotch · 10 months

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"A token to remember you by"

I know this topic has been talked a lot, and I sadly don't think I can make a proper analysis because there isn't much to say.

But I'm one sappy bastard and this blogs primarily focus was always to me to gush at stuff.

You know? When I saw the movie for the first time, I thought she really came to talk to her dad, and then chicken out at the last second.

Don't ask me what the heck was going with my eyes that day because it literally show straight up. Specially since is establish from the first movie that this picture is important to her.

You know I think is a testament of something that when Miles is talking about how every time he feels alone, he remembers the friends who get him.

And Gwen is doing the exact same thing.

This sentiment translates into the next movie, with Gwen remembering Miles constantly, and deciding to turn the picture into a polaroid.

I really found this interesting because nowadays people rarely have physical pictures (My mom had tons of photo albums back home, so the importance of keeping a token of a moment has always been present in my mind.) I have no idea how easy would be to turn a digital picture into a polaroid, but the fact that she put that effort when nowadays is doing it says a lot to me.

But even that pales in comparison to the moment I am actually talking about.

I think everyone has been asked at least once, "If your house was burning and you only have time to save one thing, what would you save?"

I always had a bit of a hard time answering that question myself; what has more meaning to me? What is the thing I knew if I lost tomorrow, I would regret not keeping it with me?

For Gwen, is obviously this picture, and I think once you reflect about the context of the situation, this just becomes more obvious.

Let's remember in what kind of situation she is, or at least the one she thinks she is trapped in right now.

At this point? She is homeless, OFFICIALLY homeless. To be fair I think she already was the moment her dad pointed a gun at her and needed to run, but even then I hesitated to call it that since she probably had a room or something at the Spider Society.

But at this moment? She has nothing; she doesn't have any friends (She has never referred to her band as such, even if I honestly think they would had been there for her if given the chance,) nowhere to go, and is stuck in a dimension where she has been accused of murder.

She doesn't have a way to travel to another dimensions (as far as she is aware,) meaning she cannot contact Hobie or Pav, or go out looking for Miles.

And what she does in this situation?

Get Miles' picture, and that's it, that's literally the only thing she went to get.

I wouldn't discard that she would get more of her stuff once the apartment was alone, to be honest it would probably make more sense to get some civilian clothes at least so she could have a change with her. Going into the apartment when she knew it was alone, so she wouldn't had a chance to get arrested would be more logical.

But none of this is about logic.

In a moment of desperation, all she cares about is getting that picture back, she is risking so much by doing this but none of that logical danger matters to her as much as it is having that back.

Because at her lowest moment, she looks for Miles for comfort, even if it would probably hurt like hell look at his face knowing what happened the last time they saw each other; she clings to that picture and the memory of him as the only comfort she has left.

Not her father, not Peter, him.

That last line was a good way to end, but while rewatching this scene, I realize that at any moment, we see Gwen putting the picture away, meaning she may be carrying it with her when she goes to other dimensions.

I wonder if Miles would have the chance to see it, and know, how much he matters to Gwen by how much that picture means to her.

#ghostflower #gwiles #gwen stacy #miles morales #captain stacy #atsv spoilers #across the spiderverse spoilers #across the spiderverse #atsv #ghostflower files

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prince-kallisto · 5 months

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Crowley’s Special Lesson Themes Analysis

HELPPPPPPPP OMGGGGGGG WTF

Okay okay okay, first of all, I’m really flattered when some of y’all say I’m perceptive and such due to my theories, but tell me why I literally JUST realized that the lesson theme changes when Crowley drops in for a Special Lesson?!?!? 😭😭😭😭 L Kallisto moment. -100 perception.

Im not kidding I was literally so focused on Crowley’s chibi form that I never noticed that the music changed when Special Lessons were activated 💀 Self-roasting aside, I immediately went to search up the OSTs for Special Lessons. A huge thank you to this user on YouTube. I compiled the three videos just for my personal reference, but I highly recommend to listen to these songs they’re such a bop!!! 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️

I find it really fascinating that the “Dire Crowley” theme (the song that plays when you first open the game) is very foreboding, but the Special Lesson songs are rather flamboyant. Maybe I’m just hearing it wrong, but I like how a ringing bell-like sound can be heard in the Special Lessons songs. It seems like the passage of time through bells is a shared motif in Crowley’s songs? It could also be a reference to school bells.

I have a theory that these Special Lesson theme songs represent Crowley’s relationship and dynamic with each of the staff members. I separated each song into their different section to talk about, including their bpm/tempo, just because I think the details put into these songs as amazing! Note, I don’t know much about music and instruments haha, so please correct or feel free to elaborate on any information ∑(ﾟДﾟ)

Alchemy Special Lesson BGM (Crewel)

-100 bpm, Allegretto, and in D minor. Allegretto is lively, but it must be executed with a sense of restraint, elegance, and precision. It is not like Allegro, which tends to be happy and upbeat. Allegretto is quite literally “less than Allegro,” so it’s restrained. D minor is a key that is often related to feelings of desperation or distress, which is fitting for Crewel’s students. Although don’t take anything I say about the keys too literally (*ﾟ∀ﾟ*) “Major=Happy, Minor=Sad” is a gross oversimplification of keys, and a song can represent any emotion regardless the key it’s in. However, I think it’s worth mentioning because keys are still chosen purposefully to guide the listener to an interpretation of the music! ♪(๑ᴖ◡ᴖ๑)♪

-This is honestly one of my favorite songs from the game. I am LIVING for the doublebass in the background. It’s so jaunty and lively despite its deceptively simple sound. It keeps the tempo very well, I love it

youtube

-I relistened to the “Cruella De Vil” song that Roger sings in 101 Dalmatians, and it’s what gave me the idea that Crowley combines his theme with the individual teachers. This song has a elegant yet foreboding vibe to it, much like Roger says about Cruella: “she’s like a spider waiting for the kill.” If you listen to instrumental versions of this song, I feel like the vibe is there

-The Alchemy song feels a bit tense, especially near the end, where is feels like the instruments are fighting for attention and overlapping each other. Although Crowley and Crewel are both (SEEMINGLY) classy and get along surprisingly well in canon, both of their “teacher modes” are very intense. E.g Crewel with the whole pup thing, and Crowley just being unreasonable over all haha. Perhaps it is why Crewel and Crowley very rarely are on screen together? For both Crewel and Crowley to be present in a Special Lesson must be very stressful for the students, with Crewel being strict and demanding and Crowley just being nosy haha.

-Their relationship fascinates me, as they both seem to respect each other a lot. For Crowley, it makes sense, as he generally speaks favorably of the other staff members. But Crewel is rather critical of both Vargas and Trein, so why is he so tolerant of Crowley’s rather unreasonable behavior? Crewel seems to respect him and consider him to be kind, even though it’s obvious Crowley is not. And like I said, they don’t interact a lot in canon, and they mostly do when the other staff members are there too, so there’s very little time of them talking to each other specifically. But then it made me think how crows/ravens and wolves have a mutually beneficial relationship in the wild, with crows leading wolves to possible prey, and the crows feeding on the carcass once the wolves make the kill and eat their portion of the prey. Research has even discovered that ravens have close bonds with specific wolves in a pack, and often play tug-a-war with wolf puppies with sticks. Thus, ravens are often referred to as “wolf birds.” Due to this, some crows and ravens get along with bigger dogs too, as crows/ravens tend to like canines. So perhaps Crowley and Crewel’s positive relationship is a reference to this, and how they may just instinctually like each other? 🤔 Because I cannot think of a reference from the 101 Dalmatians, Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty to be made here with these two characters.

-So going back to how the instruments seem to be fighting each other in the end, perhaps it represents how differing Crowley and Crewel’s personalities and teaching methods are. Crowley is strict when necessary, but he’s far more tolerant with student antics and often acts even more immature than the students sometimes and allows fights/conflicts for the students “personal growth,” whereas Crewel has this intensity and energy with the students at all times, never wanting them to be out of line in any matter at all. Like the clash of their hands-off and hands-on methods, but at the end of the day, they’re both rather strict and it’s unfortunate when the students have to deal with them at the same time haha! In their Alchemy Special Lesson voice lines, both Jack and Rook express how intense the room gets, and Room saying HE feels like the prey now. Several other students say how they feel a chill in the air during Alchemy special lessons, with even Floyd saying he gets the “heebie-jeebies.”

History Special Lesson BGM (Trein)

-100 bpm, Allegretto, and in F major. Allegretto is a common tempo in classical music, alongside Allegro and Adante, so it’s fitting that Alchemy and History follow suit. Ernst Pauer describes F major to express peace and joy, but to have an underlying passing regret and melancholy. I could think of few possible “passing regrets,” with Trein in particular with the passing of his wife, whom he remembers fondly and has many habits in her memory. And of course, History in general causes many regrets.

-After listening to this one, I immediately went to go listen to the BGMs from Briar Valley in Book 7 lmaooo…I find it interesting how prominent wind instruments are shared between these songs, but I need to analyze further before I can say something more definitive 🏃‍♂️ It is interesting how the History Special Leason theme has this whimsical and fantastical feel to it- it’s very fitting.

-On this note, the middle-ish section of the song reminds me a bit of a marching band! Which is. Interesting considering it’s military origins 👀but maybe I have to admit that this is a stretch haha…something to think about though when I analyze Book 7’s music in the future.

-I’m really in love with the “call and response” theme they have with the woodwind instruments (clarinet and piccolo?? I’m apologize if that’s inaccurate, I don’t know much about woodwind instruments 😭 I listened to samples and just made my best guess,,,) clarinet plays a melody and a piccolo responds and repeats the same sound. Not to be dramatic af, but it lowkey sounds like a pair of songbirds who are courting each other, which makes me sad because I’m not normal over my silly Crowley theories🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️ When courting, a songbird “sings”so the other bird they are courting can respond. If the courting is successful, the pair duets the same tune, which is exactly what the piccolo and flute are doing. Crowley x Trein is real… (I’m kidding HELP). It goes to show that even though Trein scolds Crowley a lot, they clearly have some faith in each other, especially in Book 6 when Crowley assigns Trein as temporary Headmage. This “call and response” is a representation of this faith, with one calling, and the other responding when it’s necessary.

-Or if you’re ridiculous like me, it’s sad in context because Crowley is an isolated character, despite all the pairs of raven statues around the school haha!

-Interestingly enough, this is the one song out of the Alchemy and Flight themes that does not have a the “ringing bell” I was talking about. Interesting this is missing in the History class, as if time is not relevant/time has stopped. Or perhaps how sense it’s history, we are not at the “present” time.

-Overall, this song feels far more harmonious than the Alchemy song. I think it goes to show how genuinely dedicated Trein is about the study of History, given he’s done fieldwork in the past. Trein is able to keep Crowley relatively in line just like the students, so the song flows smoothly.

Flight Special Lesson BGM (Vargas)

-140 bpm, Vivace, and in A minor. Vivace means brisk, lively, which signals to the musicians to play with spirit and energy. This tempo is AMAZING, because Crewel and Trein’s were both at 100 bpm, right? But this song is at 140 bpm. It gives a dynamic sense of movement and vigor to the song. At this beat, it’s known that it may make some listeners feel restless, due to the beat being faster than a resting heartbeat range. It was an incredible choice for the Flight lessons with Vargas, as it is a gym/workout class! 140 bpm falls comfortably in aerobic exercises heart rate range, especially since where referring to teenage boys. Haha this may be obvious in music theory/composition, but I thought it was cool! (*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)

-I was surprised by this one, for how prominent the electric guitar is instead of the orchestra at the start of the song! Crewel and Trein go along with the orchestral theme rather well, making it a strong highlight of their respective songs. Compared to the other themes, the guitar feels overbearing. It’s very fitting for Vargas’ personality, for as we see in the special voice lines, Vargas is a bit much even for Crowley

-However, strangely enough it works, as the ending portion combines everything quite well. Vargas is one the staff members who I think has the most positive opinion about Crowley. Although Vargas is overbearing, he and Crowley get along really well. In events like Beanfest, they share an equally concerning enthusiasm of the sport of it all. They seem to have a lot together sharing their predictions and ideas for Beanfest, and Spelldrive is also a shared interest of theirs. Funnily enough, I think Vargas of all people is able to take Crowley’s antics more in stride than the other staff members, and vice versa.

-This song ends in a particularly exuberant manner. It goes to show how excitable both Crowley and Vargas be, and how they have high hopes for their students. Yes, they’re a bit much, but there’s a genuine liveliness they both share. Crowley even plays along with Vargas’ strange ideas, like how in an Unified Exam voice line, Crowley thinks that Vargas’ idea of making the student uniforms with heavier fabric to “build muscles” is a genius idea and he wants to look into it more.

-So perhaps this song deviates a little bit more from the classical themes to represent the antics these two have compared with the other teachers?

Did I overthink these theme songs WAY too much? YES LMAO 😭😭😭 But I am so genuinely surprised at how the different Special Lesson themes were made for each class. You would think that the song would be the same, since Special Lessons are rare and last for a short amount of time. It is why I have these little notes about each song, because if the time was spent to craft unique songs, I feel like there is a purpose and thought put behind it? Hmm, I’d like to study more about music to articulate my thoughts better, because I am very interested in Twisted Wonderland’s songs, and I know very little about music!

Edit: the brilliant and lovely @snakevsnis (💞) also sent me a brilliant interpretation that Crowley may also just be the type to “mimic” the personalities of the people around him, especially based on their habits to blend in. I love this idea! It makes me think how Crowley’s immaturity becomes far more rampant when he’s around the students. He’s even a character with a generous voice range, e.g his deep, serious voice in the opening prologue, versus any other time when he’s silly. It’s to the point where his “true” personality is currently ambiguous, as it tends to shift quite a bit. So yeah, I think these BGMs could be representation of this!!

Anyway if the Alchemy special lesson theme song doesn’t get played at my wedding, what’s even the point anymore. L spouse, L wedding, I’m ditching it immediately and running away into the night, taking all the gifts and money with me so I can finally buy a Crowley plushie (things perfectly sane people say)

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therantingsage · 13 days

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Misc additional observations/notes relating to the implication analysis post that I either forgot to add or omitted for pacing reasons.

This one's embarrassing to admit, but I literally did not remember this until the post was done and posted:

N being bad at keeping things to himself is literally the first thing we learn about him when he starts talking. "Inclusive reflexes" isn't what teaches Uzi this, it's literally the first thing she finds out about his character, so she has no excuse. There is no plausible deniability she knows her boyfriend can't keep secrets.

((Unrelated to anything but since I'm talking about the pilot like. Why does he fan himself here. Dude you don't even have feelings for her yet bro what's this about. Guy who really likes strong personalities I guess))

N's tiny little smile in Promening when Uzi admits to wanting his help. He's like, critically underappreciated by the people around him before this so Uzi reaching out to him here must be so meaningful to him. He wants to be helpful and she's letting him be.

And Uzi, too, despite being stubborn about it. N being so eager to offer help in the first place isn't something she's used to, either. I'm pretty sure the (correct) general consensus is that this is the episode she falls for him, and honestly all the blushing has very little to do with why I think that's the case.

Because, like...no one really bothered even pretending to get along with her. Like, aside from Thad, but that's for like one scene total before N enters the picture, and Uzi's "how do you know my name, people willingly talk to you" implies to me that they didn't have a lot of, if any, meaningful interactions before that point anyway. And then here comes N, who despite how they'd parted, doesn't even seem upset with her. They both spent their time apart terrified of things being bad between them....but it all just melts away when they reunite and the mutual genuine concern shines through. It's great.

N maybe has fragments of memories of life at the manor, not a lot, but he probably has the vague sense that people used to be nicer to him in general. So it's not as foreign to him. Uzi does not have that luxury so having N be so enthusiastically in her corner definitely touches her heart. And it shows through in how she interacts with him in this episode.

There's lots and lots of little moments in Cabin Fever that I like but this tiny sheepish blush is a funny one. Like he just. Alluded to talking about her. And that flusters her for some reason. We have no idea how much time has actually passed since the last episode but its clear from how little it takes for this reaction to happen that her feelings have grown stronger. She likes him and its cute.

This scene is one I want to talk about in more detail, though. Home establishes that V still has faint lingering feelings for N, so it's not that hard to assume that her behavior here is at least partially motivated by jealousy. She's petty and vindictive and jealous...but most importantly she's perceptive.

Uzi has abandonment issues, which I think is easy enough to understand so I'm not going to elaborate on it. But V figured that out, and makes this threat with the knowledge that Uzi is worried about being abandoned. Uzi fears the idea that she wouldn't be missed if she disappeared, and here comes V, claiming that the one person she cares most about wouldn't care either. Hitting her where it hurts, trying to convince her that her fears are justified and inevitable.

It's likely that this moment contributes to her eventually going feral. That the stress overheats her faster.

She's incredibly vulnerable, when she snaps out of it. Shares that specific fear with N, who reassures her. Because this whole scene is him telling her that no, he wouldn't be able to just get over it if she was gone, because their brief time apart in this single episode was already something that scared him. That she's already become important enough to him that her absence was keenly felt.

It's probably around here, or a bit after this point in the nebulous timeskip between this episode and the next, that N falls for her. Scratch that, his whole speech, as I said in the prior post, just...really feels like some kind of romantic-adjacent confession. But I don't think it WAS explicitly them confessing feelings for each other. N figures out he likes her in this episode I'd like to think, but that speech was the closest he could come to admitting that. Cuz. Y'know. Uzi needs reassurance in other ways right now, no point in muddying the issue.

((and also not news to anybody I'm sure but the song that plays during that scene is LITERALLY called 'Falling...for you??' so. y'know. hindsight is 20/20 this is genuinely the moment he realizes his feelings for her are romantic))

And additional thing I like that I think about a lot, but the way he deliberately choses to switch his hands to claws when he pries her wings open. "I'm a monster, leave me be" she says, to which he replies "Hey, look, I am too, see? It's ok". It's great, he's mirroring, trying to make her feel seen. And by the vulnerability of her next line, it works. They really just, understand each other so damn well.

Home stuff. The fact that the first word that comes to mind to describe him is 'cute' is funny enough, but the fact that she even goes so far as to SAY it out loud before hastily correcting herself. Looking at her bf's baby pictures-coded. Has to keep her image up tho, this version doesn't know her so she can't be too weird or open about it.

But she still wants this version to think she's cool cuz she's a dork who likes him. It's unclear how much of this episode is diegetic when you subtract Uzi, but since these are memories and not proper time travel, we don't know to what extent Uzi's trying to avoid affecting the events. She might not care at all. Did the real N even go down to that basement willingly at any point? I doubt it. But we don't know! And also that's not what I'm making this post to talk about.

Funny Solvercam-Uzi body language on display. Delighted he recognizes her finally, spits out something edgy to play it cool (genuinely my favorite Uzi line of all time), sheepishly looks back at him, and shyly averts her gaze when he thanks her before looking back. Had she her regular face I'm sure she'd be smiling and blushing about it. It's cute as hell. It's very open delight, when you think about it. But still awkwardly teenage. It's easy to see this and have it make a whole lotta sense if they were already dating at this point. Got that meaningful eye contact going on. She likes making him happy so she's proud she succeeded.

Him trying to help steady her when they land. She blushes and slaps his hand away like 'dude I'm fine people are LOOKING at us stoooooop >:('

Her tail chewing on him is fine tho because we don't know if she controls it fully or if it does things subconsciously. And also the others aren't actually looking at them in this shot. Neither of them make the tail stop chewing so at the very least N doesn't mind.

Still flustered easily when he shows her he cares tho. Early-relationship 'hehehe he likes meeee' moment, adorable. Still clearly giddy that someone cares about her.

He's so conflicted after 'Tessa' tells him Uzi needs to die. He loves her, he loves her so so much, but Tessa is his oldest friend. All the memories he has of her paint a picture of someone he's supposed to listen to. Someone he can trust. Someone who wouldn't lie to him. He spends the rest of this episode bracing himself for a goodbye he doesn't want to give and its heartbreaking.

And despite his fear...Uzi still manages to comfort him the best way she knows how. And it gets him to smile! Because that's what the two of them are to each other. He's scared...but she's with him, so its less scary.

They've both caught up to the moment. 'Oh. We're still holding hands while the other two can see oh god'. They're both tight-lipped. She bumps him and they let go, maybe N thinks 'oh, right, yeah, not in public' but then they hold hands again but with intent this time.

And once again, it gets N to smile! And a second later Uzi does too! Awkward little moment of intimacy that must be so refreshing for them because there's so much heavy stuff happening but now they get to be distracted thinking about something lower-stakes.

To me, this bit is an interesting parallel to the Cabin Fever falling scene. He tends to be pretty perceptive about Uzi's worries. He's a good listener. Uzi fears abandonment, he fires back with a promise to stay with her.

But here, the thing Uzi fears is that things are being kept from her. That these two are keeping secrets from her. But instead of assuring her that they'll talk later, like they said they would, he instead chooses to use this moment to put his foot down with 'Tessa'. He just lost V maybe, and he's not willing to lose Uzi too, so he's decided she must be wrong about this being the only solution to the problem.

Up until that very moment, she didn't realize hurting her was on the table. It comes out of nowhere, freaks her out, and confirms her fear that she's not being told something. So she runs.

And the guilt he feels for scaring her off is heartbreaking. Half this episode is limb-chopping, genuinely, so the fact that he chooses this bone-saw to cut himself free instead of the litany of other things he has that he knows are quicker can't be a coincidence. He's punishing himself. And, additionally, probably reminding himself of V, hiding things because he worries the truth will hurt. Which makes the V hologram showing up moments later thematically very appropriate.

Can't add anymore pictures to this so maybe I'll make a part three later lol

#Murder Drones #Nuzi #biscuitbites #md N #md Uzi #Uzi Doorman #These aren't as vital to my point last time but I still think about them

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mynonclicheblog · 10 months

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One final Never Have I Ever love triangle thematic analysis

I've said this in one of my posts before, but the narrative is always going to favor what is best for Devi. A lot of what makes this show so juicy to dive into is because so much of its meaning is rooted in symbolism and higher concepts, not just the individual interactions you're looking at onscreen!

I think that's what doesn't work for some (not all) pro-Dxton anti-Ben folks. They see Paxton being respectful and kind to Devi, they see that he's the attractive object of her desire from day 1, and they see that the two of them genuinely do help each other in certain ways. But when these same people look at Benvi, they only see Ben making obnoxious comments to Devi (+ others), they see childish behavior and mistakes being made, and they see them frequently butting heads due to their shared competitive nature.

And honestly? I get it. These conclusions are easy to come to when you're looking at the surface, but they don't take into account the full story that's being told.

Let's get into it. 😎👇

So I mentioned earlier the idea of what is best for Devi. Not what is best for any regular person out there -- what is best for Devi Vishwakumar! Our girl expresses in no uncertain terms that she enjoys her hypercompetitive rivalry-turned-bond with Ben ("Ben's smart and we talk- mostly argue- for hours!" // "I don't want to break up with Ben. He really pushes me.") The fact that they fight and compete is not a detriment to their compatibility, it is actually the thing that makes him most desirable in her mind. She would not have wanted to be with him in the first place if this were not true. Their sharp-tongued communication style may not be the standard picture of a 'healthy' relationship for most people, but, well. Devi and Ben are far from most people.

Devi is an incredibly emotional, dynamic person who's always searching for another high. The competitive nature of her relationship with Ben is enough to satisfy her itch for novelty/excitement (her differences with Paxton don't hit this box), yet Ben's presence also provides a comforting long-term consistency in her life. He's seen the very best and the very worst of her and he always comes back. He frequently brings Devi back to herself, too, when she loses sight of what matters (friendships, family, sense of self, her goals, etc).

Then there's the dream vs. reality dichotomy that very much applies to this love triangle. Simple as it may be, it's accurate. I believe it was built that way on purpose because of how well it reflects Devi's relationships to Mohan and Nalini, which is the beating heart of what NHIE is all about. One (Mo/Pax) is more outwardly palatable than the other and provides an easygoing, self-soothing escapism that she needs in order to work through her grief. This person represents youth and the rose-colored past; Devi's tendency to idealize and indulge. The other person (Nal/Ben) is sharper around the edges, a bit harder to swallow, but pushes Devi to do better and supplies the support she needs. This person represents Devi's grounded reality; her time in the present and the woman she is growing into.

They are both important pieces of Devi's journey, but the themes of past vs. present speak for themselves. The past is something we keep in our heart; in this case, it's someone who has impacted us and we'll always carry with us -- but the ultimate goal is to move forward from that. The central relationship of Never Have I Ever is that of Devi & Nalini as they heal and grow together. In terms of Devi's romantic life (which is what this analysis is about), her relationship with Ben is the one that more closely shadows the series arc between her & Nalini.

I'd like to address some things by the individual season now. One of my observations watching s1 for the first time was that Paxton was usually aligned with bad things in Devi's life, whereas Ben was aligned with the good. ie, Paxton was the root cause of Devi's falling out with Elfab and Nalini // Ben is the one who repaired those relationships. These things aren't Paxton's fault, nor do I place any blame on him. They're just subtle narrative choices that send up unspoken flags saying, hey look, this isn't the right person for her. This theme remained in s1 for the most part, but given that it was NHIE's debut season, it planted several seeds for me about who the boys were for Devi and how they fit into her world.

Season 2 does a lot to sort out the difference in what Devi thinks she wants (Paxton) and what her heart truly wants (Ben). Yes, I'm going there, too: head vs heart. Devi's underlying preference for Ben > Paxton should be easy to spot as early as 2x01 -- if only for the fact that Devi finally bagged the hot guy of her dreams, yet, choosing to be with him isn't easy for her. In fact, as both Devi and Eleanor confirm later, she wanted to choose Ben in the first place. Like... that's crazy when you think about it!!! Despite all the pieces falling into place for her and Paxton, and against her friends' shallow advice, she decides that she won't let go of Ben. Instead, she makes the misguided decision to date both. This isn't the kind of mistake she'll ever make again. It isn't Devi acting out because of Ben -- it signals a profound attachment to him when, all things considered, picking Paxton should have been a no brainer. That revealed everything I needed to know in order to understand that being with Paxton wasn't what she wanted in her heart of hearts.

Then, of course, 3x10 brings that all home with the stomach knots comparison. It tells us that since Devi and Paxton have moved into a place of friendship, with him no longer on a pedestal, those romantic feelings (particularly on her part) have dissipated. As a bonus, Devi even explicitly states that Paxton was a dream! Ben, however -- her flawed reality -- is the one who still gives her butterflies. This is the result of Devi's slow awakening to her true inner self, the Devi who values realness and authenticity and loving through imperfection. It's a step closer to the complete acceptance of herself. (Notice as well that right after this point, it becomes more undeniable than ever that Ben is who she wants to be with.)

As long as Paxton was a romantic possibility for Devi, their relationship was tied to her feelings of insecurity and inferiority. Again this is not Paxton's fault -- he assures her of the opposite all the time -- but this is Devi's story, and we are shown over and over that Devi fears true vulnerability with Paxton (both sexually and emotionally). Compare this to the way she has always felt confident, seen, driven, and unabashedly herself in her relationship with Ben, even when they were enemies. At a glance Devi may appear to act more immature in Ben's orbit, but the truth is that she grows with him more than anyone else (besides Nalini) thanks to Ben's penchant for encouraging accountability and showing her that actions can have consequences.

Anyway, TLDR version:

Paxton = Devi's youth, Mohan, grief, distraction, the past, idealism, and the head (constructed ideas).

Ben = Devi's future, Nalini, healing, confrontation, the present, reality, and the heart (authentic truths).

Never Have I Ever's romantic story structure rests on the premise of these symbolic definitions. They are gospel, and while the characters will grow and change and become better versions of themselves, they will do so within the lines that are already drawn. The lines exist for a reason -- they are a narrative tool! These characters cannot and should not 'grow out' of their roles because those roles are their identities within the show's framework. Character development isn't getting wasted, because the characters are exactly who they are meant to be right through to the end. They are symbols. If that's not your cup of tea then so be it! But there's nothing wrong with this writing style. In fact it's one of my personal favorites because everything is so neatly defined, yet fascinating to read into 🥰

The imperfect Ben had to be Devi's true love because her love interests are, in a way, reflections of herself. By no fault of his own, Devi always felt the need to be "perfect" for Paxton because that's how she viewed him; a false paragon of everything she wanted to be. That is the point of their story together. Her acceptance of the deep love she has for Ben (and Nalini!), despite his sometimes off-putting demeanor, is aligned with Devi's acceptance of her own imperfections -- that she is hot-headed, she can be self-absorbed, she makes mistakes -- but that she is also brilliant and driven and caring and radiant, and she is equally worthy of receiving the love that she has to offer others.

Narratively speaking, it was never truly a competition.

#never have i ever #benvi #devi vishwakumar #ben gross #ben x devi #devi x ben #bevi #nhie spoilers #nhie #analysis post #*success

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centrally-unplanned · 5 months

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I watched the Scott Pilgrim anime! I was deeply ambivalent, which I am sure is a shock to no one who knows me and saw it lol. I think I have a sequence of thoughts, so I will tackle the obvious one first to get it out of the way: Marketing, Adaptation, & Genre Drift in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

Starting from top, if you don’t know, the Scott Pilgrim anime is not an adaptation of the original source material, but an alternate history version of the events where the titular Scott isn’t present for the majority of the episodes and Ramona Flowers is the main character. Which has been controversial! Not…amazingly controversial or anything, this is an extremely low stakes scenario and from my analysis the majority of people liked it. But controversial enough to get insufferable Kotaku articles “explaining the backlash” which don’t explain the backlash well. Let me see if I can do a better job - its fun to set low bars for yourself to clear after all.

The backlash starts with the marketing; really just the professional drama-trolls would have objected beyond an initial reaction to Netflix announcing Ramona Flowers vs the World; as a concept it makes a ton of sense, and it is essentially what they actually did (well, we will get into that). But that is not how it was sold:

“Join Scott in his fight for love, life, and rock!” I’d love to, still waiting for the invite! This is the first teaser for the show, and if you do a quick “frame count” it pretty equally privileges Scott & Ramona both, but Scott is still on top and it deliberately hides any sense that it is an alternate timeline. It even has this screenshot as one of its final moments:

Which I am pretty sure does not appear in the actual anime! If it does its in some flashback alt-timeline scene in a later episode, not its implied context (in the actual episode Scott ‘loses’ this fight). I can show more evidence - casting the original cast of the movie to make it seem like a ‘recreation’, statements by O’Malley where he plays deliberately coy with the idea of how similar it's going to be, and so on - but I think I don’t have to, because it was intentional, you don’t have to read the tea leaves on this. The bait-and-switch is part of the marketing, not an accident from it.

That is the step 1: people are thrown about being deceived. The step 2 is simple - this is a deception about an adaptation. I am someone who constantly complains about shows sacrificing cohesion & storytelling for “the twist”, but its too common these days to be that mad over it in a mass way. My designated punching bag over at Kotaku points this out:

This is a recurring theme for metatextual work like Final Fantasy VII Remake and the Rebuild of Evangelion films: initially they’re presented as retellings of beloved stories, only for it to become clear at some later point that they’re going to take more than a few liberties and tell a different story entirely.

The difference here is that FFVII and Evangelion are remakes, not adaptations. FFVII is a video game being made into a video game again; Evangelion is a tv show + movie being made into a movie series. The FFVII decision was controversial, but fundamentally you can just go back and play the original game; fucking everyone hated the idea of the Evangelion rebuilds being remakes because that is pointless, the originals have aged amazingly, and they had to deviate to justify their existence (they failed at that, but a story for another time). Meanwhile, Scott Pilgrim is a comic, that has never been a TV series, or an anime. There is the movie, but did you know a bunch of comic fans hate the movie? You see a lot of comments like these all the time (from a discourse reddit thread debating the new show):

Personally, I thought it was fun. I agree with a lot of your complaints honestly, but I don’t understand how you liked the movie? I can’t stand the movie because I feel like the characters are all flat, especially Ramona who has absolutely no personality at all.

I disagree btw, the movie is great, but it is a loose adaptation - hell it was released before the final volume of the graphic novels was finished, it has a different ending! A short, cohesive movie could never adapt a long-form, episodic graphic novel. And its live action, stylistically very different. So this TV show was both branded as, and was expected to fulfill a demand for, a first “real” adaptation of the comic, that people wanted. The fact that Evangelion deviated in its remake is a poor comparison. Questioning that people want full adaptations of works they enjoy isn’t really worth our time.

Now I personally don’t care about the above two - I am explaining the debate, but they aren’t problems for me. Step 3 is where I start caring - I think Ramona Flowers vs the World is a great idea. They thought they made that, and I wish they had. But in the process of telling the bait-and-switch of the story, they also bait-and-switched the genre. There is this great quote from O’Malley about the original graphic novel’s story from an interview (whose headline we will revisit in another post, don’t you worry):

Yeah, I mean, when I was writing Scott Pilgrim the first time, I just wanted to come up with a very simple story engine: fight, fight, fight, get to the end. That gave me something to hang all this other stuff on, all this slice of life hanging out in Toronto.

Its such a nice summation of what Scott Pilgrim is - the fighting against the evil exes? Its all sizzle and jokes, none of it matters. Its a plot device to structure the real story, which is a slice-of-life romance drama, coming-of-age narrative, and extremely intimate portrait of Toronto’s scene of indie music venues and hipster coffee shops. The joke is that Scott is dealing with all this crazy video game/anime shenanigans on top of actually having to navigate very grounded past emotional damage and present challenges of adulthood. The heart of the comic is not the fight scenes, some of which literally happen in the background while other characters are talking, but scenes of a group of friends hanging out at 11:00 PM at a dive Korean restaurant:

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off meanwhile is not built around this cast. Its built around a mystery plot and Ramona Flower’s evil exes, who she is investigating, and Scott Pilgrim, uh, checks notes travelling to the future and fighting his …aged enraged alternate self from the original timeline…? Anyway, Ramona’s evil exes are mainly joke characters, comic reliefs who engage in crazy shenanigans. Half of the episodes are structured around them, and their episodes are filled with extended comedy bits and very-long fight scenes. Episode two has a 13 minutes long fight scene between two of them, including build-up, over control of the League of Evil Exes. Hell, they don’t even live in Toronto - a ton of the new anime takes place in New York City and a bit in California. The comic meanwhile has panels just…explaining locations in Toronto sometimes:

Listing the hours of operation, its so cute! The anime has no time for this in between its sci-fi plots and fight scenes, and its far cheaper for it.

The decision to focus on shallow characters like Ramona’s exes is downstream of the decision to focus on Ramona without Scott -besides the exes the rest of the characters are Scott’s friends, who Ramona gets to know through him. Which is the final point here - who are the characters people love from Scott Pilgrim?

All of Scott’s friends ofc. Characters like Lucas Lee are memes, not people. Obviously Kim Pine, Young Neil, Knives Chau and so on appear in the anime. Sometimes they have great scenes - like the adorable scene of Knives & Kim playing music together, Knives’s first time really trying to jam:

Which goes absolutely nowhere from a character perspective - Knives & Kim barely interact after this. It sets up Knives doing a comedy-meta musical for the plot, sure…but that’s boring in comparison to real emotional connections, Knives doesn't have an arc. But they can’t have more, because our main character Ramona Flowers doesn’t know these people; she wouldn’t just hang out with them, and she is busy with her mystery investigation. She sees them when she needs them for plot reasons. Kim and Knives and Stephen Stills are much flatter this time around (Julie, to her credit, kicks ass in this one).

Obviously I could point out that Scott & Ramona’s relationship in the anime, given that they have literally one date before Scott vanishes, has no depth to it, but that is easy. The funniest way to summarize this character issue is if you check the tags on Tumblr right now, you are going to be awash in Scott/Wallace shipping posts. Like I swear, at times its straight(?)-up 50% of the posts going on, its a rabid gay horde out there lusting for this sugar daddy/baby dynamic. Which makes sense, they have so much sexual tension & emotional depth as friends…in the comic. In the anime they barely know each other! Wallace hates Scott and interacts with him maybe a half dozen times, primarily to tell him to move out, then does his own shit. This is all people projecting comic!Scott/Wallace onto the current show.

There are more downstream consequences of these decisions & other issues (like the overdone meta elements, or abandoning most of the indie-music aesthetic) but this has gone on long enough. The point is that telling a different version of the story would actually be fine. It would disappoint some fans, sure, but if done well you would likely win them around. Hell, the original comic’s ending kind of sucks, good time to polish some things. But if you change the main character and the genre and the cast focus and all the character dynamics…at a certain point its just its own new story now. A story irrevocably tied to the old one, but not about any of the things the old one cared about. I think you can see why that would be a harder sell than Ramona Flowers vs the World, even if it was a good zany action comedy anime in its own right. You will get backlash from this level of drift - and you will deserve it.

Also fuck Lisa am I right? Jeez, 0 out of 2 for moving picture adaptations. What you get for being blonde I guess.

#scott pilgrim #Ash adaptation analysis #essay

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mecachrome · 3 months

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extremely 👀👀 about this kind/nice spectrum u brought up and how alex oscar lando and anyone else on the grid are placed on the grid..... would love to know more.........

hi there!!! :D omg yes i would love to talk more about this, though of course disclaimer that these are my Personal Interpretations and i love to spout nonsense on the internet LOL. i'll just expand on oscar + lando + alex some more since frankly i don't know all the other driver lore Like That and i don't want to overstep in my analysis! also i'm deathly afraid of chirlies. ok let's move on

to start off... i think the way we talk about celebrity personas obviously requires some generalization + projection since we can only extrapolate what is already being consciously disseminated, and so although i frequently talk about the kind/nice dichotomy or someone's capacity for sympathy vs. empathy (which is kind of a parallel assessment imo) we are of course all complex people who contain multitudes, and i think it's mostly just interesting to examine strictly in the context of racing & racing mentality... if that makes sense!

also wrt landoscar's personalities → one thing i feel very, VERY strongly about despite their differing surface-level interests and social profiles (read: different flavors of off-track sports, both of them being gamers but to diverging levels of visibility, lando's higher degrees of hyperfixation, etc.) is that at their baseline they are extremely similar people, and honestly even very similar drivers and racing "characters," which ultimately kind of colors most of my analysis. if we peel back the layers then oscar and lando are both functional introverts who've been very well-nurtured by similarly robust, persisting, and loyal support systems—oscar spending 99% of his time off-track with his longtime gf, lando's best mates all being from his karting days, their dads being equally objective about yet also supportive of their careers, jon having trained lando since he was like 5 feet tall, etc.—so to me the overarching difference is that they have diametric approaches to how they externalize their convictions, and then obviously since that's what we see/hear day in & day out it generates the existing rift between their media images. per lando on btg:

"Oscar is extremely down to earth. A bit like me, just a very normal guy who's in Formula 1, just a guy that loves to drive cars and compete against people, and that's it."

(incoming egregious amounts of lando psychoanalysis...) despite oscar being the only driver i truly rep, i've always found lando's psyche soooo fascinating because he invites such extreme emotion in people (be it positive or negative), and i think part of it does go back to the idea of being nice vs. kind and ultimately the lens through which his intentions are interpreted by other people. in real-people fandom this is always interesting since it ends up becoming an unconscious exercise in how we perceive "sincerity" in others, even though the underlying paradoxical truth is obviously that any such assessment must always be dispersed and consolidated via a parasocial system (and thus everything is held relative to our own individual value systems... This is totally not the point of the ask. SORRY FOR THE MILLION TANGENTS) anyway as an extremely disillusioned sports fan i actually have a lot of time for lando despite how much visceral judgment he generates in quite a few people, which is totally fair since everyone is fully privy to feeling however they want to feel about any celebrity and i am not here to convince them otherwise lol. but that's just me!

i think to me the thing about lando is that there is almost zero pretense to his character, which some dislike because they find his bluntness off-putting, but imo just means his intentions are generally straightforward and easily digestible. sure, he lacks the spoken filter to not come off as occasionally callous, but at the end of the day i genuinely believe that he's an inherently thoughtful (and "kind") person, especially within the insular system of professional motorsport and the many mental pitfalls that accompany it. a symptom of this is how willing he is to resist more gracious media responses and how very inwardly critical he can be in specifically self-motivating ways, the latter of which sometimes gets misinterpreted due to the rigid yet overwhelmingly popular framework of what constitutes a competitive racing mentality. but like... to Me, lando is just entirely what you see is what you get, bad parts included, and he has zero intention of making excuses for that or pretending to be anything otherwise. which i enjoy!

and which again also goes back to the idea of niceness. (honestly the tl;dr for most of lando's pr scandals is just Oh okay so it's illegal to be neurodivergent now? but i'm trying to be normal so let me not just say that.) a good example is the entire debacle of saying he felt no sympathy for daniel at mclaren in 2022, because i think it elucidates a sort of kindness in objectivity that he very plainly participates in—to lando, being a top-performing athlete means never searching for excuses to soften the brunt of one's failures, himself included, and equally that there is no point playing sorry in front of journalists or trying to reshape their narrative scrutiny since at the highest level of competition any bold-faced externalization of "sympathy" is really just pity. and what point is there in telling someone else that you Feel Bad for their skill issue/struggles when the moment you extend that sentiment you essentially debase their position as a direct competitor and therefore disrespect them even more?

"I want to be the best in the world, I want to prove myself to people. But I've never had the mentality or the confidence to say that or feel like I need to do anything more than normal to show it to people. Do I have to do anything to go over the top and show that to prove it? I don't think so. People say you've got to be brutal and you've got to have this certain mentality. But I just don't think it's true at all. I think you’ve just got to get in the car and do the best you can."

i think the Separation of Church (treating everyone exactly as they are on-track, just another car to size up or keep at bay) and State (being friendly, supportive, and altogether well-regarded by other drivers off-track) is a primary tenet of lando's personality, and it's something he achieves by valuing kindness over niceness. you know the lando/maxf quadrant interview where lando is like: i'm not friends with you because of your achievements in life... i just care about your personality! and he's mainly saying it to take the piss out of him but he also 100% does mean that shit. that's the crasyinsane part about lando to me... god i'm so sorry i need to not go on for a million years but PERSONALLY, i think lando is very much the type of person who can go through an experience, or otherwise see someone close to him go through an experience, and approach it very empathetically to the point he continues carrying on this internal conviction about it even when he's survived or grown past it. like even as someone who mostly believes in Death to Relatable Marketing, i find it really interesting when lando talks about mental health in sports because we get to see both a) the fact that he's grown so much in his own mental resilience from his rookie self in 2019 to who he is now, but also b) that he continues to believe strongly in rejecting the presumed archetype of a successful formula 1 driver, and is steadfast in surfacing that even though... honestly? lando nowadays is a very consistent, well-rounded, and efficient talent who frankly doesn't experience nearly as much of the unproductive mentally-spiraling self-criticism that used to impact his performances to a far more pronounced degree when he was younger and rough around the edges. yet he still feels compelled to affirm that there is No One way to be an athlete (which is significant because "mentality" is such a harped-on concept in all sports, and everyone is always trying unfailingly to extrapolate performance-related projections via vague and completely subjective intangibles to a notably unempirical degree!!) because he does care, deeply, about how people enter and succeed in motorsport. honestly i always feel kind of iffy bringing up commentary re: Women In Motorsport because it often sounds unnecessarily adulatory, but at least in recent times i think he's also shown a decent amount of grace when talking about female fans, girls in karting, that one time he was like Bruh who are you? @ that misogynistic reporter, which...... i'm not going to say majorly influences my opinion of him, but imo being willing to quickly shut someone down like that is an anti-niceness to a productive end that i appreciate, since i think many personalities would kind of just smile bemusedly and try to quickly move on in the conversation.

tl;dr lando thinks feeling bad for people is useless and will never give you that one tidy sympathetic soundbite, but he does care for people vividly, especially off-track, which to him is the only place kindness really matters anyway. when you look at maxf (and i know this is mainly a portrait of codependency unique to their friendship but i do think it reflects his love languages in general) whose career cratered because he mentally couldn't handle the pressure, lando's response was literally to unfailingly engage in failcore househusband chores for him like leaving handwritten notes in his 3rd grade girl handwriting and ironing his clothes on stream........ which... i could go on forever but again. separation of church and state!!!

anyway with oscar on the other hand, i honestly think most things in his life kind of just exist as a function of motorsport LOL. and that he likes surrounding himself with people of similar interests/intellectual level/skillsets, down to his partner studying engineering and wanting to work in the same industry as him....... again, i think 814's baseline characters are Very similar and that they're both great team players with complementary professional approaches, so this is not a knock on either of their personalities, but imo lando is just generally more outwardly sentimental and has also had to do a lot of conscious growing up in the past ~4 years to become more well-rounded wrt off-track interests, whereas oscar basically came onto the grid as this already fully-realized product with far fewer dependencies who is just nonchalantly like, I see my family 3 weeks a year and my sisters just think i'm their lame older brother and don't care about my career at all, but i'm fine with that and i'd make all the same sacrifices i've made over and over again to get where i am!!! also re: oscar's abject lack of interest in engaging with fans one-on-one, an easy example is how lando genuinely values/treasures the friendship bracelets he gets and wears them consistently whereas oscar is just like. Erm. i respect it but that is not for me ✋😭 he's nice about fan things because he understands how much fan support and consumerist interest enable the circus that is formula 1 but he doesn't really value any of it much past the surface-level pleasantries......

why is this answer so long............... idk if you want to hear anything more about alex but i think he's very similar to oscar in terms of this measured external niceness/quiet ruthlessness, especially wrt how they weather team politics, interact with media (noted red bull marketing hater alex albon), and tend to simply Do The Thing To Do The Thing. alex is especially interesting because if you watch his high performance pod it reveals sooooo much of his growth over the years and his current mental framework ("i was having to be selfless, and it didn't really agree with me that much") and frankly even just the way he speaks about himself is fascinating to me but i digress!!! i do think much of lando's tactless impulse yet also apparent kindness comes from his considerably privileged background and the fact that he was shown a lot of Realistic But Also Unconditional Support and thus never had his career actively threatened growing up. so even though he's had to learn to not mentally catastrophize at the f1 level, he didn't undergo the reckoning alex did with his mother/losing rb's team backing/etc., which alex mentions in this podcast as specifically triggering his insatiable desperation to prove himself.......... and so on. alex and oscar to me are both quite similar in how they let more combative thoughts simmer and are very well-trained in responding palatably to the media, but they're also going to resist relating themselves too much to other people's struggles because That Is Not Their Problem, and at the end of the day oscar is uh.... sure he has a lot of appreciation for mclaren and has called prema a family before, but he really only wants to win for himself and is less inclined than lando is to romanticize the spirit of the Team. and so when he says things like "for me, there’s just not any point, especially in self-deprecation, destroying yourself in front of the media," it's a Niceness because his assessments are always entirely self-absorbed in the most productive of senses, as in he truly only cares about what he himself is doing and is never going to waste time worrying about or comparing himself to his competitors' mental approaches!

does any of this make sense. please excuse the monstrous rambling 😭 but also please feel free to follow up with your own takes/lore about any driver if you'd like to, or to tell me that i'm absolutely wrong if you'd like, because i always love to hear about these things!!! :3c

#ask #i did not mean to psychoanalyze lando like That i'm so sorry...

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