#film theory is for the cishet
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this is a long analysis on titanic (1997), re: my last reblog on titanic’s depiction of rose coming into her own sexuality, being sexually dominant, & actively pursuing jack romantically, + LGBT themes, feminism, & the cal/jack/rose triangle as a freudian representation.
—this is one of the great and unique things about this film and also i’d like to point out that although we see jack liking rose first, rose is the one who actively pursues him every step of the way which is almost never seen in films. the roles are almost always reversed. she’s the one who lies to protect him, she’s the one goes to see jack again on the deck under the guise of thanking him, she’s the one who snatches his art book and asks about the nudes, she’s the one who asks to be drawn and specifically drawn nude, she saves him with an axe, she’s the one who initiates sex, etc.
i despise it when people talk about titanic like it’s the most boring cishet movie of all time when it’s one of THEE most progressive/subversive imo (in terms of popular mass media). jack is one of the only major male romantic figures i’ve ever come across who never says anything sexist even in jest, who never dominates their scenes together whether emotionally/romantically/sexually, and who genuinely helps the female protagonist become a better person rather than vice versa. i can’t even think of comparable male characters, so yes in a way he is the perfect example of a manic pixie dream boy. i would go as far as to call their dynamic a subtle gender role reversal and i don’t know why this isn’t talked about more.
there’s also been a lot of queer interpretations and analysis on titanic which i think is apropos. jack and rose have been seen by some as being butch-coded/lesbian-coded ever since the movie came out, and you can also make a case for rose representing (metaphorically or literally) the experiences of gender-envy or being GNC, especially in the scene where jack nonjudgementally teaches rose to “ride like a man, and spit like a man” — and she says “why can’t i be like you, jack?” — etc. — jack actively encourages her to go against the gender norms and i don’t think it’d be a reach to say that he would be supportive if she was LGBTQ+ and vice versa & that they’re both clearly allies regardless of interpretation. Take for example Rose’s line to Kack: “I know what you must be thinking— poor little rich girl, what does she know about misery?” & Jack’s response: “No, no, that’s not what I was thinking. What I was thinking was, what could’ve happened to this girl to make her feel she had no way out?” — As Rose says, Jack “sees” people, and validates/recognizes them in a way that is similar to the queer theories on queer kinship, allyship, & solidarity. Rose and Jack find each other and feel kinship for each other through their mutual progressive/bohemian values in a way that is commonly experienced by LGBT people finding other LGBT people, which is heightened by Rose/Jack’s mutual attraction & their blooming relationship being socially frowned upon (due to classism + Rose’s engagement).
I also think it’s important to point out that sexuality is a core theme of the movie in general, & this is esp important considering it takes place in 1912. From Rose’s Piccaso painting of the prostitutes, to Rose’s comment at the table about Freud re: male overcompensation, to Cal slut-shaming Rose, to the nude French prostitutes, to Rose saying she’d rather be Jack’s whore than Cal’s wife. The theme of being a “ruined woman” is rampant. Many of Cal/Rose’s scenes are laced with subtle sexual implications with him wanting Rose to be sexually submissive/passive/exclusive/available (“do not deny me”) and her clearly not being interested in that role (Cal asks her why she didn’t come to his rooms late at night when he asked her to, and he’s always the one initiating contact, & she clearly hates him). It is also very clear that Rose sees her wifely duties as performative, and to some extent her gender itself is performative (see: the scene where she watches in anxious disgust as she sees a little girl being taught how to act like a lady through table etiquette, and Rose immediately runs off to Jack). I also think it’s ironically symbolic that Cal gives her his mens coat toward the end, and we see pictures of young her wearing pants and riding horses “like a man” as her and Jack fantasized, etc.
I also think it’s intentional that Jack is slightly tomboyish/androgynous looking, younger, and open-minded, whereas Cal is older, dominant, and represents a sort of Byronic “tall, dark hair, handsome, rich” version of masculine appeal. There’s also the split in politics, class, etc. — they represent opposite ends of male sex appeal while both being attractive. The love story wouldn’t be effective if Cal was unattractive bc his sex appeal is necessary to the narrative. Jack and Cal’s contrasting versions of sex appeal are what make this love triangle so effective yet conflicting (aside from their differences in personality and Cal being abusive/Jack being supportive) because the contrast between Jack/Cal highlights and brings out Rose’s sexuality and her transgressive sexual desires. She refuses to be sexually passive for Cal. In nearly all of their scenes together, Rose and Cal are constantly competing for sexual dominance through their dynamic—whereas with Jack, Rose doesn’t have to compete for dominance bc Jack accepts her for the way she is and actively lets her take the reigns and sexually guide him, and Jack feels comfortable in the role he plays. During the drawing scene and in the car scene, he’s presented as being shy and nervous but is still clearly enthralled by her, whereas Rose is suddenly the comfortable/confident/more knowledgeable one, even making jokes when Jack reacts to seeing her disrobe. Typically in cishet romances, the roles would be reversed, which is what Cal desires—that’s Cal’s tragedy, that in the end when he searches for Rose during the sinking and then later on the Carpathia, he’s mourning a fantasy of who Rose was, & tried molding her into a submissive version of herself & destroying her dominant/masculine side.
For these reasons, I believe Jack also represents a part of Rose’s subconscious mind, and that the lines “he exists now only in my memory,” “it was the ship of dreams, and it was, it really was,” are symbolic of this. I see their relationship as being more importantly a deep bond of friendship and a connection between two kindred spirits than being solely romantic. To use a Freudian model, Jack helps bring out Rose’s “id” whereas Cal tries to supress it and bring out Rose’s “superego,” and Rose ends the film by forming a healthy “ego”—this is what makes the Cal/Jack/Rose love triangle so riveting and effective, because it represents this clash of values and this tug-of-war thru this Freudian Trio.
I’m considering turning all this into an actual academic essay atp lmao
#analysis#film analysis#titanic#titanic 1997#film criticism#media analysis#rambling#my thoughts#writing#opinion#lgbt#feminism#academia#thoughts
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Wait, I saw ur bookshelf read flags tags can u recommend some books on horror and gender? I'd love to read more about horror but I don't know where to start
ABSOLUTELY I CAN!
Men, Women, and Chainsaws by Carol J. Clover - I just finished rereading this one and it's so good man, it's the foundation of ideas of the Final Girl in slasher films and talks a lot about identification with characters blurring gender lines especially in horror. Some of the concepts and language used are kinda dated, it was first published in 1982 as an article (Her Body, Himself) then expanded into a book, but it broadly really holds up and its a super strong foundational gender horror text
Gender, Genre, and Excess by Laura Mulvey - this one's a short read and it's fantastic in the way it categorises films as 'body genres'; the idea of specific film genres, including horror, being specifically constructed to evoke a bodily response, and the way these genres thus act as foils to each other
When The Final Girl Is Not A Girl by Jeremy Maron - builds on Clover's work and takes the "girl" component out, focusing on female killers and male survivors in slashers
Is The Rectum A Grave? by Leo Bersani - less focused on film texts and kind of a hard read but it makes some really good points about the potential for queer people to take the horror that cishet people have of us and use that as empowerment, the idea of reframing "penetrated/penetrating" as "swallowing/swallowed"
Queer Theory's Evil Twin by Susan Stryker - on that note, Stryker is a fantastic writer who does this piece on how monsters in horror films are potentially wish fulfillment for trans people and how queer studies generally seems afraid of trans studies specifically
Skin Shows by J. Halberstam (they publish under 2 different names but it's always a J initial) - SO GOOD. SO good. I got a copy for my birthday bc I miss my uni access to it so much. Loads of in depth discussion about trans visuals and constructed bodies in horror media
Monsters in the Closet by Harry M. Benshoff - I feel like the title is enough of a pitch for this one tbh. Focuses mainly on cis non-heterosexual depiction in horror
Like and Lycanthropy by Tim Stafford - if an academic article could be my best friend its this one. THE transgender werewolf text of all time, discourse on empowerment/disempowerment vs assimilation/non- or anti-assimilation. I kiss it on the papery lips every day
This is all just off the top of my head, and just academic/nonfiction; if you want fiction I can recommend a few of those, and if you want more stuff I have an essay I wrote linked in my pinned which has a way more comprehensive resource list at the bottom :D I love love love queer horror I am always delighted to talk about it
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hi! i was wondering if i could get your thoughts on the definition of the male gaze? articles i read say its the objectification of women in media but ive heard other people say that its more than or not that at all, i'd love to know your opinion if its not too much trouble
i understand that initially, Mulvey stated that the male gaze is structured along a threefold gaze, by the spectators, camera and the characters, that looks at women from a male point of view and regards them as mere sexual objects. - this is all based and rooted in heterosexual patriarchy.
now we have to look at what mulvey stated after she received criticism for her outdated essay. she did mention that the different ways audiences have media delivered to them now have altered the way a viewer interacts with a film. i also have a rocky relationship with this theory as she failed to take into account that there are filmmakers who arent cishet and/or white, how white viewers and filmmakers portray and see women who arent white and how gay women may be viewed through the lenses of male spectators and filmmakers (e.g. fetishization, demonization etc)
so i do still think we should use "male gaze" in reference to how women are sexualised but i don't believe the male gaze can solely just mean that when there are many "gazes" that exist. that does bring up the question of if a filmmaker or the spectator is not a white cishet man, does their gaze have a different meaning? is no longer "the male gaze"?
i can then go on about the "oppositional gaze", coined by bell hooks, who mainly discussed this from the rebellion of the resistance of a black person's right to look - and discusses how through white media, blackness is othered and goes on to challenge how white feminist's words have been all too prevalent in feminist film theory - this being an example, as the "male gaze" has been written from a very white point of view.
so TLDR: the male gaze still does refer to how women are seen as sexual objects in media because that is what it was initially about, but because there are multiple "male gazes", i don't think it can solely just mean that anymore. i also think we should look at that term critically because of how exclusionary it is; therefore, its definition leaves a lot of doors open for more questions and evaluation.
#asks#um thanks for this actually because this made me think abt this again... like maybe the male gaze doesn't mean anything else? or#maybe we should start looking at this theory through a much more critical lens as it almost half baked when we consider#that it is only talking about ONE male gaze....#film#theory#ok i think thats it i know I'm missing out ALOT but i didn't want this to be too long
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Ffs when will people understand that headcanons are NOT theories!? This same film repeats everytime someone hc's a character as gay or ships two male characters that are friends in canon–people disguise their bigotry as "stop fetishizing gay men" etc. Like, why does it bother YOU so much if a random person on the internet thinks of a character you like as queer? Or a fanartist who doesn't have the rights to the said media draws mlm or wlw ships involving your fave? Stop killing their vibes. It's not canon! They're still probably cishet in canon so you win anyway. There's already very few LGBTQ characters in media so people are obviously gonna have headcanons for character they love.
I'm sorry you are receiving hate asks too, Terfs suck.
thank you. people hate seeing queer people happy — especially if it involves something they like as well. trans people being excited about the idea of a popular and beloved character possibly being trans doesn't hurt them, but they're so desperate to be annoying that they don't care. people have no hobbies besides being haters </3
#ur so right btw#let queer people have fun omg#unless the headcanon is genuinely a problem like idk headcanoning a bi character as gay or smth#just leave people alone#it's tumblr#never been that serious#persephone-sails
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Actually im just gonna make a separate post explaining the 2 biggest cinema theories i see tumblr get wrong on the daily
Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory posits that mass-marketed cinema inherently caters to their main mass-market audience: cishet, usually white, males. This is because of the history of systemic oppression towards other groups in America, which has pop cultural dominance in the world. Ergo, cishet usually white male audiences are inherently different than other audiences because they are historically catered to in the film industry and therefore hold more power over how outgroups are portrayed on screen. The gaze isn't a pokemon typing chart, it's specifically about cishet usually white male audiences and how the historical catering to them has been entrenched in the film industry's portrayal of other demographics over the years. If that demographic has not been historically catered to by the film industry, they don't fall under this. If I hear one more person use terms like "gay gaze," "female gaze," "black gaze," "trans gaze," etc im going to hit them with a chair.
"Fiction affects reality" is the one i see get misunderstood the absolute most on this website. This is around mid-level scholarship in cinema studies so I don't really blame anybody who isn't in it, but it nonetheless does bother me when people are so confidentally incorrect about it. The example I usually use for this one when I'm explaining it to people is American Psycho because most people have either seen it, or at least know that Patrick Bateman kills people in it. Basically, if you don't already think murder is okay, American Psycho will not make you more likely to kill anybody because you already know that murder is wrong. So you see Patrick as a villain and the film as an interesting dive into the mind of a killer. However, those who do think that murder is either sometimes justified or right will be much more likely to see Patrick as either justified in his actions or a hero figure, and their experience of reality will be reinforced by it. However, it's still difficult to measure whether or not simply viewing a film that with murder in it would make someone like this more likely to commit murder. It's extremely dependent on the viewer's cultural context, personal experiences, worldviews, etc. Those parts of yourself will always inform your individual interpretation and experience of fiction, but the fiction itself doesn't really make people murderers, it can just reinforce the already-existing viewpoints of someone who thinks murder is sometimes justified. Ergo, the portrayal of something like racism doesn't make people racist, but if their personal experiences and cultural contexts and worldviews etc make them particularly vulnerable to being racist, that can affect their interpretation of the text which can then reinforce or chip away at their unique perception of reality. It's way more complicated than some of the takes i see here about it which are borderline "violent video games make people violent."
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So this seems to be the extent of the Ryan Friedkin theory—their “evidence” is similar to what they collect for Charmie (aka a whole lot of reaching and assumptions and literally nothing concrete). 🤣
“He's not creepy, he's rich af and therefore influential. He's the one who would have no problem showering Tim with all that cartier bling. That Falsetto guy and Mike Crib are both related to RF business-wise. And he's the one who took Tim AND his friends to Cannes a few years in a row. And he joined Tim for Rufus de Sol concert and probably a lunch/dinner before that...”
Why is it that Timmy always needs to have a “sugar daddy” to take care of him? Maybe he’s not a billionaire, but I’m pretty sure Timmy is rich enough to afford Cartier (not to mention a lot of the stuff he wears is loaned to him) and could pay for his own way/friends way at Cannes. Also, the “Falsetto guy” was himself also a producer on HSN and has known Timmy as long as Ryan has (and I think Mike Crib is involved with films, as well). And Mike Crib is friends with members of Rufus de Sol, so clearly there are multiple connections within this group and all are mutual friends.
WHY the need to pair Timmy with any man they can? Especially with literally no proof whatsoever that they are anything more than friends. OY.
It's their twisted need to keep the cishet dynamic. Tim is the female stand in for this sick rs.
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WAIT WAIT WAIT I have a good one ☕️- Jamie Lee Curtis and maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and wonder why the hell i thought this was interesting but right now it’s a very pressing question - letterboxd anon
hmmm my suspicion is bc of eeaao but thats just a theory!! here are my just woke up thots
i kinda grew up on jlc ngl! i watched true lies, a fish called wanda, and freaky friday A Lot as a kid. i hadnt seen halloween until this past year (forgive me) but thought she was great in that too, and i really liked her in knives out. i think those are the only movies of hers I've seen? hearing her talk loudly and openly about her life with addiction/sobriety is also really cool as a sober addict myself, i was like oh!!! hey!!! her daughter is trans which is not About Her but its always nice to see famous people doing the absolute bare fucking minimum and being vocal/visible about gender and whatever. the bar is on the floor!!!
she is also undoubtedly an entitled nepotism baby. like her dad is tony curtis. Tony Curtis. shes a classic sheltered (not sure if thats the right term?) cishet hollywood white feminist who is iirc pro police and pro establishment bc she benefits from and is protected by both. i havent watched eeaao so cant really share a founded opinion on her performance or oscar win, aside from a general side eye of racial inequality and what I've heard about hsu's character in the film vs curtis'.
im not a big fan of stuff like 'this celebrity/public figure/influencer is Good or Bad' discussions bc people is people so idk if this is the kind of answer you were hoping for but!!! here u go
send me ☕️ + [topic] and i’ll tell you my opinion on it!
#i think i put too much thought into this#shes good at screaming also gotta give it to her#letterboxd anon#asks#ask games
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funny too i used up all my psychic powers re: rian specifically lmfao like. tbt even before she showed up and all i knew of was a behind the scenes pic of her actor eva talking about having taken some lip balm or something lol and will qrting it like “i took this pic :)” and my mind started zooming like “will taking the picture may hardly necessarily mean these actors filmed material together but it sure as hell doesn’t preclude it either and if there’s A New Young Woman being introduced i feel like naturally it’d just be most likely that such a character could be fit into things most easily via tmc and if she’s Maybe going to show up at tmc and Maybe going to have scenes with winston hey hmm i wonder. could it be. would he possibly get material about having a crush on his new coworker” lmfao and did not share this theory anywhere until after the fact b/c i thought it was such a stretch. like well damn i was right on all counts out of fucking nowhere based on these deductions that could’ve easily been totally off base. and then after we had all three of the actual episodes with rian i was just like you know what, i don’t know about the character and this *is* billions but like there’s a bi energy here and if nothing else i feel like it might be coming from the actor, and since this *is* billions it’s like well maybe at most they’ll never specify that rian Isn’t bi / Is definitely totally cishet. and the actor is in fact herself bi and we have rian referring to a Person she dated and apparently she’d have sex with men so it’s like well yeah she Could be bi too. however now i have Nothing re: what we could get with her lol my intuition gift there was limited. more striped / sweaters but that’s just a wish
#winston billions#just really funny they were both Very Little Evidence stretches like oh okay i was right on the money anyways#seems mostly i Knew 5x05 through 5x07 rian lol dunno who post hiatus rian is
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Is this theory a good "fit" when making a psycho-developmental assessment of your character?
his theory is a good fit to use when making a psycho-developmental assessment of Charlie because he is a multidimensional character whose significant life experiences, both on and off-screen, and notably, at different ages, demonstrate how Erikson’s Eight Stages work to explain an individual’s development. This theory not only works to explain Charlie’s behavior at the beginning of the movie – as an introverted teen lacking in self-confidence – but also his gradual transformation over the course of the film, a direct result of his progression through Erikson’s fifth stage of development – of which he falls into due to his being 15 years old when the film takes place. Considering Charlie’s newfound optimistic outlook on life, Erikson’s theory suggests that he is on track to successfully progress through the fifth stage of development. Further, his ability to work through the trauma he experienced as a child helped contribute to the latent success of Erikson’s second and third stages of development. At the end of the film, Charlie is self-assured in that, even when things “get bad”, he remembers how happy he is, and that he will feel better eventually; this is a complete 180 from his outlook at the beginning of the film, in which he feels he lacks of control over the events that take place in his life. Such a transformation supports the component of Erikson’s theory that an individual can heal from failure at earlier stages if they take the time to work through it later in life.
Given your character’s identity, are these theories valid to use; why or why not?
As mentioned previously, a prominent critique of Erikson’s theory is its bias towards individual’s whose identities align very closely with Charlie’s. Given Charlie Kelmeckis’ identity as a white, upper middle-class, presumably cishet, young man, it is arguable that Erikson’ theory of development most adequately describes his overall development. It is worth noting that his encounter with child sexual abuse likely occurred during Erikson’s second or third stages – stages that ultimately determine the acquisition of the virtues “will” and “purpose”, respectively. Charlie’s on-screen personality, of which he lacks confidence and agency, heavily suggests that such events negatively affected his ability to “successfully” progress through these stages; this is of course, coupled by universal feelings of “awkwardness” and confusion associated with puberty and adolescence.
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The Political Landscape for Transgender Rights and Its Implications
Anna Bojorqiez
Many people don’t even realize that transgender rights are under attack, or care about the “culture war”, the cultural conflict that has become much more prominent due to failing institutions, growing inequalities, and technology that encourages people to cluster in their cultural groups.
But the fact of the matter is that this culture war is going to harm the people it is targeting. Former President Donald Trump has promised to ban gender-affirming care for minors, and to go after gender-affirming healthcare providers.
During this past years Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC), which is a political rally full of speeches, panel discussions, breakout sessions, and networking breakfasts. Michael Knowels, a political pundit with conservative values on the media company known as the Daily Wire, has called for the eradication of “transgenderism”.
The state of transgender rights to gender-affirming healthcare is dire, and help from cishet allies is needed.
In this essay I will define those who stand in the way of gender-affirming healthcare and the context surrounding it, the implications of banning it, and then provide solutions to making gender affirming care a national right.
My Personal Experience
As a transgender person myself, I feel the impact first-hand. There are nights when I cry myself to sleep, knowing that my trans siblings in conservative states might or will have their access to gender affirming care cut off by these invasive laws and consequently die out of fear that the same could happen to me if a Republican takes office as president again.
It is a traumatic experience to watch our rights get slowly stripped away, state by state, and it is an experience that is not talked about enough within spaces occupied by cishet people.
LGB Drop the T
Even in the gay community, there is a growing number of gay people in the UK who are aligning themselves with the LGB Alliance, which is a trans-exclusive radical feminist (TERF) group.
TERFs, as the name would suggest, are radical feminists who reject the inclusion and recognition of transgender people in feminist spaces.
However, this differs from the intersectional feminist ideas of intersectionality, which takes account the different ways in which women experience discrimination, whereas TERF feminism is a form of white feminism and has a tendency to overshadow not only the struggles of queer women, but women of color, disabled women, and women in other minority groups.
This puts TERFs in a weird position where they align more with fascists that believe in authoritarianism and the exclusion of people who don’t fit into their definitions of “normal”.
JK Rowling And Matt Walsh Bond Over Transphobia
In fact, the author of the Harry Potter book series and well known TERF activist J.K. Rowling, has made numerous transphobic dog whistles on twitter.
She has also praised the right-wing political commentator for the Daily Wire who has directly quoted fascists’ speeches, Matt Walsh, for his What Is a Woman documentary, stating that the film did a “good job exposing the incoherence of gender identity theory and some of the harms it's done.”
This is just a minuscule example of how even liberal people who consider themselves openminded individuals can just as easily turn around and stab the trans community in the back.
No, Were Not Grooming Your Kids.
With that said, many conservatives and TERFs have repeatedly made the claim that transgender people are “grooming kids” into transitioning, which is a process by which a predator builds trust and emotional connection with someone, usually a minor, for the purposes of abusing or exploiting the person who is being groomed.
There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that transgender people are grooming children. There is, however, ample evidence to show that gender-affirming healthcare, such as Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) and puberty blockers, greatly improves the lives of transgender minors.
Why Minors Are Coming Out and the History of Left-Handedness
One might be asking, “if trans people aren’t grooming kids, why are so many minors coming out and transitioning?” The answer to that is simple.
If you are familiar with the left-handedness graph from the beginning of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st century, you will see that left-handedness was at a low. Over the years it began to increase, and for similar reasons the transgender population is increasing. In the early 1900s, around 3% of the population identified as lefthanded. Over the course of the next 60 years, we saw an increase in the amount of left-handed people, but after the 1960s, the graph begins to even out.
This is because in the 1900s, there was a lot of religious and societal stigma around left-handedness, and people who were left-handed were forced to use their right hands, and wouldn’t admit to being left-handed due to the potential social backlash. (10)
Similarly, up until recently, most people didn’t even know that transgender people existed, and those that did often used offensive terms to describe transgender folks, which contributed to an environment of hostility towards transgender people.
For so long, so many trans people were afraid to come out due to the social backlash that came with it. But in the late 2010s and early 2020s, trans people were just barely starting to be shown in some mainstream media outlets in a positive light, and more people started to come out overtime.
Overtime, as acceptance of the transgender community begins to grow, the percentage of transgender folks will start to even out, just like it did in the left-handedness graph.
Left-handed people did not groom right-handed people into becoming left-handed, acceptance of left-handedness increased. In the same way, transgender adults are not grooming kids to become transgender; transgender kids are just starting to feel safe enough to come out, and it would be silly to suggest otherwise.
Banning Gender Affirming Healthcare Is Going to Kill Us
In addition, there is evidence to suggest that these bills that are banning gender-affirming care for transgender people, particularly minors, have been and are going to increase suicidality in the trans community.
In a policy analysis by Journal of Law Med Ethics, it mentions that these laws impact the trans community by shaping the contexts within which they receive social services, healthcare, and engage with their communities, and by “creating an overarching social landscape within which anti-trans sentiment and rhetoric cultivate misunderstanding of, hostility towards, and even violence against trans folks."
In a 2018 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that “nearly 14% of [transgender] adolescents reported a previous suicide attempt,” while the Journal of Law Med Ethics policy analysis found that the suicide attempt rate for transgender youths in 2022 was 19%.
The suicide attempt rate increase may seem small and insignificant, but that is a major increase. It is no coincidence that the suicide attempt rate has gone up as the amount of anti-trans bills being proposed goes up. This goes to show just how dangerous these laws are to the transgender population, and the need for everyone, including cisgender people, to stand up for what is right.
What Can We Do?
The situation in the US surrounding gender-affirming healthcare rights may seem hopeless to some, especially trans folks, but there are ways to help.
Cis allies need to talk to other cis people about the issue, spread awareness, and advocate for trans rights. People who are anti-trans aren’t going to listen to other trans people.
Cis people need to stop voting for the Republicans, and consider voting for a progressive candidate. Engage with lawmakers, especially local lawmakers. Attend townhall meetings, write letters, make phone calls, and use social media to urge them to oppose or repeal discriminatory legislation with evidence-based arguments and personal experiences.
And if all else fails, go to protests and make your voice heard.
Final Thoughts on the Issue
Hopefully this essay will clear up any misconceptions about the political implications of banning gender-affirming care.
In conclusion, the rights of the transgender community are being stripped away state by state. This will cause irreparable harm to transgender people, and will result in an increased suicide rate among those who are gender-nonconforming.
We need to meet each other where were at and ask questions to better understand each other, engage with lawmakers, and vote. It is vital to the survival of trans community that we take action now.
Biography
Anna Bojorquez is a college student taking an English 101 class. She is passionate about the transgender community. She enjoys playing her guitar, writing music, reading, witchcraft, and learning. She is majoring in social work to become a licensed therapist and a mental health legislation advisor.
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Knackered Movie Review; Shadow People (2013 film)
This movie was viewed through youtube's free movie selection.
This review will contain SPOILERS, if you care.
A few things come to mind looking back on this movie, but I will limit this essay to 5. The first thing being there is a rare comfort in enjoying a bad movie. Make no mistake, if you have the eyes to notice green screen backgrounds, and a knowledge of lore to laugh at troupes being self-fulfilling prophecies, you may enjoy this film as a comedy. I wonder if this will make the rounds like 'The Room' or 'Birdemic'.
The second thing that comes to mind looking back on this film is 'the crew has clearly consumed multi layered media'. The body of the film constantly jumps between different kinds of footage; starting with youtube reactions, jumping to recreation film of a radio station, to news broadcasts, paparazzi harassment, home movie interview footage, courtroom questioning footage, CDC debriefing discussion (which clearly takes place in a classroom); it's trying to create an illusion of reality by putting more and more layers on, but it ends up looking like a kid wearing too many winter coats rather than the documentation research of a lunatic (which is what they were going for). Before you insist I'm projecting, they literally put 'FNORD' on a random sign in the first 30 minutes of the film, and if you've ever read the Illuminatus! trilogy, you know that reference. (For those of you who haven't, it's a conspiracy theory hypnosis trigger code to cause people to ignore things out of fear. "If you can't see the fnord, it can't eat you". Hypothetically, fnord is written in every news article to make people freak out about the news. What it references doesn't exist; it's just meant to cause an effect when observed.)
The third thing that comes to mind is 'did the film makers want me to think they are trying to kill me?' The plot we follow of the movie is ultimately the declaration that Shadow People are an info hazard; the shadow people only kill believers, justified as a potential psychic phenomena, and/or a nocebo effect (improperly labeled a 'placebo' effect in the film by a CDC investigator.(which really shows just how much actual research they did.)); the film then ends with the very not subtle implication that we have been infected with this knowledge by having watched the movie itself. It even has an entire monologue about how sleep paralysis murder spirits have been a part of human society since the dawn of history. So, are the film makers Shadow People Cultists, like literal demon contractor D. H. Thorne? (Thorne's grimoire is a *very* disappointing read, get it secondhand if you even care to look.) Given how low-budget the film is, probably not, but they definitely are pouring on that 20-teens edge to try to give the illusion that they are. The 'protagonist', for lack of a better term, is a radio host who goes by the name Charlie Crowe, who wears a leather jacket, smokes and drinks coffee more as he believes more about the shadow people, and is a divorced father of a single child of whom he has weekend custody. Such a relatable white, male, down-beaten, cishet, emo, conspiracy-theorizing protagonist. (Please read the proceeding sentence with as much sarcasm as you can attribute to a voice synthesizer.)
The fourth thing that comes to mind is 'They really want me to remember this movie is filmed in Kentucky'. It's very insistent about being Kentuckian. ... Kenturkish? Kentuckee? It makes me wonder if they purposefully blew the budget on the opening scene being a Korean family (with a shadow people murder incident) just so the film would be more than only white people. After the initial scene, and one clip of a film being viewed in the film later in the movie, the Koreans are nowhere else in the layers of the film. The Koreans are also... partially blamed as a first contact incident because of a sleep experiment done on them by a white guy? This film is greasy with its cheese.
The fifth thing that comes to mind is 'I really wasted 90 minutes on that, I guess'. I saw it for free on youtube, and I guess I don't want my money back.
#knackered#movie review#film review#movie critic#film criticism#shadow people#kentucky#cryptid#sleep experiments#umbral folk#bad horror#d tier horror movie#funny bad movies
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i see people talking about the bechdel test again and i so badly want to tell you guys about laura mulvey but im worried everyone’s gonna misbehave if i do so i’ll keep this one to myself
#well#myself and anyone else who’s ever taken a film theory class#like if theres anyone you should be forming your baseline understanding of women in film off of it’s mulvey#you can be critical of it but still understand that its a foundational work in this field and like. more based than the bechdel test#and to be clear i dont really have beef with the bechdel test because if you dont treat it as word of god its harmless#ive used it myself to express my annoyance with certain films or tv shows not passing it when its really like such a bare minimum thing#but yeah check out the male gaze and stuff if you rly want to get to the root of the issue#which of course is the male-dominated history of film (also the white cishet bourgeois history of film if we’re REALLY getting into it)#which has repeatedly told us to identify with a male protagonist and all his desires for women who are only in the film to be the object#of his desires#and have no narrative agency beyond that#so bechdel-wallace piggybacks off that and holds women up to a standard of like ok do the women exist as something outside the male gaze#i don’t think any of these theorists necessarily speak to current current film/television as they were from like the seventies and eighties#and i feel like a lot of people try to apply these theories to present media like it’s a 1:1 but obviously they’re not gonna 100% hold up#but SERIOUSLY learn the history of cinema if youre gonna argue about this shit because it’ll give you context as to why these tests were#necessary in the first place#done rant. i guess i didnt keep it to myself but i had to just fly off the fucking handle#what do u guys think??? i wanna talk
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Dead Apple Is A Hot Mess: The Analysis
Essays:
-Dead Apple Only Really Makes Sense If You Assume It's Just Dazai, Shibusawa, and Fyodor's Elaborate Honeymoon
-Half All Other Inconsistencies Can Be Explained By Dazai Making Up Excuses To Shove Chuuya At His Crotch
-I Think Fyodor's Ability Is Actually 10 Times Weirder Than We Thought
-Ranpo Solved The Backrooms While This Shit Was Going On
Plus, everything else batshit crazy stupid about dead apple (affectionate)
Subtitle subtitle: me overanalyzing the movie equivalent of "girls just wanna have fun" played over a slasher film
this is all word vomit at this point
Prefacing this with holy shit of course I mean this all jokingly, obviously this is not what the writers meant, but they certainly left enough plot holes that my stupid idea actually fills them pretty consistently, so I'm taking it and fucking running.
I've been wanting to make a post like "how little sense dead apple makes as a cohesive story and how genuinely every time I think about it I'm just more confused" for a while, but since I finally finished reading the light novel, now I can say with certainty that yeah no, I'm not just stupid, it just literally does not make any logical sense unless you conclude that these flamboyant war criminals were all just in love with each other and their entire three-way backstabbing apocalypse deal was all a predetermined game that they planned out for their honeymoon or something. Yes, I am really saying that I think they just dressed up and played pretend as terrorists and decided that half the gifted population of Yokohama was a sacrifice they were willing to make.
Even then, it really doesn't account for half of the bullshit in the movie, but taking it that way honest to god explains about 80% of the inconsistencies, as ridiculous as it sounds.
@akutagawasslur and I have been talking about it and came up with a few sort of outlandish theories that try to actually make sense of the plot, but again, most of this is just gonna be me pointing out plot holes and continuity errors and narrative stupidity that I have no way of understanding, and that even assuming a ton of things, it still feels like this meme
Let me preface this with the fact that I love dead apple, it's an amazing movie and very pretty and I'm so glad it exists and it gave us 1. soukoku sex scene /j, 2. dazai with fancy hair, and 3. shibusawa our transfem icon /hj. But also, it just objectively sucks ass. I'm sure people have talked about this before, I just. Also have thoughts on the subject of how insanely poorly thought out the entire concept was.
(Giant fucking essay under the cut I feel like one of those youtubers who criticizes anime for fun but when I call everything gay it's a compliment)
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OK FIRST, DEAD APPLE TRIO GAY,
Before I even get into the plot of the movie, I'd like to for a minute direct you to the fact that there's no way any of these men are straight to begin with, no matter what they have to do with each other.
It's something really funny about anime in general, the way that they inadvertently make all the men fruity af for interesting character designs because straight guys are just so incredibly bland looking. It might seem normal when looking at an anime dude, but if you saw a dude irl wearing long braided hair, long, manicured nails, eyeliner, Arm Warmers, clothes he sewed himself, jewelry, and a Cape, there is no doubt in ANYONE'S mind that that's not a cishet man.
Dead Apple is just in general a very confusing movie. The light novel doesn't really help that much either, even if you've already watched it several times. I've heard that the stage play has just, a different plot altogether, but we're not even getting into that. And if someone has to put in that much effort to understand the plot of an anime movie, I don't think that's a good sign. The light novel definitely does go more into the plot, but that's kind of weird, since it's an adaption of the movie and not the other way around? They're kind of inconsistent, and they also have different translations. Honestly, after reading it, I have more questions than answers.
First off, I want to point out how entirely vague Dazai, Fyodor, and Shibusawa's motives all were in this movie. Even though the movie does eventually state what in general all of their motives supposedly are, the explanations given not only Do Not Explain their actions in ANY WAY, but also come off themselves as blatant misinformation.
I feel like the writers tried so hard to have their mind games seem death note level complex that they just ended up creating massive fucking plot holes that bring all of their motives into question.
To begin with, we have Dazai. After spending an ungodly amount of time on it, I think I kind of understand what the writers intended for him to come off as. It's a little hard because they wait to reveal that Dazai didn't actually just wholeheartedly want everyone to die for a little bit too fucking long, in my opinion, and even when they did it... it didn't work, it just took away an understandable though awful motive and failed to repace it with anything good.
So you have Dazai at the start of the movie clearly having a Moment Moment on a grave going hey bestie gonna go try out a new method of fucking killing myself, and atsushi's like, ok, be back for dinner. Dazai then reveals that he thinks Everyone Should Commit Suicide Actually and it's pretty in character to be perfectly honest. Yeah sure, of course he does. Seems like his brand of mental illness. Ango is like Dazai this is a bit much even for you you Literally Invited Terrorists To Have A Good Time but dazai's like Bestie Im Just Having A Bad Day and meets up with his matching gay villains like this was planned all along, which undoubtedly it was.
Yeah, seems like a pretty understandable motive. Depressed man convinced into thinking Apocalypse Sexy by two homosexuals. I can forgive that.
But then like three quarters through the movie, after they've had a whole ass arc about how much they're depressed and want everyone to die including themselves but they have to lounge around being emo first, Dazai is suddenly like No Actually I Was Faking It Definitely To Save Yokohama Of Course Because That's Me, Mr. Morals. And as much as I'm glad Dazai did in fact give a miniscule shit about Chuuya and Atsushi and like the entire city, I... honestly don't believe it. Not just because I wouldn't trust Dazai as far as I could throw him, but because the way they try to clear his name just isn't comprehensive enough, and I have to say it would not hold up in a court of law. (I'm amazed that it took as long as it did for Dazai to get thrown in fucking prison as it did, lol)
So sure, the movie then tells us that he invited them into the city because, I guess, they were going to do it anyway? That doesn't even make any sense. If Shibusawa was already targeting Yokohama, Dazai wouldn't need to fucking invite him. We never got any clarification on what Dazai actually did to get Shibusawa's trust in the slightest. How did he help with the plan? How was he cooperating with Shibusawa? What did he say or do that made the guy trust him? No clarification on that at all.
So that is left as a mystery, and now onto the other side- what did Dazai actually do to HELP the city? How was anything he did helping save them? Of course, he was working with Fyodor and he was going to nullify the fog with his skill, right? Fucking wrong, actually- Dazai knew the whole goddamn time that wasn't going to work. He knew he was going to be betrayed and stabbed, he could pinpoint it so well that he knew what poison that Shibusawa would use, and he knew that what Fyodor was telling him about the room and the skill was a lie. He was fully aware that being in that tower with those two would not help anyone. So then why was he there to begin with?
So Dazai gets stabbed, fucking dies, and is somehow beamed up into a fucking dragon because of Fyodor killing Shibusawa and like, resurrecting him again with his own ability. This part still doesn't even make sense to me in the slightest, and the fact that Whatever They Did Here also applied to Verlaine and Rimbaud in the Lore doesn't actually clarify much.
The only reason that this works is the fact that Dazai is genuinely dead. Not passed out, not in the process of dying- no, he's straight up passed away. His ability yeeted. It doesn't work during that time Because he's Dead, or well, that's what the light novel said anyway.
Then Chuuya punches the dragon and somehow gets to Dazai and punches him...... and then... dazai fucking.... comes back to life...... because he had a pill in his mouth......... and then boom his ability comes back on and saves Chuuya. Correct me if I'm wrong, but how the fuck did that help anyone in the slightest, not to even get into the absurdity of the plat yet? Chuuya wouldnt have even needed to use corruption if Dazai hadn't gotten himself turned into a goddamn dragon.
I don't believe the fog even went away at all until Atsushi smashed in Shibusawa's skull, so Dazai's ability wasn't getting rid of the fog in the slightest, even after the whole Dragon Event. And Dazai being there didn't change the outcome of Atsushi's battle, since Shibusawa got where he was with Atsushi entirely because of what Fyodor himself wanted. That same outcome would have happened whether Dazai was there or not.
Even if there was something Dazai did to help that I somehow managed to miss, gee fucking whiz, Dazai, you sure did take your sweet fucking time getting to it. Remember all those crystals that appeared in Shibusawa's collection during this shit??? You know??? The people that fucking died in the fog???? Because you let them in?? He wasn't being particularly helpful, if anything, what he did only got Fyodor farther along in his plans and Shibusawa exactly what he wanted.
The writers attempt to present Dazai as having in the end chosen the good side, but in all fucking honesty, what they came across showing us through his actions is that he let hundreds of ability users die because he wanted to have a fun time. Bitch was not trying to save the city. He didn't care if it was saved at all, he left that completely up to three teenagers who had about a 20% chance of surviving and all fucking hated each other. And why, because he realized that Shibusawa would eventually target Yokohama? God, maybe he could have fucking called Ango or something and gotten the actual qualified government on it, or even got the whole detective agency to fight Shibusawa before he came. Surely that would have fucking worked fine, or at least had fewer casualties. If all they needed to do was have Atsushi beat the shit out of him and Dazai was fully aware of this, I don't think he really has an argument as to saying he was doing this for good.
He never even tries to say it was to save anyone. Atsushi just, decides that's what he was doing. Dazai even tells him he's wrong.
(In my opinion, I do think he cared about the city, I do think he wants to fulfill Oda's wish, but from what I've seen, he's just... not really trying as hard as he could be. I think he was playing both sides on this one, you know? If Atsushi makes it through, then boom, well, city saved, let's move on. If Shibusawa succeeds, well then everyone dies, whatever, you know, he's hot. This can't really be proven by anything, I just think it's what makes the most sense considering the plot)
So then the question is, what the hell WAS he doing? What were ANY of them doing, if they all predicted perfectly what the outcome was going to be from the beginning?
The only answer I can give is that they're fucking depressed homosexuals and they wanted to have a little morbid fun. Genuinely, if someone can give me a better reason for what is canonically being depicted in this movie I'd LOVE to hear it.
To show you why I feel that interpreting these three as queer, polyamorous, and currently having crazy gay sex, I'd just like to point out a few things.
First of all, when you think about it, the entire stunt these gayasses pulled must have taken an absurd amount of unnecessary preparations and planning. Just to begin with, neither Shibusawa nor Fyodor live in Yokohama, but the second they're there, they already have the fanciest, most emo, obviously Supervillain Hideout piece of real estate in Yokohama. It's not like that place was just sitting around with no one owning it, one of them had to BUY THE PLACE from whoever like. Owned this goth mansion.
I mean, we don't even have time to get into what the hell this building was doing in Yokohama to begin with, because it's like.... in the 15 arc. it's just. A building that exists right at the edge of the Arahabaki crater town. That's GOTTA be plot relevant, but somehow it just. Isn't. It irritates me to no end.
And then before they moved in, someone had to move an entire, crystal collection in there (I've heard that it's actually part of Shibusawa's ability like Anne's room but I'm not sure how true that is so I'm leaving that as a question i guess)
Not only did they probably have to ship 2000 crystals into this place but Shibusawa also BOUGHT THREE CUSTOM MATCHING FANCY CHAIRS and SET A TABLE WITH FRUIT AND HIS FUCKING SKULL and LITERALLY TAILORED MATCHING WHITE OUTFITS for these motherfuckers TO WEAR LITERALLY ONCE. LIKE. HE KNEW HE WAS GOING TO S T A B DAZAI HE DIDNT PLAN ON REUSING THE DUDE'S COAT AND YET HE FUCKING SEWED IT HIMSELF.
I'm just. I'm SORRY, this is NOT something you do with your Work Associates. Just. Objectively. This is Not a coworkers relationship we've got going on here, and neither is this something that straight men do.
And even without the embellishments that can be excused as animators wanting to be Aesthetic and Extra without realizing that any higher thinking would deem these bitches as Fruits, the three of them didn't really have any excuses to be together in that tower in the first place, none that they could voice out loud, at least, if they weren't like, fucking.
There seemed to be no plot relevant reason for them to have a tower to stay in. If Draconia was a manifestation of Shibusawa's ability, they didn't have to purchase a building to store it in. And if Dazai and Fyodor didn't need to stay up there to stay away from the effects of the fog (another major thing I'll get to) why did they even meet up to begin with? God, I know you movie makers only have so much you can fit in, but this is pretty basic stuff.
Neither Fyodor or Dazai needed to be around Shibusawa at all for the plan they had pretended to agree on to work.
Fyodor had been aligned with Shibusawa because he was giving the dude inside information on the city. That really,,, has no relevancy to the actual event, even if Fyodor helped him get into the city or something, which wasn't really touched upon. He certainly didn't have any official excuse to hang around other than to watch.
And what did Dazai even do at all? What did he do to get into the cool kids club?? All Dazai did was propose the idea, according to canon... just. Contacted the dude and said hey bro wanna Destroy My City For Funsies? Sounds good, I'm not suspicious at all. Anyway mind if I hang out in your house while you do it? Cool? No reason, I just wanted to watch.
Because Fyodor and Dazai both Somehow are randomly immune to the fog, it's not like they needed protection of any sort. They're just...... there.
Like, that just doesn't hold up. What were they there to do other than have gay sex??? Of course, all three of them have ulterior motives that make it necessary for them to be in the same place, as well as separate different alliances within the alliance that are also lies.
Fyodor agreed to help Dazai touchie the crystals in order to stop the fog, but they both knew it was a lie.
Shibusawa agreed with Fyodor to kill Dazai because they knew he wanted to betray them, but at least Fyodor knew that was a lie.
Dazai on his own really didn't have any clear motive, as I can tell. He seemed to have known touching the crystals wouldn't fix shit, and he seemed to have known Atsushi was the only real determining factor in the outcome, so I'm not sure what he was trying to achieve there other than having a grand old time.
And Fyodor..... well, he says he wanted to kill both Dazai and Shibusawa so he could take the fog to spread out and go across the entire earth, but. No he didn't.
Legitimately. No he did not. He was in Yokohama to look for the book, yet he plays this whole "I'm going to kill everyone right now with my Secret Evil Plan" card and is so incredibly unsurprised when that doesn't end up happening that it doesn't even feel like he meant it to begin with. He tells us this grand plan over the span of TEN YEARS where he gets Shibusawa killed and resurrected and amnesia'd and killed again and then resurrected and killed again. But even though he's spent that much of his life invested in this, when it doesn't work out, literally, he doesn't care???? He fucks off and laughs the second his entire plan falls apart, and this isn't how he we've seen him act when he's been actually bested by Dazai. (yknow, he was clearly very amused when it happened in the third season, like he probably got off on it, but he was still incredibly inconvenienced by the fact. Yknow.)
He also... was in the tower when it fucking. Exploded. And then showed up utterly unscathed in season three. Like. Sure, ok, horror movie physics. He just comes back. But genuinely he must have known beforehand a general idea of what was going to happen even though he apparently "hadn't considered that"? Because otherwise he would like. Not be alive sorry Fyodor getting crushed by a giant building kind of isn't survivable.
Bestie really spend ten years investing in a night of fun.
So genuinely, I don't think it makes sense at all unless the three of them had to some degree agreed on all this beforehand. Because if they were genuinely trying to fight against each other, and they each all had their own comprehensive spiderweb of plans and lies, and they're all really that smart, what would they say to each other when they were all together that any of them would believe? Even if they all knew the others were lying to them and they had to go along to get what they wanted, that wouldn't fix the problem, because what are they lying to say? What would their front be when they have no plot relevant reason to lounge around in a tower together listening to classical music and getting drunk?
If you just accept that they were there to paint each others nails and have crazy gay sex, that pretty much clears that all up. I mean. Why do they need a tower? Gay sex tower. Why do they need to be together? They're gay. Why does Dazai say "i knew your Special Knife would deal me a Nasty Blow" while moaning? I hate the gays. /j (they took that out of the novel and it makes me laugh like. they knew how awful that sounded)
The thing is though, because like I said earlier with how it all ended up playing out, it seemed almost scripted between the three of them. (haha, this is a movie.) But even if you assume these three are in a queer polyamorous relationship as a FRONT, because they're just That Extra, that doesn't really work either.
The way Dazai reacted to their betrayal, the way Fyodor reacted to Dazai's backup plan, the way Shibusawa reacted to Fyodor's plan- none of them seemed unhappy with it, none of them seemed surprised at the fact they were being betrayed, just the specific way in which it happened.
So that's really the only reasonable explanation of what they were doing dhfgdfhgfjfdl. All of them had to have gotten together at least months beforehand and set this up, the way it went. In the end, Fyodor and Dazai just wanted to give Shibusawa a good time before he got to be too much of a problem for their own motives. (dazai's being, existing in yokohama and finding a good way to either die or live, and fyodor's being to find a book in yokohama to murder everyone in his Own Way(??)) Shibusawa genuinely did want to destroy the city tbh I don't think anyone's doubting that, and to some extent, Dazai wanted to see the city Not Destroyed, but Fyodor's utter lack of actual motive here kind of breaks a scenario where they all went into it for that reason.
The only normal reason why I'd believe Fyodor inserted himself into this plan was because he'd have a chance to kill Dazai. Seriously, I still can't see what was wrong with going along with Shibusawa... isn't "i can help all ability users Fucking Die" literally just what Fyodor wants? He can still get the book afterwards too, assumedly once all the competition is gone it would be significantly easier.
The only reason I can give is that it was a fake piece of entertainment for their amusement.
Again at this point it's all just a funny idea, but genuinely, nothing contradicts this, and it certainly would make a lot of things make sense. So get this:
Dazai knows Shibusawa is going to be some level of threat to Yokohama no matter what he does, so he brings together the three of them and goes, hey you know what would be fun? We have a little bet. A little game of among us if you will. So here's the deal. One night, three of us, two knives, one murder. We let you into Yokohama to start up your funny apocalypse thing you wanted to do, and I'll get this cool tower and we'll have a good time. We all get drunk, put on some atmospheric music.... Now here's the catch, MY role is I'm going to try to STOP the fog from killing everyone. Shibusawa, YOU have to try to stop ME from stopping YOU, and FYODOR, you're here because, idk, we like you and you want to kill us, I don't know, surprise us, come up with something insane, and the two of us will have to figure out what YOU'RE doing without spoiling it! We have a few months to all come up with our own plans and try to figure everyone else's out. Let's make this as insane as possible guys. We all have plenty of reasons to benefit from the other being dead, so, Winner gets to homoerotically murder the loser, but we're all suicidal here anyway, so it's really a win win situation no matter how you look at it. Does that sound good? And of course they both say yes and they start making plans and it's like, half a year before this thing happens.
It really means that they had to have all been in on every level of betrayal and decided to go in on it anyway, they had to agree to this stuff and then planned it all in their heads so some of it would be a surprise.
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ANYWAY MORE DUMB INCONSISTENCIES THAT I COULDN'T BE BOTHERED TO ACTUALLY PUT INTO A COHERENT ORDER
There's a significant amount of other things about this candy colored piece of nonsense though, specifically just, how absolutely batshit stupid the storyline itself is.
Like, Dazai, straight up fucking died. He passed away!! He, unalived, if you will!! He got stabbed by a poison knife and died! His ability stopped working and separated from his body which specifically said in the narrative would only happen if he Actually Died!
But then??????? Chuuya slaps him?????? And there's a pill in his mouth that he's somehow kept there for the whole night???? And he just!! Resurrects from the goddamn dead!
Yeah, I know it's supposed to be like that because blah blah snow white but SNOW WHITE IS THE MOST ILLOGICAL FAIRY TALE EVER and to convert that to anime is just. Wow the anti death pill that heals Stab Wounds, great job. It didn't even actually get swallowed by dazai, when Chuuya punched him! The pill CAME OUT OF HIS MOUTH. It popped ! Outside of his mouth! So he didn't swallow it either!
What the fuck happened then? Chuuya simply slapped him right out of hell. Man climbed back up eeby deeby screaming. I swear to fucking god.
It seemed that the pill which exploded several feet from his mouth also healed his stab wound, considering that the knife fucking disappeared from Dazai's back, along with all the blood.
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ON THE WORKINGS OF ABILITIES- another batshit theory
Ok, so, the whole workings of the fog regarding different abilities and stuff is also rather inconsistent.
It's stated Chuuya's ability works even in the fog because it's artificial, which makes fine sense if you've read stormbringer, yeah. But ok. If Chuuya doesn't need protection from the fog, then why when Dazai and Chuuya fall to the ground, Dazai is like "oh no you have to stay touching me because the fog isn't gone yet!!" DAZAI HE WAS FINE BEFORE YOU JUST WANT AN EXCUSE TO GO HOLD STILL GIRLIE *SHOVES YOU AGAINST MY CROTCH*
Also, why is atsushi's ability super fucking powerful? We still have not solved this. Still no one goddamn knows. He is an ability but he's also the antithesis of all abilities.... why did this have to be Atsushi, he's literally a fucking tiger? It actually makes no sense. If I was gonna choose someone to be the "antithesis of all abilities" it would be Dazai? I feel like that makes significantly more sense to be dazai here like seriously what's more "antithesis of all abilities" than an ACTUAL ABILITY THAT NULLIFIES ABILITIES? And it would have like. Actually made the movie make sense then. But no??
It's not only that that makes no sense, the whole premise of Shibusawa himself existing and the way the fog works is also, paradoxical in nature. It makes a little sense with stormbringer and the idea of these singularities, but. I'm sorry, if Dazai's ability doesn't work when he's dead, or like, apparently "really really close to dead but also Totally Fine after getting punched" according to 55 minutes logic (like. hi) then Shibusawa's ability can't work after his death either.
How shibusawa's ability works is that it separates someone from their ability, and when the original person dies, the ability becomes a crystal. Not like. A sentient ghost who forgets it died with a skull completely separate from his body. Like. Show me where that makes sense.
Fyodor's ability somehow makes even less sense. Ofc, we don't know a lot about his ability, and that's somewhat of the point. But like, without dead apple Existing, no one would question what Fyodor's ability was. Oh yeah, crime and punishment, he kills people that he judges guilty with a touch of his hand, ok. The specifics are a little hazy, maybe he controls the blood, maybe he controls the soul, maybe both. But you watch this goddamn fucking movie and somehow, his ability is its own singularity as well as Dazai's and Shibusawa's, and that is why they're all immune to the fog?
The question here then is... what is the singularity? What is the paradox of his ability, how are "crime" and "punishment" different yet something that would completely cancel each other out and make the fog not work?
Well. I have an idea. It is. Certainly not to be taken super seriously, but I think it would clear up a bit of what's going on in this shit show.
Personally, I think that Fyodor controls life- that he has the ability to resurrect people as well as kill them. Resurrecting is the "crime", killing is the "punishment". They go hand in hand, they cancel each other out, they tie into Fyodor's whole religious metaphor junk.
Ok, that makes sense right? Shibusawa issue solved, weird semantics with ability singularities and Shibusawa being like. The remnant of an ability just continuing to exist after death for no fucking particular reason solved. Dazai literally dying fr and then coming back to life with the most stupid reasoning ever solved.
Also, per my last essay, they're gay. So that's why he'd ressurect them over and over again.
Again, this is a very non-serious answer, however it does make a lot of sense somehow.
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The Aftermath TM (or lack thereof)
One of the funniest things about this movie is how nonsensical the whole premise of its existence within the bsd canonical universe is. They shoved it in the middle of season 2 and 3, but it was released after season three, so things got weird.
First of all, since season three was written first, obviously Fyodor's real introduction comes in season three. This is all fine and dandy out of universe (except if you watch it in chronological order and then you're just like? They're introducing this russian dude in dead apple as if I know who he is already? When this is... clearly his first appearance in Yokohama.) But in universe, after the events of dead apple, these people would know who Fyodor was already.
So, Dazai never informed anyone of Fyodor's existence or involvement in dead apple. Ok. Of course he wouldn't. They want to keep their relationship private. Alright.
Even though it happens canonically and chronologically before season three, it's only ever mentioned in season 3 literally twice (introducing fyodor as "that guy from the shibusawa incident" and just. literally. Dazai eating an apple when he sees Fyodor in the alley. Which is so subtext-ey as to barely even count.) But other than that it seems to be an event that like... just... no one talks about. At all. We don't know the aftermath of this event and it makes no sense how thing could have gone back to normal after this.
So yeah, that means he didn't open up and explain what happened. No one seemed to question Dazai's motives at all.
Ango knew Dazai was working with Shibusawa and presumably got kind of fucked up by them, yet. We get nothing about that. He never denied working with them, and yet, he just goes back to the ADA and no one fucking wonders whY THE SHIT HE DID THAT? They're literally like oh wow. Well that happened. I don't know what Dazai did and he doesn't care to tell us. Anyway haha don't do it again and you're fine lol
Second of all... literally 90% of the city FUCKING POPPED OUT OF EXISTENCE FOR A DAY. That is not a thing that can go unnoticed.
Imagine you're fucking? Just a normal dude in Yokohama. And you just. Don't exist for a bit. Or maybe you were hanging out in the backrooms and thought it was a dream or something. But imagine you pop back where you were and a whole calendar day has passed. There's crashed cars everywhere, evidence of many battles and lots of destroyed buildings, half of downtown is destroyed, that Weird Ass Tower fell down, there are at least a hundred Fucking Dead Bodies killed by mysterious means just, fucking, hanging out in really ridiculous places... and almost nobody remembers what happened.
This wasn't just a few people who disappeared, this was EVERYBODY. Are they just gonna pop back in their cars? Or the spot where they had disappeared? And just go? This is fine where did all these corpses come from? Half the buildings have been leveled by Dragon Shaped Footprints ah godzilla moment lol
How did they cover this up? How could Ango And The Government possibly fucking manage to contain something this size? Yokohama would look like it had just been through the fucking owari no seraph catastrophe. And yet. Somehow this isnt a problem.
Even the ability users seemed not to really bring this up at all after. Yknow. Ok. They treat it like a fever dream and never mention it again because that's what it was.
I think something that sums this up perfectly is the part at the end where the fourth wall kinda breaks a little and the writers apologize for all of their motives and actions being a hot mess. Tsujimura is like "hey ango lol... What TM" and Ango just turns around like "yeah you wouldn't understand... dazai and fyodor and shibusawa are just... you can't understand them... they're a lot like joker from the movie joker."
essay complete go about your days and contemplate my word vomit 👍
#rowan screams into the void#rowan's hyperfixation essays#bungou stray dogs#I AM SO SORRY FOR THIS ENTIRE THING#but it is. somewhat bsd analysis
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The “Me Too”
DISCLAIMER: I am about to put forth further speculation about a major Destiel-related event from this season, specifically the confession scene in 15x18. This is 100% pure speculation and I do not claim to have any insider knowledge AT ALL. If you are not in a place to read such things, please go take care of yourself instead of reading this. Do not cause yourself any additional pain.
If you are here to be an asshole and call me delusional...uh...I mean, go for it, but like I really don’t get what that’s doing to make your life better? If shitting on people’s desire for understanding a TV show brings you joy then uh...that says more about you than it does about me?
With that out of the way...read below the cut for my theory about the “me too” line.
I know I just unloaded my theory about the finale on all of you the other day, and that I should probably give you all a break in between my bouts of theory-dumping, but I had to get this out here tonight.
If you somehow haven’t seen it yet these last few (painfully exhausting) days, there is a rumor going around of a cut in episode 15x18 of a specific line--a “me too” that Jensen supposedly recorded during the 15x18 sequence, which would have given us all textual validation not only that Cas is in love with Dean, but that Dean is in love with Cas. Various people have been trying to confirm or deny this rumor since it surfaced. We all figured it would have happened during the final scene, with Dean crying, alone. It would have been there in place of the crying, and we hypothesized that Jensen had to dub it over with AMR of his sobs. It was an interesting thought, but we had no real proof it ever happened. I, for my part, started to assume it was entirely false.
But then tonight, on the Latin American CW, we apparently discovered that in the Spanish-language dub of 15x18, they had taken Dean’s last line to Cas, “Don’t do this Cas,” and dubbed it as “yo a ti”--translated to “me too,” seemingly confirming to us that the line did exist!
I watched the clip of the dub excitedly, hoping for some secret new shot that we had been robbed of in the original episode, but the “me too” was simply dubbed over Dean’s line of “Don’t do this Cas,” which is definitely something Dean very clearly said in the original recording. That wasn’t a dub, Jensen said that line.
So what gives? Where the heck did the “me too” come from?
Well, as apparently I am wont to do recently...I talked @winchester-reload‘s ear off and was eventually hit with a stroke of realization.
I don’t think the “me too” went in the crying scene. I think Dean said it to Cas’s face, and we were robbed of it.
Before I go any further, I want to again remind you that this is PURE SPECULATION. PLEASE JUDGE FOR YOURSELF AND ALWAYS BE SKEPTICAL.
So.
The original end of the scene runs as follows:
Dean: Why does this sound like a goodbye?
Cas: Because it is. I love you.
Dean: Don’t do this, Cas.
*a longing exchange of looks, with Cas smiling through his tears even more broadly than he was earlier*
*the Empty appears and Dean starts to panic*
Cas: Goodbye Dean.
*Cas throws Dean out the way, smiles at him one last time, and is taken*
Now that always struck me as a sort of weird exchange because...I mean, Dean can tell Cas not to “do this,” but whatever he was going to do that would get his ass taken by the Empty, he had clearly already done. But I originally handwaved it as Dean begging Cas not to go and leave him again by dying, even though it was too late, because I was too entranced with the beauty of the scene and of the performances to imagine anything otherwise.
However, after this Spanish-language dub story broke this evening, I started to wonder if the exchange had initially gone a little bit differently.
What if the “don’t do this, Cas” was pulled from earlier in the scene?
I would have originally imagined that it actually went between the “Because it is” and the “I love you,” but in the leaked shots of script we got a few days ago, there doesn’t seem to be any line there--Cas goes straight from his “because it is” to the “I love you.” Thus I conclude one of two things: either the line it was adlibbed or added by Jensen on the spot, between the “because it is” and the “I love you,” or it was dialogue that originally came earlier in the scene.
Either way, what matters is that I think that line, “Don’t do this, Cas,” was moved to after Cas’s “I love you” in the final cut and replaced the “me too.” I think the initial episode probably followed the Latin American dub instead, and went like this (with the one line inserted where I feel it best fits, though again, it could have come from earlier):
Dean: Why does this sound like a goodbye?
Cas: Because it is.
(Dean: Don’t do this, Cas)
Cas: I love you.
Dean: ...me too.
*a longing exchange of looks, with Cas smiling through his tears even more broadly than he was earlier*
*the Empty appears and Dean starts to panic*
Cas: Goodbye Dean.
*Cas throws Dean out the way, smiles at him one last time, and is taken*
Well.
Doesn’t that all hit a bit differently now? Doesn’t it now make sense why, after Dean’s line, Cas starts smiling more broadly than he was during the entire rest of the scene? Doesn’t it make sense now that when Dean turns to look back at the Empty emerging, there are way more tears in his eyes than there were in the prior shot? Doesn’t Dean’s body language line up better between shots if we read it this way? Doesn’t it make Cas’s sacrifice hurt both more and less at the same time, because he could go to the Empty knowing he was loved in return? That he had the one thing he wanted most?
To me, at least, it does.
Unfortunately, I think that, similar to what I speculate happened with the finale...they were told by the network that they had to cut Dean’s reciprocation because the CW panicked about coming off as too gay at the last moment. You can read all about that in my other post.
Anyway, here’s more food for thought. Remember @oceaxe-ifdawn’s post about how she had spoken with a cast member about how the script for the finale was being frantically rewritten in March, the weekend after they finished shooting for 15x18? Why would they suddenly have to start tossing out their own ending in MARCH? TWO WEEKS before they were supposed to start filming the finale?
What if it was because that was the moment when the network started to pivot? If their contacts on set told them how very beautifully homosexually gay the scene was, and that was the moment that the CW decided that they couldn’t risk losing a very specific (conservative, heterosexual) part of their fanbase and needed to start toning down the gay before it got out of hand? And since they couldn’t obviously go back and reshoot anything for 15x18, given everyone then immediately went into quarantine for COVID, they had to remove Dean’s reciprocation from the script and replace it with another, earlier shot, that could have FEASIBLY gone in its place. But they couldn’t take Cas’s confession because it was entirely necessary to the whole plot of the season (and that, I think, was a fucking genius move by the writers to at least get us this much--god bless you, Bobo).
And this way, the CW could actually have their cake and eat it too--they could claim they were still being accepting of queer people (look, we let Cas confess his affection for Dean!) while avoiding the potential loss of their favorite cishet male audience (whom they really want to transition to Walker after all of this is over because MONEY) that they might suffer if that audience discovered that one of their two “traditionally masculine” lead characters was in love with another man this whole time.
The only reason they didn’t carry it all off is that, when they needed to send the script over to the Spanish-language dubbers for recording, there was some sort of screw-up. They somehow forgot to have the dialogue swapped out back in March and the lines were never replaced in the dub script.
And that is how we got the “me too” line from Dean in Latin America tonight, a line that we had heard rumors existed, but had no actual evidence of... until now.
I’m sorry to have pulled you guys into this theory with me, but... It just lines up too perfectly. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, yes, but sometimes that cigar is actually a dick. A big, beautiful, gay dick that your stupid homophobic TV network executives are censoring because they are afraid of the reactions of their more conservative viewership.
On the plus side, I think that this more than ever confirms that Destiel is and was always canon. Textually. Reciprocally. 110%.
And the CW fucking robbed us of it.
#supernatural season 15#spn finale#destiel#destielgate#speculation#fuck the cw#trust the story#we were robbed#i hate that I keep having to sound like a fucking conspiracy theorist in order to make sense of what happened#god forbid they had just KEPT TO THE FUCKING PLAN THE WRITERS HAD SO BEAUTIFULLY SCRIPTED#that would have made too much fucking sense#and been too beautiful#and too perfect#no#we had to have some fucking executive fuckery#i hate it here
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🗝👤🔎
I'm curious 👀
🗝 how did you get into the series? what made you want to watch it?
So, my good friend, @trans-klaus-baudelaire, was talking about it in a discord we're in, and was like "its not for me, I wish I could like it, it's just too scary" and I was like, "yeah, I don't do good with scary stuff, either." And then, one day, I was really bored, and I was like "okay, I'm just gonna watch the first episode to get it out of my system!" And then fast forward three hours I had binged it all and was down a hole of theories and hcs and Martin Walls' twitter. It just sounded interesting.
👤 do you have a favorite character?
Rosemary and Sophie are my favorites, definitely. I love them so much. I was expecting Rosemary to be my favorite - my favorite in fandoms is almost always mom or mom-adjacent characters - but Sophie has captured my heart and she makes me very happy all the time.
Sophie is just - amazing. I love her horrible bangs and her beauty mark. I love how she's just trying to figure her shit out while also trying to hunt down murder animatronics. I love how much she loves her girlfriend. I love how she talks to herself, I love how as a kid she had braces, I love how she has her dad's smile. I love how tiny she is and I love how she looks so tired all the time. She's just so wonderful!
And Rosemary! Her turtleneck! Her eyes! Her hair! Her stare! Her smile! How she won't put up with shit! How she writes songs and draws and is such a good mom! How she inspired Sha! How she was probably good friends with Susan and Linda! So lady, much wow!
And how interesting their dynamics are with the rest of the twf cast!! I just - osgnoifjglks they are my only braincells and sometimes they smack together and create a thought.
🔎 do you have any theories or headcanons?
OH BOY OH BOY DO I
Lets start with the hcs!
- Rosemary and Charles are siblings - and they have an older sister (who I have opted to call Louise). Their sibling relationship is kinda strained, due to their parents heavily favoring Rosemary and shoving their other children, especially Charles, aside. Charles and Rosemary agreed to get along when Sophie was born, and Louise left Brighton around age seventeen - though Louise came back to adopt Sophie.
- There are no hets or neurotypicals - save for Felix. Felix is cishet and neurotypical because I hate him.
- Jack is a demiromantic demisexual demiboy (trifecta), Rosemary is bi and demigirl, Susan is of course a trans lesbian, Linda's pan, Charles is gay, Sophie is a nb lesbian, and Jenny is another trans lesbian!
- Sophie broke her leg getting away from Bon and is physically scarred from the experience.
- Jack was a very touchy person and always gave people nicknames, which went double if you were Rosemary. Besides Rosie, he would sometimes call her Hedy, due to a comment he made about her being so pretty, she might as well be Hedy Lamarr. (For context, Hedy Lamarr was a 1940s/50s movie star who was billed as 'the most beautiful woman in the world' by MGM and is widely thought to be one of the most beautiful people ever captured on film.)
- Sophie had buckteeth as a kid, which is why she had braces.
- Jack associates Rosemary with sheep because when Jack met her, Rosemary was carrying around a small stuffed sheep, which she called Katie. He couldn't get the association out of his head after that.
- Linda and Felix's cat was named Golightly, though it was mostly called Go.
NOW ONTO THE THEORIES (because I could go on with hcs forever)
- I do agree with you that Chris had something to do with the people being killed and possibly Jack's death. My personal theory is that Chris knows what happened to Edd and Molly, and what starts as an act of 'help' towards Felix just spirals into Chris helping Felix mop up blood and probably being the co-runner of the Relocation Project, back when it was still active.
- I do think Jack is in Bon, or otherwise has control of Bon. I'm not sure how much Felix had to do with it, though.
- Okay, my most elaborate theory! It's the idea that Felix (and possibly Chris) - basically had a bigger hand in Ashley's death than first thought. Felix/Chris knew Bon wanted Sophie, so instead of actually giving Sophie over, they sent in three Bunny Smiles Employees, gave them a key, and hoped that the most curious one would go ahead, look for the door, and find Billy. The reason that the cassette tape is Like That is because it was only supposed to be a decoy, something vaguely interesting to keep the victim in place while Bon popped his eyes back in, straightened out his joints, and ran over to kill the person unlucky enough to come across him. Bon thought Ashley was Sophie, which is why he stuffed her, and its why he checked if Brian really was Sophie before trying to stuff him. He'd already failed once! (tell me if you need any clarification for this, i tend to be bad at explaining things ijgn)
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just read this whole discussion on redacted where ppl were saying most popular black/asian/hispanic actors right now are not even good at it at all but they cast them for woke and diversity points and im like... and? the most famous white actors and actresses right now ARE mediocre as fuck and they are cast in literally every film from like the last three or more years. you know the ones. lmao these ppl are so transparent
ugh i hear you. ppl wanna push the forced diversity narrative so bad but it's like ?? poc and lgbt people EXIST fucking hell. and acknowledging that in art isn't because there's some hidden agenda. tv and movies r about mirroring real life in one form or the other HELLO. obviously there's valid criticism when it comes to stereotyping and tokenism but just including non white, non cishet actors is the bare minimum. when anyone starts complaining about it, i can just tell they've been sheltered and ignorant their whole lives, and thats why their perspective is so limited that anything other than white straight media seems suspicious to them. also omg exactly!! that's a great point. if anyone is skimming by on luck its the same 20 white nepotism babies who keep popping up everywhere, not on the basis of talent but on the basis of who they're connected to. also it's known that white ppl are literally applauded for average performances in music and media, whereas poc have to be totally outstanding to get even an ounce of the same recognition - the theory of white mediocrity is very real. transparent is exactly what it is. any excuse to spew bigotry 🙄
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