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beastars-takes · 4 years

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Zootopia Takes: The Power of Really Liking Each Other

Our main event, Beastars Takes, will resume soon, but in the meantime I want to talk about one of my favorite movie relationships:

Has this been talked about to death by other people? Yes. But this is my blog and I write it for free so I can do what I want.

Note: this is not a shipping post--this is just an examination of their canonical relationship in the movie and why it rules.

At first glance, this is your typical enemies-to-friends story. I love those. But while the typical arc tends to involve two characters who can’t stand each other, who eventually develop a grudging respect for one another (often through some kind of shared ordeal) and maybe thaw into actual friendliness at the end. Zootopia packs all of that into the first half--by the midway point they are clearly not just allies, but friends, and by the end of the film they’re inseparable.

It’s important to recognize this isn’t just for the hell of it, or just to be cute--the closeness and trust they build is the linchpin of their success in the final moments of the movie.

All the reasons why, after the jump.

Something I talked about in the previous post was the messaging of Zootopia, and I don’t want to rehash it too much here. It’s a movie about prejudice, and the work it takes to overcome it. A key theme (one that it shares with Beastars, incidentally) is that friendships with those who are different from you are hard--but they are worth it.

Part 1: They Hate Each Other! (Right?)

Now...it goes without saying that when these two first meet, they bounce off each other hard. Each is seeing the other at their absolute worst.

Judy can’t stand Nick because he takes every bit of optimism she has about this world and throws it back in her face. She want to use him as a prop in her vision of an equal society, where “not all foxes” are crooks. He laughs at her. He humiliates her. All he has to do is walk away, but he takes his time. He twists the knife.

For his part, Nick sees a laughably ineffectual bunny who condescends to him and threatens him with jail for the crime of...humiliating her. She may not personally be a threat to him, but she wields the institutional power of the ZPD--a power he has plenty of reason to be afraid of--and she does it irresponsibly.

On first viewing, Nick inarguably wins this exchange. He avoids arrest, reads her to absolute filth and leaves her stuck in cement.

And he makes her really sad. Nice!

But, and I don’t pretend to be the first person to have pointed this out, on second viewing it’s obvious he can guess her story so well because it’s basically his story. The only difference, in his mind, is that he’s accepted the reality that he’ll never be allowed to live the life he wants, while she is still vainly pursuing hers.

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but the people I’ve met who have always most pissed me off are the people who remind me of things I hate about myself. The people who seem to embody the flaws I’ve worked to minimize. Nick’s naive hope is what has brought him the most pain in his life. He sees this bunny full of the same naive hope, surmises that she’s facing the same failures he did and yet stubbornly refusing to learn from them. It’s irritating.

Pictured: irritation.

Maybe I am projecting, but if Nick is anything like me, he probably didn’t walk away entirely happy from this exchange. Yes, he “won,” but he was also reminded of everything about himself that he least wanted to think about.

Part 2: They Are Not Very Good at Hating Each Other

So, the thing about Judy is, she is naive. By default, she assumes people are her friend. But she’s not stupid.

Nick assumes she is stupid, not least because she hasn’t wisely given up on her dreams like he has, and...he learns that she maybe not so fun to pick on after all.

So they wind up doing the first part of this enemies-to-friends routine, allies of necessity.

So, naturally, because he is Him, he makes it his mission to torment her.

In fact, we get two whole scenes where all he does he does is watch her struggle and make this face.

The first read of this behavior is that he’s just enjoying the failures of someone he hates. He says as much later. But I would also argue--from a viewer’s perspective--Judy is ridiculously entertaining and charming throughout these encounters. She wears her heart on her sleeve, and it’s hard not to like people like that.

Is there more happening here than just schadenfreude? I won’t pretend to know for sure. But worth considering.

By the time they’re investigating the limousine, his sabotage has diminished into something more like gentle trolling. And you can’t see this face, in context...

...and tell me she isn’t starting to like him, at least a little bit.

He’s also starting to help! By the time they’re past the minor detour of almost being murdered by a mob boss, he’s entirely cooperative, helping her conduct interviews and look for clues. The movie doesn’t call particular attention to this, but it almost did.

Finally, let’s look at Nick’s behavior when they’re being chased by a rabid jaguar. He could have absolutely booked it, with no regard for the cop who was blackmailing him into helping her.

These moments go by so quickly, but they’re hugely revealing of his true character, even before he defends her in front of Chief Bogo.

He picks her up when she falls.

More importantly, when he gets to the skytram, his first instinct isn’t to jump in--it’s to hold the door for her:

He sees she can’t make it, and she even tells him to leave without her. He doesn’t. He holds the door until he can’t anymore, and as a result he’s nearly killed.

Nick is a good boy.

Part 3: They Are Friends Now

She save his life, so he saves her job. This is a key story beat, and it’s a Disney movie, so there’s not a lot of subtlety (except how the specular highlights in Judy’s eyes fade as Bogo asks for her badge--the light literally goes out of her. Go watch).

But it’s such a sweet moment of teamwork--he was contemptuous toward her from the start because she believed in herself. This is the first time she’s simply given up in the whole movie, and he steps up. Because he believes in her now.

And she believes in him! Or, she wants to.

Judy’s supportiveness here is sweet, but it’s also still a little selfish. It’s not that different from their interaction at the ice cream shop, really: she wants to meet a fox who defies stereotypes, who is easy for her to like. Someone who ticks all the boxes to prove her family wrong.

When he starts being more foxy, later--self-identifying as a predator, showing his claws, challenging her--we learn that her supportiveness is conditional.

Am I being too hard on her? Sure. She’s been in bunny country her whole life. She’s new to this and she’s trying. But that’s where she’s at.

But still! They’re friends now. They’re no longer pretending they don’t like each other. Judy’s openly encouraging, Nick is fully in her corner, and we get a few cute sequences where they keep being more and more impressed with each other.

He’s still not above affectionately messing with her, and she’s getting worse at pretending to dislike it.

And he trusts her enough to let her flush him down a toilet...

Which gives us this heartbreaking shot where he thinks she’s drowned. He cares a whole lot about this bunny.

She likes him too! Enough to want to team up on a more permanent basis. This is pretty standard-fare enemies-to-friends stuff now, but considering where we started, and considering they’ve known each other for all of two days? Not bad!

It’s clear this moment means far more to him than it does to her, too. It’s actually taken very little persuading from Judy to get him to step up and be brave and helpful and trustworthy. The fact that he’s turned around and opened up to her so fast suggests he’s been ready for an opportunity like this for his entire life, and never got it. I mean, look at his face.

The foundational flaw in her worldview is still there, though, and it’s about to do almost-irreparable damage to their whirlwind friendship.

Part 5: Fuck!

So Judy gives her press conference, and gives a great example of why police usually answer every question with “the matter is currently under investigation,” or “we’re not prepared to comment further at this time.” Honestly, though, this is on Bogo--I had coworkers who once did some press interviews, and they spent over a week doing media training. They didn’t even break a major kidnapping case. So, you know.

So she repeats some weird race science stuff she assumes is true because someone in a lab coat said it, which is amusingly similar to how race science (or “race realism”) often propagates--people with low-rent doctorates from crappy universities write a bunch of scientifically shoddy material and people say “well, he has a PhD!”

And then Nick has a PTSD flashback? I don’t want to be irresponsible and make an armchair diagnosis, but also...that is absolutely what is depicted on screen.

You’re not immediately “better” after something like this, which is why I cut Nick a bit of slack when he basically blows up their friendship.

Judy...doesn’t get it. It’s completely heartbreaking, because she likes him, and doesn’t understand why he’s mad, and isn’t self-reflective enough to stop and think maybe he has a point. Not until it’s too late. He tests her, and she fails.

Their friendship has always been a little inequal. He’s trusted her with everything, shown her his deepest vulnerabilities. She’s never trusted him completely.

So he leaves.

I don’t want to impugn her professionalism by suggesting she wouldn’t have quit the force if she hadn’t had that friendship-ending fight, but, you know. Maybe.

This is the second time she gives up, and this time he’s not there to pick her up again.

Judy is intensely goal-oriented, and I don’t think she realized what Nick’s friendship meant to her, as the first person in the city who truly believed in her, until it was too late. Judy is sweet and well-meaning but emotional intelligence is not really her strong suit (which is actually cool to see in a female Disney protagonist, imo).

So, while it would have been nice for her to track Nick down immediately and apologize, I think it makes sense for them to spend time apart. Her own self-perception has been shattered, and she needs time to figure out how she went so wrong.

So when she does come back, she delivers one of the best animated apologies I’ve ever seen. Only AtLA compares, in my mind.

Part 6: They Are Much Better Friends Now

Nick forgives her, because of course he does.

(Sidebar--people talk about how he kept her carrot pen the whole time they were apart. He also kept his handkerchief from Ranger Scouts, AND he only wears shirts that match the wallpaper in his mother’s house. He desperately needs a hug.)

Credit to Nick also, who can’t fight and has no police training whatsoever, who has multiple times been almost killed helping her out, now agreeing to help her out again. She’s not even threatening him with jail this time!

We, the viewers, are then rewarded with this great montage of them being best friends.

She’s finally stopped pretending not to be amused by his shenanigans.

(One other sidebar here--Nick is canonically a really gentle character. For all their adventuring, this is only time in the movie he gets physical with anyone: to protect the bunny. Again, he definitely can’t fight and immediately gets smacked across the room. But it’s the thought that counts, right?)

Per the post title, more visual evidence of them really liking each other.

Judy trips on a dead body, and here we get the second time in the movie that Judy tells Nick to leave without her, and he won’t--this time, he refuses explicitly.

Which then gives us the opportunity for the big moment--the culmination of all this care and intimacy and trust.

In order to con Bellwether, she lets him stalk her, and bite her throat. This has been often pointed out, but it’s important--throughout the movie, Judy’s wriggling rabbit nose has been used as a signifier of fear and suspicion. It wriggles when she’s spying on Nick at the beginning. It wriggles like hell when he confronts her after her press conference.

Not here. Doesn’t move. It’s a great, clearly intentional animation choice that tells a close observer (or more likely, a repeat viewer) that she’s completely unafraid.

She trusts him.

I could write a whole other post about how well-scripted this movie is, how every scene is doing half a dozen different things, but the way the personal and the professional come together here, the way the threads of prejudice and friendship and the police case all tie together in this moment. It’s good shit.

This is basically where things end, in terms of character development, but we get a bunch more shots of them clearly adoring each other:

So there it is.

To sum up, certainly not suggesting this movie invented “characters liking each other,” or anything like that. But it goes above and beyond in portraying a friendship that’s not just one born of circumstance, one that’s authentic and unmistakably loving. Characters who enjoy spending time with each other, regardless of what’s going on around them.

I hope everyone is able to experience friendships like that. I absolutely treasure the few I have.

Appendix: The Shipping Thing

I hope I’ve made all this ship-agnostic, which was my intention. I personally like the ship, and I think the reason it resonates with people is because that love and trust and closeness is clearly there, and a romantic relationship creates a lot more easy opportunities for dialing those things up even higher.

I would also argue, if pressed, that the amount of teasing and physicality that happens reads as pretty flirty. If they were humans I knew in real life, I’d definitely think there was something going on there. But I’m an American, where touching and emotional intimacy tends to be read as romantic. Also, animals are a lot more cuddly than humans. So who knows? I think it’s perfectly reasonable to read them as platonic friends until the end of time.

But, one way or another, they love each other a lot. Shout out to this, one of the most emotionally rewarding relationships I’ve ever seen in a cartoon.

#zootopia #zootropolis #zootopia takes #judy hopps #nick wilde #disney

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jered-bb · 3 years

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Thoughts

Wow it has been a very long time since I posted here.

Retrospectively I wish I had done so more actively over the years. The posts I made from 2017-2018 are valuable to my current self and my ability to make sense of my past experiences and current situation.

There are so many updates I need to log from the last year+, most of them heartbreaking, but I will save that for another time.

For now I will merely reflect on a conversation I just had with Jandy.

Currently (and as of a couple of weeks ago) we are not dating any more. That’s a long story for another time. But today she was feeling very low and came over to spend some time. I gradually was able to coax some conversation out of her, about how she is feeling and why. It took a lot of comforting and patience on my part.

The gist of things is that she feels stuck and conflicted in many ways. She loves Paul but is not “in love” with him in the way she seems to feel for me. That makes her feel very guilty, because she has stronger feelings for her “ex” than for her husband.

She feels trapped because she does not have the career or financial means to be independent. She is terrified of breaking up with Paul because she has no money and no way to support herself. I mentioned she has a “support” network in the form of friends and family and she cast doubt on that, at one point admitting that even if she did move in with e.g. her sister she would feel terrible and “like a Dara to her”. (Wow, this really shows the opinion she has of Dara. Although I’ve known she is resentful/disdainful of her for a long time... I’ll come back to that in another post.)

On top of that, she would feel incredibly guilty to break up with Paul. She feels like she doesn’t treat him very well, and that he deserves better. She admits to still wanting to be with me even though I am distancing myself from relationships (and in particular, a relationship with her) right now.

I was very mindful of being patient and supportive and giving her space during this time. There were a few times I felt the impulse to get defensive but overall I think I resisted it fairly well.

I brought up codependent habits at one point and she agreed that she has a pattern of that, as well as there being some indicators of it in me in the past. This part tested my patience a bit because she got rather defensive and her tone changed a long the lines of “how dare you tell me things I already know after being in therapy for a couple of weeks, it might be new to you but it isn’t to me.” For one thing, it’s not “new to me”, for another I’m not trying to talk down to you, and finally it’s ironic for YOU to say “you think you know so much” after some therapy after you’ve done it for not that much more than me? Pot, kettle much?

Later on I talked about wanting to treat Paul better myself and she said I don’t treat him very well. I asked for some examples of that and what she said was rather... telling. In no specific order:

He was a "non-entity" to me

95% of the time I only asked what she wanted, or if I asked what he wanted it was through her (her % estimate)

I didn't help out as much as I expected him to (her example being when I asked for help moving the laser)

I didn't respect his boundaries like Jandy being "home by midnight"

On the one hand I think she has some fair points and I have seen some of that on my own and want to be more aware and conscientious of it. On the other hand, the way she talks about it and phrases things makes me wonder if we live in the same reality. It makes me confused and honestly like I'm being gaslit? I don't understand.

For example, the part about respecting boundaries. From my perspective, I have been very conscientious about that, often much more so than Jandy. There have been countless times I've had to remind her of the time and that she might need to go. Countless times I messaged Paul directly to let him know if Jandy had fallen asleep or update him in some way. Countless times I asked him directly if she could stay over.

Overall I was very conscious of boundaries and respected them greatly. Any time she spent more time past midnight, my assumption is that she had discussed or cleared that with him already because primarily it is her fucking duty to respect the boundaries between them, not mine.

Or the "helping out" part. Very, very rarely have I asked Paul for help with something. I can think of the laser, my toolchest, and maybe my arcade machine? Meanwhile they have asked me to help with things and I gladly did, like helping load free firewood, or moving the large free freezer they got, or moving bedframes around, or moving the chest freezer that I gave to them for free, or the time I worked with Leeds to tear up their entire fucking carpet. Yet somehow I don't do my fair share or consider Paul enough? He doesn't really ask often and when he does I'm happy to help, PLUS I have gone above and beyond even when there WASN'T a direct ask.

Things like these just... I don't really trust her. It's not that I think she's lying. I don't trust her brain. I don't trust her perception of things. Her trauma makes her hypersensitive to certain things or react strongly to others. She misremembers telling me or Paul something or vice versa. She completely forgot an entire emotional conversation I had with her about the... the...

Sigh.

At the same time, when she tells me I've been selfish or inconsiderate, I can't help but take it to heart. I do actually recognize that I am an inherently self centered person, and over the last two years I've come to realize a lot of my past behaviors and how shitty they've been. I have a lot of work to get closer to the type of person I want to be.

But it is that very self-awareness that causes friction between how I view certain events or patterns that have happened vs how she does. This is not helped by the fact that over time, her perception of how I act has varied greatly, even during times when there was no perceptible difference on my part. This is a hard thing to put into words... as an example, she has basically judged the amount of effort I have put into the relationship, or the care I show her, as fluctuating greatly over time, even over the span of a few weeks or months. But when I look back, my experience does not match that. The care I paid her was fairly stable, fluctuating a little bit but generally following an arc that spanned many months. She sees "change" in my behavior where I see non, either positive or negative. She will comment that things have gotten "better" when I haven't actually changed how I act or my patterns. Likewise, NOTHING may have changed and yet she will freak out over how my attention has faltered over time.

This is a constant battle within me trying to figure out what is real and what isn't. I recognize that my behavior may change much more - or much less - than I perceive. In addition, her feelings are valid - to an extent - regardless of the "actual" reality of the situation. Feelings don't always make perfect sense, and that is okay.

But at the end of the day, I guess I sort of as myself - is this worth it? Constantly doubting myself and my reality? Trying to figure out how much of what she is telling me matches what I know and feel? Feeling judged and watched and all these expecations around how she wants me to act? All for a person who LITERALLY has had waking hallucinations and was unofficially diagnosed by her counselor as having Borderline Personality Disorder?

I have erred on the side of compassion and trust for so long, and it has hurt me. I feel myself turning away from her and distancing myself because not only does it feel safer, but it gives me a chance to recenter myself and align myself to MY goals, MY life, MY feelings. She is in great pain, and I really feel for her. I still love her. But I can't let her drag me down. Almost the entire time I spent around her today I felt an anxious pit in the center of my stomach. Why would I want that when I could be free to be myself, unburdened by someone else's emotional baggage? It's selfish, yes, but I think it may be the healthy and sane thing to do.

#jandy #relationships #emotion

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archivewineamo · 6 years

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SHE WEARS A DISGUISE. this headcanon post is going to include triggering content, DOMESTIC ABUSE / PTSD / DEPRESSION / SUICIDE ATTEMPT / MISCARRIGE & ANXIETY. please for your own sake don’t read if this is something you know it’s triggering for you.

Now, I think it’s important to explain why I even decided to make this post, well, Tanya’s second husband, Daniel, abused her since the start of their relationship, continuing out through their marriage. He was very controlling, didn’t see the wrong in handling her as he wanted and found the most suitable. He has been close to killing her multiple times. The reason why I felt it was important to make this post it’s because it’s something that forms her a lot from the happy girl she once was. She’s around twenty-eight when she first met Daniel and their relationship continued for over three years. Under this time she went through so much trauma, the trauma she bearly was able to process.

Not only did he physically and psychologically abuse her. During this time Tanya found out she was pregnant but she never gave birth to a child, she had a miscarriage in week 17 after Daniel came home and took out his aggression on her.

PTSD:

PTSD : Essentially a memory filing error caused by a traumatic event.

Symptoms for PTSD can weary between persons but I’ve chosen to list the symptoms that fit in for Tanya.

Panic attacks/anxiety/depression/mood swings

Difficulty falling or staying asleep

A sense of a limited future

Frequent periods of withdrawal into oneself

Flashbacks (Acting or feeling like the event is happening again)

Nightmares (either of the event or of other frightening things)

Feelings of intense distress when reminded of the trauma

Feeling suicidal

Guilt, Shame, embarrassment or self-blame

Misuse of alcohol/drugs/gambling and/or food

She was diagnosed with PTSD two years after her divorce with Daniel, she, after everything was settled, decided she needed to see someone to talk with, she needed to process everything she had been through and even if people might have wished she’d talk to them, she found a psychologist that worked for her.

Of course her PTSD work against her every day, there are small things that can get her to freeze, the sound of glass breaking, loud banging, a door slamming and things like that. Things that take her back to what happened and make her re-live it again.

She blames herself a lot for what happened because if she could have been better, if she could have done more, maybe it wouldn’t have happened, maybe she and Daniel actually could have been happy. These thoughts are something that brings her down every day and even if people repeat over and over again that it wasn’t her fault, she will always think so, that’s always what he said.

Before she got medication and a proper diagnose on paper, she used alcohol to self medicate, which wasn’t good in the long run, even if alcohol calms her down and she can drink a lot of it, she only drinks when she knows she needs to be somewhere where many people are and have to spend a long period of time with them. When she got her medication though she actually listened and started taking it instead of using wine to make herself calm down and thankfully the medication worked out for her, it made her calmer, it made her be able to sleep which she couldn’t be more thankful for.

DEPRESSION:

DEPRESSION : a Medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act.

Symptoms for Depression can weary between persons but I’ve chosen to list the symptoms that fit in for Tanya.

Feeling sad or having a depressed mood

Loss of interest or pleasure in activities once enjoyed

Changes in appetite — weight loss or gain unrelated to dieting

Difficulty thinking, concentrating or making decisions

Thoughts of death or suicide

Her depression started a year after she started to date Daniel, by then they were engaged and she started to realize that she wasn’t just feeling blue. She was actually starting to see that she was getting depressed. Not only had she limited contact with her friends and family which made her even more anxious about how things would turn out. Having someone in your life that constantly tells you that you’re not good enough make you low, it makes you feel like you’re not worth anything.

She loved painting, she studied the history of arts in school but as soon as she got together with Daniel that interest fell of things she enjoyed. It wasn’t worth it when she never found that thrill anymore. The canvases that was usually filled with flowers or bright colors was just filled with how she felt, dark, sad and it just didn’t make her feel any joy anymore.

Okay, so Tanya lost a lot of weight when she was together with him, he always had an ideal image on how she should look, pointed out what food habits she had and made her eat more healthy which caused her to almost stop eating completely. She struggled a lot with her weight and still does when she’s older. The real change from when she was younger is that when she got older she learned to handle it, she actually started to enjoy eating again and that’s thanks to Rosie.

Tanya is a lawyer and sadly this affected her work more and more, concentrating on her work got harder and harder and in the long run, she knew it wouldn’t work out, thankfully enough she works for her father’s company so he practically forced her to take a vacation, to gather her thoughts.

Thoughts of suicide began in her marriage and she was so very ashamed to admit that to anyone. Sometimes she held her breath under the water in the bathtub, sometimes she debated on swallowing extra many pills but she never went through with it, she wanted to spare everyone from that.

SUICIDE ATTEMPT:

SUICIDE: Death caused by self-directed injurious behavior with an intent to die as a result of the behavior.

Everyone show different symptoms of wanting attempt Suicide, i’ll list the one that fit in with Tanya.

Hopelessness: Feeling a deep sense of hopelessness about the future, with little expectation that circumstances can improve.

Sudden calmness: Suddenly becoming calm after a period of depression or moodiness can be a sign that the person has made a decision to end his or her life.

Withdrawal: Choosing to be alone and avoiding friends or social activities also are possible symptoms of depression, a leading cause of suicide. This includes the loss of interest or pleasure in activities the person previously enjoyed.

Making preparations: Often, a person considering suicide will begin to put his or her personal business in order. This might include visiting friends and family members, giving away personal possessions, making a will, and cleaning up his or her room or home. Some people will write a note before committing suicide. Some will buy a firearm or other means like poison.

Tanya after her marriage with Daniel started to get better, her medication helped, she talked with the people she needed but she still felt hopeless, she was so damaged by then she didn’t really feel a future for herself. She could feel herself getting calm at the feeling of not having to re-live the memories every day, the possibility that she could finally get some peace. She started to pull away from her friends and family, at least a little to make sure that she could do all preparations in peace.

She wrote up a will, divided all her money and every possession to make sure everyone would make it. Most money was divided between Donna, Rosie, and Sophie since they are the only persons she really has to share everything with. She packed her clothes, organized everything in boxes so no one would have to come to her apartment and take care of those things.

She wrote letters, a lot of them, especially for Sophie. One for every year, one for every moment she’d miss. There was one for her first heartbreak, her first true love, the first time she’d apply to college when she would get married when she had her first child. She wrote one for every single moment, giving her advice and expressed her love for the girl. Because even if Tanya had decided to end her life, she wanted Sophie to live her life to the fullest.

The last thing she did was to set up a college fund for Sophie, one where she placed over the appropriate sum of money so she could go wherever she wanted. That was most important for her, to make sure Sophie had the best future she could have.

When the day came, she had prepared everything, everything was laid out, drink in hand, notes tucked away on her bed, gun on the table. It was by pure luck that her father decided to pop in unannounced that night, saving her from that fate and got her proper help.

ANXIETY:

ANXIETY: a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome.

People have different symptoms of anxiety, I’ve chosen to list the one that fit in with Tanya.

Rapid breathing

Rapid heart rate

Difficulty focusing or thinking clearly about anything other than the thing you’re worried about

Feeling hot or cold

Sensation of choking

Shaking or trembling

Like you might understand all of this leads up to a lot of anxiety for Tanya, she prefers to keep her feelings to herself, especially knowing how much it would hurt the people around her to discover how she had been feeling.

Her doctor got her prescriptions for sedatives and Xanax which she prefers to not use but she still carries them around in her bag if she ever would need them. Even if she mostly can keep her anxiety in line, she gets caught by surprise by it often, especially when she had a long day and things just remind her of Daniel. It can be a smell or a sound that causes her to react and have an anxiety attack.

She has told Donna and Rosie about her anxiety so they know when she needs to be alone for a while or just take a long walk when they aren’t around and they come back and can’t find her.

She has found ways to make sure her anxiety doesn’t blossom to a panic attack, painting actually become a hobby of hers again when she got the right medication and could start focusing on the things she loved to do again. Painting made calmer and she could just relax for a while. Singing makes her incredibly happy, dancing even more so. She could find happiness in life again, happiness that she could deal with even if she went through trauma.

#* 🍷◞ ‹ SHE WEARS A DISGUISE. ⑊ HEADCANON. ›#tw ptsd #tw depression #tw anxeity #tw domestic abuse #tw suicude attempt #tw suicude #tw miscarrige

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jolteonjordansh · 7 years

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Thoughts on Worlds Conflict Arc

The name of this arc was going to be wordy or confusing no matter how many different names I discussed with my boyfriend.

Supposedly this is considered the low end of the series but I guess I’ll ultimately decide that by the time I finish watching this? Either way I still have a lot to say about it. Below the break we go!

I don’t know about you guys, but much like Digimon Tamers I think this is one of those series that may get better as it goes on. There’s a lot of plot stuff to talk about in my opinion, so I’m going to try to keep this mostly about my opinions as much as possible because one of the biggest things that bothered me when I was writing my thoughts on Tamers is that I felt like I was just summarizing and regurgitating the plot more than I was giving my input and opinions on what happened in said arcs. Let me try to get it right this time.

This arc gets a lot more necessary and needed character and world development. Some might argue there was one character who got too much focus, but I kind of think it was also necessary to some extent. Thomas gets an episode that flashes back to his past and we understand why he became so emotional when spending time with Marcus' family since he lost his mother in a tragic accident. It was honestly a really heartbreaking episode with both wonderful moments of Thomas spending time with his gentle mother and the inevitable build-up to Thomas reliving his past, but this time he overcomes it. It really helps humanize Thomas and give him some depth, though I do wonder what happened to his dad considering he pretty much has no presence. Do we have an asshole dad on our hands? Or a dead dad? Either way, I have no idea if the show will ever cover it.

Yoshino also finally gets some much-needed development and backstory. She suffers from an inferiority complex since she sees a lot of talent in her family, but not herself. I could potentially see people feeling she comes off as selfish in this, but I don't think she does. Inferiority complexes are a very real thing and often times, shows and works of fiction tend to use them as a weakness for the antagonist. I certainly don't see it as a flaw on protagonists anywhere near as much, and I think this was a pretty good take on it. She wasn't necessarily just jealous of her sisters, she just wanted to have some talent in her own right. And really, don't we all want and need some form of self-worth? So really, I don't see what's so selfish about that. And I think it ties really nicely into how she met Lalamon with her Sing a Song technique and Yoshino's piano playing. Yoshino gains some much-needed confidence and does become more prevalent along with Lalamon from here, so it was a necessary episode that made her presence in the group stronger. Plus as the designated driver of the group, she gets some kind of hilariously badass car driving scenes.

As for Marcus, he doesn't quite get a ton of development in this arc, mostly because he got more of it in the DATS arc and the focus isn't really him. If anything, most of his development bounces off other characters. But I'd say the most development we get related to him regards his dad, Spencer. Whether he's actually alive or not, we don't know, but he was part of the Digital World Exploration Squad who explored the Digital World ten years ago, along with others like Richard and the old man who we finally get to know. But apparently the reason Marcus is so crazy strong is because he inherited god-like powers from his father. Spencer Damon punches Digimon straight in the face just like Marcus, down to punching a SaberLeomon and having ridiculous jumping powers. He doesn't even have to have a Digimon partner, but he was able to befriend a Merukimon with the biggest and most epic of fist bumps. Some of these characters legit weren't kidding when they said they see a lot of Spencer in Marcus. It's almost hilarious how much of Spencer's superhuman strength Marcus inherited. Spencer apparently even invented the Digivices, but how he was able to make such technology in the Digital World with no real scientific resources, I have no idea.

The other two Digimon partners also achieve their Ultimate levels in this arc--Gaomon up to MachGaogamon and Lalamon to Lilamon. MachGaogamon is a pretty neat design, especially since I'm usually kind of bothered when more feral designs go to anthropomorphic designs, especially Garurumon to WereGarurumon for me personally. Maybe I've just gotten used to that being a norm in Digimon, but MachGaogamon just feels like a cool design with its own uniqueness, while WereGarurumon was basically just Garurumon on two legs with pants and iron knuckles. But apparently MachGaogamon's design is so complex that the Digivolution animation actually lags and drops in framerate. Remember what I said about the Digivolution animations being really fluid in this series? Not so much for MachGaogamon, as the framerate drops significantly for a couple of seconds. But to be fair, the design has a lot going on and also goes really fast, so I could see why it would stress the rendering engine so much. Lilamon doesn't suffer this at least and is just as fluid as the other animations. The animations themselves are still really impressive, and I like how they smoothly go from Rookie to Champion to Ultimate, all as if it were one animation. It makes it all very cohesive and just all the more pleasant to look at and for me to appreciate.

The Digital World in this arc feels much more like the one in the Adventure series, with its sort of wild nature unlike Frontier's Digital World. So far there isn't really anything that indicates how it was created, it just seems like another dimension much like Frontier's. But I think I really like the design of it. I know it has a very random nature and some might call it uninspired for the random computer parts thrown around, but I think I honestly like that about it. Computer data and the internet can tend to have junk data and excessive coding, and there will always be bugs in them, so the world having some bits of randomness in its nature makes sense. The Adventure series Digital World was a bit like this too, but I think Savers' Digital World does this more and I think I like it that way--it keeps its own identity like this.

The main focus of this arc is the conflict between the Real World and Digital World, as Digimon find ways into the Real World and cause problems there, but the Digimon feel threatened by humans because apparently there was a time a group of humans infiltrated the Digital World and went on a killing spree for a bunch of Digimon. I'm not talking about just reducing them to DigiEggs either. While Digimon Savers follows the usual formula of Digimon reducing to DigiEggs when they die, here the humans have found a method to actually murder them and destroy their DigiEggs when they've died. Merukimon, a Mega level Digimon who is basically one of many leaders in the Digital World, begrudges the humans--especially since he actually made a deal with Spencer to aim for a world where humans and Digimon could get along. But after the other humans come in and kill the Digimon, he thinks Spencer has betrayed him and the Digital World more or less declares war on humans. But Merukimon still doesn't want to blindly send out Digimon to the Real World. Others like SaberLeomon do, and this is why SaberLeomon inevitably dies when he decides to go to the Real World himself. Smart thinking SaberLeomon.

But the other main focus of this arc is Keenan--known as Ikuto in the original (the name I prefer personally, but I'll use Keenan for these for some consistency)--a child who was sucked into the Digital World through a Digital Gate and essentially raised as a feral child among Digimon. He becomes the Sixth (technically Fourth) Ranger of the series, with his partner Falcomon. There's a lot of focus around him accepting his identity as a human, deciding whether to side with humans or Digimon, accepting his blood parents and being treated as a traitor by many Digimon who didn't really like him to begin with, especially Merukimon's spineless and not-so-loyal henchman, Gotsumon. He suffers a lot of hate and inner conflict not only because he has to decide whether he wants to identify as a human or a Digimon, but struggles as he doesn't want to reject his Digimon mother, Frigimon, who also died during the Digimon killing spree. So naturally, he hates humans and has to deal with that conflict as well.

While Keenan is an enemy for the main characters for a while, once they help Falcomon find a vaccine for a virus that infected Keenan and Yoshino, the hostility begins to lighten up, and Keenan trusts Marcus especially after Gotsumon goes out of his way to kill Keenan and Falcomon while Marcus continues to protect and help them. Marcus ends up becoming like an older brother figure for Keenan, even letting him live at his house, and I really liked this dynamic. He really helps Keenan find some of his sense of humanity and while he is pushy, he never pushes Keenan to a point that would make him uncomfortable. Keenan meeting up with his biological parents for the first time is also rather heartbreaking considering they had just recently had a new daughter, which makes Keenan believe he's already been replaced and he believes he doesn't belong anywhere. But he eventually realizes that he really does care for his blood parents when he saves his mother from a Hagurumon. While, again, people argue that there's too much focus on Keenan and his development, I still feel it was all good development and he was a character who needed a lot more character growth to progress, so personally it didn't bother me and I do like him and Falcomon. But of course, despite finally reuniting with his biological parents after a decade, the government always sucks whenever they are involved with Digimon and Governor Hashima orders an arrest of Keenan and his parents for the opening of the Digital Gate that brought in the Hagurumon.

I hate Hashima and his strict government ass. Seriously, talk about a man with no freaking chill and I swear he's another one of those government officials who's out for himself way more than he is taking responsibility for his country. But no matter how much I hate this guy, he's basically just a Lawful Evil in this show. As of right now, nothing beats the fucking asshole known as Akihiro Kurata. I fucking hate Kurata. I am absolutely on Marcus' side when he says the man is just a spineless coward. He makes no attempt to understand Digimon and even from his first major encounter with a Digimon, his first and only solution is to kill. He's behind the Digimon killing spree with his artificial Digimon, Gizumon, and ultimately Frigimon's death, making him a big adversary for Keenan as well as the fact that he kills Merukimon in the end. This does lead to Keenan and Falcomon achieving Digivolution to Ultimate level to Yatagaramon (I'm sorry, Crowmon is just too lame of a name for me to use). Again, another great set of Digivolution animations. I'll admit, the artificial Digimon Gizumon is an interesting idea, but UGH Kurata is just one of those antagonists you can hate without a moment's hesitation.

Even when Kurata is defeated in the Digital World and he has to retreat, he still manages to be an asshole by getting with other asshole Hashima and dismissing DATS. They do this forcefully by utilizing DATS' equipment to erase Marcus, Thomas and Yoshino's memories of their Digimon. I always thought that DATS' technology was kind of convenient, but to use it against them is clever if not totally a dick move from Kurata. Conveniently, they decide not to erase Keenan's memories or the two maids of DATS--Miki and Megumi, and somehow everyone else who knows about the Digimon like Marcus' family kind of conveniently remember over time? Still, the whole memory loss thing and how Agumon has to make Marcus remember is still pretty well-executed--I just wish we could have seen more of Thomas and Yoshino's sides. Though, one random plus of this episode was seeing Kudamon not on Richard's neck and acting on its own.

I don't think I talked about this enough in my last post, but the fights in Digimon Savers are really good and I think they manage to hit just the right balance with the fights. We have the traditional fights of Digimon fighting Digimon, but now with multiple attacks. Even Rookie levels have multiple attacks, and it makes them more dynamic kind of like what Digimon Adventure 02 tried to do, but pushes it even further. Plus, with Marcus punching around Digimon, even a freaking Mega level like SaberLeomon and breaking one of his teeth, they're just more interesting. Believer doesn't even cue every episode in this arc like most of the other Digimon shows, so I think that makes some of the instances of its use such as Yutagaramon's debut all the more impactful.

That's about as much as I can say about this arc, and I think it's more of a middle establishing arc of things to come, kind of like the Crest arc in Digimon Adventure. So for what it is, I do like it and I don't think it's a bad arc at all. I am looking for things to go up from here and for Kurata to be utterly destroyed so I guess I'm off to go watch even more and hope for even better. Also, there's a scene in this where Spencer takes photos of bouncing Gomamon. Even if Savers were to somehow turn into a disaster in the next two arcs, it was totally worth that kind of adorable scene.

#Shut Up JJ #JJ DigiWatches #final thoughts

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