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suzena · 11 months

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Complete Dead Apple Explanation

Or: “The Ultimate Guide to Dead Apple”.

Warning: this is a long post! I’m not kidding, I worked on this for three months. There is a TL;DR at the end but it will only briefly cover the most important points.

I see posts about Dead Apple not being understood far too often and so I’m introducing: this explanation! I do want to preface this by saying that I can completely understand that this movie can be confusing. Or, as Fyodor said it:

But, as someone who has seen it many times, I’m here to shed some light on it! Hopefully after this post it’ll all make a bit more sense, and you’ll at least have different questions.

If you haven’t watched the movie yet and are wondering when to watch it, the story officially takes place between season two and three, though you’ll be able to watch season three with no issues if you haven’t watched the movie. Please do note that this post will contain light spoilers for the plot after season two, so don’t read it if you haven’t at least finished catching up to the anime.

I’ll try not to summarize the movie, but instead explain it. That means that this post does not replace the movie, but instead tries to elaborate upon it and tries to place it in the larger plot. Most of the early movie is therefore ignored, but please do not hesitate to ask if you have extra questions, comments, different interpretations or you want me to go into more detail about something. I may not know everything, but I’m always down to talk about this movie!

Alright, with all of that out of the way…

The Dragon Head Conflict

We’ll start at the beginning, which is to say, we’ll start at the prologue, which can be found as a permanent event in Mayoi (and also as a part of the Dead Apple manga). This is not technically needed to understand most of the movie, but it does give some context that will make it a little easier, since this is where it all starts.

The Dragon Head Conflict, sometimes also translated as the Ryuuzu Conflict, is (as the movie states) the largest conflict in the history of Yokohama’s underworld. It took place six years ago, and originally was about five hundred billion yen an ability user left behind after they died, which various organizations were very interested in. It lasted for a total of 88 days, and involved conflict between eight different underworld organizations, including among others the Port Mafia, Gelhart Security Service/GSS (from Fifteen) and Takasekai (also from Fifteen).

Now as you can imagine, the government isn’t super stoked that gangs are shooting each other up all night and leaving corpses everywhere, to the point where the sidewalk is torn up from the bullet holes. To try to combat this, they thought that they could best fight fire with fire, and let a strong ability user from outside Yokohama settle this conflict all at once.

This new ability user, known as the “White Qilin”, unfortunately doesn’t really care about ending the conflict and kills other strong ability users left and right just for the fun of it, contrary to what the government had hoped he would do. Whether they are uninvolved parties or Port Mafia executives, it doesn’t matter to this guy. The White Qilin also ends up taking the money the conflict was originally about, but that doesn’t stop his murder spree. In this way, the White Qilin gains control over the entire conflict pretty fast, making him the main target to eliminate in order to put a stop to the killings.

Dazai approaches this problem similarly as to how he did during the conflict of Stormbringer, with a group of ability users to overpower the lone individual, but gets his plan twisted on him and gets kidnapped instead. Naturally, he predicted this outcome, leaving a hint for Chuuya where he left a transmitter for a tracking device so that Chuuya could come rescue him.

This is then the first scene of the movie, where Dazai and Chuuya confront and defeat the White Qilin using Corruption, and the whole Dragon Head Conflict ends since the White Qilin is finally gone and all the money burned. This battle is so iconic in the underground circles that it gains them the name “Double Black”, or “Soukoku”.

A few small notes on the Dragon Head Conflict before we move on.

As can also be seen in the first scene of the movie, this is where Oda adopts all five of those kids you see during the Dark Age, which was also already stated in the Dark Age itself.

“I heard all about it, Odasaku. You’re raising five kids, huh? And not only that, they’re orphans from the Dragon’s Head Conflict.” ―Dazai, Dark Age

Also, ever wondered why the Port Mafia is the only major criminal organization in Yokohama? There actually used to be five in total but four of them completely perished during the Dragon Head Conflict. Another reason why Dazai & Chuuya ending the conflict is so impressive, since because of that the Port Mafia is the only one to even survive it at all.

Shibusawho?

As you’ve probably guessed by now, the “White Qilin”, also named “the Collector” in Dead Apple itself, are both different names for our main antagonist: Shibusawa Tatsuhiko. The government had good reason to believe Shibusawa would be able to stand against the entire Yokohama underground and come out on top: his ability.

Shibusawa’s ability, Draconia, creates a fog around him, which separates other ability users from their own ability and makes non-ability users disappear as long as the fog persists. When surrounded by this fog, ability users are confronted with this version of their ability that is split from themselves. If an ability user is to die within this fog, their ability will be added to Draconia’s collection room.

There is decent evidence that it takes a while before the fog activates, so the effect isn’t immediate. This can be seen with Chuuya, who makes very short contact with the fog before he lifts up the building that he shoves in the Dragon’s mouth, but it’s seen even more clearly with Atsushi and Kyouka at the start of the movie. They spend a small while running around Yokohama wondering why everyone is gone before they’re finally confronted with their abilities.

To some extent the separated abilities represent the inner conflict in an ability user. This can of course be clearly found in Atsushi and his shaky connection to the tiger, or in Kyouka who has Demon Snow which is the last remnant of her parents but also murdered them in front of her. But the clearest example of this in the movie is actually Kunikida, since there is a visible change between him and his ability.

The notebook of Kunikida’s ability does not read its usual “理想” (ideals), but instead now says “妥協” (compromise). For Kunikida, a person so tied to his ideals, this version of his ability is an “abomination” (his words, not mine), and thus a source of inner conflict, since it represents a side of Kunikida that he carries within him.

“A copy of himself that didn’t follow ideals but made compromises was an abomination to Kunikida.”―Dead Apple (light novel)

If ability users manage to defeat their abilities in a physical fight, and then also accept these parts of themselves for what they represent, they will regain their ability. For example, Atsushi does not immediately regain his ability after defeating the tiger because he does not completely accept that the tiger represents that he has killed a person. For Atsushi, a person who connects his entire reason of living to saving other people, this is nearly irreconcilable. The only reason he probably is able to get over it in the end is that the person he killed was actively torturing and trying to kill him, so Atsushi had to kill to survive.

Shibusawa, then, is dead. Chronologically, his murder is the earliest you see of him. Fyodor has told Shibusawa that Atsushi contains something that “guides the envy of all ability users”, so Shibusawa, who feels like he is missing something, seeks to take this by any means. This doesn’t work out too hot for him, and Atsushi kills him.

Now a fun thing happens. Since Shibusawa is the center of the fog at all times, so to speak, and he’s the keeper of the abilities that die in his fog, his ability is separated from himself and lives on, nearly indistinguishable from his original body. Only one downside to this: he completely loses his memories.

I can only assume the government steps in at this point to take this strong ability user in his vulnerable state, and then have him solve the Dragon Head Conflict not long after. He most likely also survived Chuuya’s Corruption by being an ability, and having ability crystals in his collection to fall back on and recover, as he also does in Dead Apple. However, all of that is just pure speculation.

After the Dragon Head Conflict, Shibusawa spends some years abroad, casually killing thousands of ability users for the same reason as during the Dragon Head Conflict: just playing around and trying to fill that hole of something that is missing inside of him. The Japanese government mostly does a spectacular and spectacularly unethical job of cleaning up after him, since they learned nothing from the Dragon Head Conflict and still think that they can control him to protect Japan should it ever be invaded by foreign ability users.

Eventually, when the timing is right, Shibusawa gets invited back to Japan by Dazai. At the same time he is told by Fyodor (can you see the manipulation happening on both sides?) that Dazai’s ability is the ultimate ability that will finally complete him, and so Shibusawa eagerly comes to Yokohama.

From here on out, as far as Shibusawa is concerned, it’s just a matter of covering the entire city in fog, killing Dazai and then taking his ability. Since Dazai cancels the fog itself with his ability, Shibusawa does need to kill him first, since the fog will work just fine on a corpse. Unfortunately, Shibusawa, however smart he is, is not in control of the plot in this movie. That control is left entirely to the combination of Dazai and Fyodor.

Intermezzo: Singularity Crash Course

Let’s do a lightning quick crash course on singularities before continuing, because you’re going to need that to understand what is happening in the next part. While Stormbringer was released after Dead Apple, I’m still going to be leaning heavily on and paraphrasing the information provided in that novel since it gives a really nice overview.

Abilities are bound to rules, just like everything else. No organisms other than humans, such as plants or monkeys, can possess an ability. Each human can only have a single ability, and when they die the ability disappears with them. Finally, there is a limit to the strength of any such ability.

But what if you wanted to go beyond that limit? What if you wanted to play with the natural laws of this world? What if you wanted to get really silly with it? Well, in that case, you can try your best at creating a singularity.

Singularities are defined as “the interaction of multiple abilities that develops into a higher-level phenomenon different from the original abilities”. This mostly exhibits itself in a massive release of energy, but rarely there are semi-stable versions of them. Singularities aren’t bound to conventional rules, and can be much more powerful for that exact reason.

As for creating singularities, there are two defined ways. The most reliable method is to have two contradicting abilities clash with each other. This leads to fun mental exercises, think “unstoppable force meets immovable object”, or, two ability users who can both see a few seconds into the future fighting to the death (sound familiar?). As a second method, an ability can also contradict itself, essentially causing the same result, but it’s a lot more finicky.

“Dead Apple”

The latter part of the movie revolves around exactly the creation of such a singularity, as all planned out by Fyodor, and accurately anticipated by Dazai. Let’s lay out all the layers of this.

Shibusawa is after Dazai’s ability. Meanwhile, Dazai is trying to stop the fog to save Yokohama. As for Fyodor, we’ll get to him in a second.

Dazai “teams up” with Fyodor and betrays Shibusawa to put a stop to the fog. The idea of this is that Fyodor combines two abilities from Shibusawa’s collection, which Dazai can’t do himself without canceling them: the ability to pull abilities in a surrounding area close, and the ability to merge abilities together. When these two are merged, together they create an ability that will absorb Shibusawa’s entire collection, and then Dazai only has to touch this ability to effectively get rid of Shibusawa’s power source.

There is a specific reason why it has to happen like this, and Dazai just touching Shibusawa isn’t quite enough. Let’s mentally walk through the process if Dazai were to touch Shibusawa. The fog disappears for a bit (and Shibusawa with it, most likely), but Shibusawa now knows Dazai’s intentions. Fyodor will take Shibusawa’s side and now Dazai is at a large disadvantage. Ultimately, it doesn’t even solve the problem. We know from the Dragon Head Conflict that just destroying Shibusawa’s body is most likely not enough, and he will be able to resummon the fog (and his body) with time and energy. The problem needs to be cut off at the root, the ability crystals.

Unfortunately, Fyodor didn’t really team up with Dazai, instead choosing to team up with Shibusawa in order to get rid of Dazai. This is then where Shibusawa gets to kill Dazai, and discovers that wait, Dazai’s ability may not be what he’s seeking after all. However, the abilities are already merged, and Dazai’s ability joins them. This combines “the ability to merge” with “the ability to nullify”, which don’t exactly mix well. Does Dazai’s ability become part of the other ability? Does his ability nullify the merging ability before that can happen? It’s already part of it, but at the same time the merging can never happen. It’s contradictory, and thus a singularity is born.

Fyodor, meanwhile, hasn’t quite had his fill of betrayal yet, and decides to remind Shibusawa of what he is by killing him, reminding Shibusawa of his earlier death by Atsushi’s paw. All of this, killing Dazai and using his ability to create a singularity, having that power from the singularity then go into Shibusawa to create the Dragon, all of that was part of Fyodor’s plan. Shibusawa is only able to cover an entire city with fog because of the large amount of ability crystals he has collected, and so with enough power (like from a singularity) he can cover the entire world in this fog. Up until this point, neither Fyodor nor Shibusawa have seen a single ability user survive the fog, and thus it is the perfect method for getting rid of all ability users in the world, which does seem to be Fyodor’s end goal.

However, Chuuya swoops in and defeats the Dragon. Dazai was well prepared and had the antidote to the poison he was killed with hidden in his mouth, so he is alive and well again. That means that Dazai has his ability back and it cancels out the singularity space they both are in. It doesn’t completely get rid of the Dragon however, as some energy still lingers around the tower.

Fyodor is still on the scene, and uses a part of the merging crystal that he saved which was used earlier to create the singularity to merge Shibusawa with the singularity, giving Shibusawa a very anime transformation into his final form.

At this point, as a result of Shibusawa’s transformation, the fog turns red. If this red fog then covers the entire planet as Fyodor is hoping, and you were to watch it from space, it would look just like a poisonous red apple. The name of the movie therefore refers to this plan of using Shibusawa to rid the world of ability users.

This idea of poisonous apples in this movie comes from two different sources. From Fyodor’s side, it is referring to the apple Eve ate in the Bible, the original sin. For Fyodor, there is poetic irony in this: the world will end with the same sin as it began with. The crime is the punishment. On Dazai’s side, it refers to Snow White, who bit the poison apple and died (temporarily). He already talks about this to Oda when he is sixteen, vaguely implying he knew all of this was coming as soon as he met Shibusawa during the Dragon Head Conflict. Since Fyodor was already around at that time and also had a hand in enabling Shibusawa originally, this may indeed be planned out this far in advance, but it’s always hard to tell with these guys.

Then the kids take over the fight for the rest of the movie, and Atsushi, Akutagawa and Kyouka work together to defeat Shibusawa’s final form in the form of a long, epic final fight. Shibusawa is finally defeated and it all ends happily ever after.

The End.

Byakko VS The Dragon

…Or is it? You thought we covered the entire basic layer of the movie, so we’re done now, right? Think again! This is only where things start to become really interesting. Please note that this section will take some ideas that were already pointed out by other people, and build on those.

When looking at lore relevance of characters, Atsushi may not immediately spring to mind as one of the most important ones. Sure, he’s the protagonist of the main manga, but in comparison to the mystery surrounding Dazai or Fyodor he fades a little into the background.

Even in this post, an explanation about a movie that’s basically about Atsushi, I’m able to explain the basics of the movie without mentioning him much at all. And yet, the movie’s core conflict is not between Shibusawa, Dazai and Fyodor, but between Shibusawa and Atsushi.

While there isn’t a lot of information given about Shibusawa’s and Atsushi’s connection, what we do get is very interesting. Shibusawa is consistently referred to as a Dragon during Dead Apple, and while subtitles usually translate everything as “tiger”, Atsushi’s tiger is actually referred to as “Byakko” half of the time.

Now what is the difference between any good ol’ normal tiger and the Byakko, I hear you ask. The Byakko is much more than an ordinary tiger, since it is part of the 四神 (shijin/ shishin), the Four Guardians of the Four Compass Directions, which the Dragon is also a part of. What you essentially need to know from this is that the Byakko belongs to the same group of creatures as the Dragon, and that this solidifies Shibusawa’s status as Atsushi’s foil in this movie.

It also allows us to make a direct comparison between Shibusawa and Atsushi. The thing is, I have been lying to you a little bit. So far, I’ve been calling the Dragon a singularity. The truth is, it may not be. I know, I know, if it’s not a singularity, then what was that whole Dragon thing about?

Fyodor actually specifically tells us that the Dragon isn’t a singularity, but instead it’s “the true form of the chaos born from abilities”. (Note here that the Dead Apple light novel talks about Fyodor as if he is “reciting some Oracle”. Did Fyodor get this information from someone else?) Is this related to why Fyodor wants abilities gone from this world? Is there another layer to abilities and other creatures that BSD hasn’t even touched upon (think Lovecraft)? It’s hard to say at this point. All we can say is that the Dragon gets referred to as something else, and… that the Dragon is similar to the Byakko.

The tiger ability we see that got separated from Atsushi in the movie actually doesn’t follow the rules the other abilities do. It has a clearly defined face, and the red gem is not on its forehead. The gem found on the ability tiger is also red, which is in line with the other extracted abilities we see, but what gets extracted from Atsushi by Shibusawa is this blue cube. The weirdness continues in the flashback we see of Atsushi being tortured by Shibusawa.

We see Atsushi’s ability leave him, but then in a flash of self protection instinct, he partially transforms into the tiger, claws and all, while the blue gem is outside of his body. Earlier in the movie it is shown that if an ability is extracted from an ability user, they no longer have access to the powers of that ability. Then how is Atsushi able to use his tiger abilities here?

Granted, there is a bit of conflicting information within the movie about this, since during the final fight with Shibusawa this blue cube is once again extracted from Atsushi, but now he does lose his tiger powers. Could he resummon the tiger while not in possession of the cube if the situation is dire enough? Is this just a psychological thing because Atsushi is aware of it this time? Who can say. At any rate, this blue cube is connected deeply with Atsushi, but the clues given imply that it may not be the Byakko itself.

“That’s not an ability! That is me!”―Atsushi, reaching out to the blue cube in Dead Apple

To be honest, the movie does very little in explaining anything around Atsushi, instead raising more questions than answers. For that exact reason, the rest of this section will mostly be speculation about one possible angle on Atsushi’s ability that personally makes sense to me, but of course this is only one potential theory.

I do also want to add here that Atsushi personally goes through an arc in this movie from seeing the tiger as something separate to something that is intrinsically part of him. This can also be a reason for this final exclamation of “that’s me!” when he reaches out to the blue cube, but it doesn’t explain everything, which is why we explore an alternate possibility here.

My take on it is that the Byakko and this blue gem that get extracted from Atsushi are not the same thing. With the side note here being that they are probably deeply connected, but not the same regardless.

My reasoning for this is that everything Atsushi-related you see in Dead Apple makes a little more sense when you consider the Byakko and the blue cube as two separate entities. The Byakko’s gem is red, the cube is blue. The Byakko is framed as something separate from Atsushi, while he claims the cube is not an ability but he himself. Atsushi had access to the Byakko while the blue cube was outside of him. Shibusawa even makes a point of mentioning that the orphanage director, who correctly thought Atsushi was the tiger, had the wrong idea about Atsushi’s ability. The Byakko is definitely Atsushi’s ability, but this blue cube is… something else.

And yet, the tiger is also deeply connected to whatever this blue gem is. Currently, one theory that makes sense to me is that the tiger is an ability that can be passed on, just like Demon Snow, that has the specific task of protecting the power of this blue gem. So, a two in one deal. Atsushi also gets referred to as “the one holding the Byakko ability” by Ivan, which would be in line with the Byakko being an ability that can be passed on as needed. Shibusawa makes a similar statement, calling Atsushi “the one clad in the Byakko”. Atsushi also has issues controlling his ability before joining the ADA, just like Kyouka and Tsujimura, who both also inherited their abilities. I would love to further speculate on this, but there is so little information on anything relating to this, so anything further would be completely baseless.

However, there is one more different clue given to us by the movie. Namely, what this comparison to the Dragon means for Atsushi as the one holding the Byakko.

Almost in the same breath as Shibusawa is recounting Fyodor’s words about the Dragon being the chaos of all abilities, the holder of the Byakko also gets its own description about its true form: the one opposing all abilities.

This relates to what the blue cube may really be. What Atsushi does to Shibusawa in his final moments is what I essentially believe to be this blue cube’s true power: it completely unravels an ability. The blue power eats up everything supernatural about Shibusawa until only his natural skull is left.

If you think this sounds familiar, it kind of does! I cannot ignore the similarity to Dazai here, though I do have to point out that Dazai can only cancel out an ability, and this blue cube power seems to… completely erase the ability itself, leaving no trace of it. The similarity to Dazai is further found the moment Dazai dies and his ability leaves his body. At first, his ability is white and vaguely similar to the blue cube before deciding that nope, this is just barely not it.

I have a hard time connecting this to anything larger simply because the series does not give a lot of clues on this subject. How did abilities come to be? How is the Book related to that, since it is not an ability or borne from an ability? And how does Atsushi factor into this?

Shibusawa has been led to Atsushi since he believed Atsushi would grant him something special, something he had been looking for all this time. “That which every ability user desires.”

This is actually a familiar story! This is not the first time Fyodor has led someone to Atsushi with the premise that he would be able to lead them to what they were seeking. The first two seasons of the anime follow that specific idea, of Fitzgerald wanting Atsushi so he can lead him to the Book.

The tiger as the guide to the Book is something emphasized again and again. While in English it gets translated as “guide”, the original manga panel said “道標（タイガービートル）”, or, “guidepost (pronounced: tiger beetle, in English)”. While this is partially just a funny pun, it also once again points to the tiger specifically as a guide.

It did leave me to wonder about the absence of a certain scene in the series. Fyodor has been sending other people to Atsushi for the entire length of the series, but has never interacted with Atsushi himself. For someone who claims to be looking for the Book, and knows that Atsushi is somehow the guide to the Book, isn’t that a bit weird? Is there a reason Fyodor won’t interact with Atsushi himself? Fyodor knew about Atsushi way before he joined the ADA, so it’s not like Dazai is particularly standing in the way here.

Regardless, this factor that makes Atsushi so special may very well be this blue cube. How does the power to completely undo abilities lead to the Book? Who knows. We simply do not know enough about the Book or the origin of abilities to say more about this. Maybe the true power of the blue cube is something else entirely.

What does all of this mean? Where will it all lead? Only the future (Asagiri) can tell.

The Unexplained and Weird

Welcome to the section I’d fondly refer to as “a collection of things I have no explanation for”. There is plenty of that in this movie, but I do want to touch upon them since not being explainable as of currently does not necessarily mean that they aren’t important in the future. Also, not having an explanation for these things is driving me insane and I need to share in my suffering. Let’s go! :)

Let’s get the big thing out of the way first.

Mukurotoride, my friend, my enemy. For those unaware, Mukurotoride is the name of the large black tower that Shibusawa, Dazai and Fyodor were chilling in for most of the movie. The name gets translated as “Skull Fortress”, but the kanji used gives the name more of a “Dead Man’s Castle” feeling, since it refers to a person long since dead more than a skull. My problem with this tower is as follows: it doesn’t make any sense. Whatsoever.

Why is it there? Fifteen establishes it’s there seven years before the current timeline, so a year before Shibusawa dies. I would’ve accepted it if the tower was a weird side effect of Shibusawa dying or something, but the current facts point towards this tower not having anything to do with Shibusawa at all. It’s also very decayed. How long has it been there? Who put it there? Is it relevant that it’s right next to Suribachi? Or in the Yokohama foreign settlement? (Side note: foreign settlements have not been a thing since 1899. What’s up with Yokohama having a foreign settlement?) No one seems to know anything about this tower, not even in the Japanese community. And then in-universe, everyone also seems okay with this wildly out-of-place tower that looks like it’s made out of human bones being there in the middle of the city? It’s giving me Sky Casino vibes.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, we can talk about Fyodor’s ability.

I want to start this part by explaining my personal stance on the current Fyodor theories, since it influences how I talk about what is shown of his ability in Dead Apple. There are a bunch of theories about Fyodor having an insta-kill ability that only works on non-ability users. Personally, I don’t subscribe to this theory, and I have multiple reasons for this.

First, I don’t think we’ve ever seen Fyodor’s ability being used. At the end of Cannibalism a cop dies as soon as he touches Fyodor. In the manga abilities don’t have a special shine effect, but in the anime they do. However, in the anime there was no ability-shine here.

A stronger argument, perhaps, is that this happens right in front of Dazai, and Dazai immediately afterwards says he has no clue what Fyodor’s ability could be. He could be lying, of course, but since this is a common enemy he shares with Fitzgerald, who is the one asking him about Fyodor’s ability, I don’t see any reason for him to do so here. The whole murder reads a little bit like Fyodor just putting on a show for Dazai.

Finally, from a narrative viewpoint, killing with a touch is a little… useless? Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’s convenient, I guess, when you’re a terrorist who seeks to exterminate part of the global population. But there are many ways to kill a person, and Fyodor has shown time after time that he doesn’t need to rely on an ability to murder people.

The strongest argument for the insta-kill ability in my opinion is Fyodor himself saying “this is my true ability” before killing that kid who was enslaved by Ace. However, this may also be part of something else that is going on with Fyodor, in a way that is perhaps very similar to Atsushi.

Alright. Whether you agree with that or not is up to you. To get back to the movie, there are a few interesting clues provided about Fyodor’s ability.

The first is of course Fyodor’s iconic line when his ability shows up on screen: “Crime and Punishment are close friends.” Everything he says after that point is already referring to Shibusawa again, so this is the only clue he himself is willing to offer up. If we consider that the abilities that get split from their users represent inner conflict, all he is saying here is that he apparently has no inner conflict. Does he know something else about the world? Does he just know who he is? Honestly, I don’t think we’ll get anywhere talking about Fyodor’s mental state.

Then there is the “I am Crime”, spoken by Fyodor holding the skull, and “I am Punishment”, spoken by his ability holding the apple. This one is slightly more straightforward. The ability user being the crime, and the ability the punishment. I’m not 100% sure if this is actually referring to Fyodor himself, or if it’s just about Shibusawa again. The skull (Shibusawa, an ability user) being the crime, and then the apple (covering the world with fog through Shibusawa’s ability, thus punishing ability users) being the punishment makes sense when viewed like this, but it could be that Fyodor is somehow also referring to himself during these lines.

Okay, if Fyodor is apparently not willing to open up, we can gather some more info just from what we can see instead of what we’re told. Most of what this part covers is taken from these excellent posts, but I’ll summarize it here for the sake of completion. Fyodor’s ability looks different compared to most other abilities. Most of the abilities shown in the movie have a blank face without any features, and have their gem on their forehead. The exception to that first part, interestingly enough, is Elise, Mori’s ability. This is most likely because she has physical form as an ability to begin with. Which then raises the question: does Fyodor’s ability also have a physical form outside of the fog? His ability looks identical, so that would imply some sort of clone ability. Next to this, Fyodor’s epithet is “The Conjurer”, which would be in line with him being able to create another copy of himself. (Though I should add here that the Japanese seems to just refer to him as “魔神”, which can be any type of evil spirit. However, if I’m not mistaken, the “Conjurer” should be from the official translation, but let me know if I’m mistaken on that.)

Finally, there is the position of the gem on Fyodor’s ability. Nearly all other abilities have their gem on their forehead, but for some reason Fyodor’s ability has his on his hand. The only other ability that has its gem not on its forehead is… the Byakko. I don’t have an explanation for this one, but the weirdness should be pointed out, since it’s another way in which Fyodor’s ability deviates from the others.

Next to the above, there are two other weird details I want to quickly touch upon.

First, the knives in the apples in the dish in Mukuroride, as well as the apples with a knife in them in general, as they are the theme of this movie. I believe this to be of a more metaphorical touch, so we won’t read too much into it, but it does have physical consequences that tie back to the title as well.

This exact shot is used four times throughout the movie, but with a varying amount of knives stuck in the apples. It starts with one, then two, then three. The room starts with just Dazai, then Shibusawa enters, then Fyodor. With each of them showing up, another knife appears in an apple. This is then a metaphor for these three being the instigators behind the Dead Apple incident. These knives in the apples can also be seen as their calling cards, as they were left both at the bar and at the scene of the crime where that agent was killed who was supposed to meet with Kunikida and Tanizaki.

In a later scene, it cuts again to this frame, but a knife and the skull has disappeared. These both get taken by Fyodor. The knife is used eventually to kill Shibusawa, but Shibusawa also took one of these knives to kill Dazai with. Either way, these knives that have been in these apples are used to murder, once again corroborating the connection between death and apples.

And finally, the relevance of the moon.

There are a few impressive shots of the moon in Dead Apple, where the moon is shown to be enormous, to the point where even the light novel points out how extraordinarily large it is. The novel also points out that the blue cube crystal holds a similarity to the moonlight. Just symbolism to show that it’s connected to Atsushi, or something more? The other side of the page in the main series will also only be written on the night… of the next full moon.

The Point of It All

I hear a lot of “Dead Apple doesn’t matter to the plot, just watch it for the Soukoku scenes and move on”. And while I do agree that it’s not mandatory viewing to understand the storyline that corresponds with season three onwards, I do think there is more to Dead Apple than most people give it credit for.

I always like to ask myself after reading a book or watching a movie: “Okay, so what was the point of that? What was I meant to take away from this?”

For example, in essence Stormbringer is a case study on singularities. Likewise, BEAST is a study into the limits of the Book, and all other side stories similarly have a message, however big or small.

So what does Dead Apple establish? Why bother?

I hope by now you agree that Dead Apple seems to be the introduction to explaining more as to what is so special about Atsushi. This seems to go deeper into chapter 28/29 of the manga, or season 2 episode 8 of the anime, where Atsushi also has some weird things going on with the tiger. What this exactly is, or where this seems to be going is unclear for now, but the Dead Apple definitely emphasizes Atsushi’s importance as well as the concept that there can be something more than just abilities.

In-universe, there are also reasons for this conflict to happen.

Most likely both Dazai and Fyodor knew the end result long before the conflict ever started. It’s their reunion in a way, so I suppose they are both seeing how the other’s condition is at the moment. They may even have gathered some intel somehow? It’s almost like collecting metadata, they won’t have a direct conversation about important things, but they try to collect information just by seeing how the other acts, to see if the other lies within prediction.

Aside from that, on Dazai’s side, except for foiling Fyodor’s plan and keeping Yokohama safe, the Shin Soukoku dynamic also gets strengthened, something Dazai is actively working on. On Fyodor’s side, next to giving the whole “eliminating all ability users” a good honest shot, he also gets to collect a lot of intel on the opposing side. For example, Fyodor in Dead Apple gets to see Corruption up close, which may potentially be relevant.

Finally, from a storytelling perspective, it sets up a lot for the third season, especially in character interactions and relationships, e.g. Atsushi & Akutagawa, Dazai & Chuuya, Kyouka, Fukuzawa & Mori. It should be noted that some characters literally have been intentionally regressed to make the ending make more impact. Whether that was a good decision or not is not why I’m here. You should just know that it’s intentional. You could chalk it up to Atsushi losing his ability impacting him and his behavior a lot, if you wanted to justify it somehow. The Order of the Clock Tower also gets its first anime appearance, showing Agatha Christie on screen, who will most likely play a more important role later on. Likewise, Dead Apple is the introduction to Fyodor as a villain, where you get to see him for more than just a few flashes.

Trivia and Fun Details

I suppose this section is skippable. But who doesn’t love trivia? This is by no means an exhaustive list of everything included in this movie, but rather an overview of what I personally caught, understood and thought relevant to include.

The “Dragon Head” in the Dragon Head Conflict refers to a Qilin, which are said to have similar heads to dragons. Since the conflict centered around the White Qilin, this is where that name comes from.

At some point Akutagawa and Kyouka use a mafia code to refer to a passageway. The code “0505” refers back to Atsushi’s birthday.

The symbol ᛟ found on the outfits of the Mukurotoride squad refers to inheritage, since Shibusawa inherited his own ability. More information about that here.

Dazai at some point meows at Fyodor. This is a very sassy way of telling Fyodor that he will personally eradicate all of Fyodor’s rats in Yokohama, including Fyodor himself. (The light novel calls it a “tedious” meow. Lmao.)

The music from Dead Apple seems to be recycled in season three of the anime. I’m guessing to save on budget?

Atsushi’s door that he eventually opens to unlock his hidden memories has its own music motif that shows up every time he thinks about Shibusawa, the fog or his memories associated with killing him. Try to pay attention to this, it’s really cool.

The motif of the door is also a tune that sounds a lot like the track named Dead Apple, further showing Atsushi’s relevance in his movie.

The lyrics of the soundtrack tell their own story. When the Dead Apple plot first takes off and Dazai is at bar Lupin, a song called My Prince plays telling of Snow White who is sleeping and waiting for her prince. However, it seems to be a spin on the classic, where indeed Snow White chose to knowingly bite the apple knowing it was poisoned, in much the same way as Dazai knew he was going to be poisoned in Dead Apple. Le Cheval Noir tells of how bored the singer is, and how nothing is special to them anymore. This plays during the scene where Dazai talks to Shibusawa, showing Shibusawa’s apathy towards everything. Mein Prinz, the song that plays as Dazai gets backstabbed, is nearly exactly the same song as My Prince, but now more dramatic and in German. This is a clue that Dazai saw this coming from before the Dead Apple conflict even started, and it’s now up to Chuuya again to save him. Overall, Dazai is leaning into the Snow White aesthetic hard in Dead Apple.

And finally, a list of everything the light novel insists refers to the theme of poisonous red apples: the red apples with the knives in them, apple suicide, the merged abilities producing a red sphere, the singularity that results from that in all its forms and the planet covered in red fog. If it’s red and spherical, you can just assume it should represent a deathly apple.

TD;DR

Recapped extremely briefly:

The Dragon Head Conflict introduces Shibusawa as a villain who was kept by the government but went off the rails. Shibusawa’s ability is a fog that splits ability users from their abilities. If ability users die, Shibusawa obtains their ability. Shibusawa died and inherited his own ability, also causing him to lose his memory. Therefore he wants to obtain Dazai's ability in order to gain what he feels he lacks. Dazai betrays Shibusawa together with Fyodor by combining abilities. However, Shibusawa kills Dazai first, adding Dazai's ability to the merged abilities creating a singularity. Fyodor kills Shibusawa, causing him to regain his memory of being previously killed by Atsushi. A dragon is created and defeated, and Fyodor's plan is revealed to be the covering of the entire planet in Shibusawa's fog, killing all ability users. This plan is foiled, but Atsushi is shown to have potentially another power next to his ability (the tiger). This power is possibly the ability to completely unravel abilities, and may be what makes Atsushi the guide to the Book. Mukurotoride is completely left unexplained in the movie, but there are clues given about Fyodor's ability that point away from an insta-kill ability, and more towards a clone type ability.

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd dead apple #dead apple #bsd analysis #bungou stray dogs analysis #posted this also on reddit but. i forgor to post it on here. whoopsie.#glad i got this all written out though #like a weight lifted from my shoulders #this is actually longer than the reddit version so rejoice! you're getting the premium version #here's to hoping it shows up in the tags! 🙏🏻#suzenanalysis

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jewishcissiekj · 2 months

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Since Asajj Ventress appeared in recent media and is set to appear in future shows and Star Wars content, I've seen a lot of people starting to read Dark Disciple. but besides that book, there are so many stories featuring Asajj over her 22 years of existence. So if you are looking for some recommendations and entry points to Asajj outside of the TV shows, here are some recommendations to get to know her a bit better, in both the Canon and Legends timelines:

(for anyone looking for a definitive list of everything she's ever been in, I also have that)

for anyone looking for just the list of recommendations without all my babbling, scroll down to the bottom, it'll be there.

Canon

Dooku: Jedi Lost Audiodrama - Script by Cavan Scott, preformed by full cast (also available in Script format) Starting off, this masterpiece. Telling the dual story of Asajj and Dooku, Jedi Lost is genuinely some of the best Star Wars content out there, in my opinion. Taking place early in The Clone Wars, it tells Asajj's journey battling her ghosts and uncovering her Master's history. It requires only the context of the prequels and The Clone Wars, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who likes the Prequels, Dooku, or Asajj.

Brotherhood - by Mike Chen Continuing with the book that serves as an introduction to Asajj in canon (chronologically), Brotherhood presents an interesting take on her first meetings with Anakin and Obi-Wan. She's far from the main character here, only supporting the book's plot as the villain and the initiator behind some of the troubles Obi-Wan faces on Cato Neimodia. This Asajj is more calculated, working behind the scenes while still facing off face to face against Obi-Wan and Anakin, and it uniquely handles her character. The book is a Clone Wars adventure taking place before and it requires only the movies' and TCW's context, once again. *While technically taking place after Hyperspace Stories #5, it contradicts that issue's events and makes more sense if it takes place before, so I listed it first (for more info on the contradictions you can go here)*

Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories #5 - Written by Amanda Deibert, with art by Riccardo Faccini (Variant cover by Cary Nord) Taking place shortly after Anakin's knighting, before The Clone Wars show, this is a short and interesting comic story for Asajj. While tying into an over-arching plot of the series, this issue stands alone well. Simply put, Asajj is sent to retrieve a mysterious item by Count Dooku and encounters Anakin and Obi-Wan in the process. It has fun art, fun dynamics, and it's really good.

Worthless - a short story from Stories of Jedi and Sith - written by Delilah S. Dawson with an illustration by Jake Bartok This one is not as set on the timeline, but we do know it takes place while Asajj is still working for Dooku. In short, without too many spoilers, Asajj falls into a pit and has to trust on a Clone Trooper's help to get out. The story is a part of an anthology, but it completely stand-alone on its own. If you can read it on its own, I recommend it, but the rest of the book is also very much worth it if you want to buy it for the story. Dawson captures a version of Asajj that rarely gets attention, before the Nightsisters, and manages to show her identity and tell a wonderful story without that tool that's often overly used (in my opinion).

Star Wars Adventures: Return to Vader's Castle #3 - Written by Cavan Scott with art by Francesco Francavilla & Nick Brokenshire Jumping forward in the Timeline, we have another Asajj story by Cavan Scott! It has Bounty Hunting, A baby Sarlacc, pretty art, fun coloring, and Asajj. So what's not to love? Like Hyperspace Stories, Return to Vader's Castle also has an over-arching plot, but that's 4 framing pages of Vaneé being a bitch and has no effect on the rest of it. Solid stuff. (it is also the source of the first picture in this post)

Sisters - a short comic story from the Age of Republic Special - written by Jody Houser with art by Carlos Gómez Next, we have a wonderful short story taking place just before The Clone Wars episode "To Catch a Jedi". In just a few pages, Jody Houser brings conflict and personality to Asajj's time on Coruscant. And there's gorgeous art.

Legends

While Legends, and especially the comics, have some of my favorite stories with Asajj, it's hard to recommend individual issues. They can be stand-alone but still connected and ingrained in the ongoing story of the comics. But I tried to hand-pick the best for introduction and knowledge of who Asajj is a character there. So I won't recommend the 12 issues she's in, I set myself the limit of sticking with the same number of recommendations I had for canon.

Star Wars: Republic: The New Face of War - 2-issue Comic arc - written by W. Haden Blackman with art by Tomás Giorello Although I'm assuming you all have at least a passing familiarity with Asajj's character, introductions are still important. And, yes, Asajj first appeared in a different comic and after a month or so in Clone Wars (2003), but chronologically, in-universe, this is her first appearance. The Face of War is comprised of issues #51 and #52 of the Star Wars: Republic comic series, and although Asajj is only in the last page of #51, it's necessary context. This one isn't a must for me, but it sets the ground for her. And it's good. Giorello's art brings a unique perspective to Asajj's character, and by that I mean it may not be to some people's taste. So take your pick with this one.

Star Wars: Republic #53 - written by W. Haden Blackman, with art by Brian Ching If the last one isn't a must, this one is. It is a stand-alone adventure, almost feeling like a (better) TCW episode. Obi-Wan is off to infiltrate a Techno Union base with a team of all-star legendary Jedi that are introduced, and everything goes wrong when they run into the Confederacy's best, Durge and Asajj Ventress. I say it's a must because it establishes the nature of the rivalry between Obi-Wan and Asajj, and gives us such a sense of who those people are. It also lays the foundations to my next comic recommendation.

Dark Heart - short story by August and Cynthia Hahn This one, a 1784-word story, originally published on Wizards.com as a part of The Living Force roleplaying campaign, is definitely not a must, but it's barely 2k words, just read it. In all seriousness though, it captures Asajj's essence and I just. love it. You can read it right now, that's the link in the name, it's up online for free legally. While it is a part of the RPG campaign, I read it individually and had no trouble at all.

The Cestus Deception - by Steven Barnes (The Japanese cover is prettier and has Asajj, ok?) Obi-Wan Kenobi and Kit Fisto head to the planet Ord Cestus to try and convince Ord Cestus's government to ally with The Republic. But under the surface, a mysterious scheme had developed and it gets messy. Never ask me to write a publisher's summary. Asajj is the villain of this one, and I don't have much to say about it, but it is good. Fair warning: it hasn't aged the best in my opinion, and not even in a politically correct sense, some of the descriptions and relationships were questionable at best. If you like Kit Fisto and political adventuring and Clone Wars fights and a mascarade ball, if I remember correctly, this one's for you. It's not much of a story for Asajj but it is a fun read.

Star Wars: Republic #60 - written by W. Haden Blackman with art by Tomás Giorello I have never ever not once said it but this right here is my favorite Asajj story of all time ever. It does require context, though, so here's it: after the battle of Jabiim, Alpha-17 (Legends Arc Trooper, you may have heard of him) and Obi-Wan (a staple in Asajj's stories, he needs to gtfo women's business) are blown up and declared dead. Turns out Asajj Ventress has been holding them in her castle on the planet Rattatak and this is the daring story of their escape. In this issue, Asajj's origin story is revealed, before the Nightsisters had anything to do with her. More than any other Legends issue, it differentiates greatly from anything you know about Asajj in TCW/Canon. She's a warlord, with armies at her beck and call, a military commander, And it's fun. Her origin story is told in this issue, and it's such a great story that shifted my understanding of her a lot. The art, once again, is by Giorello, keep it in mind.

Yoda: Dark Rendezvous - by Sean Stewart (Japanese cover, once again) Last but certainly not least, the Legends Clone Wars book I've heard the most positive reviews of, and was not disappointed in the slightest. It is as good as they say. The story doesn't focus on Asajj, and she isn't even the main antagonist, but she gets a meaningful role in it and has her place and her arc in the story. It's also my favorite approach to how Asajj would act when she has to deal with children. Worth the hype and an excellent book to read unrelated to Asajj.

Alright, that's all! I hope you check out at least one of these, they're all great. As said before, I also have a complete list of everything Asajj in chronological order. Feel free to ask me anything about the list and the things in it. I can also give a complete comic reading list for her, since it's a bit more than just the issues she appeared in. For anyone struggling with the accessibility of these recommendations, I have a hopefully comprehensive guide in the complete appearances post. And now just this list because I promised that:

Canon 1) Dooku: Jedi Lost Audiodrama - Script by Cavan Scott, preformed by full cast (also available in Script format) 2) Brotherhood - by Mike Chen 3) Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories #5 - Written by Amanda Deibert, with art by Riccardo Faccini (Variant cover by Cary Nord) 4) Worthless - a short story from Stories of Jedi and Sith - written by Delilah S. Dawson with an illustration by Jake Bartok 5) Star Wars Adventures: Return to Vader's Castle #3 - Written by Cavan Scott with art by Francesco Francavilla & Nick Brokenshire 6) Sisters - a short comic story from the Age of Republic Special - written by Jody Houser with art by Carlos Gómez

Legends 1) Star Wars: Republic: The New Face of War - 2-issue Comic arc (Star Wars: Republic #51-52) - written by W. Haden Blackman with art by Tomás Giorello 2) Star Wars: Republic #53 - written by W. Haden Blackman, with art by Brian Ching 3) Dark Heart - short story by August and Cynthia Hahn 4) The Cestus Deception - by Steven Barnes 5) Star Wars: Republic #60 - written by W. Haden Blackman with art by Tomás Giorello 6) Yoda: Dark Rendezvous - by Sean Stewart

tag list: @thechaoticfanartist @charmwasjess @metalatl @redsandspirit @slutshartsstuff @housepartyfortwo @karma-malfoy @thelivingforce

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furiroad · 5 days

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Furiosa spoilers under the cut 🚗

It's actually staggering how much that movie did not need to exist. Gonna bullet point some thoughts

My sarcastic lol @ the lightning fast sisters cameo at the end where they're all played by completely different people. the quick flash of Cheedo's eyes bc they managed to get Courtney Eaton back for three seconds didn't appease me

I guess it technically passes the bechdel test bc right at the start Furiosa says "be still" to Valkyrie but iirc that's the only pass moment. I know not passing the bechdel test doesn't mean the movie is automatically bad I just think it's interesting considering it's following Fury Road

"she talks to her mother" I don't think they ever said her mum's name out loud

You know how mad max fury road could have a silent version w no dialogue + isolated soundtrack and it worked because you could tell what's going on anyway? This movie has the opposite problem. Way too much talking. They over-explain everything

The best bit was the prolonged torture scene at the end where Hemsworth explains Furiosa's entire character arc and the message of the movie out loud to her and also us

Even his teddy had an arm missing, replaced with a barbie arm. Thanks. We get it

Her arm made robot noises

Actually threw MY arms up in disgust when she went back for that boy she supposedly had a romance with despite the film never bothering to actually show/explain that. I'm calling it a romance because the actors did. I guess it was supposed to be a Capable/Nux parallel but it didn't work for me and not just because I'm a dyke and a hater OK, if you're gonna do a ROMANCE, DO A ROMANCE. don't leave me sitting there wondering why Furiosa is risking it all for some guy she's had ONE conversation with, especially after he offers to get her away from the Citadel and back to where she came from, WHICH IS HER ENTIRE MOTIVE EVER SINCE SHE WAS TAKEN

I DON'T GET IT

Them trying to emulate Max and Furiosa's instinctive, perfect we have to trust each other moment by having Jack and Furiosa... look at each other Meaningfully fifty times while they were supposed to be driving cars? Don't make me laugh! You will never be them!!

Max being there for a second wasn't cute! I rolled my eyes

Same at "remember me?" MAKE UP YOUR OWN STUFF

So many things happened because they needed to happen (plot demanded it) and didn't make any sense in context. My favourite was when Furiosa rode her motorcycle up a dune to get away after cutting off her arm and the biker gang couldn't follow her up there for some reason

So much Christian imagery... threw me off tbh

Considering it's Furiosa's movie it sure isn't about her + she doesn't speak at all for almost the first half

This movie was way too long

I called it about the peach seed

I called it that she cut her own arm off

George Miller read some of my blog but not all of it

You know how The People Eater rubbed his nipple that one time and it was delightfully weird and gross and got a good reaction? Well in this movie he's constantly rubbing it, the whole time. Really lessens the impact of the nipple rub

As you can see this movie has made me insane

Like this is not really about the nipple rub but do you get what I'm saying here

Furiosa spends most of the movie hiding her hair (because as we all know, having long hair immediately identifies you as a woman) and then when her head covering gets knocked off and her hair is revealed (omg she's a girl) she leaves it like that and becomes an Imperator. On what planet

The history man frames the entire movie for some reason. Do they show Miss Giddy? Take a wild guess

One of the coolest parts of fury road was that a gang of bikers ended up being hardcore wasteland grannies w guns and loose morals in response to people fucking around for far too long without finding out. Did this movie have anything like that for me? Take a wild guess for a second time

The car fight scenes weren't even that great. Couldn't remember hearing any good music under them (brother in arms truly lightning in a bottle) and they went on for too long which feels wild to say about suped up car battles in the australian wasteland: 2 but oh well. This is how I feel. Fury Road was so good at carefully measuring out high octane action and then downtime and careful, quiet character introspection and this movie had no idea what it was doing either way

Honestly I don't hate it but I feel like it was a waste of time and it doesn't need to exist at all. A real nothing experience. Am I going to see this movie ten times in cinemas? No I am not even going to see it twice in cinemas

I don't know what I was expecting.

oh my god also they played clips of Fury Road over the credits as if to say "remember how fucking good this is in comparison to the dumb shit you just watched"

#furiroad personal #spoilers for the furiosa movie i mean it

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olderthannetfic · 9 months

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Hi, Olderthannetfic - I'm just sort of reaching out through the blogosphere to see if anyone in the larger proship community has any suggestions for where a community could move if not on discord. (CW for discussion of underage content and Black Butler Spoilers)

So I run a discord server for Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji) but I'm also in several writing discords including one that caters to dead dove content creators. Today they posted some rule changes, due to changes in Discord's community guidelines. Any illustrations for nsfw of obviously underage characters are now banned, and written content has to be vague and not state ages of underage participants. That prompted me to read through it: And, I gotta say, its pretty bad: https://discord.com/safety/child-safety-policy-explainer Hoping the community can offer some insight on what to do since the policy is incredibly broad. Either a new platform, or what we could even reasonably do beyond our current system of gating the server heavily to avoid issues like reporting/brigading. The meat of the policy is right here, for those who want to read it:

You may not post or share the following types of content, such as [sensitive language content warning]

Portrayals of minors engaging in sex acts, or in sexually explicit or suggestive poses

Sexual comments about or desires for real or fictitious minors

Links to websites containing material that sexualizes minors

Photos or videos of non-nude minors in a sexualized or fetishistic context

Statements expressing intent to obtain materials of child abuse or engage in child sexual abuse

Promotion, encouragement or normalization of pedophilia or sexual attraction to children

Photos, videos, or drawings of nude or sexualized minors, such as “lolicon” or “shotacon”

Photos, videos or illustrations of naked or sexualized anthropomorphized minors (sometimes referred to as “cub porn”)

Also of note from their guidelines: > Given the high-harm nature of this content, we will also consider off-platform evidence as explained in our Off-Platform Behaviors Policy when reviewing content under this policy.

This is pretty horrifying for me, since under these terms, even if we weren't writing smutty fanfiction and laughing about silly nsfw headcannons, discussion even of the source material of Kuro would be completely off limits. I mean, this is a panel from the arc that was recently announced to be animated for release in 2024:

I think even on tumblr just mentioning that this looks like an intro to a porno would be flagged.

This is particularly frustrating since this is a series that is literally sold at like, Barnes and Noble. It's one of the most popular mangas in the world. Even the numerous, incredibly obnoxious antis who run this fandom on tiktok/reddit/twitter and don't ship the "evil" Sebaciel like I do would probably be forbidden from even discussing many of the canon elements under these terms, including: * The many plot points in several arcs during which it is implied that an adult character is sexually attracted to Ciel (I was going to list them all but this honestly happens at least once per arc) * Discussion of Ciel's trauma - the inciting incident of the manga (also portrayed in flashbacks) where he is sexually assaulted alongside his brother * The Green Witch Arc plot where Sieglinde interprets the situation to be that Sebastian/Ciel have invited her to a three way to take her virginity. * The many canon depictions of Ciel in various states of undress that are clearly intended to be titillating in some manner. I mean... "Photos or videos of non-nude minors in a sexualized or fetishistic context" is basically just. The entire series. In fact, even just linking to where you could read or purchase this manga legally at Barnes and Noble could technically be considered a violation under these guidelines considering how incredibly broad they are. Much has already been said on your blog and elsewhere about how this type of policy harms queer people and CSA survivors (both terms I identify with) and how censorship like this also targets books like Speak (incidentally one of my favorite books from when i was younger) so I won't rehash that here but... its disappointing to say the least.

I assume that most of this is just covering their ass due to legislation and/or the usual pressure from payment processors. Its also possible I'm overreacting entirely and this is a paranoid reading of this policy. Nonetheless, I'd appreciate any insight you or the community might have on what our options might be.

Sorry for the massive ask in your inbox :P Just don't know what we'd do if the worst happened and we got reported.

A lot hinges on how many of those instances of "minors" they think imply "real or fictitious" and how many they're interpreting as real only. They're explicitly banning some types of fictitious material like loli/shota and cub porn, but they aren't explicit about all of the items on this list.

Will discord use these rules punitively against shit they shouldn't without warning? Almost certainly yes. But as for why they're making them, it's because discord is apparently one of the current favorite places for the distribution of actual abuse images of actual children, and they need to cover their asses.

Still, it's worth exploring your options early.

If you want to host explicit shota fan art, you're looking at a very limited selection of sites. I think a lot of people went to certain Mastodon instances.

If you want to discuss Black Butler in peace... IDK... Maybe check out how Bobaboard is doing? It's going to depend on what features you need. The more you're just making a community on someone else's site, the less liability you personally have. The more you're running your own thing, the more you have to be in charge of legal compliance stuff.

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o-uncle-newt · 1 month

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Enter Sir John (and Lord Peter)

This is basically a Sayers blog alongside a Finnemore blog at this point- and this is going to be mostly a Sayers post but also a bit of a window into my other detective fiction reading, which I don't really post about here but kind of want to. A bit of an experiment. (Also, some spoilers to a very old and AFAIK out of print book that I don't particularly recommend below, as well as a Sayers novel.)

So I have been reading a LOT of random old timey detective fiction recently, and at one point made a reading list based on having read the fabulous The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards, which I highly recommend to basically anyone with even the faintest interest in the subject (and even more so to Christie and Sayers fans). ANYWAY, I made the list, then completely forgot where I got it from, ordered a bunch of books through the NYPL's interlibrary loan system, and somehow got all of them at once. So now I have a stack of books from five states on my dresser, many of which are first editions. One of those is my copy of Enter Sir John by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson, which isn't only a first edition but literally has the pencil inscription by the original owner from Christmas 1928, when he bought/received the book. Gah I love reading other people's old books.

Reading other people's old books in general is fun- reading this particular one was more of a mixed bag. The pacing was kind of weird, the mystery was kind of thin (and the motive was... PECULIAR for a 21st century reader, a mix of oddly progressive and deeply, deeply problematic depending on how you look at it), and the characterization of most of the characters was pretty thin. The atmosphere of the small-time theatrical setting was fun, and the detective, Sir John Saumarez, is reasonably entertaining. To go through, and mildly spoil (you'll see why shortly), the plot- someone is found dead who had been known to have previously quarrelled with a woman in the past, under circumstances which make it clear that this woman had both motive, means, and opportunity. The woman is arrested and her trial is attended by a man with a title who is struck by her and feels compelled to work on her behalf. He works hard to find the actual killer when the trial goes poorly for her, and realizes that he is in love with her and confesses his feelings to her.

Sound familiar?

For context, Enter Sir John was published two years before Dorothy L Sayers's Strong Poison, and to be transparent I fiddled a bit with the timing and phrasing to make the synopsis as CLEARLY correlated as it is (he doesn't confess his feelings to her until after he's gotten her off the murder charges, she's actually in the room when the murder victim is found, she actually is convicted and her conviction is overturned on appeal, among other changes). If the above plot sounds interesting and you HAVEN'T read Strong Poison, just skip and read Strong Poison because it does the whole thing SO much better. For one thing, the mystery is better- this was Dane and Simpson's first mystery, and while I largely enjoyed Dane's earlier novel Regiment of Women (which I may post my thoughts about sometime), this book just didn't really work for me. It's technically fair play, I guess, but there aren't a whole lot of actual suspects or clues (there aren't many suspects in Strong Poison either, but there are many more clues and there's a much more robust structure).

The other major difference, and this is pretty important because it's at exactly the point where the two books are so similar, is that the characterization of the romance in Enter Sir John is REALLY NOT GOOD. Sure, as Sayers noted in her 1929 introduction to her Omnibus of Crime anthology, love interests in detective novels are often shitty and this isn't necessarily significantly worse than certain others I have read. But while there do seem to be attempts to describe the suspect's personality in a way that makes her sound more honest, frank, straightforward, etc (the kinds of ways that Harriet Vane comes across later in Strong Poison), she also comes across really naive and dumb, and really doesn't have a whole lot to do in the book at all to counteract that impression. On the plus side... she isn't AS racist as some other people, I guess? (This plays into the motive, which I can describe in the comments for people- it's too annoying to get bogged down in.) But anyway, Sir John largely (apparently? it's not characterized super well) is compelled by her and falls in love with her because of her striking appearance and her good breeding and gentility or whatever, and it's all just super awkward. (Also, there's the same "oh no I didn't realize you were proposing" awkwardness in this book as in Regiment of Women, which does it MUCH better and for MUCH better characterization-related reasons. In this book it's just kind of skin-crawling to read.)

Anyway, why have I made you all read about why I didn't particularly like a not-super-easy-to-find book that you were unlikely to ever read anyway? Well, partly because it's an interesting curiosity- and because as I was reading I was like "what the hell, how did Sayers get away with this?" So I cracked open my copy of The Golden Age of Murder again and in its description of the book realized that it mentions that Sayers and Simpson were friends and that Enter Sir John is of interest as an inspiration to Strong Poison, which in retrospect is probably why I put it on my list in the first place.

But I'm still left with some lingering questions. While the actual murder plot and motive are entirely different, this particular throughline on the part of the detective is really STARTLINGLY similar, not least because Sir John Saumarez has some distinctive surface resemblances to Wimsey. For one thing, the method used to trap the killer (casually having them be part of a reenactment/discussion of the way the murder took place) is used by Sayers in Strong Poison as a ruse that Wimsey uses to try to catch Harriet Vane out, if there's anything to catch (when he "casually" brings up the murder-for-book-profits mystery plot idea he had). For another, like Wimsey later would in Strong Poison, Saumarez has a whole inner monologue about how he has only a month to solve the case (though in his case it's before the suspect is executed, and in Wimsey's case it's the IMO more plausible situation of being before the retrial occurs).

All that being considered, one major difference is, of course, that at the end of Strong Poison Wimsey and Harriet don't get engaged, and Saumarez and the suspect (whose name I don't even remember, if I'm being honest, she REALLY wasn't that memorable) do. But Sayers famously wrote that she wanted to use this book to marry Wimsey off! If she had followed through, and still used this same book as a way to do it, would she have literally lifted, if substantially improved, this plotline from her friend's book in order to do it? She was such an original writer- would she have borrowed so significantly from another writer to finish off a series that she had worked so hard on, even if it was one she was wearying of?!

It's interesting, because I wrote in a previous post about how it feels like after writing the Omnibus of Crime intro, including how bad mystery romance plots are, she dared herself to do it better. Reading this book makes me wonder if she read THIS PARTICULAR BOOK and decided she wanted to do it better. Which would be fascinating whether that was a decision that she made before she'd decided to continue the series after this book or afterward- before, in which case she'd be wholesale lifting the plot but at the same time elevating it lol I feel like I'm writing crossword clues) just by virtue of better writing and characterization in both that plot and the mystery that surrounded it, or after, in which case one of her ways of elevating it would de facto BE changing the ending to make it less corny and awkward, and writing a detective romance which is actually psychologically plausible and satisfying rather than just pairing pants and a skirt, so to speak.

Anyway- decidedly mediocre book that I don't particularly recommend, but one that made me ask some questions that I had a lot of fun pondering! I also had fun writing this, and am considering doing another one on Leo Bruce's The Case for Three Detectives, which was tremendously fun as a pastiche of Wimsey as well as Poirot and Father Brown.

#dorothy l sayers #lord peter wimsey #wimsey #harriet vane #enter sir john #clemence dane #helen simpson #classic mystery fiction #also worth noting- hitchcock directed an adaptation of this called murder!#i'm not especially excited about this #murder! is just what it's literally called #if you've seen it and it's any good let me know!

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martianbugsbunny · 1 year

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Kay babes, I already posted a salty kinda tongue-in-cheek thing about Kalluzeb, in context of *MANDO SPOILERS* Zeb appearing sans Kallus in the Mandalorian. Because in honesty, he should be on Lira San with Kallus enjoying retirement, but I have no beef with him doing whatever it is he’s doing other than the part where he’s doing it without Kallus, because that is a huge red flag for me.

I thought I would have to worry about the following issues when it came to Ahsoka, but I guess they’re either setting him up for an appearance in that or they’ve decided to explore his post-Empire story in Mando, which is fine. If ye be free of indignation about Kalluzeb/Zeb just being gay, read on! If you’re an apple riddled with the worms of homophobia or if you’re very strongly anti-Kalluzeb, then this is not the post for you, and I would rather you just left now than got mad at me in the comments.

I’m going to specifically discuss this in terms of Ahsoka first, because I’ve had this in my drafts for months, so I wrote it before Zeb getting no-homo’d was a present and immediate danger. This may not be the best-written I’ve ever produced, but it is fairly logical, so please take it in context of the first section being written months ago, and the last section as being written today, and then you’ll be sitting pretty.

So it’s basically common knowledge at this point that Hera and Sabine will appear in some capacity in Ahsoka, and probably going to be in contact with our queen herself. I have doubts that Zeb will be a significant part of the show; maybe a cameo here or there, or they mention him but he stays off-screen. If Hera/Sabine gets off a comm in the back of their spaceship and Ahsoka’s like “hey, who was that?” and Hera/Sabine says, “just checking in with Zeb,” there is a choice. And because I have no faith in anyone to canonize Kalluzeb, this is what feels much more likely to happen: The writers will either throw in a single line after that (such as Ahsoka replying with “oh, cool, how’s his wife?”) or there will be no mention of a spouse. And believe you me, there is literally no reason that Zeb, who would be off-screen at that moment, and whose Rebels ending involved no female Lasat, should have a wife for that throwaway moment. It adds nothing to his story and it would be completely out of nowhere, probably never to be explored again. Mentioning a wife would literally just be the galaxy’s biggest, flashing-neon “no homo” (or, in Star Wars terms, you might say that he got Zorii Bliss-ed). There’s no reason to do it. Not saying he has a wife technically doesn’t even disprove the concept that he might have a wife *sarcastic snort*. So if something like that does end up in Ahsoka, we all know why. There is legitimately no other reason to add in a throwaway line like that other than to disprove the concept of Kalluzeb. Or maybe just to disprove the concept that Zeb is gay. I would honestly rather they never mentioned Zeb at all, even in passing, than throwing that kinda thing in our faces. There is no reason to disprove it. Leaving Zeb with a slightly ambiguous relationship poses no problem. No plot hole. No loose end in desperate need of tying up. There is no reason to officially, explicitly de-canonize Kalluzeb or gay Zeb, because there is no significant woman in his life he might possibly have a solid, built-up, understandable relationship with, and because his most significant person (I would argue) is a man. I can’t say it enough. This is the test. Either we get Zorii Bliss-ed again, or Zeb gets to continue enjoying the grey space. (Because I don’t have enough faith in Filoni, the man who still has not made Ahsoka a splesbian [lesbian in space] to canonize arguably one of the most dramatic potential romances in Star Wars history. Even though Kalluzeb makes sense. Even though Kallus’s entire reformation arc is started by Zeb. Even though in his little screen time as a Rebel, it is still obviously Zeb who means the most to him out of all the Specters. Even though Zeb, who is often portrayed as being kind of rough, is much kinder and more honorable towards Kallus than he deserves, before they’re on the same side.)

In context of Mando, the same rules apply. There is no need to mention him having a wife. There isn’t any urgent need to even explicitly canonize Kalluzeb, other than the fact that Star Wars needs to improve its queer representation by leaps and bounds to get up to standards, and also that Kalluzeb makes a whole lot of sense. I am terrified of him existing in post-Rebels media because thus far, he is without Kallus, and with the way their Rebels storyline ended, there’s really no reason he should be. Kallus should be by his side.

UNLESS Kallus is A) currently enjoying retirement on Lira San, and Zeb is off-world for short periods of time every now and then but goes home to Lira San and Kallus or B) they’re saving Kallus for a moment when Kallus shows up late to whatever business he and Zeb have and we get a quiet, “hey, husband of mine” and there’s no fanfare, no Zorii Bliss situation, just two gay dudes being married and living their lives together.

This is it. This is where I find out if it’s even crossed Filoni’s mind (or the minds of other miscellaneous writers, but he really sticks to his characters) to leave our plausible couple be. This is where I find out if his viewpoint of *paraphrased* “it wasn’t my intention, but I won’t de-canonize it” (https://gizmodo.com/star-wars-rebels-producer-dave-filoni-is-totally-fine-w-1823593680) holds up if he’s going to explore characters close to Zeb (which includes Kallus) post-Rebels.

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millenialmfa · 1 month

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Bridgerton Thoughts

That literally no one asked for or cares about, but I need them out of my brain before season 3.

This will have some book spoilers, so be warned. Also, for context, I’ve watched season 1 & 2 and Queen Charlotte. I’ve read books 4, 5, and 6.

Who is season 4 about?

I think it will either be Benedict or Francesca. I think Benedict is the more obvious choice (I’ve heard murmurs that people think Sophie will be introduced this season). I also think Netflix would be aware of how upset people were initially that the show wasn’t going in book order. Also, for plot reasons for Eloise’s future season, Benedict kind of needs to be married with a kid.

However, I think it is very possible Francesca may get her season next, depending on how they handle her this season. If they have her meet and marry John this season, they could easily frame the next season around her and Michael. But honestly, whether this works or not is really going to depend on the amount of screen time she gets. I would wager most people who haven’t read the books completely forgot that she’s even a Bridgerton sibling.

Why can’t next season be Eloise’s season?

This is honestly for fully selfish reasons. Eloise’s book has been my absolute favorite so far. I LOVE her love interest (very largely in part because he has the same name and personality as my spouse). Because of this, I want them to do her story right, and I don’t think they will capture the magic of that book with the current state of Phillip and Eloise in the show.

Eloise needs a lot of character development in my opinion (not a dig at her, I’m so excited to see how she grows and I think it will be very rewarding). Maybe it’s possible that they do it all in this season, but I don’t want them to rush it. It is critical that by the time Eloise gets married, her and Pen are friends again. I will be heartbroken if they drag out the mending of this friendship for multiple seasons. Technically yes, Eloise’s wedding is literal weeks after Pen’s in the book, but I think the show writers can easily navigate this. Maybe instead of Pen’s wedding being the catalyst, it will be her pregnancy in a later season that pushes Eloise towards Phillip.

Now onto Phillip. The issue being that Marina is still alive, and his children are way too young at the moment. Could the show have Eloise be the stepmother to toddlers? Yes, but is that as rewarding? No. In the books, Eloise is the favorite aunt and has incredible experience with kids. This is what endears Phillip’s eight-(?)year-olds to her. In the show however, she doesn’t seem to particularly care either way about her nephew. Also, it’s not nearly as impressive to win over someone’s toddlers as it is to win over the absolute devil children (lovingly) that Philip has in the book.

The other issue is that in the books, Eloise has already turned down multiple marriage proposals for a variety of different reasons. What’s so fun is that these suitors’ “shortcomings” end up being massive character traits of Phillip. He is NOT perfect. He frustrates her and she frustrates him. But he is a good person. Your spouse isn’t supposed to be perfect, they are someone you choose to love because your life is better with them in it, in spite of their flaws.

Long story short for this one, I hope it’s not Eloise because I love her story so much, it would break my heart to see them do it poorly.

Season 3

I’m so freaking excited. This upcoming season is the reason I even started watching Bridgerton. I had heard about the steamy Netflix regency show, and honestly never had a huge interest…UNTIL I heard the next season would feature a love interest who is considered “plus size”. I’ve always been in the size 12-16 range, so this intrigued me. I knew I wanted to watch season 3, so I watched the show and even read 3 of the books (now I’m hooked).

I’m excited because it looks like the writers are definitely keeping some of the incredible scenes from the book, but I’m also excited about the potential differences. Especially when it comes to Lady Whistledown and the Peneloise friendship.

And speaking of friendships: I am feral with the idea that I will (hopefully) get to see Lady Danbury and Pen’s friendship on screen. Their scenes together were such a treat as I was reading, and I would give my left tit for them to keep those interactions in the show.

And of course, the music! Secretly hoping for a rendition of Unholy or Heart Attack.

The Colin discourse~

I’ll be honest, I’m a demisexual/virgin!Colin truther. I was really excited about the prospect of a male lead with no experience but a whole lotta lust. I was a little disappointed in the news that came out from the Sun article (though honestly I’ve lost the plot on whether it’s been confirmed or disproven). However, I think there’s the possibility that this could still be interesting for his character and for foreshadowing.

If he does indeed go see sex workers, who’s to say that they won’t have red hair? Or be on the curvy side 👀. Would be a fun little Easter egg to display Colin’s preferences.

As for the voyeurism … kind of interesting to me that he takes the wallflower role in the bedroom with people he’s not emotionally connected to. Kind of like Penelope preferring to watch the drama unfold from the sidelines. I think it’s an interesting parallel that shows that both leads watch others as a spectacle or show, and prefer to really connect and engage with select people. Yes, Colin is sociable and charming; but it’s superficial. He laughs and has deep conversations with Penelope almost exclusively.

It’s also possible that Colin is seeking out sex workers because he has no desires for the women he meets on his travels. Maybe he’s trying to explore why none of the women he meets give him butterflies. Perhaps he seeks out these workers because he doesn’t have to connect with them. He likes that the presence of feelings are unnecessary with them. He doesn’t have to fake his disinterest.

Ultimately, I don’t think him seeing sex workers is a sinking of his character. I think it could serve to show that the only person for him (romantically and sexually) has always been Pen. I think it’s an opportunity to show differences in how he physically engages with others vs his future wife.

And I still disappointed? Yeah, a bit. But if it’s happening, I’m gonna try to give a positive twist to it. *I want to note, i am not upset that they are sex workers. I think sex work is real work and they should be protected. I honestly prefer this to him being romantically/emotionally involved with someone. I was just really hoping he would be as inexperienced as Pen*

Future Seasons

What am I hoping to see in future seasons? I’m excited at the prospect of continued diversity within the love interest casting. As far as I know, Sophie (Benedict), John (Francesca), Michael (Francesca part 2), Lucy (Gregory), and Gareth (Hyacinth) have not been cast yet. These are all great opportunities to bring in more actors of color.

I suspect Gareth will be played by a black actor, considering in the books he is Lady Danbury’s grandson.

I would be OVER THE MOON for Michael Stirling to be played by an Asian actor. Michael is arguably one of the “hottest” most “playboy” characters of the books, and it would be nice to see this played by an Asian actor. Unfortunately, American media doesn’t often portray Asian men as the typical “hottie” or “leading man,” though it has gotten better in recent years.

I’d also love to see a Latinx actor cast as a love interest. I feel that sometimes this group gets overlooked a lot in “diversity conversations.” Though I may be projecting a bit with this one, as my boss recently said she “forgot about the Hispanic population” when talking about diversity goals. As part Puerto Rican (thought very white presenting) that still didn’t feel super great.

I saw the article recently that said Bridgerton wants to bring in more LGBTQ+ storylines in future seasons. Now, I’m a staunch advocate for each Bridgerton sibling ending up with their book love interest. BUT, how incredible would it be if those character were gender bent? Same character traits, storylines, names (example, Lucien instead of Lucy), but now a queer love story can be explored in a way that doesn’t alienate fans of the books.

I don’t think the showrunners will actually do this, as it’s more likely stories for side characters (ex: Brimsley), but it’s fun to dream about a queer couple being the front and center leads of a whole season. Especially if it’s in a way that doesn’t give people the excuse to complain that it ignores the book characters. Nope, it’s the same character, just a different gender.

#bridgerton soundtrack #bridgerton books #bridgerton #polin #colin bridgerton #eloise bridgerton #phillip crane #francesca bridgerton #benedict bridgerton

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dca-prompts · 9 months

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I just found this blog and I adore it. I have a prompt thingy I already sent anonymously to @/fnafdcaconfessions but I’m gonna repeat it here in more detail because it fits more

A crossover between several DCA AUs (like in the UTMV) and the visual novel Your Turn To Die. Basically, YTTD is about 20 people in who get kidnapped and thrown death game (but only 12 survive the First Trial and meet the rest of the cast). If you wanna check it out, it’s free. But please, check the content warnings.

My angst, crossover, and “put-that-guy-in-a-situation” obsessed brain said, “What if that, but them?” So basically imagine if several Suns, Moons, YNs, and Eclipses (both fanon and canon) get kidnapped and thrown into an interdenominational death game. (If you’re a fan of Fangans, think those crossover Fangans but different game scenario.) Maybe each one is from a different AU, or maybe it’s in groups of two or something. The reason as to why they’ve all been taken will obviously differ from YTTD for reasons I will not spoil, but I’m sure there are plenty of AUs that could have a motive for this, or you could make an AU just to act as the people running the game

I’m throwing some out of context spoilers as examples of ideas (but I’m really only saying proper nouns without explaining them so it should technically be spoiler free) along with some completely spoiler free ideas

Maybe during a Main Game Vigilante YN is the Keymaster and Sherif YN is the Sage

Cherub Sun or Moon has the skull emoji card and how they deal with that

RBFR YN doing attractions with some variant of canon/ruin Eclipse or Street Racer YN

Mob Boss Eclipse would either become the biggest thorn in everyone’s side or die very quickly no in between

Solar Lunacy/Suprrbooprr’s/any Sun, Moon or YN from a vanilla/semi/sorta-canon-compliant fic (who’d probably be the pov character) looking at all the other AUs and their anime-plots of a life

Maybe seeing a Sun and Moon who share a body interacting with ones who’ve been separated their whole lives would be interesting. Though, the same body guys would probably be separated to make the game easier and less complicated

that’s all I got rn so uh I hope you enjoyed this mess of words k bye

ㅤ

#dca prompt #(au prompt)#(reader prompt)#(crossover prompt)#dca fandom #dca au #sundrop #moondrop #fnaf eclipse #dca y/n

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operationfortune · 1 year

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Okay I know this post will gain absolutely zero traction but the more I think about it the more I want to cry about it??

slight spoilers for one of the character arcs in Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre ahead,,,

So I saw Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre in the cinema today. I was alone, it was reasonably full, the film technically only opened two days ago, and it's wider release isn't for another week, but I had time to kill and it was the only thing that piqued my interest. It sits in an interesting spot tonally, comparative, I'd say, to Netflix Exclusive Michael Bay movie 6 Underground, though to use a more recent marker I'd drop it somewhere near Bullet Train (though it's definitely much closer to 6 Underground). All this context to say that I went into this Jason Statham-lead espionage action movie with zero expectations and almost completely blind.

So please believe me when I say I was truly blindsided with joy to have canonical, casual queer representation in this Jason Statham-lead espionage action movie.

Maybe it's that I don't watch a lot of media now, but it's something I noticed while watching Glass Onion too, both with Benoit and Hugh Grant (ha, put a pin in that) and especially with the character of Peg, and it makes me a bit teary and excited when I think about it. There's something to be said for how far we've come, to the point that Casual Queer Rep is even possible. There's something about watching Peg get all flustered talking to Helen and knowing that it's because she has a crush, without it having to be flagged, spelled out, or otherwise othered by the film or its writing.

It's normalised.

Which I know shouldn't be a big deal, but right now, to me, it is. I didn't realise I could feel this way; to see a full character who just so happens to be gay, where the plot doesn't revolve around her being gay, but that part of her identity is still made clear?? I love Peg so much holy shit.

But Glass Onion is the second in a series that has established itself as a forerunner for casual diversity. Let me tell you about how Operation Fortune made me want to YELL in theatres.

It's the 8th of January, and it might be a bit early to call it, but Danny Francesco might be my favourite character of the year.

Is he perfect? God no, he's objectively not a great person; he's sleeping with his sister-in-law, he's a Hollywood diva, he's demanding, and he (spoilers, seriously) ends up engaged to a war criminal. Who happens to be the main antagonist. Who happens to be Hugh Grant. Danny is the light of my life, however, and I love him with my whole heart.

So in the beginning we're told that Danny turned down $10m because he didn't want to jump out of Greg (Hugh Grant)'s cake and sing Happy Birthday; whatever, I thought, Greg is a rich, eccentric with an obsession with celebrities, and Danny is the biggest star right now, I shouldn't read anything into it because Sometimes Rich People Just Do Things For Status Reasons. We're also told, and subsequently shown, Greg tries to take celebrity's partners/girlfriends. Cue Sarah (Aubrey Plaza) in a bright red dress that I will dream about for the next month.

Also, in the scene where Danny, Sarah, and Orson (Jason Statham) are joining the fancy party, there's some distinctly fruity vibes between the three of them, but I'm not here to push my Orson/Sarah/Danny polycule agenda, just know that I have one.

So obviously Greg is excited to see Danny, but later makes a Very Distinct Pass at Sarah, inviting both her and Danny to stay with him for the weekend, with an implied Wink Wink Nudge Nudge.

While they end up taking him up on that offer, Danny, who started the film having refused Greg's Rich Weirdo Request, and now having to spend time with him for the job, finds that he actually genuinely likes Greg, who appears to genuinely like him back, doting on him, even giving him gifts.

When Danny says to Sarah "(I'm paraphrasing, about Greg) he's really into you! If you don't take him up on his offer then I might!" my eyeballs were Out Of My Head. Like sure it sounds like a joke that would be written in to simply highlight Danny's materialism, a whole 'gay for pay' joke, something about his vanity, or even just an offhand joke that I might hear one of my straight friends who were super comfortable and confident in their sexuality say about their best friends, I was So primed for this to be something that the audience could laugh off or dismiss in hindsight. Like in my mind that solidified my headcanon of Danny as bi, but I was so used to queerbaiting and years of being told I was reading into things.

So as the plot continues, Danny's fondness for Greg goes on, turns into something incredibly genuine, and looking back, he clearly has a hero-worship crush on Greg by the end of the film.

The last shot we see of Danny and Greg is the pair of them getting into an elevator after Greg pulls a stone cold power move on the films secondary antagonists, which he had Danny assist with for flare after Danny asked specifically to stay with him for that event. In the elevator, Danny tells Greg that that was "the coolest thing he's ever seen someone do" and that's the last we physically see of them.

HOWEVER!! THE ICING!! THE CHERRY!!

At the very end of the film, one of the protagonists mentions how he's gone into the film industry, and the response he gets is;

"You better not be talking about Danny Francesco and his fiancee Greg Simmonds!"

an accurate depiction of me as the credits began to roll;

WE WIN THESE!!

BOTH DANNY AND GREG ARE CANONICALLY BI/PAN IN THIS JASON STATHAM-LEAD ESPIONAGE ACTION MOVIE IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2023!! THEY BOTH LIVE UNTIL THE END!! THEY'RE ENGAGED!! THEY'RE BOTH ABSOLUTE DISASTERS!! THEY'RE BOTH FULL, ROUNDED CHARACTERS WHO HAPPEN TO BE QUEER!!

I get choked up thinking about it now, considering how quietly overwhelmed I felt in the theatre realising that Danny and Greg's comments and moments throughout the film weren't some elaborate joke, the dialogue that reminds me of my friends, the moments that felt true to my life as a queer person, they werent the setup for any kind of homophobic mixup, miscommunication, or microaggression; no, I finally, actually felt like I saw a part of myself, of my community represented in media.

Everyone in that movie is terrible in their own way, but Danny and Greg just happened to be terrible people who are also queer. Are they perfect representation? No! Thank fuck! I think we deserve more dumbass, disaster, unethical queers in media.

Even if I don't necessarily recommend this movie (it's pretty okay if you're a fan of the genre I suppose), I subjectively love it and especially it's characters, with my whole entire heart.

Danny Francesco is canonically a dumbass, bi disaster who fell for his sugar daddy, war criminal Hugh Grant. Good for him. It's what he deserves. 🥰🥰🥰

#operation fortune ruse de guerre #operation fortune #ruse de guerre #danny francesco #greg simmonds #hugh grant #greg x danny #danny operation fortune #greg operation fortune #josh hartnett #knives out #knives out glass onion #glass onion #peg glass onion #peg knives out #lgbtq #lgbt #lgbtqplus #fortunate ops

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adarkrainbow · 7 months

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Spooky season fairytales (7)

And finally, my last "spooky season" post! With seven posts of movie (and series and books) recommandations, plus additional reblogs, you'll have plenty on your plate for this Halloween!

And for this final post, I will go into the world of horror movies. I am here speaking of pure horror movies - not fairytale movies, not dark fantasy movies... BUT! Horror movies that were inspired by or heavily references fairytales.

Let us begin with a classic of classics when it comes to fairytale horror:

The Night of the Hunter, the 1955 classic movie. While technically not a horror movie per se, as many call it a "thriller" or a "film noir", it is very close to the horror world, and it heavily draws from fairytales!

Everybody knows by now the plot of this famous masterpiece. Black-and-white, heavily drawing from the silent movie era, "The Night of the Hunter" tells the story of how a dangerous serial-killer pretending to be a preacher worms his way into the household of a widow and her two children, hoping to find the money the deceased husband had hidden... As he kills the mother, the two children have to escape his clutches and wander throughout the American countryside in search of a new hope, while being hunted down by the evil figure...

When Charles Laughton decided to adapt the novel this movie was based off, he called it a "nightmarish mother Goose story". And, faithful to this description, he made sure his movie would be a dark Mother Goose fairytale. A tragic family drama forcing children to flee through the wilderness... Young ones fleeing from their wicked step-father, and seeking comfort in a kind grandmother-figure... A dark story filled with threats and creepy sights that ultimately ends well... Most significantly, the antagonist of the story, Harry Powell, played by Robert Mitchum, is actually designed to be the fusion of all three most famous male antagonists in Perrault's fairytales.

As a sinister serial killer who murders his new wife in a story about greed, he is Bluebeard. As a monstrous father-figure who hunts down two children across the wilderness to kill them, he is the Ogre. And finally, he is the Big Bad Wolf - but in this case the references are more to the early 20th century cartoons involving the character, since some of the mannerism of the villain, coupled with dark-humor slapstick scenes, clearly evoke the cartoonish Big Bad Wolf one can see in pieces such as Disney's Little Pigs cartoons.

Overall, this movie would be best described as a "realistic take on Perrault's fairytales". Remove the magic and the intemporal nature, and you've got this story.

Psycho, the 1960 classic of Hitchcock, also deserves to be on this list. Just like "The Night of the Hunter", it is another black-and-white, stylized thriller-movie about a serial killer, adapted from a novel it overshadowed. But whereas Night of the Hunter was purposefully designed as a fairytale, Psycho has little to do with it.

So why is Psycho on this list? Because while it wasn't designed as a fairytale piece, it ended up being a "fairytale horror movie". You see, many before me have pointed it out and analyzed it, but "Psycho" reuses a setting, a plot and characters that are eerily similar if not completely parallel to fairytales. The most notorious example is that Psycho is usually called a "modern Bluebeard". Indeed, we are yet again dealing with a male figure murdering women in the context of romantic/erotic relationships, and a forbidden room (well, a forbidden house) hiding a female corpse... [Note: Given Psycho's huge success, I do not think I need to put spoilers warnings]. In a lesser way, Psycho can also be read as a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. A charming male figure seemingly harmless and playful charms women... only for them to end up being murdered. The erotic undertones and the fact the male murderer little dresses as an old woman accentuates the Little Red Riding Hood parallels.

But more generally, one can tie up this movie with a lot of fairytales that all share the similar canvas of - the seemingly sweet young man is a murderer killing women (for example Grimm's The Robber Bridegroom, which also has an elderly mother-ifugre), or the mother-in-law is a deadly antagonist (the second part of Sleeping Beauty where the prince's ogress-mother wants to kill Sleeping Beauty).

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre sees us leave the world of more "quiet" and "suggestive" black and white movie for the gritty, disturbing, repulsive and yet morbidly poetic and nightmarishly oniric world of... what stood between the slasher-to-be-coded and the redneck-horror-yet-to-be-created.

Did you know that this movie began as a Hansel and Gretel project? Oh yes! It all started out with a project to make a movie out of Hansel and Gretel, a dark and adult movie. As this project was settled, the influence of "Night of the Living Dead" reshaped the creation, and an attempt at re-creating the feeling of this movie was worked on... Then it was just a question of adding disturbing real-life facts, from the social rot of the Rust Belt to the life of Ed Gein, and you've got this classic of horror. The Hansel and Gretel origins of the movie still remain - the heavy topics of food and cannibalism, the treatment of young adults as cattle, teenagers being lured into the depths of the woods to a seemingly peaceful but in fact deadly house... You can also read in it a dark retelling of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears". Youth enters an unknown house uninvited and must flee when the three beasts that inhabit it come home... Except the beasts are here human serial-killers.

But the thing that should be highlighted with this movie is that... Despite being a disturbingly realistic piece with no actual magic or fantasy in it - it is the story of disturbed, mentally-ill serial killers in the depths of the dying American South - this movie has something magical to it. Or maybe "eldritchian". Most people agree that this is an actual Southern Gothic movie, and there was a fascinating video essay on Youtube about the cosmic horror aspect of this movie, and some would even classify it as a "folk-horror" piece... And there's a reason to all that.

Once again, this is probably due to the original direction of the movie as an "Hansel and Gretel" story, but despite being a "realistic" piece, the movie makes itself oniric and unreal. It uses very simplified and thus symbolic presentations and framings of the world that evoke this dark fairytale feeling - the clear cut between night and day, the unfolding of the story between a sunset and a sunrise, the limited locations that are the road - the house - the woods. There is a true "passage into the Otherworld" as the characters leave the sane, rational, civilized and human side of Texas to enter the disturbed, insane, monstrous and nocturnal domain of the antagonists, where very human taboo is systematically broken. There is something very Lovecraftian in the madness and degenerescence presented here by the murderous family, which adds to the "cosmic horror/eldritch horror" feeling when you consider the ritualistic way the various murder and grave-robbings are performed, and the extremes nature imposes on the character (scorching hot sun, pitch-black night), and the astrological foreshadowings...

Finally, the antagonists themselves are just fairytale monsters. They are modern ogres, human yet monstrous dwellers of the desert woods, beast-like man-eaters all too disturbingly human. They are the robbers killing and eating people in the woods from the Robber Bridegroom. And while they are "realistic", as in they are just insane and (possibly) inbred serial-killers, there is so much mystery left around them that they become almost supernatural. We never know their names. We never know their exact relationships to one another. We never exactly know where they came from and how they came to be as such. Just like the monstrous families of trolls and giants in fairytales, they just happen to be here, and are just known by their role. And of course, the presence of the vampiric impossibly-still-alive grandpa adds the final touch to the nightmare that truly breaks off from reality into the full uncanny valley of the fantastic in its literary sense.

Two for the price of one! Dario Argento's duology of "Suspiria" and "Inferno". (Yes there is a third movie forming a trilogy, "Mother of Tears" or "The Third Mother", but we will NOT talk about it).

These movies are staples of Italian horror, of the supernatural side of the giallo genre, and of witch horror movies in general. Suspiria is now a well known classic : a young American girl gets enroled into a German dancing school, but strange events, mysterious disappearances and gruesome murders led her to invastigate strange, eerie and oniric conspiracies - with the final twist (now what the movie is famous for) being that a witch coven is located in the school and killing people in their occult rites. Inferno, the sequel, deepens the mythology brought in Suspiria: after his sister mysteriously disappears in a New-York building, a young man comes to investigate the reason she was so afraid recently. A book about the existence of three evil witches hiding their dark magic within three different buildings - and the one the young man's sister lived in might have been one of those buildings...

These two movies follow the typical codes of the giallo (bloody murders with intentionally-unrealistic effects perpetuated by masked assaillants with a whodunnit structure), while having Argento's typical touch (the use of unnatural red, blue, green and yellow lights giving the whole movie a surrealistic and oniric tone, very unique soundtrack choices), and ultimately delve into occult and esoteric horror as they are filled with a web of evil witches, human sacrifices, deadly curses and terrifying undeads, all inspired by the Three Mothers invented by Thomas de Quincey.

However another very important if not fundamental aspect of Suspiria should not be ignored: it is a Snow-White movie. One thing that tends to confuse people when watching Suspiria is why women in their 20s such as the protagonists are acting extremely childish. The answer: they were supposed to be children. The movie was originally written to have a child protagonist, and all the students in the dance school being children - but since the murder of children as a no-no in 70s Italy, it was decided to make them adult... However Argento wanted to make a horror version of Snow-White, about an old witch targetting and murdering young girls to gain more power. So what he did was keep the original dialogues, and then create a strange set where everything was of the wrong size - too great, too tall, too big, with for examples door handles at the level of people's chests rather than hands - to have the adult protagonist look and feel like a child inside this strange academy. More obviously, Argento heavily references Disney's Snow-White in his movie - from the use of heavily saturated colors and of extremely unique, colorful, almost surreal architecture, to the presence of a neon-glass peacock in the witch's lair designed after the peacock motif of Disney's Evil Queen.

Inferno, the sequel, as a continuation of Suspiria, also has a basis and roots in a fairytale - this time Hansel and Gretel. But the references are more sparse and trivial than in Suspiria, where the fairytale theme was very present. You have a sister and a brother lured into a witch's house ; it is strongly implied if not outright confirmed that the witch's coven are cannibals ; and the movie ends up with the witch burning down. But beyond that, Argento wanted to focus much more on the "Three Mothers" mythology than to make a true fairytal rewriting.

[A warning: if you want to watch Inferno there are depictions of animal abuse. So be warned, it isn't for animal-lovers. Well the guy who performs the animal abuse gets brutally murder as a consequence, but still.]

"The Shining" is one of my favorite horror stories, and I am the first to admit it isn't a fairytale story at all. It is a familial tragedy about alcohlism, isolation and domestic abuse, interwoven with the supernatural story of a little kid with powerful psychic abilities being targetted by the ghosts and demonic entities inhabiting an hotel symbolizing all that was corrupted and wrong with upper-class 20th century USA... And the movie is certainly one of the best horror movies of the second half of the 20th century.

But there is something in Stanley Kubrick's movie that is not present in Stephen King's novel. Or rather it is present in just a few lines of the entire novel, and Kubrick had the great idea of expanding it as a recurring underlying, secondary theme... Fairytale references.

People have already written articles about it, but Stanley Kubrick decided to insist and even add fairytale references across his movie, so that, when you decide to look at the story under a certain angle, you realize there is a "dark fairytale" undertone to it. Of course, the famous behavior of insane-Jack as the Big Bad Wolf from the Three Little Pigs, with explicit references, comes to mind. But there's also the fact that The Shining is a familial tragedy about a parent figure becoming a monstrous threat - something very common of fairytales. The supernatural notably acting by having warning messages coming from nowhere and previous victims appear to the future ones recall of how in fairytales involving murderers (like Bluebeard variants, or The Robber Bridegroom, and other variants) there will always be disembodied voices, or ghost of previous victims, or talking trees warning the protagonist. And the line of Wendy evoking "breadcrumbs" to find her way through the kitchen is working with numerous other elements of the story: the labyrinthic Overlook Hotel works as the forest in which children or girls get lost ; there is the same clear rich vs poor plenty vs hunger dichotomy as in Hansel and Gretel, the woman in room 217 has been compared to a fairytale witch, and some even pointed out that the strange decoration of the Overlook rooms can evoke whimsical candy-buildings.

Of course, the movie also offers clear subversions of typical fairytale tropes - a wicked father figure rather than the wicked mother ; or how the benevolent helper called in the role of the typical "Woodsman" actually completely fails...

So, while not intended as a horror-fairytale, Kubrick's The Shining is a great horror movie which happens to have an underlying fairytale angle you can read the movie under.

And let us conclude with... The Visit! Another movie by the very controversial M. Night Shyamalan, who produces among the best and worst movies we saw recently.

I haven't watched The Visit yet, though I plan to - but I have to include this because of how obvous the fairytale references and the fairytale theme is. Two children at sent by their mother to live with their estrange grandparents. The grandparents are nice and kind, though a bit strange, with bizarre rules and a possible start of dementia. However, the longer they stay there, the more the children start noticing a much more disturbing and dangerous behavior from their grandparents...

This movie is basically a real-life take on two fairytales intertwined together - Hansel and Gretel (with explicit references such as the grandmother asking the children to climb inside the oven to clean it) and Little Red Riding Hood (the same feeling of arriving at your grandmother's house only to realize there is something WRONG with your grandmother). And the whole thing comes with a final twist that actually clearly set this movie in the line of so many American urban legends such as "The killer on the backseat", "The old woman with hairy legs" or "The clown statue".

Ad what's a urban legend if not a modern-day fairytale? Or rather a modern day orror fairytale...

#spooky season fairytales #spooky season #fairytale horror #horror movies #dark fairytales #suspiria #inferno #texas chainsaw massacre #the visit #shining #the night of the hunter #psycho

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cbrownjc · 1 year

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Minor sidenote but re: the scene where Daniel requested the pages from Claudia's diary and then Louis did that to his Parkinsons, I don't think that it was absolutely necessary for Louis to have told him in detail what the content of the pages is within the context of episode 5 alone. I can understand people being upset over Daniel requesting them and the overall meaning of him not technically trusting Louis' word on it. However, even before episode 7, I still didn't agree with Louis's point about not exploiting Claudia when it came to those pages. Particularly because even with those pages torn out and her assault being only mentioned in passing but not explained in detail, he's still giving her diaries to a man that Claudia never knew, putting them in as material for a book that would be published to an audience that Claudia has never technically agreed to. We saw how private she was about her diaries and how offended she was that both Louis and Lestat breached her privacy by reading them, how would she feel about this random human guy who never met her in person getting to use them to write material that LOUIS wants, but not her? That would still be him exploiting her own words for something he wants, but not something she's possibly ever wanted. Even if Claudia gives Louis permission to have the diaries and do whatever with them in s2 (which I highly doubt), he still took to tearing out pages that weren't just about a sensitive subject relating to her, rather something that was also sensitive to him (specifically the taken out pages mentioned in episode 7)

Hey Anon,

You've basically summed up the larger overall issue about the diaries, which is we don't know - and it's highly doubtful - that Claudia gave consent for her diaries to be shared at all, especially in this way.

As you say, we saw how hurt and angry she was when she found out Lestat and Louis had read her diary. It's hard to think she'd be in any way okay with Daniel reading them in this way to be used for a book. Hell, it's even clear that Armand has read them as well.

And yes, along with that, pages aren't just being ripped out wrt subjects sensitive to Claudia but to Louis himself as well.

So just sharing the diaries in and of themselves is kinda exploitative and it being done at all is likely something Claudia herself would have never agreed to, along with the ripping out of pages from them.

Spoilers for the ITWV Book and Possibly Season 2 Below:

Of course, the idea of consenting for the diaries to be shared at all comes down to if Claudia is still alive at all, which I really do not think she is. The show has changed some things, but not things that are major plot points. It's only the getting to those major plot points that have been changed.

And Claudia's death is one of the biggest plot points in the whole IWTV story. It's one of the biggest hearts of the tragedy of the story.

So I do think Claudia is dead. And this makes the sharing of the diaries an issue of should stuff like this be shared posthumously or not, especially if the person who kept the diary gave zero consent about it.

And that's not a question I really feel I have an answer for.

As someone in the notes of the other post I made about this said -and reminded me of - Anne Frank's diaries were edited by her father. Not that that should be completely compatible with this at all (even if Daniel did make the comparison himself).

But posthumously published diaries being edited by family members has been something that has been done, and it's usually for the benefit of making the family, or whomever, look better, as well as sometimes the person who wrote the diary as well (if the family wants to hide something about them).

I think the answer to the question of if Claudia gave content for her diaries to be shared in this way is probably "no." Because, if we go by the books, then while I'm sure she knew Armand wanted her out of the way/dead, she probably wasn't resigned to her death or anything. She was instead making plans to get a new companion and leave Paris. Meaning she would have taken her diaries with her.

I don't, in any way, think she was going to leave them with Louis. Or give him any kind of permission to share them with people. Particularly with Armand, let alone Daniel.

#Claudia #louis de pointe du lac #Armand #Daniel Molloy #Daniel Malloy #Interview with the Vampire #amc iwtv #iwtv #ask #ask and answer #meta #book spoilers #iwtv season 2

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cto10121 · 1 year

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R&J Clown Takes Special Edition (+ Shakespeare Clownery)—My & Juliet Angst Is Killing Me

The Folgers alas stooped to interviewing the ~geniuses behind the jukebox musical & Juliet, and so of course they got to air out both their R&J and their Shakespeare clownery for the whole Internet, the finest meat for my clown-eatery. We feast tonight! Spoilers, of course

R&J Hate Dumb

Romeo is many things, but shallow isn’t one of them. If he or Juliet were, their love affair would have been over when they first found out they were each other’s enemy. There is only one thing shallow about Shakespeare’s play and that is Veronian society itself, deliberately depicted as such.

These knuckleheads then go on to reference Romeo bro-ing with his bros as “proof” of this. Never mind that Mercutio and Benvolio weren’t supposed to know about R&J’s relationship, no one could, so Romeo getting them off his tail and being normal can be in no way performative. Juliet has her Nurse on the know so she doesn’t have to perform either. And again, she has to make sure her parents aren’t on her tail. Even then, though, she makes sure not to lie (technically).

The only point where either Romeo and Juliet can be said to be in any way performative is Romeo’s “love” for Rosaline and Juliet having to come up with a diplomatic response to her mother and nurse on the question of marriage.

“Older pair of lovers” with “Teenage Dream” with nightingale and lark rip-off…it’s giving unintentional parody. It’s giving “no thoughts, head empty.”

Romeo “I killed myself for my true love and honored my rival’s dying request to be lain with her because of course that is perfectly logical to me” Montague, an ego?????? This is arguably worse than Fey!Romeo. What is with modern musicals and their insistence that every single male love interest/character be a huge egotistical dick?

Shakespeare Hate Dumb

Because of course a small town 16th century SAHM who ran a merchant house and stored 800 bushels of malt for ale would be more ~progressive about gender and social issues than a classics-educated theater actor and writer who traveled England and wrote genderbending social comedies and whose sonnets are frequently interpreted as bierotic. Because men smart, woman smarter, always!!! No thoughts, head empty!!!!

Die (Reprise, andante con grande emozione).

Also, Something Rotten called, they’re suing you for copyright infrigement. Is this Shakespeare going to complain about how it’s hard to be the bard too? Seriously, wtf?

Okay, so Tumblr won’t let me add in another screenshot, but I have to talk about the fact that these numbskulls straight up confessed they wanted to do a Max Martin musical (per producer diktat) and came up with the R&J plot afterward because, and I kid you not…most of Martin’s songs are about young teen love. 😑 Yeah, dude, like 95% of all pop music ever since the Beatles.

Also, also, not all songs about young teen love necessarily fit R&J!!! From what I can tell, the songs they chose have little to no relevance to the characters or dynamic at all, hence this new fanfic plot. And judging by the excerpts, I don’t think they even bothered changing the lyrics to fit the new context. They really should have just changed the names à la West Side Story, but they definitely knew the show wouldn’t have sold as well without the tie-in. It just pisses me off, this consistent disrespect for the source material all the while exploiting it for profit.

Bonus: Very ~Apropos Song Lyrics

Because of course these lyrics about a breakup completely fit a girl who just found her love dead beside her, having committed suicide. 🙃 No thoughts, head empty

#romeo and juliet #romeo hate dumb #rj clown takes #r&j clown takes #rj clownery #& juliet #the more i learn about this musical the more horrified i become #it looks like a trainwreck #perhaps an entertaining one but still #and my poor will/anne is a casualty #r&j alas i’m resigned to the inevitable slaughter #but they had to drag my lovers of stratford too

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killdeercheer · 1 year

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Studio Ghibli Reviews: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

I know I know this film was technically made before the founding of Studio Ghibli, but it's now currently sold under that umbrella so it also technically counts as a Ghibli film, so there.

Nausicaä started life as a serialized manga for the magazine Animage by Hayao Miyazaki himself and his involvement in the animated adaptation was only on the table if he could direct. Having just come off his first directing role on Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (a very fine action film I can't recommend enough), Nausicaä would prove particularly challenging for Miyazaki as he had barely moved his manga along story-wise. But, even so, the film was completed and went on to become an enormous Ohm-sized success, especially as the funds received helped found Miyazaki's own animation studio, Studio Ghibli.

Plot: Set in a post-apocalyptic future after a fabled "Seven Days of Fire" in which humans bioengineered giant-warriors who spewed nuclear weapons, the namesake Nausicaä is the princess of the peaceful and secluded Valley of the Wind. This is one of the last strongholds of human society, as the rest of the world is being consumed by a "toxic jungle" of poisonous sporophyte-plants and ferocious arthropods. The remaining nations frequently fight amongst each other, and one of these, Tolmekia, accidently crashes their ship into the Valley and reveals their acquisition of one of the long-dormant giant-warriors. Nausicaä must navigate the increasingly-bitter struggle between the Tolmekians (who desire to use the warrior to destroy the jungle and bring humanity back from the brink), the Pejites (another kingdom caught in the conflict with similar goals), her own kingdom (who just wishes to live in peace), and her pacifist, naturalist persona.

- this review will be mainly spoiler-free -

Right away, I will admit to being slightly biased in this review as this is my favorite of the Ghibli films (hence why I chose to discuss it first). It was also very influential as - while I had been aware of and seen several Studio Ghibli films - this was the one that really kickstarted my (almost excessive) interest in their output and history, having been entranced by their storytelling formulas, animation, themes, and complex characters. Nausicaä also hit a lot of chords with me, being a film with strong environmental themes that include a crucial lesson on the need for recognition of humans as a part of nature that must coexist with other organisms if they are to survive.

At its core, Nausicaä is a film about pacifism, and how ultimately fruitless violence is. It is the creation and use of enormous biological-weapons which destroys global human society and the environment; it is the conquering-practices of the Tolmekians which leads to the deaths of many of their people as well as their enemies; and so on. Nausicaä herself abhors violence, choosing instead to use nonviolent methods to achieve peaceful ends. However, even she is not immune, and in one scene (following an emotional reaction to the death of a family member) she proceeds to wipe out several soldiers, realizing "I didn't know my rage could drive me to kill." This action almost causes great troubles for the kingdom. I have my own complex thoughts on the meaning and effectiveness of nonviolent vs. violent methods in certain situations, but in the spirit of the themes which Miyazaki explores in his films and in the context of the plot, I feel that Nausicaä does a fair job at showing how unnecessary thoughtless violence can be.

Either way, the film presents a good textbook-example of how out-of-control wartime struggles are. The kingdoms of Tolmekia and Pejite are never shown, but based on the actions and comments of their citizens, these are communities starved for times of plenty and always at the mercy of a toxic jungle they wish would vanish. Contrast this with the Valley of the Wind, whose position by the windy sea prevents the spores of the jungle from spreading (hence their name), allowing the people to grow crops and survive with relative security even with the jungle on its doorstep. Throw these nations together and conflict could not be far behind, presenting an increasing dreadfulness that ends the film in a spectacular climax.

The cast of the film - like the majority of Studio Ghibli films - is full of wonderful characters. Nausicaä is a remarkable and charming hero; her passion for nature and for her people is admirable, and every time she flies on her glider (called a mehve in production material) I can't help but want to soar with her. Curiously, she seems to be the only lead-role in the film, with the rest of the cast coming in-and-out of the film at various times, only when they're needed. As much as I love these characters, the more I think about it, the more I realize that most lack the complexity of later Ghibli casts. Our antagonists, Princess Kushana of Tolmekia and her second-in-command Kurotowa, are more traditional villains for a Ghibli film, serving as conquerors leading a ruthless army and seeking their goals no matter what. Nausicaä's allies include Prince Asbel, a scrapping fly-boy whose main role is escorting her to Pejite and revealing his people's horrid plans for the Valley, and Uncle Mito, who helps Nausicaä return to the Valley following her journey. Lord Yupa is probably the highlight of the film, being a master swordsman who only uses his skills when necessary. But, for all intents-and-purposes, this is Nausicaä's story.

Commenting on the English dub for a moment (as this is how I know the film), I really love the voicework and casting choices. I adore Alison Lohman as Nausicaä, who brings a vibrant, youthful air to the character. Uma Thurman as Kushana, an actor who I know mainly from the PBS nature documentaries she narrates, plays a good villain with an air of prideful authority (almost a parallel to Nausicaä). Patrick Stewart is Yupa and, as always, kills the performance. Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf is Asbel, and I enjoy his role mainly due to my nostalgia (he would have finished filming Holes not long before the English dub was recorded). Chris Sarandon (Kurotowa) & Edward James Olmos (Mito), I also enjoy for their distinct voices that are absolutely perfect for their characters.

I could say much about the worldbuilding. The toxic jungle has the air of a haunted Carboniferous forest and though we only get to explore it twice in the film, it's enough to sell me on its mystery and danger. The arthropods (called insects in the film) are particularly fascinating, with the giant Ohm (a cross between a pill-bug, a grub, and a spider) taking center stage. They are implied to have highly complex cognition and I find they behave like African elephants, herding and caring for their young while communicating messages through non-verbal means. The other arthropod designs are mainly good, although some play a bit fast and loose with the anatomy for my tastes (for example, some have reptilian jaws). The rest of the planet, scarred by the Seven Days of Fire, is desolate and bleak, enough to make even the toxic jungle seem like a refuge. Of course, its important role in the story becomes apparent halfway through. The human settlements are curious as well, bearing a mix of modern and medieval elements that make for a neat combination.

Although it is not addressed in the film, according to the manga, the other animals in the film (including Teto, a "fox squirrel" companion to Nausicaä whose more like a small carnivoran, and Yupa's giant Gastornis-like riding-birds) are supposed to be genetically-engineered as well, but personally I prefer to see them as natural elements in the world of Nausicaä.

For a film that is over 2 hours long, I feel Nausicaä has very good set-up and pacing. The intro effortlessly establishes the situation of the world, including a beautiful sequence of medieval-mosaics where the backstory is laid out without words. Several scenes flesh out the characters and stakes without much explanation, which is excellent considering the English dubs often require characters practically telling the audience what's happening on screen. Even though there are some scenes that can drag on a bit, in terms of their contrast with the action scenes, they are a welcome reprieve. They are made all the better by the score, which is a delightfully weird mix of 80s synth and more typical orchestration. Joe Hisaishi is the legendary conductor for the Ghibli films and his main theme for Nausicaä is necessarily enchanting and grand for a film of this type. I always get goose-bumps listening to it.

Overall, everything in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is big. The scope of the world, the conflict, and the overarching themes. Every time I watch this film I get sucked into the story, which is a running theme with all the Ghibli films I've watched. But in terms of favorites, Nausicaä remains #1 in my book. It's a great film with an inspiring main-lead that paved the way for Studio Ghibli and many other projects by others around the world. You can't pass it up.

Speaking of books, for the record, I have read the original manga. It's excellent, a tour-de-force of literary storytelling... but, it does significantly detract from the story of the film to the point where they are two-different versions. Don't get me wrong, it does expand the world-building and add more characters, but I didn't care for some of the decisions made and the fates of some of the characters left me feeling down, so I do much prefer the film. But that's just me.

I hope y'all enjoyed this slighly-rambling review. I thought I'd try something new for a change and help bring my attention back to this tumblr blog. Expect more of these, for as long as my Studio Ghibli hyper-fixation keeps up XD

#Studio Ghibli Reviews #Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

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film-in-my-soul · 2 years

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Review: My Engineer (2020)

My Engineer

Region: Thailand

Approx. Runtime: 11h:43m:44s (14 eps.)

Viewing Source: YouTube

Summary: When Bohn, the popular engineering student, starts a revenge plan on Duen, the innocent first-year medical student, their feelings slowly start to grow through roses that Duen has to buy for Bohn every day for a month.

Overall Opinion: In terms of Thai BLs, My Engineer falls in line with the masses as your typical college romance starring one engineering student and one non-engineering student where the main couple starts off with some animosity for one another until it inevitably shifts into romance. That being said, what really sets this show apart from the others is the side couples. I know the standard joke for Thai BLs is that the side pair is always more interesting than the main pair, and I’m not normally one to agree, however, in My Engineer’s case, that is 100% correct. The two side couples, are for me, what saves the show and elevates it above where it might land otherwise. My Engineer is probably one of my favorite slice-of-life style BLs that I think, if you can make it through the trope-heavy and paint-by-numbers elements of the main couple, anyone can find themselves thoroughly enjoying.

Technical Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Personal Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

(See under the cut for a deeper analysis of character/plot/technical aspects. Beware of possible spoilers.)

Main Characters:

Bohn:

Bohn is your standard slightly egotistical trouble-making popular boy who is very full of himself and needs a good dose of humility to even his attitude out. He’s a bit of a spoiled kid and not above using manipulation to get what he wants. We see that very clearly in episode 1. It’s only really later in the show after he’s been rebuffed and denied by Deun multiple times that he seems to try a bit harder to not be such a child but it doesn’t feel completely earned because we know it’s all in an attempt to get and keep Deun appeased. He’s not a bad character or a bad guy, but he’s not someone with a lot of depth. I think until we see Bohn outside of the context of his relationship with Deun he’ll always fall a little flat for me. I will say that he has these moments of sincerity, like after saving Deun's sister and attempting to get Deun the book he needs for his paper, which I appreciate because it saves his character from seeming entirely self-serving.

Deun:

Deun is a character I think some people could misunderstand as being a weaker character at face value, but from the get, we are presented with a character who legitimately holds nearly all the power in his relationship and interactions with Bohn, outside the initial bet that is. From the moment he punches Bohn in the nose, Deun rejects him, has him complete multiple challenges, and really doesn’t try all that hard to get his friends to stop from setting him through the four tasks later in the show. However, I think what makes him more interesting than Bohn is that we have a better understanding of where those choices and actions come from. Particularly I think Deun’s relationship with his father and wanting to keep his father happy is what motivates a lot of his choices and also presents him as a character who holds himself back, especially when it comes to accepting Bohn’s feelings for him.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Side Characters:

Mek:

Mek is one of my favorite characters, possibly because I think that Ryan plays him so well. He embodies the pinning best friend with his silent acceptance of Boss giving attention to Fon and the choice he makes that he’d rather have Boss as a friend and never reveal his feelings rather than risk losing Boss at all is played very close to the chest. I think most of us have been in a similar situation in our lives and that makes Mek’s character in my opinion one of the most relatable in the show. He is also a character who constantly makes sacrifices for Boss’s perceived happiness and I think it just adds to his character when he has those silent moments of watching as Boss gets further and further from him, often with his own help. It makes the conclusion of them getting together all the sweeter, especially when until the very end he was willing to put Boss first no matter what.

Boss:

Boss is a simple character. He doesn’t have as much depth as Mek, but there are little moments where you are left wondering, before the reveal, if he is also in love with his best friend. I think the explanation in this questioning is that Boss is a character who is always looking to be in the spotlight, to be noticed, and I think that stems from his belief that Mek doesn’t feel or see him the same way (that he's even inferior to Mek), so he’s looking for that attention he craves anywhere he can, but is always coming up a bit short. Then Fon comes along and validates those feelings he’s been looking for but ultimately isn’t willing to put him first like Mek always is. While Boss doesn’t stand apart as a character on his own, when he's mirroring Mek in their relationship he’s a strong contender because he leaves the audience wondering like he often leaves Mek wondering if he’s in love with the other or not.

Ram:

Ram is a character who says little but expresses himself rather well. Now, part of this is because, to my knowledge, at the time Perth was still in the process of learning Thai and the character has very little in way of dialogue, but regardless, the effect of Ram’s silent communication adds a layer of mystery to his character that only helps in the scenes where he’s left having to show his emotions. For instance, after confronting his father's affair and leaning on King for comfort the moment has so much more impact because he’s showing rather than telling, as well as at the end of the season when he’s having to confront King and deal with the fall out of the other boy’s confession. Ram is a character whose strength comes from a silent understanding where it’s not that he doesn’t speak because he doesn’t like to but more that he speaks only when there are important things to say. Actions over words is Ram in a nutshell and Perth plays that exceptionally well.

King:

King is a much subtler character, out of everyone in the cast he and Ram are seemingly the most mature and therefore he is a more cautious person with his feelings. He has a strange duality of feeling open and bright but also internalizing so much. This is most notable in the last few episodes while he’s dealing with his head wound, simultaneously wanting to be around Ram but then pushing the other boy away when Ram tries to help. He feels like someone who can’t or simply won’t rely on others and would rather be seen as the dependable one than someone who needs assistance. Unfortunately we mostly have to view King through his interactions with Ram and are given more context clues to his character rather than able to draw concrete character traits about him.

Frong:

Frong, at the start of the show, is mostly relegated to Bohn’s love rival but I was glad to see that he was given a bit more to work with towards the end of the series with his sick mother side plot and the budding relationship between him and Thara. Unfortunately, because of lack of screen time, we’re not given much to dive into with him. We know that he’s popular at the school and that he cares about his remaining family deeply, due to the loss of his father, so I’m left to wonder towards the end if his growing affection for Thara isn’t out of some kind of thankfulness for the help and treatment he provided for his mother.

Thara:

Thara is another character that didn’t get much screen time. Through all the interactions with him, we know that he’s a kind person who wants to see others happy but we don’t know if that’s necessarily at the expense of himself as we never truly see him struggle. He’s also a little kookie with his pet lizard. He’s an oddball who seems a bit disconnected from the way others might feel about him and I’m interested to see how his character could be explored more in season 2.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Story/Plot:

(Because for BLs the plots are often times couple based, I've decided that I would break up the plot analysis by couples, excluding Thara and Frong because, in my opinion, their overall story is still developing and I couldn't think of much to add in regards to it.)

BohnDuen:

The main plot we follow with Bohn and Duen is fairly standard for a slice-of-life BL. Boy meets boy, a situation is created in which they now need to spend time together, hijinks, miscommunication, and eventually romance ensues. It’s very standard and a little boring most of the time, though upon a second viewing I did find myself more interested in their characters and less annoyed at the paint-by-numbers feel of their romance progression. That being said, they use the miscommunication and “he’ll reluctantly fall for me eventually” trope a bit too much in my opinion. It adds artificial drama to the situation that could be more character-driven if we got a chance to see them interact more sincerely with one another. Low points in their storyline for me are when Bohn sets Deun up to be very uncomfortable at the restaurant in the first episode, the IRL fanfiction dilemma in episode 9, though I do think it brought up an interesting conversation about the “roles” that are expected to be fulfilled in a MlM relationship that I wish the characters could have had outside of a comedic setting, and any time they use Bohn’s possessive/jealousness as a point of contention for their relationship. An interesting point that I think could be explored in season 2 (when or if it’s finally released) will be Duen’s dad and his reaction to their relationship, since that seems to be one of the biggest reasons Duen is reluctant to be Bohn… well aside from Bohn himself. In every interaction with Deun and his father, there's always this push for Deun to fulfill the "manly" expectations of his gender, so I think having to confront his son's relationship with another man will be very interesting and likely very angsty.

MekBoss:

A pining best friends story is something I will always be able to get behind and with Mek and Boss it’s done so well I have basically nothing to complain about aside from perhaps their awkward as hell only kiss in the series, though you can argue one of them is drunk and the other is at his wit's end. From the start, Mek’s pining over Boss is on point and translates very well for the audience to see and we follow him through each moment as he sabotages his own happiness in order to help Boss try and obtain his own until eventually he just can’t anymore. One could complain about the Fon and Boss plotline but I think it only adds to the situation in a realistic way. Mek refuses to admit he’s in love with his best friend and in doing so has to help Boss “get the girl.” Even at the end, after the two finally admit their feelings for one another and seemingly get together there’s one last moment of “miscommunication” with Fon that threatens to pull them apart, but the show doesn’t let it drag out unnecessarily and it’s a rare case of me not minding the inclusion of it, since Fon has been the wedge in their potential relationship almost the entire show, it feels like a correct ending and the last hurdle that Boss and Mek need to overcome in order to really solidify their relationship. That and of course Boss making sure everyone at the volunteer camp knows they're together too.

RamKing:

Ram and King have the relationship I truly wish that My Engineer had focused on. They have a much more subtle and natural progression towards their romance that I think is only able to be achieved because they don’t have to follow the same beats as the main couple often has to, down to the ending where their status is still up in the air even after King’s drunken confession and their shared kiss. It's this pacing that really sets the tone for this couple and sets them apart from the others in a great way. There are a few tropes here and there but they don’t take away from their budding relationship and story as much as they add to it, such as the opposites attract aspects of their relationship like Ram being a dog person and King being terrified of them. We hardly see the two interact together around other like they do in private and it serves to keep their relationship in a bubble, adding to some of the more charged moments. It also, in my opinion, gives an explanation for King's reluctance towards their relationship shifting towards romance, as we know he wants it to. One of the only silly things I can really say I think could have been rewritten is the crazy homeless man hitting King and causing his head injury. If it had been able to be rewritten I would have liked it better I think. However, the situation around the homeless man whacking him is a very good character moment for him, as the catalyst is King attempting to keep him away from the tied-up dog, thus showing his attempt at growth past his fear and his further connection with Ram.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Technical/Visual Execution:

Aside from some choice shots, such as the garden house scene between Ram and King, and the final two episodes (also predominantly the scenes between Ram and King), I don’t think My Engineer has much in the visual category to really write home about. It’s filmed well, and in even though Mek is voiced over the entire time, and Deun’s wig is fighting for its life, those elements are also handled well enough that they don’t detract from the viewing experience even when they're more obvious. Overall My Engineer, from a filming and editing standpoint, is a typical affair for the genre that I can’t really pick out too many glaring faults with, though I can’t say it was really trying to be a masterpiece the entire time either.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

INBOX - Any feedback is more than welcome or suggestions for further reviews.

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Thank you so much for reading!

#my engineer #ramking #mekboss #bohnduen #my engineer review #thai drama review #my review #cooper patpasit #poy kritsanapong #talay sanguandikul #perth stewart nakhuntanagarn screaigh

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talenlee · 30 days

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Story Pile: Oshi no Ko

With 2023 over, there comes an inevitable wave of conversations for those of us who watch anime slow, to ask: Hey, what was good back then? What anime was there, now fully complete, that is worth going back and watching again now there’s a full set of episodes to engage with? And that brings with it a ranking system and a conversation about best and worsts. I tend to think of this in terms instead of favourites – of what thing was it that I liked the best, or spoke to me the most deeply. I figured I’d talk about that in April, in my month.

One of the anime that was considered in contention is the anime Oshi no Ko, which is a – it’s about – it’s –

Hm. Hang on.

If it is time for me to talk about Oshi no Ko, a manga and an anime and technically a movie and a music video clip, then it is time to set up some basic boundaries for the audience. It is an anime with a pretty pervasive and well-defended culture regarding spoilers and their importance, though, and while I think having access to information about this series is one of the best ways to keep from giving up on it, I want to make sure you know good and clear up front that I am going to be doing spoilers about what’s included in Oshi no Ko. Not a lot – but definitely stuff from its first episode onwards, where the big twist of the series – as much as it can be considered that – is explicitly and clearly spoiled. If I’m going to talk to you about this series, I need to talk to you about this series and not about what the series pretends and implies it might actually be.

Problem with that is that brings with it its cousin, the content warning. And while normally, I can kinda just smooth things over with the phrase ‘oh lords, there’s a lot of anime bullshit going on here,’ I think it’s best to be a bit more specific in the context of Oshi no Ko. That means I’m going to talk about:

Death of a parent, particularly directly experienced

Murder, but you know, this is very low key and it’s allowed, as a treat

The ongoing experience of stalking and its ramifications

Cyberbullying and suicide attempts

Uncomfortable age gaps we summarise as ‘anime bullshit’

Sibling and parent-child incest

part 1: what it is

Oshi no Ko is a manga and anime from the pen of Akasaka Aka, the author most notably otherwise of Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War. It’s an anime ‘about the idol industry,’ focusing on the story of one Ai Hoshino, but shock! Surprise! After the first volume slash episode of the story, Ai dies! It’s not about Ai at all! It’s about her son’s quest to find his father and kill him.

I’m simplifying, but I’m not lying.

Oshi no Ko is an anime about the entertainment industry of Japan, as told by the entertainment industry of Japan. It’s that particular genre that I love where there’s a vision of economics and material realities of a space. The system that makes the media that the series is about is a system that works on layers, and maybe sure, a character may be perfect for a job but what if that job doesn’t exist ten stages later in the production process?

But okay, I feel like I’m not explaining this well, which makes sense because Oshi no Ko is a staggeringly hard anime to explain. I resent a great deal the people who simply said ‘you should watch it’ like that explains everything – I did in fact watch it and took a month break between episode 1 and 2, because I was so disappointed with the direction the series was taking at that point. Let me start again.

Part of this is because the narrative of Oshi no Ko is complex but the plot is pretty simple. The difference here is that the plot is the sequence of events that make up the story, one after another, while the narrative is how that plot is revealed to the audience. Lots of stories you know tell the plot out of order – any time there’s a last minute twist, that’s because part of the story is being told after its immediate occurrence. The example I normally use is that the start of the plot of Hamlet is that first, Hamlet’s father is assassinated, then Hamlet’s mother marries the murderer, then Hamlet returns home and sees a ghost. Except we don’t see that story in the order; the narrative presents it almost in the opposite – Hamlet returns home, finds his mother has remarried, and then thanks to seeing the ghost, learns his father was murdered.

The plot of Oshi no Ko is a woman is murdered, and her twin children dive into the entertainment industry in response to this tragic loss.

The narrative starts not with the woman but with her obstretrician, who meets her in secret because she shouldn’t be having kids, because she shouldn’t be having sex, because she’s an up-and-coming idol, and idol culture is incredibly puritanical and controlling of women’s bodies and identities. When he’s murdered by her stalker, he is reborn as her baby child, and spends a few years growing up and getting to know her better, before her stalker returns and kills her. He’s left with a burning want to take vengeance on the person he sees as responsible for this idol slash his mother’s death, and that means hunting down his new biological father, comparing their DNA to prove who he is, then killing him. Also through this whole sequence, he has a twin sister who is also a reincarnation but even though it is very obvious she is the reincarnation of the Littlest Cancer Patient he took care of years ago and made him a fan of the idol in the first place, he doesn’t learn that, and the audience only gets it confirmed in the ‘second’ episode.

Oshi no Ko is an anime that starts by telling you it’s going to be about a really cool woman investigating a mystery while trying to navigate the Japanese entertainment industry that wants to chew her up and spit her out. Then, surprise! It’s actually about a cat and mouse game between her two year old son and his biological father! Then, surprise! It’s about watching him and his sister navigate the entertainment industry, for competing reasons – her want to be like their mother, and his want to murder their father! Then, surprise! It’s about all these other characters and all these economic realities of how media gets made!

Once the first episode has gone and stuffed its central character good and hard in the fridge, the story that follows jumps forwards ten whole ass years to follow Ai’s children, the reincarnations of her old fans. Named Aquamarine and Ruby because Ai is extra as hell and also the god damned best, they make friends in performing arts schools, they connect with other actors and they get involved in the creation of media while trying to build a connection with one another. Each child is holding an enormous secret, which is really funny when you think about it because both of them just think they’re the reincarnation of someone else, which in the real world, is a thing that a lot of people just think is true anyway, for everyone. The first season doesn’t actually resolve much of the murder mystery plot, and has a rough start about treating women badly, but as it progresses, Aqua demonstrates a truly fantastic grasp on alienation in acting, and Ruby shows its counterpoint: Feeling things incredibly hard in the pursuit of being able to project an authenticity.

They both do this by lying a lot!

Oshi no Ko is a lot of things, and it’s quite good at a lot of them. Part of what it is is the incredibly disappointing twist of realising what it’s not going to be, or how it might sometimes pivot to something else, something wildly different, for completely inexplicable reasons.

part 2: the things I really like about what it’s doing

If you’ve looked at the scroll bar you know you’re in for a long one here and I want to get my praise for this series out of the way up front. Oshi no Ko season 1 is an anime I really enjoyed watching, and it has a bunch of things I really like in it. Presented without much context are some of those things.

I love Aqua and Ruby as characters. Set aside the reincarnation element, you have two kids with a deeply fucked up relationship to their mother thanks to the murder, whose whole lives twist around that woman and therefore, one another. Ruby appreciates what their mother made, the image she could construct, and Aqua appreciates – he thinks – what their mother was, the person she was under the image. Of course, that’s stupid – we see Ai’s inner mind on this and we know she was creating the image because she was choosing who to be, and who she wanted to be was someone who could talk about love and be beloved. It’s great.

In a show full of great women characters I like a lot like Miyako (cool hot adopted mom), Karina (That Bitch grown up into your high school crush), MEMcho (we all love entertaining lies), I want to bring special attention to Akane. It’s pretty easy for a character like Akane to play her part in the story, then close that off and step out; you have the online bullying victim encounter, the almost loss of her character, and then – like the rest of the crew on the reality show, if you want! – she can step out. But instead Akane takes initiative and works on doing something different, and in the process we get two things I really like. First, is she makes herself a conspiracy wall, and I love a character with a conspiracy wall. Second is, she walks into the next scene and she takes an assumption about the world that the main characters have and piledrivers it to pieces.

See, the assumption about Ai – it’s even in the opening theme – is that she’s a once-in-a-lifetime talent, a star come down from the heavens to the earth. The stars in her eyes are part of this — shown to fade out when she dies. It’s not that her eyes look materially weird, it’s there’s a way she presents herself that the show symbolises with the stars as being fundamentally engaging. Aqua and Ruby both ruminate on how nobody can do what mum does. Then Akane steps into a scene and shows how they’re wrong. Being like Ai is a thing you can learn, it’s an affect, and it’s something that someone can choose to do. Being Ai was a choice, and I love when characters are shown to be the results of choices not destinies.

Aqua’s hot. I love the chameleonic ability to shift into roles, I love the dull understated affect of a boy who is thinking of murder and trying to be normal about everything else. I love the moment in the B-Komachi play where he pulls out the glowsticks and does what he can to support the group. It’s not necessarily part of his plan – he’ll have other ways to get into the idol industry, he doesn’t need B-Komachi to succeed. But he shows up and supports his sister and his friend and his other friend, and he is affected by Karina’s performance. Which again, in that moment, she chooses!

There’s a lot of idol culture experience this anime makes look really cool. In the OP there’s the sea of glowsticks, which first look like eyes peeking out of the dark and then become a roaring sea almost like fangs or thorns. The actual song performances in Oshi no Ko kick ass. We Are Star Train (god don’t know how to romanise that one properly) and the OP Idol especially. Idol really goes so very hard, I love it so much. And yeah, this means 2023 had two different banger Yaosobi songs headlining anime I liked a lot about shows with fucked up mum situations. Don’t think too much about it.

This series sure seems to be about love, and what that means. More than I would consider most things that ‘want’ to be about love, Oshi no Ko wants to dig into questions of what you love and who you love and what you express. Is love a feeling? Is love an action? Is love a choice? These are not easy questions to answer in the context of an anime trying to also make sure you pick up the next issue.

I love the breadth of what the story bothers to include. In a lot of media I know that characters are there to serve purposes, like story machinery. A set of gears turn and a piece is put in the proper spot and then they’re done, and the machinery can move on. In Oshi no Ko I don’t know who’s done and I don’t know who’s coming back. A mystery story can be very hard to do well, and part of what’s going on in Oshi no Ko is multiple competing stories which means pursuing the mystery is something being chased through these other competing needs. It’s not sitting around forcing focus on a drip feed of clues, it’s doing things in the mean time.

Really really like this show!

And I feel like if you ever talk to me about it, you wouldn’t believe me!

part 3: Guess We’re Talking About Incest

I mean I don’t have to talk about incest, but in the context of talking about Oshi No Ko I kind of do have to talk about incest. You may not want to talk about incest. In which case, you want to jump down to the next image bumper, and just ignore this whole section. After all, incest isn’t a topic some people want to talk about. The purpose of this big chunky introductory paragraph is to make sure you don’t just stumble into the next paragraph without being very, very aware that I’m about to talk about incest.

Anyway, incest is a mainstream kink that’s more commonly referenced than feet.

Now I think the reaction to this is split into three basic groups. One, ‘no, it’s not,’ two, ‘oh yeah, Game of Thrones is popular,’ and three is ‘oh yeah it is isn’t it.’

For anyone in the first group, I’m not talking about pornographic material. I’m talking about how mainstream, common, well known and prestige material regularly invokes incest and incestuous themes as a thing to titillate. I mean that ‘stepsister’ and ‘stepbrother’ tropes are extremely common. I mean that calling one’s sexual partner ‘mommy’ or ‘daddy’ is so common that evangelicals do it. What I mean is that in the context of sexual fantasies, ‘one person having sex with twins’ is so fantastically common that I found it showing up in episodes of Magnum PI. An ongoing clock throughout my childhood, which shows up any time there are celebrity twins, was people talking about the idea of sharing a pair of famous twins. In my childhood, it was the Olsen Twins, with people literally maintaining a clock on how long before they were legal.

And now you may be stopping me to go hey hey hey, hey those things are different. Stepsiblings aren’t proper incest. Sex with twins isn’t proper incest. And that impulse, that intuitive counterpoint – that these things ‘don’t count’ is stupid. Two related people having sex with a third person is, what, not showing and demonstrating a level of sexual intimacy that passes muster? Do you imagine they do not touch one another in the act? Is there a garbage bag set up to ensure nobody’s fluids get on anyone else? Because the point where you’re saying there’s incest and there’s proper incest, you realise you are just arguing about degrees, not about categories.

(And I guess this is an example, albeit a sticky one, of prototype theory.)

You need to be prepared to think about incest in this kind of sticky, dimensional zone way, because it’s not like Oshi no Ko provides a clear and unambiguous relationship to what incest means and its ramifications in the setting. After all, these children are the reincarnations of other people, which I assume happens all the time and it’s just that Ruby and Aqua are just rare examples of people who remember their previous lives. They are, legitimately, Ai Hoshino’s children, and it is entirely normal and natural for a pair of babies to nurse on their mother. It is not sexual to nurse on their mother. There is nothing sexual inherent to nursing at all, it’s literally a job of the body, and treating it like it’s inherently sexual is really messed up. But these two do treat it as if it is sexual, because to them, it is, and at that point you have infants without sex drives or the ability to act on those sex drives who are entirely, 100%, sexually interested in their mother.

If you want to argue Ruby isn’t interested because she says it would be fine for her to nurse on their mother, note that she’s only using that idea to tease someone who she is actively trying to make feel bad about her getting to do something sexual that he does not. It’s ‘but we’re both girls’ level argumentation.

Don’t worry, though, because as the story unspools (and I checked ahead in the manga for this one), there’s an eventual conversation about how Aqua and Ruby are going to kiss (it’s for a movie). Aqua is uncomfortable about it, and Ruby expresses that hey, you don’t need to feel bad about kissing me, you can just imagine it as the doctor you are kissing the child patient he had.

Who was, again, a child.

At the time these characters have this conversation they have been siblings for sixteen years. They have grown up together and been directly associated as siblings together their entire new lives, even if there’s thirty years before it for him and twelve for her.

To be as blunt as possible about it, I don’t care about the incest. Incest, as a kink in media, is not only widespread and mainstream and incredibly common, is also something I only ever see complained about when it’s a queer woman who brings it up, especially if that queer woman is talking about an entirely fictional character pairing. It’s possible some queer nonbinary people I know have talked about it too and gotten attacked, some things get complicated. It’s hard for me to see a kink referenced in Friends and then see a conspicuous trend of shitting on women for talking about it and imagine this is coming from any kind of good faith criticism from a coherent societal other position.

The incest kink is in Oshi no Ko, in much the same way that age gap kink was in Violet Evergarden, except in Oshi no Ko it’s, like, more tasteful? And the actual kink in question is handled in a way that doesn’t make me feel creeped out. Like, I can see the kink, the subversive element of the story, and how the story winds up there and think ‘oh yeah, that’s part of the complicated relationship in this story space.’ And it’s been a long time since the story brought up nursing motherhood as if it was a kink space because it very much is a kink space. To cruelly summarise, the incest doesn’t detract from the story because the story is already so aggressively weird for seemingly no purpose but to set up this kind of kink narrative. It’s a Christian Baby hypothetical, but for brotherfuckers.

Basically, if you’re here to have this kink tickled, it’ll probably do it but it didn’t stand out to me as doing a good job of it, but also didn’t do it in a way that made me ask questions about the story. This is a thing the series wants to be about and it’s having fun with it in a supernatural and fantastic way. It’d be like arguing about Loki’s sexuality in Norse Myth, or about what genders Sun Wukong was on — the parameters of your conversation are so wildly inadequate for the task.

part 4: Trust and Motivation

I try very hard to not be dogmatic about interpretations of media. I have the impulse, time to time, to tell someone ‘that’s stupid,’ about interpretation of media, because they may have missed something obvious. This can be really telling when I’m dealing with people who have recontextualised a piece of media without some very important information. There are quite a few people who struggle with interpreting the universe of the Pokemon franchise because they forget ‘this is for four year olds.’ A lot of what’s ‘wrong’ with Steven Universe is because it’s a cartoon for children. More than a few times I’ve dealt with students who don’t understand American media because American public health is so bad (and counterpoint to that, I’ve dealt with Australians who don’t know that they have public health care because they’ve ingested American media). The maxim I work by is that anyone I see talking about media is negotiating with that media, and that means their biases are coming to bear in trying to talk about the biases that are in the work.

I don’t tend to like long-running anime.

It’s not just because it’s a bigger investment of time like I’d assume is a problem for me. It’s also that anime that runs over a long time tends towards being anime with a plot that’s less focused on things that I think matter. I would rather an episodic series of series, like Slayers, where each season brings with it a new whole distinct story, than the more sprawling, deliberately processional ongoing myth-arc structure of a show like, well, Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War or Oshi no Ko. The fact that Oshi no Ko has a full season that doesn’t actually conclude any of its story arcs and merely says ‘tune in for next season’ is something I found incredibly frustrating. Mystery stories promise a resolution and if you can’t do a resolution in twelve episodes chopped up weird to include a movie, what trust can I have in there being a resolution worth waiting for?

Complicating that further is that sure, fans of Kaguya-Sama: Love is War would say that trust is important in this artist, in this writer, because look at all the work, the doujin work too, in making that work hold together across its extensive sprawl! And to that I would ask why we need to sprawl? Is the manga of Oshi no Ko concluded, does it include some brilliant twist and we’re all just waiting to get there?

No!

No, Oshi no Ko is still going and it’s not wound up its conclusion and it’s got seasons worth of anime to go to get there, and that makes me extremely suspicious. This series, this season, was worth the twelve episodes of time I spent on it. That was really good! But if the story then says that I need to give it not another season, but another pair of seasons, maybe three extra seasons, maybe an ongoing, steady sprawl of seasons, to get to the end of its story I suddenly lose a lot of interest. How am I going to trust it was worth it? How is it going to be worth it?

At that point, I have to stop thinking the resolution is the reason to care and instead the focus should be on what the show is doing moment to moment and instead of relying on the driving mystery to instead focus on what, as best I can see, the story wants to be about and what that story can be relied upon, trusted, to bring me, all while it radicalises me into thinking that maybe every entertainment industry everywhere needs to be burned to the ground and everyone with the job title CEO for a media corporation should be hung inverted in the streets with nails.

Bear that in mind here, I’m trying to not just be like ‘well, this show is doing X because it’s Y.’ There’s more to it than that. There’s my biases at work. For example, I think that Oshi no Ko is a pretty horny series. I think that the way the show depicts mouths – Ai’s in particular – wants you to pay attention to it. Characters are sweatier, and thirstier and breathier than anime normally represents. There’s a focus on eyes – sure – and how people look at things and look at one other that speaks to ideas like their inner lives, their conception of what they’re dealing with. One of the characters whose eyes you never see is treated as being breathtakingly inscrutable.

These are details I focus on. These are things I think indicate that there’s a deliberate intention in this series to look at characters as whole people with individual motivations and wants, and those wants are informed by the things they’re familiar with and the things about themselves they may not have interrogated. This level of intentionality makes it hard for me to ever treat stuff in Oshi no Ko as being accidental or just a meme or chosen at random. Not that there can’t be things like that in the work, but it just feels so thoroughly constructed to me that everything that’s in the story is there for a reason.

Couple the intentionality of the story with the horniness of the story and there’s this creeping step-step-step up to the point that yeah maybe the incest kink and the age gap kink and the hot pregnant lady in the first episode and the way girls ogle one another and the lizard eyes are all things that are in here for a reason and that reason may be because this show likes those things and wants to include them. Maybe the reason this show is the way it is isn’t part of some grand conspiracy.

part 5: is this a dril tweet?

Now this is where we do verge into a conspiracy theory, something I cannot prove and also do not want you to imagine is necessarily true. It’s more a story, a story that makes something make more sense to me. It involves talking about What Japanese Culture is doing, and I want you to remember any time someone like me, especially someone who can’t speak or read Japanese, says that, you are being told a story.

This story is about my journey trying to understand Oshi no Ko.

I couldn’t work out why Oshi no Ko worked the way it did. Specifically, I couldn’t work out why the first movie-length episode was about a character being isekai’d into reincarnation in his own world, as the child of someone who he had already met, and how that idea then failed to play meaningfully into the plot of the story afterwards for a whole season. There’s nothing in the story that benefits from the addition of this element; indeed, if you skip the first episode, it barely comes up in the series as a whole. There’s one moment where Aqua references it, and Ruby doesn’t make it focal outside of that first episode.

At the same time, it was central to the first hour of the story! It was so important that the story bent its structure around making sure that pre-Aqua Aqua met Ai and had a positive opinion of her. That doesn’t seem necessary at all, after all – if you remove the supernatural element and merely have Aqua and Ruby as the children of a talented idol performer who was tragically murdered, does anything about their motivations need to change? They can both still be precocious children following in the wake of the mystery of their mother’s murder. A story could even be built around finding the videos we know Ai made about her feelings and her history – instead of building ninety minutes of television around the importance of one character so you can feel upset and shocked when she died.

I did not understand what it was doing or why, because who comes up with ‘reincarnated as the baby of a girl I just met, and having some weird intimacy issues around that’ outside of a hentai doujinshi specifically about satisfying that, singular kink?

Turns out, at least according to Mother’s Basement, this is a common phrase used in Japanese idol culture. The idea of wanting to be reincarnated as the child of your favourite idol is a thing that’s been a meme in the culture for about ten years. Hah! Fool on me, I see! I was just not clued into the culture of idols in Japan, which is a supremely fucked up space and not because of this single idea. This single idea seems like supernatural fantasy kink, honestly imagining nonsense about people you’ll never meet is a lot better than y’know, actually inflicting that on the people in question who are in many cases real humans. It is strange, though — it’s like such a singular idea it feels like a meme, like a joking repeating of an incident everyone is vaguely aware of, or connected to.

Dot dot dot.

Ten years ago, and a few months as of the time of this writing, dril tweeted:

here’s a list of touhou girls i want to have as a Mom someday & here is a copy of that list in case you accidentally throw it in the gabarge

Dril, September 14, 2013

Now hold up hold up hold up hold up. I don’t know a line of cause or effect here. What it looks like to me, knowing a natural flow of meme structures in my language space, is that sometimes someone will make a joke, and it will spread and be shared wildly and now I can talk about walrus fairies vanilla essence goncharov and you know what I mean, and if you don’t know what I mean you have no idea what I mean.

The story for how this looks to me is that dril made this joke, and someone shared it on 2ch because it was funny (it is) and then that led to people who got the joke making reference to that joke and that became a common enough thing on 2ch that it spread to the idol niche and now it’s seen as their thing to joke about wanting a character as a Mom Someday, even if nobody cares or would want to care!

That story is pretty wild, though I want to make it clear it’s just a story. It’s nothing that I can prove, and I don’t have the skills to prove. An equally possible version of the story is this was already a meme for how people referred to their idol interests and dril made a joke about that where it being decontextualised from idol culture in Japan to American fan culture around Touhou was the bit. It’s also possible both ideas stem from another, earlier, thirdier, secreter thing. It’s also also possible they’re both unrelated and it’s just that the time was right for that kind of joke. I can’t say and you shouldn’t treat what I’m saying as ‘dril shitposted so hard that Oshi no Ko came into existence.’

The idea of being reincarnated as your favourite idol’s kid, to have her as a mom someday, is a thing that you have to already know about or you’d have no reason to reference it. Without knowing that it’s a thing people say, though, its presence in the story is completely inexplicable. When it’s in the series, it’s a Funny Bit, a Bit that’s about how important this weird kink-interest (kinktrest) is to the speaker. It’s about ‘imagine that common thing we all say, and what might flow from that.’ There’s no sense to it because part of the point is a relentless desire to have this scenario that is pre-negotiated by common conversation! Part of the joke is, after all, being so invested in the idea that you’re prepared for people to ignore or discard it!

part 6: conclusion

2023 was a year I consider weaker for anime. When I set up my blog entries to make sure that I’m not just banging on the same theme over and over, I have two slots: Anime (Good) and Anime (Cringe), where I know that if I’m going to talk about the anime I think of as unequivocally good, I want to space those out. It’s important to me to not dwell too much on good things at once to not lose perspective but also so you don’t notice I praise the same things the same way all the time. Oh, it’s about choices is it? It’s all about choices? Well who woulda noticed that! I wonder if Talen is going to like this anime about a hot boy he can project onto who also has an awful relationship with his father and some extremely damaging power fantasy like he’s looking at Unit-01 rampaging through the NERV base thinking ‘This would fix me,’ as he’s been doing in his head for twenty five years.

I think that Oshi no Ko might be my favourite anime of 2023. I also think, with all these words out there, with all this hindsight, I think that’s embarrassing. Oh, not for me, I’m great, no, but for 2023 anime. I think that as good as the best bits of Oshi no Ko are in the context of the series, there is so much stuff in Oshi no Ko that could just be improved by not including it. Hell, consider the importance of the premiere movie, and how I have a hard time not thinking this series is improved by not watching it. This is a semi-complete story with a premiere episode so bad that I stopped watching it for a month. It is an anime that can accurately be described as taking a story about an interesting woman then killing her so it can instead become a story about two men involved in her murder. This is an anime about the idol industry and related entertainment media that somehow doesn’t seem like it’s going to conclude with the main characters storming an executive meeting with abbatoir bolt-guns so how satisfying could its ending ever really be?

There are other 2023 anime I’d recommend more highly. I’d say that you should check out Apothecary Diaries first for an anime that’s more straightforward about how it’s enjoyable and what you should enjoy about it (though you know, just as much weird content warning shit). I’d say Overtake is an anime with a better and more tightly contained story that doesn’t leave you with a giant ‘we’ll get to this later’ end point. As much as I have come to despise it, I’m sure you could watch Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End and have a better time engaging with its immaculate vibes and its central character who’s a woman.

I can’t pretend, though, that I don’t care about this story and its characters. I want it to go well. I want to see Kana and Akane hate each other in ways that feel tinged with horny (because everything in this series is tinged with horny). I want Aqua to talk more about how his obviously damned soul might as well be put to some use tinged with fatalistic violence (because everything in this series is tinged with fatalistic violence). I want more of the music, oh my god, the music, that OP goes so fucking hard.

I may be literally waiting for years for it to be done and then I may need to work through the anime slow and steady as they drip it out, which seems incredibly inefficient to me. I may never get the conclusion I want out of this incomplete mess with its weird choices and its eerie haunting of sexy dead mum mouth.

Still love it though.

Maybe it’s just that Aqua is really hot.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Anime #Oshi no Ko #Media #Story Pile

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