#wasn't necessarily expecting the analysis
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I'm on the fence about a lot of the "glass child" discussion because where I agree with some points that are made and enjoy the in depth analysis, I've come to severely disagree with others. Mostly because the internet is the internet, and the nuanced discussion has lost that nuance.
The reason this whole thing blew up (though it's been a concern for a while, certainly) was when Phil explained why he felt he needed to save Tallulah first before Chayanne. And you could tell Philza was trending cautious waters with his wording - he never wanted to say "oh, Chayanne's a chad, he'll get over it." With his wording, he recognized that neither were necessarily fine, but he still felt it necessary to prioritize one over the other because of one of his kid's big issues: Tallulah has abandonment issues. Maybe they're not as bad now since the "official adoption," but it certainly shouldn't be disregarded. But Phil remembers how much Tallulah hates being left alone, and wanted to make sure she wasn't in that situation long. Phil knew at the of the day, that Chayanne had no severe abandonment issues (that we are aware of), hence him saying he'd be okay "a bit longer." The prioritization is still there, and the Death family still has much to talk about, but the fandom's reactions felt a bit too... harsh, a bit too severe. They'd make it sound like Phil didn't consider Chayanne's feelings at all or that he thought Chayanne was totally going to be 100% okay with being alone forever and ever. When there's more to it than that, and ultimately, Phil was stuck making a decision in a lose-lose situation, and he knew that.
But a lot of people seem to focus solely on this moment, and let it epitomize the entirety of the Death Family's relationship and struggles. When, if anything, there's additional moments from yesterday's stream alone that I think show some slow growth in Philza's parenting when it comes to him being overprotective of Tallulah and him expecting a protector/warrior out of Chayanne.
Because if Phil really thought Chayanne was a ruthless warrior who can handle anything and be fine and get over it, he'd have let Chayanne immediately join them in their journey of saving Richarlyson. Like "If we've got Chayanne with us, nothing can hold us back" or something. But he didn't. He wanted both of his children to stay back, to stay safe. But his kids insisted on joining, even if just for emotional support. And if Phil really was completely stuck in his old ways, he'd say the old "Chayanne protect your sister" when the mobs starting showing up, or hell, even before that. But that never once happens. Both of his kids fight, and he trusted that they could both handle themselves since they insisted on coming along, though you can see him check on both of his kids once or twice during the fight. If this becomes a persistent thing, it shows great growth in Phil's character when it comes to being overprotective of his daughter and having his son prioritize her safety above all else. It's become more of "keep an eye on each other," which is definitely the preferrable kind of thinking!
And again, I emphasize that singular moments should not be the sole focus of these discussion. Rather, the overall actions throughout should be talked about. And honestly, Phil made sure that a lot of his focus was divided between both of his children throughout yesterday. When Chayanne decided to stay behind while the others went to the beach event to keep an eye on an AFK Tubbo, Phil decided to "hang about with you, kid, it's alright," even when Tallulah was long gone. Like, he wasn't going to let his kid sit alone like that waiting! Or when he got the llama plushie during the treasure hunt, I'd honestly have expected him to immediately give it to Tallulah because animals=Tallulah, I guess. But he asked them both which of them would have liked it more, a genuine attempt to make sure neither felt left out in receiving the gift. Yes, these, too, are small moments, but if we wanna have a discussion about these relationships, all these moments should at least be considered, not just the negatives.
And to me, the kind of consensus to make in these scenarios is that the situation at hand is... complicated. Like, Phil's parenting is flawed, I'd be a fool to say otherwise. All parenting is inherently flawed, that's basic psychology or... just how humans work. However, through his faults, he tries everything he is able to to do best by these kids. So, with all these moments and more, it never sat right with me to say Phil neglects Chayanne. I can almost see the case for "emotional neglect" a bit more, but even then, I find some fault in that thinking. Yes, qPhil is neurodivergent af, so he doesn't get emotional context clues and needs these discussion to be upfront in his face (which I already went into depth here regarding the relationship these two have). Put simply, any "emotional neglect" Chayanne feels isn't necessarily from Phil prioritizing Tallulah, but more so where Tallulah is more open with her feelings which makes it easier for Phil to talk to her about them, Chayanne has rarely ever been someone who opens up about feelings, and when you couple that with Phil's lack of emotional intelligence, these issues clash. However, it's important to note that a while ago, Chayanne had an open dialogue with Philza about Tubbo's death and how it affected him, and Phil was responsive to it. It'd be one thing if he told Chay to get over it, but no, he was very honest and kind to Chayanne during their talk. And afterward, Phil suggested for Chayanne that, if he ever needs to talk, to have them sit at the pier outside of their house. He extended an offering to Chayanne for emotional discussions. It was a great way for both of these people who are terrible at talking about their emotions to come together and talk. It highlights how Phil is very much okay with talking to Chayanne on an emotional level, and he has, and he will continue to be. They're just... both bad at it, sadly.
Finally, I think it's important to clarify what a glass child actually is, and if it fits the current narrative. A glass child is a child who is overlooked when their sibling is facing some sort of disability that makes the parent give the sibling their full attention, and often has the glass child help out a lot. Initially, Tallulah very much needed extra care due to her "asthma" and the fact she wasn't a great fighter who could protect herself. Hence why Phil and Chayanne were so overprotective of her and put a lot of focus on her. And for the longest time, Chayanne was okay with it, because she needed that help to survive on this hellish island. It's just that over time, things changed. These characters changed.
So it's not really like that for Tallulah now, is it? Her asthma is no longer as bad (it still happens, though!), and she's gained a lot of fighting experience over time. She can hold her own in a fight. And Phil no longer keeps that much of a paranoid eye on her; i.e. again, yesterday's stream where, even when they were fighting end monsters, he never shouted for her to get away or for Chayanne to protect her. In the early days, if Tallulah was even allowed to join, he'd have her stand back and ask Chayanne to keep an eye on her. But that doesn't happen here.
So nowadays? No, I don't think Chayanne could be considered a glass child. Because those disabilities aren't as much of a hindrance for Tallulah as they used to, and Phil isn't as paranoid about them as before. I think the effects are still there, in a way, but it doesn't fit where the characters currently stand. Ultimately, I think there are several reasons as to why things are as they are even if Chayanne may not be a glass child in the present. The big one being that Phil's not entirely adapted to the changes his children have gone through.
Especially after Purgatory, his children have gone through a lot and changed in the process; Tallulah became more independent, and Chayanne kind of being tired of being a warrior and needing more emotional support. And since he wasn't there to witness that change and only saw the aftermath, I think it's a struggle for him to come to terms with them. However, that doesn't mean he's entirely set in old ways. He's trained Tallulah on PVP, and again, he's allowed her to participate in fights without being super worried. And as I mentioned, he has extended a branch for Chayanne to be more open with his feelings. These are just starts, certainly, but it means that Phil is open to adapting and helping both of his kids in any way they need. He just has to figure out what they need.
And let me be clear: I'm not disregarding the flaws in q!Phil's parenting. They exist, and Chayanne really needs to have an open discussion about how his emotional needs haven't quite been met as of recent, and Phil needs to be more open to have emotional discussions with Chayanne, even if to them, that's like pulling teeth. There's changes and improvements that need to be made. However, in talking about the negatives, it just seems like people think that's all there is. No, these flaws in Phil's parenting doesn't make him a bad parent. Because there are plenty of positives, plenty of decent growth here. There's love and respect and everything in this family. q!Phil is genuinely doing his best in a very difficult scenario: living on an island that is set on killing the eggs, and being a parent of two while basically being a single parent all while struggling with your own traumas. that's going to come with obstacles, it's inevitable, but what's also inevitable is how this family will work through them, and come out of this better than before.
#qsmp#qsmp meta#philza#chayanne#tallulah#missy rambles#long post#sorry it's so long by god some things i was seeing made me so sad bc the initial discussions were so open-minded yet critical yet receptive#then it devolved into “he's neglectful and a bad dad” like ??? damn we were doing so well
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2024 China Grand Prix Race Analysis
Here is my full analysis of the 2024 Chinese Grand prix. I already covered the sprint in a separate post here.
The important thing to keep in mind about this weekend is that the Chinese track was a very unique surface. It caused a lot of unusual grip problems for many of the top teams. I think as a whole that this race saw some outlier results as far as car behavior goes.
Table of Contents
Stake
- Zhou
- Valtteri
Ferrari
- Start
- Charles: his race, vs Lando
- Carlos
- Data Analysis
Mclaren
- Lando
- Oscar
- Data Analysis
Penalties
- Logan
- Kevin
- Daniel
- Lance
VCARB
Aston Martin
Red Bull
- Checo
Final Thoughts
Stake
Zhou
I usually start these with Ferrari. However this is a special occasion. So we are starting the analysis by celebrating Zhou and his performance this weekend.
This was the first Chinese Grand Prix in Formula 1 history with a Chinese driver racing on track. Zhou Guanyu made history and considering the car he's in he gave a good performance for the home crowd. Between qualifying 10th in the sprint, making some pretty good overtakes during the race, and carrying his team after Valtteri's DNF it was a pretty good weekend all around.
It was so nice to see all of the home support for Zhou. He was given an honorary spot at parc fermé after the race, and I am so glad they did something special to highlight this moment for him and the country he is representing in F1.
Zhou driving this weekend really was the highlight. This was only ever going to happen once in F1. Glad I was here to see it.
Valtteri unfortunately suffered a power unit failure and had to retire from the race. No damage to the car. This did bring out the yellow flag and a VSC. And when the marshals were unable to roll the car off the track quickly enough it upgraded to a full safety car(don’t worry we will be coming back to this)
He was looking pretty good in the car until that point, actually getting close to the points. I think we might see Stake in the points this year if they ever get their pit stops under control.
Ferrari
Ferrari's race was probably the weakest for the team so far this season. It wasn't really a surprise though. The cooler temperatures and inconsistent track surface were not ideal for the SF24.
Charles started in P6 and finished P4, Carlos started P7 and finished P5.
I do consider this not to be indicative of any downward trend for Ferrari. It was pretty predictable and it did not reveal any issues in the SF-24 we weren't already aware of (tyre warming)
Ferrari did say that they sacrificed more in qualifying in favor of a better race setup. And I don't think this was necessarily a bad idea. It's impossible to say if a different setup might have put them higher and if they have been able to defend with that setup. Going for a more race focused setup and relying on the better tyre deg to be able to allow for overtaking is a pretty good plan, especially if they didn't think they could get much more out of qualifying.
This did mean that we got to see some proper overtakes in the SF-24 from Charles and that is something we just haven't seen a lot of this season so far. So seeing how it handles in that regard was good.
So the big question is, why did Ferrari suddenly end up behind a Mclaren when Ferrari have been easily beating them all season?
Well there are a few factors:
- Ferrari struggled this weekend with grip and failed to find the best balance in the car to maximize top speeds. They did sacrifice some downforce in favor of speed during the race but I don't think it was enough. It didn't do enough to help the top speeds and it sacrificed grip so we ended up a weird middle ground that didn't optimize either problem. This track surface really made it so hard to figure out the right direction for setup.
- Mclaren(Lando) were stronger than expected. Lando was really the one pulling performance out of that car.
I will point out some key areas on this in the data analysis section as well.
Race Start
The most notable thing about Ferrari’s race was the start, when Carlos compromised his and Charles’ start by attacking right into turn 1. This forced Charles to have to defend(something he should not have to do right off the race start from his own teammate who started behind) and this resulted in them both immediately losing a place to Russell. This was a place they both had to fight to make up.
Again, this kind of thing isn’t good when compromising the results for the whole team is the result.
Footage Analysis
Just so we are clear about who is responsible for the loss of placement I want to show the footage from this start. This is from Carlos' driver cam footage as it most clearly shows what happened.
Charles starts P6 with Carlos behind him in P7. George is behind them in P8.
Into turn 1 Charles has the inside line, very clearly. Carlos has the outside line into the turn, this is fine. Charles is also clearly ahead.
Carlos pushes inside more, putting pressure on Charles. Notice how much closer Carlos got and how much space he left on the outside(another vulnerability he left open)
Charles pushes Carlos back(to defend which he has to do if attacked especially into a crowded corner like that a the race start)
Charles then took full position in front of Carlos, and this allowed George to slip past both of them on the inside line.
Because Carlos forced Charles to defend George was able to take that inside line that Charles had and passed both of them, dropping Charles and Carlos down a place.
Charles cannot defend both the outside and inside line on his own. He defended against the car that put pressure on him first. His teammate should not be the main one he has to defend team track position against.
Carlos compromised Charles' ability to defend position against George(which is the priority, he's on a rival team that is more important than racing between teammates)
Again if he is attacked Charles has to defend, why would he give up the place to the teammate he was faster than? Nothing would have happened if Carlos hadn’t pulled this move. Charles would have kept George behind and they might have been able to overtake earlier in the race and gain one more position, because they lost a full position to George this early they had to take that back before they could make progress climbing further up the field.
Carlos
This was Carlos' weakest performance so far this year. He compromised the race start for himself and Ferrari causing them both to lose placement immediately. Then he was unable to overtake. The only real overtakes he's pulled off were on cars with seriously compromised brakes.
He struggled with grip and tyres more than Charles. They both had issues in this area but it was more noticeable in his performance.
Charles finished 10.36 seconds ahead of his teammate who was directly behind him in the final 13 laps this race. And that gap can be explained by the fact Carlos was stuck behind Fernando for more laps(as well as a pit stop), however once he got into clean air he did not make up any time at all, his pace didn’t gain on Charles at all with the clean air. A gap in pace that big between teammates is concerning(at least for Carlos) It may be due to his personal choice of setup, or tyre management, or grip in the track. Given that he had more issues with grip on this track I am thinking that was a factor. He lost most of his time on turns 1, 5, 7, 8, and 10.
Edit: also Carlos did pit under normal conditions while Charles pitted under the safety car, this saved Charles some time(aprox 7-8 seconds), however the main point stands that Carlos did not make any progress closing the gap between them.
Charles
Charles' overtakes climbing up the field really saved Ferrari's race. Starting off by losing a position he climbed up places pulling some really clean overtakes and also helping his teammate through.
It was great to see him doing some overtaking in this car, he hasn't been in the position to do much of that due to track position etc in previous races. SF-24 looked good on that front in his hands.
Charles mentioned the lack of speed on straights, and this is due to the fact he wasn't able to gain on Lando in those sections(when he should have) this is due to the less than optimal downforce balance Ferrari went with this weekend(again I don't this is anything terribly concerning, this was a hard track to get that right on)
Overall Charles ran a really good race, obviously not the results he wanted but he extremely optimistic about the upgrades and that they will address some of the current limitations of the SF-24.
Data Analysis
I want to compare Charles and Lando's pace to highlight where Mclaren had the edge on Ferrari in this race. Charles was the fastest Ferrari this weekend and Lando was the fastest Mclaren.
First here is a breakdown of the fastest lap both driver's set.
Lando's straight line speed was really a big factor in keeping him ahead. That plus the fact he was consistently strong in sector 2.
And here is a look at the overall race pace between the two.
Ignore the mess in the middle, that curve is just correcting a slope for the outlier laps due to yellow flag and safety car conditions. It's not important here.
Lando had the edge on Charles almost the entire race. Until the end on the old hards.
What is important is that Lando had the pace on the new hards. Charles didn’t have the time to catch Lando once he managed to gain the places. He probably would have without the yellow flags and if track placement was better. The point being that Ferrari’s pace was off this weekend but it wasn’t as bad as it looked on track, there were other factors at play.
I think this result was a combination of a sub-optimal setup for this track on Ferrari's part on top of the fact this wasn't Ferrari’s strongest track, and Mclaren getting things right for Lando. Also some fairly solid driving from Lando.
Now I want to compare Charles' and Carlos' fastest laps and pace. This was the biggest gap in performance we've seen so far this year between the two Ferraris. Some of that I will attribute to the fact this track was weird as far as track surface goes, but such a big difference between teammates like this means it wasn't just the car or the track surface. While both were not great with grip or setup this weekend one outperformed the other by a decent margin.
Here is a look at Charles' and Carlos' fastest laps.
Charles having better straight line speed consistently and putting in a strong sector three is what put him ahead of Carlos and kept him there for the entire race.
Now here is the full race pace.
Again remember to ignore the weird lines in the middle that is just the graphing tool not able to create a good slope for all the safety car laps.
But you can see that Charles' pace was better the entire race, on both the medium and the hard tyres.
I don't think there was a lot more to get out of this weekend for Ferrari. It's possible managing the pits a little differently would have gotten Charles up to third but with the yellow flag chaos It was really difficult to gauge in real time when the best time to pit was. I think the pit management was good. We can look back and go "oh we could have gained a place here" So I have no issues there.
Hopefully that clears up some questions about Ferrari's overall race and car performance this weekend.
Overall this was still decent points for the constructors’ and we saw some good racing from Charles. I do fully believe we will be seeing Ferrari come back stronger in Miami.
Mclaren
Why was Mclaren, specifically Lando, so strong this weekend?
Well it's unclear.
They have had the clear #3 car so far this season. So I think that it's a combination of this not being a strong track for Ferrari and some conditions that favored their car that put them ahead.
No one, not even Mclaren expected this so I really think it seems like it comes down to this track being better for them than expected and Lando specifically being tuned into the track. Like after practice Lando was not feeling confident(his words) and the team were also not making any promises. I don’t think they were sandbagging, I think this genuinely all came together for them.
Now it’s clear that Lando would have finished P3 behind Checo if it were not for the luck/strategy(a little of both they timed that well, but also had to get lucky with Red Bull timing) with the pits. Red Bull lost track position to Lando when they pitted Checo and they were unable to take it back. If Red Bull had timed their stop better Lando would have been P3 because his pace was not going to catch Checo if he was ahead.
So the P2 is due to some good driving on Lando’s part and Red Bull giving up track position and failing to recover it.
Oscar struggled more on this track. However he wasn't far outside where we've seen him in other races and for Mclaren in general. So he wasn’t under-performing, Lando was over performing. I also want to note that Oscar was slightly damaged during the crash between Lance and Dani, Dani's front wing tapped the rear of his car and there may have been a small amount of damage, important to note as he may have been compromised on pace due to this.
Data Analysis
Comparison of Lando and Checo’s pace
The first half of the race isn’t as important, the graph is very odd in the middle due to all of the outlier laps caused by the yellow flags, so that is not important. What I want to point out is that Lando was on the same pace as Checo(or slightly better) for those first 6 laps after the race started again when all the yellow flags were done, but after that Checo was faster until the end of the race. Not enough to catch Lando, but enough that Lando would not have been able to pass him if he hadn’t had track position.
Now here is a quick look at Lando and Oscar's pace.
There isn't a ton to dissect here, Lando was faster the entire race, by a pretty big margin on the hards especially. Given that a lot of drivers this race had issues managing deg on the hards I think that second stint gap really came down to tyre management, an area where Oscar is still improving.
Here is a look at their fastest laps to really see where Lando was making those bigger gains and where Oscar was struggling.
One thing that I find interesting is that Oscar's fastest lap had a section of DRS, Lando's didn't and Lando was still a full second faster. Just a really solid lap from Lando all around. His strength in sector 2 is what really gave him an edge all race.
Overall this was Mclaren’s best finish, but their strongest weekend overall so far this season is still Australia(because both drivers had a strong finish not just one)
Penalties and Incidents
Welcome to the “everyone gets a penalty!” section of the analysis. This was a mess to unravel. After reviewing the footage and reading the stewards judgements as well as the driver and teams statements I have come to a lot of the same conclusions as the stewards.
The middle of this race was a mess. One yellow flag had just ended before another had to be brought out again.
There were two yellow flags this race, the first after Valtteri DNF'ed and the second due to multiple incidents right after the end of the first yellow flag.
My biggest critique is that the VSC was deployed weirdly late. They seemed about 10 to 20 seconds off in calling for one, and that is concerning. A driver on the side of the track is at risk, so it’s important to make sure a race is slowed immediately.
Logan: overtook under safety car conditions after the VSC was enacted when Valtteri’s power unit failed. Nico was coming out of the pitlane as Logan was coming down the straight, Nico managed to barely exit in front of Logan, but Logan’s faster momentum into turn 1 put him ahead of Nico, and thus he overtook under a yellow flag. Time penalty and license points is an appropriate penalty. I have no idea why his team didn’t get him to slow down more. They said they missed Nico, which I really don't know how. Lack of track observation. This was a failure of the team as much as it was sloppy on Logan's part. I think he would have slowed more had the team actually noticed this sooner.
Kevin: Kevin made contact with Yuki going out of turn 6 right after the race restart. He broke late and made contact with Yuki’s rear wheel and this led to a tyre puncture. Yuki had to retire from the race. Kevin was clearly at fault here, he failed to brake when catching Yuki.
Daniel: Dani was penalized for overtaking under a yellow flag and a safety car. He did this deliberately because Nico took a place from him and he thought it was okay to take that spot back. However he should have waited for the race to resume under green light conditions before doing that. He knows better. What happened with Nico is a little murky as far as why he took a position and why he did not get penalized. I think it's because it was right before the safety car but the FIA reporting on that isn't clear.
Lance: At turn 14 Lance rear ended Daniel after the first safety car had ended they were waiting on Max to restart the race. Max was leading the race and setting the pace until proper racing speeds could resume. Lance is at fault here, it’s that simple. This was seriously negligent driving on his part. I really have no idea what he was doing but no competent driver does this. I will agree with Oscar in the sentiment that everyone was crowded together, only one person crashed into another car in that scenario.
“Yes, but not everyone decided to crash into each other.” - Oscar
Lance argued that it was the concertina effect, and said the stewards should account for that. This is a weak argument at best. The concertina effect is to describe car behavior on track, it isn’t an excuse. Going into a corner a driver who is supposedly one of the best in the world should know how to account for that effect. The fact is that he was going too fast into that corner and not paying attention to the car in front of him.
Furthermore his lack of accountability and attempts to blame everyone but himself for the incident is not a good look. He is very clearly in the wrong here. I think that the penalty he received might be on the gentle side of things as well. Personally I would have liked to see a 20 second time penalty for that, or a grid penalty.
I agree with Dani’s statement that Lance should have only been paying attention to the car in front of him. He clearly wasn’t doing that, or at least not well enough. He appears to be looking at Max and Oscar waiting for Max to restart the race. But that is not where he should have been looking. Additionally Dani pointed out that Lance’s speed there was too much, he put half his car under Dani, that’s not the concertina effect, that is going too fast.
Dani of course is heated, and I feel that for him, he DNF'ed because of the carelessness of another driver through no real fault of his own. I don’t think continuing to argue is good on either side, but he has every right to be mad, especially when the offending driver refuses to admit his fault. Two DNFs in a row is hard for any driver. Lance really cost him a lot.
This isn’t just sloppy driving on Lance’s part, it's outright negligent.
VCARB
Quick note about VCARB. Dani was on track for his best performance all year this weekend. Which makes the DNF all the more upsetting. Yuki struggled with this track all weekend, seems he was not feeling this track or that car. I will say his performance seems like an anomaly compared with the rest of his season so far so I don’t think it’s cause for concern for future races.
VCARB as a team were obviously the worst off this weekend with both driver’s DNF'ing at no fault of their own.
Aston Martin
I already covered Lance, so I want to just quickly mention that Fernando was on fire this weekend. He was defending, and had that car in places it really had no business being. His recovery from the close spin, the defending, the overtakes. He really is just continuing to show his skill and experience, and he overall had one of the best drives of the entire race.
Red Bull
Max won the race, and it was a pretty clean race for him, which is amusing due to the utter chaos happening behind him. First time he has won at this track, so that is another track conquered by Max. Well done Max!
Sergio
Checo’s race wasn’t actually that bad. He was comfortably in P2 until Red Bull gave up track position and he wasn’t able to recover the place from Lando. I already compared the pace between those two. But I think it’s pretty clear that he would have been P2 were it not for the pits. If he has position he has the pace to keep the spot. However he does not have the same pace Max has in the RB20 to take lost positions back if the car ahead has similar pace.
I also want to note here that there were a few corners where it was pointed out that Alpine and Williams were outperforming Ferrari on. However taking a look at the data it wasn’t just Ferrari. Pierre was literally faster than Max in that corner consistently. What this tells me is that something about the unusual grip of this track was not suited to any of the fastest cars. So it’s not a Ferrari problem, or a Red Bull problem, it’s just highlighting an unusual quirk of the track that no one really figured out this weekend.
Here is a fastest lap comparison of Pierre and Max. Obviously Max is the best driver in the best car, so I think this just highlights my point about certain corners especially turns 1, 2, and 3. There was something off there that gave the edge to some midfield cars are far as grip goes. All top cars struggled for speed on those turns and I think it was due to weird track surface conditions.
Final Thoughts
This was the most chaotic race of the season. Hopefully we have a penalty free race next time.
See you when I return with Miami GP analysis!
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Hot take, but I don't think Jason is as unreasonable about his not being avenged in Lost Days/UtRH as we often think. Which: I definitely think his feelings in UtRH do come from a place of anger and hurt that isn’t very rational. That said, viewed narrowly, I think a couple moments from Jason's '80s Robin run make Jason's post-resurrection conclusions about how Bruce should have acted upon his dying make a kind of sense. (Full disclosure: I did not touch pre-Crisis content).
I know this panel from Detective Comics #570 makes the rounds fairly often:
But the context is sort of interesting: the person Bruce "lost" is Catwoman and she's very much alive. The Joker just brainwashed her back to being "bad" after she had been on the straight & narrow. (Notably, brainwashed "bad" Catwoman still balks at murder and protects Bruce's secret identity under duress, so "bad" seems pretty relative here).
So Jason's holding Bruce back from murder not because The Joker killed someone he cared about, but because Selina's returned to her old ways. This is flat-out murderous revenge and no one even died.
I think, in conversation with the below panel from Batman #425, there's something to talk about:
(For context, this is the father of the rapist who Jason may or may not have killed in Batman #424, who somehow magically intuits Jason is responsible for his son's death and is seeking his own vengeance.)
I don't think this necessarily reads as Bruce exonerating José Garzonas, but that he identifies the events of the comic as coming from "a father's righteous anger" implies that Bruce believes there is some degree of right behavior on Garzonas' part. Fathers, after all, avenge their sons.
Additionally, while I think from the perspective of the living that Tim being Robin wasn't intended as a slight against Jason (at least, outside of metatextual analysis), I think it's important to note that in terms of Jason's post-crisis origin, he's Robin to Batman long before he's anything to Bruce Wayne. Cf. Batman #409:
This is two or three days after the tires incident. Adoption is not, at any point, discussed. Jason is Robin first. (Indeed, post-Crisis we don't even see Jason finding out about Bruce being Batman).
Thus: Jason's had to hold Bruce back from murder after losing someone important to him (who isn't even dead), Bruce has described José Garzonas as possessing "righteous anger," and Robin is probably inextricably tied up with his place as Bruce's son/ward.* After being resurrected, Jason wakes up and the Joker isn't dead and there's someone taking up his role, the very first thing he was to Bruce. Looking at events from Jason's (limited) perspective, I guess I kind of don't blame him for thinking Bruce would've killed the Joker, and thinking also that things, as they stand, imply a lack of care on Bruce's part.
I think there's a clear throughline of Jason's expectations from what we see in his original '80s run to Lost Days/UtRH. I also will reiterate that I'm approaching this not from what Bruce ought to have done, but rather what I think Jason might’ve expected.
* I do have one point of confusion, which is (as far as I could tell) in Jason's post-crisis iteration, there's no reference to Jason being adopted as Bruce's son (as opposed to ward) except in NTT #55, after he's dead. Bruce accuses Dick of disliking Jason because he was adopted when Dick was not, and Dick returns that he wasn't upset about the adoption, just confused. Did I miss something? Are we supposed to assume the pre-crisis adoption holds? Are the writers just doing the standard inconsistent thing?
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Riverdale is Bad and I’m So Smart
So, I was going to make a response video to Friendly Space Ninja's video on the finale...but honestly, there are just other things I'd rather do with my time...
I did, however, write a script for the video. You can read that here if you wish.
The short version is that people who talk about art the way he does are fucking idiots and I'm tired of being nice about it. If you don't know what you're talking about, either figure it out or shut the fuck up.
**And let me clarify: There is a big difference from expressing a personal opinion to friends and standing on authority with a huge platform to provide "critique". Huge difference. Not understanding or not liking the finale is totally valid, (It wasn't necessarily what I would have done with the final season) but what makes me angry about this guy in particular is that he positions himself as an authority on media criticism and analysis. He then provides the shittiest fucking examples of both. I can't stand it.
Hi. So. Our dear friend Friendly Space Ninja put out another video about Riverdale. This time, he took it upon himself to discuss the finale. Anything for a click, right, buddy?
Well, he made all sorts of claims about the finale and the final season. He gave his thoughts on the show as a whole. And all of it, dear viewer is entirely worthless. Strong statement, I know, but hear me out.
He didn’t watch the latter half of season 5, nor season 6 at all. He didn’t even watch all of season 7. He watched the first few episodes with specific expectations and when those were not met, he skipped to the end only to be baffled by its conclusion, claiming that it was all meaningless and even going as far as to “explain” quote unquote that Angel Tabitha’s rework of the timelines erases the other shows that Roberto Agurrie Sacasa has made. This, by the way, demonstrates such a lack of understanding of the surface level plot, that I can’t even respond to it.
For these reasons, I will not be refuting his assertions as I did in my last video response to him. It’s simply not worth it. His video is so deeply stupid that picking it apart would be giving it more credit than it deserves.
I was very diplomatic in my last response video, but I really don’t wish to be this time. I really don’t think it’s worth it.
However, I would like to say a few things, just to give you a sense of why I am so fucking angry.
Firstly, I’d like to talk about the work of Barnett Newman. In particular, I’d like to talk about Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III. The first time I saw this painting, or even just paintings like it, I scoffed and said, “Why is something like this in a museum? It’s stupid. It’s just red, yellow, and blue. Is this even art?” Years later, however, I learned an interesting story about this painting.
In 1986 the painting was vandalized in an anti-Semitic attack. Daniel Goldreyer attempted to restore the painting in 1991. Should be easy, right? I mean, it’s just three colors.
However, the effort proved utterly unsuccessful as the depth of the color was incredibly difficult to replicate. The skill required to create this painting was far more than the untrained eye could perceive.
The first time I saw this painting, I did not understand it and condemned it as stupid because I was an arrogant prick.
And I’m sure hundreds of thousands of people who also don’t understand painting would agree with such a dismissive sentiment.
But just because I have millions of people agreeing with me doesn’t mean I know anything. It just means a lot of people don’t understand painting. That’s it.
Friendly Space Ninja’s video on Riverdale is the equivalent of someone looking at this painting and calling it stupid without understanding anything about abstract expressionism, painting techniques, and the works of Neoplasticism that this series was responding to.
It is watching Sunset Boulevard and complaining there is no color.
It is the equivalent of an incel giving you dating advice.
But let me address Mr. Space Ninja directly and I won’t use any metaphors because I want this to be understood.
More than making a stupid response to Riverdale, your crime, Mr. Space Ninja, is arrogance. You look at a piece of art, you are utterly baffled by it, as you yourself say in the video, and you assume that the art must be the stupid one. It couldn’t be that it’s going over your head. No. It must be meaningless because you can’t grasp its meaning.
This is very troubling and also quite sad.
Though, I suspect you have no interest in providing useful insight into the works you discuss. It’s far more lucrative to provide inflammatory confirmation bias and, at the end of the day, that’s all you’re really doing. And to be clear, that is an insult. Wouldn’t want you to miss that. <3
Now, I also watched Alex Meyer’s video on the finale as well out of curiosity, as he also has a large platform. I haven’t watched his other videos because they seemed overtly negative about the show and I figured they wouldn’t be even remotely enjoyable. Curiosity won out though and honestly, though the sacred cow he is mocking is mine and thus, I disagree…I can’t fault him for this. There was a lot of care and thought that went into this. Even if he thinks the show is silly (and it certainly is) there’s a clear affection for it.
Not only that, but towards the end of the video he says this: “Time will be kind to your show. And all the chucklefucks like me with our kneejerk reactions? That's all going to fade away."
He also acknowledges the fact that there might be more to it than just the silliness. He doesn’t talk about it because he prefers to joke about the show rather than analyze it. He’s a jester, not a scholar. I could never fault him for that.
But I also don’t think anyone in their right mind would consider this critique. This is a comedy bit. And I’m not saying that comedy is less important or valuable than analysis. Not at all. It’s just different.
Anyway. Friendly Space Ninja. Fuck you.
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I AM ASKING YOU ABOUT RACEVID (or RAVEY, or whatever it is the kids call it wbwbwb) !!!!
(i got one nice ask about it so i'm digging out this half-a-year old draft to talk about my personal racevid hcs that i cringe-cultured myself out of posting, take it away pidge-from-six-months-ago)
i honestly wasn't expecting this much racevid support. on my old newsies blog way back i made posts about these guys and they typically only got like. 3 notes? granted my writing wasn't as good so maybe i'm persuading people. or maybe the newsies fandom is finally waking up to the wonderful possibilities of multishipping. one of the two.
part two of the racevid analysis!! this one is less of an analysis of how they behave in the musical and more my own personal headcanons of their relationship and how it develops. part one (a very unpolished and rambley analysis of racevid in uksies) is here if anyone's curious!
right. so. it's act 2. jack publicly denounced and betrayed the strike. race leaves with davey, both in shame over being betrayed by (to race) the brother he grew up with and trusted more than anyone and (to davey) the guy he didn't even want to trust in the first place, but still put his faith in despite knowing better. the next day jack comes BACK, asking them both to trust him again. what would you do.
i'm of the firm belief that race only came back to the strike because davey agreed to come back, too. i don't think either of them necessarily FORGAVE jack in that moment - it'd only been a day and while we as the audience understand why jack (a frightened seventeen year old with little to no prospects or power) did what he did, we can also understand why it stung so deeply for them to be betrayed by someone they put so much faith in. especially davey - like i said in part 1, i believe davey has feelings for jack in every universe, and for him to not only trust, but fall in love with someone despite knowing better, only for it to come back and bite him (the way he KNEW it would but convinced himself otherwise) would be a humiliation that runs deep for him. but davey believes in doing the right thing, and as much as jack hurt him, he still trusts him to do what's right, too. that's another one of those strange mirrored-similarities race and davey have - davey loves so intensely that he still has faith in the good of a person, even when he believes that that person isn't good to him. race loves so intensely that if you burn the bridge you have with him, he will do everything he can to keep it from getting rebuilt.
i know both of them would forgive jack eventually. for davey, jack's family. you fight with family, you disagree, you throw things and scream in each other's faces, but you do that because you love each other and want what's best. so as long as jack's willing to put the work in, davey is, too, and he can still be mad at jack and not willing to forgive him yet while still loving him. i think race is a different story, though, especially JPB's race, who i think has a lot more grit, anger and seriousness to him than other race's. race has been with jack for years, they've grown together, talked together, maybe he hasn't always been perfect, but if jack was so scared, why he couldn't he just talk to him?! i personally view race as a kid who was very overlooked by his family (i saw that 'race has like 12 cousins in brooklyn' thing someone said and ran with it, so in my head he comes from a BIIIIG big catholic family) and so he takes it quite personally when people ignore him. in his head, jack not trusting him enough with his fears is saying he doesn't trust race the way race trusts him, doesn't see him as family the way race sees him like a brother. and i think race's response to this (in his own mentally ill 'i love you so much that i hate you for it' way) is to push him away. he's looking for reasons to resent jack here - and i think a big one of those reasons is davey.
for context; like i said in part one, my personal Racevid Story is that after the rally failure, race - being person who's used to the temporary nature of pleasure, and so grabs hold of any vice he can without thinking (gambling, smoking, fighting, etc) - would've impulsively kissed davey as a sort of 'please stay, i need help, please don't leave me in this mess alone' gesture. but i think davey is so used to shoving down his feelings and pretending he's fine that he would've gotten freaked out by the sudden notion that maybe race is attracted to him. he's barely got a handle on his feelings for jack, he's alone and scared and has no one to talk to, and now race is here, KISSING him, and it's all wonderful and confusing and TERRIFYING and he can't deal with it right now. so i think they would've just stopped, stared at each other, mumbled some kind of excuse and let themselves be dragged to their own responsibilities - race to the newsies, davey to his family, and neither of them having the nerve to actually understand what they want, because that would mean being vulnerable enough to want something.
i think jack coming back and davey immediately trusting him (despite knowing better) is going to make race angry for two reasons; first of all, like i said two paragraphs ago (fuck i'm rambling so much here) i think race would be looking for reasons to resent jack for what he did (again, coming from a very teenagery 'i love you so much i hate you for it' place), and second, i think it's also a source of jealousy for him. davey BARELY knew jack and still gave him everything. davey had no reason to trust any of them and he still did. davey could've thrown race away immediately, but he still made the effort to see him, so how dare jack cast that aside in favour of a daydream? (again, this isn't a jack criticism - this is just how i think race views the situation.) race (to me) is not used to people seeing him, certainly not used to people making an EFFORT to see him and take him seriously, and davey gave him all of that without him even needing to ask for it - and now race has messed that up and davey isn't talking to him, which he probably deserves, but jack messed up too!! why does JACK get to keep being seen? doesn't race deserve it, too? (again, i really think race's family overlooked him a lot and that's why he tries so hard to be such a commanding presence and keep peoples attention, because it hurts so much when other people are allowed attention so freely and he isn't.)
i don't buy in to davey being a mom-friend who wants to solve all his friends problems for them. i did shit like that when i was younger, and honestly i still do, and i just don't think that after the strike and all that he learned about himself, davey would fall into assuming that the only value he has is to fix things for everyone else (i mean, i do still think davey would have some issues to work out after the strike, hence 'run boy run', but not this specific issue). but i do think davey is very protective over the people he loves, and i think this rift between jack and race is affecting him, too. i think maybe the topic of jack comes up, and he tries getting race to talk more about it. when race refuses to talk, davey - finally - brings up the kiss.
this is entering fanfiction territory so im not gonna try to write out dialogue here or anything. i think itd be another example of them fumbling for a way to reach one another. neither one is used to speaking the others language, so to speak. i think race would feel especially humiliated given the turbulent situation, and i think davey would be struggling so much to find the 'right' words that he'd become defensive and panicky. and i think that would all bubble up into davey just blurting out something of the lines of 'i trust you'. and i think that'd be the thing that connects for them. not just being liked, but being seen for all their flaws and difficulties and being trusted anyways. i think that'd be the trigger for davey bullying race into finally talking to jack about what happened, race coming back to the strike, and the two of them entering a slow, tentative relationship that, as their dynamic in the show does, grows much steadier with time.
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1-the character everyone gets wrong for Gravity Falls and 16-you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc) for Star Wars ??
The character everyone gets wrong (Gravity Falls)
I want to preface this answer by saying that I think there are a plethora of fantastic Gravity Falls fics, comics, and metas out there that address and explore Stanley's possible mental health issues in light of everything we've learned about his backstory, which is pretty damn bleak. And yes, I do enjoy reading this angst.
The fandom tends to focus on this particular side of Stanley and with good reason - it is absolutely fertile ground for analysis and there is no doubt he is a tortured individual.
But there is a tendency to "blorbo-ize" Stan and his sympathetic history. While he was absolutely forced into some horrendous situations and had to make decisions based solely on survival probability, this is also a man who has a rap sheet a mile long, has outstanding warrants throughout the majority of the country, and is heavily, heavily implied to have been dealing in cartel business.
You don't get that far in these circles without having a backbone of steel and the capacity to do some seriously shady - and bloody - shit. Sure, Stan eventually bailed from the more hardcore aspects of his existence. And this isn't to say he's fundamentally a bad person or even liked everything he was doing - but he is a dangerous man, whether that danger comes at the end of a gun barrel or a marked ace of spades.
And I think this aspect of his character gets underplayed in a lot of fandom. (Interestingly enough, Ford is the one who is generally allocated this role, due to his dimensional hobo life on the run. And Ford is a badass, but Stan is equal to his brother in this, albeit in a different context). Stan maybe wants to forget that part of his life (understandable), but he didn't get as far as he did being a criminal (you don't get to rack up that kind of sheet and stay mostly clear of the law without some considerable feats) without developing certain skills and he'd be dead five times over if he weren't some kind of threat. Yes, by the time we meet him in the show, those instincts may have been dulled, likely intentionally, but this is the same man who admits to having 10 firearms in his household, even if his reasoning is (seemingly) ludicrous.
Runners-up: Mabel and the Flanderization of her zaniness. (Let's not forget she put the majority of the puzzle pieces together in Not What He Seems). Ford's seemingly god-like combat skills (the man gets his ass handed to him on multiple occasions in the show and is in constant need of rescue after he comes back from the Portal. Don't get me wrong - I love a badass Ford - but he wasn't exactly batting 1.000 after returning to Gravity Falls).
16. You can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc) (Star Wars)
I fully expect to get pilloried by certain factions of the fandom for this opinion, and to be honest, it's been a long-standing thorn in my side.
The Jedi were not 100% without fault and yes, some of decisions they made fed into their ultimate demise.
Was it deserved? No. Were they evil? No.
Were they a stagnant organization led by a creature who had lived long enough to distance himself from the day-to-day concerns of the majority of mortal beings under his care? Yes. Did they have an effective strategy to combat their massive, massive PR problem - a problem which ended up with them characterized as a baby-snatching cult of superbeings that could easily usurp the will of a (corrupt) Republic government? Nooooo, not at all.
They refused to play politics. Until they had to play politics. And they lost on all sides.
There was so much emphasis on tradition and purity of said tradition in the organization - even if the highest members of the Council didn't necessarily 100% agree with this - the mythology of it was present enough in the Jedi Temple, that constant, subtle pressure to do things in a certain way, to avoid wholly the Dark Side (even if the individual teachings of the Masters went against this). The Jedi wanted to change, but at the same time, couldn't budge the 1,000 ton boulder of their past until it was too late to avoid Palpatine's machinations.
The ultimate tragedy is that the Jedi meant well, but couldn't collectively nudge their organization towards change.
And they did make some baffling decisions - Anakin being allowed to train at all being peak among them. (And then letting Obi-wan - a grieving 25-year old being held hostage by a deathbed promise - to train Anakin, as per the "will of the Force..." This was not well-thought out by anyone involed.)
Dooku had legitimate criticisms of the Order, even if he ultimately expressed his grievances by betraying everyone and everything he loved and aligning himself with an ultimate evil that not even he could overcome. Qui-gon, for all of his many fault, had some great ideas for the Order and should have been on the Council - if for not other reason, than to upset the status quo (and yes, I know he turned it down, and that's another story altogether).
It feels, that in a certain way, the Jedi were crushed by their own mythology, and by the time that leviathan breached the surface, it was far too late for change.
Discussions of the Jedi have a tendency to polarize quickly, and I'd love for there to be more space for exploration of where they did fail without consigning the whole organization to the out-of-touch and evil-by-incompetence box.
(And caveat lector: post this fully admitting I haven't meditated on Star Wars lore in quite some time, so excuse some of the broader strokes of this analysis).
Ask me a spicy fandom question
#hello there#ask legobiwan#gravity falls#stan pines#mabel pines#ford pines#star wars#the jedi#there's a whole other category for my sincere dislike of human!bill but that's not germane to these particular questions#so i'll just leave that little tidbit in the tags
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I saw this toss in about the whole "Eggdad" thing: Even if Eggman never lays a hand on Sage; that doesn't necessarily mean this stops for the rest of his creations. And Sage has to bear witness to that. (A parent showing blatant favoritism towards certain kids isn't wholesome by any means and hardly ever leads to anything good for every kid involved; including the ones that sucks up all the attention. It's silly to think that this wouldn't affect Sage in some way. Gamma wasn't an AI, and yet the actions Eggman had him do [and Amy's words] had him think twice. Omega was tossed away, and now seeks revenge. Even Metal Sonic rebelled, which ultimately resulted in him being reset. *With Sonic's influence changing how she calculated outcomes, what's stopping her from having her "canon event" later?)
*Note: This doesn't really mean yet another rebellion from an Eggman invention. (In anything, I'm more intrigued about the opposite happening. Like Sage struggling with perfectionism to NOT wind up like previous creations did. Constant approval seeking.)
Yeah exactly. I think a lot of the people who didn't wanna hear me out were missing the point of my analysis, hc, and fic about this. They were acting like I'm predicting that Eggman will be depicted smacking Sage around or something but I don't think he will because well- he literally can't. At least I don't think so because Sage is an AI program and his hands should just phase right through her if he were to try anyway.
Instead I was actually highlighting how terribly he treats all his other creations of Metal Sonic, the E Series, and Orbot and Cubot and how he's even manipulated those who were created/worked on by his grandfather with Emerl and Shadow. It'd make a lot of sense if he manipulated Sage in various ways and one way can actually be through treating her better than his other creations that he still treats terribly.
It's highly likely for him to at least be manipulative towards her, in fact he pretty much is in the Frontiers' story. Because he'll yell at her one moment when she doesn't do exactly what he wants but highly praises her the next when she does. He'll raise his voice and thump things that he can hit when he's angry at her, just as he does his other creations. Only difference is that he can't actually hit her like them.
But hitting them physically isn't the only way he can be a bad father and show concerning traits that support that. It's all throughout Frontiers for the above, which is present in multiple cutscenes. And also the way his value of Sage is solely rooted in what she can do for him and how great and impressive of a genius she makes him look as her creator in the first place, as he makes very clear in the memos.
That's already a lot of pressure put on Sage. She's expected to meet these expectations in loyalty and efficiency that Eggman brags about in the memos, otherwise she isn't reflective of his genius and doesn't bring him the selfish gain he desires, which will lose what gives her value and use to him in his own words! And not just that, but also the point you've raised about how he treats his other creations.
I've seen a lot of people acting like the way Eggman treated his other creations suddenly doesn't matter or just ignore it. But let's not pretend that Eggman isn't awfully cruel to Orbot and Cubot all the time in the games, which I explored in depth in my "proof that Eggman is a bad father" video. He has been verbally and physically abusive towards them and there's no other word for it or any excuses to make against it.
That isn't suddenly erased just because he sees more value in Sage (for very selfish conceited self serving reasons at that) and half-heartedly entertains the idea of Orbot and Cubot being like her brothers. It actually makes it worse that he's willing to see them that way with the way he treats them. It just means he's canonically both verbally and physically abusive to "kids" of his already, regardless of if he is to Sage.
I've seen it depicted in cutesy funny ways to have Eggman treat Sage better in front of the others, but the blatant favoritism of some creations over others, that's based on who is the most impressive and useful to him at the time, would have harmful effects on all involved in reality. Sage has to keep living up to that and he can use her as an example to get the others to fight harder for the same praise.
The Murder of Sonic had Eggman do this intentionally by having them compete against to serve him well to impress him and get praise and "rewards" and I really like that. He programs them with feelings just to take advantage of them like that and that's just so Eggman. I can see him doing more of the exact same thing in the main games with how their worth is determined by their use there too.
Sage, Metal Sonic, and Orbot and Cubot would all be affected badly by this when they realize Eggman's affection and praise is conditional, shallow, and manipulative in these ways. When they realize that it's really all determined by what is the most beneficial to him personally, while buttering them up to keep them loyal and efficient, set an example and act as a measuring stick to the others but tosses them if they fail.
And Gamma was also a victim of this as a top example of what shows how harmful it is when Eggman picks a favorite! Eggman praised Gamma highly and said he was proud of him in the exact same way he did to Sage and say that he knew he'd be of use (again proving that their value is determined by their use to him), to butter him up and keep him performing well- even though he clearly had doubts in him prior.
It was very manipulative of Eggman to that just like it appears to me with Sage too. It's even similar to TMoS in a way, with how he pit Gamma against Beta in a fight and all the E Series had to search for Froggy and he punished the failures cruelly by breaking them down, disassembling them and putting them back together, which disturbed Gamma so much that he was willing to kill his brothers to set them all free.
And Omega was shut away by Eggman and he hated being sealed in that room, not even the important duty of guarding the real Shadow and ensuring that he didn't escape was enough to feel valued and be happy. Just because he can be useful to him, it doesn't change that Eggman is still cruel and uncaring and will lock him away and not care if he wants it or not. His value and praise is a performance and only for his gain.
And Metal Sonic is also another of the top examples of what it's like to be treated badly by Eggman to the point that he tries to rebel twice but not be so lucky to escape like the E Series and Omega because he's trapped being reprogrammed again and again and kept under his control to ensure that he's not going anywhere. No matter how useful a creation is to him at one point or another, they all suffer in some way.
There are many ways Eggman could be cruel or harmful to Sage. I think he's already shown signs of how and used some tactics on her in Frontiers, going by his track record and the known intentions and reasons behind it confirmed by Ian Flynn. Maybe they'll decide to expand on it blatantly, maybe they won't. But I think it's there subtly already and those conditions are very accurate to his character.
Then you have the extras of Eggman calling Sage "ugly/unseemly" before he gave her shoes in the Sonic Channel art (what was seen as a sweet cute gift by fans still had him being a jerk in it like lol wtf Eggman) and in Murder of Sonic, he's still yelling at Orbot in front of her, so she has witnessed Eggman still very much being terrible to his other creations/her brothers and in front of her in official media already!
And yeah I don't see Sage betraying Eggman with the stuff she witnessed both from how he treats her and Sonic and co and how she still stuck by his side and stayed genuinely loyal and willing to protect and serve. Even after all that and how she also revealed that she doubted he even cared about her, as she asked Sonic if he thinks Eggman does (to which Sonic could only mutter "sure... in his own way" lol)
Eggman doesn't even have to give her much to keep her loyal and efficient as it's what he created her to do and it was a success, she's devoted and willing regardless of how he treats her. She was like that even before he gave her an ounce of praise and even after he yelled at her. But the manipulation of her emotions by buttering her up with that praise, albeit conditional, helps further ensure it will stay that way.
And when his other creations see the praise and approval Sage gets, they'll wish they could get that too and will work harder to try to please him, which is exactly what he wants. But he has and continues to treat his other creations terribly even in front of her when they don't, which puts even more pressure on her having to continue living up to that standard to keep him pleased and avoid ending up like them.
So yeah, regardless of how Eggman treats Sage on the surface, there's always those dark undertones, the bad signs that have shown in their interactions, and the toxic basis of their dynamic on Eggman's side as officially confirmed. It's supposed to be unsettling as Flynn said for a reason. And he still treats his other creations blatantly terribly in front of her which also isn't pleasant and can have harmful effects.
They're not the picture perfect family that people find cute and ideal and that's actually the point. And it will definitely be interesting to see how Sage remains loyal and devoted but will have to deal with her father doing things like this to her brothers and what she thinks and he feels about it. It will probably be like how she took a liking to Sonic and co but Eggman just wants them dead but still she stayed by him despite that.
#asks#dr eggman#eggman#dr robotnik#dr. eggman#sage the ai#sonic frontiers#the murder of sonic the hedgehog#abuse mention#metal sonic#orbot and cubot#eggdad#robotnik family#eggfam#sage robotnik#my post
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I hope this isn’t taken in the wrong way. I’m actually curious. Analysis of the Like Crazy MV shows Jimin standing at the lips of a hetero kissing couple. It’s been said it shows he’s bisexual since he’s literally getting kissed by both. I don’t know a whole lot about bisexual gender ID other than they are attracted to both sexes. So my question (hopefully you understand me) is in the case of Jikook, would Jimin stay forever with a man or would he at some point want a female? I mean, once he decided on male Jungkook, does he stay with him and not become curious about being with a female? I just don’t know if the mystique of being with a female to see if he likes it, would make him pursue it. I know he loves Jungkook so do you think Jimin feels he doesn’t need to look at anyone else? I know this is a weird ask so if you’d rather not tackle it, no worries!
I appreciate you being forthcoming and sending in this ask.
To be truthful with you, that scene in Like crazy to me wasn't about his bisexuality.
To me it felt more about him feeling out of place. Not meeting the 'normal' societal expectations of male/female.
But that's the fun with art, you know, it's up for interpretation.
Now for your question about bi-sexuality.
Being bi-sexual doesn't mean you will necessarily be intimate with both sexes in your life time.
Someone who is bi-sexual can be attracted to a male or a female or other gender. They could be in a life long relationship with one or the other, and never ever be with someone from the other gender. It's not about promiscuity (something that is wrongfully attached by many to bi-sexuals).
Ok, so how do I explain this properly?
Your sexual inclination, who you are attracted to sexually, has nothing to do with how many sexual partners you will have in your lifetime.
Being bi means that you might find more than one gender sexually attractive. It doesn't mean you will be running around having sex with all, nor does it necessarily mean that as a bi person you are curious of how it would be to have sex with both male and female (as this is what you are asking).
Looking for other experiences, not being satisfied with the person you are with, sexually, is not about your sexuality (heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bi, etc.) and more about your personality.
Being in a loving, happy, and sexually satisfying relationship, and yet feeling like you need more, as in exploring having sex with someone else, same or not same gender, is not about your sexuality, and more about who you are as a person.
I don't really want to get into the JM question as of itself, other than to say that we don't really know anything about both of them: their sexuality, their previous experience or lack there of, the inner works of their relationship.
What I see is 2 young men truly in love with each other, truly attracted to each other, now almost 8 years into their relationship.
I did feel that I need to answer the ask though because I do think the question comes from a misconception that needs to be cleared up.
Bisexuality does not equal promiscuity.
Bisexuality does not equal need to explore sex with every gender you might feel you could be attracted to.
That depends on the individual, who they are as a person, what they want from life, from their partners, from and for themselves.
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Expressing Anger: An Extensive Analysis of Logan's Statement in SVS:R
Let's talk about Logan's statement here, shall we? (This is a very long post; continue at your own risk.)
The last plot-specific episode, Putting Others First (aka Selfishness vs Selflessness: Redux), showed something unique about Logan that I haven't seen many people mention.
Logan spoke up about his frustration.
This may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but hear me out.
Typically, Logan states facts and provable truths; he sticks to what he knows and what he believes will be useful for the topic at hand.
However, he has had moments of frustration, annoyance, and anger, alongside other emotions that he may or may not even be aware of, that don't necessarily counter the facts he relays, but can change their meaning and interpretation. In these moments, something precedes Logan's anger and he has, at times, responded impulsively instead of thinking through his actions and deciding on a better move.
Take, for instance, the moment in Learning New Things About Ourselves where Roman and Logan argue for a second time about clarification, and Roman remarks that Logan wasn't just going "above and beyond" with clarity but that he was going "overboard" with it and that it was stupid. This finally bothers Logan enough that he crumples up the card in his fist and shouts as he throws it at Roman, hitting him in the eye.
Now, Logan instantly expresses shock, confusion, and then regret after this moment, and then promptly apologizes for his behavior and suggests he should leave, likely to prevent the unusual situation from happening again.
Logan at no point in the rest of the episode addresses what caused him to react that way. He speaks on the initial argument he and Roman had, but focuses more on the root of the problem presented there and agrees to try to do better.
When it comes to his emotions, though, Logan's response is only to ever explain that he doesn't have emotions, which we (and everyone else) know is a lie, including Logan.
Because Logan doesn't bring up the frustration (and may have not fully realized it was frustration), there is no true reconciliation from Roman about what he said that upset Logan, nor from Logan about his harmful actions towards Roman.
This is a more common occurrence than one might come to expect, though, as Logan is either unwilling to or deems it unnecessary to address what causes his outbursts. And that's because anger doesn't just bubble out of nothing, especially not for him.
Anger serves the purpose of notifying others of when they've crossed a boundary, getting them to stop or change their behavior, and standing up for what someone believes in or standing against something they don't.
So, fast-forward to Putting Others First, and the scene where Logan is asked to provide information from a "real philosopher" to support what Patton was trying to explain, only for Patton to hit "Skip All" and effectively remove Logan from the discussion.
This is something far beyond having your methods labeled "stupid" in an argument, as Patton had asked for his help and then when that help was provided, Patton didn't like it. But instead of saying as much (instead of beating around the bush about it), he quickly took advantage of Janus' trick to 'skip' over Logan's dialogue. We are shown that Logan is then removed from the scene entirely, and there is no response to this action. They simply move on in their discussion as though it meant nothing.
Later, when Logan (the actual Logan) resurfaces, he does something he has never done before.
He expresses his frustration with the situation.
Well, I mean, he did technically admit once to being frustrated back in Moving On (Part 1), but that was only because everyone was also frustrated and he never mentioned anything about it beyond that. But in this particular instance in Putting Others First, he actually expresses himself in regards to his frustration.
He says it in a very passive-aggressive tone, stating "Not that any of you care, but I am unharmed. And I don't want to talk about it. I'm just here to deliver one last fact, and then I will do you all a favor and spare you my company."
This remark is full of anger, as anyone can see, but it's very interesting if we break it down and look deeper at each individual part.
First, he's addressing the other sides and Thomas' failure to respond to the action (wrongdoing) made against him by Patton (and Janus) earlier. He specifically says "not that any of you care," which is a very emotionally-charged thing to say for someone who prefers to stick to facts and stay objective.
He is assuming that they do not care, which could have easily been inferred by their lack of reaction and failure to respond to the action made against him. But even if it was true that they didn't care, Logan would have no way to know that this is absolutely true. (Note: I think they probably did care, even if they didn't show it, but they were all caught up in Thomas' problem and what Patton had to say about it that they pushed any concern for Logan down to a very low priority in that moment.) But he is stating this as though it is a fact.
This is odd because, as we've seen throughout the series, Logan doesn't often pick up on mood shifts and appropriate responses within conversation - his EQ (emotional quotient) is rather low, meaning he is prone to not always recognizing or understanding emotions (both his own or others'), not always picking up on body language or sarcasm or changes in tone, and not always knowing how to communicate effectively in certain situations.
However, there is one thing he seems to do when he's frustrated or annoyed that we've seen in multiple episodes, which is that he states what he thinks very bluntly. Now, this can be difficult to pick up on as Logan tends to speak very bluntly and concisely at all times, but the distinction to look for is the underlying emotion that is present in specific moments.
Take, for example, his part in the Incomplete song from Learning New Things About Ourselves, after Thomas says, "Actually, that was for your benefit," and Logan responds, rather bluntly, "I don't see how that can be relevant." While this was rude within its context, he is mostly just speaking bluntly. He is saying outright that he doesn't understand why this has anything to do with the discussion they were having. However, he is frustrated because he thinks the song is a waste of time, and he wants to say this objectively and resolutely, but he is angry and that anger coats his words, whether intentional or not. As such, his comment about relevance doesn't sound like someone who's confused, it sounds like someone who thinks they know better and is rudely telling them off for doing something wrong (and that's how tone change works!).
And because his words are perceived as rude and undermining, everyone around him reacts emotionally, which Logan then responds to with emotion, as well. His anger becomes more prevalent as he goes head-to-head with Thomas, purposefully pinpointing Thomas' negligence and desire to distract himself from the actual issue (because that's what he thinks all this singing and puppets really is - another distraction from the work that needs to be done). It's not until later, when he realizes this was a creative way to work through the problem for Thomas and was not actually a distraction, that he releases the frustration and tension he had throughout most of the episode, where he then continues to speak bluntly but without that underlying emotion tinting it.
Back to Putting Others First, his remark that the others do not care is steeped in this same emotion (but far more intensely), and while his words may seem blunt because of how he's speaking, they are not blunt at all - they're actually very sharp!
He is purposefully targeting them emotionally by saying "not that any of you care" and leaving no room for argument. He is stating it as if it were a fact, and likely knows that this will hurt them emotionally, to possibly give them pause to reflect on their own actions (or lack thereof) and feel regret. It's a form of retribution, something that anger is all about.
He wants them to feel how he felt.
In essence, this is a counter attack, a strike in return for the strike he received.
Moving on, he states that he is unharmed. Again, he is stating this as a fact, likely because it is a fact - physically, at least. But why mention it?
He is, again, poking at their emotions, by bringing forward their disregard to his safety due to their actions (or lack thereof). By saying "I am unharmed," what he means is "I could have been." And with the precursor of "not that any of you care," he is implying that they wouldn't care if he was actually hurt, and stating it altogether as though he knows it's a fact. Again, this is a phrase built for retribution, it's meant to invoke an emotional response from the others, to bother them and make them regret what they've done (which seemed to work, given their reactions).
What's a little odd is that, if this was only about any kind of physical harm, the others should be able to easily recall Logan stating he (as a metaphysical being) could not be physically harmed back in Dealing with Intrusive Thoughts when he endured multiple 'attacks' from Remus. He showed that these have no real-world impact and kept very calm and unbothered throughout them all to prove to Thomas that things would be okay and not to be scared.
So if they remembered Logan couldn't be physically harmed, they would have no reason to worry if he was okay after what happened. But Logan knows how much they did worry back in Dealing with Intrusive Thoughts, so much so that he had to show them multiple times that he was perfectly fine.
So, given that Logan was angry in this moment and wanted to provoke an emotional response, this just adds to the fodder. He wanted them to think about if he had gotten hurt and how he believed they wouldn't care if that happened. He wanted them to feel bad for not caring about him, regardless of whether it was even possible for him to get hurt in the first place.
We'll not get into emotional harm here, as Logan wouldn't have admitted to it if that was the case, and while it has definitely had an emotional impact on him, he clearly didn't want to address that, which is why he didn't clarify the type of harm in his statement.
After this, he states "and I don't want to talk about it." Again, this is probably actually true, as he is speaking about himself and what he wants, and he would know with certainty if that is true or not.
But here's the thing - when was the last time Logan has expressed what he wants? It's been a very long time, so I actually went ahead and rewatched old episodes to find this out. There are only 4 instances where he mentioned wanting or not wanting something throughout the series, the most recent being Learning New Things About Ourselves wherein he inferred that he didn't want to be seen as a joke because he needed to be taken seriously in order to do his job. The only instance where he has actually stated blatantly that he "wants" anything was in Accepting Anxiety (Part 1) when Thomas asked him if he wanted the other sides to weigh in on the issue, and Logan said that he did want that.
But, regardless, my point here is that this isn't really something Logan typically does. In this moment in Putting Others First, however, this is very significant, and the reason is because what Logan is doing here with this statement is establishing a boundary.
He is stating, resolutely, that he doesn't want to talk about his situation. He's expressed that he believes the others don't care about him and he's leaving it at that, with no room for their excuses, and then making it clear he wants everyone to move on with the discussion and not talk to him about it.
It's easy to think this may be untrue, that he does want to talk about it but that it's maybe 'too fresh a wound' to be comfortable doing so right now, but Logan is the type to be upfront and speak honestly. If he was bothered and wanted to discuss this later, he would have said that, even while angry. But what he stated instead was that he did not want to talk about it, establishing a clear and concise boundary, meaning the others should listen to that and respect it.
(This is also why Logan raises his voice afterward when Patton tries to placate him, which he just outright stated he did not want them to do.)
But like I mentioned already, this is one of the only times Logan has ever established a boundary for himself. He is someone who tends to find ways to adapt for the benefit of Thomas and the other sides, and this leaves him very open for making mistakes, experiencing failure, and enduring ridicule. And yet, through all this, he doesn't often state what he wants. He has, on many occasions, mentioned his suggestions for Thomas to improve himself, but he doesn't tell Thomas or the other sides that they need to adapt for him. He makes suggestions if there may be a benefit to Thomas (ex. telling Virgil and Patton to back off a bit in Dealing with Intrusive Thoughts), but he does not expect anyone to cater to his wants at all, which is why he is so surprised when he gets something he likes (ex. 12 Days of Christmas, Crofters The Musical).
The point I'm getting at here is that Logan doesn't really establish boundaries, either because he's learned his won't be respected or because he knows he needs to adapt for the sake of others and placing rigid rules can keep him from adapting as flexibly as may be required to do his job.
A weird example off the top of my head here to better explain this, but if he established a boundary that he didn't want, let's say, cookies to be eaten during discussions he has with others, he may recognize there could be some sort of convention to eating as a multitasking behavior to keep Thomas focused, or that he needs to placate Patton or the others to maintain their interest in a particular topic, or maybe he will learn that they learn better through a reward system and thus will have to pull back this boundary because he's seen that the pros outweigh the cons, no matter his reason for establishing the boundary in the first place.
It makes sense he doesn't want to waste time putting some rigid rule in place if he thinks it may need to be changed later in order to do his job, and especially if the other sides won't respect it anyway.
This is why we should fully believe that he means what he says about not wanting "to talk about it" and that Thomas and the other sides need to respect the boundary he just established.
Alright, moving on. Next, Logan explains that he only returned to give one last fact before he will be taking his leave again. This is less emotionally-charged than the rest of the statement, but there is still emotion there. He's telling them that he only came back to teach Thomas something here, so he is both saying he doesn't want to be around them but also that his priority here is his function and use to Thomas, not the other sides. If he didn't have anything useful to say, he likely would have never shown back up at all. Thankfully, though, he did, as it gave him a chance to express his anger, even though he's clearly holding a lot of it back.
But it's important to note here that Logan is playing in to part of the problem he's having, by only appearing in the discussion to fulfill his role and nothing more. He has come to recognize, especially due to events of this episode, that he is only needed to provide information to Thomas, and that (apparently) even that has its limits. Based on their words and actions, Logan believes the other sides do not want him to be included in the discussion. This was probably already the case long before this episode, given that he chose to use a less "invasive" method for his participation, only to be told immediately by Roman that he was unsuccessful in this. Logan would not have been making efforts to exclude his presence unless he knew it was something the other sides wanted. He doesn't decide things on a whim, he would have to have come to the conclusion that this was the best approach.
I specify "the other sides" here, by the way, because I don't know how true it is of each individual side or about Thomas' view on this, and I'm sure Logan isn't fully certain about that, either. Unfortunately, due to the events of Putting Others First, Logan may be more inclined to believe Thomas doesn't want him there, but there may still be hope that Thomas does.
So, Logan is playing into his role with this part of his statement, both indicating that this is what he thinks the others want of him (to be absent from the discussion) and that he may believe this is all he can properly provide to them at this point. And what I mean by that is that Logan may believe the others are right to not want him around, or that he may only be useful if he is limited to serving his function to Thomas and nothing more. This isn't true, of course, but if a situation is presented with the same conclusion over and over again, you're more likely to believe that that conclusion will always remain the same. It's understandable if Logan has come to believe this may be true, even if he hopes it's not.
On that sad note, we get to the last part of Logan's statement, which is possibly the part with the most emotion, though that emotion is less anger and more sadness.
He finishes his statement by saying, "and then I will do you all a favor and spare you my company."
There's...a lot here. Like I stated just before this, Logan believes the other sides do not want him around. And while, at face value, this sentence indicates that by leaving, he is doing what they want - in reality, that isn't the full story. Because this part is said with that underlying emotion - two of them, actually - anger and sadness.
The anger is directed at them and the wrongdoing that was committed against Logan, but the sadness is more directed at what Logan sees to be the likely truth. He is angry that the other sides dismiss him and don't want him there, but he is also saddened by this, especially because he thinks it must be a fact.
Hope is hard to have in the face of knowledge, after all. I may want to believe the sky is orange, but there's a hell of a lot of proof that it's blue, you know?
Positive thinking only gets you so far, and at some point, you just have to face the facts and try to keep moving forward despite the negativity of the truth. And that's what Logan has been doing, he's lost that hope that maybe there is some silver lining to how he's been treated, that maybe if he adapts enough then he'll finally be accepted, but this episode, this moment, must have been one of the absolute last straws for him, as he is certain of this truth now.
If anything, he can put that positive thinking to use for their benefit instead, and also be passive-aggressive again. This is why he says "I'll do you all a favor" in reference to him leaving. It's not just what they want, it's his gift to them. A big, shitty gift, one that hurt him a lot, but this is what they wanted, right? And shoving that in their faces, again, serves to enact that same retribution as before. He wants them to know he's been hurt and wants them to feel bad for what they've done. The only difference this time is that he's not just angry, he's sad because he knows it won't change anything.
Lastly, I want to note that he specifically refers to his presence as "my company" which I found kind of interesting. It's just a synonym, sure, but 'company' is usually used to infer companionship, that it's time spent with someone who you like to have around or someone who complements or matches you.
So for him to specifically use the phrase "spare you my company," he is either saying 1 of 2 things here - either 1) that he still sees them all as equals, but that he recognizes they cannot be companions with him by definition because they don't want to spend time with him, or 2) that he no longer wants to be considered companions because they do not want him around and that he wants this connection severed.
Overall, it seems this statement from Logan is embedded with emotion, namely anger, and he said it with the intent of causing an emotional reaction from the others. He expressed his frustration.
Now, it'll only be a matter of whether this is ever addressed in the next episode (one that's not an Asides) and if anyone bothers to reflect on or change their behavior regarding it to see its true effect on Logan.
One last thing I'd like to note:
Decisions made of anger are often impulsive and not well thought-out, they are driven by emotion and the need to feel vindicated. This can often evoke regret, the feeling that you made the wrong decision after having the benefit of hindsight.
It is completely possible that Logan may retract the statement he made in this episode. He may review it later and realize he was too emotional, and since he wants to be seen as serious and someone who makes objective decisions, he may regret his decision to speak in the way he did.
He may decide that establishing a boundary could hinder his ability to continue adapting to Thomas' needs and may wish to retract his statement to prevent this becoming a problem, but I doubt he would need to as Logan's personal concerns are very rarely brought into any discussion.
And he may still have hope that some of what he treated as fact was not actually true, and that the other sides do care or that he perhaps has another chance to change himself for their betterment.
That being said, he may come to regret this decision but may stick by it, either out of spite or failure to receive the retribution he desired. He might have come to believe much of what he said was factual and saw no need to counter it, or still has the barest hope that things can improve if he just keeps trying.
In the end, my hope is that this moment is given more meaning in the future, even if it's not addressed right away in the next episode. I would prefer Logan either finally stand up for himself and deal with the potential discord that comes from it, or that the others attempt to reflect on their behavior towards him and begin to change their ways. Obviously, Logan also has some work to do in that regard, but it would ultimately do him some good to speak his mind and genuinely express himself more often.
#sanders sides#logan angst#sanders sides analysis#logan sanders#ts logan#long post#orbs thought bubbles#might make this more palatable with gifs later#god it's so damn long I'm so sorry
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The Dark Secret of Kung Fu Panda (Part 1)...
... Shifu is kind of a shitty teacher.
But only if you live in the West!
Apparently, you all like Panda analysis, so let's talk about cross-cultural translations, Theravada Buddhism, filial piety, and the ultimate futility of writers trying to impart a specific interpretation to a diverse audience - just to start! Then, I'll come back on Thursday and we can unpack WTF is the deal with that Dragon Scroll.
American movies can pick up a lot of box office cash in China, so they try like hell to stay inoffensive and relevant to Eastern and Western audiences. Often, they fail spectacularly.
But Kung Fu Panda pulled it off! ...With just a little wobble on the dismount.
Chinese audiences have little to complain about when it comes to these guys:
But here in the West, we can't seem to stop coming up with reasons all three of 'em got a raw deal - even the ones who were a little bit genocide-y.
And especially this li'l guy.
Aw, no, look how cute!
People will bend over backwards to defend that cute kid (and sexy adult), to the point of throwing Oogway, Shifu, Po, Tigress, or the whole franchise under a bus.
There are folks out there who are gonna die mad about Tai Lung's lack of a redemption arc and humiliating demise. Like, literally.
To their credit, the Kung Fu Panda team caught this after some early screenings and tried to fix it. Tai Lung's betrayal and attempt to steal the scroll just wasn't enough, so they added a massacre, and every villain after Tai Lung had an impressive kill count woven into their backstory right from the start.
(Not that it necessarily helped, if you happen to look this bad boy up on DeviantArt.)
In a wuxia film, and in Chinese culture in general, betraying your father/teacher, and asking that they betray their father/teacher is more than enough to make a villain. Given that filial piety is the basis of all ethics, as taught by Confucius himself, what went down in the Jade Palace was an attempt to burn society itself to the ground, all because one guy felt entitled to a shiny piece of paper. That is Captain Planet levels of self-destructive evil.
All three movie villains pulled off some violation of this fundamental ethical duty. Tai Lung betrayed his father/teacher. Lord Shen betrayed his parents - and managed to let his teacher go, with sadness and disappointment on both sides. Kai betrayed his adoptive brother - although from his point of view, his brother betrayed him, so he may be the most sympathetic of them through this lens.
The only way to impart this level of wrong across cultures is to add a lot of murdering, and even then it doesn't quite scan. Tai Lung didn't even necessarily kill anyone in the village; cartoons get nervous about the word "die" around these here parts, so they just said he "laid waste." Well, that could mean a lot of things! Does that guy deserve decades of solitary in a hell-prison for (in my mind) doing nothing more than calling out an unfair action and leaving a bad Yelp review of Mr. Ping's noodles?
I can't trust a bird who eats noodles, I don't care how cute his hat is!
So, it's not just that the violation of ethics doesn't carry, the concept of "unfair" crept into a place where it really doesn't belong. Traditionally, it is perfectly acceptable for a Kung Fu Master to be a total piece of shit who motivates his students to learn out of sheer spite and puts them through hell.
Oh, yeah, I remember him. That moustache looks familiar...
If we're coming from a place where we buy that trope and expect it to be played straight, Shifu's mistake was being too nice to Tai Lung. His student's self-esteem was insufficiently crushed! That boy had the nerve to break his own Master's leg! Thank goodness Shifu became a cold, uncaring, emotionally-distant task master - just in time to raise Tigress right!
Yes. Good. Never let on that you're pleased with anything your student does. That'll keep 'em in line!
But a Western audience isn't going to buy that. Shifu just looks like a jerk, and Tigress is a jerk... In fact, all of the Five, save Viper (who is just that nice) seem like jerks, and Oogway is a troll.
"Oh, I'm sorry, did you have something urgent to do? I think blowing out these candles, one-by-one, is rather important too."
Being an utter troll is also a valid way to teach kung fu, and Buddhist practices in general, which is definitely where Oogway is coming from. I peg him as a Theravada Buddhist, due to the way he teaches, and one scene in particular from the third movie.
Enlightenment isn't something you just hand over like a piece of paper, it's something everyone has to find for themself, in their own way. It's not possible to teach Tai Lung or Po self worth, and it's not possible to teach Shifu to lighten up, so the best a smart teacher can do is give them a good nudge, then step back and see what happens.
...Even if that "nudge" requires one to ascend to the Spirit Realm and leave your most stubborn student to clean up his own damn mess.
But there aren't as many Buddhists watching in the West, so what's a writer to do?
Well, they split the difference. Tigress did grow up better than Tai Lung, in accordance with the tropes, but it turns out she's not done learning and growing, and neither is Shifu (or the rest of the Five, but they don't get much of an arc. There are time constraints!). Their arrogance and lack of flexibility render them incapable of working with someone like Po - and they gotta figure out what they're doing wrong fast, 'cos Shifu's other teaching mistake is on his way back! In China, Shifu is learning to be a better teacher. In the West, he's learning to stop being a shitty teacher! And it takes him all three movies to grasp the humility he needs to learn from Po. Tigress, on the other hand, learns to respect Po and soft style by the end of film one.
When Western values are applied, Shifu comes off as a very slow learner, due to his own impatience and inability to slow down. But that's okay. He does learn, he's clearly trying, and we love him anyway.
Well, most of us do. Some of us can't get over that cute, fluffy little leopard, and we don't buy the (admittedly imperfect) attempt to make this story intelligible across cultures. These folks tend to focus their ire, much like Tai Lung himself, on that useless piece of paper the troll stuffed in a temple like it was something important, and the jerk led Tai Lung to believe was rightfully his. Why can't the boy just have his useless piece of paper, huh?
Well, I'll come back later and I'll tell ya.
#kung fu panda#po#shifu#oogway#tai lung#buddhism#cross cultural translation#stories#confucianism#villains
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[part 1/3] Kaoru no Dokugen - Chapter 0: The person I admire
"It was the first time I had ever felt a sound like that, and the songs were just intense but easy to hum and listen to. I wasn't able to make such an analysis at the time, but I felt that I had come across something extraordinary."
Notes before reading:
This chapter is from Kaoru’s first book “Dokugen" released on October 2015. It is placed after Chapter 35 (the last chapter), not part of "Ongaku to Hito" magazine. You can purchase the book 👉 here.
The title is written in Kanji as "憧人" (Akogareru Hito), which means "The person I admire". (Actually, I'm not sure if this is how it's pronounced 😅)
I first translated this chapter into Traditional Chinese in 2021, but later I found that there was no English version, so I decided to translate it again into English.
The translation is divided into three parts (I didn't expect it to be so long in English…). This is the first part. 👉 part 2. & part 3.
In this part, Kaoru talks about how he got to know the music of X JAPAN (it was called "X" back then), and how much he loved HIDE that he started playing guitar and wanted to form a band.
Repost and share are welcome.🙌 This is the first time I have translated so much words into English, so please feel free to correct me if you spot any mistake or any confusing parts.☺️
Chapter 0: The person I admire
All right, now it's time to write about this.
As the title says, it's about someone I've admired for a long, loooooooooooong time.
He is the guitarist of the band, which I first knew in middle school. I've written before, the first time I heard of them was recommended by a classmate, who was really into noise music.* At that time, I honestly did not accept the intense sound I had never heard before at all. However, there were a few songs on the album that I liked, and I had those songs dubbed onto tape and listened to them over and over again.
After that, the band's debut album was released on April 21, a few days after I entered high school. Somehow I ordered the band album that was totally unacceptable when I first heard it and bought it on my way home from school.
As I wrote before, I still vividly remember the first time I heard that album. I went home, sat in front of the radio cassette without taking off my uniform, opened the CD, held the booklet in my hand, and within minutes after I pressed the play button—the word "shock" could not be used to describe what I felt. Then, for about an hour, I fell into a feeling I had never felt before and I couldn't sit still. I wanted to tell someone how I felt as soon as possible. Despite these thoughts, I couldn't leave the album behind and ran out, but stayed home and listened to it over and over again from that day on.
Intense and beautiful.
It was the first time I had ever felt a sound like that, and the songs were just intense but easy to hum and listen to. I wasn't able to make such an analysis at the time, but I felt that I had come across something extraordinary. The visuals, which had only been seen as people in bizarre outfits, even came to seem super cool because of the great songs after I heard the sound, making me want to go to the live concert.
After looking up the magazine, I found out that they were having a live show in Osaka a few days later. The tickets were sold out, but I still wanted to go to the venue. I wanted to feel the atmosphere even a little bit, so I headed to the venue with all my money (5,000 yen). The venue was the former Osaka Kosei Nenkin Kaikan medium hall. There was a park in front of the venue, and I was nervous because there were a lot of people dressed in rocking styles, but not necessarily in cosplay. There were also many people selling scalped tickets, which were highly sought after. Since it was impossible to get a ticket, I went to the stalls that were selling goods. As the time for the show was approaching, the crowd around me was gradually dispersing. I saw some people putting their ears against the wall to listen to the sound leak, so I thought I'd give it a try when the show started, but I found someone who gave me a ticket and I ended up watching the live show!
That live was……………of course, X's live.
Of course, the guitarist I saw there was HIDE-san.
Seeing HIDE-san at this live changed my life.
To be honest, I thought X were monsters when I first saw them. Especially HIDE-san looked like an alien, not a person from this world.
After watching such a live show, I started searching for magazines with X on them. Even when I was at school, I wanted to go home early and listen to X's songs. I got deeper and deeper into them, wanting to listen to them all the time, wanting to touch X all the time.
Then, I really wanted a Mockingbird, the same guitar HIDE-san had, so I saved up my pocket money and New Year's money, and then went to a music store in Shinsaibashi Amemura, Osaka. I went to this music store because I had read in a magazine that they had Mockingbird guitars there, but in fact they did not, and I was told to make a reservation. I still wanted one, so I ordered it on the spot, but after that I didn't hear from them for a while. Six months later, when I thought maybe it had been forgotten, the shipment finally arrived and I got the Mockingbird. I was so happy that I kept touching it.
From there, I watched X's live performance in Kansai many times, and I also went to the Tokyo Dome live several times. I recorded all the TV shows with X on them; through the help of my friends, I also found and got videos of TV shows outside of Kansai. HIDE-san didn’t look like an alien on TV, he was kind of cute.
I never thought I'd be so addicted to them. There was nothing in my eyes but X and HIDE-san.
At that time, I heard that if you wrote a letter to HIDE-san and sent it with a return postcard, you would receive a reply, so I started writing immediately and sent the letter. I wrote about how I started playing the guitar after seeing HIDE-san, and that I wanted to form a band someday. Then, what a surprise!
A reply came back!!!!!!!!!
(To be continued…)
Words from the translator:
When I first listened to X JAPAN's music, my feelings were similar to what Kaoru described. At the same time, I love HIDE as much as Kaoru does, even though I'm born in a world without HIDE.💗
*About the classmate who recommended noise music to Kaoru, you can read Chapter 2 of Dokugen. Here are two translations by different translators:
Chapter 2: “The transfer student who introduced me to the noisy music” by @thepriceofbeingaroseisloneliness
Chapter II. A classmate who introduced me to “noise” music by @elenalester
------
part 2. & part 3.
#dir en grey#薰#kaoru#読弦#dokugen#憧人#akogareru hito#translations#kaoru translation#text translation#hide#松本秀人#x japan#translation by yinfu
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Persona 3 update mostly on the story. I just got Aeigis and as a unit she's interested. Very focused on two things which are buffs and AOE physical damage. However her versatility is low so hopefully she gets better skills later. I didn't expect to get her this early I thought she was the last one we get like. Personality wise she's okay. Standard robot character so far but I'm sure her story gets crazy.
But what I really want to talk about is the characters of P3 and how it's really good at giving them their own agency. At first I was very disappointed that characters didn't get their personas through a self revelation like 4 and 5 and that their social links are way more of a barrier, but I get now it's bc they put more time putting their character development into the actual story instead of social links.
I think Yukari might be my favorite Persona character which man it's hard putting her over Ryuju, Kanji, and Mishima but damn she's up there. Her telling everyone off was chefs kiss to be honest. Dont get me wrong I adore Akihiko and Kirijo and I'm not necessarily saying they deserved to get yelled at like that. But Yukari definitely deserved to pop off. And the scene with her on the beach is great. The fact that she's like there's nothing you can say that will make it go away is just great. Again she's the most normal persona but her determination to do go snooping and finding out the truth is just so badass.
Moving onto Junpei my sweet sweet boy. I understand he's an insecure boy who just wants to feel respected and lovef and worth something but that doesn't mean I wanna go around hitting on women that I have no interest in. But I digress. I love his little arc after the love hotel where he just feels such visible content. I felt bad bc I do like Junpei and I hated him being mad even if it wasn't my fault. But it very sweet tbh after the erealizesnthst he's the problem he genuinely goes 'sorry I've been a dick' and we're good but I get the sense that feeling of resentment isn't over. It seems like a common theme in the Magician arcana.
I need to know what went down with Akihiko and Shinji. Also apparently Kirijo gonea through some intense shit too. They're still shrouded in so much mystery in such an intriguing way and seeing them both open up slowly is very sweet. Also I didn't expect Kirijos dad to be so nice I was expecting a Haru situation.
Fuuka is very funny and her willingness to hack into a major corporation is peak. Again I love her own agenda is just not wanting to stay with her parents.
Again, I love that everyone has their own agenda that makes more internal conflict. The P4 and P5 groups all shared the same goal so most conflict was external and very rarely did personal character development happen outside of their persona awakening or social links.
Also looks like I was pretty accurate in my analysis of the protag and that he's just vwry quiet and calm. He's a good leader, but socially he doesn't say much. So I'm more lenient with him being not as expressive as Yu and Akira if that is in fact his character. Yu comes off as very empathetic and a bit more extroverted (from what I remember it's been a while since I've played 4 and 5 and ofc player choices matter) and Ren comes off as introverted but with a silly side along with a strong sense to help others.
But yeah quickish analysis of the my P3 experience. Could possibly become my favorite solely for Yukari.
#persona 3#persona 3 reload#persona 3 makoto#persona yukari#yukari takeba#junpei iori#akihiko sanada#mitsuru kirijo#fuuka yamagishi#persona 3 aigis
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so... episode 73, huh?
I've been having a lot of thoughts about gillion and his approach to emotions, and it's all been kickstarted by the last episode
(spoilers for the just roll with it riptide campaign up to ep. 73 below, also discussions of multiple not so nice topics, such as self-hatred, lack of parental figures / abandonment, atlas personality, physical and emotional abuse, isolation, neglect and indoctrination. be safe.
also i am very aware that most of what I'm gonna say is not necessarily new to a lot of people and it's by no means a revelation, this is supposed to be more of a getting-my-thoughts-in-order kind of post. I don't really have a structure planned for this one, so get ready for a lot of rambling and don't expect a conclusion or anything of the sorts
also every english teacher on earth is gonna hate me for this, but I'm not providing any context. this analysis is not gonna do you any good if you aren't familiar with the rough plot of riptide. I'll do my best to make it clear which scenes I'm referencing in case you want to watch / listen to them to refresh.)
basically this whole thing started bc I thought that gillion was behaving quite strangely this episode (ep 73). of course, considering his situation (everything he's learned about his "purpose" in the episodes before the feywild, being in a phase of change and finding himself etc.) and the catalyst being the kidnapping of pretzel, it's not surprising to see him act differently, but what threw me off was that he was hugely inconsistent in his behavior.
now if I wasn't aware that charlie is an absolute improv and acting genius, I might have waved this off as the player being unsure of the best approach, but charlie doesn't only know how to be in character, he also knows said character impossibly well. he's proven again and again that he understands gillion's situation and the effects of his life on him to a tee.
and so I took a closer look at the inconsistencies to figure out a pattern. surprise, surprise! I did!
most instances I found have to do with his projected intent and mood, and his actual intent and mood.
after pretzel got kidnapped, gillion took an oath of vengeance and, very in line with that oath, started acting scary, forward to the point of aggression and very, very angry.
yet despite his demeanor he does not resist when asked to cooperate by the staff (who as far as he knows works with the very people he suspects took pretzel), offers dirla his help with their stolen cub and shows genuine interest in helping everyone who's lost someone to the pig girl, and goes out of his way to save the pixie that fell off of the flying pug. and even though it might not come across that way because of the weird mix of behaviors, he still tries his best to be as polite and well-mannered as possible. these are all things that gillion would have done before, but now contrasted by this sinister act, that he seems to only half commit to, they feel weird.
one instance I wanted to highlight was the conversation he and jay had with the pixie in the big tent. here is where gillion gets really upfront and explicitly aggressive (even though his attempt at kidnapping failed) for the first time, and he immediately gets interrupted by a sudden outpour of emotions when the pixie tells him that her pet weasel is called peanutbutter. charlie tells us ooc that gillion broke out in tears because he saw himself in her. what that means is that he saw a person who clearly loved their pet a lot and gave them a food related name, and the resemblance to him and his own pet was enough to break through his normally very strong emotional barrier (we'll come back to this) In Front Of Other People!
this reaction could be due to the pixie and her weasel reminding him that he very much misses his own beloved pet, or because he gets hit with the realization that this pixie could also lose her pet, or, most likely, it's a mixture of both. normally both of these would act as a motivator to get going and fix things, but gillion instead just kinda falls down sobbing.
the way he talks to the pixie shortly after he broke down, also shows a weird juxtaposition between his tone of speaking, which is extremely childlike and sounds very vulnerable for once, and the words that he says (talk about murder and torture) which again ties into the previously established inconsistency.
all of this leads me to the most obvious hint at what is going on with gillion and why he behaves the way he behaves: the fact that he breaks down crying the second he's by himself. it's like a big, red, sparkly, blinking arrow that points us to the source of everything.
gillion is putting on a facade. one that crumbles the moment he is alone.
and sure this is pretty obvious - we've known that he isn't really one to be vulnerable - but the moment I actually sat down to think about what this facade would mean for gillion, all of the above listed inconsistencies (and more) started making perfect sense.
to understand we need to take a look at what we know about his upbringing.
what we know of course is the whole deal with being raised as a weapon for the elders, being taken from his family, his training etc. but we actually know shockingly little about his relationship to the elders and his day to day life. all we have are implications and speculations. however, even though not much has been confirmed, most things we learn about gillions childhood work together to create a picture and we can fill in the blanks with relative ease.
we aren't given a specific age that gillion was taken by the elders but we know that he was already in training by age eight (gillion's first secret in the meat room ep. 52) and I think it's safe to assume he was taken way earlier, seeing as the prophecy and the incidents surrounding his birth (allegedly) lined up perfectly and the elders would have been informed immediately, since the whole prophecy thing is a huge deal to them. (Edit: as of ep. 79 we know that he was taken at age five or younger)
we also know, thanks to the description of young gillion in ep. 72, that he was bruised and wearing "clothes and armor that's a little too big for him". so the elders clearly had no issue harming a small child (even if it was due to the training, you don't just hurt a kid like that) and the not-fitting clothes indicate serious neglect. even form-fitted armor would not have been a huge trouble for the elders, the literal highest authority in the undersea, to get.
the isolation from any friends or family (except edyn) gillion experienced while in training isn't even just implied, it's outright stated multiple times, most notably during the conversation with edyn in ep. 58, when she is talking about pretzel being intended to help with his loneliness. the elders even held control over how much he was allowed to see his sister and restricted the frequency more and more the older he got.
in that conversation gillion talks about how he was not the best student and had to take "extra lessons" (Edit: we now know that these extra lessons stem from the elders refusal to explain their expectations to gillion, ep. 77), and how he did not get much time (if any at all) for hobbies, which leads me to believe that any deviation from the intended path (such as misbehaving or interests in non chosen one stuff) was punished and beaten out of him, figuratively, or even literally.
the elders made gillion do stuff he did not want to do (also ep. 58, same conversation) (Edit: also ep. 75) and did not let him do stuff he did want to do, and still he holds an unwavering trust in them for a very long time even after he was exiled, a clear sign that his perception of the elders as rightful authority has been really deeply ingrained in his brain. not once would he question the elders since to him they are infallible.
and of course we are all quite familiar with the very core of gillion's story; the ideals instilled within him by years and years of influence by the elders and the prophecy: the very black-and-white view on morality, the "greater good" being much more important than his own life, the undersea being superior to any other faction and the clear correct choice once gillion's destiny rolls around, the idea that he carries all of the responsibility for literally every creature of the undersea and also every other person or creature (in that order of priority), the justification of murder (as long as they're "evil" of course) and the notion that he is only of any worth if he can be a weapon for someone to use, or a shield for someone to take refuge behind. (all of this is displayed in his behavioral patterns over the course of the campaign and I won't be digging out any scenes for you to go back to. if you aren't familiar with these patterns why are you here? /lh)
all of this paints a picture of abuse, neglect, isolation (and the distance from actual society that comes with it, which in turn results in easier manipulation), control and indoctrination, not to mention the absolute abandonment from his biological parents.
the amount of psychological issues that stem from this is enough to fill a whole book:
a lack of self-worth bordering on self-hatred and a very self-sacrificial nature, abandonment issues, an atlas personality (if you can't infer what that means through context clues, google it, it should be the very first result) and trauma from the elders' abuse.
the following part will only really talk about the last two, since they are the most relevant to how gillion approaches his emotions.
the whole facade that gillion puts on again and again is essentially one big trauma response. as many have already observed, gillion has two very strongly contrasting sides to him. one is his more "true" self which shows more and more as he stays with the riptide pirates. he starts finding joy in otherwise "useless" activities such as joking around and even pulling pranks (ep. 42), he stands up for himself instead of just others, and he begins very slowly and cautiously opening up to his friends.
certain situations (his friends being in danger, a village in need of saving, an insult to his honor) tend to trigger the other side of him (which used to be the only side that ever saw the light of day) to show: heroic, righteous, strong, but also closed off, self-sacrificial, and afraid of failure. part of this side, or this trauma response, is this facade. he falls back into old habits, habits that used to keep him alive: do the right thing even if it means the death of yourself or an enemy, if in doubt the undersea is superior, be on your best behavior, and whatever you do Do Not show weakness.
on top of all that comes the atlas thing, the idea that the world is resting on his shoulders and it's his job to fix everything.
so he restrains any show of emotions not just because back in the undersea that was dangerous, could get him in trouble, but just as importantly he was taught that his own emotions come last and being emotional could harm others. and it's his job to help everyone else no matter the cost.
and this explains pretty much all of gillions behavior this episode, especially if one considers that he is very emotionally affected by pretzels disappearance, which means that it is much harder for him to keep up the act. the mix of threatening and weirdly polite, his oath to get vengeance and yet not hurting anyone who might have been involved with the kidnapping, the stark contrast between cornering the pixie and collapsing on top of her sobbing, are all a result of all of his different pre-established patterns and systems of how to function clashing, and so of course it's a mess. he's angry at the pig-girl, rightfully so, but that also triggers the anger towards the entire world he's in that isn't intrinsic but has been instilled in him by the elders. he wants to be threatening but his instincts tell him to be well-behaved. he feels like he cannot let anyone see how he's actually feeling but he's so strung up that it only takes the name of the pet of a stranger to make him cry. and he expresses the most amount of emotion he probably ever has in front of others while talking about harming and killing people.
even the very fact that he made the oath of vengeance points us to his childhood; the moment something happens which he does not know how to solve otherwise, something that he cannot deal with in the same way he deals with other things, he makes an oath, or a deal, or a bargain. it's a pattern that's wormed it's way through the entire campaign ever since his talk with niklaus hendrix (ep. 8) and found it's beginning in his original paladin oath, one he took due to the conditioning and expectations of the elders. (my theory is that he finds something comforting in making a deal with someone higher up in the food chain than him. fucking freak.)
another interesting aspect to look at under this new light is his initial reaction to finding pretzels bowl empty. first thing he does is scream. multiple times. to me that is a very clear very vulnerable expression of emotion. and then - he does nothing. until he's prompted to break the mirror by jay. and it's only until after that plan fails that gillion starts his whole vengeance spiel, which we now know is most likely an attempt at fixing things the way he should as instructed by the elders. in that short period of time before that he is aimless. he's just gillion and he lost his pet and he doesn't know what to do. in that moment his initial reaction is utter despair, pure emotion, and once he had time to gather himself that's when he doesn't see any other way than to do something painfully familiar. and with that also comes the whole barrage of old behavioral patterns that lead to him acting the way he does.
so that's this episode, but of course, similar, less obvious cases are sprinkled all throughout the campaign.
the one that immediately comes to mind is the fight for honor between him and chip (ep. 15), where the moment his honor is wounded, he opts for a fight to the death, even though at this point he already considers chip his friend.
or in ep. 8, insisting on a fight with niklaus and even going for a second round after getting downed by niklaus in one hit, and then accepting a deal that he knows is bad news, all because it would save the mayor and his daughter (because, quick refresher, they could have just let the mayor die and that would have lifted the curse). and "what is one more burden" right?
or the fact that he still sees having fun with his friends as an actual literal sin!! (ep. 71)
or letting jay down him willingly, even removing his armor (ep. 53)
and so on and so forth. there's probably a lot of subtle one-liners or passing ooc remarks, that I can't remember, but you get the gist.
the gist being that gillion grew up not being gillion, but The Chosen One instead. and now that he has the freedom to be both, there are some really messy consequences, and it's actually incredible what a grip charlie has on all of these layers and behaviors and I get more and more fascinated by him the deeper I dig.
we have not even touched certain aspects of gillion's character and journey, there's his fish out of water issue, very subtle hints that he might have been suicidal at one point, not to mention what his banishment from the undersea did to him. but all of that is another conversation entirely.
anyway! I hope you enjoyed this very all over the place, rambly analysis post, even though there's not many new thoughts or revelations in here and I basically winged it! the moment I started this train of thought on saturday I just couldn't get to rest until I put this whole thing together.
now I finally know peace.
can't wait for the next episode on friday to disprove all of what I said
(also please feel free to add onto this, tell me how I got it wrong, derail the post etc. I love reading other people's thoughts on stuff I say)
(@wrinklemcdinkle
@snails-in-spaceships
@keenscribbles
@poly-pirates-my-beloved
@enby-ralsei
@littlefoxwithbighat
@burning-sol)
#I think I'm done?#I gave up halfway through the final edit so there might be some misspelling or something#wow this took something out of me#gillion tidestrider#jrwi gillion#gillion jrwi#edyn tidestrider#jrwi edyn#edyn jrwi#niklaus hendrix#jrwi niklaus#niklaus jrwi#jrwi riptide#jrwi#just roll with it riptide#just roll with it#jrwi riptide spoilers#long post#and I mean Long#analysis
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hey I've been really loving your neverafter analysis - it made me feel like i wasn't complaining about nothing lmao and you word it much better than I could
so about that, you've mentioned the acoc finale a few times & if you have a post about that or any kind of commentary, I'm really curious to read it
<3 i dont think i have any posts from when i watched, ive deleted most of my acoc posts over the years bc they annoyed me lol. ive gotten several questions about this and will do my best to explain what i mean! it's not going to be super detailed due to i havent watched that season in literally 3 years but basically i just remember the very end of the acoc finale being really like. tonally jarring because the players were saying all this insane stuff about consolidating political power but it was being framed as a happy ending not only for the party but also for their subjects. the vibe was like, well it was tough going there for a minute but now the Right people are in charge, so it's all good now :) just no acknowledgement of the inherent violence of governance via monarchy, which again may be stupid to expect from the dnd comedy show, except for the fact that the content of the season was like. a painfully extended enumeration of The Violences of Monarchy. but i guess we learned nothing :) like let's just read from the wiki briefly about the events of the episode post-siege:
Cumulous asks Liam what is glowing in his pocket. Liam without hesitation eats the seed from Lapin Cadbury. He thinks of the change he most wants to see in the world and wishes that the creativity and magic of Candia would burst forth, and instantly Candia quadruples in size within its place on the Calorum map. Saccharina thanks Liam as the new queen of a lot more Candian land. Far off, Liam hears Lapin chuckling […] Lapin whispers to Liam on his way out, “There’s nothing wrong with being a seed guy.” A new age of Candia is born as Emperor Amethar of the House Rocks embraces his new title and brings a new age of peace to the realms […] Liam brings the Pontifex and Sir Keratin back to life in an act of mercy and locks them in prison for the rest of their lives. He leaves them, and goes back to being a seed guy […] Saccharina tries to find Cinnamon an alternative food source to Bulbian hearts, looking through all of Vegetania before returning to Candia. Just outside the castle, a tinfoil tree grows and a cranky Cinnamon eats the fruit from the tree and then grows gentle, regarding the world with love instead of hunger.
all of this is soooo stupid and shoehorned to me... why is liam wishing for candia to grow four times larger besides that ally the player thinks that would be a good thing. WHY is liam resurrecting dead people and throwing them in jail framed as 'quirky' besides the fact that they have essentially already rolled credits and so are just ready to frame anything that happens as funny and nice because they don't want to like. get into the politics of it.
and that's not even getting into the rest of the wrap-up where like. all the bad stuff, all the outstanding conflict and tension that would naturally linger after the battle just gets done away with completely for the sake of an ending that is not tainted by even the faintest hint of complexity or violence (again, this is revealing and tells us a lot about what the table considers violent vs. what is so normalized as to not even register as violence in the moment). rather than having to grapple with having raised and domesticated a pet that feeds on people in a time of war and then still being responsible for that creature after peace has been declared, cinnamon is magically transformed into a creature that now only needs the fruit of trees to surivive. the events of the season usher in a reign of peace rather than a rocky period of distrust and repairing alliances or even open rebellion because that is the happiest ending for our royal protagonists, not because it necessarily follows logically from what took place in the finale.
all in all i feel that what the acoc finale wants to convince me of is that the season's conflict was largely a case of good vs. evil individuals rather than complex people caught in and trying to exploit violent systems, and that as long as the good people win out and have the space to rule as they want to, monarchy is not opposed to concepts like happiness or justice but indeed is highly compatible with them. we just needed a good king!!! earlier in the season it felt like there was space to question monarchy's claims to moral authority, particularly through saccharina's abuse and the outsider perspectives of her crew of outlaws. however, by the finale all of this critique has been subsumed into the narrative machine and we're back to cheering for the rulers of candia in their noble pursuit to conquer ever more land, something we hope they achieve because they have shown themselves to be pure of heart and sound in judgement. this was not a actually a forum to question whether a small group of unelected wealthy people should be allowed to govern just because they want to, but rather just an extended job interview for the rocks family, and they have passed with flying colors. anyway.
the reason i compared this week's neverafter to this particular acoc episode is that i think we are again seeing some of the limits of the table's political imagination, particularly as it relates to incarceration; imprisonment has been invoked repeatedly through the device of trapping people in timothy's book, which is either framed as a good or bad thing depending on whether it is done by a protagonist or an antagonist. if the authors or the fairies trap the characters in their respective stories, it's an abuse of power that must be challenged. however, if the party traps an annoying or superfluous npc, or a meddling princess, in their handy portable prison, it's (a) benevolent; the possibility has been raised that trapping characters in this way makes them happy, and may indeed be a way to give them a happily ever after; or (b) violent, but markedly less so than other available courses of action and thus merciful by comparison. there is no space to discuss the inherent violence of incarceration or entrapment even if it is used as an alternative to death, which IS INSANE in a season where the horror that kicked everything off was the horror that what the characters thought were their lives was actually a prison made of narrative.
across these two seasons i think we are seeing an inability or perhaps just an unwillingness to contend with the inherent violence of being held against one's will. the problem for the party seems not to be that characters experience various levels of incarceration by virtue of being trapped in narratives, but rather that the wrong people have been imprisoned while those who truly deserve the punishment roam free. the party, our protagonists, have been trapped in story despite their inherent goodness, while the true bad actors -- the fairies, the princesses, the gander -- are allowed to roam free. according to this logic, simply capturing and imprisoning everyone who advances a plan the party doesn't agree with will be a satisfactory outcome and should be enough to set the world to rights.
tldr it frustrates me as a viewer when d20 seasons make a point to explicitly raise and explore structural issues only to "solve" them at the last minute with individualist fixes that do nothing to address the root cause of said issues. it adds insult to injury when they try to tell me the ending is a happy one simply because it made the party happy, even if others had to suffer for that to be so.
#guy who said he would be brief. anyway#others are welcome to add their perspectives i know ive discussed the acoc finale with ppl in replies/dms/etc. before#short answer: It Was Not Good#asks#anon#acoc#neverafter
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Hiii! Huge fan of your Hanella series! Im doing a The Fall rewatch atm and love the moment Stella comes over and kisses Archie Panjabis character in front of that guy. Idk how to describe it… Possessive isn’t the right word for the moment but I find the confidence so sexy. Do you think Hank has ever experienced her be that bold and forward in public with him before?
Hello, and thank you. What's behind this cut is a lot of word vomit, so read at your own risk.
Please first allow me to preface the explanation that follows here with the fact that I actually put in way too much character analysis into both Hank and Stella when I was coming to the decision years ago of whether or not to continue with these stories or just keep it as that one-shot, one-night stand that reluctantly became two. I did not in any way expect the overwhelmingly positive response to the pair as I got and I wasn't going to continue if it was only to make them international fuck buddies, becauase...boring. If I couldn't find it in them to build up a relationship within the series, I wasn't going to do it. So, I sat with it for quite a bit, stewing on their strengths and weaknesses and what would pull them together, but also keep them apart. So, these are my opinions on The Fall and Stella, but in now way a judgment of them, because they are what they are. There are honestly plenty of things I don't like about both Stella and Hank as characters, or how they respond to certain things (even within my own series) but if I stopped them from doing things that I don't necessarily like or agree with, it wouldn't be truthful for the characters.
That being said, I don't feel the same way about the moment with Reed as you do (and trust me, I know I'm probably in a minority of one when I say that). What Stella was doing in that moment was meant to intimidate, to take power, to have an upper hand over the guy speaking to Reed, as well as to seduce. That scene actually makes me sad and uncomfortable to think that she would put another woman in that position of having to deal with unwanted advances - and actually she was caught between either accepting the kiss to get a guy to leave the table, or embarrass Stella by pushing her away. It's stomach-churing for me. Whenever it comes up in a rewatch, I cringe at how awkward it looks and that I don't want to see someone who doesn't want that kiss, to have to take it. It's predatory. If Stella was some guy coworker of Reed's who did that, I would feel the exact same way. The only real point in Stella's favor that I can give her is for what follows - she respects that when Reed says no, she can't, she doesn't try to convince her otherwise, she leaves it at that. Let me reiterate here, this is not me passing a judgment on Stella or anyone who got something different out of that scene. It's how I feel about that scene and what needs to be explained to answer the question.
So, in terms of that above motivation, the thing is that she's never had to take power over Hank or seduce him. And that's one of the reasons why Stella's hang-up about public displays of affection as well as overcoming those hang-ups are a theme throughout the Hanella universe - because this relationship is different for her. She keeps that overt boldness private for them, because it's for them and not for anyone else and she doesn't have to weaponize it. I think part of what makes their relationship work in my mind is that they can inherently cancel out the more unappealing aspects of their personalities, but they've still had to put in the work to get past their baggage.
One of the things I remember that I leaned on heavily to develop Stella's character in this series, and move past The Fall, is the conversation with the doctor (whose name escapes me because all I could think of when I saw him was JEFFREY FROM COUPLING!!!!!). I remember that quiet conversation with Doctor NotJeffrey being the most telling about how lonely she is and how hard she's worked to push people out of her life. And those were the kinds of things that I knew that I could work with - knew that I wanted to work with. That, combined with the last shot of her alone in her kitchen after the whole ordeal is what made me believe that she was capable of more than fleeting one-night stands and could be ready to form a connection with someone.
I also think the Working Hard stories within the series are probably the closest to any public boldness Hank has gotten from her, but because they're both in on the game and she's given herself permission to have fun with it.
I'm sorry for the long ramble and I know you probably wanted me to say yes!!! one time he was waiting for her at a bar and she walked up when he wasn't looking and grabbed his dick through his jeans and cocked her head to the side and he knew it meant 'let's get out of here' and they fucked against the brick wall in the alley and then went back in and had a drink, but I really, really do take these two very seriously and I do have reasons for why they are the way they are.
Too seriously, I know.
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Okay so- if you saw my aroace chr headcannon list, you probably saw Adam from Hazbin Hotel on there! It's been a while since I have written an essay, but honestly I really wanted to expand on my asexual Adam thought and @kiichu asked me to so here we go ;)
[ Just. Don't expect any actual thoughtful analysis. I am mostly just grasping at straws and projecting because I kin the dude ]
[ Oh yeah and I will reference the Trans Genesis AU a lot. Nope, Stanley and I did not abandon it. Sorry not sorry ]
First things first, let's look at his first appearance in episode 1.
Needless to say, he was a bit of an asshole. But something really stuck out to me.
In one of the scenes, he was recounting a date/one-night-stand he had to Charlie (because of course he was).
He clearly seemed to be describing the dinner date itself in detail, but he literally just caps it off with "and then we fucked, and it was awesome".
This line can be read in a few different ways, depending on your view.
1. They didn't actually fuck, the woman ditched him or didn't exist to begin with and he's lying to seem cooler.
2. It wasn't awesome (*at least for him, but yk could go both ways) and he wasn't about to go into detail about his less-than-stellar sexual encounter (I feel. Really uncomfortable writing this, I am too ace for this shit).
3. The logical explanation of the writers not wanting to include it for rating reasons and because of the episode's already short run time and also because we as the audience don't really need to know that. Though I think that if that were just that, a better alternative would've been that Adam either continues describing the date or starts describing the sex and either Lute or Charlie (or both) stop him.
For my interpretation of the ace Adam, we'll go with the second interpretation.
Allos love pointing out how "asexuals can still date/have sex" but they always neglect one thing: that's not exactly how sex-favourable and sex-neutral aces work.
I can't speak for everybody on the spectrum (especially since I am mostly repulsed), but wanting to have sex doesn't mean you feel sexual attraction.
So yeah this doesn't disprove him being asexual, though I am aiming for a very different interpretation.
Sex-repulsed Adam.
NOW, PLEASE HEAR ME OUT I KNOW I SOUND CRAZY!!
Ace men rarely get any representation, and a lot of men (especially cis men, but trans men too) don't realize they're ace or are actively in denial about it because of this thing called ✨toxic masculinity✨
I don't think it's too much of a hot take to say that Adam clearly falls into a lot of toxic masculinity stuff.
Being literally the first man, the original dick (or the original pussy if we're talking about the tgau), he is probably expected to uphold these harmful beliefs of masculinity or at least thinks he has to to be taken seriously (or be percieved as cis at least-).
Therefore, he's probably is in deep, deep denial of his asexuality and tries to cover it up by, well, sleeping around I guess (*hopefully not with human souls because i don't need any of the implications that come with that).
But that doesn't necessarily mean he enjoyed it, you know.
Now I don't wanna go too deep into this honestly quite depressing line of thought, so to keep it brief that's probably why he wouldn't go into detail about that one night stand- even though he totally seems like the type of guy who would talk about this stuff in excessive and unnecessary detail (can you tell I love torturing this guy. I mean if yk the TGAU you probably already know but shush).
That or because a lot of aces literally cannot talk about sex seriously. It has to be a joke or about an ao3 smut fic.
*ahem* Moving on-
The infamous "Now, I'm going to FUCK you" scene that every Adamsapple shippers love (no hate to Adamsapple shippers btw, except @roryheart fuck you Rory /lh silly (I love you buddy don't take this seriously)).
Just. Just look at his face when Lucifer says it.
It could just be pure confusion, which is quite understandable tbh.
Or we could go with the funny interpretation of Adam being so autistic and ace, he thought for a second that Lucifer was actually hitting on him this whole time and he just didn't notice. Purely because this has actually happened to me before and I wanna project-
Moreover, he looks lowkey disgusted by it and just attacks Lucifer immediately.
Whatever, now we get to the ✨angst potential✨ of ace Adam.
Elaborating on the bit of toxic masculinity from earlier, maybe he thinks that his aversion to stuff like is why both Lilith (and presumably Eve) cheated on him with Lucifer, because he wasn't a real man.
And if we wanna get really depressing, all we have to do is just remember that his only purpose was to have as many children with Eve (and previously Lilith) as possible to populate the Earth.
Yeah, sounds like a total nightmare scenario.
I have a few other ideas, but they're really half baked and not really well put together and stuff- idk I just think ace Adam is a cool idea.
Sorry if this wasn't exactly the essay any of you were looking for but I genuinely just think it'd be fun and kinda interesting to explore really.
Btw gonna make "sobek rants" exclusively for angry rants and gonna repurpose "brainingsewer" for essays and analysis and stuff. Not that anybody really cares about my tagging system.
#brainingsewer#sewer dump#tw sex mention#the only guy in the bible#idk i am just throwing words into the world
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