credit to @rapidhighway for the art in my pfp, check them out, her art is awesome!! --------------------------------------------------------- I'm a sleep deprived tea addicted raccoon, that is in WAY too many fandoms. --------------------------------------------------------- Any pronouns but my fav are They/them --------------------------------------------------------- My second account ( pretty sure it has become my main now lmao ) : https://www.tumblr.com/andytheconstelation?source=share --------------------------------------------------------- WHAT IS GENDER --------------------------------------------------------- Child of 🥀📜Erato 🎼💌 --------------------------------------------------------- I like : Sanders sides, Gravity Falls, Bongo Stray Dogs, Voltron, Alien Stage, DC ( mostly the bats ), Steven Universe, FNAF, Undertale, The Owl House, My hero academia, Adventure Time, Dead poets society..ect.. --------------------------------------------------------- I live for music ( I love all kinds but I'm a huge fan of Queen, David Bowie, Conan Grey, Cavetown, My Chemical Romance, Set it off, Melanie Martinez ), I'm a theater kid, LOVE Disney movies, I'm kind of a Slytherin/Ravenclaw. I am also the overly anxious mom friend --------------------------------------------------------- I kin : Luz, Luna Lovegood, Sirius, Regulus, Andromeda, Patton, Virgil, Roman, Janus, Mabel Pines, Dazai, Ivan alien stage...ect.. --------------------------------------------------------- English isn't my first language, my first language is French
oh my god. danny motta is going up against fucking poseidon in the tumblr sexyman poll. guys we have to make danny motta win against poseidon at the very least. for the bit. guys. for the bit we have to make danny motta win against poseidon. guys. gu
It’s been a solid couple of years since I’ve drawn any fanart for Sanders Sides, so! Have a Virgil, in one of those super emo hoodies from 2009 we all saw at Hot Topic
"she dies because no one could think of what else to do with her."
-Aoko Matsuda, The Woman Dies
i had an interesting conversation with @itsrubyrose45510 recently , about the female characters of death note, their deaths and how they all fall into the "beautiful dead girl" trope. final girl digital on youtube has a great video on it , which got me thinking about misa amane. (and by extension myself and my own struggles with mental health but we aren't getting into that here.)
so, misa amane. let's start. is she goth? this doesn't seem relevant but trust me here. fight over which subculture she belongs to (if any) all you want, but at the end of the day she's one of the most famous goth girl characters, particularly in anime. now let's think about the goth subculture for a minute, it's all about music, expressing yourself through unconventional clothes and makeup, and creating safe spaces for marginalised communities. the goth culture romanticises the darker sides of life, suffering, melancholy, heartbreak, death and the like to fight social taboos. keep this in mind as i want to consider this gothic romanticisation with the "beautiful dead girl" trope and misa amane's death.
according to the trope (and literature in general really), the life of a woman goes like this-- happy childhood, sad adolescence, bitterness in early adulthood which is then cut short by death. typically a suicide. always seen through rose-tinted glasses, with pretty dresses, gorgeous landscapes, peacefully sad expressions. she is not allowed to be ugly, not even while she's dying. she's immortal and forever young. it's a shame, really, she was taken too soon. her suffering is tragic, for she was too young to be so sad. any older and it's unremarkable. nothing tragic about it, just a bitter woman who finally got sick of it all. (do watch the video if you're interested in a more in depth explanation.)
misa dies. shocker. all the death note characters die, it's literally called death note. one of the points of the show is that everyone dies equally and there isn't much meaning to death itself, however the show fails to actually demonstrate this with the vast differences between the male characters' deaths and the female characters' deaths. i'm focusing on misa amane here, of course. with the author's sexism seeping into misa's writing, it was only natural she would meet her end after light did. her death is absolutely gorgeous, she dies on valentines day, wearing a pretty gothic lolita dress, the sun setting in front of her before she jumps. we don't see her mangled body. we don't hear any of her thoughts before her death, we don't see her reaction to finding out light is dead. her expression is... pensive? she's not angry, she's not mourning, she's not sobbing, she's not scared, she's just, almost sad. not quite, but there's hints of it. because expressing your sorrow and grief is ugly, and the last thing we want is for our token pretty girl, the one caged to a man's side, to be ugly in her last moments.
her death symbolises two things to me. one, in line with the trope, that women must die young so they can be beautiful forever. because there is nothing else to a woman, particularly a fictional one. two, that misa is worthless without a man. she did nothing but aid light, or at least try her best to, yet all we felt when watching her was annoyance, for getting in his way. and now that he is gone, there is nothing else for her to do. hence the quote i opened with, she dies because there is no one could think of what else to do with her.
with her gothic appearance and her own habit of romanticising death (think "what a beautiful way to kill someone", "i would die happy now, while i'm still young and pretty") it feels almost obvious that she would kill herself after light died. it's perfectly in line with everything she has done thus far in the story, and of course, she has no other option as a 26 year old female character. as Jia Colentino puts it, "at which point, if you hadn't killed yourself already, you would simply disappear." like i've already mentioned, the romanticisation of her death (and the other women in death note) goes against what death note is trying to say about death as a concept, but this is where i want to bring up her status as a goth character-- is romanticising death a good or bad thing when viewed through a gothic lens that is trying to fight social taboos? it makes it more palatable, but should it be?
in misa's case, i think no. in fact, i do not think she should have died at all. it adds absolutely nothing to her character, and in fact takes more away, more than was already taken after she met light. being one of the only characters to survive would have added so much more to her as a character and gone against the numerous tropes she falls under, making her something of a deconstruction of them. the gothic girl lives, we've already gone against the immediate expectation we had of her. light, and consequently his death, could have been framed not as her life sentence, but as a bird escaping her cage. she was nothing but a tool of kira's as long as we'd known her, light's death could have been an opportunity to finally see misa wake up from the manipulation she underwent and learn to enjoy her life without him. she wouldn't be the poor girl whose life got stolen, the one who deserved better, the victim. her continuing to live after light died would be inspiring too, for she finally escaped her abusive relationship.
life does not end with your 20s, life does not end with a romantic relationship, life does not end with abuse. there is more out there.
i believe if misa got to live, not only would her tropes be abolished, but her character would make for a great representation of what happens when women get with controlling men. she may have lost herself for a moment, and now with light gone she can get her own life back.
There's something to be said about the portrayal of the women in Death Note as being more emotional, thus being "easier" to manipulate, control, and be outsmarted by men.
But like, a lot of the men in the story are also "emotional", like Matsuda, Aizawa, and Chief Yagami. Heck, Light's and Mello's motivations and character are emotional/driven by their feelings.
But the men are portrayed as being lovable, admirable, noble, and heroic, or cool, edgy, badass super geniuses. This lack of awareness in the blindspot of their writing and the authors' hypocrisy and double standards is ugh.
A lot of the fandom sees Misa as being stupid and annoying, but like, when you really look into it her and Mello's character are actually so, so similar. Except Mello's character gets all the applause, while Misa is just thought of as an airhead, obsessive fan girl.
There's also something to be said about a lot of the fans being sad about Matt's death, a character who wasn't even a character at all, but rejoice Takada's horrific death or don't care to see the tragic implications and circumstances of Misa's death.
I have even seen people turn their anger and dislike onto Halle (and/or Takada) for Mello's and Matt's death, and I'm like ???!?!!?!?. As if Mello (and Matt) weren't knowingly and willingly involved in and walking into a very dangerous situation.
Why is it easier for people to choose to hate on Halle (and Takada) than turn their frustrations on the actions and decisions of their favorite characters, like what Mello (and Matt) chose to do with their life.
Fans hate on Misa and Takada for being "stupid", "easily manipulated", used, and controlled, then cheer for their demise. But when characters like Mello (and Matt) meet their own demise, fans mourn their loss, but don't acknowledge that Mello (and Matt) were at least in full control of their lives and decisions, with no one using or manipulating them.
Oh, and there's the weird and frankly, gross way people used Halle's character in old Mello-centric fanfics. And the whole romanticization of the Mello/Sayu ship back then, ignoring Sayu's actual circumstances and the real effects the kidnapping had on her, in favor of propping up Mello's character.
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