I just got described as an "ad hating commie" by someone because I said a minute of youtube ads is unpleasant. fully spent 5 minutes arguing and defending youtube ads. insane stuff
Hey there! Just a friendly reminder/PSA from your friendly neighborhood Pixiemage!
“Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” is too often (incorrectly) used as a cover-all tag, on fics ranging from Vaguely Uncomfortable to Serious Shit, as a replacement for any intense tags relating to the story. People will use it to say “Holy shit guys some INTENSE SHIT happens in this story” without actually saying what that Intense Shit™ is.
In actuality, the “Dead Dove” tag is meant to be used in addition to other warning tags. Pulled from a scene from the show Arrested Development (look it up on YouTube!), it means “Hi! Hey! I labeled this fic to warn you of what’s in it, so you might REALLY want to read those labels! This fic is exactly what it says on the tin! The tags are accurate! Don’t say I didn’t warn you, because this is me warning you! Read the tags!”
So before you accidentally use the “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” tag without context, here’s your preemptive lesson for next time. Please tag your fics accordingly! Ta!
INSTEAD OF BANNING RANDOM TRANSFEM BLOGS, MAYBE TUMBLR STAFF COULD BAN, OH, I DON'T KNOW, FUCKING BOTS THAT SHOW UP UNDER EACH POST THAT TAGGED AS "FAN ART", OR IS IT TOO HARD, ARE YOU TOO BABY TO DO YOUR JOB, DO YOU REMEMBER WHERE THE BAN BUTTON ONLY DURING YOUR TERF TEMPER TANTRUMS, HUH
luv how male animals gotta fucking dance around and cry and shit for female attention and sex. and then men irl complain about fat women and body hair like get on ur fucking knees and beg me actually
Alpha males: "This is nature. You don't see animals acting like queers don't you?"
90% of nature documentaries: "Until now the female has been very impressed by the males drag performance of Orwell's Homage To Catalonia, soundtracked exclusively by Maria Carey songs. A demanding performance like that knows to impress. But... Oh No... One note in the final tune was one cent flat. It doesn't look good for the male now. She is ordering an orbital laser strike to burn his beautifully groomed plumage from space. It will take all year to regrow, effectively ending this one's mating season early. Better luck next time, little guy. Women are a tough audience."
The Symbolism of Doble Passe - a Tenjoin Asuka analysis
Doble Passe is Asuka's signature card. Not Cyber Blader or Cyber Tutu or any Cyber Angel -- it appears seven times, more than any of those, and like Manjoume and Shou's signature cards, it is the one she draws when Judai calls out to his friends through the Darkness nightmare. It's unique for being the only signature card in the entire series to be a trap card (unless you count Revolver with Mirror Force lmao)
But what is Doble Passe supposed to be, anyway?
A passe is a movement in ballet, and Asuka has multiple ballet-themed cards (Cyber Tutu, Cyber Prima). So maybe Doble Passe refers to doing a passe twice ("double passe")? But that would be odd to me. Firstly because there's no significance to doing a passe twice; it's just a leg lift, and it's not a notable or flashy ballet move. Secondly, the card art of Doble Passe isn't even depicting a passe. The passe involves forming a triangle with your raised leg.
So my theory is that Doble Passe is actually referencing something else. It's referencing the paso doble.
⇀ Doble Passe, the Dance
To understand, we must look at what Doble Passe does as a card. It cannot be activated until your opponent attacks your monster. It redirects their attack into a direct one, and then your monster gets to attack your opponent directly in return.
It's reactive, only being activateable if your opponent makes the first move. It's reciprocal, consisting of two mirrored actions, one leading and one responding.
It's a dance with your opponent.
Unlike ballet, the paso doble is a ballroom dance. That means it's performed with a partner. It's the most difficult of the five competition ballroom dances, with origins as a military march.
And famously, it's meant to evoke Spanish bullfighting.
(The passe in ballet vs. paso doble, the Latin dance)
Doble Passe is used to redirect your opponent's attack, just like a matador using a red cape to manipulate a bull. Both involve luring in your opponent to perform a reversal, and that's exactly how Asuka uses it.
"idk if it were based on the paso doble wouldn't they have named it that instead of doble passe. i think you're just pulling this out of your ass"
Well, what if I told you the card was named Paso Doble -- in French and Portuguese. It's not likely that the French/Portuguese localizers got insider knowledge from the Japanese writers, but I do think it's telling that they looked at the card and thought it should be named Paso Doble (because, again, Doble Passe is nonsensical).
You are right though that it would be a stretch to say "I guess they just mixed it up and wrote Doble Passe when they actually meant Paso Doble oops!" just based on two localizations and a dueling metaphor.
No, my actual evidence is the Asuka vs. Titan duel, where she duels Titan for his Spirit Key, and he's using a matator-themed deck.
The three monsters he uses, Matador Fiend, Picador Fiend, and Banderillero Fiend refer to the three types of toreros in a bullfight, and his field spell Dark Arena forces Asuka to attack while he chooses the target of her attacks, forcing her into the role of the cornered bull. Throughout the duel, he taunts and goads her, using her brother's memories and role as Darkness to psychologically exploit her. Her victory over Titan in the end represents the triumph of the bull; or rather, her triumph as the more skilled matador.
There is more to the paso doble as it relates to Asuka, though. The paso doble, like all ballroom dances, is a dance with strict gender roles.
One view of ballroom: The man is strong and powerful. He decides what steps the couple will take at what time, dictating direction and timing. The woman responds to the man and does whatever he leads, and her job is to be beautiful and expressive.
(Source: Gender Roles and Ballroom Dance, ballroommind)
Strong boundaries are implicitly (and at times explicitly) constructed around what is normal behavior for men and women.
(Source: Sexism in Ballroom Dancing, Joel Torgeson)
In the paso doble, the man plays the "active" role as the matador. But the woman is not actually the bull. The woman is supposed to play the part of the matador's cape; she's a passive object, and to do the dance well, it's supposed to look like the man is "in control of" the woman. If you watch the paso doble in action here, you can see how the woman's movements flow as an extension of the man's.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the context of sexism in Duel Monsters and in the GX world at large is essential to Asuka's character. In that post, some people assumed I was criticizing GX for its "bad female writing." No, there are definitely things to criticize about Yugioh writers writing women, but depicting the GX world as one where women are only seen as objects of desire isn't one of them. That's just the world we actually live in. That's what Asuka has to deal with, too. It doesn't have to be to your taste, but there is value in showing how she defies what that world expects of her.
This is why the paso doble is doubly significant for Asuka, because when she uses Doble Passe, she gets to "reclaim" the active role in the dance. She gets to be the one asserting control, the one who manipulates her opponent. She gets to be the matador, traditionally a deeply masculine role, using her monster and life points as the cape.
⇀ Doble Passe, the Art
I'd also like to take the time now to talk about Doble Passe's card art. It doesn't show a passe, or a paso doble either, but I still find the art striking. A woman dances alone on a stage, isolated in a spotlight. Despite the only light source coming directly from above, her shadow is split into three.
I think this art strongly represents how Asuka is trapped within the cage of society's expectations for women. Something I didn't notice until looking closely at the card art is that the woman wears a mask with a smile painted on it. Throughout the series, Asuka is shown to be self-conscious of how she is perceived and emotionally guarded as a result, likely due to being held up on a pedestal as the "Queen of Obelisk Blue." Other characters repeatedly comment on her femininity and lack of romantic interests.
This is what means to be a woman in the world of GX, in the world of dueling. You can't get away from the gaze of other people, whether it's fellow women who idolize you, or the men who only view you as a potential girlfriend. So you have to put on a show for them, and hide your true feelings under a mask.
I'd also like to bring back the duel with Titan as an example of how light is often associated with Asuka (see also Prima Light, which she uses to evolve Cyber Tutu).
This is a cool shonen moment in the context of that duel (which I think is really good and nobody talks about), but if you're certified insane about Asuka like me, I think you can interpret it as how she wants to be seen as a duelist instead of just a woman. To be seen not because of a spotlight that she didn't ask for, but because of her own light that she created.
⇀ Doble Passe, the Card
I'm not done because I will talk about Tenjoin Asuka into eternity. Now we can talk about how Doble Passe is used by Asuka as a duelist.
GX is very conscious about how it uses cards to embody the characters who use them. Manjoume's Ojamas are a parallel to him -- cards that everyone looks down on, but become strong in defiance of expectations. Power Bond is a card that carries a great risk, requiring the user to respect the opponent's skills; it's used to illustrate both Shou and Ryou's opposite character arcs (I could also write a whole analysis about this).
Doble Passe is card which requires you to sacrifice your own life points for a chance to launch a direct attack against your opponent. It's a card that requires you to stare down your opponent's attack and deliberately put yourself in front of it, just for a chance to reverse the situation. It's an aggressive, risky card that you have to have the guts to activate.
Something else notable about this card is that it sucks ass.
Functionally, it's kind of just a much worse version of Magic Cylinder. 90% of the time you'd expect it to be a bad tradeoff; typically you attack a monster which has less attack points than your monster, so by turning both into direct attacks, you're taking more damage than your opponent.
But what Yuginerds fail to realize is that everyone's deck in GX fucking sucks and the point of Yugioh is using cards to deliver a story. Narratively, Doble Passe is not a bad card but an unwieldy one. Asuka is shown as incredibly skilled because she manages to use Doble Passe and always walk away in a winning position, and each time she does, it makes a lasting impression on every person watching. It's hard to capture via screenshot, but trust me when I say that every time she uses it there's a pan to the audience making one/all of these faces: 😰😳😱
Here you can see what I'm talking about in the manga as well, even though manga Asuka uses a completely different deck.
Here are all the ways Asuka uses Doble Passe to swing the advantage to her side:
Activating it when Etoile Cyber is attacked, which becomes stronger when attacking directly
Activating it when a monster like Grand Mole attacks, which is usually attacking monsters stronger than itself due to its effect
Activating it to preserve her monster so that it can be used next turn
Activating it to force a tie when winning is out of reach
Activating it when her opponent's life is already low, so that she can end the duel there and then
What GX communicates is that in Asuka's hands, Doble Passe is not only an aggressively gutsy card, but also a deeply skillful and calculating one.
Asuka is the character in GX who loves dueling the most, aside from Judai, and I will die on this hill. While other characters' relationships to Duel Monsters stem from their need to prove themselves (Manjoume, Shou, Misawa) or their connection to their cards (Edo, Johan, Kenzan), Asuka has a love of the game that matches Judai's, to the point that during her duel with Manjoume she tells him that she's in love with dueling itself. I only see this coming up during shipping arguments, and few people actually engaging with it.
I cannot understate that in almost every single one of Asuka's duels, the writers go out of their way to demonstrate how Asuka not only uses, but values strategy. To Asuka, the beauty of Duel Monsters is in the battle of minds. GX repeatedly shows how it bothers her when duelists who don't respect the depth, strategy, and sanctity of Duel Monsters.
She's repeatedly bothered by characters like Judai or Taizan (the drawbread guy) who duel using luck or instinct instead of strategy. She criticizes characters who duel using the strength of others instead of their own minds (which is relevant to her arc in Season 2). And she's annoyed when characters like Manjoume or the other guys who want to date her use dueling in a way that betrays the purity of dueling, such as how Manjoume in both his duels with Asuka makes plays that symbolize how he loves her, but which make no sense from a gameplay perspective, such as playing a card that gives her a card.
Asuka: You still don't understand? Back then, I wanted to show you how much fun a duel could be, how much depth it could have, how important it was to plan tactics and probabilities from start to end.
[…]
Asuka: You have no skill at gambling.
Mitsuo: You risked all or nothing too! You're just like me!
Asuka: No, I'm not. I used strategy to reduce your probability of getting it right. Don't lump me in with some phony gambler who never thinks of anything, leaving things up to chance, until he eventually wins.
This ties in quite well to her Darkness nightmare in season 4, where she is a teacher who's unable to connect to her students and teach them how fun dueling can be. I know there are people who dislike Asuka becoming a teacher, and I will write another meta post one day about the controversy of Asuka's Darkness nightmare and what it actually means, but just for this post I wanted to say that it's already been shown in GX how Asuka loves dueling and wants to share that with others.
And what reminds her of that is hearing Judai's voice, who loves dueling as much as her, and drawing her signature card, which represents what dueling means to her: Doble Passe.
⇀ Doble Passe, after Word of God
I've been working on this post for a few months now, most of it was written a while ago, but what got me to finish it is new information that came out with the GX Duel Memorial Album, an infobook that released recently that contains new commentary directly from the GX writers. I haven't been able to read the whole thing yet, but you bet when I saw this translation of Asuka's section I clicked on it immediately. Paraphrased:
Q. Can you tell us how you came up with Asuka’s Deck? Also, was there anything you were conscious of when composing Asuka’s Duels?
Q. I would like to hear any stories you have to share about the Duel Composition for Turn-41 (Asuka VS Titan). Also, the effect of “Cyber Blader” which changes on the number of monsters your opponent controls, remains rare and impressive even today.
A: Asuka is the lone girl in the regular cast who is an Obelisk Blue Honor student, so I tried to give her a Deck that gave the impression of her being a strong female character. That led me to giving her a motif based around female athletes. I tried to think of how to reflect the strength of hard-working female athletes in sports with her Deck. Technically ballet dancers aren’t athletes, but due to a certain movie I saw when I was in school, I always saw them as more like fighters (ahaha).
When thinking of new motifs, I research various materials. When doing this, I come across a lot of words I don’t know. That’s one of the joys of this job. The research I do reflects not only in the cards and Decks, but in the names of attacks and effects. “Cyber Blader”‘s effect names are derived from ballet terms: “Pas de Deux”, “Pas de Trois” and “Pas de Quatre”, which mean “Two people dancing”, “Three people dancing” and “Four people dancing” respectively.
This terminology lead me to the idea of “Could ballet dancing could be recreated through monsters battling?”, and resulted in a tricky monster whose effects change depending on the number of monsters.
As a result of coming up with this effect, I feel like the direction of Asuka’s personality and character and the structure of her Duels ended up being decided. I think I was able to differentiate her from other students by having her use tricky effects, and use her Duels to show not only her fierceness and strength but her intellectual nature.
This has a lot of W's for Asuka-heads like me, and shows clearly the thought and intention behind Asuka's character.
I love how it confirms that Asuka's deck is based off female athletes. Yugioh is certainly guilty of giving its female characters the Girl Deck, and I won't say Asuka's doesn't fit the bill. But while before, it may have been ambiguous as to whether Asuka's deck was based on athletes, or """girly""" more traditionally feminine ballerinas and dancers, this shows that from the start, the intention was to represent Asuka with strong female athletes, showing her hard-working and competitive nature, and ballerinas happened to be included just because the writer thinks of ballet dancers as fighters and athletes.
And I cannot emphasize enough that ballerinas and dancers are athletes, even if they aren't in the Olympics. The line between competitive dance and performance sport like gymnastics and ice skating is thin. Ballet is more competitive and physically taxing than many sports in the Olympics.
This also can be clearly related to Asuka's love of dueling, which is not only a sport, but THE sport in GX. And this article also confirms the intentionality behind Asuka's characterization as an intellectual fighter, who specifically uses tricky effects to get the upper hand. Another W for me.
This article does not, however, confirm that Doble Passe is based on the paso doble. I know what you're thinking: OWNED. TYPICAL TUMBLR OVERTHINKER.
Yes, I think it's likely that if Doble Passe was based on the paso doble they would have mentioned it here. The second asker does specifically mention Asuka vs. Titan so if the matador connection was intentional, they probably would have brought it up there (tho that second asker is so real and we are on the same wavelength… thank u for asking the real questions)
I still don't think it's completely impossible, just because it would be a crazy coincidence that Asuka, who only has 7 duels, happens to duel against the one character in the entire Yugioh series who uses a matador deck. The writer also does mention that they do their research to name cards and effects, and often use words that they don't know.
But I understood that it was something of a long shot in the first place. The Titan matador coincidence did make me sit up in my chair, but I've always had a pretty cynical outlook on how GX came together, by which I mean I think that the writers were flying by the seats of their pants and made things up as they went.
Personally though, I dislike the fandom mentality that media analysis means peeling something apart and going "THIS is what the writers meant," "THIS is why the writers included this part," "THIS is why the writers are actually geniuses for foreshadowing this or making this elaborate connection." As if the only way your interpretation can have meaning is if it was intended by the writer.
Not that I don't understand the urge to defend your ideas by citing the source material. I just wish people would take credit for their own creativity.
If it is just a coincidence that Asuka happens to duel someone with a matador-themed deck, it doesn't mean that the duel didn't actually mean anything. It means that rather than the writers being the one who created that meaning, I'm the one who created it, and I will take credit for it. Yes, I am just making stuff up, because making things is the definition of creativity.
Interpreting a piece of media is an act of creation. Through analysis, you and the original writers become co-creators. That's what media theory is.
Of course, there's value in citing the source material and in analyzing the writers' intention. But I wish people would understand that this shouldn't be in pursuit of the Absolute One Correct Interpretation, but because like any piece of art, making elaborate connections makes your art more beautiful. What you think the writers are doing: you're doing it.
Anyway, if you made it all the way through: I LOVE YOU TENJOIN ASUKA!!!!!!!!!!! This will not be the last time I talk about her.
And CHECK OUT MY DOBLE PASSE FANART.
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