children of the force @childrenoftheforce - Tumblr Blog

Some of the ways people talk about Drusilla is a bit odd? Like, how a lot of people insist she cheated on Spike frequently throughout their relationship. When as far as I remember, there isn't actually any evidence to back that up.

There's more to suggest she was faithful from the time the fang gang split up until Angelus' return in the 90s. Spike says to Buffy he wants it to go back to being just him and Dru again. He's shocked and deeply hurt by her messing around post s2, a reaction I don't think would have been so extreme if this was normal behavior for her. Also, both Angelus and Spike are shocked when Darla and Dru sleep with the Immortal, suggesting they were at the very least keeping things inside the group.

A lot of the talk veers hard on the side of slut shaming - Dru's a ho who can't keep her legs closed because she doesn't give two fucks about her vampire husband. Generally ignoring the complexities of the situation like Dru's Stockholmy relationship with Angelus and Spike's increasing attraction to Buffy.

And when certain complexities are acknowledged, it often comes with some fairly ableist rhetoric. Mainly Dru's insane so she can't love anyone. I can understand "she's an evil vampire, so she can't love" (though I disagree). But she plays with dolls and sees things that aren't there, therefore she's incapable of love? Kind of a messed up thing to assert, tbh.

She struggles with psychosis and a bit of age regression due to her severe PTSD, I don't see how those things make a person incapable of loving other people. Dru is arguably right there with Spike as one of the most loving vamps in the series. The focus of her emotional attachment is just more on the family unit (Darla, Angelus, and Spike) than his.

spikedaily

Buffy the Vampire Slayer 5.18 | “Intervention”

thesublemon

planning ≠ coherence

I talk a big game about liking coherence in art, and it’s probably clear that I have an apophenic tendency to enjoy textual interpretation. And this might lead people to think that I have a preference for carefully planned and plotted art, or that I look down on the messy and improvisational. But this is actually almost the opposite of the case. Not because I don’t really like coherence, but because artistic coherence is something more complicated than planning, and isn’t even necessarily possible to achieve with planning.

The thing about improvisation, is that at its best it’s about finding the choice that feels right. I listen to jazz more than any other kind of music, and one of the reasons I like it so much is the exhilaration of someone landing on a musical idea that simultaneously makes a song feel bigger and more complete. A solo isn’t fun if it’s just a bunch of disconnected ideas (similar to how whimsy isn’t fun if it doesn’t also “work”). It’s fun if it picks up on the things that the other players are doing, or ideas that showed up earlier in the song, and then makes them feel like they go together. Even if they “go together” in the sense of being coherently discordant, eg repeating ideas that don’t work multiple times. If beauty is fit, then the joy of improv is finding fit in unexpected places.

This goes for narrative too. In long-running stories like comics, book series, and TV shows, much is often made about whether certain choices were planned from the beginning. If things were planned, that’s a reason for praise, and if things weren’t planned, that’s a reason for derision, either towards the showrunners or towards people attempting to interpret the work. Say, “This plot point only happened because an actor wanted to leave the show. Therefore it has no meaning to read into.” But making things up as one goes is not what makes a story lose its plot, so to speak. Making things up is only a problem if the things the artist makes up don’t go with what came before.

In Impro, a very excellent book about the craft of improvisation, Keith Johnstone calls this process of making-things-go-with-what-came-before “re-incorporation”:

The improviser has to be like a man walking backwards. He sees where he has been, but he pays no attention to the future. His story can take him anywhere, but he must still ‘balance’ it, and give it shape, by remembering incidents that have been shelved and reincorporating them.

Johnstone is big on the idea that satisfying narrative depends on a sense of structure, and that reincorporation is one of the most important tactics for creating structure. To paraphrase him, a story where a character runs away from a bear, swims across lake, and finds a woman in a cabin on the other side, and “makes passionate love” to her has no structure. It’s just a series of events. Whereas if the bear then knocks the cabin’s door down and the woman cries out that it’s her lover, then suddenly it feels like a story. Because not only has the bear been reincorporated, it has been linked to the woman. From this perspective, if a story has no sense of reincorporation, or new developments don’t make sense with what came before, then it will feel incoherent, no matter how planned out it was.

I also keep thinking about Paul Bouissac’s discussion of gags and narrative in The Semiotics of Clowns and Clowning. He explains that what makes a scene funny is not whether it strings a bunch of gags together, but how those gags are organized. To use an example from the book, it’s one thing for a clown to pretend to hurt its thumb, and ask for an audience member to kiss it. It’s another thing for it to keep hurting different parts and then finally hurt its groin and act scandalized at the idea that someone might kiss it. Bouissac calls this sort of repetition “anaphor”:

Anaphor is one of the main tools of textual consistency. In linguistics, it designates the use of pronouns or any other indexical units to refer back to another word or phrase in the text. It links together parts of sentences and bridges the grammatical gaps between clauses, which is a consequence of the linearity of language. In rhetoric, anaphors are repetitions of words or structures that build up the cohesion of discourse and create momentum toward a climax. In multimodal communication, words, gestures, objects, or musical tunes can play the same role by reminding the receiver—that is, the spectator in the case of a performance—of signs and events produced earlier in the act.

One of the things that fascinated me about Farscape as a teenager, was that in contrast to other scifi of the time, it made no pretenses of having been planned—unlike say, Babylon 5. Or even shows like The X-Files, Lost, or Battlestar Galactica that gave you the “feeling” of a plan whether or not they had one, or were capable of following through. Farscape felt incredibly coherent, both in terms of theme and plot, but this coherence came about purely on the strength of the writing’s ability to ideate and then reincorporate. It would take someone’s weird costume idea, like the villain having glowing rods that screw inside his head, and snowball that into a whole storyline where the villain is a half breed of one hot-blooded race and one cold-blooded race, and can only stay alive by thermo-regulating the inside of his brain. And then decide that his vendetta against the hot-blooded race has motivated his obsession with the protagonist since the first season. Yet these twists never feel like “ret-conning” in a pejorative sense, because it all feels narratively and thematically sensible. (Unsurprisingly, making the show was described as “more like improv jazz than plotting out a symphony”).

None of which is to say that I dislike planning or polish, either. Stephen King, as a so-called “discovery” writer, famously writes off the cuff, without outlines. As he puts it in On Writing:

You may wonder where plot is in all this. The answer—my answer, anyway—is nowhere. I won’t try to convince you that I’ve never plotted any more than I’d try to convince you that I’ve never told a lie, but I do both as infrequently as possible. I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible. It’s best that I be as clear about this as I can—I want you to understand that my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves. The job of the writer is to give them a place to grow (and to transcribe them, of course).

But his best stories feel like whatever bloat might have been generated from this narrative improvisation has then been pared down to what that improvisation was really getting at. And I can’t lie, I get a particular joy from reading or watching something and feeling without a doubt that the artist is in complete control of my experience. It was one of the most gratifying aspects of rewatching The Wire recently: the feeling that the little meanings and foreshadowings I was seeing in each choice were almost certainly intended. Nothing is more satisfying to an apopheniac than feeling like the patterns you see are actually real. And nothing is more annoying than a story that tries to pull some sort of reveal on you (“Dan is gossip girl!” “Angel is Twilight!” “Rey is a Palpatine!”) that doesn’t make any sense because it wasn’t intended from the beginning. Just because those characters existed in the story before, doesn’t make it good reincorporation. So if a story is a story because of structure, then if the choice is between a planned structure and no structure, the former is almost certainly going to be better.

Point is, it’s not really the process that matters. All creativity is improvisational in a sense, because all creativity involves making things up. What matters is how dedicated an artist is to the integrity of their work. If a writer has carefully planned their whole story out, with every twist and every theme clearly in mind, but can’t adapt if they start writing and find out that something they planned doesn’t actually work, that’s one kind of failure mode. The narrative equivalent of designing a perfect castle and then building it on a swamp. On the other hand, if a writer tries to go with the flow, but can’t reincorporate that flow, then that will be another failure mode. To the extent that I respond to improvisational art, it’s because improvisational art is often more attuned to these questions of whether something is moment-to-moment right. But what matters, above all, is the rightness. That’s what defines coherence. Whether there is a sense in the work that it is oriented around something, and whether the choices contribute to that something.

kylorenisadorkable

Dyad Symbolism and Jungian Psychology in The Last Jedi

belWhile re-watching The Last Jedi, I began to notice how often imagery of pairs appeared throughout the film (and I don’t think this is just a coincidence).

Here’s just a few:

Rose and Paige’s medallion:

Han’s dice:

Rey’s scar:

The legacy lightsaber (split in half):

the Twin suns, Leia’s Ring, The Supremacy (split in half), Snoke (split in half) etc…

I believe this was all very intentional symbolism that was suppose to lead our heroes to the resolution of the saga (and where I believe a Rian Johnson Episode 9 would have taken us) by finally bringing balance to the force.

TFA begins with the galaxy still in disarray as the dark side of the force perceivers through the rise of the First Order. Lor San Tekka states that this can only be stopped through the return of the Jedi as he says that “without the Jedi there can be no balance in the force.”

However, this is exactly why Luke wants the Jedi Order to end because he felt that his efforts to stop the Empire were wasted and that the legacy of the Jedi only ended in failure.

However, Luke soon see’s the error of his ways thanks to his pep-talk with master Yoda and sees that the solution to restoring order in the galaxy is not to end the Jedi but instead, to accept their (and his own) mistakes and learn from them.

Rian states that “If you think you are throwing away the past, you are fooling yourself. The only way to go forward is to embrace the past, figure out what is good and what is not good about it. But it’s never going to not be a part of who we all are. And that includes Rey, who grew up hearing the legends about the Jedi. So the notion of, ‘Nope, toss this all away and find something new,’ is not really a valid choice, I think.“ (Rian Studied works by Jun and Bly in preparation for writing TLJ, including Modern Man In Search of a Soul and A Little Book About The Human Shadow)

This idea of incorporating that dark parts of yourself into your identity comes from the concept of “the shadow” in Jungian Psychology, which involves examining our darker sides in order to become more consciously aware of the origins of our behaviors, motivations, and desires.

So to become whole or “balanced” we must incorporate our Ego and our Shadow together and that creates our concept of “Self.” (Every Thesis contains an Antithesis and by synthesizing both together you can see a larger “truth”)

Look familiar?

And this is where Rey and Ben come in, as Rian states that “Rey and Kylo are almost two halves of our protagonist.” I think that TLJ was leading up to having Rey and Ben set aside their differences to come together and reform the Jedi Order.

As TLJ shows that when they work together they are an unstoppable force that can achieve harmony.

Where as when they are fighting against each other the world devolves into utter chaos.

Which is why even though TROS teased having Rey and Ben defeating Palpatine together. It didn’t feel like a satisfactory conclusion to the saga because in the end Rey ends up fighting alone once again balance is not restored.

childrenoftheforce

Will I ever get over the monumental storytelling disappointment that was the sequel trilogy after The Rise of Skywalker? Apparently not. The Last Jedi will always be the best and most beautiful Star Wars film.

papers4me

When Stories Changes Colors

Often authors start their stories based on certain themes & genres, then they later move away from some of them as the stories deepen & reach climax. So, once you reach the conclusion, the story has become something else entirely different from how it started.

That’s called story-telling. The longer you tell the story, the different it becomes. However, this change helps the story move away from the basic introduction of its characters, plot & world-building into the exploration of meaningful themes leading to the story’s vision. The overall vision is the reason why the story was essentially created. Doing that is not a necessity, but it sets complex stories apart from simple ones. It is very important that while you can change themes & even genres within your story, you need to effectively wrap things up in the conclusion. Not necessarily bringing back what you have long moved from, but holding the story together using the vision. This is the thing that can’t change. You started the story for a reason & this reason should conclude it. Themes & genres are tools you need to reach your destination.

For example: (with spoilers)

-Fruits Basket anime started as simple, basic, direct, short “lesson the day” episodes in season 1 & moved to exploring traumatic themes, character depth, ugly truths, & emotional turmoil in season 3. While Fruits Basket isnt the best example due to the anime’s favoring quick over-dramatic presentation of trauma over deep character depth & consistency of quality in season 3, the later still does the job of reaching the heart & conveying the message of “welcoming growth & accepting change”. Story-wise, there is no comparison between seasons 1 & 3. They look so different that it feels rewarding. Season 3 holds what fruits basket is in its core, a story abt accepting human weakness & moving on in life, leaving behind the small simple lessons of its early episodes.

-Attack on Titans is a an example succeeding brilliantly to change colors then failing miserably “tie” the colors in the final step. we can compare the first season to season 4 (firs part) & you’ll feel you’re watching/reading a different story! in a good way! the last good way. Now the final arc in the manga does a good job of ruining this as it attempts to return back to the beginning to story that has long moved from what it was initially. Calling back sth that has long been abandoned isn’t parallel, it’s contradiction & the plot will strat having holes bigger & bigger as the conclusion comes. AOT’s plot has become sth way bigger than a group of “ united avengers” can defeat to save the day & the story has become is too deep & complex to have one big giant baddie that must be defeated for peace. You can’t start simple, go complex as hell, then finish as simple as “snow white & the 7 dwarfs defeating the Evil Queen”. Isyama had the ending decided for so long as he claimed more than once, so what went wrong is the road reaching to it. If what we have in the final arc is the vision from the beginning, then the story should have been tailored to suit it. The story-telling reaching before the final arc is one of the most complicated, complex & deep plot exploration with various character depths (minus the protagonist or antagonist or whatever u wanna call him), but the final arc itself failed to contain all this with its basic one-sided battle & no color suited it, so it revered back to trying to parallel the beginning bringing back as much parallel as possible from every character & scene in its early stages.

-Game Of Thrones is an example of unnecessary intentional change of colors. Unlike the above examples, GOT started complex & complicated from the get go. You get introduced to tons characters thro their dialogue & interactions. The story’s themes & world-building involve magic, mystical world & politics. These three are the core of the story, moving away from them creates a story that is a kind to soap opera of repeated short dialogues & unnecessary drama. The show producers wanted to minimize the unique “magic “ aspect of the story to change its colors to appeal to the masses “like mothers & sport players” or sth. The problem is GOT’s color is what gained popularity & changed the masses view abt watching fantasy stories. For example, stories abt vampires & mermaid have their own audience & the majority of viewers won’t tune to watch them as they might deem them too “ fantasy”. But GOAT seasons 1 & 2 with the magic world gained immense flowing from viewers who normally skip such genres. These ppl have already accepted the “magic” of GOT as part of what the story is & were expecting to see a pay off in the final season. However the producers decisions to move away from “magic” meant killing off what was the build up from season 1. The White Walkers were destroyed with one stab thro a single character’s body. With one stab, you end what you sacrificed seasons, plots & characters to establish. The politics itself was simplified immensely as long built, established with foreshadowing political rivals simply “bent da knee due to love love”. Others wanted elephants & died under a brick. Villains who once were the core of the story with their complexity such as Tywin & little finger, or their madness such as Joffery & Ramsey were changed into whatever the show’s Euron Greyjoy was. a simple& basic villain with not much plot value.

So, good story-telling requires a well-established structure with thought off vision & an overall perspective of what the story needs to become from the beginning. Writing itself is a nonlinear process, so writers will either go above their own structure or under it, especially in stories that are published/aired while written. However, if the decisions is made to start publishing or airing before the whole process of writing is over, then there is bigger responsibility on the writing team to review each chapter/ episode while keeping in mind where it’s going & what’s expressing. Nothing is more disappointing than seeing a great written story loose its colors instead of just changing to new better colors or showcasing more hidden ones.

childrenoftheforce

This is the tragedy of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, too: that it had no vision, and what vision directors like Rian Johnson in The Last Jedi attempted to give it was rejected and squandered in favour of fanservice and creative cowardice. The disastrously immature and cynical final chapter that is The Rise of Skywalker destroyed the thematic fabric of the entire cinematic Star Wars narrative. It took one reactionary movie made by indulgent fanboy fools to unravel the thematic arc of the eight films that came before it.

Stories that have successfully ‘changed their colours’ for me are Fruits Basket, as mentioned by OP, as well as Revolutionary Girl Utena and The Last of Us (Parts I & II). All of these stories go in directions one cannot expect from first engagement with them. They surprise by shaking off their expected genre conventions while building great thematic depth and character complexity. The results are stunning and increasingly rare when it comes to long-form storytelling.

#the craft of storytelling #the last jedi #the rise of skywalker #fruits basket #papers4me

abla-soso

One of the main reason why I love Akito and Shigure’s ~toxic~ romance so much is that - for once - the girl is allowed to be damaged and nasty in a genuinely ugly way.

Akito is not an uwu precious, broken waifu. She’s a nasty bitch with a horrifically sad past that perfectly explains but doesn’t excuse any of her shitty, bad, no good actions.

It’s usually male characters who are allowed to be this way, especially in romance stories.

And the guy - for once - is not a naïve, spineless simp who passively lets the damaged, nasty love of his life use him and walk all over him. He’s a vicious, fearless man who laughs at his lover’s dangerous outbursts, challenges her, taunts her, knows her tragic ugliness inside and out and doesn’t excuse any of it but still shamelessly loves her despite AND because of it.

They both truly love each other so deeply and so possessively that it constantly breaks their carefully constructed personas. And while they always feel the need to re-build their carefully constructed personas around each other and wear them like a shield at all times, they still can’t resist the magnetic bond between them and let it destroys and re-build them over and over, bringing out the worst and the best of each other.

It’s only at the end, when Akito is finally free and starting to heal, that they allowed their love to breathe and flourish away from it’s toxic foundation.

It’s one of the very few romance stories where the ~toxic~ love is achingly real but not romanticized, and the healing from toxicity is beautifully moving and believable.

childrenoftheforce

Heathcliff and Cathy vibes, but with a happy ending

furubacanon

Although it may not be obvious at first glance, Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket is a story rich with themes related to Buddhism. The story contains a number of allusions to Buddhist practices, thought, and religious symbols. In this article, we will be overviewing the different ways in which Buddhist principles and ideas can be seen throughout Fruits Basket.

The Zodiac

First things first, the entire motif around which Fruits Basket is built - the Chinese Zodiac, or in Japanese the Junnishi (12 animals) - has strong ties to Buddhism. As Yuki correctly tells Tohru in the first chapter, no one is quite sure when or why people in China started using the 12 animals as a way of keeping time. Originally it was simply a system of numbers, so it is speculated the animals were added in order to help make the system easier to remember, but no one knows why those particular animals were chosen or how the folklore of the Zodiac began.

However, we do know that the Zodiac and its related calendar were adopted in Japan in 604 A.D. and introduced to the country at the same time as Buddhism. Before that introduction, the Zodiac and Buddhism had already become tied up together in China, and so likewise the same association developed in Japan. Originally, the Zodiac legend in China was not related to Buddhism. The animals were invited to be part of the Zodiac by the Jade Emperor, the ruler of heaven in Chinese mythology. When Buddhism was later introduced to China, the Zodiac legend started being retold replacing Buddha as the figure where the Jade Emperor once was. This is how the story was brought over to Japan, presenting Buddha as the one to assemble the 12 animals together.

The Zodiac Legend

In Fruits Basket, we are initially introduced to one version of the Juunishi legend. In this version, “God”, as stated in Fruits Basket, invites all the animals to attend a banquet. In this story, the Rat simply tricks the Cat by telling him the wrong date of the banquet.

There are many varied versions of the Zodiac legend, although the basics remain the same. The Rat tricks the Cat (and usually the Ox), so that the Cat is left out of the Zodiac and the Rat becomes first place. In some versions the animals are simply invited to a banquet, in others they are told the first 12 to arrive will become guardians of the gates of heaven, in others an actual race is set up, and in others still the animals are put into a competition of different challenges against one another. How exactly the Rat tricks the Cat also has many variations.

One of the most popular versions is one where the animals are challenged to a race and must cross a river to get to the finish line. The Rat tricks the Cat by convincing him they should ride together on the Ox’s back to cross the river, only to then push the Cat off into the river when they are halfway across. The winners in this version are typically rewarded with a banquet afterwards.

The Origin Story

In some versions of the story, the placing of Buddha as the figure to assemble the animals is given a more religious context, where Buddha had invited the animals to come see his departure from the world to Nirvana (a state of enlightenment that ends the cycle of reincarnation). The 12 animals who are part of the Zodiac are said to be the ones who came to see Buddha ascend to Nirvana, while those who didn’t were not granted such a position. In different versions, Buddha may have told the animals that if they accepted his teachings they too would obtain enlightenment and join him in Nirvana. Among the animals who refuse Buddha’s teaching might be the Cat, meaning he does not attain enlightenment and is left out of the Zodiac.

This above version of the story resembles in some ways the “true origin story” we are told in the world of Fruits Basket about God and the Juunishi. God asks the 12 animals to join him in drinking from the enchanted sake cup he has created, allowing them to gain an eternal bond and continuous rebirth. All the 12 animals readily accept and drink from God’s sake cup, however the Cat, who had been given the drink before learning what it was, says he wishes it hadn’t been given to him and that he does not agree with God’s desire.

In Fruits Basket, this refusal is what leads to the Cat being cursed, reborn as a monster, and ostracized and punished in subsequent reincarnations.

Reincarnation

Obviously, reincarnation is a huge aspect of Fruits Basket, as the 12 animals, God, and the Cat, are reborn indefinitely as spirits in the bodies of humans. This is a function of the bond which God created with the sake cup, to have himself and the animals eternally tied to one another, even beyond death.

Reincarnation is also an important belief in Buddhism, which teaches that the actions of a person lead to a new existence after death, as part of an endless cycle called saṃsāra, or the endless cycle of life and death, death and rebirth, and delusion plus suffering. This cycle can only be escaped in Buddhism through obtaining enlightenment.

In Fruits Basket, although God and the 12 animals initially saw the bond and its cycle of rebirths created between them as a good thing, they eventually began to view it as a curse and cause of suffering. God’s desire to create an unending bond and cycle of reincarnation among himself and the Juunishi is actually the opposite of what would be taught in Buddhist principles, or what Buddha might have meant in the version of the story where he ascends to Nirvana and invites the other animals to obtain enlightenment.

Enlightenment in Buddhist thought breaks the cycle of rebirth, rather than creating or continuing it. Reincarnation happens because the individual still has not found enlightenment and must continue to learn in their next cycle of life until they finally obtain its meaning. Continuous rebirth in Buddhist doctrine is seen as a source of suffering and pain, not something desirable as it originally was to God and the Juunishi. In Fruits Basket, the Cat foresaw the kind of suffering and pain that the “bond” and its continuing cycle of reincarnation (both of life and relationships) would eventually create.

Kyo’s Beads

Kyo’s bracelet in Fruits Basket is well-known. It is the charm which keeps him from transforming into his “true form” - a hideous monster. Kyo’s bracelet is actually, as told by him, a set of juzu, or Buddhist prayer beads.

The beads are supposedly made out of the bones of a Buddhist monk and the red-coloring on every other bead are dyed from his blood. As the story goes, so many years ago this Buddhist monk sacrificed himself in order to create the bracelet and keep the Cat’s “true form” at bay. There is actually a practice in some Indian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions where prayer beads can be made out of human bones if they are recited over for the purpose to forcefully tame or subdue a malicious spirit.

The purpose of Buddhist prayer beads is to count them while meditating, reciting mantras, or reciting Buddha’s name. The recitations and repetition of the beads is meant to remind the user of the cycle of rebirth, the ability to break free of it, and to help them obtain enlightenment.

When prayer beads are made into a bracelet they are meant to be worn on the left wrist, where Kyo does indeed wear his beads. This is because the left hand represents the world of saṃsāra - cycles of rebirth and suffering - and the right hand represents the world of Buddha and enlightenment.

In Fruits Basket, Kyo’s beads serve as a reminder to him of his “true form”, his exclusion from the Zodiac, and the Sohma belief that the Cat’s is “an existence made up of others’ sacrifices and others’ lives”. Kyo himself is caught in a cycle of rebirth and suffering due to the conditions of the Sohma curse. However, so are the rest of the Juunishi, as the original Cat foresaw. Kyo’s beads are used to represent both these conditions, for himself and for the others as part of the Sohma bond as a whole. At the end of the manga, when the bond/curse finally breaks, it is represented through the powerful imagery of Kyo breaking his juzu beads off his wrist.

Permanence and Impermanence

Throughout Fruits Basket the idea of “permanence” is used in relationship to the “bond”. The concept of “permanence” - that something would remain in the same state, unchanged, indefinitely - is what God and the other Juunishi wished for when creating the bond. They wished that the banquet, their lives, and their relationships to one another would have “permanence”. This is also the idea which the Cat directly spoke out against. Instead the Cat spoke favorably of change, wishing to see God in another life forming different relationships with new people, saying that even though it can be sad they should accept the impermanence of all things.

Permanence and impermanence are also key concepts in Buddhist thought, with “impermanence” being an essential doctrine of what Buddhism teaches about existence. Buddhism teaches that all existence is in a continual state of change, where all things are temporary, trasitionary, and never remaining in one constant form.

In Buddhist belief, realizing this truth about life’s inherent “impermanence” is key, as it is believed that resistance to it or trying to obtain “permanence” is a root cause of suffering. Enlightenment is obtained through the realization and acceptance of “impermanence”, including of the “self”, or in other words that there is no constant, permanent, singular sense of “self”, “soul”, or “being”.

Conclusion

The narrative of Fruits Basket of course is not a parable or guidebook for exact Buddhist doctrine, but thematically it can be seen to be heavily influenced by Buddhist principles. Impermanence in particular is a concept from Buddhism that has had a great impact on Japanese aestheticism, or those ideals of what is considered beautiful and truthful, which appear frequently in Japanese art and storytelling.

A commonly used example is the cultural appreciation for cherry sakura blossoms, which bloom for only a brief period each spring season. They are considered so beautiful in Japanese culture, and celebrated accordingly through hanami (annual flower viewing parties), precisely because of their transient nature. They will only last in that exact state of delicate existence for a short time.

Fruits Basket uses allusions and symbols related to Buddhism to steer home thematic principles related to changing relationships and selfhood. Everyone comes to their own moment of “enlightenment” regarding these realities at the end of the series and the themes extend beyond just the Sohma and their family curse. The “bond” between God and the Juunishi, and Akito’s desire to create a “permanence” in her identity and relationships, is related by Tohru to her relationship with her deceased mother and how she too had been wishing for unchanging feelings and bonds. Each of the main characters in Fruits Basket are brought through a journey of realizing and accepting the truth of “impermanence”, or that all things come to an end and all people, feelings, and relationships change.

Sources

Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices. Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Johnson, Frank A. Dependency and Japanese Socialization: Psychoanalytic and Anthropological Investigations into Amae. New York University Press, 1993.

Lebra, Takie Sugiyama. The Japanese Self in Cultural Logic. University of Hawai'i Press, 2004.

Schumacher, Mark. “ZODIAC CALENDAR & LORE.” 12 Zodiac Animals & Zodiac Calendar - Buddhism in Japan and China, onmarkproductions.com/html/12-zodiac.shtml.

Tanizaki Junichirō. In Praise of Shadows. Leetes Island Books, 1977.

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peacefuloasis-deactivated202510

Spoilers~~~~

Issues with making yuki/kyo fight happens on the day of toru's discharge & adding " kyo packing his lugguge before yuki stops him:

1. Originally yuki/kyo fights when tohru was just hurt & hospitalized, the entensity of the fight stems from yuki being mad at kyo for not accepting tohru & telling him there is no way he could stop her mom's death. Yuki's tears stem from being worried about toru. Kyo's defeated mindest stems from just seeing tohru's injured body.

2. Moving the fight daaaays after & making it on the day of tohru's discharge & " adding kyo packing his luggage" ruins kyo's character. It makes him out to be only wanting to live thanks to yuki's words. If he confronted his dad, why would he pack & leave? Why would yuki's words abt not killing kyoko matter? He learned & confronted his dad. Kyo needs to be super defeated for the fight to be super dramatic. Really does kyo not want to improve? How would kyo deserve tohru if only he rushes to her thanks to yuki's words? Thsts super lame. So love is the answer? & if they make yuki super emotional wihle tohru is safe & sound thsts weird. If he isnt emitional then he is unnecessarliy violent for seeing a deafeted guy......

The real ruining issue is making kyo pack to leave. They could've done without it. This ruins kyo so much. Im happy fir those of u who only care for romance. But furuba is about each character realizing & fighting fir their own chance to live. Kyo doing nothing but packing before running to tohru has nothing to do with innate desire for growth. Thry would ve at least cut tge whole fight. Or even make the fight any other day than toru's discharge day!!!! Why the extra drama.

Really kyo didnt require long eps, just one short scene confronting his dad & another with tohru. Now it feels like there is no father confrontation. Akito just gifted him the the cat's room demolish? Laaaaaaame

childrenoftheforce

Holy god thank you for articulating this and not bootlicking this travesty of an anime

Where are all my fellow Furuba anime haters/manga purists at? HMU so I can follow you and we can bathe in our sadness and disappointment about this adaption’s piss-poor choices together

#fruits basket #fruits basket manga

furubacanon

Fruits Basket is not about “the power of unconditional love”

People say a lot of things about Fruits Basket and its themes and Tohru as a character. They say it’s about “the power of love” or the importance of “unconditional love” or “love and forgiveness”. Then they say that Tohru as the main character exemplifies these themes.

But let’s really think about this.

Fruits Basket is not about the power of love, or unconditional love, or forgiveness.

Now Fruits Basket does have a lot to say about empathy, but it says both positive and negative things about it, and at most it is one subtheme of the larger themes of the narrative.

People will say Furuba is about “love and forgiveness” and even just the positive side of “empathy” because they see this as what Tohru displays. Particularly they feel this is what Tohru displays as her “saving power” in the first climatic moment of the story’s end where she talks to Akito and offers her a hand in friendship.

But “unconditional love” or “forgiveness” isn’t what Tohru has going for her in this scene that allows for such a powerful start of a resolution with Akito’s character. Nor is it ultimately empathy. Yes, Tohru has a lot of empathy for Akito in this scene, but as stated above, this is at best a subtheme of something larger going on that is the much more powerful play in the story.

The true crux of this moment in the story is that Tohru relates to Akito. That of course leads to understanding, which leads to empathy, but it’s what Tohru relates to Akito about which is the main driving theme and purpose of the scene and the overall narrative of Furuba.

Firstly, let’s acknowledge that Tohru isn’t empathizing with Akito in this scene simply because she has some otherworldly power that makes her “unconditionally love” even the most awful of villains. She relates to Akito because she isn’t relating to her as a “villain”, she’s relating to her as herself. Tohru is seeing herself as a villain and understanding her own flaws through Akito. Tohru is having a moment of personal development and growth as she faces down Akito with a knife - Tohru’s focus is as much on herself as it is an Akito. This is even more clear in the manga where these scenes between the two of them have tons of internal dialog from Tohru, where the bulk of it is about her own issues currently going on (with Kyo and her mother) and very little about Akito in front of her. She is talking to herself as she talks to Akito. Tohru is only able to understand where Akito is coming from at this moment because she recognizes that she has been coming from the same place - the untenable desire to hold onto unconditional and everlasting bonds.

Now let’s talk about that theme. “The untenable desire to hold onto unconditional and everlasting bonds”. Note the word “unconditional”. Now there are a lot of dimensions to the Bond, but one key piece is that the Bond in Fruits Basket is an “unconditional love”. The Zodiac are bonded to (and love) God no matter what God does. There is also bitterness and hatred there after years and years and being bound by this feeling. But that “unconditional love” is supposed to overpower all other conditions - bitterness, oppression, abuse, desire, freedom, individuality. And it does. That’s why the Bond works, because it demands “unconditional love” from it’s members, and is set up to enforce it as the primary feeling they experience.

So saying that Fruits Basket is about the “(positive) power of unconditional love” could not be further from the truth. Saying that this what Tohru “saves” Akito with could not be further from the truth. The story recognizes that which is unconditional and everlasting as something negative - love included - and, ultimately, impossible. The love between God and the Zodiac. The love Tohru tried to create between herself and her deceased mother. Tohru doesn’t reach Akito through a display of “unconditional love”. She reaches Akito through a recognition and a mutual acknowledgement that “unconditional love” does not exist.

“It is terrifying to exist in this world, with no guarantee that I’ll be loved”.

When Tohru offers Akito her hand in friendship, she is showing her that relationships (love) do not have to be unconditional in order to exist. At first, Akito rejects Tohru, saying that the first time she does anything undesirable, Tohru will reject her. Tohru doesn’t say anything and she doesn’t object to what Akito has said. She simply offers her hand again. She is not telling Akito that “I will accept you no matter what” - she is telling Akito that even without a guarantee, it is worth a try. That things don’t have to be unconditional and everlasting and frozen in time in order to exist or be worthwhile. Akito is terrified that if she leaves one absolute (the Bond and the love it guarantees her) then she can only possibly be met with the opposite absolute (no bond, no relationships, and no love ever in her life). Tohru is showing her that this isn’t true. Right here, now, she is offering Akito a chance to form a new relationship - one that may be imperfect, conditional, and limited in scope and time, but nevertheless real.

This is what Fruits Basket is about. It is about ambiguity and change. It is about the lack of guarantees. The existence of both light and dark. The fallacy of absolutes. The false dichotomies we let rule our lives.

So there is no absolute love. There is no absolute forgiveness. There is no absolute empathy. Tohru is not a character who, in the end, embodies any of those things. Tohru embodies hope in impermanence and the importance of change - and only after she’s learned to embrace those things herself when her character has been fighting against them for so long, just like Akito. - Mod Red (Christa)

#fruits basket #truth right here #wish more people understood the art of story analysis

gracielitamargarita

Thoughts on Kyoru in Fruits Basket: The Final as a manga reader

(and bad metaphors about lava cake)

So with next week’s impending shit storm of a Furuba episode next week, I’ve been doing some reflecting on our favorite Mutual Pining Idiots, Kyoru–and thinking about how the anime adaptation’s choices in rearranging or removing content has impacted things, specifically with Se3E6.

And just to preface, I think the anime adaptation has been terrific overall. I also think loving something and critiquing something aren’t mutually exclusive either. The goal of what I’m about to write is not to incite negativity, just to get some feelings out about my favorite pairing from my favorite manga series and provoke some deeper thought, I guess.

ALSO, I hope you don’t mind metaphors–specifically ones about chocolate-raspberry lava cake, because that’s what I’ve decided works best for explaining Kyoru. So FASTEN THOSE SEATBELTS PEOPLE

MANGA SPOILERS regarding previously omitted content as well as VAGUE ANIME SPOILERS that can be implied/inferred from the ending of Se3E7 under the cut.

Keep reading

ugh

If you are out here telling manga readers to stop being negative or mad about the significant changes to story and character that the anime is making at the climax of the story, then kindly: STFU. I will not be grateful for mediocrity and it’s not my problem if my criticism offends your feelings. This adaption has always only ever been decent to good, coasting on the brilliance that is the source material, but now it is downright disappointing.

How is the anime making Tohru look uncaring - by not having her react to Kyo’s panic attack - acceptable? Do you people not care about character continuity? The anime fabricated a dramatic cliffhanger solely for shock value and then didn’t bother to follow up on it. Matter of fact, the entirety of Tohru’s character development - which we have waited two seasons for - has been compressed and flattened as a result of the changes they’ve made in recent episodes. That is some Game of Thrones S8 bullshit. And how about when the anime made Rin look like she didn’t care Kagura hit Tohru in front of her, even though Rin more than anyone knows how much it hurts to be physically attacked? All of this is to say nothing of how the story’s pacing has, too, been destroyed.

Am I the only one who is bothered when the emotional logic of the characters and subsequently the story is undermined like this? I don’t care how colourful and flashy the anime is. All the animation and sentimental music and voice acting means nothing when it fails to tell the story in a coherent and meaningful manner. Meaning is lost when the truth of the characters and the story that emerges from their truth is sacrificed in order to service the plot. By cutting, merging and re-contextualising scenes like they have in the past three episodes, the anime has proved that it is not interested in narrative truth; it just wants to run to the finish line as fast as possible while hitting only the necessary plot beats. This is not a matter of having to make changes to the story in order to fit the medium; it’s a matter of the anime team not accounting for and planning far enough ahead given the limited episode count in order to avoid compromising the story at its climax. The end result is Fruits Basket-lite, in which plot facts take precedence over depth of story. That is not the Fruits Basket I love and was promised that this adaption would be faithful to.

If you are enjoying the anime and don’t care about negative opinions then I hope you will continue to do so! This post is not directed at you. But please, to those who do care when they see criticism, and are making it known: stop. I am going to criticise the anime for its poor adapting choices and I am not going to ‘just be happy’ that we got an adaption at all. Am I entitled for spewing my unhappiness into the fandom void like this? Maybe. Or maybe I'm just holding the creators to account for the expectations they set when they promised years ago that they were going to make a complete and faithful adaption of the manga.

#Fruits Basket

adreadfulidea-deactivated202402

I think a surprising amount of writers don’t realize that tragedies are supposed to be cathartic. They’re intended to result in a purging of emotion, a luxurious cry; the sorrow caused by a great tragedy is akin to fear caused by a good horror movie – it’s a “safe” sorrow, one that is actually satisfying to the audience. It can still be beautiful! It’s isn’t supposed to just be salting the earth so nothing can grow.

But that’s how you get grimdark: writers who don’t realize that they’re supposed to be doing something with the audience instead of to the audience.

jadewhisper

#i once heard a lecture where someone said that the great appeal of tragedy is to see terrible things happen to people you’re supposed to#empathize with and see yourself in#and that the catharsis comes from seeing someone’s life go horribly wrong and still have the author hold your hand and tell you#‘this story mattered. even though it had a sad ending it still mattered. even if you don’t succeed your attempts matter’#grimdark tells you that the world sucks and nothing you do matters#well-written tragedy tells you that sometimes the world sucks but everything you do matters so so much#your story is still worth telling even if you never achieve that happy ending#or if you lose it along the way#people have inherent value and their stories deserve to be told no matter if they turn out okay or not#and in a reality that has no concept of ‘fair’ that shit just hits good man!!! feels good!!!!! it’s COMFORTING

kyloren

alwayseverlark

The way I knew!!!!

Ben’s proposal in The Last Jedi, was indeed, Darcy’s proposal in Pride and Prejudice!!

We LOVE an idiot pining and in love !

Ben Solo is Darcy in the space

@eiramrelyat @alliswell21 @mandelion82 you’re going to love this confirmation!

frumfrumfroo

I see so many stupid takes on what a “revised” ST storyline would look like. Granted, almost all of these are still better than the dumpster fire that is TROS. But a lot of these still don’t make sense because a lot of people still miss what I think you articulate so well in many of your metas: that the ST is about the Skywalker family, the unresolved trauma, and with Ben Solo as the heir and person who should tie up all the loose ends (I can’t put it as elegantly as you do, but the whole thing you have repeatedly said about him living and having children, reconciliation of Anakin and the Skywalker “name” to society, repairing the unresolved issues Leia had with her father, etc etc). I just saw another stupid take where Rey is Obi Wan’s secret daughter who has been abandoned (wow way to go shitting on Obi Wan’s character) and therefore has anger issues, hates the Jedi and worships Vader, Ben is not force sensitive and grows up a diplomat learning from Leia, Finn is a Jedi randomly, Poe is a pilot for no reason I can think of or why he even exists, and Rey needs to be saved by Ben (how? Why? Why not by Finn if Finn is the Jedi and Ben is doing just fine in life.) Oh and the dyad is created by Obi and Anakin’s ghosts, and also Rey is asexual bc she is too angry—I support asexual character representation but not if it is a manifestation of maladaptive behaviors rather than a healthy state of being). I mean, all of that could be interesting, maybe in an Obi Wan family saga spinoff series, but I fail to see how this is about the Skywalkers or ties in thematically to the central characters of OT/PT. Like why should we care? I suppose if we learned that Leia did reconcile with her father, and the galaxy at large knew of Anakin’s redemption, and Ben didn’t grow up with this fear of fatalism, fine I can see perhaps that storyline “working” but again...it wouldn’t really be about the Skywalkers anymore, who in that version seem to all be well adjustsd, happy fufilled functional people. But why not then just call that story a complete new series instead of a sequel...(and btw that “version” has almost no mention of Luke, and most OG fans are interested in seeing where their original heros ended up etc etc). I fail to see why Rey even needs to be around in these “alternate” versions. Just make a completely new story set in SW world but not a “sequel” then, that would be fine. Anyway, every time I see stuff like this, I come to your blog to re-read your metas because you are one of the very few people who GETS the story. Please preach some more to the choir (if inspiration strikes). I need to be reminded that there actual people in the fandom who cares about Ben, the Skywalkers, thematic coherence, and GOOD STORYTELLLING. Anyway thank you so much for your detailed and insightful analyses. They are truly a delight and a balm. If it’s not too much trouble, could you by chance link to some of your own fave metas you’ve written, or that you think are the most important to understanding the ST and Ben etc? Do you recommend any other bloggers whose metas on Ben and ST you feel are good and enjoy? Thank you!

Thank-you so much, anon! 🥰

Yes, the problem with so many ‘fix-it’ ideas or ideas of what the ST ‘should’ have been is that they have nothing to do with the Skywalker Saga or its themes. If you just want to write about new characters in the GFFA and not meaningfully continue the same narrative about the family and the question the Skywalkers exist to ask, then it’s not part of the same story. Which is fine, but it’s not a sequel. You can’t unpick the end of RotJ and destroy the resolution of the original character arcs if you’re then going to make them glorified cameos to give your unrelated newbies a pep talk without providing a fuller and more complete statement of the original message and the original arcs. That’s an either/or choice. Either actually make a sequel and deal with the implications of that or don’t.

The most stark contrast between TLJ and TFA/TROS is that TLJ is written as a fully equal and living part of the story, it treats the characters as characters and takes for granted that it is part of the saga not just a tribute to it. There are elements that are meta, it does comment, but it doesn’t approach the OT heroes as icons frozen in amber incapable of change or allow its new characters to act like fans of the films rather than people who live in the universe. And this is why it’s so much better and so much more memorable. It’s an actual story which stands on its own two feet.

Probably my most key posts on SW’s themes and worldview are in the tags space crime and punishment and the legacy. My Ben tag covers a lot those two miss and also has reblogs from other people whose meta I would really recommend (especially benperorsolo). This is a round up I did mostly about Rey’s arc/place in the story, but it’s pre-tros and missing some links. Her tag has more on sw protagonists and why I think none of the ‘alternatives’ people offer for Rey Nobody and Reylo work.

I think I linked most of my individual favourite posts in this answer lol.

frumfrumfroo

I'm very curious as to what you mean by "invoking the shadow of Palpatine" being appropriate for TRoS VS what we got. Like, a flesh and blood zombie Grandpa clone dangling from his little Space Crane was certainly one of the most embarrassingly stupid film moments I've ever had to witness, but do you think revealing Palps in some form as the power behind Snoke and the source of Ben Solo's torment is still inappropriate narratively, if it had been handled better and actually resolved?

Basically just that he is The Big Bad of the saga who personified temptation and it’s appropriate to tie the story together by making the last trilogy sort of the ‘clean up crew’ who need to mop up the scattered evil Palpatine left behind. The ST is about loose ends, really, which is the only way it works since its setting is just a reheated OT setting.

I was thinking anything on a scale from ‘his influence lingers in the form of a power vacuum easily filled by another authoritarian who carries on his legacy of appealing to fear, selfishness, and pragmatism’ through ‘Palpatine had some kind of auxiliary plan in place which is triggered/exploited by Snoke/Hux/the Knights of Ren’ all the way to ‘someone gets deep into dark side shit and can use his voice/appearance to fuck with Ben/Leia/anyone old enough to remember the Emperor’.

Like, having him not be dead was always going to be really problematic and undermine the existing story. But I don’t think the connection needs to be as explicit as Palpatine being the literal power behind Snoke. It originally appeared that Snoke was just an opportunist who exploited the Skywalker family’s failure to fully reconcile with Anakin and the weakness of the New Republic in the wake of the Empire’s collapse. I think it’s enough for Snoke to be a Palpatine wannabe and they could easily have included background to that effect in an episode IX where Ben gets to be an actual character whose fall is further clarified (in a scene with Luke where they finally talk about the temple and what really happened) and who speaks post-redemption.

The source of Ben’s torment is the Skywalker legacy, which is Vader’s legacy, and that’s already intimately tied up with Palpatine. They could have just put a bow on that with a very brief flashback to the way Snoke manipulated him with his family’s fear and with their history where he invokes the Emperor. Or just cover it in dialogue with Ben and Luke or Ben and Rey.

And the physical aspect of the fight could be the First Order military (lead by archetypal True Believer Hux) and the Knights of Ren (or ‘Sith cultists’ or the Vader cultists who were allegedly in tros could be trying to manifest the Emperor with dark energy or whatever nonsense if you absolutely have to have a Force user battle). They’re a ‘remnant’, too, so they are part of Palpatine’s shadow already. Fear and complacency allowed the Empire to rise in the prequels and will allow it to return if people don’t stand against it. TLJ did the heavy lifting on reiterating this point already, you just need to follow through. The movie they should be trying to mirror thematically is, appropriately, The Phantom Menace.

Really, the Force plot/A plot could just be Rey saving Ben while the Resistance struggles to survive as more FO generals seize power and shit gets more out of hand without a functional supreme leader holding things to a plan, second act climax be his redemption and defection, and then the third act be F/nn rallying the galaxy to defeat the First Order while Ben and Rey work together on an ultimately life-affirming Force mission of some kind which requires both of them (rescuing Leia from Vader cultists maybe?), plus positive new growth plus reconciliation.

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