30s, okinawan-american, constantly politicizing your favorite animanga
basically just a dumping ground for my various and varied interests. i cycle through the same five or six interests on a seasonal/cyclical basis. iāve read yomi no tsugai in full at least twelve times. iāve lost count of how many times iāve read fullmetal alchemist. you get it.
leftist politics abound. iām indigenous and i never shut up about it. terfs blocked on sight. queer as in end u.s. imperialism, land back, fuck ice, and free palestine.
I have this hc where takeda did baseball when he was younger bc of that one manga scene where he compares volleyball rules to baseball rules (i cant remember what it was exactly) so i have drawn it !!! š„¹š„¹
You know it's a Gothic Horror show, and you're supposed to feel uncomfortable, right? I do. But do you? Do you, Rolin, and Hannah understand that? Because from where I stand, only the Black characters seem to be trapped in a horror story. The others appear to be in a completely different genre.
The issue isn't that viewers like myself don't want to feel uncomfortable. The issue is that, in this Gothic Horror show, Black characters disproportionately bear the brunt of the violence.
Take this season finale as an example.
At the end of Episode 6, two characters are beheaded. Yet in Episode 7, we are shown the severed head and mutilated body of the black character in explicit details, while the white character's mutilated body is shown only briefly and out of focus, and his severed head is hidden from us.
Louis's arc is presented as a parallel to Lestat's. Both characters are placed in situations where they must confront people they have wronged, or at least people the narrative insists they have wronged, as well as their pasts, relationships, and mistakes. (Personally, I don't believe Louis owes Armand anything, but the narrative clearly wants the audience to think otherwise.ššš)
Yet the way these parallel journeys are depicted are drastically different.
Lestat's reckoning unfolds in beautiful rooms, elegant spaces, and dreamlike settings. He sits comfortably while listening to the grievances of the people in his life. He argues back. He reflects. He moves through beautiful environments, from grand rooms to forests and back again. Even when he is forced to confront painful memories, the experience is framed as introspection. The focus remains on his emotional and psychological journey.
Meanwhile, Louis is placed in what looks like a torture room straight out of a Saw movie. His severed head sits on a table, hooked up to a machine. His body is positioned across from him, forcing him to stare at it. His suffering is not just physical; it is public and humiliating. His torture is broadcast for others to watch and study. His pain becomes both spectacle and data. He is joined by Regina, another Black character, whose torture is used as leverage against him.
The man torturing Louis demands an apology, not for any genuine wrongdoing, but because Louis failed to love him the way he believed he deserved to be loved, and failed to show enough empathy for his trauma. This is the same man who murdered Louis's daughter in a lynching and attempted to murder Louis in that same lynching, and who, only minutes earlier, boasted that he took aesthetic pleasure in making Louis's death visually exhilarating as part of that lynching.
And so the torture continues. Louis is pushed to the brink of death. Regina is slicing her wrist. Eventually, Louis gives in. He apologizes. He accepts responsibility not only for hurting his torturer's feelings but for the torture itself. He tells his torturer that his coldness and denial drove him (the torturer) to these actions (the torture). The torturer receives the apology he wants, ends the torture, heals and frees Regina, and leaves, but not before carving the letter "A" onto Louis's mutilated body.
Meanwhile, Lestat is still moving through beautiful settings, confronting his past, and listening to others condemn him for the failures of his life. His story reaches its climax in the final act, when he is surrounded by the people in his life and the people he has wronged, some of whom are cheering him on. Rather than being subjected to physical degradation, he is given space for self-reflection. The focus remains on his memories, his relationships, his mistakes, the horrors he has committed, and his regrets. He eventually acknowledges some of his mistakes and even apologizes to one of his victims. Instead of fleeing from his past, he chooses to face it. His reckoning culminates in understanding, and the arc ultimately ends with imagery that evokes transcendence, as though he is ascending to heaven.
Both Louis and Lestat are given parallel narrative arcs centered on confronting their pasts, their relationships, and the harm they have caused. Yet the show presents those reckonings through vastly different visual and narrative lenses. Lestat's journey is psychological, reflective, and aesthetically beautiful. Louis's journey is a sustained ordeal of physical and psychological torture, humiliation, and degradation. One character is invited to examine himself; the other is turned into a spectacle of suffering. While Lestat is afforded reflection, Louis is afforded degradation.
And I'm supposed to look at that contrast and just shrug and say, "Well, that's Gothic horror for you"? Really? Take the blinders off. Look at what is being asked of Louis and compare it to what is being asked of Lestat. One is granted introspection, reflection, and, ultimately, transcendence. The other is subjected to torture, humiliation, and spectacle. The genre does not erase that disparity. If anything, it makes it more obvious.
My issue is not the horror. My issue is who is repeatedly asked to embody that horror, whose pain is treated as spectacle, and whose pain is afforded dignity, nuance, and care.
do i kill myself lowkey. Yuru crying that his parents left him and asa but danji knows that asa is actually gone too. Do you think it ate away at him to keep this lie here
i knew that the tvl finale was gonna be bad but that was truly one of the worst episodes of any show i have ever watched ever. rolin jones kill yourself challenge
i know kinjo is canonically not the twins family name but it is To Me. when they get registered down the mountain it most likely will be. and also the [name] āhyperbolic tagline of the characterās current issueā [name] format doesnt work if yuru doesnt have a family name lmao
ever since the newest episode i really canāt stop thinking about the scene where kinjo ātrust issues doesnt even begin to cover itā yuru is forced to make an active choice to trust tadera āi hold everyone i care about at arms lengthā ryuu with his life, and how interesting it is that this choice comes so soon narratively after yuru finding out danji was not only tsugai, but that in that all important moment where yuruās parents left him behind and danji is there to comfort him, that danji ALREADY KNEW about the asa in the cage. like. idk man. character who has not had a single second to sit in an emotion experiences yet another trust destroying betrayal and has to actively set that aside because his life is in immediate danger. can someone please give this child a break.
When I was a little boy, girls used to just do random cartwheels for no reason. Then one day, they stopped. Now that I am a man, no women randomly do cartwheels. This is because society is evil and killed the cartwheel impulse in their soul. They don't even spin horizontally anymore. It's fucked up.
