Crooked_Mantis

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Taking a break on Frankenstein Weekly to analyze a bit of a recent Spy x Family chapter (#79).

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I want to share some of the comments I made on this chapter when I first read it:

“I trembled with rage and horror, resolving to wait his approach, and then close with him in mortal combat.”
-DA DA DA DADADA DA DA DA-D-D-D-DA!

“do not you fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head?”
-Dude, you are tiny. You are a chihuahua threatening a great dane.

He easily eluded me.
-No shit. I picture he’s either walking around your attempts or you are being held back by a single outstretched palm.

In short, Victor Frankenstein should be a guest character in MK12 and he should have the poorest viability in battle. Absolute F-Tier pick.

So, a big thing about the Trial of Justine that really ticks me off is how obvious it is that she is being used as a scapegoat. And how Victor, when faced with this fucked up court ruling, doesn’t dare to try proving that.

Like, anyone who saw the body and has common sense knows it wasn’t her.

And I’ll remind you why they should realize the truth just by looking, because the biggest piece of evidence (which Victor was aware of but never seemed to piece together) is here in his father’s letter:

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If you worry my reasoning here will delve into forensic techniques that won’t be normalized for two hundred years, then worry not. I’m not talking about the print itself, it’s the size of it that matters here.

If Victor tried, if he really followed his hunch to its logical end, he could’ve asked to see the body (He’s of a privileged position, has good reputation, and that is his brother who he is actively mourning. He would likely be allowed.) and been able to confirm that the size of the marks on the deceased neck were too large for any normal man, much less a teenage girl! (Is Justine like 14 or 16? I only know she was 12 when she became a servant but-)

If the Creature really is responsible like Victor assumes, it’d be obvious because no one is built like him, and strangulation as a means of death is a great giveaway for that exact trait. But Victor can only think about a solution in terms of giving away his whole story, instead of tastefully using evidence and proof to show another culprit… who, might I add, does not have to be attached to him in any way. He’s blindsided by his own self-centered view, where either he steps up and tells all to be persecuted for his mistake, or he sits back and keeps all his true deeds private.

It really shows (alongside the jail visit) how little Victor cares for Justine that he never pursues any line of thought other than this. He doesn’t even have new insights to offer to Walton in the present, he’s never like: “Well in hindsight, I should/could have tried this-” Instead he doubles down that there was no option.

Here Elizabeth is, standing up to the court and pushing for her friend. Trying her best, doing all she can. And there’s Victor, resigning himself to misery because he can’t break from his own emotional viewpoint, that focuses everything on his success or failure.

I’m not going to say much about the current Frankenstein chapter yet, but oh boy we’re really getting into it now.

I see a lot of posts saying “Thank god other people despise Victor Frankenstein” and “How dare these people harshly judge Victor Frankenstein” and some comments made between the two parties that feel like the start of a fan war. I would prefer that not happen with this book, of all things, so I think both sides should probably be listening out for the other.

Try to reconstruct the narrative of the book with the opposing side’s views and recognize that both readings are subjective and they can coexist in your mind. They are lenses to read with and they don’t have to be entirely separate. Victor can be a sympathetic figure just as much as he can be a terrible person.

He will do a lot of things that are worth judging, but we should never forget where those decisions stem from. We should always look for the humanity in him, but we should acknowledge when he loses sight of what’s important. All of this also applies to The Creature when he is explored.

And at the end of the day, we’re all here to find our own fun in this reading. Some people genuinely don’t have fun with anything other than the light roasting of these literary figures and still want to participate. Some people find their fun in relating to these figures. Some people love to point out how gay it is. And I love seeing all these posts.

Let’s try our best not to step on each other’s shoes when challenging each other’s takes. That’s all I hope for.

crooked-mantis:

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I know most people knew Victor was a bad father, but I don’t think any new reader is really prepared for how obsessed Victor is with insulting his own creation. Like I know the hurtful comments come from a place of great fear and anxiety, but like, he really can’t let it go. He doesn’t stop with this at any point, and he begins long before the creature has even done anything.

It is possible these comments are not reflective of his prior mental state, but rather interjections and words choice of the present Victor, telling the story. But given all that we see Victor recount with surprising clarity and accuracy later in the novel, I’m really not sure that he’s tainting the internal monologues of his past either.

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I know most people knew Victor was a bad father, but I don’t think any new reader is really prepared for how obsessed Victor is with insulting his own creation. Like I know the hurtful comments come from a place of great fear and anxiety, but like, he really can’t let it go. He doesn’t stop with this at any point, and he begins long before the creature has even done anything.

It’s interesting how often Victor frames knowledge as a secret. It really only gets worse when M. Waldman introduces the phrase “penetrate into the recesses of nature and shew how she works in her hiding places”. Hiding places, secrets…. But never words like mysteries or curiosities. These specific words and phrases of Shelley’s choosing are used to personify nature itself as this greedy entity. Secrets are kept by people. Hiding places are maintained by people. And the fact that they keep personifying nature with feminine pronouns kind of adds to the picture, doesn’t it? [She keeps things from us, hides away, hordes this knowledge in the shadows. We must chase after her, pull this knowledge from nature’s clutches and recover what we are entitled to as men- I mean scientists!]

I know this isn’t like, Victor’s surface level thoughts about science 100% of the time, but even as an underlying thought or metaphor for his work, this is a really unhealthy way to view knowledge and the practice of science.

She determined to fulfil her duties with the greatest exactness; and she felt that that most imperious duty, of rendering her uncle and cousins happy, had devolved upon her. She consoled me, amused her uncle, instructed my brothers; and I never beheld her so enchanting as at this time, when she was continually endeavouring to contribute to the happiness of others, entirely forgetful of herself.

Victor is the kind of sexist who sees a woman in her worst state and is like “Why can’t you act like this more often?”.

Like, this behavior is clearly spurred by guilt. It was Elizabeth who first caught scarlet fever and, had that not happened, it would not have spread to Caroline. She’s only 13, and through that immature lens she must already be placing some, if not all, the blame on her own shoulders before she is specifically given the task, the death bed wish, to act as the lady of the house and care for everyone as such.

This is her unhealthy coping mechanism, her personal redemption for the fault of catching the fever. You can see, in the strict determination by which she carries out this request, that she could not be more miserable with herself. I cannot help but read this as someone trying desperately to make amends while internally beating themself up.

And then Victor looks at her face in this state and calls it the most enchanting he’s ever seen her. Like, what?

Walton is less oblivious than our old friend Johnathan Harker, but I think there is a comparison to be made based on how many people in his personal life have dissuaded him from this very expedition.

“You [Margaret] will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.”

“These volumes were my study day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which I had felt, as a child, on learning that my father’s dying injunction had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a seafaring life.”

It’s like, dude, maybe they all warned you for a reason. Maybe your “enticements being sufficient to conquer all fear” is a bad thing. You should be allowed a healthy amount of fear on a trip across icy cold waters on a rickety old ship, especially when no one’s been there before. Don’t be a fool.

The Power of Love trope in Spy x Family

People already talk about how beautiful it is that each member of the Forger household is an orphan. And thus the false family serves each of them something they were missing in life. But I want to go further and point out how genius it is that all of their tragic situations were a result of the war effort. Spy x Family never directly states, but frequently reinforces, the idea that War Separates Families. War is many bad things, and the series shies away from none of them, but it has a certain interest in reminding us of how children lose their parents, people leave their spouses to die on the battlefield, time apart, conflict, pain, all create rifts between the relationships of those still living. War destroys bonds. It kills love.

And there has never been a show so dedicated to The Power of Love as Spy x Family. In wholesome moments all across the series there is familial, romantic, and platonic love abundant. A number of them aren’t even healthy forms of love. But the most important is the love that forges our main characters into a family. The fact that Operation Strix is inadvertently about making a loving family in the face of war is so wonderful. If this family forms the proper connections, wins the hearts of the Ostanian elite through showings of wholesome family love, they have the potential to end a war that threatens all other families and so many other forms of love. Spy x Family is so about The Power of Love trope, but it doesn’t take the form of a magic attack, a kiss, an inexplicable defiance of death, or anything like that. The Power of Love is expressed in behaviors, meaningful words, wholesome acts of kindness, and it almost always helps the mission progress later down the line. And I love that restraint. I love this smaller form of The Power of Love trope that doesn’t need to be so in your face to make its point. I love how well this series understands wholesome content as a valid story focus and how that is utilized in the plot itself to create a better future for everyone.

casually-crooked:

Credit to @cosmoglass for making the post that first pointed this out, but I want to show in more detail why Lupin the 3rd: Castle of Cagliostro and ICO for the PS2 are aesthetically connected, with the latter likely being inspired by the former. This post won’t contain direct spoilers for either source material. But a lot of images will be used, so if you prioritize coming into both of these masterworks blind, and with fresh eyes, wait until you’ve seen them for yourself.

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I love generational stories. I love stories bigger than any one character knows. I love when an antagonist outlives a protagonist but is felled by their successor. I love protagonists that are the spitting image of their predecessor. I love protagonists that act in direct contrast to their predecessor. I love the sense of reincarnation, literal or ineffable. I love any side characters whose traces vanish in the distant future to remind us how important the story we follow is. I love seeing the themes that die off and the themes that carry over. I love how everything stays the same despite everything that’s changed. I love seeing a family line, in blood or in bond, span across ages. I love seeing the light of the first hero in the eyes of the last.

When I see a design choice that I can only articulate in my mind get used by an artist, I want to send them my whole heart. Even though they probably didn’t think that hard about it.

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