#marthmanx

i was tagged by the wonderful @cor-aeterna!!

Name/Nickname: september

Gender: cis woman

Star sign: virgo

Height: 169 cm, or 5′6′’ i guess

Time: 7:07pm

Birthday: september 3

Favorite bands: lmaoooooo, florence + the machine, local natives, nothing but thieves, the neighbourhood and young the giant

Favorite solo artists: erik hassle, amanda jenssen, vérité, thomston and matt maeson

Song stuck in my head: settle down by skott

Last movie: god.............. when even was the last time i watched a movie. the prince of egypt, i think???

Last show: i’m still on my mcleod’s daughters bullshit, and what about it

When did I create this blog: 2013 babey

What I post: what don’t i shove down all your throats honestly

Last thing googled: "anna olsson mästarnas mästare” because their facebook page played me 😭😭

Other blogs: y’all should be grateful i have @notesofseptember too, because i could slam you with even more music than i already do

Do I get asks: yea

Why I chose my url: i’m september i’m stollig it seems self-explanatory

Following: i’ve reached a very nice equilibrium of 210

Followers: way too many to seem reasonable tbh

Average hours of sleep: 9

Lucky number: 11!!

Instruments: former first flutist, and i can plink away at a piano not-horribly

What am I wearing: it’s laundry saturday, so sweatpants, a tank top, and my favorite cardigan that i have worn holes in the elbows of

Dream trip: god what i wouldn’t give to get to go to finland right now

Favorite food: granny’s pancakes, mom’s stews, and my sister’s lasagna

Nationality: swedish

Favorite song: LMAO but i have been listening to josef salvat’s peaches non-stop these last couple of days so do of that what you will

Last book read: dsakjbkdajbskjad finnjävlar (finnish bastards), i think??

Top three fictional universes I’d like to live in: ooooooooh, top notch question, moominvalley, ingary (bookverse), and seeing how it’s topical, the specific emil of lönneberga universe of the 1996 pc game

Favorite color: cobalt blue

THAT. WOULD BE. THE COOLEST THING. EVER.

rules: we're snooping in your playlist!! put your entire music library on shuffle and list the first 10 songs and then choose 10 victims

ascending - the lighthouse and the whaler

dearly departed - marianas trench

i know - aly & aj

you f o - stela cole

next to me - civil twilight

the first time - mrkts feat. staso

t-shirt song - don broco

my enemy - chvrches feat. matt berninger

astronaut - darin

prime - maraton

Sure! For those who don’t know (and are rightly wary of googling anime terms), a tsundere is a Japanese character trope where a female love interest is mean to the protagonist because she likes him, gradually warming up over the course of the show to be nice to him even though her feelings were clear from the beginning. (Since I hate the trope, I’m going to go on a brief tangent to plug a GREAT example of a tsundere: Kurisu Makise from Steins;Gate, who is irritable towards the main character because he’s obnoxious to her when they first meet and warms up to him only when he starts acting like a gentleman and/or comes to her for help. Her behavior is also influenced by her experience with physically abusive men, which is a great detail, because it means she puts up walls between herself and the protagonist to protect herself for a very good reason.)

Midna is not this! She has a few of the trappings, of course--she calls Link idiotic, she has a little fang, she’s irritable, etc. But that’s just shallow surface resemblance, and a tsundere characterization here is not an added complexity, it actually makes her a flatter character. In the game, Midna’s character is very clearly motivated: she lost her throne and she wants it back (drive), humans are beneath her or openly against her (hostility), and at the beginning of the game she doesn’t even LIKE Link--she tolerates him because she wants to use him (baiting him constantly), and she admits to that later. Her growth FROM being this character is very important. She doesn’t get sweet and vulnerable just because she grows to like Link. Ultimately her biggest attitude change (but not the only one, if you’re checking for subtleties in the way she speaks) is just before Zelda sacrifices herself for Midna. She’s realized at this point, from Link’s interactions with the children and others, that the people of this world AREN’T stupid or evil, that they’re people just like the Twili, and worth saving, and when Zelda gives her the chance to save both worlds, she takes that responsibility very seriously for the rest of the game, but more importantly, takes on humbled language with Link (a commoner, but her FRIEND!), asking him to accompany her instead of forcing him to.

I can’t give you good examples from the manga because I didn’t continue reading and much of it is, mercifully, wiped from my brain at this point. But from what I remember, Himekawa wants Midna to already be in love with Link near the very beginning of the story, because she wants female readers to invest in that romance (because NOTHING ELSE is interesting to female readers, right) and that just doesn’t fit her character--she can’t be distracted from the horrible tragedy her people are facing that easily, and she shouldn’t be flipping between “It’s not like I LIKE you, b-baka” and “Zant enslaved my people and cursed me” it’s SUCH a tonal problem. Like my other posts says, it’s better for Midna to be monstrous at the beginning so we can see how far she’s come. It’s okay if she’s not likeable or beautiful (THEY SHOWED HER TRUE FORM ON THE FIRST FRICKING PAGE) because Link is the one we’re following, and she’ll be with him for the long haul.

That would be too adorable for words! And too perfect! I love it!