#random meta

And it's interesting because the show can do this without implying that Robby's bad at his job - his instincts remain excellent about all the cases. His impulsive, off the book actions only ever have good consequences so far (telling the lady's boss off from threatening to fire her, cutting her leg so Garcia does the surgery immediately...) But it still makes you feel like he's on the verge of exploding. It still makes you feel like something could go really wrong if he keeps going that way. Which is a fun way to build tension without making him incompetent. We know he's a great doctor! And yet.

Meanwhile all the scenes with Al-Hashimi this episode portray her as someone who's extremely competent, a good teacher, and caring to her patients. She stands up for herself when Robby is being annoying, but in a very professional manner. At the start of the season, she seems cold and rigid, compared to Robby who is lively and cracks jokes and loves improvising. But now we're mid-season: Robby's emotional state and behavior feels erratic, and Al-Hashimi comes off not cold just... calm. And good at her job. The scene where she's mentoring Mel, Whittaker and Samira is almost... relaxing. Even with Santos: her scolding Santos last episode felt, though warranted, a little too harsh, but I think this episode her talking to Santos about charting really emphasizes that she's not trying to be mean, because she's not just issuing a dire warning, she's commiserating and offering a solution (the AI program). Whatever you may think of it, it's a solution she believes in.

I had my doubts going in but I'm halfway through at this point and man, teenage Coriolanus is a really brilliant character. Like he's incredibly smart and capable and very clearly traumatized in a way that makes him sympathetic, and he's capable of insights and empathy in a way that only some of his Capitol peers echo in stark contrast to the callow decadence and bigotry of the society and him. His love for Lucy Gray feels genuine and sweet and sincere.

But he's also an arrogant, selfish, snobby, entitled bastard whose affection for the people around him can switch to loathing, dismissal and resentment at the drop of a hat. He's constantly looking down on and insulting people in his internal thoughts and only doesn't voice them because he knows he doesn't have the station to get away with it. He's paranoid and insecure and only interested in Lucy Gray in the first place because he's able to put her on a mental pedestal above the other District folk, seeing her as better than them, a reflection of his own privilege and bigotry. And his love for her, while sincere, is also jealous and possessive -- he needs to own her, needs her to be his girl, and gets violently angry at the very implication that she might have had a lover and a past before him, that there was anything in her life that didn't revolve around him.

Ya know it's weird that i haven't done it already... I kinda thought I had, honestly. Yeah, let me resurrect this long dead series of posts...

Inoue Orihime[井上 織姫] read most literally as something like "Well+Top"(as in the top of a well(for water)) and "Weaving+Princess" but of course the name Orihime is just taken directly from the mythological figure behind the tanabata festival. It's possible the name Inoue in that context could be used to reference the Well Mansion, one of 28 categories of constellations in Chinese astronomy. Although in Tanabata Orihime refers to the star Vega, which as far as I can tell is not part of the Well Mansion.

In any case, the myth of Orihime and Hikoboshi was the basis of Kubo's original Bleach one-shot, which itself got reworked into the plot with her brother Sora, the hollow Acidwire. Ichigo lost prettymuch all of his associated hikoboshi themes in the transition from the one-shot to the serial title, so her name is kind of vestigial. The one lingering detail that was never built on was how her rejection powers were said to verge on the territory of god, and in the tanabata myth Orihime is the daughter of Tantei[天帝]:"Heaven Emperor" one of several epithets for the Jade Emperor, a figure hailed as a human ascended to immortal, the First God, and a supreme ruler over other gods. But despite that very slight thematic alignment, she was never given any divine origins.

Her bother, Inoue Sora[井上昊] reads, "Well+Top" and "Sky/Heaven," where Sora[昊] is a synonym with Ten/Ama[天]: "Sky/heaven" and both a synonym and homonym with sora[空]: "sky/heaven/void." (And it's a bit of a tangent, but that last one is the same word Kubo uses in the name Kuukaku[空鶴], Karakura town[空座町], and when Aizen says, Ten no za no kuuhaku[天の座の空白]: "The Throne of Heaven is Empty.") He was a rewritten from what was originally Orihime's late grandfather in the one-shot, which aligned more obviously with the father Heaven King role of myth.

Sado Yasutora[茶渡 泰虎] I think I've mentioned before, reads "Tea+Ferry" and "Peaceful+Tiger" which just seems to literally describe him as an immigrant(traded over on a boat, like tea) and as a gentlegiant type. It's also very possible Kubo just wanted to nickname him "Chad" and found a name he could squeeze into that, rather than worry about the meaning of the name first.

Arisawa Tatsuki[有沢 竜貴] I don't really know how to parse part of her surname here, "Posession/Existence+Swamp" seems to be the literal breakdown? It's also just an actual surname people have, as is Inoue --Sado by comparison however, is not. In any case, her personal name is "Dragon+Noble/<indicator of high rank or status>." This is why she and Orihime get a paired Princess and Dragon motif.

Asano Keigo[浅野 啓吾] reads "Superficial+Rustic/Unsophisiticated" and "Disclose+Me" basically just calling him surface level, simple, and open. He's exactly what it says on the label. Can be read like an open book. Then there's his sister...

Asano Mizuho[浅野 みづ穂] and her name is the phonetic MIDZU+"the ear of a plant/head of a spear/tip of a brush." There are kanji that could go with that but for one, I'm not just gonna take blind stabs, and besides if Kubo had wanted to ascribe obvious meaning to it, he'd have done so. No idea what to make of that one. Considering she's extremely minor and secondary to an already minor character at that, I'm willing to bet he just picked it to be aesthetically pleasing.

Kojima Mizuiro[小島 水色]: "Little+Island" "Water+Color," that is of course as in "Color (of) Water" and not to "water color paints," those have a different name entirely in Japanese. I don't know that his name really says much about him, but considering a lot of weird little details of his fairly minimal appearances across the series, I have my own crackpot theories about Mizuiro, but this isn't the time or place...

Honshou Chizuru[本匠 千鶴]: "Book+Artisan" and "1,000+Crane(s)" the association of paper craft and cranes points pretty obviously to origami, and 1,000 origami cranes (senbazura[千羽鶴]) which evokes a meaning of longevity and recovery from illness. Also the Bookishness vibe seems to be evoked in her general glasses girl design.

Kunieda Ryou[国枝 鈴]: "Country+Branch" and "(Small)Bell." "County" like a "nation/kingdom," not like "rural" as in Asano's name. The small bell evokes a clear but subtle ring, which is kind of reflected in her quiet and intelligent demeanor.

Ogawa Michiru[小川みちる] "MICHIRU" is phonetic so no attributed meaning, but her surname just means "brook/stream" (lit."Small+River") a very on the nose nod to her diminutive size. I never noticed until now but she always has different sheet music notation hairpins.

Natsui Mahana[夏井 真花]: "Summer+Well" (again, like with Inou, the structure you fish water out of, not the adverb) and "Pure/Genuine+Flower." She's an extremely minor character so I don't see there really being much overt meaning to this. Summer seems to evoke her tan*, and Flower beauty, and she's a busty tan girl. (*you know I said that on reflex, but now that i think about it, I don't know that Kubo himself ever actually drew her in color... that may have been an anime thing.)

Ochi Misato[越智美諭]: "Surpass+Wisdom" and "Beauty+Admonish" which I guess I've never looked at before now. It's not that she isn't a cute character design(and I've got a thing for kind of homely teacher characters anyway...) but I didn't realize Kubo was trying for, like, a "hot teacher" thing with her?

And those are basically all the important ones, and frankly a couple not so important ones... I'm not getting into any of Kubo's little inbetween doodles, or god forbid that ridiculous number of random Karakura High students he dumped into Burn the Witch.

think about it. these are the only people in the world that you can ever truly connect and be yourself with. you're spending decades, centuries, millenia with them. lines will get blurry sometimes. you'll be friends, lovers, and friends once more, lines crossing and uncrossing through the years as your wants and needs evolve. quynh loved lykon. quynh loved andy. andy loved quynh. andy loved booker. booker loved joe. joe loved booker. joe loved nicky.

then nile comes along and all the love and hate and conflicting feelings mixed with this dependency they have with each other must look so strange to an outsider. how do you even begin to explain it? how can you prepare someone for that?

Mostly Lan sect people, since kids weren't allowed to go to discussion conferences and the Lan sect is pretty leery of letting their babies interact with gremlin children from other sects anyway, much less their precious sect heirs. after all, assassinations are rare in the cultivation world, but not unknown; if you're going to take them out and about, it's safer to let them interact with non-cultivator children or what you assume are non-cultivator children

A Warden hears the Calling after 15 years alone, goes to meet his fellows one last time, and finds a stack of letters waiting for him.  Years and years of letters from an old friend that never found him, the last one detailing her trip down to the Deep Roads to serve her own Calling.

Reading the letters helps drown out the Call as he heads down, retracing his friend’s path, battling through Darkspawn one last time.  Down deep below he finally finds his friend’s body.  He puts her sword back in her decaying hand and a letter in her pocket.  

He makes his last stand.

Oswald has just heard Victor and Martyn arrive.  Oswald can be a intensely greedy and selfish man.  Oswald can also be a generous and loving man.  He knows here that as much as he loves Martyn, and as close as he is to the kind of loving relationship that he hungers for - he is going to send him away. He’s staring the reality of it in the face, in this moment, quiet and resolved, knowing what has to be done, and preparing himself to do it.  

While Shiro is still a Paladin, Keith doesn’t wear black armor, even after Iron when they all end up with new armor bc they’ve collectively managed to destroy every single backup set and Allura decides she might as well get them some upgrades like she remembers the second gen having.

However, one of those upgrades is the ability to control the color of their armor essentially at will (after everything, they go to a pride parade and Allura makes herself into a walking rainbow while the others are waving flag-capes around). This was put in specifically because Keith had been bugging everyone for some sort of stealth suit since TRIALS/String Theory.  He quite enjoys the ability to make his armor closer to the colors of the Blade’s stealth suits. 

When Shiro decides he’d rather stay on Earth, be with Adam, raise Zoé, he formally hands Black Paladin status over to Keith. Keith initially doesn’t change the red on his armor, but eventually Adam, of all people, talks him into it. 

Lance walks into a wall the first time he sees Keith fully decked out in the Black Paladin’s colors. No one ever lets him forget it.