Hi....If You Don't Mind, Can I Ask, What Are Your Top 10 (or Top 7) Favorite Media (can Be Books/ Manga/

Part of why I dragged my feet on ever checking out JJK was the reputation I heard was that it's a BRUTAL grimdark story where ANYONE can DIE in a snap and the author says FUCK you. And after finally catching up with the anime that just... Isn't the tone at all?? Like, Game of Thrones, Gantz, Attack on Titan, etc other cornerstone grimdark reference points, I think one of their defining hallmarks is not just that characters die suddenly and violently, but that human life is nasty, brutish, and meaningless, and it's your own fault for being stupid enough to get attached.

Jujutsu Kaisen on the other hand, I don't know how you can look at one of the most recent casualties circa S2Ep20 of the anime where that character gets a full entire episode reminiscing about their childhood, and the moments and people that meant most to them, and come away thinking the author's intent was to treat life as meaningless. The amount of screen time devoted to the following character who gets badly maimed, the audience gets enthusiastically shoved neck deep into their insane kaleidoscopic passion that is never once undercut or subverted. Both of these characters, far from being callously snuffed out and dumped in the trash, were shown immense love. What we got was not a statement of their life being disposable, but a celebration of life, a reminder of who they are, what they cared about, what made them special, who they loved and who loved them and will remember them in turn.

This is a story about curses born of misery, hatred, and malice. It is also a story deeply concerned with dualism, especially when it comes to attachment and desire. Misery stems from worldly attachments, but it is not weak or foolish to become attached to things in this world. To love something is to set yourself up for the pain or anger of losing it, or sadness of having it denied. But that love is what makes life worth living anyway, and what makes it worth it to keep fighting. We as the audience are sad because we are attached to these characters who have met terrible fates. We see enough of them to be able to clearly picture the whole rich life they could have lived surrounded by friends and feel the sting of that path cut short. It is a story about how it was worthwhile knowing them well enough to be attached anyway, even if it meant unavoidable heartbreak.

This is true of both the human protagonists as well as the curses! Volcano Man and Mahito are ruthless killers who cruelly take lives without a thought. They also have hopes and dreams that they earnestly try to protect and follow through on, and face heartbreaking despair upon defeat. They feel pain just like we do, but must nevertheless be killed. Humans face pain through the very act of living, but nevertheless must live.

In true grimdark fiction there is rarely anything good in life for characters to return to once the battle is over. In Jujutsu Kaisen, on the contrary, there is enough good in life that we see it even amidst the battle. I can see that no other way than an expression of genuine affection. Truly bleak fiction leaves me wondering why everyone involved doesn't just put a gun in their mouth and be done with it. JJK provides an answer--because you'll get to laugh about ruining an expensive shirt, because you'll meet an acquaintance's hot mom, because the next human earthworm movie is coming out, because your favorite idol is doing a meet and greet this weekend, because maybe someday you'll finally go to Malaysia. There are many answers, and none of them are stupid.

In modern Japanese, camera is just called 'camera' = カメラ - the same as English, it is a borrowed word.

But Sukuna is old af. He calls it 写真機 (shashinki) - literally 'photography device' - an outdated word from Meiji period I don't think anybody uses anymore.

Aw, A++ writing, my inner linguist nerd is purring

I will never be over the absolute irony of how this movie has been treated in the award shows. The golden globes, the critic choice awards...all we need is one more moment from the Oscars and we'll have a perfect trifecta of fuckass blindness.

Like seriously? "I'm Just Ken" was a song quite literally made to be an ironic incel anthem, and they gave that the spotlight? Don't get me wrong, Ryan Gosling gave an excellent performance but even the man himself was baffled.

Like look at his face. That is the look of a man who just realized he is quite literally living the reality of the movie he made and somehow everyone runs face first into the point, and right past it. He wants someone to say "You just got punked!" so bad.

RYAN GOSLING "I'm Just Ken" wins Best Original Song at the 29th Annual Critics' Choice Awards (January 14, 2024)

#VoteBlue

Whatever, I am calling it: the Hayffie fandom NEEDS a Bridgerton inspired/themed Hayffie fic. The possibilities are endless.

Hunger Games fanfic blurb:

I sipped the last of my water, slow as I could, hoping it would tide me awhile through the heat of the Hobb. Business was slow today. Not that we make much on other days, selling trinkets and scraps of metal and cloth in a district where most people could barely buy bread. But we scrape by.

But today, I hadn't a single body come by to look at the wares. Although, I s'pose, when you've got a Reaping tomorrow, you're probably not in a buying sorta mood. Even Greasy Sae is selling her stew for half price today for the youngins that usually come around to her corner.

Speaking of the youngins, one of them walks my way. The one with stern eyes who brings fresh game from the woods. The butcher's wife says she hunts 'em with a bow and her arrows never miss the mark. Must be nice to have a useful trade like that. Sometimes, she trades me berries for balls of yarn. That's probably what she's making her way over for.

Never got her name. I call her "Stern Eyes" and word around the Seam is she sings like a songbird. My Gammy Maude would've liked that. She gives me berries wrapped in cloth, and I give her the yarn. But she doesn't walk away.

She reaches her hand into one of the boxes, the one with old pins for hair and clothes that might've been pretty once but had gotten rusty and dusty since. Then she pulls out that pin. Gammy Maude's pin that used to belong to her friend. The friend with bad luck in love and even worse in life. Some say she ran away, and some say got shot in the woods by her lover. Gammy said her friend used to sing too. Like a songbird.

Gammy never liked that pin much. Said it never brought nothing but bad luck. I think it just reminded her too much of her friend and the lover who might've shot her. But she still kept the pin till she died. Guess reminders are still reminders.

It's a mockingjay pin. Might be gold, but it's too old and grimy to tell. Could've sold it for scrap metal, but after hearing Gammy's stories, I could never bring myself to melt the damn thing down. And it's not like I could just walk up to the fancy parts of town with a mockingjay pin to sell. The peacekeepers would have cuffed me before I could quote a price. Probably really is bad luck anyway.

Stern Eyes is holding the pin and askin how much. I think of asking for a couple of coins, and then I remember the Reaping. She's probably young enough to have her name in the bowl. More than a couple of times, like every Seam kid. I wonder if it'd bring bad luck to her too. Or maybe it'd bring her good luck. If I'm being honest, I just want the pin gone. Can't keep holding on to a thing like that.

I tell her she can take it. No charge. Can't ask people to pay you for what could be bad luck. Don't know why she picked that one, but I wonder if she knows anything about the last songbird who had it.

I really hope it brings her better luck than Gammy's friend.

Writer's note: I know this isn't accurate to the books where Katniss gets the pin from Madge and the pin isn't really mentioned in TBOSAS. But I remember she gets it in the Hobb in the movie and it does make an appearance in the prequel movie as well. Soooo, that's where this idea came from!

Yellow Flowers

Yellow is associate with hope in The Hunger Games. In the upcoming chapter 4, Katniss will remember eating dandelions and it giving her hope. The dandelions are linked to Peeta in Katniss' mind. He was looking at her when she saw them. (This will come up again in Mockingjay, if we get there.)

The yellow flowers come up again later. "Rue is a small yellow flower that grows in the Meadow. Rue. Primrose," Katniss thinks, explicitly linking Rue and Prim together.

Rue is a yellow shrub that can be decorative or used as an herb. There is "common" primrose and "evening" primrose. I believe Prim was named after evening primrose. It is also yellow and has some medicinal uses which is apt for Prim who wants to be a healer.

It's worth noting that katniss is white but has a yellow center. It's a flower but also edible, making it a bit more functional than rue or primrose (although rue can be used as an herb) to someone like our Katniss who is looking for food always. (Aren't we all?)

There is also one other character who is a yellow flower that Katniss will never explicitly link with hope but has a symbolic function in the novels: buttercup.

Buttercup the Cat is Prim's guardian. He and Katniss never get along but I always thought it was because they were too similar, both prickly and overprotective of Prim. He also prefers the Everdeen's old house in the Seam, like Katniss does, over the house in Victor's Village.

Buttercup is also a survivor. He doesn't die when Katniss attempts to drown him. He makes it through the firebombing of District 12. He somehow makes it back from District 13 to appear in 12 at the end of Mockingjay. Compare this to what Katniss goes through in the novels, how often she escapes death and her own difficult, winding road back to the house in the Victor's Village.

Anyway. TLDR, there are a lot of flower names in THG. I haven't even gotten to Posy (a "posy" is a bouquet of flowers) or Snow's unnatural, genetically engineered roses that are in opposition to the wildflowers like rue and evening primrose.