Theyurienjoyer - Mary.

being a lesbian is so dumb. this girl once sent me a photo of a rat she found in a dumpster and i imagined kissing her in a botanical garden

AHHHHHHH THESE LESBIANS WILL BE THE DEATH OF ME LIKE WHAT ARE WE WHERE ARE WE HERE ARE WE READY FOR A WEDDING

i just started honkai impact recently ....... i don’t know her true intentions, i don’t know how far she’ll go and how doomed the world is thanks to her existence but i just know that i Get Her

I think the way the camera treats Caitlyn in the first act of season 2 is really interesting. It cuts off her eyes at some very key moments.

The eyes are how we connect with someone. Cutting them off cuts off the ability to sympathize with them. And depending on how the mouth is shot it can make the character seem more base or animalistic in a given moment. I think the show did this quite a bit with Silco in season 1, and they do it with Caitlyn in season 2.

The first one is from s2e1 when Caitlyn says about Jinx, "I want to rip that laugh from her throat forever.

Up until this point the viewer has been quite embedded in Caitlyn's POV when she's on-screen. The musical segment was showing her perspective. We witness her fantasy of being able to take down Jinx. The show is making sure that we understand where she's at mentally.

But here, the first time she's expressing violent thoughts, we're decidedly not in her POV. Her eyes are cut off, we don't get that connection with her. But what we do get is Jayce's reaction. And he's concerned. It's the first kind of "uh oh" moment, where you get a sinking feeling about where Caitlyn's headed.

2. After the memorial attack, she calls the attackers "animals" and we get this uncomfortably close shot of her teeth.

She's calling others animals, but she's the one who's shown snarling in this animalistic way. Again, her eyes are cut off, cutting off that avenue for sympathy when she says this, cutting the viewer off from her perspective, distancing her. Instead our attention is directed at this ugly, unsettling expression of hers. The camera is presenting her as something to be worried about rather than someone to feel sympathy for.

3. After interrogating Heenot, when she's gearing up to go after Jinx, and Vi is about to ask to talk to her.

Throughout the preceding scene, we were getting a lot of shots of Vi reacting to Caitlyn's behaviour, with a quite open expression, and a lot of shots of Caitlyn looking hardened and aloof. And then we come to this shot, and though Caitlyn is centre-frame, it's still Vi's POV. We see how Vi is feeling and reacting to things, but Caitlyn's eyes are again cut out of frame. She's distanced from the viewer, just like Vi is feeling distanced from her. Vi's position in the frame communicates how she's feeling, like she's being edged out of Caitlyn's life by Cait's singular focus on revenge.

And just like with that first shot with Jayce, by focusing on the reacting character, the camera is showing the viewer how they should be reacting to Caitlyn too: unsettled, disturbed, alienated.

4. When Cait and Vi are fighting, and Vi grabs Cait's arm, before she jabs Vi with the butt of her gun.

It's a reaction shot, Vi just grabbed her arm and told her she's acting like Jinx, this cut should be showing us how Caitlyn feels about that. But we don't see the reaction in her eyes, we just see her mouth.

In this case, I think it's not just about presenting Caitlyn in a way where she's cut off from the viewer. Because it is a reaction shot, I think this communicates that Caitlyn also feels cut off from herself in a way, cut off from the sympathy she had for others that was such a part of her character in season 1.

And then it's interesting to compare all this to when Vi and Caitlyn cross paths again, and Vi calls Caitlyn "cupcake." And we get this shot:

We get the closeup on her eyes. Whereas before, the audience was repeatedly cut off from having that connection with her, now it's like, boom, big connection. And just as before, I think the shot is not just about the audience being able to connect with her, but Caitlyn being able to connect with herself. That despite everything, she's still the same woman who fell in love with Vi, that part of her is still there. She's been on this whole awful journey, and she's done awful things, and allowed awful things to be done in her name, but she's still the same person, and she can't pretend anymore that it's all fine. She sees clearly again.

I love lesbian gender so much. Literally every lesbian I’ve met has their own unique form of gender expression. Even within dynamics like butchfemme, we still transcend “normal” definitions of gender. We’re like scrapbooks, we just collect all these little pieces of fashion and culture and construct our own sense of beauty out of it in hopes that other lesbians will find it cool.

this isnt art but...

i can't read japanese so... post-its...

THEY HIT THE SECOND TOWER

you mean to tell me there are people who don't make little creature noises on a daily basis? wild

compulsive heterosexuality is truly one of the worst things you could ever experience not only as a lesbian, but also as a feminine woman. i have been a christian for as long as i have been existing in this planet—raised with catholic knowledge, scriptures, grew up with religious family—therefore, i always thought that women are only meant to be with a man as they are meant to be with a woman. women are meant to submit, to be whoever i am today, while men are meant to protect; to which i do not mind because being feminine is amazing, being feminine is special! it makes me unique, it makes me powerful. i wouldn’t mind being clingy to you, i wouldn’t mind cleaning the dishes for you, i wouldn’t mind being left alone at home for you to come back home with our children, but i always find myself in tears whenever i try to envision myself with a man.

you know this by now but it’s been a year since i assembled the puzzle pieces of my identity and finally figured things out like yes, i am lesbian and i have never been so happier to finally call myself one! i am sending all of my love to all the bisexual people; it is a label that i was once comfortable identifying myself with until i have felt that i know i could be something more than that. most of the time, i am super confident in my skin. sometimes, i feel like throwing up.

the moment i find a man attractive, i get so confused that i start to despise myself ruthlessly. a part of me is terrified, deeply terrified.

will i ever be happy with the decisions i make in my life if i keep on swaying back and forth like what i’m doing today? do i really like girls? am i just playing with their feelings the whole time? are they an experiment all along? am i an experiment? am i actually a lesbian when i end up finding certain men pretty? what if my sacrifices for being bold boils down to the drain and at the end of the day, i’ll settle down with a man? will i actually burn just because i am being who i really am? will i be that kind of a lesbian who will be despised for having this compulsion? maybe i do really like men? will all of this boil back down to me being a christian? will my parents tell me that they told me so and i’ll find myself crying, telling myself that they were right all along? am i meant to suffer from the constant loop that repeats all of these questions again? the moment i find a man attractive and try to envision myself leaning my head against his shoulder, arms wrapped around his; i can never see the same sparkle in my eyes when i love a woman. what am i? who am i, truly? does it ever get better?

this is my biggest fear. you could bring me cockroaches; the insects i always despised since i was a kid, you could take me to the tallest building since i am terrified of heights, but to constantly doubt who i really am and realize that i still haven’t figured it out yet is what would kill me.

Please take note of Nero making such a big deal out of Urizen being Dante's brother. "Your own flesh and blood." THIS IS A BIG DEAL TO NERO. The blood relation is PARAMOUNT in his mind. Keep this in mind.

V admits in this scene that the one thing he and Urizen have in common is their hatred of Dante. That is the one defining foundational trait that makes him Vergil, whether whole or in pieces.

He's always defined himself as "Dante's older brother." He felt that that's how the world and his parents defined him. He saw Dante as the favorite, as the one who never had to struggle, who could be irresponsible and get away with it because HE as the older brother always needed to be held to a higher standard. To Vergil, brotherly love is irreparably entangled with his feelings of resentment.

That's why V says "you've lost me, and I've lost you." This is not a simple "my good half and my evil half" kind of thing. Urizen is all of Vergil's selfishness and pride and power incarnate. And those things are part of Vergil just as much as his humanity, his empathy and his eccentricities. He can no more give up that demonic pride and still be himself than he could his love for William Blake poems. They are all essential ingredients that make him Vergil. All this experience has taught him is that he was out of balance before, and that is why he lost to Dante at the Temen-ni-gru, because he was willing to suppress the things that truly mattered and were important to him in that blind quest for power. Just as Urizen lost to Dante here and now.

Now that he's learned his lesson. Now that he's remember what truly was important about being human. NOW that he is whole again, he can finally truly defeat Dante once and for all. Or so V is thinking in this moment.

When he does recombine with Urizen, I wonder. Does the memory of Dante telling Urizen that Eva died trying to find and save Vergil remain for him? Would that knowledge make a difference to him now? Given how Vergil acts from here on out... maybe I'd like to think so.

God this moment was so fucking hype when it happened back when the game came out. "The alpha and the omega Vergil." holy shit this game kicks so much ass.