god Donna is just. She’s so important. She’s old enough to not need the Doctor. She’s not emotionally dependent on him. They’re friends who love each other but it’s not some sort of living crutch for either of them.
She recognizes that he needs someone to watch him, keep him from going too far. She says as much at the end of ‘The Runaway Bride’. And she does that, not because she feels obligated or because she thinks that it’s ‘not the real him’ when he’s like that. She does it out of friendship, and that’s that.
That’s why I love her as a companion. There’s no weird ‘well I’ve projected my hope and my love onto this pedestal of a person,’ she sees him and treats him like any other bloke. He’s just a guy with a time machine and a hero complex, she’s not scared of him and she doesn’t worship him. It’s about as healthy as DW has ever had when it comes to how people should treat each other.
This is like Mr. Rogers for adults. A soft voiced, gentle reminder to love yourself and to recognize that you are enough and what you do is worthwhile always. A reminder about being kind for when you are grown and may have forgot about how important it is, surrounded by a world trying to make you feel like you don’t do enough being told in a simple and understanding voice that you are good and what you are is good. Yeah. Yeah, it’s good.
if you can reread a 100-400 chapter manga and binge watch an entire anime in one sitting then you can definitely read an article about how a particular series has imperialist undertones and caricatures that takes 5 minutes to read instead of mocking the article writer’s actual extensive research about the history of the mangaka’s nationalistic views and preference for wwii germany but you don’t bc you hate criticism and lack reading comprehension i guess
actually i wont be vague about it anymore. i hate going to anitwt and seeing ppl say that aot isn’t “pro-nazi” bc “the military are the bad guys! the military are the cause of the victims turning into weapons of mass destruction! you’re not supposed to root for them!”
gentiles or aot fans in general will not see what’s wrong with isayama clearly depicting jewish ppl as man-eating monsters since the very start of the series. they will see nothing wrong about pseudo-germans (nazis) forcing the victims they segregated to become monsters except for fictional plot purposes (instead of thinking “this is so fucked up that he’s basing a real life group that suffered irreparable damage from genocide and stereotypes as scary monsters for his horror manga”). these aot fans will see nothing wrong with dehumanizing an oppressed group since the beginning of the plot while sympathizing with military people. part 1 makes you attached to the characters that work in the military, of course it’s imperialist propaganda. thats what propaganda is—its designed to make you attached! the entire story is filled with nazi propaganda! it doesnt matter if the same characters rebel or if its a story about gray morality (which is already a red flag, imperialism is NOT some gray issue) bc isayama still names his characters over literal nazis or whatever shitty nationalistic inspo he has. i hate going to twitter knowing they mock the polygon article, the one that says we can’t ignore the imperialistic subtext in aot (its not even subtext, its literally in front of you), the article that briefly talks about evidences of antisemitism in the series and isayama’s anti-korean sentiments. these same ppl will reread a 400 chapter manga in one sitting and analyze panels and dialogues and how the theme is important. these ppl will rewatch animes that would last a day or weeks to finish. they will not spend a second in critically engaging on whats wrong with this series. they view imperialism as a joke. they view the history of jewish ppl used as a commodity for isayama’s imperialistic propaganda as a joke. imagine having entire analysis of sports and shonen animes yet you refuse to listen to the voices of minorities (jewish ppl and romani) who tell you why its wrong. imagine mocking the polygon article that summarizes why the series does have fascist subtext. if you can crtically analyze manga panels, then why dont you critically analyze some history articles and textbooks as well?
any comparison between early 00s online youth culture and late 10s online youth culture is fundamentally incompatible as soon as you move beyond the similarities of “lol teens being cringey” or whatever because we are in a completely different media landscape these days. making heavily-edited cosplay tiktoks is nothing like curating a deviantart gallery full of anime blingees because the former is always, implicitly or explicitly, an attempt to cash in on internet fame while the latter was simply rooted in the deep twisted psyche of someone feasting on the dark side’s cookies
