LoganForkHands73 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 9:37 pmI feel that I've incurred your wrath somehow. I'm not entirely sure what warranted it, I guess I was dismissive, in which case I can only apologise.
No, not at all - you've done no such thing, and you have absolutely
nothing to apologise for. Rather,
I apologise for having taken the conversation to a place that's made you feel uncomfortable, though I assure you that it was certainly not my intention to do so at all.
My response really
was just taking seriously the inference that you were saying that I was supplying something to the reading of the characterisation beat from Chapter 79 that wasn't reasonably drawn from what the arc has given us (that's how I was reading the "less complex" comment), and I was puzzled/curious about this because you
also seemed to be saying things that I felt
I was saying about the beat - so that's what the first part of the post was about, with the bullet points and the questions and whatnot: laying out as clearly and logically as I could think to do what I consider is 'in' that beat from a characterisation perspective, noting whether we seemed to agree, and then asking what else the beat might be telling us, other than '
xyz'; I wasn't trying to be obtuse or argumentative here. (In retrospect, the questions might have come off as more rhetorical than inquisitive - that's on me, because that isn't what I was trying to do; I really was trying more to get at logical 'points of cleavage' that I figured
must exist between your interpretation and mine: trying to give potential hooks for you to come back on and say something like '
see, I agree with bullet point 1 just fine, where we really differ is on bullet point 2 where you say it's about xyz, I don't think that's warranted because the arc hasn't given us abc to hang that interpretation on', etc.) I was also increasingly mindful as I wrote that the whole reason I was engaging you on this was to share my enthusiasm for that particular characterisation beat in the first place (else all I'd've been 'sharing' is a heap of words), which is what the second part of the post was about; trying to present the rationale more fully. I guess I wasn't very successful at that either, and again, that's on me, so again, you have my apologies.
(
Bleh, I should go back to tinkering with power levels or something, and leave exposition like that to people who can do it properly)
Anyhoo, (if you'll indulge me once more) let me try again on the rest of your post, because it might help if I'm a little clearer on where we
don't differ, to end up suggesting where we
might differ (which may at least end up with something you enjoy reading a little better than my previous attempt, if nothing else):
LoganForkHands73 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 9:37 pmI mainly took issue with the execution. Gas being absent from the action may justify those insecurities, perhaps even on a 'meta' level as you imply, but it doesn't justify a total lack of personality or narrative focus until now. We could've gotten more insight into his mental state and his yearning for approval to boost his self-worth. We could've seen flashbacks of him practicing his weapon-spawning powers while wishing for the day he'll get to use them against Granola. Instead, we see him do nothing but scowl enigmatically for most of the arc. Barely a spear-carrier in a Greek play. I would certainly like to see it as you do, but I don't yet see
amazingly nuanced characterisation, most of which has only been gleaned from info-dump exposition in the last handful of chapters. A bit of nuance, maybe, yeah.
Okay, so we
don't differ on this; I'm perfectly happy with this take and (as I said last time) I think suggestions like the ones you make here are totally valid. I'm
not saying that I think Gas is a nuanced character; far from it - in the last Manga thread, I went so far as to say that I don't regard him as a fully-fledged character in his own right
at all (in the way that Goku or Vegeta might be considered such, or even Granolah).
None of the Heeters are, to me, because I see them as only really 'working' in this arc as a corporate unit where the individuals are principally performing role-based functions that are indicative of that unitary 'corporeality' - so, while Elec and Macki may seem more obviously 'characterful' than Gas or Oil, I consider that's just because their
roles (as the 'brains' and 'face/voice' of the unit respectively) naturally convey that sense of character better in more scenarios - from that perspective, it follows that you're unlikely to see the 'hands' of the outfit (Gas) naturally do very characterful things, as a rule.
That is, unless they're in a scenario where they're doing '
hand stuff'; then you're likely to see more of it. So I'd only really expect to find particularly satisfying characterisation beats in such a scenario - for Gas, that's really just Chapters 78 and 79, and unsurprisingly, that's where we've found most of it, as you've noted. So, if the hands can't do (in fact, are specifically
stopped from doing) 'hand stuff' for their corporate unit for most of the arc, then they're not being expressive in the mode appropriate to their role function. Arguably one might
expect to find little better than occasional characterisation points seeded here and there that will only really bear noteworthy fruit (to mix my metaphors briefly) once the appropriate situation presents itself for them to be expressive in the way that befits their specific role, because then those things can be drawn together and more effectively harnessed in 'proper' characterisation beats. As you say, those things could've theoretically been earlier, more frequent, and more explicit, but on the other hand, I'd suggest that Toyotarou has elected to make their relative absence one of those characterisation points in itself (i.e., seeding the frustration a 'hand' would feel in not being allowed to be a 'hand', for further down the line).
So, if I can suggest where we might differ, it's maybe more where we're coming at this from? You're looking at Gas the character as an
independent character, and finding mostly absence where there could have been presence (again, totally fine and perfectly valid); I'm looking more specifically at the
characterisation beat Gas manifests in the most naturally expressive mode for what I consider to be his intrinsic role, in Chapter 79 (not trying to make a distinction so precise as to be pedantic here; the beat itself was what I first engaged you on and what I've principally had in focus), seeing what threads from the wider arc it draws together into itself as a beat, and finding the union of those things in the beat the really rewarding thing in itself, even if we get nothing else from Gas as a 'character', or even a furtherance of a scenario in which he
might continue to be more expressive than in the early arc (so to phrase it in the terms of my earlier posts, Gas's
character isn't nuanced, but his
characterisation beat in Chapter 79
is nuanced, to me). Hopefully that fairly puts a finger on the true point of difference, and makes sense?
LoganForkHands73 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 9:37 pm(though I think it's mainly your usual Oxbridge writing style)
Pfft, I
wish; if I had that, I'd've learned to be concise by now
But at least hopefully this was a better attempt at getting towards something worth saying than my last one; apologies once again (and further apologies if it isn't, naturally).
Alas, until this leads to some juicier tension or gets explored in greater depth, I'm not really that compelled by it so far. I may be swayed if the next few chapters wrap it all up somehow. 
