#a beloved killer is also such a perfect way to portray that type of person | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

andreabandrea · 1 year

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i really love post-game headcanons where frisk refers to flowey, either jokingly or seriously, as their best friend. their dynamic is so interesting to me, like. flowey feels like anyone who sees him and knows his secret will only want to have asriel back, but frisk never knew asriel. on the other hand, they know flowey - and flowey is the only other one who knows what it's like to save and reset.

and that gives frisk a connection that they don't have with the rest of their friends and family. even though in the true pacifist ending, things are all fine and dandy now, there could very easily still be trauma of like - every monster trying to and succeeding in killing them (except papyrus, who just beats them near unconscious and throws them in a shed). and if they did any neutral routes, they might have killed also, and nobody knows about it or remembers it except them. even despite killing and being killed, just the trauma of resetting and being forgotten and starting over several times could weigh on a person - granted, frisk is a very determined person, but still.

i think the concept that frisk doesnt want to change flowey, but instead meet him where he is, would be intriguing to flowey - and in some circumstances, i could see that being enough to convince him to come to the surface - and this has always been more interesting to me than "saving asriel"-type endings. some things can't be taken back. trauma can't be erased - but you can still move forward with your loved ones by your side.

i think frisk and flowey would help each other heal. frisk initially tried to run away from the surface for a reason, and maybe not a good reason - asriel implies maybe they were trying to end their life by climbing a mountain nobody returns from. flowey has a whole load of trauma that i surely don't need to elaborate on - but i will anyway.

a lot of flowey mischaracterizations stem from the reader taking his words at face value. in new home in the no mercy run, flowey expresses that he's emotionless and nothing but a heartless killer. a lot of fics tend to write flowey as nothing but a perfect calculating killing machine because the readers believe him. but his actions tell a different story; flowey loses his patience with the whole "i'm here to teach you about love" act if you dodge his bullets three times - it's childish, in a way, because he is a child and he's mad that he's not winning at this game. flowey clearly expresses sadness, anger, and in the no mercy route just a bit after new home - fear. (the way i've written it in the past is that he's constantly disassociating from himself and the world by portraying his death and trauma as part of a game, and the way he deals with emotions is filtered through this ptsd-like view, but i dont want to act like i'm the best flowey writer in the world or anything, i've also made a lot of mistakes).

regardless, flowey is, at the end of the day, also a child like frisk. he wants to seem scary to them, and in the no mercy run, he's trying to sound cool and appeal to "chara" - that's why he acts the way he does. it's like a child trying to scare another child or act tough for a beloved sibling.

flowey has also done terrible things to frisk; they're not exempt from the list of monsters that tried to and succeeded in killing them. and although i think all the other monsters can and would be helpful and healing toward frisk and flowey, there's something valuable about a bond like - "we went through this together." if frisk can forgive someone like asgore who succeeded in killing 6 humans, killed them a handful of times, and also made them kill him, i think frisk can forgive flowey.

this comes down more to headcanon, but i think the way that frisk and flowey would interact in this post-game scenario is that, like. flowey would never admit weakness directly. he would feign disinterest in the surface and its denizens, but only because he's afraid. afraid that people wouldn't want him around. afraid because he doesn't know what happens next and if he deserves to see it. afraid of what he could do. but if he, soulless that he is, ever did try to do anything harmful, frisk is the one person who could easily stop him. (not that they would have to - flowey only killed out of boredom, not out of a real enjoyment of it; with so much to do on the surface, and no reset as a failsafe, i can't imagine flowey starting to kill again).

i think frisk would be able to read between the lines about when flowey is hurt and upset and try to comfort him without making him feel weak. we see frisk's kindness and mercy scare and upset flowey once (post-photoshop flowey fight), but those aren't normal circumstances - flowey hadn't grown as much then as he has by the end of the true pacifist route. i think, with time, flowey could come to accept he deserves to exist as he is and accept kindness, and show it in his own way

without the ability to reset (barring the true reset), anything that happens from now on is permanent. flowey in the game relies heavily on his knowledge of past resets; without that, he's forced to admit (albeit if only to himself) that he's not as smart and powerful as he likes to claim. it's a scary new world, and the future isn't written, but i think flowey would be willing to face it again with frisk - someone he always wished he had as a friend.

#bandrea blabbers #ugh!!! i didnt mean to type a whole essay #none of this is groundbreaking or new analysis #i just have so many thoughts about flowey undertale and they ambush me when im doing chores or showering #utdr

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Riverdale Gives Clarity on Betty’s Future Path

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In Riverdale’s stunning midseason finale, the question of whether Betty will ever give in to her dark impulses is answered.

This Riverdale review contains spoilers.

Since making her comic book debut in late 1941, Betty Cooper has become an archetype (and Archie’s type, well, one of them) for the so-called all American girl next door. Beautiful and blonde were her original personality traits. However, the comics were much smarter than to just let Betty become a tired ditzy stereotype. Through the writing of Archie legends like Frank Doyle, George Gladir and Kathleen Webb, Betty Cooper was transformed into a character to be reckoned with.

Across the decades, Betty had been established as everything from Riverdale’s best mechanic to endlessly loyal and forgiving – making her a perfect foil to the oft-snobbish Veronica in the process. Just as Betty’s obsession with Archie was reaching levels of absurdity in the 1970s, the publisher decided to go meta. The result was the soap operatic “Betty Cooper, Betty Cooper” storyline in the Betty and Me comic, which itself was riffing on the comedic nervous breakdown that was the TV series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

So when Riverdale debuted in 2017, it was little surprise to fans of the Archieverse that Betty Cooper was the most complex character on the series. Seeing how underwritten a good deal of the show’s characters are (Archie, Kevin, Reggie, etc), it’s something of a relief that the same fate didn’t befall Betty. This is most likely because of the talent of the actress portraying her, Lili Reinhart. The way Reinhart portrays Betty is stunning to watch – vulnerability, dread and innocence swirling behind her eyes. You believe in every ridiculous plotline that Betty is immersed in because of Reinhart’s seemingly effortless ability to make the implausible feel ordinary. It’s a wonderful bit of acting sleight of hand that she pulls off every week, and no wonder that the show’s writing staff continually gives her more bizarre and/or heartbreaking material to work with. They know that Reinhart can pull it off, so they keep putting Betty through the dramatic ringer.

The biggest ongoing mystery about Betty is whether or not she will give in to the serial killer gene she possesses and let her darkness take over. No matter how often the show reminds you that Betty once put her beloved cat out of its misery by bashing its head in with a rock after it was hit by a car, or that her dad and brother are cold-hearted killers, one gets the sense that she will never fully become Dark Betty.

This was basically confirmed by tonight’s mid-season finale, which cemented another possibility beyond Betty will lose control and become a serial killer or she will overcome any murderous impulses – namely that she will utilize her darkness to bring evildoers to justice.

Friends, the era of Antihero Betty is upon us.

Despite the promise of fun narrative developments to come in this installment that range from the Mighty Archie Art Players doing their take on A Few Good Men to the aftermath of Jughead’s maple-mushroom trip/possible Mothman abduction, it was Betty’s story that was the most captivating here. All season Betty has been coping with her failure as an FBI recruit to bring the Trash Bag Killer (who is based on a real murderer) to justice. Her PTSD from this incident and the yet-to-be-revealed suffering at TBK’s hands are driving her to not let her guard down ever again. Yet her best intentions are immediately discarded though when she is unable to rescue Polly on the Lonely Highway.

Betty has been spiraling since Polly’s disappearance, feeling hopeless that she was unable to save her sister. Just as she has been unable to save her father’s soul. Or arrest the Trash Bag Killer. The darkness that Betty feels is tangible, and a lesser character would have been consumed by it long ago. One of the supposedly bright spots in her life is her FBI superior Glen Scot (Greyston Holt). I’m pretty sure that fellow agents aren’t supposed to be romantically linked, but seeing what show we are discussing here that is the most minor of nits to pick. This episode reveals that Glen is exploiting Betty’s familial trauma as the basis for a dissertation on nature vs. nurture in a family where killing has become commonplace. As if that wasn’t reprehensible enough, he basically blackmails Betty into compliance, subtly threatening that her future at the FBI is on the line if she doesn’t cooperate.

When Charles and Chic crash the birthday party being held for Juniper and Dagwood (who are chillingly revealed to be budding sociopaths in their own right in this episode), Betty’s trauma and training combine. As a result, we learn about who Betty truly is – a badass who is on the side of justice but doesn’t have a problem bending the very limits of the law to protect those she loves. Following a makeshift wedding between the pair of convicts, Riverdale launches into what is arguably the most unsettling sequence it has ever showcased.

In a bit of karmic justice, Glen unexpectedly arrives and is forced to become the centerpiece in Charles and Chic’s impromptu game of The Pincushion Man. After convincing Charles that Juniper and Dagwood are already a few shower curtains short of the Bates Motel, Betty becomes the player in this deadly game that involves plunging a knife into Glen. She does just this, giving Glen a not-fatal wound. She pretends to enjoy the act, which buys her enough time to throw the knife deep into Chic’s chest. A struggle ensues, with Charles grabbing Alice. But Betty shoots her brother and saves the day. We learn that Charles survives, the fate of his new husband however remains uncertain.

As unsettling as this scene is – its intensity is jarring for a show that aired during the 8 o’clock hour – it tells us a few crucial things about who the post-timejump Betty truly is. First and foremost, she is a woman who will always put her loved ones above her own interests. We’ve seen this element of her character before, but never as compelling as presented here. We also learn that her darkness isn’t the curse she thinks it is. She can tap into these feelings instinctively, using the ruthlessness of the serial killer gene to accomplish the task at hand. In the case, she saved the life of her mother and herself, and spared Juniper and Dagwood from enduring any more trauma.

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When we last see Betty before Riverdale returns in the summer, she is calm and collected but also tapping into her darkness to roam the Lonely Highway. We don’t know what Polly’s ultimate fate is, but for Betty things are clearer now. Her darkness is no longer her biggest fear, it’s her greatest asset. Good luck to anyone who gets in her way.

The post Riverdale Gives Clarity on Betty’s Future Path appeared first on Den of Geek.

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