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biird-rot · 2 months

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Leon Kennedy is Autistic: An Analysis by an Autistic Person

DISCLAIMER: This post and all the points I make are highly based on my OWN experiences. I often find parallels between my experiences as a disabled individual and characters I love to help me better cope with and process my feelings. Hate will not be tolerated!!!

Before I get started, I’d like to say that this is not even me scratching the SURFACE of the things I could analyze about Leon and apply to various autistic experiences, this is mostly just the things that resonate with me the most.

Parallel Play/Preferring to Work Alone

It could be attributed to trauma, and the fact he works in a government agency, but Leon has always been the flying solo type. Missions in which it would be better if multiple people worked on it (RE4) HOWEVER! Whenever he does work with others, he often goes off on his own and leaves whoever he's with to deal with what's there (DI, Leon going off immediately after being vaccinated by Rebecca)

Difficulty Communicating/Identifying Emotions

This also plays into the difficulty making friends and maintaining friendships aspect of being autistic. There isn't any direct/obvious representations of this occurring in the franchise, but it can be inferred based upon his interaction with Chris and Rebecca in RE: Vendetta when the two try to recruit Leon on their mission because of the intel he has on the type of BOWs they're dealing with. Speaking of RE: Vendetta, it can also be noted that Leon copes with his inability to cope with/regulate his emotions by drinking, and this is a habit he always had. In fact, he's essentially hung over in RE2, having drunk his feelings away after being broken up with the night before the Raccoon City incident, and he is literally drinking on the job in Damnation. Essentially, he's canonically an alcoholic. As an autistic person, sometimes I would turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with my emotional dysregulation, especially when I was unaware that I was autistic.

Leon isn't a very emotional person in general, again, It could be chalked up to trauma, but lack of emotional expression is also a common experience/trait amongst autistics.

“Inappropriate” Responses to Situations

GODDDD this one is SO prominent in RE4R (hell, even the OG), Infinite Darkness actually everything he's in, I can name at LEAST 2 examples of this. To keep this short, I'll just name ones that I relate painfully hard to, and ones that I find hilarious.

To start, WHENEVR HE JUST SAYS "ok 🧍" in response to an emotional moment. RE2R, when Claire introduces him to Sherry, in RE4R, when Ashley hugs him and expresses her relief that he's okay, and in Infinite Darkness whenever he checks up on Patrick after the White House Outbreak. It never fails to make me lose it because he's just like me fr.

Thists a sillier one, but I want to mention it because it's so mecore.

Thank you to @highball66 for doing the lord's work of translating the Death Island manga yall seriously he’s a legend🙏

When Leon sends selfies of him on missions. That's it. He just sends it to Hunnigan and I think it's great.

Sensory Issues

Okay, I KNOW LEON IS A GOVERNMENT AGENT AND NEEDS SOME LEVEL OF GEAR ON MISSIONS BUT!!!!! Half the time he isn't even wearing a full set, not even a bullet proof vest. HOWEVER, I did notice that one thing he CONSISTENTLY wears (with the exception of a few instances) is GLOVES!!! This is more of a personal headcannon, but I like to think he's sensitive to texture, especially when handling guns and such, so he wears gloves, so it doesn't feel as terrible. To further back up his sensitivity to texture, in Death Island, after the Dylan BOW explodes and splashes water everywhere, Chris doesn't seem to care about being covered in water while Leon is flicking the water off him.

Literal Thinking - Coming off as Rude/Inappropriate Unintentionally

GODDDDD this is another big one, but I’ll only cover the ones that I relate to a lot to save time. Starting with his initial encounter with Jill in Death Island, they’re being chased by lickers and…well..this interaction

Exhibit B: This scene. He’s just so nonchalant about it and I do the exact same thing without like…intentionally being a “smartass” or whatever, I’m just being honest 🧍. Jill’s “Oh😒” at the end of the scene is really what made it hit home, because that’s how people typically react when i have a similar interaction with them

ANOTHER THING!!! All of the instances in which Leon casually asks “so you wanna get dinner?” Or something along those lines. It’s often interpreted as a poor attempt at flirting, but personally, I think he genuinely just wants food, and he doesn’t understand why ppl are like 🤨 when he asks. He just wants a nice dinner with a nice lady :(

Hyper-empathy

Small disclaimer here, autism is a SPECTRUM. And our empathy levels fluctuate every day. In Leon’s case, I see him being hyper-empathetic, much like myself. And being able to empathize so easily with people is incredibly draining. Additionally, a huge thing that is common among autistics is how we tend to respond to people who are sharing their struggles with us sharing our OWN experiences that are similar to theirs, and it often comes off as egocentric and selfish to “make it about us”, but in reality, that’s our way of saying that we understand what you’re going through, and it helps us process how you may be feeling as well. There are many scenes I could pull from, but I want to talk about one specifically in Infinite Darkness since it resonates so much with me:

The scene within ID in which Jason is having a nightmare, and Leon wakes him up, immediately asking him if he wants to talk about it. Jason recalls the nightmare and his trauma about Penamstan to Leon, and says that he has no idea what it was like, and Leon responds talking about his experience in Raccoon City, and how that affected him similarly

Special Interests & Using Media to Communicate Feelings

There are many aspects of this I could talk about, but I’ve already written 10 pages worth already in this post, so I’ll speed through it.

Personally, I think Leon has a special interest in film! He makes several references throughout the franchise, many of which are overlooked. Personally, my favorite reference he makes is in RE: Vendetta to Pulp Fiction (I think) when Chris and Rebecca confront him during his “vacation”

Final Notes/Conclusion

I had to cut a LOT out from my original mini-essay I wrote about this to fit it better on here, and make it not as boring to read lmao, but I hope you enjoyed my silly little analysis! I love being able to relate my experiences to others, fictional or otherwise, as it helps me feel less alone, and be able to process and cope with what makes my disability a…well, a disability. I hope fellow autistics find some solace in this as well, and please let me know your additional thoughts about this topic if you’re a fellow autistic Leon Kennedy headcannoner!!!

#biird rot #resident evil #leon kennedy #leon kennedy resident evil #leon kennedy re4 #leon kennedy re2 #resident evil 2 #resident evil 4 #resident evil 4r #re4 remake #re4remake #resident evil vendetta #resident evil death island #character analysis #actually autistic

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zepskies · 5 months

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Why We Love the Boys

As promised, here is my review of Supes Ain’t Always Heroes. I actually used to write book reviews in my high school journalism days, so here we go!

What this book is: A masterful deep dive. A study on character psychology, the source of the comic and show’s inspiration, and the narrative themes illustrated in The Boys that parallel American culture and our real lives.

It includes interviews from one of the comic’s creators, Darick Robertson, The Krip himself (Eric Kripke), and actors Jim Beaver (Robert Singer), Aya Cash (Stormfront), Chace Crawford (The Deep), Jessie T. Usher (A-Train), Nathan Mitchell (Black Noir), and of course, Jensen Ackles (Soldier Boy).

It also includes a small but significant ode to the creativity of fans and fandom (with a mention of fanfic writers)!

I’ll admit, I felt seen. 😊

Who wrote it: Psychologists Lynn S. Zubernis and Matthew Snyder. Zubernis is a self-proclaimed fangirl of not only this show, but Supernatural and Eric Kripke in general. (That aspect definitely comes through in her writing.)

She is also editor of Family Don’t End with Blood: Cast and Fans on How Supernatural Changes Lives and There’ll Be Peace When you Are Done: Actors and Fans Celebrate the Legacy of Supernatural. Both of which I now want to read.

Several other authors also contributed to this book, as their expertise and backgrounds lend to the subjects they’re covering, such as racism, sexism, the entertainment industry, the comic’s inception, and more.

Who wants to read this book: Anyone who enjoys learning about what makes characters tick. What drives their choices, their sense of morality and justice, and their trauma and strife that lead them to do heinous things. This book will help you better understand your favorite characters (and how to write about them).

Perhaps most importantly, this book is for anyone who wants to read it put into words, why many of us love The Boys, as well as Supernatural.

In a way, the latter is more escapism entertainment than The Boys. Because in this show, there isn’t much, if any escape.

Despite this being a “superhero show,” as we all know, it’s so much more than that. It’s a mirror held directly into our own faces: about why we enjoy heroes and antiheroes, and excuse the “bad behavior” of the ones we like.

About mental health, grief and loss, nature and nurture, coping mechanisms and the importance of choice in dealing with trauma; of racism, sexism, misogyny, weaponized social media, politics, corporate greed, and the power (and cruelty) of good marketing.

This book explores the true villain of the story (and it ain’t Homelander).

I’m going to get into my favorite aspects of this book—as well as an amazing chapter on Soldier Boy’s character study (and why we love him, perhaps too much).

Though in my opinion, it was missing one small, but key thing…

The Mirror of The Boys on Screen

This world is a gritty, bloody, and at times all-too realistic take on how superheroes would be if they lived in our world.

They are the worst of celebrities, professional athletes, and politicians all rolled into one. They are the shiny products of a company and are marketed as such. And they often buy into their own hype.

Some of my favorite quotes on this topic:

“The Boys often reflects darkness in our real world that is uncomfortable to watch. While we go through the tedium of our daily lives, trying to get by and using television or comics as an escape, it can feel difficult and overwhelming to confront the very real and insidious sources of authoritarianism, nationalism, and corporatism that are not just part of a story. “This show holds up a mirror and forces us to catch a glimpse of things we need to question, and asks us why we so easily believe the talking points of systems with marketing departments and press flacks behind them that carefully massage every word in order to get us to feel enamored with their product or policy.” (p. 227-228)

“The Boys works to reveal the nonaltruistic, sociopathic nature of contemporary US corporate culture. In a sense, The Boys uses the behavior of its characters to diagnose not an individual, but a culture.” (255)

In studying narrative I’ve learned that the best fiction and art serve to reflect the human experience. In this case, it’s something The Boys does expertly, even though it’s packaged in extreme, shocking, and often uncomfortable ways. But also in brutal, hilarious satire that’s fun to watch.

It “exposes real-world abuses, revealing many” of our own frustrations in American culture and in life in general (267).

Major Themes & Questions Explored

Several Boys themes are explored from a psychological, cultural, and narrative point of view, as I mentioned earlier. These are some of my favorite segments:

Toxic Masculinity & Narcissism

A whopper in The Boys, and the main theme of season 3. This book defines clearly what both of these words actually mean from a psychological point of view.

It also takes the bad taste out of your mouth that you might get from just hearing the words “toxic masculinity,” as it’s a phrase that can be carelessly thrown around to describe men and character traits that aren’t truly toxic.

How being emotionally available to your loved ones and not repressive of your feelings doesn’t make you weak, or less of a man. And how “being strong” doesn’t mean being physically violent and domineering. (AKA: the Big Swinging Dick™️ in the room.)

Narcissism is explored in a very interesting way. The book gives a diagram of different aspects of narcissists and how each character (Soldier Boy, Homelander, Butcher, and the Deep) falls into them.

Soldier Boy, for example, is classified as a “Classic Narcissist,” while Homelander a “Malignant Narcissist.” <- This will play into SB’s character study, and the main difference between SB and Homelander.

Butcher, however, displays narcissistic tendencies but is not, in fact, a narcissist. (More of an antisocial sociopath. Yay for him.)

Misogyny & Sexism

The classic superhero world of comics dates back to the 1930s and ‘40s. It has been, and in many respects still is a (White) male-dominated industry, where in narrative, female superheroes typically work under a male leading the team, as in Justice League, Teen Titans, and the Avengers.

As much as I love DC and Marvel comics, female characters have also been drawn wildly sexual for male readers and the male gaze, and non-supe characters have been written primarily as love interests and damsels for the hero to save. (Think Lois Lane, Lana Lang, and Mary Jane.)

Modern adaptions have given female characters more agency, but their foundations were rooted in underlying sexism and the mythic hero—an Odysseus-type with certain characteristics of male strength and heroism. And that goes all the way back to classic literature, like The Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In The Boys, the female supes go through the same issues as their comic counterparts. And they are treated how women are treated in the real world—marketable as sexual objects. (Starlight’s forced costume change is a prime example.)

Author Danielle Turchiano argues in the book that the women in power at Vought (Madelyn Stillwell, later Ashley) are given only so much power as men like Stan Edgar and Homelander give to them.

Stillwell, Ashley, and even Stormfront “drink the Kool Aid” of the misogynistic infrastructure of Vought, but they’re not truly “powerful” in and of themselves. (112)

And I would add that the only female characters that have or find true agency are Grace Mallory, Annie January/Starlight, and Maggie Shaw/Queen Maeve. Even Victoria Neuman is trying to work the political schematic and Vought by operating “within the system” Vought has created.

Mental Health, Trauma & Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms

This is a huge section, and rightly so. It kind of spans throughout the book, really, because all of these characters have traumas that inform who they are as adults making the (often grotesque) choices they make.

For many of these characters, it stems from their upbringing and fraught relationships with their parents, whether explicitly or implicitly explored in the show.

Butcher: Is an antisocial sociopath with narcissistic tendencies. Arrogant, emotionally manipulative, violent, and obsessive. He was also physically and emotionally abused by his father, led to use drinking and violence as a means to cope and express himself. His rage is so deep under his skin—he loathes himself for it (and his father), but struggles immensely to escape it.

Homelander: A malignant narcissist, the height of arrogance, and emotionally manipulative. He lacks empathy for others' pain, and in fact enjoys inflicting it. Yet he was a sensitive, gentle child who only wanted connection and love. Vogelbaum raised him like a lab rat and fostered him in a cold, detached cell. He was raised to be entitled and to believe he was an all-powerful god, the lord of his own kingdom within his mind, excused from the responsibility of his actions.

Soldier Boy: Also a narcissist; violent, arrogant, misogynistic, and often indifferent to the damage he causes, emotional or physical. Yet he was also emotionally abused by his father, who set impossible standards for what it meant to be a man. It drives Ben to try and prove his worth to his father, though he’s never able to. It fosters the lack of self-worth he feels as he seeks validation through fame and what he believes power to be.

These three characters have many similarities, but also notable differences that set them apart from one another. And both Butcher and Soldier Boy use substances like drugs and alcohol to cope with their traumas—ones that their forced stoicism and sense of manhood won’t allow them to easily express.

“We see Soldier Boy use substances almost continuously in season three to deal with his PTSD from the childhood emotional abuse he received from his father, the betrayal and assault from his team, and the torture he endured from the Russian scientists.

“In the short term, the use of drugs and alcohol to avoid thoughts and feelings about traumatic experiences can be felt as helpful, but in the long term, it hinders one’s ability to process emotions and can cause a deeper depression from the guilt and shame of both avoidance and substance abuse.” (27)

Heroes, Antiheroes & Villains

This book explores two key questions that the show encourages you to think about:

Who the hell is the hero of this story?

And who is the villain?

The surface-level answer is that Homelander and other supes like him are the villains, and Butcher and his band of bros are the heroes (or antiheroes). But they commit just as questionable, sketchy, and downright murderous acts as the supes they’re trying to take down.

“Butcher is not really a good guy. He’s manipulative and self-centered. His reasons for wanting to take down Homelander are utterly personal. That it serves the greater good is almost a coincidence.” (9)

And if Butcher is not a hero, but a vengeful vigilante, then why do we root for him so much?

Well, we see his incredible flaws. But I sympathize with his struggle in losing his wife and the life he could've continued to have with her. I root for the underdog going against the hydra head of Vought and the psychopathic Homelander.

And I see in Butcher, as I also do with Homelander and Soldier Boy, their traumas and their internal conflicts, their deep-rooted self-loathing, and a desire, deep, deep down…to be loved.

(And to foster connection with others, even if they’re unable to sustain them.)

On the flipside, we have antagonists in this show who do truly heinous things. What makes them compelling and even sympathetic, yet again, are their painful upbringings that have shaped them to be who they are. The supes of this show are byproducts of being treated like products.

Like the saying goes: Villains aren’t born, they’re made.

That’s why the real villain of this story is Vought International. It’s an allegory, and an indictment of the ruthless corporate greed that pervades American culture—and much of the world.

It’s why Stan Edgar is sometimes scarier to me than even Homelander (and was the true villain of my story, Break Me Down), if far more insidious.

Speaking of BMD, let’s get to it, shall we?

Here’s a (lot) bit about the Soldier Boy section of the book.

Soldier Boy: Why We Can’t Hate Him

I had to laugh out loud at the title of Soldier Boy’s chapter:

Loving the Villain: The Confusing Case of Soldier Boy

I’m not gonna lie. I felt called out. 😂

It is a confusing dichotomy. Soldier Boy is an absolute asshole. Misogynistic, narcissistic, arrogant, callous, violent…

But also deeply traumatized, a man-out-of-time, emotionally abused, byproduct of the historically and culturally different time he was raised in, a man who just doesn’t get it…

And also charming, adorably grumpy, and undoubtedly attractive.

It’s hard to indict “Ben” as an unredeemable villain in the same way I do Homelander, the psychologist-labelled Malignant Narcissist.

Therein lies the main difference between Soldier Boy and Homelander: Soldier Boy doesn’t take joy in harming others the way Homelander does. But he still harms people, whether he means to or not.

Zubernis confirms many of my own conclusions and ideas about Soldier Boy, and why I still rooted for him to be better, and didn’t want him to die at the end of season 3.

As Zubernis rightly exclaimed during her own watch of the finale: “Noooo, don’t kill the Danger Grandpa Baby Murder Kitten!” (175)

Because Jensen did what he does best in his roles: He made us feel Ben’s pain.

“What’s funny is, in regard to Jensen playing Soldier Boy, you know he’s fucking fantastic, he’s just so good at bringing the audience, and it’s almost like—what I laugh about is, he was probably a little too good at his job!” Kripke said. (180)

And he continues, “In part it’s because of the fandom. So many people took his side in the finale, they’re like, Were’s on his side, fuck everyone! And you’re like, but he’s the bad guy and he’s trying to kill a ten-year-old.”

Were there fans who held this viewpoint? I’m sure. There are some radicals who don’t give a fuck and will side with their favorite character, come whatever. But while I can’t speak for others, that’s not how I interpreted that moment in the season 3 finale.

Yes, I think Soldier Boy was (wrongfully) willing to fight Ryan. Do I think he would’ve killed him? I’m not sure. I think he would’ve done what he had to do to get Ryan out of his way in his fight with Homelander. Maybe he would’ve been more violent than he intended, in the callous collateral damage he’d shown throughout the season, or maybe he would’ve gone that far, if provoked.

It’s a tough call, as I think this character can go one way or the other in terms of his “villain” nature. We just haven’t seen enough of him in the series yet for me to make that conclusion on the canon-version of Soldier Boy. (In fanfic, I’ve explored my own interpretation.)

But overall, I think The Krip once again underestimated the power of Jensen’s acting.

…And the ardent nature of his mostly female fanbase. 😂

Why We Love Soldier Boy

The author cites multiple reasons for why we love Ben more than we probably should:

It’s Jensen Ackles. Fair enough. His talent speaks for itself.

Soldier Boy’s backstory: He was emotionally abused by his father and as a result, he has a complex regarding his self-worth, “something to prove,” and a secret need for attention, validation, and praise.

He has trauma and PTSD: He is displaced from what is familiar to him and confused when the boys find him, and that is the least of it. He’s been tortured for 40 years. Can you even conceive of that?

He’s charming: in a sexy grandpa, adorably grumpy, lovable asshole kind of way.

We’re drawn to danger: dangerous “edgy” types are fun, especially when you’re physically attracted to the character.

He has his moments of vulnerability: Jensen’s ability to play the nuance in the character is the ultimate draw. I felt his pain, could see his torture, and his resulting PTSD. He longs for a family, even if his ability to bring up those children is questionable at best. 😅

But I think the one aspect the author doesn’t consider is the character’s capacity for change.

Soldier Boy’s Potential

Again, I don’t think you can write off Soldier Boy’s potential for positive character development the same way you can Homelander, or even Butcher.

For one thing, we just haven’t spent enough time with the character. A lot of his collateral damage after he escapes imprisonment has been accidental, or PTSD-induced. Though we can’t discount how he murdered M.M.’s grandfather via collateral damage (and was callous about it).

I think this is what drew me to write about Soldier Boy. “For all his arrogance, his chauvinism, his massive ego and general bastardry, there’s still humanity in Ben.”

In the book, Nathan Mitchell also says something amazing about his own character (Black Noir) that resonated with me about Soldier Boy as well:

"One of the ingredients of a compelling character is contradiction. How does one aspect of our personality contradict with one another? [...] Who is he underneath? How might his true nature contrast with the demands of his job?"

Or coded for Soldier Boy/Ben: The pressures he puts on himself to be the type of man he thought his father wanted him to be.

Again, his sexist, misogynistic ideals are shaped by the time he was raised in, by being a product of Vought, and of his father’s emotionally abusive upbringing. Does this excuse or justify all of his behavior? Of course not.

But I think those 40 years in captivity changed him from the careless alpha dog we saw in 1984 Nicaragua…

He admits to Crimson Countess, with tears in his eyes, that he’d loved her. That he waited for her and his team—arguably the only social system he has in his life—to save him. He’s gutted to realize that not only did she and the rest of the team never love him, they hated him. They traded him for nothing. Just to get him out of their lives.

For all he claims to be afraid of nothing, tough as shit, he is afraid when he goes to face Mindstorm. He knows what the supe is capable of, and he visibly takes a shaky breath and tries to steel himself.

For a moment, he drops the “Soldier Boy” persona that he wears like a fine tailored suit. And he tells Butcher that the backstory Vought created for him was a lie; he grew up a rich kid who got sent to boarding school, but flunked out, because "he was a fuck up." And his father couldn’t be bothered to discipline him, implying he didn’t care enough about his own son to even lay a hand on him.

He is reluctant to kill Homelander when he finds out he’s Ben’s son (sort of). He even claims that he would’ve been willing to share the spotlight “with his own son.” — Something I doubt even Homelander would do.

Ben even seems to be fighting tears when he levies the same vitriol at Homelander that his own father did at him:

Homelander: “Weak? I’m you.”

Soldier Boy: “I know. You’re a fucking disappointment.”

Let me be clear. I don’t think it’s up to someone to change him (like a love interest). I don’t subscribe to that thinking, that a woman can “change” a man.

For example: In season 2, Butcher tells Becca, “Who was I before you? Nothing.”

And yet, she tells him that he put her on an unrealistic and unsustainable pedestal, in which she felt like she wasn’t allowed to fully be herself, unable to keep him from flying off the handle in rage. That kind of relationship (where one is dependent on the other to “keep them in check”) doesn’t work as a lasting, satisfying redemption arc, and it doesn’t work in real life either.

I do think, however, that a person is capable of change if they’re broken down enough (pun intended), and if they themselves have a desire to change. Someone they encounter can inspire them to be better, like Butcher with Hughie. That person can help support the other.

At the end of the day, however, it’s Ben that has to want to change.

If he wants love and connection, he’ll have to somehow want it, and try (and sometimes fail) to get it, thereby giving him agency and a redemptive character arc.

Now, obviously, it’s up to The Krip where Ben goes from here. He seems to have a more indicting vision of the character than I do (at least, so far). But we’ll see! The fan demand to bring back the character has already had Kripke confirming that Soldier Boy will be back.

Maybe it will encourage him to give the character a more satisfying ending than Dean Winchester got in Supernatural. Though granted, that one wasn’t his doing, apparently he was in favor of the ending the writers came up with.

Comparing Dean & Ben

In his interview segment, Jensen talks about what, if any, are the comparisons between Dean Winchester and Soldier Boy. AKA: Wanting a father’s approval, and an undercurrent of “John Wayne”-esque masculinity in John Winchester that Dean sought to emulate.

Jensen also talks about where he drew from to not only embody the character of Soldier Boy, but bring nuance to him—and show the peeks of vulnerability under the bravado and stoicism.

“He’s so fragile and his ego is fragile. Just like Homelander. These bigger-than-life powerful heroes really have a glass jaw… “And everyone walks on eggshells around him [Soldier Boy], and they tell him that they love him, and it’s the same with Homelander. Then when all of a sudden he faces his old team and Crimson Countess says we never loved you, we hated you—that’s a gut punch for him. Because even though on some level he may have known that, he never thought he would hear it. “And he probably propped himself up around trying to believe otherwise, because how can you walk around knowing everyone you’ve ever cared about hates you? It’s too painful.” (191)

It really is. And I inherently felt this about Soldier Boy/Ben when I watched season 3 for the first time. That’s exactly what I got from his performance and thought, there’s more to this guy than the toxic masculinity he represents.

This guy just wants to be loved, like everyone else. He wants to feel important, and even after his father’s dead, “show him” that Ben is the man his father wanted him to be. And so, he bought into the illusion Vought painstakingly crafted for him.

Whether he can come back from that remains to be seen. But I choose to be optimistic until evidence points to the contrary. 😅 (We’ll see in season 4!)

So that’s my personal take on Soldier Boy and this awesome book. 💚 Thank you again @kaleldobrev for recommending it to me! I hope you all enjoyed my long-winded review and want to check this out.

And if you do read it, I hope to read your thoughts as well!

Tagging people who said they wanted to read my review on this book: @venus-haze @jessjad @kristophalis @sl33pylilbunny

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miraculouslbcnreactions · 1 month

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Okay so a thing that has bothered me ever since I first watched Chat Blanc was Bunnyx and the general time travel stuff because tghis makes no sense. In the Chat Blanc time line, after Chat Blanc destroyes the universe, everyone is dead. Including adult!Alix aka Bunnyx. So the Bunnyx fron the Chat Blanc timeline doesn'rt exist anymore, meaning that the Bunnyx fron the episode is from a parallel timeline where Chat Blanc didn't destroy the universe. That however raises the question why she would even care about that other timeline. Is her quest to assure victory over Monarch in every single timeline because that sounds exhausting as hell. I also don't understand the deal with her leg disappearing while she witnesses the fight between LB and CB, it has no reason to, because LB defeating CB doesn't have any effect on Bunnyx because, as stated earlier, the Bunnyx from that timeline is already dead! And honestly, the fact that Lb even had to fight CB makes no sense. They could've just went back in time 2 minutes so LB can erase her name from the letter (or just be quicker so Adrien doesn't see her) and CB doesn't happen in the first place!

Like, genuine question, what was the point of the whole thing? I mean other than the concept is cool and the writers wanted to give LB trauma (which never really plays a significant part in the overall story anyway??)

Sorry for rambling so much, I don't know if this makes any sense, the episode was really confusing to me and idk if it's just because the episode actually doesn't make sense or because I just don't understand it bc time travel is really confusing. Would really love to hear your opinion!

You're fine and you're not missing a thing. The episode simply doesn't make sense nor am I sure why it even exists. I know a lot of people love it, but I really don't get the hype. It runs off of nonsense logic and makes most of the characters look really bad.

Let's start with the lore.

The canon lore is that Bunnyx only travels through time, not universes, so it makes no freaking sense that an adult Bunnyx would be able to stop Chat Blanc since the existence of Chat Blanc should stop her from existing. It's a total paradox that goes against everything we'd been told about her powers. Of course, she's also supposed to be the hero of last resort, yet we hear about her hanging out with famous historical figures and the season five final sees her acting as a substitute for the horse miraculous even though the people she portals in don't do a thing to help with the final battle, so it's not like Chat Blanc is the only time her powers and role get ignored. Any time I use the rabbit, I have to completely rework its lore because canon is just so bad at time travel. I like Alix and her adult design is awesome, but any time Bunnyx shows up, I expect to be annoyed.

Also, I will never forgive her for just dumping Ladybug back in our time without so much as a word of encouragement or any reassurance that the Chat Blanc stuff was only a maybe. And Ladybug was the one to figure out how to fix time!!! Alix, you suck at your job! Or this is just another case of the writers refusing to let someone other than Marinette save the day even though the poor girl really needs a day off.

As for why this episode exists? I don't even know, dude. It makes no sense. Back when we thought it was going to be a driving force in the season four conflict - an assumption that was backed up by Marinette's nightmare in sentibubbler - the episode kinda made sense in spite of its flaws. But we're two seasons past Chat Blanc and the only person who is apparently traumatized by it is Adrien.

Yes, the writers actually said this. No, you didn't miss an episode where Adrien learned about Chat Blanc. They were talking about the nightmares from the final:

Mélanie says that he "could become Chat Blanc" and the others add that even though he does not remember and has never lived it, Chat Blanc still has an influence on his actions.

Yes, this is embarrassingly bad writing. The character who never saw or even heard of Chat Blanc is somehow the one who is traumatized and effected by it while Marinette's trauma has nothing do to with Chat Blanc or the events of the season four final. Instead, it's random BS that was never even hinted at until season five. I just... what?

In case it wasn't obvious - which I guess it isn't given that professional writers missed this - the logical way to write this to have the season four conflict be about Chat Blanc from Ladybug's side. After the conflict ends, she reveals everything to Chat Noir who becomes terrified of hurting people with his powers. This is only exacerbated by the events of Destruction. But then the show would have had to let Chat Noir have a character arc that didn't revolve around Ladynette and the series seems allergic to that as a concept, so instead Adrien gets magical trauma that keeps him from the final fight. And I thought the Derision retcon was bad!

Other issues with Chat Blanc in no particular order:

It cements Nathalie as just as bad a Gabriel since she's the one who tells him Adrien's secret identity and we then see her do nothing to try to protect Adrien.

It makes Gabriel irredeemable by showing him gleefully hurting his child. Dude punts his son across the city with a smile on his face!

It makes Adrien look slimy since he asks Marinette out without telling her that he knows her secret identity. This one is in a bit of a grey area for me because the secret identity stuff is complicated, but Adrien has never been the one who cared about secret identities AND he's the one who has been directly turned down in hero form. The episode takes none of that into consideration with its writing and it really needed to for Adrien to feel like he had a valid point of view here. As is, he's taking advantage of a situation and putting his Lady love at risk for his own wants.

The pillow sniff scene makes Marinette look unhinged.

It spits in the face of The Power of Love by having Adrien's love fail to be enough to stop him from killing Marinette.

Marinette's parents should have gotten involved after Gabriel threatened her. There is no way in hell that I'd let my kid go over to the Agreste mansion after that. If the writers were once again determined to not let Tom and Sabine parent, then the threat should have come when Marinette was alone.

Why did Ladybug even need to go to the future if Bunnyx could have just gone back in time and stopped Ladybug from leaving the present for Adrien? Why did Chat Blanc even need to be defeated? What did Ladybug's ladybug actually fix when she cast her charm?

This is minor, but it bothers me: Chat Noir should not have been smiling and happy when he was freed from his akuma. That boy should have been in the middle of a breakdown.

I know people forgive some of the above because Chat Blanc is sort of an AU and I'm not going to say that's wrong, I just can't look at it that way because there's nothing that sets Chat Blanc apart from the normal timeline. The Paris special gives us an AU. Chat Blanc (and Ephemeral) are what the writers told us would happen in the canon timeline if Gabriel ever discovered his son's secrets. Canon Gabriel was the one doing those things and would have done them again if given the chance. This is who the writers said he is. Same goes for all the other characters who come across less than stellar here.

There's a reason why I love a good Chat Blanc rewrite. It's an idea with a lot of potential, but canon capitalizes on almost none of it.

#chat blanc my beloathed #ml writing salt #ml writing critical #chat blanc salt

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velvet-vox · 13 days

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All of the points that go in favour/against Doll coming back to life.

So, originally, I wanted to make a post of theory/analysis on Cyn and the possibility of her being redeemed at the end of the show; one of the points that I was going to make for said redemption was that Doll's death was meant as a cautionary tale, the main team of the series is abuse and how trauma affects us into becoming the worst version of ourselves, Doll was a trauma victim who was so dead set in her unhealthy coping mechanism that she ended screwing over her entire life, granted said redemption for Doll wasn't unreachable as showcased by her last living moments, but by then the damage was done; Cyn, on the other hand, could have potentially realised all of the harm she was doing even as far back as before the gala massacre, but then, it kind of reminded me why I ended up never making that post.

You see, the thing is, I don't understand Cyn.

At all.

Like, I also for the longest time couldn't understand Doll despite being hyper obsessed with her, and took over a year, countless analyses done by other people and (unfortunately) episode 7 until I could finally come to understand her to the deep, narrative level that I do now, and I still don't know if I truly got everything.

But with Cyn, not only do I not understand her like I do with other characters, but..... I also kind of feel left out.

To me, it seems like the fanbase at large is obsessed with this little gremlin; I'm autistic as well, since that's the main head canon floating around, yet I don't really relate to a word she says, to me, the hype surrounding Cyn feels similar to the hype surrounding Nori pre episode 7: we have this almost blank slate character that is characterized enough to not be an head canon dump, she is super relevant to both the plot and to one of the protagonist backstory, it's one of the main antagonistic forces, and is generally super important.... Yet I still don't get her nor do I get her surrounding hype. I've read a couple of analyses, and would gladly accept if someone sent me some more, since just a single Murder Drones character requires a lot of digging to fully comprehend in its entirety.

But finally going back to Doll, I want to make a short list of all the points in favour and against a possible resurrection of her character, starting with the pros.

Pros:

- Doll is definitely a big selling point for the russian audience of Murder drones, as I have seen various people lament her death on the fact that she was russian alone; funnily enough, this was also my main reasoning to not kill her off as I and other people started learning russian all because of her.

- Gonna reiterate the fact that Doll is, currently, peak russian representation, and it just feels rather insensitive from Liam to kill her off permanently when there's already Yeva and her dad, two russians, whose death is much more acceptable.

- Doll, unlike Alice, Beau, Rebecca or others, had so much potential as a character, being Uzi's foil and all, and to not capitalize on that would be a huge waste.

- Her death, although very impactful, was not, per se, as narratively satisfying as it could have been (see Nox from Wakfu), so it might've been a mislead, and if V comes back, there's a chance Doll might come back too since Doll x V is the parallel dynamic to Uzi x N.

- Gonna mention personal bias. It's not important nor is it a valid point but it had to be mentioned.

- Doll parents are already dead but we had a whole Yeva flashback in episode 7 that I can't explain in ways other than she'll be relevant in the future, and if she turns out to be alive, even if mind controlled, Doll's death is inevitably going to lose a lot of impact because, as it stands, it's balanced, but with the twist, it could retroactively feel like drama porn.

- She wasn't unreademable, just unreachable and deeply hurt, if she had a second chance to make up for her mistakes I believe she would take it in a heartbeat, I can only imagine the immense amount of guilt she was feeling while dying, she must've realised she only caused more damage in the long run and couldn't do anything to fix it, so if she could help Uzi out even as a digital ghost, it might just give her the sense of closure she so desperately needed.

- If Nori can come back as a core, so can Doll, they just need to cut Cyn stomach in a non lethal way.

And now, for the sadly more probable cons:

- This is Liam Vickers we are talking about.

- Even with all of her potential, hers and her family backstory feel rather.... disconnected from everything else going on right now? Like, Yeva might have been this important figure into Nori's past, but as of right now, aside from her impact, she really doesn't seem too relevant to the main plot; same thing with Doll, in fact, it was Doll's own insistence to be relevant that led to her demise, because, despite everything, the story revolves around N and Uzi manages to survive because she is important to N, and even then, she still sacrifices her own life for him.

- The narrative has always been pretty disrespectful to her? Like, I'm not talking about her sad backstory, sad development, and even sadder death, (this master guide over here realistically had no end in sight as you could just go on and on forever) I mean in general there was a clear lack of commitment to her side of things from the writing team, I think I've read somewhere else that in the original animation Uzi even walked on Doll's body as she was running to N; many theorised that they only came up with her story only after the pilot dropped, and I can't help but think that it has to be true because she had this air of mystery that in my opinion went anywhere and in the pilot she's a background character. I don't know, from a supposedly sympathetic villain the writing was rather unsympathetic towards her whole situation and she felt more like your average b##ch in the episodes following the prom.

- She still fulfilled her limited narrative role, so changing it back could alter future developments and remove impact from the tragedy of this cautionary tale, since, in all honesty, Doll's side story would require the show to switch off the plot too much and unfortunately that's never been a priority for the writing team. Also bringing back up Nox from Wakfu (still gonna make that comparison post) whose Doll shares some themes with, even though his personal story was extremely tragic, it was extremely disconnected from all of the main characters as he was more of a warmup baddie for Yugo to get in the groove, and he never returned physically aside from passive mentions and an illusion.

- I don't think they went out of the way to showcase Cyn eating Doll's core just for it to be a fake out.

- Even with all of my personal biases, aside from her starring episode she never had a real purpose in the grand scheme of things so her death was probably just a way to cut off loose ends.

- She isn't a protagonist despite what she deluded herself into, so plot armour applies even less to her than it does with the main trio (spoiler: it doesn't).

Ultimately, in my heart and mind, despite what I really want, I know Doll's not coming back.

She was disrespected, screwed over by both the writing and her own twisted mind, and since this is a somewhat heavy horror show despite the comedy, I really don't think we are going to see her reunited with her parents as a ghost nor will she be in robot hell or heaven, I really think she is just dead.

That's so sad. What a shame.

Farewell, comrade.

#murder drones #murder drones doll #murder drones cyn #murder drones episode 7 #murder drones nori #murder drones yeva #murder drones doll's dad #murder drones uzi #murder drones n #murder drones v #murder drones alice #murder drones beau #murder drones rebecca #murder drones analysis #character analysis #wakfu #wakfu nox #wakfu yugo #murder drones nuzi

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punkeropercyjackson · 4 months

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Okay but y'know who would've been the perfect character to use as a secondary foil to Dabi in addition to Shouto being the first instead of Bird Bitch?Momo.Their upbringings are significantly different but not entierly-Momo was abused by her parents with adultification and verbally abused by them in a way that's so normalized that she has no clue of either of those things even happened to her,Dabi was abused by Endeavor in the classic way with constant verbal degragation and physical assaults.And they both had the same motivation and justification behind them:They wanted them to be the perfect child.Momo's abusers in the sense of her becoming the ideal proper 'mature' woman,Dabi's abuser in the sense of the most powerful hero.They parallel eachother in a contrasting way and so do their trauma responses by extension and their dynamic has so much untapped potential that i genuinely think it's one of Horikoshi's dropping the ball moment's that he never had them share a bond or at least pointed out their different similarities

It's shown that despite his lack of care for strangers generally,Dabi looks out for his own.He treats Toga like his little sister because she had a rough childhood due to her quirk too and his best friendship with Jin is so tender and strong that it borderlines on romantic and we all saw what he did and said to Hawks for his ableism motivated murder of him and it's not a coincidence that he's even more brotherly to Toga and unhinged after that event specifically.In addition to their shared history of parental abuse,Momo herself also has a bunch of disorders which unlike with Jin were not intentional-Let's be honest,if Horikoshi had made her autistic,adhd,anxiety and ocd intentionally,i don't even wanna think about how horrifically she would've been treated by both other characters and the narrative-but are too intertwined with her story to remove them and still have her be in-character so it's fun and interesting to think of Momo and Dabi having to interact with eachother due to her being a heroine in training and him a villain who's team's main enemies are friends and mentors

Both of them have also not fully escaped the treatment they got growing up-Momo was given a costume that was blatantly meant to sexualize her and gets put in charge of leading her classmates into war as literal child soldiers,Dabi still dosen't get believed as a victim of his father because he's 'too mean' to count as one.I would love to see stories of them slowly accidentally befriending eachother right after the Bakugou rescue arc and Dabi helping Momo see hero society isn't fair or kind to her either and Momo realizing just how often it is that situations like Dabi's happen-Hell,she helped rescue someone who's the same as Endeavor,only on a smaller scale.I don't think she'd instantly go villain nor that Dabi would force her to but the prelude to the war arc has her getting kicked out by her parents for standing up to them and because they found out she's been doing vigilanteism so she joins him because she knows he's right and because he's treated her better than almost every other adult in her life and in turn,she's made him realize that not every hero is thrown into it willingly and are just hurt kids like he used to be and that they're the real ones.'Creati' becomes 'Destruct' but before this all unfolds,we get Shouto and Momo being closer than ever as the series progresses due to the differences in Momo's plot and Dabi's involvement in it pulling Shouto into their orbits and Todomomo goes from a subtle but potent romance to a constant and in your face 'They're soulmates by choice' type of beat in the best and healthiest way possible

Momo gets to be written as a multidimensional teen girl character with no demonization for being an anti-heroine and not be erased as the second real first friend Shouto made in favor of a lifelong bully who told his number one victim to kill himself and Dabi gets to redeem himself by being the good older brother he never got to be as Touya and entering rehibilitation after the war ends because he refuses to die after getting to save Jin from Hawks so they can live out the rest of their lives together.Breaking the cycle of abuse is a much better story than shonen fuckery bullshit disguised as superhero homages when in reality it's disrespecting the history behind and core of comics

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memyselfandmya · 17 days

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Part 2 to my JWCT Analysis

Warning: spoiler and theories below; proceed with caution

In a later scene, where Darius is taking a picture of the computer screen, the background stood out to me a bit. It seems (somewhat) drastically different than the scenes we've seen so far with the brick/concrete wall. Especially the picture in the back, it doesn't seem to fit the vibe of any of the other places/homes we've seen so far. My idea is that it's maybe Kenji's or Yaz's place. Just because we haven't seen much of their hypothetical living situation yet. Maybe I'm looking too deeply into the artwork but these kinds of things give clues like with Sammy's home. Maybe it could be Sammy's room but I just don't get the vibes. Another theory I have is that it could be Brooklynn's place and the campers go there after her "death" to find information to help them. It seems kind of like her vibe, especially the vibrant picture. There's also another picture along the very edge. You can't see much but it looks like rocky terrain which could mean Kenji because we did see him rock climbing but it could also still be Brooklynn because of her history with travelling to cool places.

Some of the other scenes I won't say much on because they're more dinosaur centric and I don't know. a thing about dinosaurs. Everything I know comes from JW and JW alone. But when that trailer thing comes by with the dinosaur, am I crazy for thinking it's blind because it has a cloudy white eye.

There is that one scene where they're enclosed or something in something and Yaz grabs onto Sammy's shoulder which is adorable. Also the following scene where Yaz and Sammy are in the jeep(? idk it reminds me of a jeep) is so cute. They're definitely still together at some point in this show. Also this is the part where Yaz reminds me of Marinette.

Also just in general, the theme "chaos comes home" is just so interesting and cool to me because these characters spent so long trying to escape dinosaurs on Nublar and Mantah Corp Island only for dinosaurs to arrive on the mainland a couple years later. The trauma this will bring back up.

There's so many mysterious people and I want to know who they are.

Just Kenji punching a dinosaur. That's the analysis.

The way Yaz clings onto Ben in that one scene is just so wholesome to me. I love their relationship so much.

These new settings are just so interesting I'm excited to see the more urban look this show has.

The parallel with JW and Claire Dearing when Darius is running from the dinosaur

All in all, I'm very excited to see this. I'm definitely going to binge and rewatch the day it comes out. Expect many posts from me then. They were so right when they said this would be much darker. It's only the trailer and it's definitely giving the same darkness/heaviness of season three which I absolutely adore. I really want to see the characters suffer (I swear I love them) and I hope they highlight their trauma from the island. I'm content with the character designs, I think I am a little disappointed with how they don't reflect the characters as much and are a little more generic. At least for Yaz's character, mainly. I was surprised to not see her in some sort of athletic wear, maybe this demonstrates a shift in her life where she's no longer so driven about track and stuff, which if so makes the design more realistic. I'm sad that Kenji's VA is different just bc of nostalgia but the new VA seems really good and doesn't sound too different from the original. I'm excited to see the full(ish) cast, that was one of my main worries, that it'd only be Darius-centric. (No offense to Darius I just want to see all of my babies). I'm also sad about Brooklynn, she wasn't my favorite character but I still love her so it's sad to see her go, (if she really is dead). It makes sense to me why they "killed her off" both in the show and in terms of production and I do feel like the way they "killed" her off was fitting for her. The plot seems really good and I'm really intrigued which is always a good sign. I'm also really looking forward to seeing where these characters have lived, where they are now, and maybe how they got there. I'm so looking forward to May 24th and I am counting down the days.

Take everything I say with a grain of salt.

#jwcc #jurassic world camp cretaceous #jwct #jurassic world chaos theory #jwct trailer #jwct spoilers #ben pincus #darius bowman #brooklynn jwcc #kenji kon #sammy gutierrez #yasmina fadoula #jwct analysis

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cbrownjc · 2 years

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You know, I’m one of those people who’ve read the books. And I honestly wasn’t disturbed by EP5 in the least.

Well, okay. I am iffy about the Claudia assault situation. I don’t think it was gratuitous (mostly because they didn’t show it), and it does set up a few things: The Fang Gang, who show up in Queen of the Damned. As well as the general idea that other vampires are “not so nice” and that Louis and Claudia have been living in a bubble of protection with Lestat. (Which their eventual journey to Europe will fully show.) But I think there could have been a way to get that point across to Claudia (or at least why she decided to head home to get Louis) without that specific thing happening to her.

As to the Louis and Lestat fight, no, it didn’t happen in the book. But, I’m sorry, am I supposed to think Lestat wouldn’t be capable of it, if pushed in this way? We are talking about the same Lestat who raped a female waitress in Tale of the Body Thief, right? The Lestat who, in that same book, forcibly turned David Talbot into a vampire against his will in a parallel to that rape of the waitress? “Oh, but he didn’t mean to rape that waitress and felt sorry about it and even tried to help her later!” Yeah, whatever. He still raped her. “Oh, but David forgave Lestat and even admitted that he really wanted the Dark Gift anyway!” Yeah, whatever, he still assaulted David, with David fighting back and saying “no” almost the whole time.

Now yes, in The Vampire Lestat, Lestat says he never showed Louis or Claudia the true extent of his powers. (And he didn’t have the cloud gift in particular at that time anyway). So that whenever he and Louis did fight in any way in Interview with Lestat, we retroactively know Lestat was holding back. But any fights they got into never reached the extent they do in the tv show because Lestat never once was really confronted with the idea that Louis and Claudia were seriously going to leave him. Not like this.

By the time that was clear, he’d already been dumped in a swamp.

“But he would never hurt or lay a finger on Louis in that way!” So the gaslighting and emotional abuse/manipulation he did do to Louis during that time was better? Really? Both are still abuse. Hell, Daniel flat-out called it abuse back in EP3.

Lestat is a fucked up brat prince bastard. Always has been. And in the show, he is basically a walking billboard for Generational Trauma at this point.

Louis, for his own reasons/issues we’ve yet to learn, has never once said he loved Lestat back, either before or after the turning. And was going to leave Lestat to go with Claudia overseas to find other vampires who he will be vulnerable to and at the mercy of. (Because yes, Lestat is right to try and scare them away from going there to find other vampires for those out there who haven’t read the books. The real issue is he should have just been open and honest about why Europe is dangerous.) Lestat’s fears of abandonment compounded with all of that? Yeah, I get why he snapped.

But out of character to do it? Nope. Not under this circumstance.

Also, people should remember we are not dealing with young, impetuous Lestat here, as he was in the first book. This time, he lived over 150 years before ever coming to America to live. Which is why he even has powers like the cloud gift in the first place, I’d wager. (My working theory is that he spent most of those years with Marius, but I digress.) He wouldn’t be the exact same as book-Lestat at this point in time just by the very nature of having lived over 150 years doing who-knows-what beforehand.

I’m not sitting here trying to excuse Lestat’s actions btw. Just analyzing his character and where his POV is on all of this (and if it contradicts the books, which I don’t feel it does). And I suspect we will start to get his POV on all of this by the season's end.

So yeah. Louis and Lestat aren’t healthy at this point in time. They never were in any iteration of this story. That fight didn’t change my POV on what could happen with them in the future, however. Just that they have a lot more to deal with, and that Lestat has way more issues in this version to work through.

#Interview with the Vampire #Lestat de Lioncourt #Louis de Pointe du Lac #loustat #Claudia #amc iwtv #iwtv #EP5 #media critique #character anylisis #this whole thing feels very much like 'I can excuse murder but I draw the line at domestic abuse' from some comments I've seen #which what?#I understand the Lestat's character talk and issues more #and can see where some of those arguments are coming from #but the guy has lived 150 years more before getting to this point than he did in book-canon #he's basically the same age he is at the START of The Vampire Lestat book #so he lived a different pre-Louis life than book-Lestat did #Louis and Claudia aren't the only characters that got depth added to them via the changes done #just my thoughts

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ccarrot · 5 months

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More Chuuya hcs pls

Lemme tell you a little about my aus while i'm at it!!

Whenever i draw SB lab art, if he's got short sleeves and Dark eyes its chuuya and short sleeves with crazy contracted eyes it's cloneboy! If chuuya's wearing a. longsleeved nightgown it's Chuuya from schoolkoku au!

So the mechanics of Corruption are a little strange because N wants chuuya to say the trigger phrase presumably to "factory reset his mind" but in order to actually activate Corruption he needs to wear the ability proof anti-mindcontrol hat BEFORE he says the trigger so that his mind doesnt get wiped in the process.

To continue on Corruption, if N was intending to get Chuuya to actually activate it, then there COULD be a way for Chuuya to stop it himself. I don't buy the idea that Chuuya's been literally coded to respond a certain way to the words, but maybe it's true that he's been conditioned/brainwashed in a way. In any case it's not lile Verlaine's Brutalization.

Nawy originalaccountname has convinced me that Chuuya has a fear of electricity and lightning storms.

Donut Shop Chuuya experiences an Evangelion Mental Breakdown(tm) at 19. Regains a Lifetime of memories. and the stress of that makes him benched from his executive duties. At some point he just, ditches Yokohama and holes up with Adam and Mary in England for a bit. Donut Shop Chuuya comes back to become Dazai's Bakery employee at some point but not after getting dragged into the Bungo Stray Dogs plot. Hopefully no more fighting for this boy afterwards.

Chuuya's ability is sustained by a singularity ability right? The point at which somthing reaches an infinite value is essentially a singularity, for black holes i think its when the center becomes infinitely dense bc the gravitational pull becomes infinte. My loose memory of physics concepts aside, If chuuya's base ability was enhancement, then Corruption is triggered when the enhancement gets activated on himself, and he's get closer to death when the gravity of his ability gets closer to infinity. Asagiri is a Nerd.

I think if Chuuya ever dies, his ability would like. Explode out of him into a giant black smoke hound thing. A massive BEAST emerges in the wake of his death. Gwahh so edgy.

Like ghhh i think if he never managed to leave the lab he WOULD see N as a caring father figure to look up to. From what we know about N he isn't clinically detached, he's very hands on and manipulative. And we also know that chuuya WILL latch onto any form of kindness and devote his LIFE to uphold that. He'd think of N as his parent.

Most of my skk aus involve Chuuya experiencing the Horrors and Dazai is the pov character who goes through comparitively more realistic trials. I follow Asagiri's formula 👍

More abt hallucinations. That scene was definitely supposed to draw a parallel with him and Atsushi i think btw. So i hc he has issues with night terrors and audiovisual hallucinations, no matter how much he ignores his trauma he wont escape these till he faces it head on. Anyways i think he encounters "ghosts" a lot. The Flags, people he may have killed. Murase really frequently, and N when he gets stuck with sleep paralysis fhh. One he minds the least is Rimbaud actually. Rimbaud's "ghost" is never unhelpful but not one he regrets too much either. Rimbaud's last words to him DID fundementally impact the course of Chuuya's life

Either way he gets bad insomnia. Perpetually has reddish under eyes. He uses makeup lately. The edgy red eyeliner to fit his vibe. Bro is so tired.

Chuuya gets injured easily and a lot but he walks it off like A Champ. Perks of an inhumanly good pain tolerance. Also he gets chronic migranes and pain in general.

He actually smiles a lot. He tries to be really expressive when he talks to people, and if he isn't annoyed or half zoned out he'll try to appear friendly. This doesn't apply to School au or Analog au chuuya, those two girlies are still learning the muscle movements for smiling.

I headcanon Chuuya to be singularly the coolest character in bsd ever and no one can compete. Chuuya won an Oscar.

#ask #headcanons #chuuya

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pandoratheprocrasticreator · 2 years

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i really really want a young eda spinoff and i know most people are thinking about the fluffy cute stuff, seeing the old hexsquad as kids and all. i want to see that too but i also hope they use that to play up the dramatic irony and the tragedy of it all

because like. we know where these kids end up. eda and lilith being the grudgeby champions of their school? lilith gives her sister a life-crippling curse in five months and neither of them know this. odalia, alador, and darius goofing around and being best friends? at some point, we know they have a falling out and darius ends up absolutely DESPISING them (or at least alador) for the next thirty years. darius looking up to his cool emperor’s coven mentor, THE golden guard, and thinking he’s the best role model in the world? we know what happens to that golden guard. raine being all excited to show everyone how good bard magic is? we know about their slow disillusionment with the coven system over the next decades, leading them to commit treason against the covens that they-and all their friends-have spent their entire childhoods dreaming of joining.

even if every episode ends with a satisfying conclusion and the characters being happy, knowing where they end up 30 years down the line means we know most of their “victories” are temporary. even if we have an episode where eda and raine have a great time at grom together, we know that eda’s refusal to talk about her problems eventually cause that relationship to deteriorate. even if we have an episode where eda helps lilith gain some confidence, we know that lilith’s envy eventually twists into resentment and causes her to curse her sister. even if we see odalador get together and become a surprisingly sweet couple, we know that odalias’ need for control, alador’s apathy, and both their ambitions eventually warps their romance into a stiff business partnership. and that the perfect happy family they might have wanted initially eventually becomes fake and loveless.

i want to learn about some of the kids’ families as well. i want to see if odalia and alador’s parents made them Like That to amity and the twins. the show is all about generational trauma, after all. it would be sad but understandable to see the blight parents be abused by their parents and know that they ended up repeating the cycle. people say odalia and alador might have broken off their friendship with darius because of family-enforced classism to parallel amity and willow, but are we sure odalia and alador were the rich kids in this scenario? darius was the one who had connections to the golden guard, after all, and this analysis by @yardsards lays out how odalia and alador may not have come from old money. if they lost a friend because they weren’t seen as “high society,” then it could explain why odalia is so obsessed with family image and prestige as an adult. and also, i want to see raine’s parents. why did they insist on sending raine to an expensive school they hated? were they part of why raine was so insecure about the bard magic thing or was that just the other kids? also, i want to see more of gwen and dell. we already know how gwen failed the clawthorne sisters as a mother i want to see how dell did it. (i love both of them so much but it takes both parents to make your kids Like That)

and i would love to see them explore the emperor’s regime through the eyes of kids who have never known anything else. the clawthornes were wild witches, but lilith especially dreamed of joining the emperor’s coven. was this the equivalent of being the first person in your family to go to college? belos had only been ruling for two decades by that point, but he’s had followers for hundreds of years. did some of the other kids have family that were in covens? was that how darius got the golden guard to mentor him?

and why WAS the golden guard from the emperor’s coven darius’s mentor, anyway, if he later joined the abominations coven? did darius originally plan to join the emperor’s coven, but changed his mind after the golden guard’s death? did the golden guard even mentor darius while he was in high school? was his death what caused darius to separate from the friend group? did the other kids have mentors to prepare them for coven tryouts as well? if so, then were the clawthorne sisters at a disadvantage, since they had no family connections to a mentor, and that’s why lilith got desperate? we got a glimpse of the coven indoctrination of children in eda’s flashback episode, so was there more of that at hexside? were there kids other than eda who didn’t want to join a coven, but were pressured into it by society after graduation?

there’s also a bunch of potential friendships between characters that barely interact in the main show. like eda and lilith were in the same track as boscha’s parents. were they friends? rivals? grudgeby teammates? similarly, odalia and perry porter were both in the oracle track. maybe they’re just classmates but it would be really funny if they were actually besties. we get a mention of darius and raine being friends/worsties in hexside but we don’t actually know what they were like! did raine annoy darius with catboy shit like they’re doing as an adult? if they were good friends, that puts raine’s attempt on his life as an adult in a tragic light, since they probably assumed their friend had been indoctrinated by the emperor, and even if they didn’t want to kill him, they had to. it would be a huge betrayal to darius too if that were the case. (but if they were worsties it makes that scene funnier bc raine saw the chance to murder this guy whos been annoying them since age 17 and JUMPED on it)

anyway this started out as speculation on how bittersweet a young eda spinoff would be if the audience already knows the ending of their story but it spiralled into every single headcanon i have about the old hexsquad. go figure

#toh #the owl house #shut up pandora #eda clawthorne #lilith clawthorne #odalia blight #alador blight #darius deamonne #raine whispers #perry porter #dell clawthorne #gwendolyn clawthorne #fun fact!#i have 2 midterms 2 quizzes 5 labs one presentation one lab report and 3 assignments due in the next two weeks #and here i am talking about owl house again #the brainrot is unreal #instead of hyperfixating on baby shows can i please hyperfixate on like #air pollution for once in my life

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dioriysus · 8 months

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love the fact that tim drake’s vulnerabilities and mental health are more explored in the fan fics but he is unfortunately, somewhat suave canonically and is skilled at harbouring all the trauma or atleast intellectualising it rather than giving himself a moment to just feel the emotions (atleast that is my impression from the haze of memories). usually the fanfics depict him as someone unable to control his vulnerabilities and there’s nothing wrong about that but part of the reason that he doesn’t get much opportunity to be outright vulnerable is bc he is a skilled navigator among ppl and convos. the boy literally knows and analyses any thought/emotion that pops into his mind, he’s obsessed with his ability to manage it all.

i think the main emotion he suppresses is guilt and bc he’s objective enough to understand that under this line of work, there is technically no point in feeling the guilt, it’s disregarded and builds up. guilt about his responsibilities as a vigilante, for potentially endangering the lives of the civilians he loves, the overwhelming pressure to please everyone in both sectors of his life. he’s mature for his age, something that’s acknowledged by his family and surroundings and somewhat by himself as well. he doesn’t let himself linger on disappointment towards others as often as he should and moves onto what is under his control immediately.

that’s always been his biggest coping mechanism, control. tim doesn’t dwell, he has enough awareness of the world and his position in it to not constantly be reacting instead of just acting. i think that’s why him and steph’s differences in social backgrounds didn’t hinder the relationship bc he is generally a smart and self aware guy and can empathise with others while sticking to his moral grounds.

steph’s introduction into his life helped tipped the balance he so proficiently curated on the matters of heart vs head. it’s simple around her. yes, he feels a responsibility to keep her out of vigilante life as batman’s protege but she expects nothing from him (at first) and he likes that. that’s not to say that he didn’t fulfil any boyfriend responsibilities (he literally was there to help her deliver her baby) but she likes him for all he is and he does the same and everything else comes naturally and out of duty of the heart.

i think after war games and all, we obviously see him transform more and more into Batman. his civilian life that used to be as equal and important as robin became more withdrawn, a little less genuine and more tactic based? it was an understandable progression given all the losses he had been dealt with. the charms that came from him as a well-rounded person with academic/emotional intelligence were sort of lessened to tools to help enhance robin/red robin’s missions rather than.. ykno.. actually make good connections with people.

can’t say much bout the new52/rebirth as i hadn’t taken in much of Tim’s characters as vividly as his 90s series.. but i do commend the dc writers on letting Tim talk about how much he likes bernard and why.. feel like the last few timsteph content (minus some of the yj stuff) started to feel stale and was just Steph sulking around him (pls don’t hate meeee, there were cute moments but i missed the tension and chemistry from their original run)

i think he’s an incredibly interesting character and if there are to be any other live action depictions, I’d rather they take inspo from the robin series than anything else. let him be the well-liked guy who seems to be doing well in everything and then we can dive into the dynamics with his father, with Batman and other authorities in his life.

also i reckon if damian hadn’t met Tim through his connection to Batman, he would’ve had similar kind of dynamic as he does with dick 😭 idk i love looking at the parallels b/w tim and dick. tim wouldn’t obv give as much grace to damian as dick does, nor can he intimidate him through any means of physical combat like jason (i giggled writing this bc Damian doesnt take Jason seriously but atleast they’re both aware that they both need to reel in the violence). idkidk they’d have a fun back and forth relationship and Tim being the strategist he is would put Damian’s strengths to good use and Damian would respect that.

ok let me stop this rant once and for all bc i have actual tasks i need to get done but i lauv tim drake if u couldn’t tell! if there are any points of this essay that doesn’t make sense, that’s fair bc pls let me reiterate that my memory is not the strongest soldier and i could be mixing iterations of tim from all places saur yeahhh

#tim drake #stephanie brown #red robin #dc comics #bat family

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comradekatara · 10 months

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Hi, do you have any thoughts on canon jet? I always love your takes! I'm studying the poem The Patriot by Robert Browning rn and it instantly reminded me of him. The confident leader sentenced to death and all

“canon jet” as opposed to....? [thinks about everything fans have done with/to this guy] oh.... right.

so my thing about jet is that ever since i was little, he has been my least favorite character in atla. like, to be clear, i don’t think he’s the most evil (certainly not), but he is the most boring. what could be such an interesting and dynamic and morally grey character (like hama!!! I LOVE hama) is just reduced, at least to me, to bad vibes. rancid vibes. his aura has fruit flies. he sort of reminds me of humphrey bogart in the maltese falcon or casablanca; like, i should be enjoying this, this should be good....... but i do not like this painting charlie its smug aura mocks me. over the years i’ve come to appreciate jet more. i think the tragedy of his character is effective, if only because of how his death affects katara (esp the parallel of jet dying in katara’s arms and yue dying in sokka’s arms, that’s very beautiful to me). i think he’s a good foil to sokka. i like longshot, smellerbee, pipsqueak, the duke. i like his awesome tree houses, the color of the leaves in his forest. basically i like everything about jet except jet himself. because of his vibes. his smug aura.

i realize that this opinion is incredibly subjective and divisive, and a lot of people may and do disagree with me. i know a lot of people ship jet with zuko (which is crazy to me, sorry) or generally find him sympathetic. and like, i find his motivations sympathetic, i find his backstory sympathetic, i find his trauma sympathetic, i find his ideals sympathetic, i find his death noble and moving in its tragic irony. but sokka’s vibe detector is never wrong, and that kid’s aura is the equivalent of when a cartoon villain puts poison in a teacup and a little skull and crossbones appears in the air. (he sort of reminds me of the guy i sat next to on a flight once who vaped in my face from his disgusting bubblegum flavored juul for most of the flight and then hit on me relentlessly for the last hour. like jet just feels spiritually aligned with that man, to me.)

anyway, to your point, he wasn’t really “sentenced to death” as much as he was tragically killed by long feng’s callousness. his death was heroic, but only in the sense that he lied to katara to protect her (although i do think she knows that he’s dead; she didn’t even try to use her spirit water on him, so he was clearly beyond saving). in the end, he wasn’t even the one to help them get appa back; zuko was (the irony of that is so delicious, like i may not ship them but their dynamic as foils is excellent). but his intentions were good, and that’s what mattered. and for what it’s worth, i do think he cared about katara. he definitely did use her and make her complicit and try to have her brother killed, but he did like her! (even if he refused to wear that ugly lil hat she made for him, which was so rude of him btw.) and in his final moments, he comforted her. he didn’t go out in a blaze of glory fighting the fire nation, like i imagine he’d always assumed he would. but he did die trying to help the avatar, telling katara that it would be all right. and i imagine he’s proud of that, too.

#aclusterfuckofglitterbugs #asks #jet #jetxkatara #abdullah rly ruined my life w that one post #that was technically correct but convinced ppl that u should stan jet that that is the morally correct thing to do #smh..

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pomplalamoose · 6 months

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headcanons: Luke Skywalker and a mentally ill reader🫂🩵

A/N: I received several requests for Luke with a reader that struggles with their psychological health and decided to do one big post instead of three small ones.

Since I'm heavily affected myself I have a hard time talking about it, meaning this will be shorter than what I usually do; thank you for understanding <3

Nevertheless it's an important topic that shouldn't be ignored so here we goooo

Luke comforting you when you're afraid of being a bad Jedi due to your mental illness

• like I often mention, Luke always has an open ear for you

• I think he's especially understanding when you tell him you struggle with your personal image as a Jedi

• because in a similar way Luke often worries about this as well

• is he doing the right thing? Did he make the right choices? He doesn't know

• more often than not he wishes for Obi-Wan or Yoda to be with him still, to guide him

• his insecurities might stem from a different place than yours but in many ways you are able to draw parallels

• just like you he's afraid of not being good enough

• I think he'd let himself be really vulnerable in sharing this with you, hoping that it makes you feel less alone

• he doesn't want you to think you are in any way failing him or yourself

• most importantly though he wants to prevent you from thinking he's without faults

• he wants to give you an opening to relax, to show you that it's going to be okay as long as you're genuinely trying your best

• he does his best and is he not doing a good job?

• he wants to relieve you of the burden of perfectionism

• both of you are human and that is very much okay

• additionally the both of you don't have much information about what a Jedi should or should not be and while that certainly makes things harder, it can also mean a new beginning

• Luke spends a lot of time thinking about the principles and teachings he wants to pass along to a new generation of Jedi

• and I think a big part of that would be to embrace one's nature and being as they are

• some things can't be changed, it's the will of the Force

• in this regard he is big on following his senses and his heart and how could you ever be a bad Jedi if he sees so much goodness in you?

• while it may be hard to see for yourself, Luke will do his best to show you that your personal struggles don't equal being a failure

• mental illness isn't a flaw that makes you less capable or less intelligent

• you are not your mental illness

• it doesn't define you as a person even though it often times feels like it

• he will list many wonderful character traits of yours, trying to convey how others may see you

• he retells situations where you were able to overcome or even use your struggles in order to help another person

• you are allowed to be yourself and he's glad to have you by his side

• he values your opinions and insights

• in many ways you are able to view certain aspects from a totally different point

• with your unique experiences you are able to offer comfort to those in similar situations better than Luke ever could

Not wanting to burden Luke with your trauma

• Luke is familiar with the notion of keeping ones struggles to oneself

• especially when it's done out of consideration for others

• I don't think you'd manage to hide your mental state from him though, not post ROTJ and not when you're force sensitive as well

• he might have been rather blind to his surroundings earlier on, but has long grown past it

• of course he respects if and when you want to open up at all and will put no pressure on you to tell him anything whatsoever

• however I think he prefers his family and friends to be outspoken about how they're feeling

• not only does he want to help but is also aware that it's only going to get worse over time otherwise

• he knows what can happen when one gets lost in an endless maze of the same recurring thoughts

• to be able to realease something into the Force, to let it go, one has to confront it

• how this is done varies for each person though

• you know best where your trauma stems from and only you know what you are able to take on in order to leave it behind

• as much as Luke would love to be able to simply tell you what to do, he can't

• it's a journey everyone has to go on for themselves

• he'll want to be your company though

• Luke is happy to let you take your time

• if the possibility to retreat is important to you, it's what you get

• he wants your healing to come from a place of security and with the knowledge that he's there to catch you when you're not able to do so on your own

• still he remains firm in his believes and will tell you so

• nobody said it was easy, he knows for a fact it isn't and he is ready to be by your side when you are

• depending on your relationship he might give you gentle nudge in the right direction or, alternatively, a kick in the butt if that's what you need

• he won't stand by and watch you destroy yourself

Dilf!Luke realizing you're not doing well mentally

• since he always has his eyes on you, he can tell when something is just a little bit different

• depending on how well you're able to hide your mental condition though, it possibly takes him a while

• unlike is child he can't be around you all the time and during your car rides home the both of you don't talk

• maybe he realizes how tense you grow when a member of your family contacts you

• maybe he overhears parts of a conversation either when you have to take their calls or when you talk with your friend

• I think he'd ask his child if everything's okay with you

• he doesn't want to seem overbearing or like he's invading your privacy

• since they are your best friend they wouldn't tell him any details but maybe mention you're struggling

• again it depends on you as a person

• are you open about your mental health or not?

• if not they will lie for you

• otherwise they know what they can share without revealing too much

• after all it's your decision what you want others to know

• either way he's worried

• he will offer his help right away

• if you need someone to talk to, he's there

• he's not a professional of course but he'll listen! A second perspective can change a lot!

• the house is easily big enough for one more person, he doesn't mind you staying for the night or a few more

• you can always come over when you need space or a place to rest

• he'll look after you

• have you thought about moving out?

• are you making enough money to be independent?

• are you seeing a therapist?

• "Dad please calm down, I can't tell them you said any of this!"

• your friend will give you a watered down version of what happened because they're kinda afraid that you'll be creeped out by Luke's behavior

• you aren't

• in fact there's nothing you want more than for Mr. Skywalker to take care of you

• he may ask you about it himself once you are better acquainted

• if you're comfortable enough to drop a comment or two he definitely catches on to them

• you are welcome to celebrate the holidays with him and his child, you know?

• he's sure they would be more than okay with it too

• it's your choice of course but he'd be happy to have you

#ask #asks #luke skywalker #luke skywalker x reader #luke skywalker x you #luke skywalker fanfiction #star wars #luke star wars #star wars fanfiction #star wars headcanons #star wars a new hope #star wars empire strikes back #star wars return of the jedi #dilf luke #dilf luke skywalker #luke headcanons #fanfic

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justanotherthrowaway1950 · 6 months

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Why Azula, Ozai, Azulon, and Sozin Shouldn't Be Written as Having ASPD

Keynote: Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) is the proper medical term as far as I know for what is commonly referred to as sociopathy and psychopathy. So I use ASPD throughout this meta in lieu of those terms.

It is a commonly held belief in ATLA fandom that some combination of Sozin, Azulon, Ozai, and/or Azula have ASPD since there is no good explanation for the way that they treat their “loved ones”, their subjects, and the world other than them being utterly incapable of feeling empathy for others.

And while I do admit that reading Sozin, Azulon, Ozai, and/or Azula as suffering from ASPD is a perfectly acceptable and well-supported by canon, I personally think they shouldn’t be written as suffering from ASPD because there are three, story-based reasons for not doing so.

Or more specifically, if Sozin, Azulon, Ozai and Azula aren’t written as suffering from ASPD, (1) it strengthens their ability to serve as character foils, (2) allows there to be a better reason for why the Fire Nation waged the Hundred Year War, as well allow for more interesting stories to be told of Zuko and his descendants reforming the Fire Nation, and (3) the franchise’s stance on the nature versus nurture debate would be kept in tact.

This is because, in regards to point (1), Sozin, Azulon, Ozai, and Azula not only serve as character foils to members of their family, but also other people in the other nations as well.

And the four Fire Nation royals serving as character foils not only enhances Avatar’s characterization, but also plays an important role in the narrative as well.

For example, one of the key parallels in ATLA is that between Zuko and Sozin, or more generally, their relationships with their respective Avatar over time.

(Yes, I do think Roku-Sozin are meant to be paralleled with Aang-Zuko since I don't think it was a mistake that Zuko and Aang learned about Roku and Sozin's past in the same episode.)

(Or that one of the last scenes in the show has Fire Lord Zuko at his coronation have Aang by his side not just as the Avatar, but also as his friend as well as evidenced by their hug just before Zuko got crowned.)

(Or that both Sozin and Zuko were given multiple, unearned chances by their respective Avatars to do better.)

This is because, despite growing up best friends with the Avatar, knowing true firebending, and growing up in a mostly peaceful world, Sozin’s lust for power and desire to spread the Fire Nation’s “greatness” caused him to forsake balance, which resulted in him dying a bitter, regretful old man who killed his best friend so he could start a genocidal war of conquest.

Meanwhile, despite only knowing rage-based firebending, growing up in a world at war, and being raised to believe that the Avatar was his nation’s sworn enemy, Zuko eventually rejected Sozin’s path and chose to follow Aang and help him restore balance.

And as a result of his strength of character, Zuko will more likely than not die a happy, old man, one who not only helped the world heal, but also managed to become best friends with Aang, despite everything that transpired between them during the first couple of months they knew each other.

Another key parallel is that between not only Zuko and Azula, but also Azula and Katara as well.

For in Zuko’s case, Azula serves as a reminder of what could have happened to Zuko if he never managed to (inadvertently) get out of Ozai’s thumb and eventually reject him for good.

Or more specifically, a conqueror with all the physical and political power in the world, but eventually goes mad since they have no one to share it with due to alienating everyone in their quest for power and Ozai’s approval.

Meanwhile, Azula serves as a reminder of what Katara could have become if she used her family trauma as justification to become an unrepentant monster.

That and if Katara was raised without love and taught that empathy was weakness, not a strength.

For they are both powerful benders, daughters of their nation’s respective heads of state, have hot-headed older bros who are swordsmen, trained under the same master, and whose (final) girlfriends are warriors.

Moreover, they have mother issues related to their missing mothers and serve as the emotional center of their groups, though Katara’s stays together while Azula’s fails apart due to Katara being able to love her companions while Azula is only capable of using fear to keep her companions in line.

But beyond the obvious parallels, there are also interesting parallels between Ozai and Hakoda, Iroh and Azula, and Ozai and Zuko.

This is because in the case of Ozai and Hakoda, they have dead or presumed to be dead wives, daughters who are bending prodigies, sons who wanted nothing more than to make them proud, and are elite warriors.

However, due to a combination of the cycle of abuse and his insatiable lust for power, Ozai constantly pushed his children and pitted them against each other, resulting in him losing the War and his freedom as one of his children went insane while the other betrayed him after realizing he had nothing of value to offer to them or the world.

Meanwhile, Hakoda was a supportive and loving father who taught his kids the value of family and friendship, and as result, he managed to win the War because his kids were able to work together and support each other and their friends.

In regards to Iroh and Azula, even though on the surface they don’t seem to share that much in common, especially since their personalities are different, they not only are very similar people, but also serve as direct foils to each other.

For they were both brilliant military strategists and tacticians with hot headed brothers, brothers who grew up in their shadows due to them not being able to keep up with their psychotic fathers’ expectations while they easily met them, and thus “thrived.”

They were the favored children of genocidal warlords, in addition to being heavily sheltered and coddled bending prodigies who came up with several, new firebending techniques.

They have a tendency to manipulate and lie to those around them, were complicit in the Fire Nation’s war crimes, and killed people in combat.

(Yes, Iroh is complicit in the Fire Nation’s war crimes. This is because, beyond the fact that the TTRPG confirms he was the Rough Rhinos’ commander when they burned Jet’s village, he was a leading general and crown prince for several decades.)

(Moreover, it is highly unlikely he never sat in his father’s war council meetings, or was unaware of stuff like the Southern Raids, or what happened to the captured Southern Waterbenders.)

(Especially since the TTRPG implies he learned lightning redirection from observing waterbenders before Lu Ten’s death, and so, unless he met Foggy Swamp Tribe Waterbenders, he either participated in the Southern Raids or observed the captured Southern Waterbenders since the North hadn’t seen Fire Nation soldiers in eighty-five years.)

(Also, in my opinion, post-redemption Iroh is a liar and manipulator, even if it is for a good cause.)

(For he lied to Zuko and his crew about his true allegiances, hid the fact that he was a member of the White Lotus, and tried manipulating Zuko to turn into an outright traitor in the Catacombs, with the last point being really egregious in my opinion.)

(This is because he hadn’t done anything to challenge Zuko’s worldview, or help him see past it, instead trying to rely on his personal connection with Zuko.)

And they not only conquered, or tried conquering, Ba Sing Se, but also lost everything in their quests to fulfill their forefathers’ vile dreams.

However, partially due to his strength of character, and partially due to having more freedom and sanity, Iroh was able to use him hitting rock bottom to reflect and grow as a person before dedicating the rest of his life and afterlife to helping restore and maintain balance.

Meanwhile, as of current canon, Azula is incapable or unwilling to engage in self-reflection, remaining essentially the same person she was before her downfall, though much more dangerous as she has not only grown in power, but is now trying to unleash dark spirits so she can take down her brother’s regime so she can retake the throne and restart the Hundred Year War.

Finally, in regards to Ozai and Zuko, it is pretty obvious from the way adult Zuko looks like Ozai, Zuko’s initial aggressive bending style, the fact that they are both hot-heads who lived in the shadow of their prodigal siblings and resented them for it, at least until he defected in Zuko’s case, and the fact they were their father’s unfavored child that they are character foils.

Or in other words, Ozai is what Zuko could have become if he never got out of his father’s thumb, didn’t have positive influences like Ursa and (post-redemption) Iroh, and let his hate and desire for his father’s love warp him into a monster, one who continued the cycle of abuse and War in order to fill the gaping hole in his heart caused by a lack of parental love.

I could go on, but the point is that Sozin, Azulon, Ozai, and Azula play important roles as character foils to several of the main characters, not only strengthening their characterization, but also the narrative as a whole.

However, if they are written as having ASPD, their ability to serve as character foils is severely weakened, not only weakening the characterization of several characters, but also ATLA’s narrative as a whole as well.

For if Sozin has ASPD, then the parallel between the Sozin-Roku and Zuko-Aang relationship is lost, or at least severely weakened, since Sozin becoming a genocidal tyrant is due to his genetics, and not because he made the wrong choices in life.

If Azulon has ASPD, then a large amount of the differences between his children can be chalked up to Ozai inheriting his ASPD while Iroh did not, instead of the differences in how they were raised, their different life experiences, and strength of character, or lack thereof, explaining why ended becoming the people they did, as well as their eventual fates.

If Ozai has ASPD, then his failures as a man, father, brother, and ruler aren’t due to his upbringing and his weakness of character, but instead due to his genetics.

If Azula has ASPD, then her ability to serve as a dark reflection of what could have been for Zuko and Katara is lost since Azula becoming and staying evil is a result of her genetics, and not her choices.

And more generally, if they have ASPD, then the four of them starting and continuing to wage the Hundred Year War can be chalked up to their genetics and them being in positions of unchecked power, which leads into both my second and third points.

This is because, in regards to point (2), if Azula, Ozai, Azulon, and Sozin have ASPD, then the reason why the Fire Nation started the Hundred Year War essentially becomes bad people who were on the throne and/or had power.

Whereas if Azula, Ozai, Azulon, and Sozin don’t have ASPD, then the reason why the Hundred Year occurred can be seen as the end result of the Royal Family over the centuries engaging in greater violence, as well as enacting more and more centralization and authoritarian measures, to prevent the spilling of blood, resulting in them losing the plot.

That and the Fire Nation being fundamentally flawed since it was created and maintained through acts of violence.

For the first Fire Lord united the war-torn Fire Islands, thus ushering a prolonged period of peace, by violently bringing the warring clans to heel.

Centuries, if not thousands of years, later, when it became apparent that political conspiracies and economic crises that came about due to nobles clashing with the Fire Lord, as well as the Royal Family fighting amongst itself, periodically weakened the Fire Lord’s authority to the point that bloody civil wars often occurred, Fire Lord Yosor, working with Avatar Szeto, helped stabilize the Fire Nation by implementing political and economic reforms that, among other things, centralized power in the national government’s bureaucracy, which was obviously controlled by the Fire Lord.

However, Yosor and Szeto’s reforms were still not enough to ensure peace, for the clans’ conflict with the crown, which at this point was held by Fire Lord Zoryu, almost led to a civil war in what came to be known as the Camellia-Peony War. Thus, Zoryu began a multi-generational project in which the clans’ power would permanently be dissolved, with the only figure able to wield power being the Fire Lord.

And while it took centuries, Sozin completed the project, which not only ensured, as far as Sozin and the Royal Family were concerned, the Fire Nation’s peace and prosperity, but also enabled Sozin to pursue policies to uplift all of his subjects.

And after seeing the success of the policies he implemented, Sozin then had the bright idea of spreading the Fire Nation’s propensity by any means possible.

For while it was utterly evil and led to an incalculable amount of lost and/or ruined lives, it would make complete sense from his point of view considering one could easily make the argument that life in the Fire Nation got better as the Fire Lord concentrated more and more power in the throne, as well engaged in increasing amounts of violence to keep the peace.

And obviously his descendants, especially Ozai and Azula, would agree with Sozin’s worldview considering he embarked on a historical revision project so widespread and successful that not only was there one place in the Fire Nation by the end of the War that had unbiased historical records, the Dragonbone Catacombs, but also had managed to brainwash the Fire Nation to the point that they thought that Airbending was demonic and that the pacifist Air Nomads were in fact the Air Nation and had a standing army.

So, if the above explanation of why the Fire Nation waged the Hundred Year War is canon, instead of the “bad people on the throne” explanation, then Zuko and his descendants’ task of reforming the Fire Nation likewise becomes that much more complicated, and thus allows for richer storytelling.

For instead having to only make to sure that no one with ASPD inherits the throne or is in a position to wield power, Zuko and his descendants would have to ask hard questions about the nature of the Fire Nation government and why the Fire Nation ended up waging the Hundred Year War, questions like, “Are human rights compatible with absolute monarchies?”, “What do we have to do in order to not only de-Sozinize our people, but also make sure that Sozism and related strains of thought never become popular again?” before then taking action to implement solutions to those questions.

And the process of them trying to come with and implement reforms in order to make sure the Fire Nation never starts another war like the Hundred Year War, as well deal with issues in regards to said reforms as they pop up, would lead to compelling stories.

Especially since there are few things that can provide credible physical challenges to the post-war Gaang or post-Season 4 Krew, and so, in order to tell compelling stories with real stakes, they need non-physical problems or threats they can’t punch their way through.

For example, imagine seeing Zuko trying to implement democratic reforms after realizing that part of the issue was that one man had the power to plunge the world into chaos, struggling to get the nobility and upper classes to accept the lost their privileges and power, as well establish democratic norms in a nation with no known history of democracy?

Or seeing Izumi fight back against a populist resurgence of Sozism as most of the people who lived through the end of the Hundred Year War are now dead or old, struggling to put down it without becoming a tyrant?

Finally, in regards to point (3), regardless of how people feel about it, the franchise has been pretty consistent on which side of the nurture vs nature debate it stands with, constantly implying, if not outright stating, that its heroes and villains alike are products of nurture, not nature.

Moreover, the franchise has provided explanations, but never justifications, for why various villainous characters like Yun, Amon and Kuriva ended up doing the evil things they ended up doing, ranging from being betrayed by their father figure after being lied to their whole lives, being warped by abusive parenting, to unresolved abandonment issues.

However, the franchise’s consistent stance that evil is a product of nurture, not nature, would be heavily contracted if Azula, Ozai, and Azulon, and/or Sozin were written to have ASPD, at least to the degree that fandom thinks they have it.

For while ASPD is not a guarantee that someone would become a threat to society, as seen by the fact that a famous ASPD researcher has ASPD himself, yet managed to have a productive, normal life with friends and family, most people think that people with ASPD have the malignant version of it, as seen in various other artistic works like We Need to Talk About Kevin.

So, in combination with the fact that Azula, Ozai, and Azulon, and Sozin in all likelihood will never have their upbringings detailed on-screen or on-panel, if they are written to have ASPD, the audience will more likely than not assume that they were born with malignant ASPD, and thus born evil.

“Ok, you make some good points, but what if I don’t I don’t want Azula, Ozai, Azulon, and/or Sozin to be anything more than uncomplicated villains?”

“For a lot of shows nowadays have complicated villains with motives, and so giving the four Fire Nation Royals motives behind their evildoing would take away a lot from their uniqueness, and more generally, Avatar’s uniqueness as a franchise.”

“Like, what happened to villains who wanted to do evil just because?”

I agree with the sentiment that the trend of making every villain complicated might have gone too far, and that sometimes it is better to have uncomplicated villains who do evil just because.

But Avatar is a not a franchise with uncomplicated characters for the most part, as seen with not only the existence of characters with Hama and Jet, but also the inordinate amount of time the narrative spends humanizing the Fire Nation, even though it would have been very easy to paint them as ontologically evil.

So, by giving Azula, Ozai, Azulon, and Sozin motives for their evildoing beyond having ASPD, it wouldn’t take away from their uniqueness, or the Avatar franchise’s uniqueness in general, but in fact enhance it.

“Ok, writing Azula, Ozai, Azulon, and Sozin as not having ASPD wouldn’t ruin their characters, but what if I want them to have ASPD because it would enhance Avatar’s story.”

“Or more specifically, by writing those four as having ASPD, it would allow audiences to learn how to recognize those suffering from ASPD, or at least the malignant version of it, and learn how to deal with their behavior. And more generally, that not everyone’s issues can be solved with love and/or therapy, and that some people have to be taken down permanently for the good of society, or at least removed from society.”

In regards to the idea that writing Azula, Ozai, Azulon, and Sozin as having ASPD because it could teach audiences how to deal with people having ASPD, at least the malignant version, I would agree that be a good idea, if Avatar had a good track record of portraying mental health issues.

This is because Azula after Sozin’s Comet, or at least during her appearances in the pre-Faith Erin Hicks comics, is supposed to be suffering from split personality disorder.

However, as seen by the contentious discourse on what, if any, mental disorders Azula is suffering from, it is clear that they did not do a good job of showing that Azula was suffering from a split personality disorder.

In fact, there is a Word of Statement, one that is supported by various allusions in the post-Sozin’s Comet comics, that Azula and her fellow Fire Warriors were abused in their asylums, yet there is little to no time spent focusing on how their experiences informed their behavior.

So I am skeptical that they would be able to properly show all the symptoms and co-morbidities associated with ASPD, and not just rely on and perpetuate stereotypes like they did with Azula and the Fire Warriors.

Also, just because Azula, Ozai, Azulon, and Sozin don’t have ASPD doesn’t mean their issues could be solved with love and/or therapy, or that social sanitation couldn’t be practiced in regards to them.

For not every troubled individual has ASPD, nor does everyone who committed heinous crimes worthy of being jailed for life have ASPD, so why can’t Azula, Ozai, Azulon, and Azulon be treated like those people?

“Ok, but what if I want Azula, Ozai, Azulon, and Sozin to have ASPD because I fear that giving them any nuance would be akin to excusing their crimes and abusive behavior and pressure Bryke into redeeming them, or at least suggesting they could have been redeemed in Azulon and Sozin’s cases?”

Just because there is an explanation for why the four Fire Nation Royals did horrible things wouldn't justify them, nor would it excuse anything.

For Sozin would still be the man who betrayed his best friend, turned his only son into a genocidal warlord, brainwashed his subjects into waging a genocidal war of conquest and imperialism, and responsible for the Airbender Genocide.

Azulon would still be the man who continued his father’s genocidal war of conquest and imperialism, turned both of his kids into genocidal warlords, responsible for the Southern Waterbender Genocide, had Ursa kidnapped and raped so his bloodline’s continued rule would be assured, and condoned Ozai’s abuse of both his children.

Ozai would still be the man who continued his forefathers’ genocidal war of conquest and imperialism, abused his wife and kids, murdered his father and usurped his older brother after coercing his wife to do the former for him, and attempted to genocide the Earth Kingdom.

And Azula would still be girl who conquered the Earth Kingdom, abused her brother and “friends,” murdered Aang, aided and abetted her father’s efforts to genocide the Earth Kingdom, attempted to kill her mother, brother, “friend,” and uncle, kidnapped a bunch of children, including her half-sister, and is currently engaged in domestic terrorism.

Moreover, just because there is an explanation for their evil beyond ASPD doesn’t mean that any of Azula, Ozai, Azulon, or Sozin have to be redeemed or have it be suggested that they could have been redeemed.

For just like The Avatar and the Fire Lord made clear (in my opinion) that just because Sozin felt guilty for betraying Roku and starting the Hundred Year War didn’t make him redeemable, there is nothing preventing Azulon remaining the unrepentant monster who was slain by the monster he created, Ozai spending the rest of his life seething in his cell, or Azula remaining a domestic terrorist incapable or unwilling to engage in self-reflection before the Gaang finally stops her for good beyond Bryke’s desires.

So to conclude, I don’t think there is anything wrong with seeing Azula, Ozai, Azulon, and/or Sozin having ASPD, and in fact, I think there are strong arguments to support such a view.

But what I am saying is that writing them as having ASPD is a bad storytelling choice since it ruins or weakens their ability to serve as narrative foils, eliminates potentially more complicated reasons for why the Fire Nation waged the Hundred Year War, as well the complex, engaging stories the franchise can tell of Zuko and his descendants’ ongoing struggles to reform the Fire Nation, and would be inconsistent with the franchise’s stance on the nurture versus nature debate.

And at the end of day, isn’t the Avatar franchise at its best when it is telling stories with engaging narratives and complex characters, even if the conflict is black and white?

#atla #tlok #atla comics #azula #ozai #azulon #sozin #fire nation #post war fire nation #atla meta #tlok meta #atla comics critical #azula meta #ozai meta #azulon meta #sozin meta #fire nation meta #post war fire nation meta #justanotherthrowaway1950meta

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rafaelsilvasource · 2 years

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Out100 Cover Stars Ronen Rubinstein & Rafael Silva Televise Queer Love

9-1-1: Lone Star's Ronen Rubinstein and Rafael Silva are setting network TV ablaze with their fiery queer romance.

BY RAFFY ERMAC | October 25, 2022

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Tarlos is here — and ready to take over.

Coined by fans of Fox’s hit procedural drama 9-1-1: Lone Star, the affectionate “ship” name is a portmanteau of the show’s queer main characters: firefighter-turned-paramedic Tyler Kennedy “T.K.” Strand and Carlos Reyes, an Austin police officer. The LGBTQ-inclusive series centers on the lives of emergency responders and also boasts names like Rob Lowe, Liv Tyler, and transgender actor Brian Michael Smith.

Watching Lone Star, which opens a fourth season in early 2023, it’s easy to see why fans love Tarlos. Their relationship — which began in the pilot episode in an Austin honky-tonk and evolved into a roller coaster of casual hookups, breaking up, moving in together, and eventually getting engaged — is a story LGBTQ+ fans could only dream about seeing on network television just a few years ago. Seeing these two characters — with their movie-star good looks and boys-next-door appeal — navigate life and love in relatable ways gives fans giddy feelings with every new episode (which is why discussions of Lone Star continually trend on Twitter during the television season).

Fortunately, out actors Ronen Rubinstein and Rafael Silva have the chemistry to bring these two Lone Star boys to life.

“I can’t imagine doing this with somebody that (a) you don’t like and (b) you don’t mesh well with on set,” Rubinstein says of Silva. Since they started this journey as Tarlos when Lone Star premiered in 2020, the two have grown close as both colleagues and friends. “I can’t imagine doing that with somebody that you don’t get along with and you don’t respect and you don’t love as a human being,” he adds. “I can honestly say that’s how I feel about Rafael.”

“Ro and I are just so fucking different as people…. But it’s this sort of yin and yang thing,” says Silva. “Two of the same pieces of the same puzzle are not going to go together, they’re just not. They have to be different in order to complement each other, and I think we do that very well as actors and as people.”

One of the first scenes the two shot together was a sex scene, and like with any intimacy on camera, that required a lot of trust — even if at the time, they had just recently met. But the two used their real-life newness with each other to their advantage, as it paralleled how T.K. and Carlos were also just getting to know each other, creating a realistic pairing that the stans simply can’t get enough of.

“At that point, when you have a bunch of people just watching you make out and do that, you have to rely on your partner,” Silva says. “It’s like we only got each other right now, so let’s just do whatever happens here, just go with the flow. Let’s just go.”

Tarlos, with all their confidence and chemistry, is one of television’s better examples of an LGBTQ+ couple just getting to live their messy but meaningful lives without extreme trauma keeping them apart. A couple like Tarlos was a portrayal Rubinstein and Silva didn’t see a lot of growing up, and that helped motivate them to portray T.K. and Carlos in a way never before seen by generations of queer TV watchers.

Silva, who was born in Brazil and spent the early part of his childhood there, says he was raised in a very male-dominated, machismo-drenched culture with a stigma surrounding gay people. It wasn’t until he was a young adult attending Pace University in New York City that he was exposed to queer culture, and he was able to “actively, fully be myself” as a gay man. And it wasn’t until he saw Viola Davis’s badass bisexual Annalise Keating on ABC’s acclaimed How to Get Away With Murder that he felt like he saw something of himself represented on television.

Like Silva, Rubinstein, who spent his childhood in the U.S. but was born in Israel after his family left the Soviet Union following its collapse, had a similar experience growing up in a culture that taught folks being gay or queer was verboten. “It just wasn’t a thing that was ever brought into my world,” Rubinstein says.

That is, until he caught the acting bug. Going into Manhattan for auditions and exploring the West Village introduced Rubinstein to people and cultures that he had never experienced before, and that’s when he started to realize he could truly be himself and like both men and women. (Rubinstein publicly came out as bisexual in April of 2021 while Lone Star’s second season was airing.)

“I remember going there, just wandering around, and I was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is amazing,’” he recalls. “I think that was probably the first time where I started looking at men differently. Especially growing up, [I don’t remember] anybody talking about being bisexual. That wasn’t even a term that I even knew existed. It was just gay or lesbian.”

Though they didn’t have much representation growing up, Silva and Rubinstein are elated by how many people are touched by Tarlos. “It’s really all over the world right now, it’s unbelievable,” Rubinstein reflects. “I’d be lying to you if I said, ‘Yeah, of course I knew it would be like this,’ or ‘Yeah, I expected it.’ First of all, just for this storyline to even be birthed, it is so risky. Especially for a network like Fox. If it wasn’t for [creators] Ryan Murphy and Tim Minear, it wouldn’t be possible, and it’s still shocking me to this day.”

What was also shocking for Silva and Rubinstein (in a good way) was getting to see just how much love fans were ready to give in real life, as the two got to meet Tarlos stans over the summer at the Dream It Not at Home convention in Paris.

“We met a lot of people saying, ‘I’ve been saving money to come here, I’ve been working overtime,’ so all I could hear was, ‘I’ve been putting in effort in order to see you,’” Silva says of the experience. “When you hear that, you feel the responsibility to also take them in.”

And they’re not taking any of that love and support lightly. With season 4 of Lone Star on the horizon, and with more Tarlos promised to viewers after a breathtaking proposal scene at the end of season 3, Silva and Rubinstein are more committed than ever to nailing their parts as authentically as possible. And they can’t wait for fans to see what season 4 has in store.

“I’ve definitely been shocked and surprised already within the first couple episodes. There’s definitely been some storylines where I’m like, ‘What?’” Rubinstein says. “It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen on the show, especially with us, so that’s been really cool. It keeps you on your toes, and when I get a script, I’m literally flipping through the pages as fast as I can because at any moment, there could be a bombshell — and we’re definitely going to have a couple this season.”

“Right off from episode 1, we’re going to find out some things that are funny, but it propels on to several beautiful episodes after the first one, and it’s going to be intense,” Silva says. “It’s going to be fun to watch and fun to do. Like what Ronen said, you can’t really expect much because things change a lot. Whatever you think is going to happen, Tim always brings something better than what your imagination can perceive. I think the fun part is just waiting to find out what actually happens.”

“The biggest thing is all paths lead to the wedding,” Rubinstein adds.

As the actors reflect on the future of their careers beyond Lone Star, both remain optimistic that LGBTQ+ representation is only going to improve, and they both want to work on projects that push boundaries and are more inclusive of historically marginalized identities. For Rubinstein, that means seeing more projects with bisexual male leads, and for Silva, that means adding Latinx representation to mainstream American media.

“I would love to do movies and work with some of my heroes, whether it’s Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale. I’ve been putting that out since I’ve started this journey, so hopefully it happens,” Rubinstein says. “I think, selfishly, I would like to see more male characters who are bisexual, especially in leading roles. It’s strange that it’s not happening more often. Maybe it’s going to take me to produce something or be the one that does it, but I’d love to see more of that. I think there’s a lot of stories to be told, but especially in the LGBTQ+ community.”

“If I’m going to dream, I want to do things that challenge me, that make me scared, but where I can also have fun and also, I’m going to say selfishly, where I can achieve a certain level in my career where I won’t feel like I have to explain myself,” Silva says.

talent RAFAEL SILVA & RONEN RUBINSTEIN @actuallyrafa @ronenrubinstein photographer COYOTE PARK for GOOGLE PIXEL 7 coyotepark.format.com @coyotepark executive producer & senior director TIM SNOW @snowmgz creative director RAINE BASCOS 1st assistant MASON ROSE masonrose.photography @masonrose__ light tech EVADNE GONZALEZ @evadnegonzalez digitech MERLIN VIETHEN video AUSTIN NUNES austinunes.com @austinunes producer STEVIE WILLIAMS x2production.com @beingstevie of X2 Production set designer ORRIN WHALEN orrinwhalen.com @orrinwhalen art assistant BRANDON LOYD @ohmylord stylist EDWIN ORTEGA edwinortega.com @edwin.j.ortega styling assistant BROOKE MUNFORD @brookesquad hair/groomer ABRAHAM ESPARZA abrahamjesparza.com @thisisbabe manicurist RILEY MIRANDA @rileymiranda.nails

#rafael silva #press #ls press #interviews #photoshoots #out magazine #tarlos #ronen rubinstein #october 2022 #out magazine 2022

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