#but then they had their own realizing they’re a terrible person arc and fucked off to have an identity crisis
Text
HORRIFYING: LIKE IT OR NOT SHOU SUZUKIS TERRIBLE BUZZ CUT HAS REAL SYMBOLIC VALUE
so i see people making fun of his new hair which is understandable to an extent because it does look a little jarring since it’s so new but it’s a little bit more than him trying to look like his dad or fucking up with scissors so let’s talk about it
i want to start with just hair and symbolism in mob psycho and what we’ve seen of it so far
terus hair gets its own entire arc basically but it mirrors his growth as a character, put simply: shaving=reason/opportunity to change, tall wig=overcompensation/dedication to large change, cut wig=humble change/humility as chosen by others, final hair=change/humility as decided by himself
serizawa’s haircut is symbolic of new beginnings, and it’s reigen that cuts it which can be seen as reigen freeing him from his past and allowing him to take steps into a new chapter in his life which is pretty cool, the same can be said for how it’s consistently mob that’s shaving Teru’s hair lol
less significantly is kamuro and ritsu getting hair changes after the big cleanup arc ends, while not exactly a haircut it’s still a way to show the changes in their mental health and is a way to say that they’re taking care of themselves more afterwards
which takes us to shou’s haircut, which still needs prefacing because his first hair has its own meaning
unfortunate and tragic but shou having this ridiculous vibrant sharp main character look is a window into how he sees himself during this time, he’s trying to stick out because he has an understanding that he is very important, I vaguely recall ONE saying in a tweet that his design is made with the intention to resemble that of a battle shonen protagonist.
in a way his appearance mirrors his feeling of responsibility to take the role of this cliche selfless protagonist chasing after a happy ending, and we know he has this style by choice because the fanbook tells us that by no means is it his natural hair
so understandably when he realizes that he’s actually free of this responsibility and doesn’t have to force himself to fill the shoes of a sacrifice and can choose to make decisions for himself and his own happiness, he cuts all his hair off.
and not only does it pull him away from this manufactured anime protagonist fantasy (which he’s arguably been using to make things look less scary by ignoring the humanity in his situation) it is also representative of free will and personal autonomy, which is so important because until then shou was doing most (not all) things because he felt he had to, not because he wanted to!!
tldr mobpsy loves symbolism and his haircut is a very literal way to show us he’s finally able to make decisions for the sake of himself because it’s what he wants and because it’s what makes him happy, not because he feels some moral or greater obligation to.. you make fun of him but that haircut was his choice and that’s all that matters :cry: :cry:
#ok and#I admit#he does look like a tennis ball#this can coexist with my point though.#But it is pretty funny he looks like a tennis ball.#mp100#shou Suzuki#text#long post#my gifs#start of a new era baby#shou spinnoff when
657 notes
·
View notes
Note
hey can you do a character analysis/comparison on zonic and shard to find out what silver likes in his men
Cries. They’re both stupid guys who piss her off idk. Real analysis tho
Ok Ok so Shard and Zonic have completely different origins. One was created purely to cause chaos and the other was created purely for order and stability.
However, they’re both Sonic. Yet how they view that is also entirely different. Ever since Shard was just “Metal Sonic” his entire purpose was not only to live up to him (power wise), but to best him. After he was rebuilt, he wanted nothing more but to live up to Sonic. Sure he could match with him power wise, but he couldn’t just copy and paste his exact personality and friend groups. I think his entire arc was him becoming his own person and realizing he’s more than just Metal or Sonic. With Zonic, he knows he’s just like Sonic, and even believes that he can beat him if he really needed to. Due to his origins, he feels superior to Sonic, while Shard looks down on his origins as it’s the exact cause of his insecurities. I believe, despite these differences, their core values and personalities are very similar. Zonic puts up this serious front for the sake of a mission, but it barely lasts that long. They’re both so. GOOFY. They make terrible puns nobody laughs at besides themselves and can act cheeky if they believe they’re better than whoever they’re being cheeky with. They’re also quick to act. Like a pathetic wet cat. The moment their insecurities are exposed and if there’s a doubt in their mind they fumble. I think it affects Zonic more than Shard, because he’s so used to being so sure of himself that if something goes wrong, it messes him up like crazy. Thissss is what also affects how they interact with Sonic. Despite his superiority complex, Zonic is really dependent on Sonic. This can stem off of his own fears that are now eased when he works along Sonic, or just the fact that Sonic is from the Prime Zone and without Sonic there’s literally no. Purpose for him. No matter what, Sonic is the OG and Zonic is the copy. His entire world is structured after Sonic’s and made to protect and defend Sonic’s. Shard has the exact same dilemma concerning Sonic, but it’s now taken from a more personal level (which I rlly enjoy and makes the comparison more fun) His interactions after he was rebuilt started out tense, but through the development of friendship and his displays of kindness, he was able to become Sonic’s friend. I’m not gonna say Zonic and Sonic didn’t develop a friendship bc they definitely did, but Sonic put trust in Zonic *after* Zonic revealed he was him. It was more like a “I have to trust you bc you are me even tho I can’t always agree with you” then develop a friendship rather than “You have to earn my trust because I never had any for you in the first place” like it was for Shard
BUT WHATEVER WHO CARES AB SONIC LETS TALK AB SILVER !!! Shard and Silver had more of a one sided enemy thing going on. Silver wasn’t there to make friends, but ended up making friends anyway because idk this is sonic the hedgehog. They were very. Brash and rude to each other, but Shard was clearly having fun teasing and messing with Silv while Silv was debating on killing him like half the time (I’m getting lazy just reread the wiki page like the rest of us) Because Zonic fucking DIED and every zone was erased besides the prime zone (which was a fucking LIE bc of the silver age and like several other issues but whatever) Silv and Zonic never interacted howeverrrr it’s easy to predict how they’ll interact. Silv, unless told that he could trust him in the beginning and that they need to work together, would be hostile and probably bite him ngl. Zonic, esp after the Silver Age, would probably arrest Silver. This would cause Silver to be on edge and they would probably fight a lot. Zonic would win but not rlly bc Silver doesn’t stop fighting that’s like his thing. I still think that although their fights would like strain their relationship, they would end up becoming allies due to having a similar goal and a similar way to attain it. Also thank god Silver is finally partnered with someone who wouldn’t blink if told he needs to kill someone in order to maintain order. They both have the same job and morals, so if they ever got over their differences then they would probably make a good team. So um TLDR Silver likes guys that he hates and finds annoying and only get in her way, only to find out it’s a good kind of annoying and they can rlly be her friends. They’re just like me fr
#tumblr said I ran out of space in the text box and told me to shut the fuck up :[#I didn’t mean to type that much I didn’t rlly say much anyways#but whatever here you go thank u for letting me talk ab them#btw Shard and Zonic would be friends :]#Zonic would b like ‘god bless your annoying .’ and Shard will be like haha ur so funny :] and throw him into a wall#zonic the zone cop#shard the metal sonic#<- they get main tag privileges bc only 7 ppl check out their tags#bows. ur welcome Zonic fandom#ty answers stuff
17 notes
·
View notes
Text
“but I thought about how I needed to say this”
a.k.a. yet another meta dissection of The Apology. I actually wrote most of this up on Friday night based on the original Japanese (@pikahlua has an excellent translation up here, and I also used @hanashimas’ translations as a reference as well), but I wanted to wait until the official release, though that turned out to be a mixed bag to say the least lol.
I would also recommend reading @pikahlua and @class1akids’ breakdowns of this scene (here and here, respectively), because they are excellent, and because if any scene deserves to have as many meta breakdowns written about it as possible, it’s this one.
anyway so here goes.
Caleb did a more accurate job with this than the fanscan, even if he did try his best to take us out of the seriousness of the moment by throwing in that swiss cheese line lol. anyway so there are two things I want to talk about here. the first is the line about Izuku not remembering, which I thought was a nice touch. of course he doesn’t remember what Kacchan said back then. he wasn’t exactly in the soundest emotional state after seeing one of the people he cares about most taking a near-fatal blow that was meant for him. I’d be shocked if he remembers anything about the aftermath (including the way he flew into a mindless rage afterwards) right up until the point when he entered the OFA Interstellar Party Void with Tomura. anyway, so I thought that was a nice callback.
and speaking of emotional states, the other thing I wanted to talk about is the part that Caleb got right which the fan scanlation didn’t. “but I had more to say.” in other words, “stop trying to win on your own” wasn’t just a one-liner; it was meant to be the beginning of a much longer speech. “there were other things that I needed to say.”
like, can we just stop and talk about that for a second. because basically what this means is that in that instant, when Kacchan pushed Deku out of the way and got impaled, his one and only thought was that he needed to apologize to Deku. his life was presumably flashing before his eyes, he had no idea if he was going to survive or not, and the only thing on his mind was how urgently he needed to make things right with his former childhood friend.
moving on!
so I have a confession to make, which is that I am relieved to see Katsuki describing this as the reason why he bullied Deku, as opposed to Horikoshi trying to retcon it into some sort of “secretly he was just trying to protect him and keep him out of harm’s way because he was worried” thing, which ngl would not have gelled very well with me. the thing is that I’m really not a fan of the whole “Kacchan Did Nothing Wrong” mentality that some fans seem to have. like, I have seen all sorts of convoluted attempts to find excuses for Katsuki’s shitty behavior, but in my view those attempts undermine what I love about his character in the first place. Katsuki is such a great character specifically because he is not perfect. his redemption arc is so compelling because he was such a giant asshole at the start. he was completely at fault, and he acknowledges this, and takes full responsibility for it. and that is fucking fantastic.
his arc is so great because it doesn’t rely on garnering sympathy by giving him a Tragic Past, or by trying to foist the blame for his behavior over on someone else. it’s an arc that acknowledges that redemption isn’t something you achieve by making people feel sorry for you; it’s something you have to earn by actively working to change and do better. and by forgoing the “misunderstood/tragic past” route, Horikoshi is making a statement that anyone can go down the wrong path, but that more importantly, anyone can also choose at any time to turn away from said path. there is only one requirement for doing so, and that is realizing that you’ve done wrong, and deciding that you want to change.
anyway, so in chapter 284 Kacchan of course had that whole speech about Deku not taking himself into account, and mentioned how that made him want to keep his distance. and a good chunk of fandom took this to mean that Katsuki’s bullying was actually a misguided response to Deku’s reckless tendencies -- sort of an “if I show him how weak and powerless he really is, I can get him to accept the reality that he’s quirkless, and that being a hero will just get him hurt or killed” type of thing. and I won’t lie, for a good while I was wondering myself if Horikoshi was really going to go down that route. and like I said, I am honestly relieved that he didn’t. not only for the reasons stated in the previous paragraph, but also because the message that would have sent -- that there are certain circumstances in which bullying can almost be excused because the bully had Good Intentions and was just trying to save the other person from themselves, and so it Wasn’t That Bad, Actually -- is all kinds of fucked up to say the least. so yeah, I’m glad we ended up steering well clear of that.
(ETA: this post was long enough already so I edited out the 3 additional paragraphs I originally wrote analyzing the dialogue from 284. but just to be clear, I’m not trying to imply that Kacchan worrying about Deku’s recklessness is a retconned thing that Horikoshi only threw into the story recently, because there are multiple instances throughout the story where he clearly is worried and in total denial of it. but I firmly believe those feelings are not what led to the bullying. they’re two separate things. Kacchan worrying about Deku is what prompts him to yell at him in chapter 1 when Deku comes to save him. but it’s not what incited him to burn his notebook and taunt him earlier in that same chapter. that action had a much meaner and more selfish motivation behind it, and I’m glad Horikoshi didn’t try to change it up last minute, because it wouldn’t have felt right.)
thankfully as of this chapter I think we can safely cross that out as a possibility, as we’re given the true explanation straight from Katsuki himself. and the truth is that he bullied Deku out of insecurity and jealousy and fear and intolerance. there was nothing noble about it. there were no good intentions concealed in his actions. there are no justifications given, no excuses offered, and no mitigating circumstances to be considered, other than the fact (which neither he nor Horikoshi bring up) that he was and is still a child, and that children make mistakes.
it’s an explanation that challenges many of fandom’s ideas on who is and isn’t eligible to be redeemed. there is no Ozai in Katsuki’s backstory. there’s no great tragedy that he spent a lifetime trying to rise above. the only villain in Katsuki’s story is Katsuki himself. the only darkness that he has to overcome is his own. and it’s challenging, because I think many people believe the only way someone can be redeemed for doing bad things is if bad things happen to them in return. but what Horikoshi is saying here is that that’s not the case. bad doesn’t erase bad. and the one and only way to truly earn redemption is by doing good.
and that’s what makes this such a phenomenal scene for me. by not shying away from Katsuki’s flaws and failings, and having him take full responsibility for them, Horikoshi keeps the apology from being self-serving, and underscores the true depth of Katsuki’s character development. the level of self-awareness he has here is something most people can only dream of. which is very fitting, as that’s perhaps the most important takeaway from his character arc -- that it’s only by acknowledging your own weaknesses and flaws that you can learn to overcome them and reach your full potential.
one last thing to point out here, which is that in the panel where Katsuki finally acknowledges his terrible treatment of Deku, Deku is not even visible. instead, Horikoshi drew the panel from a perspective that makes it appear that Katsuki is addressing this particular line not just to Deku, but to all of his classmates.
again, he shows him taking full responsibility and admitting his wrongdoings in front of the people whose opinions and approval he cares about most. and just to clarify in case there’s any confusion from Caleb’s translation, Kacchan’s wording makes it very clear that he wasn’t just “mean” to Deku, but that he full-on bullied him (he uses the same verb -- “ijimeru” (苛める) -- that he did back in chapter 284). there’s no attempt to downplay his actions here.
moving on now, this chapter also reaffirmed another thing about Deku and Kacchan’s relationship which I was glad to see revisited -- Kacchan’s unwavering belief in Deku’s ability. this is one of those paradoxical things about their relationship which I’ve always been fascinated by, but which is also kind of hard to explain, because I don’t want it to come off like I’m trying to put a positive spin on something which was unequivocally awful. like, please don’t think I’m trying to say that Katsuki’s bullying of Deku was in any way a good thing. but that being said, there’s also a strange irony at play here, which is that Katsuki’s jealousy and insecurity also betray the fact that even at his very worst, he never once underestimated Deku. he has always believed in Deku’s strength, even when that strength pissed him off and made him afraid and uneasy.
no one else -- not All Might, or even Deku’s own mom -- believed from the get-go that Deku could become a hero. but Katsuki never once counted him out, even when he was calling him a pebble in his shoe. he confesses here that even though he “tried to act superior by rejecting [Deku]”, in truth he was never able to shake the feeling that Deku was above him. long before he ever understood the concept of “win to save”, he knew instinctively that there was a strength in Deku’s heart that couldn’t be measured, and which had the potential to surpass even his own strength. and I’ve always felt that this was so important, because it’s the one aspect of their early relationship that hinted that on some level, however subconscious, Katsuki held the same type of faith in Deku that Deku always held in him. it was one of the few things that hinted at there being a possible path towards reconciliation one day. and it paved the way for the most important shift in their relationship to date, when Katsuki finally realized who Deku got his quirk from, and responded not with resentment or spite, but with acceptance.
moving on, I also really love the way we see them portrayed at the different stages of their childhood throughout this speech, and how it perfectly lines up with the dialogue. from small children (when Katsuki talks about his insecurities first manifesting), to middle schoolers (when he talks about the bullying), to high schoolers (when he talks about the past year and everything he’s learned at U.A.). Horikoshi really didn’t have to go that hard, but he did, and that’s why we love him.
and then we finally get to That Part.
where do I even start with this there are so many things omg.
the bow. this is the one and only time Katsuki has ever bowed to anyone of his own volition as far as I recall. and this absolutely is a bow, just to be clear, even though his form is straight-up garbage (very Kacchan-esque, with his feet and arms spaced apart because he’s still a punk after all). this is Kacchan showing more humility and respect than he’s ever shown to anyone else in his entire life.
regarding “Izuku”, I actually have mixed feelings about this to tell the truth. I think it was a good call here because it was incredibly effective in setting the tone and showing just how serious Kacchan is. however if he continues to use “Izuku” rather than “Deku” from here on out, that would give the impression in hindsight that all his past usage of “Deku” really was meant as an insult, which would undermine some of my favorite scenes. I would really like to believe that since DvK2 or thereabouts, Kacchan has (mostly) been using “Deku (affectionate)” rather than “Deku (useless loser)”, lol. but if he switches to the “nicer” name on a permanent basis following his apology, it implies that the previous nickname was indeed being used cruelly. and so honestly I hope this was just a one-time thing, because I do think that in Katsuki’s mind, the name “Deku” hasn’t been meant as a slight to him for a long time now.
“my truth/this is what I truly feel” -- the word Katsuki uses in Japanese is honne (本音), and if you’re familiar with the concept of honne/tatemae, that’s the same “honne” he’s talking about here. it means that he’s casting aside all of his walls and facades and expressing what he truly feels. and of course, one of the fascinating things about Katsuki’s character is that he’s the exact opposite of most people in that he chooses to put his meanness on full display to the public, and ironically it’s the kindest parts of himself which he tends to keep the most carefully guarded and hidden away. this also means that while his rage and anger are very often insincere and put on just for show, those relatively few occasions where he lets his humanity truly shine through are pretty much 100% genuine, as is the case with this one here.
and Deku’s face says it all when it comes to how powerful those moments can be as a result.
and this, right here, is why it wasn’t enough for Katsuki to atone solely through his actions, and why he needed to actually say the words as well. it’s not that the words are more important; obviously the actions are far and away the most important part, and carry far more meaning. but the reason why Katsuki needed to say the words as well is simply because Izuku needed to hear them. needed to, and deserved to, because this is one of the most important people in the world to him.
and so he deserves to know that the relationship isn’t just one-sided, and that he is just as important to Kacchan as Kacchan is to him. he deserves to know that Kacchan understands how horribly he treated him, and that he’s sorry for it. and he deserves to know that Kacchan, without any expectation of it changing their relationship -- meaning that he will continue to feel this way regardless of what Izuku says or does from here on out -- cares about him. now more than ever, with AFO out there doing everything in his power to make Izuku feel as alone as possible, this is something that he really, really needed to hear.
so this part has some interesting wordplay which neither Caleb’s translation nor the fan scanlation was really able to get across. basically, in the Japanese version, when Katsuki talks about “those ideals”, Horikoshi uses the kanji for “ideal”, but pronounces it as “All Might.” obviously the meaning of this isn’t too hard to decipher, as we all know how much both boys admire All Might. to them, he absolutely is synonymous with the Ideal. so this is a way of showing that respect they both have towards him, even as Katsuki goes on to point out the one fatal flaw that All Might was never able to overcome.
and speaking of interesting wording, as others have noted, at this point in his speech Katsuki switches from “temee” (which he was using earlier during the “your strengths and my weaknesses” part) to “omae” (“omae” being a less insulting word for “you”, though still very manly and tough-sounding), which is definitely a big deal. though fwiw this is not the first time he’s used “omae” for Deku (he switches to it briefly right after DvK2, when he tells Deku “you had the strongest guy lay the groundwork for you -- don’t lose”, and then later when they’re walking back to the dorms and he says he’ll learn and get stronger by watching everyone around him just like Deku did). it’s definitely a good choice on Horikoshi’s part though, as it makes this last part of the speech sound more earnest and sincere.
just a quick note, he does indeed use a plural pronoun here, as in “the obstacles that you can’t overcome, we will overcome.” but as @pikahlua pointed out, the “we” here is ambiguous -- it could either mean “we” as in class 1-A -- “we will overcome them for you” -- OR it could mean “we” as in all of them -- class 1-A and Deku. “we will overcome them together.” idk about you, but I know which one gets my vote.
anyway, and so this is the line that finally wins Deku over and allows him to let go of his fears, however briefly. what I love about this is Kacchan’s utter conviction. one thing that Caleb’s translation doesn’t quite get across is Kacchan’s use of the word morenaku -- “without exception” -- when he talks about how they’re going to save everyone and win. it echoes that same sentiment he showed back during the Joint Training arc -- that it’s not a perfect victory unless they save everyone. every last person. and he explicitly lists Deku among their number, just so there can be no doubt.
and Deku’s response to this (or at least his thoughts, since he’s not really able to get many words out) pretty much brings everything full circle here.
he acknowledges that everyone else has gotten ahead of him. which is especially meaningful given who he’s standing directly across from. because for most of the series, as we all well know, it’s been Kacchan who was woefully lagging behind Deku in the character growth department. but now Deku himself is acknowledging that not only has Kacchan finally caught up at last, but that he and the others have surpassed him. which is only temporary, I should add, as I have zero doubt that Deku will catch up again soon. but the fact remains that just as Deku’s rapid increase in strength and skill left Kacchan scrambling to keep up earlier in the series, Kacchan’s extraordinary character development has now left Deku in that same position. as All Might once put it, “when he’s starting at level one, and you’re already at level 50, it’s only natural that you’ll be growing at different rates.”
and what’s so wonderful about this though is that the two of them are finally approaching that point where they’ve both caught up to each other and are finally starting to level out. Deku is a full-on badass, and Kacchan is out here talk-no-jutsuing with the best of them. the two of them have been chasing and chasing after each other this entire time, and now they’re finally just about ready to meet in the middle at long last, with each of them fully embodying both of those two crucial aspects -- win, and save.
just about. because Deku still needs some help catching up. but seeing as help has already been offered -- and accepted -- I can’t imagine it will be very long now, and I can’t wait to see him finally overcoming those fears and doubts with his friends by his side. it’s going to be such a powerful moment.
and last but not least,
or, as I prefer,
you had one job, Caleb. flkjsdlk.
but at least this provides a good opportunity to note that unlike the “we’ll help you handle it” line earlier in the speech, here the phrasing is left up to interpretation, as he doesn’t use a pronoun. so it could be “we know”, or, as the fan scanlation put it, “I know.” or it could be both. regardless, it’s good stuff.
anyway, and so Deku passes out, and in the process Horikoshi gives us one last parting metaphor, just in case anyone still thinks Kacchan is all talk because they haven’t been paying attention for the past 322 chapters (more likely than you think). once again, Katsuki’s actions speak louder than his words (even his nice words) ever could: he is literally there to catch Deku when he falls.
so that’s it! my sincere thanks to anyone who actually read through all of my endless ramblings about this scene which I have been waiting for since day one. props to Horikoshi for taking on an impossibly difficult task, and pulling it off with all of the emotion and care and nuance that I’ve come to expect from his writing. imo he delivered on every single level with the exception of the aftermath, which I don’t consider to have actually happened yet. Deku’s part of this is definitely a “to be continued.” but yeah, as far as Kacchan’s part goes, 10/10. so fucking proud of this kid.
#bnha 322#bakugou katsuki#midoriya izuku#bakudeku#bnha meta#bakugou meta#deku meta#bnha#boku no hero academia#bnha spoilers#mha spoilers#bnha manga spoilers#makeste reads bnha
553 notes
·
View notes
Note
This is a bit of a long rambly mess, but I just to vent somewhere! When I was at first getting annoyed at JC’s depictions, I thought fanon JC was painted as similar Mu Qing, right down to JC being given MQ’s secret care for children. But I then realized that even that comparison was inaccurate.
Even MQ apologizes (more than once across the story!), says that XL was right, and says he wants to be his friend. And if JC did that in most fics, that would at least be fine. But fans don’t even do the courtesy of giving JC that arc! Instead, it’s always JC being right -- whether about the GC transfer, or he’s suddenly become a person who’s willing to help the Wens and WWX is just a stupid idiot for doing it on his own -- and WWX has to admit that JC was right.
And where MQ becomes more comfortable with the fact that he used to be a servant, accepting and overcoming the insecurities, JC’s arc in fic could be learning to overcome his insecurities that WWX is better than him at many things even despite their class differences. But no, fanon JC has to be AMAZING at something, or even SEVERAL things, SO much BETTER at them than poor stupid WWX. That’s the BEST solution for Yunmeng bros reconciliation, obviously.
At this point, I honestly wish JC was actually given MQ’s character arc in more fics, because at least he could be said to have one, and not just have always been a perfect person, best brother, best jiujiu, bestest sect leader. Ugh.
It kind of feels like another side of purity culture from the people who should be against it. If JC and WWX reconcile,if JC loves WWX, then JC can’t have ever been a bad brother. Instead, it’s Wei Wuxian who has been the bad brother (the character who’s more easy to change since he a) has already gone through this characterization in all versions of the canon, so his development can be reversed for the fic and brought back up to speed by the end, and b) has actually had character growth, unlike JC, so it’s easier to write that growth). It’s Wei Wuxian who needs to change to match where JC is at. It’s fine if the “bad brother” is the character who tried to do good, but fucked it up because he “doesn’t know how to ask for help!” or “is too stupid to know other people care!” or whatever other excuse. That’s easy to fix! But it’s not fine when it’s the character who never really cared about people outside of his sect and is terribly low on empathy/mercy/compassion/caring. JC has to have been secretly good all along! He loves his brother, so obviously he never did anything terrible to him! Or to other people in the name of hating him! Love cannot be unhealthy or messy or crystalized over by and wrapped up in hate!
(I mean, if we’re comparing characters to JC, Severus Snape also has an unpleasant personality yet was actually revealed to not have been evil all along, and the discourse around him is more interesting than the stuff surrounding JC. It’s still often stupid discourse, but at least it’s based on evidence from the text and not a made up secret narrative where JC hasn’t been a bad person this whole time so fans can just make up whatever characterization they want.)
Instead of dealing with JC’s and WWX’s canon relationship and trying to find a way forward from where they left off in Guanyin Temple (if they’re ignoring the extras in MDZS, or going off CQL), fanon JC is just retroactively made into having always been a good person to justify the ease of their reconciliation.
And as someone who loves delving into fictional complex, complicated, messy, ugly relationships, I find it so...bland, boring, childish, and exhausting.
"As someone who loves delving into fictional complex, complicated, messy, ugly relationships, I find it so...bland, boring, childish, and exhausting."
Hello there anon, the above as well as what you said about reversing Wei Wuxian's character to be on par with how awful Jiang Cheng was to him is especially resonating. As a person Jiang Cheng himself for all intents was considered at least above average from the normal cultivators.
Yet his downfall always relied on his hate of Wei Wuxian (as a person, in talent, socially) it is a core part of his character that is woven into the work itself and the catalyst for Wei Wuxian's death itself. Jiang Cheng if anything, is coldly upfront on just why he refuses to help Wei Wuxian out of his predicament as well as framing Wei Wuxian. The text itself says he puts little fight in pretending to even speak for Wei Wuxian's behalf when Jin Guangshan begins to sully him and conspire about him wanting to be a sect leader. He is meant to be the complete contrast in Lan Wangji and Mianmian trying to speak for his good-will, in fact he contradicts this by saying that Wei Wuxian has always been tiresomely reckless and uncontrollable, something that holds little truth as Wei Wuxian worked in trust for Yunmeng Jiang's benefit for years. Their actions simply are not of comparable fault and the end of the work (in the least the novel) makes this message clear. Jiang Cheng, as a character, like MXTX said is a product of following what his environment made him as well as him putting no fight on his end to amend that to be better and learn. Love is very complicatedly explored in this work in all it's ways and that's what is very beautiful about it. It does not shy away from the forms it manifests in. Including Jiang Cheng's who at the base of it, the rivalry there was as much one-sided as Shu She's for Lan Wangji, the layers of irony are the best part of the novel for each of it's characters.
As for fandom. I do think a lot of it is petty stupid discourse (oh and I have never said I am particularly immune to it, I am far too sarcastic for my own good and have a bit of a loud mouth when I see something particularly ridiculous for this fandom and I do not know when to shut up my filter). But, so much of it is coated within personal resonance towards certain characters which leads to feeling personally hurt, especially when the block features exist on this site. Multiple tags have been implemented to block for this exact purpose, yet their comes the takes that you can not use these sarcastic tags that are blockable because "it's not the right ones". Fandom is ever shifting and as such it is curated as much as you want it to be. Being ordered to not use these tags or to avoid posting all together is a moot point as well as demanding others to read how you want them to, even when the work textually supports or does not certain interpretations. As lovely as the thought is that "all interpretations are valid", logically it does not work quite so well when you attempt to push that on so many others with little helpful evidence other than flimsy fanon popularity (Ron the Death Eater And Draco in Leather pants are infamous fandom tropes that are despised for reasons). JC is not a case of questionable good for selfish reasons as in the comparison to Snape, he is simply a show of selfishness who has an ambiguous opening to do better, in terms of those in the future. Too much clout though is put on that idea when the work itself is not shy to say real good, kind, supportive people are hard to come by.
#mdzs#mo dao zu shi#canon jiang cheng#jiang cheng#I love him but he is very much a trash racoon king#fandom also needs to chill with is elitisism and faux intellectualism
120 notes
·
View notes
Text
Being Exiled with Tommy Headcannons!|| 🥀
irl/ in-game
Genre| angst + comfort
h e a d c a n n o n s||
Sypnosis|
Both you and Tommy ended up getting exiled together.
Artist| OliverSonder on twitter!!
Warnings] mentions of manipulation, character death, spoilers for Tommy’s Exile Arc and the Season 2 finale!!
[can be seen as both platonic or romantic!!]
||gender neutral reader!!||
(also this was not grammar checked and im to lazy to watch through hours of footage so if anything in here is wrong blame it on the DSMP Wiki OKAY LETS GO-)
So i think its pretty established that if you end up getting exiled with Tommy your one of two things.
- Really sweet and loyal friend that will stick up for in-justice and be there when someone needs you the most
Or
- A total fucking gremlin that will steal your kneecaps and toes and eat your shower curtains in the middle of the night.
There is no inbetween here you guys.
I did end up going for Reader A, though. But you guys tell me if you want headcannons for a gremlin!reader because i will gladly do that!!
But anyways just... enjoy exile!
Exile|
- It was about his third day in exile when Y/N appeared through the nether portal, bags, pouches, tools, armor, etc. on their person. Tommy thought they either were here to beat him up or got exiled themselves.
- Tommy was pleasantly surprised when he learned that Y/N was actually there on their own accord, helping him through exile and being his shoulder to lean on. The first few days we’re rough, fighting back mobs in the night and farming crops all day. His clothes we’re starting to get dirty and torn by the time Y/N got there.
- Y/N ended up making a little bunker about 30 blocks from where they’re tent was, where they hid all theirs and Tommy’s valuables, such as armor, diamonds & iron, and rations. Although Y/N never gave into Dream and gave him they’re stuff, Y/N simply refused, they wouldn’t be giving in that easily.
- Most of they’re days are spent in caves mining away, chatting and fighting off Creeper’s as they tried to keep the moral high, always keeping Tommy company. Y/N never let him go anywhere alone, they we’re always with him, like his own bodyguard of sorts.
- One time they both find a Mineshaft though and got lost, they ended up at the surface two dayd later with torn clothes, cuts and bruises and we’re in bad shape. Thankfully Y/N had a brewing stand at they’re camp though, so Healing Potions we’re semi-easy to make/get.
- After the duo end up going to the artic though... things got... weird.
- Techno was not expecting to open his door to find the heathen Tommy and sweetheart Y/N at his doorstep shivering and begging to come inside, bags thrown on they’re shoulders as they teeth chattered from the cold wind and snow.
- Whenever Dream comes to visit Y/N always has to hide with Tommy, reassuring him that its okay and they’ll always be there for him, and protect him at any cost, which he highly appreciates.
- The ‘gapple-eating’ thing Tommy did was a cute, yet depressing thing. Seeing him hasitly munching on golden-coated apples was funny and caused giggles, but the meaning behind it always left Y/N with a lump in their throat and a hole in their heart.
- Whenever Tommy is in danger and calls for Dream, Y/N always has to stop him and bring him back to reality, making Tommy realize Dream isnt his friend, and never was. Many nights have happened where the two talk about Tommy’s feelings with Dream, not only for Tommy to vent and let everything out, but also for Y/N to understand whats going on in his head.
- When going into the Nether Tommy always grips Y/N’s hand, as his fear of lava and heights consumes him whole in that firey dimension.
- When Tommy gets up close to Dream in the cabin? Y/N is scared spineless, if people could see them, they’d see the palest, most terrified and worried being on earth.
- Y/N having a heart attack when Ghostbur slips up
- Ghostbur is just a whole thing and just. Y/N needs a break, okay?
- Y/N begrudgingly helping Tommy build his cobblestone tower outside of Techno’s cabin.
- Y/N apologizing soon after to Techno only for him to laugh and ruffle Y/N’s hair, saying he knows how Tommy can get anyone to any situation.
- Very rarely does Y/N ever leave Tommy’s side, when they do its usually to get supplies or visit they’re friends. So when Y/N was walking back to the Nether portal to see Tommy, Techno and Dream all standing there, looking like they’re about to slit the others throat, well...
- Nobody has ever seen Y/N drop kick a person so fast.
��WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” Y/N yelled, they’re sword at Dream’s neck, as he laid on his back, his mask covering his shocked expression.
“Answer. Me.” Y/N gritted through their teeth, pushing their swordfurther against the masked mans throat. Techno soon chimed in, reassuring Y/N that nothing to terrible happened.
“It’s fine, Y/N. He didn’t do anything, why not we head back home? Wouldn’t want that homeless man to be to scared spineless, eh?” Techno said, hand on they’re shoulder as he looked Y/N in the eyes.
The 3 walked back to the Nether portal, purple mist engulfing Tommy and Techno as Y/N stood in front of the portal. Back turned towards Dream, Y/N shifted they’re head and glared at Dream with eyes that could kill.
“Don’t do anything you might regret, you megalomaniac.”
- When Tommy and Tubbo decide to go fight Dream, Y/N is both excited and scared. They hope Dream will finally be taken down, but they dont want Tommy (& Tubbo) to be taken down as well.
- So like any amazing best friend, Y/N brews up a bunch of potions of Strength, Healing + Regen, Invisibility and more. Even if Tommy thought he was going to be walking out of there alone, he wasn’t going to be. Y/N would make sure.
- Y/N watched from afar as Tommy got his disc out of the jukebox, laughing in success. All Y/N did was clap quietly, making sure they’re Invisibility didn’t wear off. They we’re making sure Tommy stayed safe, even if he didn’t realize it. Y/N loved him with they’re whole heart, and everyone knew that.
- At Dreams secret base, Y/N was just getting there as Tommy took Dreams first canon life.
“Tommy. Stop. Dont do anything you might regret.” Dream snarled, looking at the teenage boy, his blue eyes dull, yet full of passion and vigor.
All Tommy did was pursue forward, as everyone waited for what was to come. Tommy took one step to close though, because Dream had decided that he had enough.
Dream brought his arm into the air, hand curled into a fist, he was about to hurl his hand into Tommy’s face when Dream suddenly fell to the ground, arrow in his forehead.
Dream was shot by Y/N
Y/N stood there, enchanted bow in hand, infront of the nether portal that swirled with an eerie purple mist. Y/N lowered their bow, staring at the man who tortured Tommy for weeks now. Y/N simply stepped forward and towered over Dreams corpse before it disappeared in thin air.
Lets just say Dream wouldn’t be hurting the blonde heathen anytime soon.
a/n: howdy everyone how we doing? Decided to do Tommy x Reader for this post, although i am MAJORLY simping for Wilbur atm and i have brainrot so that’ll most likely be the next post (if i dont do a pt. 2 for this one but even so WILBUR).
Anyways i hope i did racooninnit justice, i have no idea how to do headcannons since half the time i ramble (its the adhd) so this was new for me. Definitely not my strong suit but like you live ya learn. Also, sorry if i left out quite a lot, i might make a fic about this and include more events, but this is really long for headcannons (because of my layout) so i didn’t include to much. I dont want people scrolling for like 20 seconds to go to another post (i write on mobile so undercut is not a thing for me RIP)
Anyways have a lovely day and dont let Tommy eat all your gapples!!
#tommyinnit x reader#tommyinnit imagine#tommyinnit fanfic#tommy x reader#tommy imagine#tommy fanfic#mcyt x reader#mcyt imagine#mcyt fanfiction#dream smp x reader#dream smp imagine#dream smp fanfiction#dreamer posts ♠️
448 notes
·
View notes
Text
Rewriting Haggar/Honerva’s redemption arc
One of the many things that bothered me about VLD S8 is Honerva’s redemption arc. While I was never fully against the idea of Honerva getting a redemption arc, I just didn’t want VLD to do it because I knew that they would fuck it up if they tried. And low and behold, I was right!
But yeah, I wasn’t against the idea of her being redeemed. And I don’t mean “redeemed” as in “all is forgiven and she’s just a good guy now,” but more like a Darth Vader, “the things she did were inexcusable and she would never be able to right all her wrongs but she goes out on one good act to show that there was still good in her deep down and she at least had the potential to change.”
I know a lot of people don’t like the whole, “redemption=death” thing, which I understand, but I personally never had a problem with it.
Ok, so why didn’t Honerva’s redemption work? Well there are a few reasons but the one that baffles me the most is that, instead of trying to make her more sympathetic, season 8 seemed to go out of its way to show her being more evil and vile than ever.
And because I have nothing better to do, I’m gonna go through Honerva’s story in VLD and explain what I would change to make her redemption more believable.
(Keep in mind I am not a writer, this is just me ranting about my favorite character and how I personally would’ve written her.)
1. Realizing she’s Altean
I always thought it’s was weird that when Allura said “you’re...Altean!?” In the S2 finale, Haggar didn’t seem to react at all, she just kept attacking. It’s as if she didn’t care or already knew, which doesn’t make sense considering in the S3 finale and S8E2 it’s established that Haggar has no memory of who she was before she died. And in S4E3 she seems shocked by her Altean face (which also doesn’t make sense because her blue skin isn’t camouflage that’s just how she looks after the rift) so it seems like she didn’t know.
Wouldn’t it have made more sence if after Allura said “you’re...Altean!?” Honerva looked confused/shocked? If she became defensive and said Allura was lying/trying to insult her? There’s def anti-Altean propaganda in the empire so it would be considered an insult.
After that she starts questioning Zarkon. And when she looks into his mind, it’s out of genuine curiosity and desire to know the truth, not because, “the empire needs him” or whatever that meant.
And isn’t it a bit odd that she doesn’t seem betrayed at all when she finds out Zarkon has been keeping all this from her? She’s just like, “oh, you’re my husband? Cool.” Wtf???
2. Her past relationship with Zarkon
Okay, I love Zonerva, but if we’re being honest, Zarkon was not the best husband. He enabled the shit out of Honerva, even when it was obvious that the rift was doing serious damage to her physical and mental health. To me, it seems like Zarkon was so blinded by the power the rift gave him that he didn’t realize/ignored the negative effect it was having on Honerva. In the same way he downplayed the negative impact the rift had on the planet.
I think that should’ve been explored more. Maybe Honerva notices that she’s been acting differently and is worried somethings wrong (think S5 Kuron). And Honerva tries to tell Zarkon that she feels strange and Zarkon just brushes it off.
And later, when Alfor visits Diaibazaal years later. Things are pretty much the same except when we sees Honerva, she is very obviously pregnant and Alfor’s there when Honerva falls and goes into labor (instead of a random quintessence seizure). Alfor and many Galran doctors try their best to save her and the baby but she dies in childbirth.
Zarkon goes ballistic. He’s yelling, throwing doctors across the room, and Alfor turns to the doctor holding Lotor and tells them to get the baby to safely, fearing Zarkon will take his grief out on the baby.
Zarkon turns on Alfor, blaming him for Honerva’s death and accusing him of letting her die so that he could get his way and close the rift. He lunges Alfor and roars at him to leave.
He spends the rest of the night grieving at Honerva’s bedside, when Kova jumps on the bed and starts gnawing on her finger trying to wake her up. This is what gives him the idea to bring her back with quintessence.
3. Her current relationship with Zarkon
I think it’s pretty safe to say that they’re relationship didn’t get better after the war began. Zarkon hid her identity and her child from her for 10,000 years and essentially used her as a tool of war. It’s pretty fucked up.
I know it’s pretty well established that Zarkon treats Haggar with more respect than his other underlings, but I feel like it would be interesting to see that change overtime. We see that after Voltron comes back, Zarkon becomes very obsessed with Voltron/Black, and he and Haggar start disagreeing more and more.
Remember the moment where one of Haggar’s druids told Zarkon Haggar said he needed to rest and Zarkon hit them with his bayard and told them, “remember who your master is”? What if, instead of a random druid, it was Haggar who he hit?
I feel like that would be a good way to show Haggar and the audience just how much Zarkon’s obsession with Voltron is affecting him, and make the audience feel a tiny bit bad for her.
Then later in season 4, when Zarkon wakes up from his coma and finds out Haggar brought Lotor back to take his place he gets pissed. He puts a price on Lotor’s head and has Haggar arrested for treason. She steals a ship, escapes, and later on meets up with Lotor’s generals.
Her and Zarkon are officially broken up and her quest to reclaim her identity and get her son back begins.
4. Oriande
I never liked the concept of chosen/sacred Alteans. The idea that some Alteans are just born more powerful than others just feels iffy. My idea of Oriande is that it’s an Altean holly land, any Altean can enter it just depends on whether or not you can pass the White Lion’s trial. Passing the trial proves that your intentions are pure and and the White Lion will bless you with power.
I didn’t like how Honerva seemed to force her way into Oriande, I think it would be more effective if she had gone through normally because, at this point, her intentions were pure. She was going there to purge herself of the dark magic corrupting her and reclaim her memories so she could go get her son back.
I also like the idea that Oriande is a sorta link to the Altean after life, and you can speak with people you’ve lost. Allura gets to speak with Alfor, and Honerva speaks with her mother.
You could also have her be confronted by the spirits of the Alteans she helped destroy. Have the weight of her past actions bear down on her. An important part of any redemption arc is acknowledging the terrible shit you’ve done in the past, and that was severely lacking in Honerva’s arc.
Another interesting thing you could do is have Honerva talk to her younger self. The one that died 10,000 years ago. This kinda thing actually happened in 80s Voltron, young Haggar appearing in Haggar’s head trying to convince her to be good again.
5. Her relationship with Lotor
Now this is where the redemption arc really falls apart. I forget who, but one of the writers said after S5 that Haggar/Honerva was motivated purely by love for her son, but man did they do a bad job of showing that.
And it would’ve been so easy to fix that problem, just have her not be horrible to him. Have them have actual civil conversations, have her protect and defend him. Don’t have her reject him as a fucking baby!
Imagine if, after Zarkon destroys Lotor’s planet, instead of immediately deciding to
exile him, Zarkon says that this is the final straw and he’s going to have Lotor executed. But Haggar speaks up to defend Him. There’s actually a scene in DOTU where Zarkon tries to kill Lotor and Haggar gets on her knees and begs for him to be spared. (Though the scene was mostly played for laughs.)
she asks for mercy and justifies it by saying it would be unwise to kill his only heir. It’s a weak argument, Lotor’s a half breed and couldn’t realistically take the throne, but Zarkon does concede, he still loves her after all, and has Lotor exiled.
And Haggar isn’t spying on him because she doesn’t trust him, but because she’s concerned for him. When Lotor confronts Haggar about sending her cronies after him, she says she knows he’s hiding something. Lotor asks if she’s threatening him, thinking she’s going to rat him out, but she says no, she’s not threatening him, she’s just trying to warn him against doing anything stupid because, with Zarkon seemingly on his death bed, the empire needs Lotor’s leadership.
At this point in the story, Haggar is questioning her loyalty to Zarkon, so I feel like it would make sense for her to be silently supporting Lotor from the shadows.
Then at the Kral Zera in season 5, It was weird to me how she was helping Lotor through Kuron while also telling him he couldn’t be emperor and trying to put Sendak on the throne. I feel like it would’ve made more sense for Sendak to just show up on his own without Haggar.
Haggar wouldn’t even be at the Kral Zera, she would just watch through Kuron.
And then we get to S6 when she actually reveals to Lotor that she’s his mom. This scene was just so poorly done. She never actually apologizes to him, she’s just like “yeah I forgot you were my kid and I never loved you, but were cool now right?” I remember when I saw S8E2 and it shows her after Lotor rejects her and she looks like she’s about to cry, I was just thinking, “this would be very emotional and sad IF she had actually apologized and made it clear that she genuinely loved him.” But she didn’t and I don’t know why!
And then we get to season 8, and of course everything in S8 is bad but Honerva’s story is particularly bad. She’s supposed to be motivated by love for Lotor yet she doesn’t act like she actually cares about him at all.
She manipulates his corpse and when she sees his gross melted body, she doesn’t even react that much. When a mother sees her child’s mutilated corpse, how do you think she reacts? Screaming? Crying?? Hurling??? But no. She’s just like, “...”
And then when she goes to the alternate reality and meets baby Lotor and he rejects her, her reaction isn’t disappointment or sadness, it’s anger and entitlement. She immediately decides, “ok, fuck this kid. Let’s destroy this reality.”
It just doesn’t make sense! This is the season you’re trying to REDEEM her! Why are you going out of your way to make her so vile?
6. Her S7-S8 plan
(Keep in mind I haven’t watched S7/S8 since they came out and barely even watched S8 to begin with, so I don’t remember some things and I can’t be bothered to rewatch them.)
Okay, starting with S7, she’s not in this season at all but in “The Ruins” the druid dude says that her final order was to hunt and destroy the Blade of Marmora. I guess it makes a certain amount of sense because she saw that it was Keith who brought Lotor’s actions to light, but that whole plot was really pointless in my opinion. (Was anybody really hoping for a rematch between Keith and that one random druid?)
If you want us to forgive Honerva for her crimes, you really shouldn’t keep adding more unnecessary crimes. It’s established that there were a lot of Galra war lords vying for power and pirates looking for money, just have it be that Kolivan got kidnapped by one of them.
Then you have her season 8 plan and I’m gonna be real with y’all, I have no idea how to fix this mess.
I feel like the basics of her plan could work. She tries to get Lotor and Sincline out of the rift but when she gets him he’s a melted corpse so the plan then becomes to use sincline to go to another reality to find a living Lotor, but opening all these rifts causes problems and the paladins have to stop her.
But all the shit with manipulating the colony Alteans, killing the White Lion, desecrating Oriande, and destroying Olkarion and entire realities, it was all so unnecessary.
Personally I would cut the colony Alteans from the story all together, there are other ways for Lotor to betray the team. It was a lazy way of making Lotor 100% evil and having Honerva manipulate them is unnecessarily cruel, especially in the season you’re trying to redeem her.
Here’s a very basic outline of how I would do this plot.
If we’re going by season 8’s logic that she needs a sacrifice to bring back Sincline, I would’ve had the Galra she killed at the Kral Zera be the sacrifice, not the White Lion. She stands on the pyramid and talks about how the empire stole her life from her and she wants revenge as she absorbs their quintessence into herself and then uses that to bring back Sincline.
Then when she finds Lotor dead she takes Sincline and uses it to go to another reality where she can be with her family.
The danger comes when she opens rifts to the other realities and rift creatures start coming out and causing damage. The paladins fight them and follow her into the rift to stop whatever evil plan she may have. Because the paladins don’t know that Haggar is now Honerva and all this is just to get Lotor back. They think this is all some plan for multiverse domination or some shit.
Meanwhile Honerva has just been rejected by little Lotor and seeing Voltron show up pushes her over the edge and they fight.
But when they find out the real reason she’s doing all this they start trying to appeal to her and convince her to give up and close the rift peacefully. And similarly to how the paladins had to sacrifice the castle to close the rifts created by the fight with Lotor, Honerva has to sacrifice herself to close the rifts.
In the end, I feel like a Honerva redemption arc could’ve worked if the writers were actually competent and actually made an effort to have her be sympathetic, but In canon, her reasoning, “If I can’t indulge in the simple joys of life, why should anybody else?” just doesn’t cut it.
It’s disappointing. VLD had so much potential. I’m thinking of just rewriting the entire series from the beginning. Hopefully putting all my thoughts out into the universe will help me move on.
#voltron#voltron legendary discourse#haggar#honerva#Lotor#prince lotor#Allura#princess allura#vld#vld critical#Altean#voltron season 8#zarkon#emperor Zarkon#zonerva#Galra#redemption arc
180 notes
·
View notes
Note
What are your thoughts on tua S2? Did you feel like the characters grew? What did you like? What did you not? I’m interested in your perspective. Your analysis are super thoughtful and interesting!
Aw, thanks, Anon!
Overall, I really enjoyed S2 and thought it was a solid follow-up to S1. I do have my quibbles about it, so I think (for ease of reference and because my thoughts are a little scattered today) I’ll list some of my personal highlights (in no particular order) before getting into what I didn’t like as much.
Big spoilers ahead.
Allison. I thought they handled her storyline especially well. Of all the siblings, I think she had the most difficult obstacles placed in her way (not only is she a Black woman landing in 1961 Dallas, but she’s a Black woman landing in 1961 Dallas who can’t even speak in her own defense for a year) and they sugarcoated exactly none of it. The writers pulled no punches when showing what civil rights protesters went through, which just made their nonviolent response all the more breathtaking. Allison’s fear and anger during those scenes were palpable even as she kept them hidden. But along with that horror, we see the kindness and warmth of the Dallas Black community, the women who take her in simply because she needs their help, and her love for Ray, perhaps heretofore THE most thoughtful husband ever portrayed on screen. I loved him, and I loved him and Allison together. While I understand and respect his choice to stay in 1963, I wish they’d gotten more time together. They both deserved it.
Vanya. We got to see how much the baggage from her past affected her by glimpsing what she might be like if it were taken away. It’s an interesting philosophical question, and it was explored well, in my opinion. She finds it easier to love and be loved, and she stands up for herself more readily—but she also doesn’t hesitate to use powers she can’t quite control and threatens Five without fully realizing how dire her threat is (or how it might dredge up traumatic memories she doesn’t know exist). The moment where Ben finds her curled up, fully convinced she’s a monster, was heartbreaking. I loved watching her find happiness with Sissy, even if that was fleeting (and dear god, Sissy deserved her happy ending with Vanya, dammit, I don’t care if it would fuck up the timeline). Her patience and sweetness with Harlan were just beautiful. And the way she used the confidence she gained during her amnesia to fully come into her own not to exact revenge on her siblings, but to save them, was fucking phenomenal.
The humor. There was a lot more humor this season, and it was awesome. So many iconic scenes—Olga Foroga, Luther babysitting two homicidal Fives, Elliot awkwardly lecturing his guests on the history of Jello, “NEW TIMELINE NEW ME,” “Your vagina needs glasses,” AJ the fish gobbling up the cigarette bubbles, Five getting to say “fuck”….this season was a lot funnier than the previous one, and I think that was one of its strengths.
Klaus’ cult. It was played for laughs, which I both expected and thought was the best way to handle it. He didn’t want to start a new religion with himself at the center; he just wanted to not get thrown out of any more diners, but Destiny’s Children had other ideas. The “I too am a fraud!” scene was hilarious and tickled the question of whether or not a religion founded on false pretenses can still help those within it find meaning.
Luther. Getting him away from his dad, his siblings, and the Academy was exactly what he needed to become the pure of heart and dumb of ass genius we always knew he was, but his first major step in that direction was heartbreaking. We all knew he’d be rejected once he got to the Academy. We all knew Reginald would rip his heart out and stomp on it in his admittedly fashionable shoes. It gets Luther out on his own and forces him to become his own person apart from his dad, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch. He got the positive character development he needed, but the catalyst was tragic.
Diego. We see, for the first time, exactly how Reginald kept him in line—not with meds or with PTSD-inducing torture, but with words. Even when he knows Diego as little more than a stranger, Reginald is able to rip off his skin and fling it in his face with a single diatribe; and even at 30, with years away from his dad, Diego is left unable to speak, feeling as if all of his accomplishments up to that point were the work of a dumb kid who thought he was smarter and more capable than he actually was.
Luther and Diego sharing a braincell. Luther has bad ideas. Diego has bad ideas. When they put their bad ideas together, they get terrible ideas. I loved watching them work together as a team, rather than being at each others’ throats for most of the season, even if I’m left hoping Olga Foroga had a pleasant and quiet day after that phone call.
Reginald. At first glance, it may look like the writers were trying to make him likable so they could parade him around as your average abusive-parent-with-a-soft-side. But it’s more nuanced than that. Abusive parents (and abusers in general) often fly under the radar because they fool outsiders into thinking they’re good people. They’re active in their communities. They give to charity. They have friends who attest to their virtue, significant others who think they’re the greatest. And that’s what we see with Reginald. We see him as the rest of the world did: an intelligent, eccentric man with a sharp sense of humor who cared deeply about scientific advancement. That’s how he evaded suspicion—because there were stories from years past of lively parties at his mansion, of what a gentleman he was to Grace and of how he did everything he could to save little Pogo. But those stories would all have come from people he considered his equals. When he’s with people he considers his inferiors—aka, the Umbrella kids—he’s openly condescending and demeaning. We get to see how he fooled the world, and it is chilling.
Elliot. He deserved better, and you can ship him with any one of the Hargreeves kids and get the cutest thing ever.
The Swedes. They said so much while speaking very little.
Ben. He got more personality and screen time, and it was glorious. His love of his family and resentment toward Klaus practically leapt off the screen. The way he says “I’ve missed you all…so much” once they’ve all left was one of those right-in-the-feels moments; and watching him get so much of what he’s wanted for years when he possesses Klaus was beautiful.
Now, as for things I took issue with….
Ben. I understand why they ended his arc the way they did. I get that they were probably afraid the Klaus/Ben dynamic would grow stale if they didn’t change it somehow and wanted to give him a larger role in S3. His death(???) was heartbreaking and extremely well-done. But it also wasn’t foreshadowed. We never got any sense of what ghosts in the TUA ‘verse are, so the fact they can be destroyed by a ton of sound-turned-energy or by going too far into someone’s psyche or whatever happened….it’s not that it doesn’t make sense so much as there’s not enough evidence to determine whether or not it makes sense. It feels like the writers just kinda made that up so they’d have a reason to change Ben’s relationship dynamics, but if that’s the case, couldn’t they have done it another way? Couldn’t they have made it so the immense energy or psychic woo-woo or whatever gave him a power-up instead of destroying him? Vanya transferred some of her energy into Harlan and brought him back to life. Couldn’t something similar have happened with Ben? And if it tied him to Vanya as well as to Klaus, great! More fodder for angst and humor! (”Vannyyyyyyyy, stop hogging Ben!” “You got him for 17 years, Klaus, you can part with him for 20 minutes.” “Guys, don’t I get a say in this?”) I’m glad they didn’t write him out of the series entirely, but I still wish they’d kept him and all the character development he’d gotten throughout S2.
Episode 10. It looks like they tried to cram half a season’s worth of developments into 45 minutes. Twenty minutes in, I’d already said “Wait what the fuck” half a dozen times. A lot of those moments were explained later on, and I was able to make enough inferences to fill in any lingering plot holes, but…still. Too much stuff, too little time. E9 was a perfectly satisfying ending to the season. Yes, it leaves the siblings stranded in 1963, but they could’ve tied up those loose ends in the S3 premiere.
Lila. She’s an incredibly fun character, but her arc is kind of a mess. Most of that is due to E10, and I do feel that more time to let her arc breathe would’ve worked wonders, but I’m left feeling like her turn from “Handler is the best mom ever and I lurve Diego too” to “KILL DIEGO AND HIS EVIL FAMILY” to “Handler is a bad mom and Diego is right” happened too quickly.
The Commission. Okay, so, the Handler announces the entire Board has been killed, and she’s stepping in as director even though everyone appears to know she’s been demoted (and demoted pretty severely—she went from having an office bigger than some apartments to being a case management drone). There’s suspicion and lots of it. But then, La Resistance is….ten or so people in a single room? And when she calls the temps agents to her side, thousands of them show up ready and willing to fight and die? I dunno. Just seems like there should’ve been more splintering going on there. Again, I think they needed more time to tie everything up.
Aside from those complaints, I loved the season. I set aside most of a day to binge it, and I do not regret that decision at all.
#the umbrella academy season 2 spoilers#tua s2 spoilers#umbrella academy season 2 spoilers#The Umbrella Academy#Umbrella Academy#tua#luther hargreeves#Diego hargreeves#allison hargreeves#klaus hargreeves#five hargreeves#ben hargreeves#vanya hargreeves#reginald hargreeves#grace#pogo#number one#number two#number three#number four#number five#number six#number seven#anon#answered
1K notes
·
View notes
Note
Can you explain trauma Kirk has in the cheating scene? Im new to star trek
Welcome!!! I hope you stick around for a while and become fully assimilated into the strange, delightful glory that is Trek fandom.
I can only speak for myself, but when I talk about Jim’s trauma, I’m referring to two main components (under the read-more for discussion of childhood abuse and Tarsus):
1. Jim’s abusive childhood
There’s a deleted scene from Jim’s childhood in the first movie in which his older brother Sam is shown running away from home. It‘s made clear that the “man of the house” Frank is at the very least verbally and emotionally abusive to both kids, and based on baby Jimmy’s reaction to Frank getting in his face, I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine that it had or would later escalate to physical violence.
[Note: Because AOS and especially the extended universe are a hot mess, some pseudo-canon sources describe Frank as their uncle (Winona’s brother) while others have him as their stepfather. I’ve gone with stepfather, because I think it better explains why they stayed in that situation as long as they did.]
Sam says their mom doesn’t understand how Frank treats them when she’s not around (i.e., off-planet with Starfleet), which makes the case for a certain amount of neglect as well. Then there’s the AOS tie-in comic Operation: Annihilate, which shows the aftermath of the car incident, and in which Winona is pretty grossly depicted as an enabler of Frank’s abuse, telling Jimmy that Frank just gets mad sometimes and that he basically needs to suck it up and live with it. For the record, this comic is not part of my personal canon, as I think the exchange I’m describing is lazily characterized and does Winona unnecessarily dirty. (“He’s given us a home” - motherfucker, it’s a post-scarcity economy and you work for Starfleet! Get a goddamn apartment!) That said, I do think Winona bears significant responsibility for leaving her kids in that situation, since the most charitable read is that she wasn’t paying enough attention to realize how Frank was treating them. (I know at least one of my fandom friends disagrees on this point, and I’ll acknowledge that I have a dirty lens when it comes to childhood abuse and the enabling thereof. Your mileage may vary.)
Anyway. In this version of events, Jimmy doesn’t steal the car because he’s some innately shitheaded out-of-control rebel like the final cut suggests. In fact, Sam’s exposition tells us that up until this point Jimmy has been an exceptionally obedient, rule-following, “good” child. Here, he steals the car because Sam leaving and his own realization that he’s never going to be good enough to make Frank happy makes something in him snap. It’s a powerful moment which greatly enhances Jim’s characterization, and if you ask me it��s frankly criminal that they deleted this scene.
2. Tarsus IV
TOS Kirk is a canonical survivor of a famine and genocidal massacre on the colony Tarsus IV. Here again canon is a bit of a mess when it comes to Tarsus IV, and fanon has taken that canon and gone absolutely hog wild with it, but it is firmly established that Jim was just 13 at the time, which...woof. That’s dark as hell.
Now, it is not official AOS canon that this version of Jim was on Tarsus IV at the time of the massacre, but it’s also not official that he wasn’t. My take, which I think is shared by many in fandom, is that AOS Jim was sent there to live with family after the car incident as a sort of “get your head straight” move, and also (in my opinion) because Winona finally started cluing in that it probably wasn’t a great idea to leave him alone with Frank.
The TOS extended universe further establishes that Jim was understandably pretty messed up after the events of Tarsus, and that his father’s intervention was crucial to helping him recover and setting him on the path toward Starfleet and the Enterprise. In AOS, of course, George isn’t around to provide that support, and Jim’s already learned that he can’t rely on his mom, and he’s maybe stuck living with fucking Frank again. All of this builds on his earlier trauma in really terrible ways, and he never has the opportunity to actually heal from any of it.
Aftermath: PTSD and the cheating scene
Again, the abuse and Tarsus IV are both semi-canonical at best. However, I’d argue that they should be considered canon, because Jim’s character arc makes a lot more sense when they’re included. This double whammy of unresolved trauma and the almost total absence of emotional support go a long way toward explaining how the boy who grows up to be TOS Kirk in one timeline instead grows into the Jim Kirk we meet at the bar in 2255 of the Kelvin timeline - a “repeat offender,” reckless, directionless, emotionally detached, quick to meet violence with violence, and so very, very angry.
That’s why the scene where Spock lays into Jim for cheating on the Kobayashi Maru is so painful to me. Jim is up on display at the front of this hall, being stared at by basically everyone he knows, and Spock is criticizing him for missing the point of the exercise - specifically, lecturing him about needing to experience fear and control his reaction to it. Imagine how that would land for someone with as much trauma as Jim is carrying, who endured all he did as a powerless child, and who (in my telling of things) suffers to this day from panic attacks as a result. It’s, uh...it’s not great.
#maybe someday i'll actually finish jim's prequel and this will become clearer#in the meantime have a bunch of words in some semblance of order#fic related#kirk#star trek#aos#ask#anon
150 notes
·
View notes
Note
Plesse tell me about queerness in the get down!!
okay okay queerness in the get down let's fuckn goooo
disclaimer: I havent watched this show in full for like 5 months at least, probably gonna get something wrong and/or forget some more important bits. also this wasnt proof read I just word vomited
tws: period typical homophobia, abuse mention, f slur use, bury your gays trope, overdose mention, mention of a creepy possible age gap (the age gap hasnt been confirmed so that's why its possible), cops
going from least to most prominent queer characters, let's start with mylene cruz!
so, from the beginning of this show she has an established romantic relationship with ezekiel (although the status of their actual relationship changes frequently throughout the show) and though this was a relationship she was hesitant to pursue, it is clear that she does have romantic feelings for him and if not for them both having growing careers in very different music genres (zeke specifically working in a genre that she repeatedly labels as bad because she thinks they're ruining records + that it isnt real music because they're using someone elses piece and rapping over it, that's not really important here tho lol) they probably wouldve had a much healthier, smooth sailing romance. that being said theres a few things that happen in the show that, while not explicitly clear, or even really good coding at that—to the point where you wont catch if you really arent looking for it (and trust me, I always look for coding, hers was just so little that it flew over my head until I saw someone else mention it)—are still cool to think about!
so, for starters, I wanna mention the toy box performance, which was performed by mylene and regina, who are best friends. that's all cool and shit, and you dont really think much about it...until you hear about the fact that the show runners purposely colored a lot of the scenes in that performance with the bi colors. like. the writers after the show ended basically said "oh yeah there was plans to make her coding more explicit, but our shit got cancelled soooo" and then dropped the fact that she was gonna be bi (or at least implies bi) in the series, which puts a new twist on a few things.
now, besides the bi coloring in the background of the toy box performance (which was mostly on scenes with her and regina, which involved a lot of uh,, lowkey lewd dancing. with each other. in very revealing outfits. wooooo), there's her music! I dont tend to read too much into this one bc, like I said before, her coding is fucking light and the writers themselves said they didnt really get to do much with it, but I think some stuff with her music is interesting. specifically how her, yolanda and regina's song set me free blew up because dizzee, resident (lowkey enby coded) bicon, got their song played in a queer club. also that the song was majorly important to dizzee and started playing literally right as he kissed a boy for the first time and realized "oh shit I like boys that's bonkers". also that the song can be taken in a gay way since literally the entire thing is about becoming your true self, fully and unapologetically, which is what both dizzee and mylene's entire character arcs are about. dizzee (and a lot of other queer people, apparently), heard this song about being set free and it resonated with them so much that they got that shit most of its popularity.
speaking of dizzee and mylene, they parallel each other a lot in the way that their arcs are about them realizing who they are, coming into themselves and no longer just letting people treat them like shit in a sense (dizzee starting to tell people essentially that they can call him weird all they want, they can make fun of how he acts, what he likes, how he dresses, etc. but he likes how he is and quite literally saying "it's okay to be an alien" as he has consistently compared himself to one throughout the show vs mylene learning that if she wants to be a disco singer she needs to put her foot down, not let anyone, not even the love of her life, not even her abusive father, stop her from achieving her dreams, etc. and continuing to pursue her career with or without their support). one more little parallel that I think is interesting is during I think s2 towards the end of the show is when dizzee and thor are shown together having fun with each other, painting all over the building and each other and are basically just being happy and in love together and then they have these clips of them being interspersed with clips of mylene at a party where she is starting to realize that if she wants to get anywhere she needs to be her own main priority and that she needs to put her career and her dream, which is what makes her the happiest, above all else if she wants to succeed. idk I just think how the show made these two into a weird parallel, accidental or not, is neat. maybe not an explicitly queer parallel, but I think at least how her music and whatnot helped dizzee, the main queer character in this show, blossom, is important.
moving on we got shaolin fantastic also known as "oh no your internalized homophobia is showing-"
so, heres a quick list of...interesting shao facts:
Consistently referred to as fag/faggot (shaolin fanfaggot is my personal favorite); he gets really defensive about this despite nobody actually thinking he's queer, it's just people being assholes to be assholes, and he is the only character consistently referred to using a slur, especially a homophobic one, especially for a "straight" character. dizzee, a canonically queer character, is called a fag less than shaolin is even though dizzee actively goes to gay clubs, has a not so secret dude he "hangs out with" and wont let anyone properly meet, paints his nails, wears less than straight clothes even by the 70s standards and is just all around the definition of fucking queer (and I mean like in the weird way, not the gay way). in fact theres only like once I can remember him being called a fag and it had nothing to do with him actually being gay it was literally just like thrown out there the same way you would call someone a bitch.
Has only shown sexual interest in women, yet refuses to have deeper relationships with women in general (possibly because of trauma but who knows) but takes his relationships with his "brothers", specifically zeke, very seriously
Tells zeke and zeke ONLY his real name when zeke was planning to stop being his friend bc shao more or less got boo boo, a like 14 year old black kid, arrested for selling hard drugs; he was clearly scared and trying to do anything to keep zeke around, literally chasing him down the street and hounding him until he got zeke to stop and argue with him
Kept threatening to beat up zeke in the end but couldn't actually bring himself to do so, instead saying that zeke is "fucking lucky" before walking away
Let's zeke get away with things that nobody else can, in general just has a weird soft spot for ezekiel that he shows with nobody else
when shao found dizzee with thor in a vaguely compromising situation (like they were just shirtless covered in paint sleeping next to each other but shao had also seen everything they painted on the walls ((which some of it was sus)), it was clear they had painted on each others bodies and dizzee had been routinely disappearing with this guy for weeks now yet not producing nearly as much art, at least, as far as we audience members know) he didnt judge him but instead, waited for him to get cleaned up and then told him something along the lines of "theres a reason why im so secretive blah blah blah [not everyone needs to know everything about me]", which, in context, kinda implies that he might be a lil. a lil homiesexual. jus a lil.
whenever even the possibility of zeke leaving him comes up he absolutely loses it. he has literally cost ezekiel life changing opportunities because he thought zeke would just up and leave him for them. this could be abandonment issues bc he's a severely traumatized character, and that probably does contribute to it, but it also is just not a reaction he has to any of their other friends just randomly dipping in and out of his life soooooo
generally speaking, this mfer has got either bisexual with a big hard on for zeke coding or homosexual with terrible internalized homophobia and still a hard on for zeke coding. either fucking way, that nigga gay. he gay as hell. gay as fuck man. there wasn't really much to analyze here tbh bc the coding is just so fucking obvious if you look for it or you are/have been a gay person who's dealt with at least a little bit of internalized homophobia.
also, just a sidenote, idk how fucking old shao, but I'm praying hes like at max 19 bc I'm pretty sure zeke is a minor in this show and shao definetly is not so the whole him being heavily implied to have a crush on ezekiel thing is kinda. oof. not oof if zeke is like 17 but any younger than that? OOF.
edit: apparently the characters are only supposed to be a year apart in age but i had no clue about that before writing this post and since shaos age was never actually stated in the show i naturally assumed he was an adult since his actor Looks Like An Adult. this is definetly on me to a certain extent, but i also never saw anything about this when trying to find our their ages so 🤷♀️ maybe i just didnt look deep enough, sorry!
now moving on to the main event...marcus dizzee kipling :]
so, first things first, let's talk enby coding bc him being bisexual was already confirmed!
um, to start off, I just wanna say I dont think this enby coding was intentional or even really coding, it's just moreso me being a dizzee kin on main and knowing as a transmasc enby he has very transmasc enby vibes. for example:
cool, gender neutral nickname that everyone calls him
paints nails various different colors
the whole wardrobe is just a transmasc enby heaven...fishnet shirts, jean overalls, jackets and cuffed pants galore, the big colorful pins, etc
gender neutral hairstyle (when I had my fro it was very sexy and made it easy to transition between hyper masc and vaguely fem, which is pog)
comparing himself to/representing himself consistently with an alien character (though this is meant to represent his sexuality, it could also double as a gender thing too, not neccesarily bc of the whole nonbinary alien trope but bc an enby who likes aliens might heavily identify or compare themselves to whatever their idea of an alien is, whether that just be a genderless entity or a motherfucker with fly style and no need to be perceived as anything other Wacky As Hell)
moving on from there, let's talk about how his queerness is presented to us and how, while it may be a really good piece of representation, especially coming from netflix, it still lacks in A Lot of places.
so, let's start with good things!
i personally really like the get down's queer rep with dizzee bc it's (for the most part) nonsexualized and very very soft, about dizzee figuring himself out and realizing there is a place where he fits in, and about two teenagers in the 70s falling in love over their shared passion for street art. it also features an interracial couple where both boys challenge stereotypes both about queer men and men of color, which is epic poggers and very sexy. this piece of rep specifically is very important to me bc I am a queer black person and even tho interracial relationships are mostly normalized now, I've still had people give me shit for primarily dating white people in a town that is...primarily white lol
mm anyways, I can also appreciate how in the get down, dizzee being represented by rumi the alien is not a thing specifically related to gender (as it often is) and instead is about his sexuality and just in general weirdness and how it has led to him being alienated amongst his peers, poc or otherwise. him seeing himself as an alien is not about just his queerness, which is important, it is about him being a queer black man who talks different, acts different, dresses different and is "soft"—he isnt a walking black male stereotype and he wouldnt have been seen as masculine back in the 70s by any stretch of the imagination. this can be relatable to a wide spectrum of queer poc, from queer black men currently who still have to deal with this shit or to people like myself who are afab neurodivergent mixed race enbies that have always been signaled out as weird and alienated for it. dizzee is god rep bc while he has a small part in this show, his parts are very impactful, hard hitting and show queer poc of all ages that they arent alone and that it's okay to "weird", you just need to embrace it because somebody will love you for you, as thor did for dizzee.
that being said theres um. some minor problemas here,,,
namely:
dizzee and thors first kiss
the lack of development this pairing got
the way dizzee was confirmed bisexual off screen, he never said the words himself, just showed interest in both genders
the way dizzee and thor were never even confirmed boyfriends or just fwb so most of the fandom just calls them boyfriends bc Why Not
dizzee was implied fucking DEAD??? AT THE END OF THE SERIES?????? AND THOR WAS IMPLIED ARRESTED?????????????
now, these might have been things that wouldve been fine had the show been given it's full run but it wasnt which is why we are now left with probelms.
so, from the top, let's go over these: dizzee and thor's first (and only "on screen") kiss was one that was shown in a montage of other queer people making over and doing other vaguely romantic/sexual things, one of those things being a whole ass naked titty being mouthed at, but the actual kiss...was just not shown? like they really did just say "yes they kissed <3 you know this from the context clues of it being in a montage with kissing, hickey giving and titty sucking <3 but no we will not show it <3" LIKE HELLO? I SAW A NAKED BOOBIE BUT NOT TWO MEN KISS??? HUH????????
also, dizzee and thor were both fucking high as hell during this bit like this isnt a terrible thing but it's also like sometimes you do shit when you're high that you wouldnt do sober and they just never kissed again on screen so like?? like idk that's not that bad but it does kinda irk me since they deadass got no other on screen intimacy after that unless you including painting on eacher other or sleeping next to each other on a shitty mattress but not touching at all during it bc they were both at opposite ends of the mattress like half way off it
so yeah, that was trash. then we got lack of development, which kinda goes with the "dizzee being a bisexual but he never says it in canon" thing cause like...okay dizzee was already sort of a side character from the get go like he wasnt the mc by any means, but he became way more of a background character as things continued until we basically only saw him for performances or when he was with thor, yet they got no fucking development as a pairing other than "dizzee realize he gay, he like thor, he and thor spend time together and ig probably do some gay stuff but we dont really know bc we only ever see them do graffiti together now" like?? tf am I supposed to do with that shit. answer. quickly. and then theres dizzee not being confirmed bisexual, which is just a running problem with shows literally doing everything to say a character is bi except for having the character just...say they're bi? which would be so easy? like a good way dizzee and thor couldve had some development is by thor teaching dizzee things about the queer community that he didnt even know existed, thor couldve helped him understand what being bi meant and helped him label himself and whatnot but instead we got an off screen confirmation that the writers had bisexual in mind when writing him. which is garbagé.
the whole thor and dizzee never having a confirmed relationship status is also a development problem cause like literally nobody knows if they were just friends who made out, maybe fucked, who knows, or if they were dating bc dizzee does give a love confession but a love confession doesn't mean there is a relationship, especially since thor didn't say he was in love either (as far as I remember, I could be wrong, plus whether or not that really happened or was apart of dizzee literally overdosing during a performance is unclear so 🤪)
and now for the biggest issue...bury your gays trope.
during the season 2 finale, dizzee and thor are chased by cops after they are found doing graffiti, one of the cops is able to catch thor while the other chases dizzee into a train tunnel and there is a train seen headed straight for him before the show cuts to black on a train horn. the show writers claim that if they had gotten another season, dizzee wouldve been alive but since they didnt and since that's essentially super fan trivia knowledge, most people dont fucking know that and instead had to watch a black queer teenager chose death over being fucking arrested by a white cop. on top of that, thor didnt see any of that shit because he was caught and the cop started hauling him off while dizzee was still being chased so thor literally has no clue where his friend/possible boyfriend fucking is or that he's likely dead in a goddamn tunnel all alone, unless you count the fucking pig that chased him in there who wouldve died too. this shows rep was so fucking good as far as most shows go on not having major fucking problems, on not being toxic and over sexualized, etc, etc. and then they just. killed a black queer teenager for no fucking reason. like it was literally the last episode ever, it would add nothing to the plot, it would just devastate fans and devastate it fucking did. I dont cry easy but seeing a character I identified with, who I had hyperfixated on, die because he'd rather that than be arrested is terrible. it fucking sucked.
so yeah. that's my all too extensive thoughts/analysis on the get down's queerness. theres definitely stuff I missed, or misinterpreted, or looked too much into, etc, etc., but this was a fun thing to spend time writing sooo yeah!! thanks for the ask anon, sorry this was just a big rambley info dump, but hopefully you get some enjoyment out of it since it took like 3 hours at least 😭😭 feel free to ask clarifying questions lol
#shit self#asks#the get down#mylene cruz#shaolin fantastic#dizzee kipling#long post#analysis#info dump#idk if anon has seen tgd or is just being nice so i tried givinh background to things#kinz#bangerz#discourse
74 notes
·
View notes
Text
Episode 4 Rewatch Thoughts
So first of all, I would definitely say that I have...calmed down a considerable amount since my first watch, so to speak. @delyth88 said some things in her rewatch post about being able to adapt to things and enjoy the episode more the second time due to knowing what's coming rather than having to deal with the uncertainty - which I how I feel about it as well and is a trend I experienced with episodes 1-2 as well, and in some ways episode 3. Once I had a chance to recover a bit from the narcissist thing and the romance thing, it turned out there were a lot of things I really liked! The big issues I had haven’t gone away by any means, and honestly a couple of the biggest ones aren’t even things that specifically happened in this episode - the first is just the gradual realization I’m having that I don’t think they are ever going to properly address Loki’s past trauma, and all those plot points the MCU just dropped are probably forever going to stay that way. And that fucking sucks, there’s no reason it had to be like this, and I don’t see how I could ever not be upset about that or truly get over it. The other thing is that it’s just incredibly frustrating and sad to me that all those theories about Loki having some kind of other plan in episode 3 to explain the bizarre incompetence we saw, or payoff for the weirdness that was the TemPad breaking scene, literally just amounted to nothing. All these things I hoped were intentional subtext turned out to just be nothing more than...bad writing? So yeah, I’m pretty disappointed about that. But at this point I’m trying to enjoy the series for what it is as much as I can, and on the second watch I really did enjoy a lot about this episode. So yeah, long-ass intro aside, here are my (hopefully more coherent this time) thoughts about episode 4:
Damn, that scene with Sylvie as a child really highlights how inhumane and barbaric the TVA is. Seeing her in that little prison uniform was...oof. Not that we didn’t already know the TVA was terrible, but I appreciate that they’re making it unmistakably clear for the general audience.
It's genuinely a good thing that they're going into Sylvie's trauma, and it's important to the plot, but I can't even put into words how frustrating it is to see them do that while simultaneously refusing to address Loki's. (you know, the protagonist?)
"Kind of an asshole and a bad friend" LMAO Mobius the TVA was holding Loki captive and was eventually going to kill him, can you really blame the guy for trying to escape?? Also an additional episode establishing that friendship would have been good - as much as I'm glad they consider each other friends, it felt premature for either of them to use that word yet.
I have mixed feelings about the Sif scene - overall I like it, but I do have some issues:
Pros:
- Loki whump! Both physical and emotional! (I want to see Loki win but I also like whump. It's complicated. Also I'm confused about where exactly she kneed him? Everyone is saying crotch but the first time he's holding his inner thigh so I thought it was there? Anyway if it is the crotch I'm not a huge fan of that particular decision, but my general feelings about whump still stand.)
- Lots of sad Loki faces, talking about fear of being alone - good stuff!
Cons:
- The first of the dreaded "narcissist" mentions
- It’s kind of odd that he never even tried fighting back?
- This also could have been an opportunity to acknowledge Loki's trauma, and as usual, they did not take it. I would have maybe liked a scene where Odin was being a dick to Loki and we got an acknowledgement of some of the emotional abuse. They probably could've worked Loki's fear of being alone into just about any memory. Did it really have to be a scene about how Loki's in the wrong? And in itself I have no issue with Loki facing the mistakes he's made! But I've been waiting 10 goddamn years for just one character or even a single solitary line of dialogue to acknowledge that Loki was wronged too, and by all appearances it still isn't going to happen and I'm just fucking tired.
And about the narcissist thing - it's frustrating because if they would just do it right, it could actually be really good?? If an element of the story was Loki (and Mobius) thinking he was a narcissist and then realizing he actually isn't, that would be amazing. The problem is, I'm fairly certain they are not going to go that route. I feel like it'll be more along the lines of "yeah you're a narcissist but you can be Good!" instead of acknowledging that Loki was never a fucking narcissist in the first place. Tbh it makes sense that both Loki and Mobius might think Loki's a narcissist, or throw around the term without knowing what they’re talking about - there are great explanations and meta about that - the real problem for me is that, in the eyes of the general audience, it confirmed a harmful and unfortunately very popular misconception about Loki, and it also perpetuates an incorrect view of what a narcissist is. Those are the main reasons I'm mad about it; if they purposefully, explicitly contradict it later it'll probably be fine! I just really don't think they're going to.
Tbh, after the second watch I'm a lot less mad about the shitty things Mobius said while interrogating Loki - it still hurt to hear and I'd still love an apology, but from Mobius' perspective it honestly makes sense that he wouldn't pull any punches considering he thinks Loki is partially responsible for killing the minutemen and Hunter C-20, and is trying to bring down the TVA.
I do still think Mobius turning on the TVA felt rushed. I'm delighted he got there, and the way he realized things made sense - it just happened unrealistically fast. I felt like a lot of things were rushed, and honestly I think more things will probably feel rushed in these last two episodes as well. This is something I felt with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier too - like they needed at least eight if not more episodes to give proper space for the story and character arcs they were trying to squeeze in. Six episodes just isn't enough.
Although, that said, while I still think this episode had weird pacing it didn't really bother me that much on the second watch? Probably because I already knew what the sequence of events was going to be.
The scene when Mobius was pruned was amazing - I loved Loki's emotions, and the way he walks down the hallway still kind of crying but mostly just looking utterly dead inside? *chef's kiss*
The timekeepers scene still felt off to me, and I still can't really articulate why. It honestly doesn't matter that much to me so I don't want to waste time on it, but I guess it just felt...sort of low-budget? Like we already knew the timekeepers probably weren't real/weren't what they seemed, but did they have to look that obviously fake? Idk.
I'm going to make a separate post about the romance stuff, but basically where I’m at with it is: it's a terrible shame to see such beautiful platonic/sibling energy go to waste, I'm real annoyed about it but trying to make peace with it for my own sanity, and I think there are a million clues pointing to it not actually being romantic but I don't trust that any of those were intentional. So I guess we'll see?
I'm very intrigued by all the Loki variants. Also I'm curious if Mobius is there as well, or if each variant person has their own world? Either way I'll be shocked if Mobius is actually dead (there's a million reasons for that but the main ones are that it's likely pruning doesn't actually kill any of the variants (not just the Loki ones) and anyway he's supposed to be in 5 episodes). I'm really curious about the variant world in general though and I wonder what exactly the dangers are - why Loki "will be [dead]" if he doesn't come with the other Lokis.
#loki tv series#loki spoilers#the nexus event#loki series negativity#positivity as well but tagging anyway
23 notes
·
View notes
Text
If one more person says simon snow should lose his wings i’m gonna lose my goddamn mind: a meta
Alright you guys, I’ve had ENOUGH. Simon cannot lose his wings unless you want him to break up with Baz, and this is why.
Let’s start with Baz.
This analysis is obviously Simon-based, and yes i’ll get there, but first we need to look at the biggest key we’ve been given to what Simon’s wings could possibly mean subtextually and metaphorically for the story at large. That key is: Baz’s vampirism.
Baz being a vampire is constantly compared to/mentioned in tandem with his queerness in Carry On. In his first chapters, what are the three most important traits that we learn about him?
he’s a drama queen
he’s a vampire
he’s hopelessly in love with simon snow
If you boil his character down until he’s basically just a stick figure, that’s what he is: an over dramatic vampire in love with Simon Snow.
We’ve all read the books, we all know this, and we all know he’s much more than that. What of it?
What’s important is that Baz’s vampirism is treated almost the exact same as his homosexuality.
Hiding it from everyone, being ashamed of it, knowing what you are but being terrified of it. His dad being “definitely more disappointed in my queerness than my undeadness.”
I mean, holy shit, let’s look at this bit in Carry on from Chapter 51:
“I think if I got married, to a girl from a good family, my father wouldn’t even care that I’m queer. “
This scene really hits, because how many times have you wondered “What if I was straight? Maybe this thing wouldn’t be as bad?” “What if i was just a straight poc?” “What if I was only gay and not trans?” “What if I was only disabled and not gay on top of it?” What if, what if, what if. Would my life be easier? you wonder. Would I get hurt less? Would people treat me better?
If Carry On is about self-realization, then Wayward Son is about the struggle of self-acceptance.
Baz going to Las Vegas and meeting Lamb probably seemed familiar for some of you people that are LGBT+. It’s how you feel when you’re from a small town and you go to a big city like New York or Orlando or LA for the first time and you see gay people all around you. Flamboyantly gay! Gay people holding hands! Gay people kissing! Trans people that don’t fit the gender norms! Older trans ladies just walking down the street!
It’s exciting, it’s exhilarating. Your baby-gay brain is so confused because no one’s giving them dirty looks. They don’t look nervous or ashamed. Is this allowed?
The party in the penthouse is glamorous and beautiful and alluring and none of the humans there are scared or look like they’re in real danger. It’s because they aren’t. None of those vampires are there to kill people.
This is where Baz’s fear of his own nature comes in. Let’s hear it for all you homosexuals in the crowd that are/have been terrified of being predatory. Of turning the gender you’ve been told all of your life you’re not supposed to want into pieces of meat. You feel ashamed for wanting physical intimacy. You feel wrong for wanting emotional intimacy.
Lamb is the older gay that you meet/learn about/watch on youtube or whatever that makes you learn that no, you’re not inherently evil. Lamb is the queer history, the queer movies, the queer people that you discover that make you learn that “no, i’m not bad. I’m not broken. I’m beautiful. I’m beautiful.”
Baz thinking the sight of Lamb drinking that guy’s blood being alluring and beautiful is crucial to his arc. Baz needs to see that all of him is beautiful.
So homosexuality = Baz being a vampire? How in the flying fuck does this have anything to do with Simon?
Remember, Baz is our key. His struggles have been happening since book one. Simon just gained his “creature” status at the end of Carry On. He’s new to this. Which means we’re new to the subtext. Which means: let’s dive on into the next big point.
Our Big Bisexual Boy
Whatever label you choose to use for Simon is up to you. As long as we all agree he likes more than one gender then it’s whatevs. I’m going to be using the word bisexual for this meta, though.
We’re all well aware that Simon is Struggling with his bisexuality in this book.
“I still haven’t sorted out whether I’m still attracted to women or whether I ever was, or whether I’m some kind of Baz-only-sexual. But the cleavage at this place is abundant, and I’m not mad about it.”
(taken from chapter 21)
Like....... y’know. We know. It’s... we get it.
The important part of that quote is that it’s at the Ren Faire. The Ren Faire is the first time Simon’s had his wings out in public since god-knows-when, if ever. This is also the first time he really considers kissing Baz in the book. Kissing Baz in Public.
Any of you that have been to Pride probably got a little bit of the warm fuzzies during this scene. The faire brought back such deep memories of my first pride it was a little bit emotional. I talked to random people, people ran around in rainbow outfits. There was body paint! Stupid hats! Weird dye jobs! The classic pride-flag-as-a-cape look! I talked to so many people and
“Everyone here is so friendly.”
(also taken from chapter 21)
Everyone was so nice to me.
Baz feels right at home; Simon is all smiles. The only one not having a blast is Penny and she’s (I’m sorry, Penny) the token straight friend in these books.
I don’t know how Rainbow did it, but she made me relive my first pride through Simon, and I’ll never not be grateful for that.
“Today I’m someone else entirely. Today I’m just a bloke with fake red wings.”
The Pride/Ren Faire parallels were pretty obvious, but I wanna get a little further into the whole “wings = being bisexual” thing.
We’ve established with Baz that being a magical creature or whatnot is Gay, but while Baz is fully magical, Simon’s “half-normal.” Kind of. It’s a weird situation there but half-normal works for the argument.
“’Smells like dragon... but also smells like iron. Another abomination!’”
(chapter 35)
Now the word “abomination” is really fucking unfortunate in this context, but biphobia exists so idk man. I’m gonna start talking in gay/straight terms and I absolutely know bisexuality isn’t half-gay half-straight but we’re talking in metaphors and i’ll tie it together at the end so just stick with me, okay?
He’s part dragon, part Normal (kind of). Simon’s not like Baz where he’s absolutely, 100% a vampire. He has traits of dragons and humans. This is why it’s so bad that he hates his wings half the time. They are part of him. They may not be “normal” and he may have to hide them, but he can’t just cut off the gay part. Our queerness doesn’t define us, but it’s a defining feature.
Penny says she wouldn’t be her if she wasn’t a mage. Simon wouldn’t be Simon if he wasn’t bi.
The mistake Simon and almost everyone else makes during this book is that they think of his wings as these separate entities. There is no gay part and straight part of Simon Snow. All of him is Simon. From the tips of his toes to the tops of his wings, all of him is Simon. He might’ve discovered this part of himself during a tragic point in his life, but that doesn’t mean it has to be something bad. It doesn’t have to be something tainted.
Sometimes you discover things about yourself during the hardest moments of your life. When you’re already down in the dirt, beaten and bruised, sometimes a mirror is put in front of you and you realize something. You realize you’re trans. You realize you’re gay. And sometimes you resent those realizations because they came to you at the worst possible time. “This is just one more thing on my plate,” you think.
This series is about reclaiming the things that where taken from you by the ones that hurt you.
Simon’s going to have to learn to love his wings, because even though they remind him of something that hurts-- hurts more than anything-- they’re part of him. They are him, as much as the rest of his body is. Simon’s going to have to forgive himself, and learn to love himself for all that he is.
Because all that he is is beautiful.
We all know it; it’s time for him to understand that.
All right, bitches. Let’s get to the bit we all REALLY care about. this is the one that really fucks me up my dudes. Because it’s Brutal. But anyways here we go.
His wings are the Big Baz Love
What are the two things that Simon’s considering cutting off in this book?
“That’s what I’m going to say when I break up with Baz.”
“Dr. Wellbelove said he could remove the wings. And the tail. Whenever I’m ready.”
(Chapter 2, Epilogue)
Yikes!
My guys..... Simon and Baz don’t kiss unless Simon’s wings are out.
I truly do not understand how some of you are out here saying Simon’s gonna lose his wings I really don’t. It’s stressful. I’m stressed. Ms. Rainbow Rowell, you have me stressed.
His Wings! Are! His Love!
On Love’s Light Wings!
Goatman dances his nasty little fingers all over the bridge that is Baz’s ass? Wings out, uses his tail to help kill the guy. Lamb is hitting on Baz too much?
“’Spell my wings off.’”
(Chapter 45)
In the airport, when a lady is giving them the “don’t be gay” stink eye he immediately checks to make sure his tail is hidden.
Baz can’t spell his wings off, guys.
Baz can’t spell his wings away.
“’Snow needs you to cast your angel spell on him. I hid his wings for breakfast, but they’re still there.’“
(Chapter 19)
In Chapter 41, the biggest kiss scene we get, Simon wraps his wings around Baz to hold him. He’s embracing him in his love guys. Guys.
Have you people noticed how i’m suddenly less articulate? It’s because i’m in crisis. Set me on fire I wouldn’t notice. I’ve been living with this terrible knowledge.
The first scene we finally see them kiss is after the scene at the Ren Faire when Simon’s wings are finally out and he finally got to fly.
“Simon catches up with me and traps me against the car. He’s kissing me before I see it coming.”
Simon is so dtf in this scene Penny throws a water bottle at them, and it hits him in the wing.
“’So hot,’ Simon Says. ‘Got to see you fight without picking a fight with you myself.’
Bunce throws a plastic bottle over my shoulder, and it smacks Simon in the wing.”
(Chapter 22)
She had to smack him right in the love for him to calm down, my dudes, my guys. Do you realize how hard it was for me to annotate this goddamn book with this knowledge? Every. Single. Time. Simon stretches a wing or flaps them around it’s about Baz. It gets to the point where you have to put the book down or you’re gonna explode.
Simon’s wings are always out around Lamb. He’s jealous as hell and he hates that motherfucker’s guts. The only real injuries Simon sustains in this book are to his wings and they’re almost always when Baz gets hurt too.
When did Simon get his wings? Only a day after he first kissed Baz.
Simon’s love for Baz is so big and so obnoxious he can’t hide it. His wings and tail have spikes, because that’s all Simon knows. He’s rough around the edges, he’s been hurt, he’s been used.
He’s never been in love before.
His love is spiky; it’s loud. It’s hotrod red and you can’t miss it when it’s out. Baz can’t see it, because Simon’s tucked it away. He hasn’t flown with it. He hasn’t wrapped it around Baz in so long. He doesn’t know how to handle a love this big, where to put it, when to unfurl it.
Simon gets jealous. He gets scared. He’s insecure. He wants so dearly to finally give to someone instead of feeling like he’s just giving in. Like he’s still just taking from Baz.
What do you do with wings?
How do you find somewhere safe to fly?
The Resolution.
I said earlier that if Carry On is a story of self-discovery, Wayward Son is a story of self-acceptance.
Simon has to love himself, and learn that his love for Baz is a good thing. As he accepts himself (and his dragon powers evolve go read my dragon simon meta it’s good.) he’s going to start to shine.
This is a story being told to us with nothing but love. This is a story about a boy that’s his own worst enemy-- as all of us often are. It’s so scary to accept our wings. It’s so scary to accept our fangs. Especially when they’ve come out of such a hideous occurrence.
We need to accept these dark times and acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, we were made more beautiful because of them. Maybe the light we give after we’ve been in darkness is more vibrant, because we know how scary the dark is. The things that happened to us were horrible, and hideous, and terrifying, but we aren’t. We’re different from how we were before, but we’re still beautiful.
Simon Snow is going to accept himself.
Simon Snow is going to accept his past.
Simon Snow is going to finally, finally tell Baz he loves him.
And for the first time, Simon Snow is going to see that he’s beautiful.
If you’ve liked this meta you should also check out this one where i explain how they’re finally gonna get their relationship together. Also the one about the scarf
Special thank you to @singerofsimplesongs for listening to me howl and screech about this damn thing.
Tagging some people that might be interested!
@neck-mole @watfordwallflower @carrybits @theflyingpeach @fight-surrender @shitty-posty-times @wisest-girl @slaying-fictional-dragons @gucciglitzy
#carry on#wayward son#any way the wind blows#rainbow rowell#simon snow#snowbaz#baz pitch#Penelope Bunce#tyrannus basilton grimm pitch#tyrannus basilton pitch#wayward son spoilers#meta#wayward son meta#carry on meta#this will end in flames#agatha wellbelove
4K notes
·
View notes
Text
My Complicated Feelings Toward JK Rowling
I think everyone who’s read Harry Potter and likes to talk has written something like this by now. It makes sense, right? She wrote possibly the most influential book series to come out in the last century. For me and many others, those books are an unforgettable part of our childhoods, and it hurts for the person who took us on such a journey of magic and wonder to be so unmagical herself.
So, here’s my take.
I think the thing I hate most about JK Rowling is how close she came to greatness.
There’s a reason her books became so popular, after all. For all her faults, (and there are many) she’s an amazing writer.
Every one of her characters feel like they could walk off of the page at any time and into your life.
Dudley Dursley with his absorption of how his parents treat Harry and how his friends treat him, with his slow growth throughout the books into a person beyond who he was raised to be.
Molly Weasley with her overbearing mother henning, sometimes harmful but oh so clearly coming from a place of love, and her complete willingness to adopt any child that stands still long enough for her to do so. (Except Fleur)
Narcissa Malfoy with her belief in the horrible things she’s doing, without that stopping her from being entirely willing to do anything for her child.
Sirius Black with his tendency to unintentionally echo the sentiments he was raised with, and the tragedy of him losing his chance to ever truly grow as a person after being thrown in Azkaban for twelve years and then dying so soon after, and his complete, unconditional love for Harry.
I could write essays on any of them, and my point is that while JK’s treatment of certain issues and characters makes me want to hate Harry Potter, her characterization itself is both consistent and magnificently human.
Her world, too, is beautiful.
I first read Harry Potter before I turned eleven, and I was one of many across the nation who awaited my letter with eager anticipation.
Can you blame me? The world she created filled so many children with wonder, made so many of us want so badly for magic to be real, to be ours-
It was beautiful, and I hate her for what she could have been.
She had this fully realized system of prejudice that canonically created genocidal maniacs and put them in power every two generations or so, and she had this very realistic way of writing horribly flawed people that pronounces them as people without exonerating them for the awful things she’d have them do, and I can’t help feeling like “the horrors of war”, as well as she wrote it, wasn’t the story her world deserved.
But that’s a big idea to tackle, and I think it will be tackled best if I start small. I’ve spoken now of the beauty of her world, of her characters. Now I’ll speak of what marrs it.
Like I said, I want to start small.
So, let’s talk about the house elves.
TL;DR? Hermione was right. They’re indoctrinated from birth into believing the only thing they’re good for is housework, as well as being raised to abhor any elf who chooses to do otherwise. It’s a neat little self perpetuating system that bears absolutely no similarity in ideology to the mythology JK built it off of, and as such loses the aspect of choice that’s so significant to brownies.
Add to that the socially acceptable abuse, and you’ve got something that looks far more similar to slavery than it does little fairies who come to clean your home and get mad if pay them because they’re doing it as a favor.
And that’s why it’s so concerning, when JK brushes Hermione’s campaigning off in canon so casually.
It’s honestly hard to say when I started to be leery of JK Rowling, except that it was several years before the TERF scandal occurred. I think this was probably one of the earlier areas, though.
The first time I remember wondering if Harry Potter’s greatnesses were in spite of her intentions, rather than because of them, though, wasn’t the house elves.
It was, rather, a different contentious issue in the fandom, and one I’ve always fallen quite firmly to one side of, as someone who’s been bullied myself.
The first time I remember being suspicious of JK’s beliefs was when I realized she didn’t write Snape with the intent for him to be a villain.
Snape is not a person anyone in the fandom seems to be able to agree on. Some see him as a flat, cartoony villain, while some see him as a tortured soul who only did all those terrible things because he was hurting inside, don’t you see?
Personally, I drew the line at him being a child’s boggart, as well as the time he attempted to kill Neville’s toad, Trevor, because seriously; what the fuck.
It had always been my belief that while him being obsessed with loving Lily motivated him to work on the side of good, it was more like Narcissa’s willingness to betray her cause for her son than anything else, being a sympathetic trait without absolving his cruelty.
Then I realized that a bunch of people (likely including JK) view Narcissa similarly to how they view Snape, seeing both as people who do bad but are good, rather than people who do good but are bad, and I honestly don’t know what to say to y’all.
You know having good traits doesn’t make a person good, right? Being capable of affection doesn’t absolve people of cruelty or make it your responsibility to forgive them and try to get them to change, it just tells them that they can do bad things without being punished for it.
Do you guys need an abuse hotline?
Anyway, that’s when I stopped liking JK, since I’ve been bullied myself and seeing her treat such a horrible bully as a good person kinda soured me on her. I’m not mad at her for letting her bullies grow and change- I love Draco’s and Dudley’s character arcs. I’m just mad at her because unlike those two, Snape is an adult and she kinda wrote it like forgiving him was an expectation of Harry, rather than a personal choice (and not an easy one either! Forgiving bullies is hard and it’s not always healthy!)
I’m getting off topic, but I genuinely believe that discussing this kind of thing is important, so I’m leaving that in.
Getting back to what this is actually about, I’m the kind of person who sees potential in things, often before I see the work itself, (it’s why I write fanfiction) and Harry Potter has so much potential it hurts, because so much of it is just wasted.
I said, earlier, that “the horrors of war” wasn’t the story best suited to this world, and I stand by that.
The first reason I believe that is because I don’t think that the black and white morality this kind of narrative often creates was well suited to JK’s writing style. JK has a tendency to put her characters in boxes of “good” or “bad” and as someone who doesn’t really believe in inherent goodness or evil, this will always feel unrealistic to me.
Because in the end, it’s JK’s minor villains, the ones not directly involved with Voldemort’s war, that really shine.
My favorite villains in the series were Umbridge, the Dursleys, Draco Malfoy, and Cornelius Fudge, because they were the villains who felt real, who felt like flawed people making flawed decisions because we’re all fundamentally products of our environment-
These are the villains who stuck with me, who I still want to take and shake because they were the kind of cruelty we’ve all faced.
Voldemort, as the main villain of the story, would have been more powerful if he’d been an amplified version of these people. In fact, the story would have been better in general if Fudge or Dumbledore had been the villain, because the problem with Voldemort is that unlike the good villains in this story, who feel real because we’ve all met people like them, Voldemort is and will always be larger than life.
A genocidal maniac is a villain few of us have faced societally, and one none of us have faced directly.
Also, rather than being a worse version of Umbridge or Fudge, Voldemort is more akin to a worse version of Snape. He’s a tortured soul who does bad things because bad things were done to him, rather than being cruel through his choices, his own agency.
That’s the first reason why “the horrors of war” wasn’t the best choice of a narrative for this world.
The second is that I don’t think JK sees anything wrong with her muggle hating characters.
She clearly thinks killing muggles is wrong, of course. She’s not that bad.
But, well, the muggle characters in Harry Potter are consistently kind of awful.
First there’s the Dursleys, selfish, entitled, egotistical, and cruel to anyone different from them. Then there’s Snape’s muggle father, who was horribly abusive, as well as cruel to anything different from him.
Then there’s the muggle prime minister, who despite being an important figure, is left completely out of the loop for anything concerning wizards, pretty much only used when the ministry needs the muggle news to say or do a certain thing, like when Sirius Black was declared a criminal.
There’s also the family at the quidditch world cup, of whom who only meet the patriarch, a somewhat stupid man who remarks uncomprehendingly on the oddness of wizards trying to assimilate into muggle society, a man who is canonically obliviated ten times a day.
And that’s it, that’s all the muggle characters I can remember. Aside from the Dursleys, none of them are given more than a page or so of screentime, and none of them do anything significant.
No, wait, I did actually forget two.
Hermione’s parents, who are obliviated and sent to Australia when the war starts, because the only thing they could ever do in a war is be victims.
Muggles in Harry Potter are consistently stupid, ineffectual, and cruel to anyone different from them.
Out of the entire massive cast of Harry Potter, there are few enough muggles that I can list them all off the top of my head without googling and the only muggle in the story ever given the all important chance to be kind is Dudley Dursley, who is taken out of the story the moment he stops being an awful person.
I’m sure you see the problem.
The issue with Harry Potter is that JK acts like the problem is solved when muggles are no longer being actively persecuted, when in reality that’s only the beginning of solving the prejudice that plagues her world.
Voldemort is frequently called “wizard Hitler” and I think that’s more accurate than people realize, because as with Hitler, people easily see the problem with Voldemort committing genocide, and they’re fine with working to stop that, but the moment they’re asked to examine their own biases, their own small cruelties and exclusions, the ten thousand cuts they’ve inflicted with their own hands…
The moment people are asked to examine themselves, to look close at the mirror and point to what allowed someone like Voldemort to gain a following in the first place, they turn away and go back to turning a blind eye to the fact that if you don’t address the societal issues that made him gain a following in the first place, there’ll just be another when it’s been a few years and people have forgotten.
In the end, Grindlewald is wizard Hitler. Voldemort and the death eaters are wizard neo nazis.
I’m not Jewish, though, so I’ll let them be the ones to expand further upon this, as many have.
My point here is that JK’s story would have been more powerful if it had been about addressing the issues that underpin the death eaters, rather than killing their leader and acting as if that’ll solve anything.
JK Rowling is antisemetic, racist, and a TERF, among other things, and while I’m glad it shows in her work as little as it does, it does show, and I’m not going to cover that in this because a thousand other people have covered it better than I ever could.
Suffice to say, I’m nonbinary, and I’m glad I was disillusioned with her before I knew she was prejudiced directly against me, because loving her before she said the things she said and did the things she did would have hurt.
The fact that her world shows so clearly the consequences of her beliefs, even in the context of a prejudice that doesn’t exist in our own world…
I guess she’s always been too good a writer for her own good, in the end.
#harry potter#jk rowling#harry potter meta#harry potter criticism#tl;dr i hate harry potter because it came SO CLOSE to greatness and then JK just SQUANDERED it and i'll die angry
62 notes
·
View notes
Text
so about norman’s ethics
The thing that a lot of people don’t understand about Norman is that he doesn’t believe in the like, political sentiments that he acts on in the slightest. Yeah, this doesn’t make it ok that he did a bunch of shitty stuff, but it’s a misconception to say norman like, genuinely believes fucking eugenics are a good thing.
And yet, he decides to act on the idea to degenerate and genocide the demons and seems not to understand why Emma wouldn’t agree with him. People’s explanations of this seem to be pretty much one of two minds, either:
His morals are corrupt: Norman wants all the demons dead because what they did makes him think they’re all bad and don’t deserve the respect humans get, which is understandable but still wrong, or
His morals are intact but he ignores them: Norman feels bad that he’s doing a bad thing and does it anyway because he can’t find a better way out, which honestly makes what he did worse, though Tragic.
The second one is more accurate, but still doesn’t completely explain his ideas.The truth is that, in my opinion, he just barely understands the concept of morals in general, and what’s ‘messed up’ is simply his priorities. That sounds like I’m saying he’s a twisted cycle path but I swear I’m not, it’s just like him having low empathy. This is another, autism thing, and it’s another thing that I have, so I’ll try to explain it as best as I can?
Personally, I understand and try to follow sociatal expectations for moral things like, you know, do not kill people and what not. Because it’s bad or... whatever. And although I can cognitively understand the reasons why people think so, I don’t value it in the same way. Obviously I wouldn’t kill a person, there’s no need for me to in a world like this, and it would be inconvenient and probably make me feel bad despite not understanding why it is bad. But I’ve known from a very young age if I had the power and reason to kill someone, I absolutely would, no questions asked. Not even the necessity, just a logical reason. Most of the time this means nothing and isn’t applicable in the real world, because most of the people around me would be negatively affected by it. But it means nothing to me personally, and if prompted I could change at the slightest reason.
This is what I think we’re dealing with in Norman’s situation.
Norman, in grace field, has no reason to violate any intagible laws of right and wrong, in most cases, until the escape arc happens. Yeah, I do believe Norman probably lied significantly more than the average child, because he didn’t see any reason not to, but I doubt it hurt anyone bad, they lived in, well, basically a neverland. He’s just a slightly off white little man. But when he is faced with a risky and dangerous situation, he might look Correct on the outside but the closer you look the more you realize his actions are directly impacted by the situation around him, completely independent of any internal moral compass.
Ray wants to only escape with those three, because although he feels extreme guilt for being the way he is and completely understands it’s a selfish and terrible thing to do, he’s too cynical to accept any other options. Norman initially agrees with him, because Ray explains the risks. Emma then insinuates she wants to bring the other kids, giving ideas as to how. Norman then switches to Emma’s plan because he believes it can be achieved and he wants Emma to be happy, not because it would be wrong to do otherwise. At the same time, he later ships himself out, without much consideration to the others’ wishes against it, because now that it’s gotten impossible to have both, Emma’s and Ray’s safety is more important now than their happiness. Though he can understand that they’d not like that, it’s not that important to him in the long run. He will choose the path that offers them the greatest chance, if the one his friends want isn’t good enough.
When he was shipped out and taken to lambda, what happened is he was put in a situation where the stakes become much higher. There’s a different kind of situation, and the idea of simply running away from the demons is obviously not an option. When he escapes, and basically adopts the lambda kids- now he’s surrounded by people with the opposite morals and ideas as Emma. These kids want revenge, they would be happy to kill the demons, their ideal situation involves that and trying to reach any compromise would be unsatisfactory. The overwhelming majority of the kids agree with killing the demons, and that idea makes him seem stronger and gives him more certainty and control over the situation, even if it’s difficult and hurts him personally, making him a “Bad Person” to Emma.
Norman harbors no personal hatred towards the demons, nor any specific desire to kill them. He just doesn’t see any viable reason not to, and killing them provides both him and the people he cares about with a more beneficial situation. Emma is now the minority, and even though she provides an idea that could work, Norman, after seeing so much pain and suffering, is no longer willing to take the risk for her, like he was in grace field. He is incapable of understanding why she values a sense of right and wrong more than the actual statistics of how well one or the other could work- yes, they had different experiences, but she lost other people because she decided to take risks, and she still believes in it? It simply doesn’t fucking compute.
An important aspect to consider is that it still does make him feel bad not to follow a more traditionally accepted route. He might have low empathy but he’s not an emotionless robot. Not understanding morals doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a concience, though it’s much more ambiguous and generally equates to any other thing, such as the actual convenience, details, or certainty of a plan. It’s not of any more importance, and he is in a situation now where it’s inconvenient to pay attention to, more so than in grace field. So not following a Nicer route does take a toll on his Feelings TM, same as it takes a toll on his literal body, but that’s a sacrifice he’s fine with, it’s a sacrifice that’s significantly smaller than the chance that someone he cares for could die.
Generally, most Lukewarm Takes on Norman can be disproven with this idea (pretty much anything that insinuates he would see the demons as less or like, he’s doing it because they did awful things to him, understandable but hey this isn’t tokyo ghoul and he’s not that kind of character), though everyone is obviously free to have their own takes and I doubt Shirai took his autistic coding into consideration, so it’s obviously my own idea.
Although Norman’s actions have correlation with Ray’s before, Norman isn’t disregarding his physical needs and trying to sacrifice himself out of any idea that it would make up for what he did, he’s doing it because it gives him more control over his own situation, he values his own well being less than his family’s, and he doesn’t understand why it would be Bad to do so. If we’re really digging deep, it’s likely he doesn’t want to have to experience any real consequences for his actions. He understands that they’re Bad, but this isn’t important to him, more than anything else. He doesn’t want to see Emma’s disappointment because it would complicate things.
After Emma and Ray, well, complicate things, ie face him and force him to see there are real consequences to his actions past Ambiguous Moral Obligations (ex. “you’re Taking Advantage the lambda kids” means nothing until he sees that it’s stopped them from being able to grow as people and forgive, “you’re neglecting yourself” means nothing until there’s an idea brought up that could fix him, “you’re trying to kill so many fucking people” means nothing until he sees that it’s hurting the human kids.) and that there’s a valid flaw in his personality past that- that it’s not a strong but a cowardly move, he can move forward and attempt to change things, possibly give himself a fucking break.
In that situation, with other solutions that Emma and Ray have opened up actually seeming to work, he no longer finds it necessary to Be Terrible and hurt himself. This makes him feel better, because he doesn’t want to be Incorrect, it’s just a difficult thing for him to understand, when most other things come to him naturally. I think in the future he can be more cognizant of the fact that he’s more suceptible to doing generally, unacceptable things, and vows to lean more on Emma and Ray so he doesn’t end up going down the wrong path again, because to him they all look the same color.
Yes, this is my long ass way of telling Shirai why the fuck did you let Norman be a CEO. That’s a terrible fucking idea, he’ll become capitalism, guys?! Don’t let him do that. He needs to be in a job where like, he can use his skills without having to make Ethical Decisions like... an engineer or something. Computer scientist. IDK. Just not a fucking CEO, not in a management position for anything.
Honestly, it’s difficult for me to even use the alignment chart because I don’t understand morals enoughto put anyone in the Evil category because the idea of ‘evil’ doesn’t exist for me. So yeah, I’m projecting, but in conclusion I just have a bone to pick with anyone who wouldn’t call norman lawful neutral.
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
~ Glenn dissection ~
this is genuinely not a post to start some kind of discourse, I just wanted to dissect gGenn close a little bit because i think the choices in today’s episodes are very interesting and i wanna dissect how I think they were the right ones.
in summary; Lark is having a little special interest moment and wants to info dump sorry not sorry.
My opinion on Glenn is fairly neutral, much like Henry. I don’t think he’s a terrible parent, but he’s also by no means a good parent. I do see some child neglect in his narrative, but he’s by no means ‘abusing’ Nicolas.
So, I’ve been thinking about these two a lot over the past few days. Like, a lot a lot. They.... They’re a complex pair to digest
As Freddie and Anthony said in the latest episode of Talking Dads, people don’t like accepting characters who are good people and bad parents. Because if someone’s a good person, then they’re a good parent, or bad person equals a bad parent. Vice verse shit.
Now, Glenn was ruled as a good person. And, I won’t say Glenn is a ‘bad person,’ but I also won’t say he’s a good person. Again, he’s a grey area. he’s a grey character. he’s a mediocre person.
Glenn, at his core, is an immature person. A broken man who refuses to acknowledge he’s broken, and that gets increasingly clear with each time he talks about Morgan, or is asked about Morgan. There’s an unresolved grief there, and who knows if he’ll ever resolve it. He avoids those kinds of emotions (’harshing his vibe’)
I think, narratively, the only option that would’ve made sense would have been to give up Nick.
there are three core things we have to think about here.
- Player; how would this decision affect Freddie? How do his personal desires for Glenn play into this?
- Narrative; what decision makes the most compelling narrative? What furthers the story in the most dramatic way?
- Character; What decision would the character make in this sitation? Why would they choose this?
These are all things that are constantly needed ot be brought into topic when it comes to these kinds of major plot points. The only other instance I can think of for this in DnDads was the chimera and Grant.
I’ll start at the top.
1. PLAYER; The most intense part of a narrative is the player’s decisions in said narrative. As a dungeon master, I’ve watched my players choose some baffling things for their characters (such as, a typically laid back background player taking the lead in a mystery to try and assist our younger player) and these players own wants and desires in the storyline play a major role in these things. In this case; Freddie didn’t want to kill off Glenn. And that is absolutely valid and understandable and by no means wrong of him. He’s played this character for two years (or coming up on it) and that’s huge. That’s a lot of time for him to become attached and fall in love with this character he’s made. It’s completely normal, acceptable, and welcome for players to fall absolutely in love with the character they play. These players, over the course of their campaigns, become a way the players bond with each other. It’s no secret that Freddie feels very attached to Glenn, to the point there’s jokes there’s little to no line between them during episodes. He didn’t want to end a character he held so near and dear, and if anyone faults him for that; a personal fuck you to you, good tiz.
A content creator is going to love the characters in the content they produce, and shaming them for wanting to hold onto those characters as long as possible is absolutely absurd. If Scott Cawthon can keep making FNaF games six years later, and no one insults him about it, Freddie Wong can choose the timeline where Glenn stays alive.
2. NARRATIVE; in crafting a narrative, you want to choose the option that will cause the most conflict and interesting plots to follow. While, killing off Glenn would have provided us with a very interesting arc where they go to hell to rescue Glenn and go into this weird Entourage-style campaign; it’d be repetive. We just had an episode or two where the gang had to go save Glenn, and while we currently do have to save Glenn again, it’s very different this time. It’s not ‘Glenn got sent to a hell dimension’ it’s ‘let’s pull a jailbreak’ and yeah, I’m not to excited about another ‘go save glenn’ arc right after Deck Picks, I AM excited for Jimmy Wong and this new character of his, I’m vibrating with excitement.
Choosing to give Nick up makes narrative sense, whether it was a ‘good dad’ decision or not. It made sense. It provided more conflict for the party, because now there’s a new guy in the party and Nick doesn’t remmebr who Glenn even is, it provides a very interesting new character arc (i.e, Glenn building a cool uncle type relationship with Glenn, and befriending Nick’s new dad.) No, Glenn giving up Nick was not some big heoric deed as some people are portraying it, but it’s more selfless than dying just so your kid can become an orphan and mourn your memory. That would’ve been the shitty option, I’m sorry, but it would’ve been. Especially given Freddie, nor Glenn, thought they owuld be able to bring Glenn back this itme.
3. CHARACTER; I feel that this is a very telling decision for Glenn and wanting to better himself. I’m gonna focus on the topic of Glenn seeing Nick as his last tie to Morgan.
We know Glenn is very stuck on Morgan, to the point of being stuck at the same maturity he was when Moran was born. He’s stuck there, trying to keep her memory alive. Because, Morgan was all he had and he lost her. And that sucks. When your partner dies, it feels like everything in the world is absolutely gone and there’s nothing you can do to get them back and that everything you ever were is gone. So, of course he would latch everything he had of Morgan onto Nick. It makes such logical sense. His wife has died, y’all. Unexpectedly. Suddenly. In a horrific way. But, here he has this little kid who is a physical manifestation of their love and commitment to each other. Obviously, he’s gonna latch onto that child and hold them close, see them as their last tie to Morgan. Because Nick is his last tie to Morgan. A child inherits parts of both their parents, and I’m sure there are things Nick does that Glenn sees nothing but Morgan in.
Glenn wanted to keep Nick. He loves that kid so much. (Freddie’s first reaction upon meeting Nick in episode one is “Guys, I love my kid!” and that transfers into Glenn’s love language, encouraging Nick even if it’s in a very bad way.) But, I feel., and this is strictly me looking into his character, he realizes he needs to let go. He realizes he needs to let himself grow, and that him and Nick aren’t healthy and that he’s becoming Bill. And he let’s go.
This also plays into how the Close family is known to live hard and long, (YOLO mentality) and so, clearly he won’t take the death option. Not happening.
TL;DR Glenn choosing to give Nick up shows a major character growth in unhealthy attachment and admitting fault, and Freddie also is totally justified in choosing option to give up an NPC his player character is attached to instead of just killing off the character he’s clearly very attached to.
#dndads#this is just me dissecting Glenn#episode 48#glenn close#dndads spoilers#i dont know if I should tag this positivity or not#but i know its not discourse#this is just a character psychoanalysis
44 notes
·
View notes
Text
So it’s 5am and I haven’t slept yet, not sure if I’m gonna sleep at this point, so I wanted to talk about this post by ruby-whistler because I have Thoughts but didn’t want to derail the original post. (Also keep in mind it’s 5am so this is gonna be very stream-of-consciousness).
Disclaimer- my intention with this post is not to start a fight with ruby-whistler or any other Dream apologist for that matter. Just because we fundamentally disagree doesn’t mean we have to hate each other. I am simply thinking my thoughts and sharing them on the internet
Edit: this has been sitting in my drafts for like week as I debated on whether I should tag ruby-whistler, given my view of c!Dream versus hers. clearly, I’ve decided against it, as I really don’t want to start conflict, but I do want to get my thoughts out there.
[please assume that I am referring to the dsmp characters, not the content creators, unless specified otherwise]
So first off I would like to point out that ruby-whistler and I have very different views on Dream as a character. For the sake of clarity, Ruby is a Dream apologist, and I am not. Frankly it would take quite a lot for me to genuinely believe that Dream is deserving of sympathy, let alone a full redemption arc. That being said, Ruby brought up some interesting points that I’d like to explore.
For those who don’t want to read the original post, Ruby suggested that if Dream were redeemed, it wouldn’t because he suddenly realized he did a bad and was sorry(he knew he was doing a bad the whole time, just didn’t care), but instead had someone systematically disprove his learned toxic behaviors and mindset(ends justify means, attachment=weakness, etc.). Basically prove him wrong. And I actually like this interpretation!
To elaborate on my own feelings toward Dream, I think it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to fully redeem him from a writing standpoint. If not because he doesn’t want to be better, then because no on the server will be willing to help him. Characters like Dream rarely get redeemed because they’ve dug a hole for themselves. They either reached the point of no return, or the people they’ve hurt are(oftentimes justifiably) unwilling to forgive them, so with no support system they fall back into old habits. Sad? Yes. Understandable? Also yes. There’s a reason Dream’s character type almost always suffers from redemption equals death.
(for those who don’t know, redemption equals death is the trope in which a villain is so bad that the only way to somewhat redeem them is to have them die by heroically sacrificing themself. basically there was no way to justify their actions and not enough time for them to heal, but at least you know they’re trying. Examples: Star Wars’ Darth Vader, She-Ra’s Shadow Weaver.
So from a meta perspective, a Dream redemption is highly, highly unlikely. That being said, I do think it’s a bit of an icky mindset to have that certain people simply can’t change for the better. What Ruby mentioned is a smart way to get around this. I won’t be the first to point out that Pandora’s Vault is not exactly the environment for rehabilitation, especially not now. I think Dream is a terrible person, yes, but do I think he deserves to be tortured on a daily basis? No. Do I think he deserves to be kept a box with nothing to do but think and write? Maybe a little as karmic punishment for intentionally designing the place that way, but not forever(probably like a month At Most) All that’s going to do is make a bad person even worse. The way things are going, the most likely  scenario is him breaking out and going on a fucking rampage. So yes, I think Ruby has a point with this whole positive reinforcement idea. Get the few people on the server who are still sympathetic to him to just sit and chat. Not to talk at him and tell him what they think, but just chat. Ease him into the idea that maybe he was wrong. It could possibly work.
At this point I’m going to stop talking about Dream and start on the implications for Tommy because oh boy. Obviously a Dream redemption would affect more people than just Tommy, but I’m mainly invested in his story and I’m also kinda running out of steam here so you get what you get
Now here’s where it gets tricky. In the event that Dream manages a full redemption arc, in which he does his best to right his wrongs and be an actual good person. Not Everyone Is Required To Forgive Him. Tommy, I’m talking about Tommy, do not make Tommy forgive him. (As said above it’d be understandable for a lot of people not to forgive him, but I am talking about Tommy right now)
Not only would this type of thing have terrible real-life implications, it just wouldn’t make sense for Tommy’s character. If Dream, even a fully reformed Dream, walked up to Tommy wanting to rebuild old bridges, even if he genuinely apologized, even if he did everything right, Tommy cannot and should not be expected to trust Dream. His first thought would be that Dream is trying the same shit he did in exile. The fact is, Tommy will have to live with his trauma for the rest of his life, and Dream should have to live with the knowledge that he caused that trauma, that he ruined someone’s life. Just because you’re a better person now doesn’t mean that the people you’ve hurt are magically also doing better.
(This is just a tangent about a potential direction the plot could take and is almost more of a Tommy analysis than anything so if you wanna dip now feel free)
Don’t get me wrong though, I also think it’d be interesting for Tommy to question himself later, if he happens to see enough hard evidence that Dream has changed. After all, this is a real-world dilemma, what do you do when your abusers heal? Abuse victims will often see their abuser bettering themselves and start to feel guilty for still being angry because “look, they’re not abusing me anymore, so I have no reason to still feel this way!” In this situation it could be constructive for the two to sit down and just talk things through. Still, I firmly believe that the best thing for both of them is to go their separate ways. Coexisting is enough in this case.
#it is now 7am help#dream smp#dsmp#c!dream analysis#dream smp character analysis#c!dream critical#long post#abuse tw#abuse mention#torture mention#let me know if I should tag something else#still not sure how to tag for this fandom#fill the void with character analysis
6 notes
·
View notes
Text
more scattered naruto thoughts now that we’ve finished season 8 -
[spoiler policy disclaimer first, as always: I am watching naruto for the first time and have only gotten up to the end of season 8 (after pain destroys the hidden leaf village). i am trying to avoid spoilers, so please don’t interact with this (tags included, because the notifications now show them to me automatically) with any spoilery commentary, including even general things like “oh i love this show but it gets less good after X point” or “X season is better than Y season” or any general assessments of quality/likability/etc re: future seasons. Thank you! <3 ]
- i like the way S8 ended. i know that in real life maybe it wouldn’t be so feasible to just talk your enemy back to the light, but honestly, i don’t care. i love that shit. i love stories when people refuse to hurt the people who hurt them first, and then their seemingly inconceivable choice to refrain from striking back creates a connection (it’s the ‘return of the jedi’ effect, folks). i understand that it doesn’t work like that in real life most of the time, and i don’t recommend it for real life people trying to defend themselves, but i do love it in fiction. i LOVED how naruto went in pursuit of nagato to talk to him, not fight him. even though naruto says straight-up “i can’t forgive you” / “I want to kill you so badly i can’t stop shaking” - he still recognizes that his enemy is someone who’s been victimized, and he has enough compassion to feel pain on their behalf even when he himself is reeling from having his entire home destroyed and both of his teachers murdered by the person he’s confronting. his choice to control his (valid) rage and extend a hand in compassion is ultimately what changes the outcome and saves everyone who would have died, reversing the damage that was done, and i love that shit.
- absolutely adore yamato abandoning his own mission and taking off at a run to try and help naruto when he senses that naruto is losing control over the nine-tails. this man thought he was just a substitute teacher for a while there, but he’s become part of the family while he wasn’t looking.
- HINATA. oh my god i couldn’t even enjoy this incredible moment because i was so stressed out (and angry, at the time, because i really thought they were going to kill her, and that would’ve crossed my line). i want to watch this again knowing that she’s fine, because my anxiety over ‘fuck fuck fuck they’re actually going to kill one of the kids’ precluded me from even appreciating it appropriately.
- there’s been a lot of talk on this show about how sakura doesn’t have as much chakra as naruto or sasuke, but she heals people non-stop the entire time Pain is attacking and doesn’t show any signs of running dry. SHOW HER SOME RESPECT.
- CHOOOOOOOOJIIIIIIII! omg. i was so afraid that his father was actually dead, and SO RELIEVED that he was okay. you can’t do that to choji!!!
- also relatedly, how much do i adore choji for caring so much about kakashi? <333 i mean this kid is there sobbing over his dead body, and then he bursts out crying when kakashi comes back to life - i really appreciate these little ties between characters who aren’t always in close quarters but who do have a relationship. kakashi has been a teacher to ALL of the kids, and team 10 especially feels indebted to him - the respect and affection they all feel for him is very real.
- first time i actually thought ‘ok he’s cool’ with regard to minato was when he talked to the nine-tails so unfazed like “he’s a loudmouth. let’s go somewhere more quiet.’ i’ve been kind of so-so on his character so far, but i liked this.
- also later in that scene - the (rare) scenes we’ve seen where naruto totally breaks down absolutely kill me. it happened once when gaara was dead, and then there’s another moment in this episode when he’s talking to minato - whoever voices him does just incredible work in those moments, and it is SO PAINFUL to me because naruto is always such a happy kid the rest of the time and eternally optimistic and positive and excited and popping back up every time he falls down, and so when he cracks it is just devastating to see. i hate seeing him cry like that.
- similarly - that shot of sasuke at the end of the itachi arc wrecked me. naruto’s breakdowns are upsetting, but at least he allows himself to have them - when he gets pushed past a breaking point, he explodes. he cries and yells and spills every single thought in his head in front of everybody who’s around him, and after it’s done, things get better. he’s with people who care about him. he’s venting and making himself understood, and he always finds his equilibrium again.
sasuke, though, has been completely locked down ever since we saw him sneak out of the hospital to wander around the scene of his community’s mass murder, and he’s still locked down now, even crying all alone at the edge of the ocean. this moment isn’t cathartic. it isn’t a release. this is barely even a sliver of what this kid has going on inside him, and it looks like it’s agonizing for him to even let that much out.
- the scene where naruto is about to give up and give in to the nine-tails’s power...that exchange!!!!!!!
i don’t know. it hurts. i hate this. i don’t know. what should i do. i don’t know anything anymore. someone...please help me. give me...an answer.
destroy everything. erase anything that causes you pain. give me your soul, your spirit, your vital essence. give it to me, and in exchange, i will rescue you from your pain.
this whole exchange is amazing. the way naruto says ‘it hurts’...this is one of those scenes that expands to cover so much more ground than just what’s onscreen at that moment. what naruto overcomes here is precisely the trap that sasuke has not been able to escape. sasuke has never had any framework for dealing with pain that isn’t about pursuing vengeance. it’s the only way he thinks he can free himself from his pain - by putting all of his energy into destroying the people who hurt him.
but it becomes an endless cycle, because he never succeeds. itachi dies and sasuke feels worse than ever, so he turns his attention to the hidden leaf in an attempt to finally kill what’s hurting him. but even if sasuke were to raze the entire village to the ground, his pain would still be with him, and he’d then have to turn his attention to yet another target, because the alternative would be to recognize that he can’t escape his pain by destroying the things that hurt him, and that’s not something he’s able to accept right now. he’s spent half his life fixated on the idea that revenge can rescue him from how terrible he feels, and abandoning that idea now would mean that nothing can save him. it would mean that he’s going to hurt like this no matter what he does.
kakashi tried to warn him about this. he tried to tell sasuke that even after getting his revenge, sasuke wouldn’t feel better, that he’d only tear himself apart trying to achieve something that would leave him feeling empty - but sasuke was too entrenched in his own warped thinking to believe it. and ever since then, sasuke has been in the company of people who are happy to let him dig himself deeper and deeper into a self-destructive hole as long as it benefits their agenda. they don’t care if he’s hurting himself. they’re happy to see him suffering. his pain is a tool they can use.
- a note re: kakashi, when it comes to this topic -
i think it’s relevant to remember that kakashi never tells sasuke not to pursue revenge because it’s “wrong” or ethically questionable. he never delivers any moralizing speeches in the vein of “if you kill someone who victimized you, you’re just as bad as they are.” kakashi doesn’t think it’s wrong if itachi dies, and if sasuke were in a better state of mind, he probably wouldn’t even mind if sasuke were the one to kill him. that’s why kakashi is comfortable helping team 10 pursue asuma’s killers, after all - because they’re not unbalanced by rage or making self-destructive decisions; they’re acting with clear heads and pursuing a course of action that needs to be taken anyway (asuma’s murderers are on their way to the leaf to capture naruto - they need to be dealt with regardless). team 10′s kids can handle that mission - they’re thinking straight. they’re comfortable accepting adult guidance. they’re grieving, but they’re okay.
sasuke is not. sasuke has been deeply traumatized since he was a very young child, and encouraging his quest for vengeance is equivalent to validating all of the fucked-up thought patterns that are hurting him so badly - that it was his responsibility (as a seven year-old child) to protect his clan, that he was weak and cowardly for running away, that he needs to take itachi down as penance for failing to save his family, that killing itachi is the only way for him to justify his childhood survival, that killing itachi will free him from his pain. for kakashi to encourage any of these false convictions would be irresponsible and, ultimately, harmful to the child he’s supposed to be looking after. if sasuke gets his revenge on itachi, he’s just going to be left with the horrifying realization that his pain hasn’t lessened even the slightest bit, except that now he also has to deal with the additional trauma of killing someone he used to love.
kakashi doesn’t discourage sasuke from revenge because Revenge Is Morally Bad and You Are Morally Bad For Pursuing It; he discourages sasuke from revenge because in this particular case, sasuke’s fixation on revenge is hurting him. it’s unhealthy for him, and it will cause him worse pain in the future if he allows it to continue driving his life. sasuke is never going to feel better if he doesn’t stop distracting himself from his pain by focusing solely on vengeance. if he’s ever going to actually be rescued from his pain, he needs to face (and FEEL!!!) his grief, which is precisely what staying fixated on revenge allows him to avoid.
- relatedly: i just. am SO sick. of all these horrible people. getting their hands on sasuke. and using him for their own ends. when he has already been manipulated and victimized all his life. it makes me wanna SCREAM!!!! and i know that’s the point; we are supposed to be frustrated by this - but - hrnghghgnh
and like - it’s not like sasuke doesn’t know it’s happening! he’s not stupid! he knows the people around him are using him, and he just tries to use them back and play them before they play him, and he accepts that this is what his life is going to look like, and because he survives, he thinks he’s in control, but he has NO IDEA how far over his head he’s in now. and besides, he never stops to think that maybe his life shouldn’t look like this. he has no conception of ‘someone should be taking care of me.’ he’s never seen himself as a child who needs protection - he’s never seen himself as a child, period. it’s why he’s such a brat to the other kids, and it’s why he never calls kakashi ‘sensei.’ he thinks of himself as an adult. he has adult problems. he can’t connect to children his own age because he can’t connect to the idea of childhood - his childhood was stolen from him, and with it went any conception of refuge or safety or the fact that relentless self-sufficiency and a constant cycle of using/being used by other people isn’t in fact what his life is supposed to look like.
i am continually infuriated by all of these people who have abdicated their responsibility as adults and chosen to exploit an already exploited kid, one who is too messed up to save himself or let anybody else help him. none of these people care about him. they all want to use him for something. they’re happy he’s in pain, because his pain is what enables them to manipulate him.
the people who DO truly want to help him are the same people he’s desperately trying to avoid. the only adult sasuke ever had a meaningful and non-manipulative relationship with is the same adult he keeps running away from. and the only two people his own age who ever actually knew anything about him or cared if he was okay are the two people he keeps pushing away.
there is, perhaps, a lot to be said about how sasuke continually runs away from the people who actually care about him and instead affiliates himself with people he’ll never have to worry about forming a connection with. “having too many ties in this world just holds you back” - sure, and having no ties protects you, too. nobody to love you, nobody to know you, nobody you can ever lose.
15 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
randoediot
Ediot, the fat fatty robutt
thietkenhadepmoivn
Thiết kế Nhà Đẹp Mới
lauritanaomystery
🌼Mushi said Fuck too!🌼
hanadoesstuffwrong
Hana x
aisha-winget01
Untitled