sometimes a girl just has to explain her favorite book to an imaginary version of the girl she has a crush on

Disney+'s Loki Season 1 was weird, wild, and wonderful; all spurred on by the god of mischief himself, as Tom Hiddleston’s Loki went to the far reaches of the MCU’s reality and back to change everything, including representation in our corner of the sacred timeline. As discussions about representation for the LGBTQIA+ community focus on seeing themselves in media, Loki’s premiere during pride month elicited discussions and excitement from fans and critics. The topic, what does Loki being bisexual. Where do we go from here has been on everyone’s mind, but the answer is simple. As Loki prepares for Season 2, it’s time for Marvel to take the next step and explore the character’s gender fluidity.

Loki’s MCU popularity is somewhat ironic given the character's original roots in the mythology. The Norse counterpart to Hiddleston’s trickster was the son of the giant Farbauti and the goddess Laufey, who managed to wiggle his way into Odin’s family. He is described as a shapeshifter; taking multiple forms like a salmon, a mare, and an old woman. Depending on the source material, Loki (much like other deities) shapeshifted and schemed his way into the myths that shape the world: When bound to a rock beneath a serpent, if the serpent drips venom on him it causes earthquakes. He sired Hel, the goddess of death, Fenrir, the wolf, and Jörmungandr — a snake eating its own tail.

Loki has counterparts in multiple other pantheons (Anansi from West African and Carribean mythology, Hermes from Greek Mythology, to name a few) but he’s front and center in Marvel and the fan dedication to the character (where else are you going to get a room full of fully grown people screaming a villain’s name?) means that Marvel can tell stories with him including stories that focus on what Loki represents in comics canon, who the character has become in the modern mythos of the MCU.

In the MCU, Loki's story is a sad one. In Thor, he discovers that he was adopted, that he will never be King of Asgard despite his brother Thor being a brute, and decides to make himself an enemy of the Gods of Asgard and the humans on earth slowly learning about what lies beyond the solar system. Outcast and alone, he becomes Thor’s primary motivation to fight, battles the Avengers and nearly takes over earth, and finally sacrifices himself to save Thor and the other Asgardians seemingly undergoing a redemption arc. In fact, Loki has had two redemptive arcs, both of which speak to people who have struggled to repair themselves and contribute to society. His story is that of someone who has always sought to accept himself — much like those in the LGBTQ+ community.

Now that his redemption is (seemingly) out of the way, there are other parts of Loki’s comic history that writers can tackle, including his shape-changing abilities and his fluid sexuality. Neither are unusual in the media (you could make an argument that Loki’s mythological arc where he gets impregnated and gives birth to an eight-legged horse is a sort of ancient world blockbuster event).

Loki being genderfluid should be Marvel’s next step in on-screen representation because all of the character’s traits point to it being the logical choice. For one thing, the story of a being who feels abandoned in their own family is one common to every sphere, but it fits in well in the LGBTQIA+ community. Statistics regarding transgender children point out that over half have ​​considered some sort of self-harm without support. Support leads to a decrease in suicidal thoughts as well as suicidal attempts. Loki never went through those things, but for many now cheering his bisexuality seeing a character with that backstory doing good and being seen in the public doing some good is much-needed representation.

In all other continuities, Loki is a bisexual genderfluid being. Using the so-called “God of Outcasts” to introduce bisexual and genderfluid characters to the MCU is a smart decision. Loki’s large fanbase puts him on avengers merchandise and front and center in Avengers canon. His villainy and transformation to anti-hero with two redemptive arcs has brought his engaging character to the forefront of his own story. As he says, he’s “writing his own destiny,” something members of the LGBTQ+ community can relate to, and he and his variants can ask the audience to question their preconceived notions of the bisexual and genderfluid community.

There are certain behaviors that come with being genderfluid. There is the notion that constraining oneself to a particular set of societal expectations of gender is ridiculous. There is a focus on individuality over conformity on such a base topic. As so many people say, gender is a spectrum and to describe individually what gender means to specific people, doesn’t do it justice.

Rather there are practices and behaviors that Marvel could study and put into stories. Loki’s change in appearance and outfits could come with new pronouns (a facet of being transgender and genderfluid, as pronouns are a source of hot debate in the cisgender community) and audiences would be more willing to accept it thanks to the dedication of his loyal fans and his anti-hero status. Loki is cunning, Loki is full of guile, and Loki has proven himself because people love the character. Villains from underrepresented groups are frequent. The audience’s love has writers wanting to explore his sympathetic backstory. That changes the equation. Members of the LGBTQ+ community understand what it’s like to be declared villains.

The show has made massive strides in representation, even casting queer actors to play Loki(s). DeObia Oparei’s Boastful Loki exemplifies just what Loki and the MCU should be striving for, representation and work — building characters who can be examples to others. Oparei went to Twitter and thanked Marvel for its work, but it’s work that must continue.

From his beginnings as a trickster god to his inclusion in the modern mythos of the MCU, Loki is a powerful figure, and the new Disney+ series has set him up to be both a real anti-hero and an embraced character. Since audiences have now embraced his sexuality, it’s time to embrace the next step and use Loki, Sylvie, and any other Loki variants to explore what being transgender, what being genderfluid, truly means in modern mythology and beyond.

Loki Season 1 is streaming now on Disney+. A second season has been announced.

thoughts on the finale

overall, s3 was quite good. but the finale makes it all feel pointless. and not just s3, but s2 and s1 as well. and i know the line about “the universe acknowledges you” was because of what was to come and was supposed to be some sort of comfort to the audience, but it wasn’t. at least not for me. legion never stuck the landing for their finales so this doesn’t surprise me. but i’m gonna rant anyways.

several things i didn’t like.

1) no acknowledgement whatsoever of the hallers who gave david a loving life. they retconned the hallers’ existence this whole season to push the idea that david never received love in his childhood and didn’t grow up looked after. despite the fact that we’ve seen throughout s1 how dearly important david’s childhood was and how important mama and papa haller were to him and how much he loved them and vice versa. i mean really, no acknowledgement of amy haller at all? the woman he cared about most besides syd? his sister? who was so important to him, we got a multiverse episode about how key amy was to david’s lives? not even an acknowledgement towards lenny when she killed herself inside amy’s body? and even worse, we’ll never know precisely why the xaviers gave david to the hallers in the first place. i found this retcon extremely insulting to david’s character, but to adopted families/foster families.

2) farouk’s redemption. how utterly insulting to the audience’s intelligence to redeem farouk with no recognition for his insidious actions and unrelenting vile choices. he possessed a baby, terrorized it for fun, abused a child, he sexually molested david every time david was frozen with fear to further suppress him, he raped lenny, a lesbian, whenever he felt like it, he stole people’s bodies because he felt like it, he killed endless amounts of people. and then they have this same farouk ask his younger self if he was really that hateful and petty as if the audience is supposed to forget that just a year prior to that conversation, that this same farouk brutally murdered an innocent amy haller to get at david and, as lenny said, raped her whenever he wanted. the same person who continued to plant the ideas in david’s head that he’s god and doesn’t have to regard the lives of other people. the same person that kidnapped syd and manipulated her into turning against david before he even betrayed her. like, for real? just retcon all of that to pretend like farouk had a change of heart and always loved david and wants world peace? all it takes is to share beer with your old enemy despite the fresh blood on your hands? wow. how embarrassingly bad is that on the writers’ behalf.

3) syd. not only did syd have a mere handful of lines in this episode, but yet again, it’s as if the writers changed their minds about syd’s feelings/characterization. she’s got to be one of the most jerked around characters on this show. she used to be consistent up until the latter half of s2 when the writers decided to make syd ooc for the sake of plot (you know, the david is evil crap). syd just episodes prior expressed that she felt it was worth it to have been with david and that she wouldn’t change it. she didn’t regret their love, she regretted their downfall. in her final moments, she’s back to bitter snark, borderline defeating the whole empathy episode. i loved the bit about saving baby david, but loathed the “i am” in response to david saying she’ll be extraordinary without him around. it retcons the entire value of syd’s history, her life choices, her self perception. syd, who ALWAYS believed she was extraordinary, given by her famous quote “who teaches us to be normal when we’re one of a kind”, suddenly will be a “better” person w/o having known david? when it was through him she found summerland, found mutant allies, found freedom, found a second childhood. and then what is the purpose of saying her new life will be distinctly amazing if we don’t even get to see it? not even an epilogue paragraph of what syd became in her new life? it felt like such an impersonal send off for her. she’s the female lead but yet again she ends up on the reduced end of things.

4) no consequences. the entire theme of s3 was, time traveling can change the past, but it can’t change who we are. there were no consequences in sight for any of these people. all those awful things david did, murdering and orphaning people, causing his best friend/sister’s suicide, drugging those hundreds of women, none of it mattered when legion pretended like it was supposed to. we didn’t really see david grow. we didn’t truly see him redeem his self. we didn’t see him express any true regret or remorse for all he did on the way there. right up until he end he remained in his entitled tantrum state. all it did was justify everything he did. because the past got rewritten. david got his second life and the people he sacrificed to do it don’t matter. and really? “sorry” was all he could say to the woman he raped and hurt the most? big yikes. legion’s faux commentary on make entitlement and sexism went absolutely nowhere. it’s absolutely bull crap. further proof that rape should’ve never been part of this show, let alone trying to do commentary on rape culture.

5) disjointed elements. switch turning out to be a time god felt so last minute and so lazy. she suffers and endured all this abuse from david because she was meant to “grow up” into her celestial clock form. sure it’s better than just her dying, but it feels as if her screentine was dedicated for a disappointing surprise. given how much screentime switch took up, i expected better. this is my main problem with shows adding more characters to the main plot. it causes the original characters to be neglected which results in less screentime for the originals (syd and the loudermilk twins) or being killed/written off (lenny, ptonomy, the birds) and usually the pay off isn’t good.

6) the severe lack of follow up. we will never know what oliver’s 1 + 1 plan was. we will never know what ultimately became of the birds. what became of ptonomy, who they turned into a flash drive and gave all of 3 lines to for the whole season, we’ll never know what the 3 years from now event change ptonomy calculated turned out to be, or what became of summerland or division 3. we’ll never know why they showed 616!legion in the desert. we will never get a true apology from syd to david and vice versa. we will never get an actual explanation for why farouk was allowed to roam around freely and unchecked despite him being the root cause for david’s demise.

7) the impersonal approach to mental illness. what’s the deal? legion had such a sensitive despite clinical approach to mental illness in s1. they handed the diagnoses with such care and the themes involved with it. in s2 it’s all but abandoned, and in s3 the theme returns, but with no personal touch whatsoever. ah gabrielle has the sickness, it runs in the women in the family, okay mental illness is hereditary for david, understandable. how come this is something david never reconciles his self with? how come they never give david’s true diagnosis? we know he has dissociative identity disorder, but david doesn’t. david is expressly in denial about being mentally ill, even saying he’s not “crazy” to his mother. yet he has a system of alters he works with. they all say “i am legion” which we know is what his collective of alters are called, but that’s it. one of the things david wanted to change was his mental illness. is he ever going to learn he can’t change that because he was sick all along because of his mother? his mental illness is such a huge aspect to her character yet in s3 it just feels like a post it note stuck to his chest. no one regards it with sensitivity. no one accepts responsibility in exacerbating his condition. nothing. legion used to be about mental illness. then they shed it for social commentary which held no weight, and destroyed the characterizations for an outcome that was ultimately inconsequential.

overall, this just proves to me that legion needed more than 3 seasons. easily 4-5 seasons would’ve worked better for this. legion doesn’t even leave things up for interpretation, it just leaves most of what they set up unanswered. i felt since s2 that it had been too soon to develop the story they were developing and i was right. choosing a 3 seasons arc where 2.8 out of the 3 seasons the male lead is a sympathetic and genuinely good character to make him evil and narcissistic and apathetic? makes no sense. or when the female lead used to be this complex morally grey character and at her last hour becomes isolated once more and is quoting things straight out of 2014 tumblr? i mean really? wtf.

the other characters didn’t get to do enough across these seasons. they were cannon fodder for david’s story/development (or lack thereof) more than anything else. once they were less proximal to david, they were less relevant to the writers too.

syd and david’s relationship didn’t last nearly long enough before they were thrust into ghastly new territories. and the same goes for everyone else’s dynamic on the show. far too much offscreen development occurred. farouk having a change of heart? you truly couldn’t pinpoint any point where farouk ever felt sorry for david or cared about anyone else but his self. he’s been nothing but condescending, sadistic, manipulative, and countless other atrocities. d3 and the summerlanders being comfortable with farouk with no mind control at play at all? get real. kerry and syd’s friendship was nice tidbit but we didn’t see it develop at all. it would’ve been important to see these female mutants develop a relationship. it’s the most frustrating thing aboutall of this. clearly more time was needed.

we needed more time for these things to feel truly earned. but noah was way in over his head because of how busy he became by the time s2 swung around and decided to cut the show short. i don’t buy for one minute that 3 seasons was the plan all along. everything about legion’s story progression beyond s1 screams improvisation and a messy one at that. there wasn’t enough time for these characters to breathe, too much characterization and story had been retconned to get the ending over with, and legion choosing to end where it began, except all the characters we loved are gone, all the things that made the show most important to us are gone, feels more depressing than i thought it would.

it’s going to be difficult rewatching the show especially from its flawless premier season, knowing none of it happens at all. it’s literally unfathomable to think that 3 years later this is where we’d be. i’m so disappointed.

On the writing of RWBY volume 5 and why I like it

Ok I have seen too many posts about why people dislike the writing of RWBY volume 5, so I’m here to counter with why I actually really like it. Yes there are flaws, but that’s not what this post is about. There are enough posts about them already.

1) The writers really know how to make the viewers hate a character. Honestly, I have not seen a character so universally hated by the fans as Adam (up to the end of volume 5. I know nothing about the character short so that’s not included in this) since Umbridge in Harry Potter. It’s HARD to write a character that is viewed as a terrible person by everyone and they did this with Adam time and time again. Yes he’s a bit of a whiny bitch at the end of volume five, but that makes even the people who liked him for being a badass see that he’s just a coward.

1.5) Still on that point, Cinder. I actually have always loved Cinder as a villain. My sister cosplayed her 3 years in a row and that made me enjoy Cinder and always want to see more of her. But when the writers were about to “kill her off” (in quotes because I won’t believe it until I see a body/powers transfer), they made her universally hated by the fandom by having her spear Weiss. In that moment, even people who loved Cinder (like myself and my sister) wanted her dead.

2) Plot twists and cliffhangers done right. I’ve actually gotten really into watching RWBY reaction videos again just to see the looks on peoples faces when a) Weiss gets speared and b) “She’s not the spring maiden, I am”. Both of those were just so jaw-droppingly unexpected that I was left speechless after the episodes. And these weren’t cheap tricks to get an audience reaction. They were well crafted and well implemented. In terms of the spring maiden, there was subtle foreshadowing: candles going out when Raven was speaking with Qrow in V4, spring maiden powers only being used when Raven was wearing her helmet, Raven saying that Cinder’s last name was such a fitting name she must have chosen it herself while pretending a girl named Vernal was the spring maiden. 

Weiss getting stabbed was less foreshadowed because it was meant to be a shocking scene. But I love how they did it. First it served two major plot purposes: unlocking Jaune’s semblance and making the viewers HATE Cinder. And the latter point is impressive (as mentioned above). For it to work, Weiss had to first be a super liked character. And volumes 4 and 5 managed to make most fans I know love Weiss so much. For a show with over 50 characters after the second season, it’s amazing that they could make one character so universally loved. Especially when she was such a brat in Volume 1 that a lot of fans disliked her. Second, the parallels to Pyrrha’s death during that scene were heartwrenching. Third, we all knew Weiss would be okay, at least in the back of our minds, but it’s a testament to the writers that the stakes still felt high anyway. That even though we KNEW they wouldn’t kill her off, we were still worried that they might. Let me tell you that it takes skilled writing to first build up a character who is that well liked (especially when they were such a brat at first), then give them a near death experience that is actually suspenseful and not eye-rolling, despite it being a character that you KNOW won’t die.

3) Ilya gets redeemed without dying, and in a believable way. I really like what they did with Ilya. It’s rare to get a real redemption arc. My roommate and I actually spent a good half hour a few days ago trying to list real redemption arcs in books/shows/movies/video games and they are few and far between. What I mean by real redemption arc is one where the character was actually one of the bad guys (and not brainwashed, possessed, blackmailed, or otherwise forced to do so against their will), who for a real reason (generally the bad guys going too far) has a change of heart, decides to help the good guys and try to atone for their evil ways, and doesn’t die doing their one good deed (because that happens so much and is such a cop-out). Ilya worked with the White Fang because she hated humans after her parents died in a mining accident (and possibly before too). She was there because she truly believed in their cause. She had a change of heart when they went too far and tried to kill Blake’s family, and even then she still followed them until part way through the fight at the Belladonna’s. And Blake choosing to forgive her after her change of heart was strongly built up in Blake’s character arc from the beginning (she comes from a similar background and has trouble forgiving herself, but also sees the importance of not holding past misdeeds against the members of the White Fang who want to leave it).

4) Heartwarming team rwby reunion moments (also giving Weiss and Yang some interactions because we’ve barely had any of those before this): the writers must have done something right if tiny moments can be impactful for so many different reasons. Weiss hugging Yang in the bandit camp is one such example. It works so well because Yang’s surprise says a lot about how alone she thought she was and Weiss initiating the hug shows how much less cold she is now and how desperately she missed her team. Then when they meet up with Ruby, and Yang and Ruby hug, Weiss looks sad and then Ruby opens her arms to include her. It shows so much about how Weiss sees them as family but at the same time felt like she didn’t belong to that reunion because Ruby and Yang are actually sisters. The writers did something right if a facial expression can convey all of that uncertainty. And Blake’s reunion with the team was full of so much uncertainty and the way they’ve been handling it gives me hope that we will get a proper resolution to her running away at the end of volume 3, as opposed to just immediate forgiveness.

5) We’re finally starting to explore whether or not Ozpin is trustworthy. This has been hinted at since the song Sacrifice in volume 2 (and less so in a handful of cryptic lines in volume 1) and we are finally getting some in show evidence for all that speculation. I especially love that Ruby still follows him because the greater good (stopping Salem) is more important to her than whether they’ve been lied to/they’ll die in the process/etc. 

6) Lionheart’s death was super creepy.

I could go on, but this post is getting really long. In general, though the pacing of the writing isn’t always the best, that’s been a problem since volume 1 (the exception is Volume 3 because shit hit the fan). There are other flaws to the writing, but like I said, this post isn’t about those. The strengths to the writing lie mostly in the writer’s abilities to make us feel what they want us to feel: we hate who they want us to hate, we love who they want us to love, we cry just by having them say the words ‘combat ready’ or ‘keep moving forward’, we fear for the lives of some characters and root for the deaths of others. This is the sort of writing I love. I love being made to feel things, and it’s rare I get that from a show. Another strength is in how interesting all the characters are. They’re all distinct and unique, a difficult feat for a show with so many, and most of them are interesting enough that they are someone’s favourite. Personally, I can never choose who my favourite character is because I like so many of them for different reasons (Ruby’s optimism and bravery, Weiss’ finding herself and becoming the person she wants to be, Blake’s struggle to forgive herself for the mistakes of her past, Yang’s fierceness, etc etc). The third thing I love about the show’s writing is actually a place where it receives a lot of criticism. I love how cryptic they’ve been with things (villain plans, ozpin’s intentions, etc). I’ve seen some complaints that this drags on or it makes it feel like the villains are doing cryptic bad things with no grand purpose, etc. Personally I love it because it leads to so much speculation about what will happen next. We are given just enough info to start guessing and this has led to so many discussions with my friends just analyzing every sentence of the show. 

Overall, while the show’s writing has it’s flaws, I still love it.

Antiheroes and Pity vs Sympathy

I automatically have a flash of sympathy for anyone who’s called-- or calls themselves-- unlikeable, or unwantable, or unknowable (hi, Adam Parrish). I don’t want to seem like a bleeding heart, though, mostly because I don’t want to say that I romanticize this. So in part this is a comeback to the people who don’t understand, and in part it’s because I’m addressing it mentally to those characters and/or people who’re in that state of mind (particularly re: the Kavinsky and/or Mary Morstan discourse in fandom). It’s not about pity, when I love a dark character. And it’s not that I don’t see all the issues. I think what I feel is a desire to protect those who make themselves vulnerable, and I think to believe yourself unlikeable is ultimately to admit to a wound. In that position of vulnerability, a lot of dark things can happen. A lot of violence and hurt can potentially be perpetrated in so-called self-defense. Not all of it is forgivable, but much of it is sympathetic, to me. 

Usually. Not always.   

I say all this, but it’s by no means absolute. I like a lot of characters that are supposed to be ‘problematic’ or dark, but at the same time, if a character is essentially shallow or comfortable with their own darkness and despair, generally I don’t care for them. It’s not that I need self-hatred or something, but there’s a big difference between Draco Malfoy and Adam Parrish, or Severus Snape and MCU’s Loki (to get more hardcore), and someone like Kylo Ren or Kavinsky. What makes someone like Kylo Ren or Kavinsky different? Seemingly, they have all those antihero type ingredients of intense darkness and perhaps self-pity, but they just lash out and doesn’t make any meaningful connections. They may try, but they are abusive. Snape is like that too, with Lily-- he tries, but he’s still abusive and emotionally toxic to her, and then even to Harry-- so that his better feelings and motivations are swallowed up. The difference is that Snape ultimately sacrifices himself. He does a lot of hard things, thankless things, with little help and no acknowledgment or reward, in order to atone. This is the difference, even if he can’t unbend enough to form healthy relationships. With someone like Kavinsky or Kylo Ren, there is no atonement.

The vulnerability feels most of all like an excuse and not a burden the character bears (in this, Kylo Ren is like his grandfather). He has no obvious conflict within himself, no apparent (supposedly hopeless) desire to be something other than what he’s becoming. When a character simply chooses to self-destruct by destroying others, it’s not that they’re suffering over being unlikeable. It’s that they’re mainly making others suffer the bulk of the pain for them, leaving them only the smugness and self-satisfaction of destruction. That’s where my sympathy stops, and only the pity for the truly pathetic is left.

I’ve argued against sympathy for Kavinsky just recently, from the perspective that he’s not written sympathetically in the first place. There’s also a great post with comparisons between Kavinsky’s portrayal and the antihero protagonist in the All for the Game series. People seem not to differentiate between the antiheroes who’re written sympathetically and given proper redemption arcs and those who aren’t, except to say the ones without an arc were robbed, somehow. A lot of readers go beyond being moved to pity for the character and identify with their pain, which is understandable. Many of the geeks who read genre fiction probably have plenty of experience with feeling pathetic, left behind, unfairly maligned and so on, so there’s plenty of room for projection. However, they lack self-awareness in realizing this means they’re now bound to misread the entire story, because they’re no longer apt to align their sympathies with the actual heroes. 

Basically, a lot of misunderstandings and claims of authorial bias happen because people can no longer process a story as intended, by over-identifying and thus sympathizing with the pathetic antagonist. Note, there’s a difference between a pathetic and a sympathetic antihero, and it’s important to understand if you’re interested in following the narrative in the first place.

Specifically about Kavinsky, a lot of people point to his implied tragic backstory, and/or the sympathy the narrative should have shown for the possible trauma involved. I get pretty frustrated with that. First of all, the way I read ‘The Dream Thieves’ strongly implied that Kavinsky did a lot of unforgivable, dark shit as much or more than having it happen to him. He chose this. Give the guy some agency. This erasure of agency is something no one tolerates for the heroic protagonists, to the point where many people in fandom refuse to understand the concept of ‘extenuating circumstances’ for them. And yet somehow it frequently goes out the window for traumatized antiheroes. I also think I’m particularly frustrated ‘cause I’ve always thought of myself as having a huge soft spot for just that sort of misguided, unloved and problematic character. I don’t romanticize them, but I feel for them. I root for the underdog. I get invested. I do all these things. I am all these things. So I take it a bit personally when people make pity and entitlement-based arguments masquerading as empathy-based arguments.

The other reason I get frustrated is ‘cause I do the ‘what if’ thing, that old ‘but it could have been glorious’ argument like this one about Ronan/Kavinsky. That’s me. That’s the sort of thing I’ve said about Harry/Draco and even Heero/Duo (about whom I shouldn’t have to argue, because they’re both good guys who’re still young, who haven’t messed up that badly and haven’t finished growing in any case). Think of the possibilities! Why not grow into a glorious future? Why not choose hope? Why not believe people can change? Why not believe love can change you?  I’m not even sure what’s different here, except I’m certain it is different.

Harry & Draco and Heero & Duo (and Adam & Ronan) have all paid their dues. It’s not about one character rescuing the other. They struggle together, they help each other, and they need each other, but they each have an arc in this scenario. And like I said in my earlier Kavinsky post, a redemption arc isn’t an entitlement. It’s always a possibility, yes. But it’s not an indiscriminate process. It has to fit. It has to be fought for. Sacrificed for. Both Adam and Ronan are portrayed as fundamentally different from Kavinsky, basically.

The thing I love about Adam Parrish is that he’s always striving. He’s trying to prove himself. This is a quality he shares with a lot of Slytherin types, from Draco and Snape to Loki, or Tyrion Lannister in The Game of Thrones. These are all characters who’ve been on the ‘losing side’ for a long portion of their life, and they try to do something about it (something that usually involves more mistakes), but you can sympathize. It’s not enough that they were wronged, though. It’s not that I’d sympathize automatically just because a character goes dark after being wronged. That kind of narrative is all too common. The thing is-- the whole secret here-- is that any old villain thinks it’s Not Their Fault. 

It’s never their fault, is it?

Of course they’re the injured party. If that’s all you need to empathize and over-identify, then you’re creating your own prison along with the antihero in question. Then you’re just always going to be identifying with the so-called victim, full stop, and that’s a dark path in and of itself. It’s a small hop, skip and a jump from that into the moral quagmire these characters wind up in, because the dark choices they make are all about them. Who wronged them. What’s best for them.

By contrast, the best characters, the sympathetic ones, are not defined entirely by their trauma. They may think they’re unlikeable, or unknowable, or untouchable, but they still do some good in their life, they still want to achieve something constructive, and they’re still capable of love in spite of themselves. There’s still some core of them that’s untainted, that’s genuinely vulnerable, human and just a bit hopeful. They keep their eyes on the skies, not locked in with their inner darkness. That’s what works for me. They’re fighting for the future, even if they think it’s probably hopeless. That’s the ‘hero’ part of antihero.

This is not the same thing as wreaking revenge, like Kylo Ren or Kavinsky after Ronan rejected him. He didn’t have to do that. Ronan never did, and he went through some pretty bad shit himself, and has a lot of the same tendencies (as we know). There’s a difference between fighting for something and just succumbing to destruction. Destruction is an ugly thing. Of course, it’s a pitiful thing, too. It’s a natural part of humanity, a part of grief and rage that can be inevitable. But as a state of being, though, it’s static and unsympathetic. It’s movement that I like. If a character isn’t moving, my sympathy for their pain soon evaporates. They have to be running to something, away from something; they have to change.

One major reason I grew to love Adam as I read The Raven Cycle is because of his arc; you get the sense he’s always growing. He’s always changing. With Draco Malfoy (whom I adored), this was more of a potential than a reality in the books, so his story was a lot more frustrating except for the movement we got in ‘The Half-Blood Prince’. We did get a piece of the growth I think the character was capable of there. I understood, though. It was Harry’s story, so Draco was always an afterthought, more or less. I’ve accepted and made peace with this. I’m a Draco fan, but I actually sympathize with JK Rowling saying that Draco fans romanticize and victimize him too much. As written, Draco is more potential than reality, and a completed story that doesn’t explore that potential has effectively defined itself. 

There’s no point to responding to the story you wish was there instead. You can imagine alternative paths for the character, but they’re not actually real; you don’t get to argue that the author somehow robbed you-- or the character. 

Does the actual Draco Malfoy in the actual Harry Potter books deserve redemption? Well, he hasn’t done anything that awful; he was just an ineffectual bully who was merely manipulated into killing Dumbledore. He’s a pitiful figure, but no, he doesn’t have enough of an arc or enough evidence of an inner life to say he’s got a ‘heart of gold’, fanon aside. He’s just human, so he makes some positive choices-- he cares about his family, and does protect Harry from Voldemort to a minor degree. Beyond that, there’s absolutely no substitute for good characterization, and an actual canon arc. We can see Adam and Ronan’s interior slowly revealed throughout four books; with Draco, we barely got to the point The Raven Cycle got to in one book. Even with Snape, who doesn’t have a heart of gold either, at least there’s more genuine attention to interiority. While you can fill in the blanks, I’ve never felt like fighting the writer and the writing to do so after all is said and done. I’m not going to try to love a character in spite of the way he’s written; that seems pointless.

I do love Draco for who he is-- a slippery, whiny little shit who’s clearly desperate for attention and overwhelmed by the expectations placed upon him. I don’t need pity to appreciate a lively, if problematic, character. I do acknowledge that fandom is a wonderful place, where you can explore the potential backstories and give characters like Draco or Kavinsky (whatever their differences) the redemption arcs they didn’t get in canon. That’s a good thing. But that’s a separate thing from claiming the canon wronged them somehow. The canon was telling its own story, that has a logic and a rationale. Understanding this is important to understanding the rationale behind all the other characterizations involved, so I certainly wish the antihero fans took more of an interest. Alas....