Small but significant character moments that I actually really adore are from both the times we see the boys as tots. There is a reoccurrence that happens in both of them that I find so incredibly interesting.
For the turtle tot short, Splinter leaves the boys with weapons. In the short, Raph is the one who suggests they do “what Lou Jitsu would do” and Leo is the one who takes point when Splinter comes back to reprimand them. Leo, in taking point, is the one to defend them and get Splinter off their tails.
And then, in the flashback regarding the Kuroi Yōroi helmet, Raph is the one who grabs and throws “Skully” as a way to replace their missing ball which breaks it into pieces, but Leo is the one who speaks for the group and rushes into action to fix the teapot.
I love this for multiple reasons, but the biggest are how it shows that Raph has always been inclined toward the bold and fun and making the plans to include his brothers in what he loves and believes they’d love, whereas Leo has always been inclined to be the “Face” of the group and shoulder the attention even if it’s potentially negative all while coming up with on the spot attempts to fix the situation.
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The thing that bugs me about the many conflicts of interest that happen between sonic and shadow is that no one in the fandom seems to consider that the fact sonic was wrong doesn't mean shadow was right
This is such a good point. Say it louder for the people in the back!
Sonic and Shadow fundamentally butt heads because of how they both view their responsibilities to protect the world.
The most pointed example of this for me is the inciting incident in Sonic Prime. I’ve already said a while back that I think Shadow is equally to blame for shattering the crystal because he was the one who prevented Sonic from doing what he had to do. I got some pushback saying that Sonic was the instigator of Shadow’s aggression, but I have a hard time believing that when Shadow literally greeted Sonic with a punch. Yes, Sonic still made a lot of mistakes that I acknowledged in my original post, but Shadow immediately set the tone for that encounter and it was NOT positive. My point in bringing this up again is to say that they both fucked up, but Shadow, the show itself, and much of the viewers blame exclusively Sonic because Shadow somehow stole the moral highground.
More nuanced, however, is the discussion around Sonic’s moral code as presented in the IDW comics (which are canon to the mainline series, btw, if anyone didn’t know. They are the same picture).
In issue 7, Sonic and Shadow argue over whether Eggman should live freely as Mr. Tinker. Shadow states that Eggman deserves to pay for all the pain he’s put Sonic through (among the other harm he’s caused). While Sonic agrees, he hinges on the fact that Eggman isn’t around anymore. Sonic doesn’t want to punish Mr. Tinker because he doesn’t want to be an arbiter of justice.
Yes, Sonic was “wrong,” but was Shadow really right in this case? Everyone in-universe gets upset with Sonic for not knowing something he reasonably had no way of knowing (literally who tf would have predicted Starline? lol) but what they’re really upset with is the fact that Sonic didn’t mitigate the risk.
I really feel like you can’t ascribe moral boundaries to these things. One isn’t good while the other is bad and vice versa. It’s all shades of gray.
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Why I believe John/Orekoto was lying about his motive in Neoplasm
Ok so double just came out and I have a lot of thoughts. When a new MV comes out I usually wait a while until I can make a proper analysis but this one is mostly going to focus on neoplasm. And in particular one thing me and my friend found particularly suspicious about John’s (Orekoto’s) testimony when it comes to the murder(s).
When Es questioned John about their murder, he responded very clearly with “Yeah it was me, I killed them off”. And after that Es questioned why he did it, only to say that he did it only because they were annoying him and it was whoever was walking by. Es goes quiet at this which might imply to me some sort of suspicion on his testimony. John goes on to say that he can’t remember how many he killed because he was just born back then and his memory is kinda fuzzy.
Instantly this set off a ton of red flags for me, it just doesn’t make any sense when you think about it. Earlier on when John fronted he started acting all violent and threatened to beat up Es, who just calmly laughed it off. Es seemed to be quickly notice something was off, as their calm demeanour enacted an also suspiciously calm demeanour from John. Es then said it was strange because they assumed him to be a monster. After hearing that John instantly went back into that violent persona that they were showing as soon as they fronted.
This scene is very telling to me. John is not violent, or evil, heartless or anything like that. He’s only acting that way to potentially come out less. And be even straight up says “if I had stayed a monster… maybe that would’ve been better.” Then instantly takes back what he said by just going “…what?”
From this it’s very clear, like I said, that John isn’t evil. But then that takes what he said about his murders into question. That he only did it because he just got annoyed and killed random passers. This clearly isn’t true when you take into account the whole interaction with Es, because otherwise he would’ve attempted to kill Es the whole time and not go docile when they weren’t acting scared.
I believe that John is trying to dip back into his monster persona he made for himself here. He probably figured out that acting evil all the time wouldn’t work, and when questioned on such a sensitive topic such as the murder he just went with the option that made him the least sympathetic, and Mikoto more sympathetic in order to lower his stress levels by not telling the full truth.
As for who committed the murder/s, I’m still pretty unsure. In double it looks like both sides are perpetrators. But this also takes into account, what about those scenes of John killing the mannequins? It seems like it matches up enough to what he said in the voice drama but I don’t think that’s the smiling gun.
Milgram is an extremely complex series, and in no way should the easiest option be assumed as the right one. Unreliable narrators are a big thing in the series, and we should look at a character’s MV with how they view themselves in mind. For example, Kazui thinks himself as a monster and this is especially prevalent in Cat, where if you’d take it at first glance you might assume that he’s evil or whatever, just as he views himself.
The same should apply to John as well. He wants to believe he’s a monster in order to protect Mikoto from more mental stress about his murder, and might end up with him fronting less. This likely subconsciously played itself into double and even MeMe, where John portrays himself as evil as that’s what he wants people to view him as.
I feel like when discussing who’s the murder and if John is evil, we should definitely take this into account otherwise our future opinions will be biased.
Ok so someone just mentioned the fact that he had a baseball bat in the first place means it was likely a premeditated murder. So him killing people just because they annoyed him would be a really weird thing to say because that would’ve been an impulsive murder, and he had a weapon at the time.
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