#i understand that these characters are not entirely good
Text
The Next Gojo Satoru
As you've probably guessed I have a lot to say about this chapter. However, right away I want to start out by pointing out once again that the fandom is taking a mostly gojo-centric view of this chapter. Which I understand it's Gojo's body that's being puppeteered around and dehumanized in the exact same way that Kenjaku one of the sickest and most inhuman characters used Geto's body.
However I think it shouldn't be understated how shocking it is to see Yuta betray all of his values like this. The most human character who represents love in the cast has given up on the cast and betrayed someone he loves. So let's talk about what this all means for Yuta under the cut.
GOJO GETS AN F IN TEACHING.
I understand why most of the focus is on Gojo, because yes Gojo's body is the one being violated here. He's not even allowed to rest in death after fighting on the front lines against Sukuna to the point where his brain was hemmoraging in the middle of battle and he was brutally cut in half.
Considering how much horror Gojo experienced when he saw Geto's body taken from him and made into Kenjaku's pupet. Cosidering the horrible pain that Nanako and Mimiko endured just seeing Geto's body still moving around denied a good death (Nanako and Mimiko were tellingly willing to let go and not try to take revenge against Gojo for killing Geto because of their friendship even though Geto was their whole world, but they'd never forgive Kenjaku for taking his body). Considering that Gojo even went out of his way to say he wanted to kill Kenjaku / Geto on Christmas Eve again in order to give him a proper burial it's understandable how horrifying this update is.
This is also a series where the two main antagonists are parasites who take the bodies, and steal away all bodily autonomy from characters like Yuji and Megumi and then force them to do horrible things they would never do and bear witness to it, such as the slaughter at Shibuya, or the murder of Tsumiki at Megkuna's hands.
It's understandable how people had such a visceral reaction to this chapter. However, I think the fandom has a tendency to paint Gojo like he's the central victim of all of Jujutsu Society when he's both victim and perpetrator.
Gojo is someone who has only been regarded as the strongest his entire life, and been used as a tool to keep Jujutsu Society stable his entire life. Gojo is also someone who never tried to be anything other than the strongest, never tried to empathize with anyone other than those who were just as strong as he is, and who raised all of his students to be tools too.
To illustrate my point here's an incredibly similiar character from Tokyo Ghoul: Arima Kishou. They are so similiar that they're both white haired mentor characters to the protagonist, they're both the strogest in their respective worlds, and Gege straight up copied this section of panels from the Tokyo Ghoul Manga.
Arima is a breeding project, who was bred by the Washuu Family who mxies blood between humans and ghouls through a series of controlled marriages for the purpose of creating hybrid ghoul human children. Arima isn't the ideal hybrid they were looking for, but he was so ungodly talented he quickly rose to being the most powerful and well-respected investigator in the CCG.
However, this is how Arima reacts to the fact that his entire purpose in life was just to be a weapon to kill ghouls.
Arima loathes violence, he loathes being an investigator, he loathes himself most of all and designs his entire political revolution around him finally being killed by Kaneki - to punish himself and also to relieve himself of the burden of living a life where he was only meat to kill others.
Gojo on the other hand loves being the strongest, he lives for Jujutsu. Arima's death is tragic and nihilistic believing his life had no real worth because all he ever was was a weapon to hurt others, whereas Gojo died satisfied.
Arima's last battle against Kaneki is grim, silent, and tragic, he does everything he can to make Kaneki despise him, to force Kaneki to kill him by being the worst version of himself and when Kaneki still wants him to live he just slits his own throat because even if Kaneki forgives him he can't forgive himself. Gojo laughs his head off and has the time of his life fighting against Sukuna, and going out in a blaze of glory.
Gojo dies smiling, Arima dies finally breaking into tears after a life of pretedig to be cold and emotionless. Gojo's dying regret is 1) that Geto wasn't there to say goodbye to him, and 2) that he wasn't able to draw out all of Sukuna's strength. Arima's dying regret was all the pain and suffering he caused throughout his life and how he was never able to rise above his circumstances and be anything other than what he was born to be.
These two characters are incredibly similiar, they are both the strongest, and they were both made into tools by a dehumanizing system they were born into. However, their attitudes are entirely different. Gojo enjoys being strong, and yes part of it is that Gojo himself doesn't realize he's a victim or what society has groomed him into becoming, but the other part is just because it's an ego trip for him. Gojo doesn't see himself as the tragic victim his fandom makes him out to be.
If you were to transplant him into Tokyo Ghoul Gojo would be happily killing ghouls, and he would think killing ghouls is fun because he's the strongest and best at killing ghouls. This is the complexity that is Satoru Gojo, he has been dehumanized and put on a pedestal his ow life, but Gojo also enjoys being on that pedestal and won't ever step down from it willingly.
I'm not saying that Arima is a better person than Gojo. I think the fact that Gojo doesn't think of himself as a victim is tragic in its own right, because he lacks the self-awareness to actually grow and change as a person. In the end both Arima and Gojo believe they couldn't be anything better than what they were, and their only release is death which is just insanely sad to me because as long as the future exists people always have a chance to get better no matter who they are. To give up on the future, to see an early death as a good thing simply because you can't endure life any longer is one of the most hopeless things imaginable.
Gojo's not sad because he was born to be a tool exploited for society's benefit, he's sad because he was lonely. He doesn't even realize it's his own darn fault he's lonely, because not only has Shoko said that he's not alone she's always been right there, but this chapter we get a repeat of Gojo's students begging him to let them in and Gojo himself decided to draw that line between himself and others and thinking an enlightened, godlike being like himself can't possibly be understood.
All of this to say I think Gojo is the sole victim here, but he's the middle of a chain of of victimhood. I think ultimately the biggest victim here is Yuta, and yes I will not only play trauma olympics here I'm going to win.
If this chapter goes to show anything it's that Gojo has completely failed in his ideals of protecting the youth from the dehumanizing system of sorcerers that takes children and reduces them to cogs in a machine.
A lot of people criticize Jujutsu Kaisen for dropping basically all of its political elements and themes of reform in the second half after Shibuya, and while I understand the criticism I think Gege intentionally shifted away from politics because Gojo's political revolution was never going to succeed.
From the beginning Gojo's solution to reforming Jujutsu Society and it's habit of taking away the youth of children and raising them up instead as child soldiers is... to make stronger child soldiers.
This is Gojo's blindspot and it has always been Gojo's blindspot.
It's why Gojo is completely okay with someone like Mei Mei who at the best uses her brother as a human shield to get out of curse domains and has stolen his entire childhood away to make him own pet little shoulder, and at worst actively molests him.
It's why Gojo is stated in the databooks to have only taken an interest in Megumi and Yuta because they were strong.
Gojo understands that he's being exploited by Jujutsu Society, but doesn't understand you need to deconstruct unfair systems of power and exploitation in order to build something better. Gojo from the beginning only had one plan, and that was to replace the people at the top with his own allies who'd support his agenda. He just thought waiting for them to die out and the children to grow up was the more peaceful way of doing it.
Gojo's political revolution was doomed from the beginning and that's why we see him go back on his word this chapter and just slaughter everyone at the top. His choice of a new leader for Jujutsu Society is hardly better than the elders, the person who executed Gojo's teacher and tried to get all the children to kill Itadori early on. Good choice.
This is what Gojo said would happen though, if he just wiped everyone out at the top no real systemic change would occur because they'd just be replaced with someone who wasn't that differet. Gojo's just given up on the notion of lasting change out of pragmatism.
Which is why Gojo himself is not that different from the elders in the first place, not because he's a bad person but because he was shaped by that same society and he's the pinnacle of that society.
I think the thing is and this point often gets ignored - a lot of the choices the elders make are because of outdated traditions like choosing to oppress Maki and Toji just because they challenge the traditional notions of cursed energy.
However, some of the decisions they make are out of cold hard pragmatism. Gakuganji actually turned out to be right in his assassiation attempt against Yuji Itadori. If they had succesfully killed Yuji, then the massacre in Shibuya would have been prevented and likely Kenjaku's plans would have been pushed back. The elders didn't sentence Yuta to execution just to be cruel, or just because they're superstitious but because he's already had several incidents of nearly killing people because he can't control Rika.
It's easy to dismiss the Elders as evil because they're just faceless entities, but then we witness in this very same chapter the main characters making the same heartless decisions out of the same sense of pragmatism.
Gojo understands Jujutsu Society is flawed, but doesn't understand exactly why it's wrong. He doesn't raise his students to be independent free thinkers because then they might question him, he raises them to be very powerful because that's more pragmatic.
Here are the next generation of sorcerers who are going to bring about the change to Jujutsu Society that Gojo so desperately seeks.
Nobara Kugisaki: Dead
Hakari Kinji: His greatest ambition is to start a fight club
Yuji: Actively calls himself a mindless cog and just wants to kill whatever society points him at and tells him to kill.
Maki: Mass murderer.
Yuta: Just stole Gojo's body and said he had to become a monster i Gojo's place.
Megumi: Begging to be killed.
Inumaki: Tuna Mayo
Panda: Is a Panda
(Joke lovingly ripped off from @kaibutsushidousha)
I understand that fighting Sukuna takes precedence now, but do you think once the dust settles any of these characters are going to do anything to make lasting change?
Are we going to see anything for them at the end of the road other than a mountain of their fellow sorcerers corpses?
Gojo didn't nurture his students to grow into healthy adults, he raised them into stronger child soldiers and yes that's the pragmatic thing to do to help them survive in the Jujutsu World, but the elders make those decisions out of cold pragmatism as well.
MHA is also showing a story where the children are failing to learn from the previous generatio's mistakes, but it's far less frustrating to watch in JJK because it almost seems like that's the point?
Maki sacrificed Mai for the sake of becoming someone strong enough to reform the Zen'in Clan, only for her sister to die and Maki to slaughter the rest of her family failing in both her goals to reform her clan and protect Mai.
Yuji became the host of Sukuna in order to help others, because the total deaths of people in the world would go down if he ate all the fingers. Not only did that decision lead to the death of thousands in Shibuya, but he's even lost his role of being Sukuna's host to Megumi.
Yuta wanted to find a reason to live and a purpose in protecting his friends, and also wanted to pay back the man who saved him, not only is Yuta choosing to die in a way that breaks his friends heart he's also violating his beloved teacher's bodies.
There's a lot of arcs like this where characters fail in what they set out to accomplish, because like in most tragedies they don't try to grow as people they only care about getting stronger. It's the same choice over ad over again, a decision made of cold pragmatism that brings about their tragic ending.
I think it speaks to why systems like this perpetuate themselves, because it becomes so hard to hold onto your humanity that even trying gets you actively punished all the while people like Mei Mei crawl to the top. However, even if you throw your humanity away purely as an act of survival you're still helping perpetuate that system instead of fighting against it.
Anyway, that's enough hating on Gojo, onto the main event.
THE NEXT GOJO SATORU.
It's almost masterful how perfect the foreshadowing for this chapter's twist was. Yuta sharing a common ancestor in Sugawara with Gojo.
The irony that Kenjaku said out loud that someone like Yuta could never become Gojo, on top of the fact that Yuta's true power comes from detaining his loved ones soul. He's turning Gojo's body into a weapon the same way that he once used Rika's vengeful cursed spirit as one (he even channels her strength into a sword, the same way Maki uses the sword that Mai gave her life to create in battle).
The way that Yuji's first impression of Yuta from his powerful presence and cursed energy alone was calling him someone even creepier than Gojo.
The idea that Kenjaku has been trying to get his hands on the six-eyes for years, which is what led most of the fandom to theorize a possible Kenjaku return by stealing Gojo's corpse. The fact Tengen said the six eyes, himself and the star plasma vessel are all connected and one time Kenjaku killed the six-eyes from a child only for another one to appear right away.
Yuta being told he could never reach Sukuna's heights because he lacks the selfishness of a calamity.
Even Yuta trying to tell a nameless assassin Uro to be less selfish, only to be chastised by her for not understanding because it's impossible for someone as blessed as he is to know what it's like to not have a name, to not have a face, to not be someone important.
Now here Yuta is, not only is he making the selfish decision to use his teacher's body as a tool, he's also most likely in five minutes going to die in someone else's body, having sacrificed not only his name, and face, but also his personal values in order to become a monster.
This arc makes it seem like Yuta's gone against everything he's stood for, making his arc a complete circle from Jujutsu Kaisen Zero and that's kind of the point. Heck, even something as small as Yuta's decision to show mercy to Ishigori was rendered pointless because Sukuna immediately killed him soon after taking Megumi's body.
If Yuta's regressed in his character it's because Gojo's purpose was not to raise these children into healthy adults, but strong soldiers.
What happened to Yuta is a direct consequence of the way Gojo recruits these children, and the underhanded motivations he has behind those recruitments.
Yuta's decision to take Gojo's body is more tragic on Yuta's part then it is on Gojo's, because Yuta is a child, and Gojo is an adult.
It is sad that Gojo is all alone, that he's forced to become a tool to society, but Yuta shouldn't be the one who feels responsible for that. Gojo is supposed to protect Yuta, he's the adult, the teacher, the one with power and Yuta is the child. Yuta is not the one who should be making this speech because it is not Yuta's responsibility to do any of this - but Yuta thinks it is because he owes Gojo.
However, when Gojo recruits people it's with the unspoken implication that they now owe him. He wants them to feel indebted, because then they'll be easier to use as pieces in his intended political revolution. We see this blatantly with the way he recruited Megumi.
I'll make sure you and your sister don't starve but you owe me in the form of labor later on in your life.
Gojo saved Yuta because he thought Rika was powerful and the elders were foolish for executing a potentially powerful sorcerer for THE GREATER GOOD instead of teaching him to control his power out of fear. Gojo recruited Yuji, because someone with Sukuna's power and who could eat his fingers as a vessel had the makings to be an incredibly powerful sorcerer. Gojo didn't even think of Megumi until after Geto defected, and Gojo decided he needed to start making changes to Jujutsu Society.
While Gojo's pragmatism is understandable to a point it also poisons his more nobler intentions. Since Gojo expects payment in return when he sticks his neck out for people, because these children are assets first and children secod.
I think Gojo likes Yuta. I think he gets along with him well. Yuta clearly respects him as a mentor. He did in fact go to great lengths to save Yuta from execution. He was right that it was more ethical to teach Yuta to control his powers rather than execute him for the danger he might represet. He even gives Yuta emotional advice a couple of times.
However, if Yuta was just like a grade 4 sorcerer with no special talent I doubt Gojo would have blinked at his execution. He sees Yuta for his talent first, and his potential to become someone like him. If anythig there are clear comparisons to both Megumi and Yuta. They're both prodigies born with incredible techniques, but Yuta is a lot more receptive to Gojo's grooming than Megumi is who's too traumatized to function. Gojo's not just grooming Yuta into being a powerful sorcerer, but another version of himself.
So it's almost karmic that not only does Yuta basically turn his back on everything that makes Yuta himself (his love for people, his desire to live and be surrounded by others), he also does so by literally becoming Satoru Gojo and transplanting his brain into Gojo's body.
Because Yuta is despite possessing a similiar level of talent as far from Gojo as possible. Gojo is not well liked by his comrades, he's there because he's needed due to his power. Yuta on the other hand has everyone vehemently disagreeing with his backup plan in the event of Gojo's death because they don't want to lose him.
People need Gojo, they want Yuta because of the connections that Yuta has made with them and because they care about Yuta as a person. Gojo is someone who deliberately draws a line between himself and others because he believes the strongest can't be comprehended, Yuta only fights for the sake of being accepted by others because he needs their approval in order to live.
Yuta's now turned his back on those two things, his tendency to put his loved ones first, and his desire to live, both because he feels he owes Gojo.
This comes about because of two factors, number one Gojo helping him with the implication that this help means that Yuta owes him something which makes Yuta desperate to pay him back and therfore easy to mold, and number two Gojo's intentions to begin with to take Yuta and make another Gojo out of him. To make a successor who would carry on the same burdens that Gojo did.
Gojo succeeded one hundred percent in making his successor as opposed to Megumi who turned out to be too different from Gojo i the end. He took what make Yuta unique and ironed out all those wrinkles until he was left with someone willing to make the same inhumane, pragmatic decisions that Gojo was.
I think it's tragic that as much as Gojo wanted to make things better for the next generation, he basically led Yuta down the same road he did, to make the same choice to throw his humanity away along with all of his loved ones. Especially since Yuta started out in such a different place.
Yuta has learned to become selfish like Gojo, because selfishness is apparently now the only way to get by in this world. A cycle that has been started with the elders, and continued on with Gojo, remains unbroken as Yuta becomes just another link in the chain. Yuta's likely going to die in a stranger's body, leaving all of his friends behind to mourn him, but even if he lives what life will that be exactly?
It speaks to the arcs in Jujutsu Kaisen that they're all kind of circles at this point. We have this heartwarming goodbye of Rika telling Yuta to live, and Yuta's whole arc was to learn to try to live without Rika and make new friends, but it's now likely goig to end with Yuta dying a year after Rika finally moved on.
Choso was told to try living on as a human and Yuki even sacrificed her life to give him the opportuity to escape the fight, and he only lived a month longer to die right in front of Yuji's eyes.
Gojo put all of his hope in the next generation, but now not only did he put all the power in Gakuganji's hands but he ended up dying a year after Geto did just like Yuta will likely die a year after Rika.
I think these character arcs are turning out to be circles because the characters aren't actually doing anything to try to break the cycles that they're trapped inside of - they're only trying to get stronger. Which is why they end up resembling the actions of the villains, Yuji becoming more curselike, Yuta stealing Gojo's body the way Kenjaku did with Geto's.
It reminds me of a quote from Critical Role that I absolutely adore.
“I have just taken an audience with the Raven Queen who has snuffed any hope of my redemption, for which I am truly grateful. With new clarity, I can finally see my life as a series of compounding, poor choices.” Vax winces. “There was nothing I could’ve done to save my family, yet I still sold my soul in search of vengeance. Later I allowed Ripley to leave, knowing full well she was a greater threat to the world than the Briarwoods would ever be. I traded the world’s safety for the belief that I could murder my way to peace; that if I could be a greater horror, it would bring my family back. And once this lie was shattered I scrambled to find asolution, to make a deal, to undo my mistakes and balance the scales. I nowunderstand that there are no scales, there is no redemption, and no ledger that judges me good or evil. I am free to simply be myself and live with the terrible mistakes I’ve made."
Especially this sentence: I believed I could murder my way to peace; that if I could be a greater horror, it would bring my family back.
Maki is a character that I have not found all that interesting in a while because she committed such a huge mass murder, only for it to have no consequences in the narrative and never be mentioned again, but this chapter she suddenly became an interesting character again.
Maki who lost everything but gained strength, doesn't seem all that bothered by the loss. People compare Megumi's reaction to losing Tsumiki to Maki's reaction to losing Mai, but Megumi's reaction is much more interesting because it's always better to see a character be weak and fall apart then to be strong and power through things.
However, maybe the reason Maki hasn't experienced any grief at all towards Mai and has instead delighted in her newfound strength and independence is because of this, because she still had Yuta.
Maki is a character who's not really said anything other than exposition the past like twenty chapters, but now she's the most vocally against Yuta sacrificing himself for the greater good. Yet this is against Maki's own ideology of doing everything you can to be stronger, to win. Maki was always about individualism, not about friendship or the bonds between others, she severed her own bonds to be free. Yet, she can't stand to see Yuta do the same thing as her, to become more like her.
This might be the consequence of Maki's continued choice to value freedom and the power to achieve that freedom over all else. Now, the one time Yuta is trying to throw away the same things that she threw away she can't say anything meaningful or convince him to stop him.
Which reminds painfully of this chapter as well.
Mai killing herself in order to free Maki from cursed energy is an obvious parallel to Sukuna devouring his own twin in the womb, but the difference is in this situation Maki didn't want Mai to go, she begged her not to. However, just like with Yuta there was nothing Maki could ahve said or done by that point to convince Mai to stay. Maki has always chosen power over her sister, she's always abandoned Mai, so what exactly can she say to convince her that she cares more about Mai more? That her dream of defeating the Zen'in and having revenge against them isn't worth the price if it comes at the sacrifice of Mai?
Maki didn't want to abandon Mai, or for Mai to sacrifice herself, but tragically her every action indicated otherwise. It all comes down to this: I believed I could murder my way to peace; that if I could be a greater horror, it would bring my family back.
Maki seems to have achieved peace by murdering the Zen'in, but we see the same kind of circular arc that we have for Yuta.
Maki gave up on everything for strength, but Maki's not strong enough to finish Sukuna then and there, forcing Yuta to sacrifice himself the same way Mai did.
Maki can't talk Yuta out of making that sacrifice, or come up with any convincing argument with why he shouldn't because of all the choices she's made before this.
Maki chose to murder her way to peace, but it came at the cost of her humanity and growth and thus she's faced again with the exact same situation with Mai and she's forced to watch her heart be taken from her again.
It goes to show that we think these characters are getting stronger but they're actually sacrificing something vitally important.
These characters are just going to keep going around in circles and you have to wonder just when is it going to stop?
#yuta okkotsu#gojo satoru#jjk meta#jujutsu kaisen meta#yutamaki#jujutsu kaisen theory#jjk 261#jujutsu kaisen 261#jjk 261 spoilers#jujutsu kaisen 261 spoilers
242 notes
·
View notes
Text
Food Bank Fundraiser
Hi everyone!
First of all, I want to say thanks to everyone who's been leaving such nice tags/comments on stuff I've posted! It's been really encouraging (o^▽^o)
Anyway, I think we all know it's very dark days on the economic front for many of us. So as such, I'd like to help raise some funds for Food Banks Canada! In exchange for you making a donation to the food bank, I will draw a character suggestion!
I know this is not really the sort of thing I normally do or post here but... many folks are struggling to put food on the table right now, and the food bank is a source of support for many and provides an absolute necessity. I've seen many people struggling in my own city, and food security has become an even bigger issue than it already was in the last couple of years with the food bank struggling to keep up with demand. Of course, food security is an issue across the whole country that's putting a huge strain on food banks, with nearly 5% of the entire population making use of food banks monthly, and 23% of the population reporting food insecurity (CBC, 2024; Global News, 2024). Unsurprisingly, those who are already most disadvantaged suffer the effects of food scarcity even more (Statistics Canada, 2023). To make matters more desperate, Canada's food bank system is on the brink of collapse (CTV News, 2024).
I know this isn't going to something big enough to change the world or anything, but being able to make even a small impact for individual people is important too!
✨Incentives✨
Of course, I'm sure people aren't just in it for a reward, but rewards make things all the sweeter, right?
For those who want to contribute, I'll take a character suggestion and add it to a poll (depending on the number of contributors, it may be split up into multiple polls), and then I'll draw as many as I can from top to bottom ranking! If you contribute, please send me a DM with your donation receipt and your character idea! They won't necessarily all be drawn in the same style, and they'll be done according to how much time I've got. (I know that commissions are probably the biggest incentive, but realistically, I struggle to get them done quickly and they're probably not that affordable to everyone)
If you prefer SFW or NSFW, you can let me know (But NSFW will be posted to Cohost). If you make a bigger contribution, I'll reach out to you and ask if you wanna see more specifics/details in your piece. How's that for sweetening the pie? :3
For those who can't make a donation (which is completely understandable), simply spreading the post is also helpful, and I appreciate that greatly as well!
Don't forget that giving a donation allows you to get a tax break based on the amount donated as well!
Alternatives?
If you'd rather donate to your own local food bank, that's great too! You can DM me and send me a pic of your receipt and I'll still add your suggestion to the poll.
If you REALLY want a commission, you can also DM me and I'll do my best to fulfil it! I won't be taking commissions for this till/if there's at least a couple of items on the poll though. The proceeds will go to my own local food bank. The commission will be done later though, and may take some time to fulfil. I take payment only after starting.
When do we start??
I guess once there's a good number of poll options? I have no idea how long that will be, but rest assured I'll keep you updated!
Where do we contribute?
You can make your donation to Food Banks Canada! They really need it!
Alternatively, you can make a donation to your local food bank or equivalent charity.
Other Questions?
Feel free to send me a message or an ask! I'll get back to you ASAP. If I need to include more details or clarify something, let me know! It's my first time doing this!
TL;DR
I want to help raise money for food banks! Anyone who contributes to Food Banks Canada (or donates to their own local food bank or equivalent charity) can DM me with their receipt and give a character to add to the poll. Poll characters will be drawn in order of their ranking, as many as I can manage, over as long a period of time as I can manage!
No pressure to donate of course, I just figured this would be a fun way of raising a bit of money to help out, and allow us to donate more than what I personally can
Current Contributor Count: 0
Suggested Characters:
None... yet! But imagine your beloved, obscure or popular character here on this poll list! Oooooooh, how lucrative :3
Total funds raised:
0
#I bet Amiya would encourage donations to the food bank too right??#I know it's unorthodox to run it like this!#But boy is it dire days#food bank#donation#Art#fundraising#Arknights#Amiya#pixel art#pixel#art#poll#digital art#artists on tumblr
193 notes
·
View notes
Text
I do think that, for all that can be said on the way Fallout (and CRPGs of the bethesda style) handle 'Raiders' etc, the points on the karma system have always been the weakest to me.
Like, you start off with 'it is considered objectively Morally Good to murder a certain class of people on sight within these settings', with all its obvious implications that tie into the rest of the way these (notably usamerican) games treat them: mindless, always-hostile cannibals, local inhabitants who can never be bargained or argued with, without any culture or relations of production beyond theft, who are more akin to wildlife than other humans; and it seems like a really poignant case of ludonarrative... until you start delving deeper into the morality system. Like, yeah, killing them is Good, but looting their camp afterwards is Evil? Pretty clear message about notions of private (or, well, really, personal) property, here! And also, you can't sleep in their beds! Which... ah, yeah, that one's clearly just a mechanical limitation. And, now that I think about it, it would probably also be a real development hassle to put more nuance into the theft karma system to account for when, situationally, stealing is considered right or wrong in the game's morality system beyond simply whether a container is owned or not...
Like, I'll step aside from the crowd here and say that I don't think the morality system is, in and of itself, a bad mechanic - as Marxists, we understand that all systems of morality are socially constructed and socially contingent on a given class in society, so the game saying 'these are the moral rules for your character in this world' does not necessarily imply those rules are objective (if anything, it would be interesting to have competing morality systems) - so the system's existence in and of itself is not necessarily a conceptual problem in the same way the entire notion of 'raiders' as presented is. I think, when critiquing them, it's a stronger argument to rest on the essentially ideological error of 'then we'll just throw in some endlessly-respawning drug addicts to massacre and level up from' rather than the essentially technical error of 'the game engine is not strictly consistent with how karma points are awarded and implies a presumably unintentional view of the morality of taking stuff from dead people'.
#riverposting#not necessarily in response to anything just something that's been on my mind since I last got to talk about bethesdas bad worldbuilding
98 notes
·
View notes
Text
Autism Rizz Tournament
Rizz: Originally short for "Charisma", Rizz (for this tournament, at least) refers to the appeal, charm or general "ability to pull" a character has, either romantically and/or sexually. (The character doesn't necessarily need to be attracted to anyone to have rizz. If they can make others fall for them, it counts)
How to vote
Propaganda
Riz Gukgak (Dimension 20 - Fantasy High)
His name is literally Riz.
He is a little obsessive Goblin fella, he goes completely overboard in everything he wants to pursue, he describes himself initially as being social but not having many friends because of his poor social skills, he can't tell when people are making fun of or bullying him, he takes himself so so seriously, he carries around a briefcase with Little business cards because thats how he thinks you're supposed to make friends, he gets at most four hours of sleep and lives off coffee, I love him so so dearly. Also a new season of Fantasy High is coming out and I'm here to spread the good word.
Edogawa Ranpo (Bungou Stray Dogs)
He's very autistic in the sense that he clearly doesn't understand how other people work (nor does he care to) and yet he still pulls multiple bad bitches, including a socially anxious author and a weird little freak who murdered his ex
He's got that "doesn't even try" Rizz. So he's very cute, right, but I swear he has no idea that he's attractive. He does know that he's really smart, and being smart is like what he's built his entire sense of self around. Anyways, he has had one singular competition with this guy named Poe, and since then Poe dedicated the rest of his life to outsmarting Ranpo. Poe went full stalker and joined a villainous organization solely in hopes of meeting Ranpo again and challenging him to a rematch. Then, as soon as they interact again, Ranpo befriends Poe instantly, and Poe is clearly majorly down bad for Ranpo.
This man is beloved both in canon and among the fan base. No stronger example of autism rizz
#ranpo edogawa#bungou stray dogs#riz gukgak#dimension 20#fantasy high#character tournament#poll#tumblr polls#tumblr tournament#tournament poll
72 notes
·
View notes
Note
When I see what happens with Octavia she says things like “you left at the first chance you got” “was i just an obligation?” “Did you just stay miserable because of me?” That is not what a villain or ‘spoiled brat’ would say.
She doesn’t seem to understand her parents weren’t ever in love, not that they fell out of love which is what she believed, and she has no idea that she was a precautionary heir. This implies stolas told her otherwise. That they got married out of love and wanted to have her. I don’t care how sad stolas is, that’s just fucked up to lie about. Why is he allowed to have meltdowns about his sex life and get a thousand hugs and kisses, but she’s called a cockblock bitch for being sad she represents the pain of both her parents? She’s upset that she had to hear it from someone who wasn’t her dad, and she’s struggling to understand why it was kept a secret all this time. He’s been very closed off, secretive, dishonest. He says he wants her mother out so she disappears, he obsesses over his affair day and night. If you imagine her position as someone looking in, he looks like he just got tired of being married and wants to start a new family. Or worse, that since their family was fake, his new family with the imp is his ‘real’ one.
These are all such complex feelings and themes being explored, but fans prefer to swallow “Andrealphus is brain washing Octavia to hate stolas who did nothing wrong ever in his life, he’s a perfect good boy. Octavia is a villain for blocking stolitz! I hope her sister Loona slaps some sense into that dumb bitch!”
Honestly not that I overly care but if I were viv and my co-writer trashed a sensitive character story and basically spoiled an entire climax of a season that I just wrote, I’d be pissed. Rogers kinda spoiled what happens and he sabotaged a chunk of the audience being able to sympathise.
No kidding. Octavia's easily the most tragic character on the show and the least culpable, and if my co-writer went on a barely coherent, drunken rant about what a cockblocking slut this sad child from a broken home is, I would be livid.
But if Viv cared, she never showed it.
47 notes
·
View notes
Text
Back from my slumber I have a lot of asks about the situation with Pepito’s OG admin and the « Otipep incident » (don’t know what else to call it lmao) and pretty much my only take is that this whole thing could have been fixed or even entirely avoided very easily by doing 2 things.
1. Hire an admin who is fluent in spanish and ideally from latin america.
Not only it makes sense since all 5 of Pepito’s parents are native spanish speakers who mostly used spanish when playing on QSMP, but also because being fluent in a language comes with some understanding of what is and isn’t acceptable to do/say to someone.
Random exemple but Lea played a pinguin during Carnaval and the first interaction between them and Antoine is just them two insulting each other with chat and Baghera all laughing at it. But that’s possible because by being from the same culture and linguistic background you know it’s fine/can pick up social cues easily if it’s not to adapt your roleplay.
This isn’t a dig at the admin for not knowing enough spanish btw, they just weren’t the good fit for this roleplay situation. « They must have lied about speaking spanish » I can lie about being fluent in spanish while only really having a basic level and a 5 minutes discord call would expose that.
2. Oh my, miss communication (pun intended) you again ?
Having a system to allow ccs and admins to share boundaries, both general and for specific scenes would have solved so many issues. Like just being able to have discussions such as « My character is really angry today because X and might act rude, what would be your limits regarding that ? » or « Hey the lore I plan on doing today touches some heavy topics is that okay ? ».
This is especially important when you have the dynamic of admins who are in character 100% of the time and ccs who switch on and off the RP aspects, that’s a receipe for misunderstanding that can even extend to the audience.
Another example would be the one time Em told Bagi to shut up because her character was angsty and while Bagi seemed okay with it but a lot of viewers saw it as very rude.
Communication also allow you to fix it if things go wrong once or twice, and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Because if you don’t have a direct line to talk about it your options are 1) dealing with it live on stream (bad) 2) not being able to discuss it at all (also bad)
#i mean props to everyone involved that i can count on one hand the number of times things like this happened#i’m sorry to all anons who sent asks related to it this is all you’re getting but that’s legit all i have to say lmao
38 notes
·
View notes
Text
Why Po from Kung Fu Panda and N from Murder Drones are the exact same character: an analysis of Po's and N's low empathy.
Hi.
If there is one thing that unites the Murder Drones fanbase and the Kung Fu Panda fanbase is the misinterpretation of their male lead character traits.
More specifically, the two fandoms in their fan works tend to leave out or outright forget one of the most interesting aspects of their characterization:
Their low empathy
So, today, I'm going to explain to you the difference between being kind and being empathetic, why both N and Po are only the former and not the latter, what are their similarities and how said similarities makes the other more interesting, and why it's ok and totally fine for someone to have low empathy as it doesn't make you a monster by definition (well, that's the case at least for Po; sorry N, but you committed genocide).
Let's get right in.
1. Defining kindness and empathy
For starters, I'm going to define the difference between kindness and empathy, as the two terms are often used interchangeably when in reality they are nothing alike. So:
A kind person, is someone who goes out of their way to commit an act of good towards the other, usually said act gets expressed in a physical way (hugs, gifts, favours etc) or a psychological way (pep talks, encouragement, comfort words etc).
An empathetic person, is someone who understands the pain and struggles of the others on an emotional level without necessarily having experienced it before and can relate to them through said connection even if they don't necessarily act upon it.
I'm a kind person, but I'm not an empathetic one. I always go out of the way to not inconvenience the people around me, and I even go out of my way to buy expensive gifts and surprise the people I care about the most, but I don't necessarily feel anything intense when they are present in my life nor do I really relate to their struggles and losses.
I wouldn't define myself as a Po or an N since I'm more on the introverted side of the low empaths, but I can use my extensive knowledge on the matter to demonstrate these next two points:
2. Demonstrating that N has low empathy
I expect this to be easier than Po, since despite the Murder Drones fandom being younger than the KFP one, I assume that most people would believe you if you told them that N is rather unemphatic, because when you really start to think about it for more than one second, you'll realise that N doesn't really feel directly bad for the people he killed, he more so feels remorseful for his past actions and uncomfortable whenever he inconveniences the drones who are still alive through his murderous nature.
In the pilot episode, he kills an entire room full of people and almost kills Uzi as well, and when it's time to apologise? He says that he's sorry for ruining their card game and making Uzi have an awkward moment with her dad. You know... aside from this being a horror comedy show with a tinge of romance, Murder Drones doesn't really make N feel awful for the horrible atrocities he commits, instead makes N feel sorry for the down to earth annoyances he produces.
There are many other examples of his uncaring nature towards life: the death of Uzi's classmates, both by his, Doll's and V's hands, his increasing anger towards V caused more by the fact that she kept secrets rather than her attitude towards the murders, and the speed at which he reacted to Beau and Tessa.
Despite his happy go lucky attitude and gentle treatment of others, N doesn't feel the need to cope with his murders that V and Uzi have (at least on the surface). V couldn't cope with her murderous actions, so instead she created this killer psycho girl persona that enjoys the thrill of death, while Uzi had an entire mental breakdown after taking out half of his classroom and needed N to calm her down.
N's main motivation throughout the season is being useful to the company and his friends, and more often than not this goal involves him being a violent killer to everybody who threatens the wellbeing and happiness of his owners.
N's lack of empathy isn't a flaw that he can overcome like Uzi's ego and V's insecurities, but rather an innate character trait that he has to live with for the rest of his life, and that's ok; after all, the show doesn't punish him for being unable to relate to other people's deaths and traumas, but instead punishes him for being submissive and following orders unapologetically; a flaw that he shares with J.
3. Demonstrating that Po has low empathy
And now, it's time for the hardest sell. Many of you up until this point might have been thinking: "How the hell did he even think about comparing Po from Kung Fu Panda to N from Murder Drones, they are from two completely different franchises with a distinct difference in tone between the two" but trust me, once I came up with the comparison, I was unable to not see it, so I had to write this article.
Much like N, Po has a happy go lucky attitude towards his fights, and uses humour to his advantage and to the disadvantage of his enemies. But don't let his cuddly appearance fool you in the same way pandas fool people in real life and Kung Fu Panda 1 fooled audiences when it first released: behind Po's childlike wonder for martial arts (which is already a red flag, if you think about it, it's similar to Lizzie's passion for murderous women) there's a strong, unyielding warrior who was ready from day one to do the necessary things to keep the Valley of Peace safe.
Don't believe me? Then just look at the photo above; the execution of Tai Lung is definitely the first thing that comes to mind when everyone thinks of Po lacking compassion, for obvious reasons, but there are way more than that: at the beginning of the second movie when Shifu receives the letter informing him that Master Rhino was executed by Lord Shen's weapon, Po is super enthusiastic about Rhino's legendary status right up until Shifu drops the truth bomb on him and reveals that he was killed, and Po's reaction is to instinctively reiterate one of his previous statements, and then moves on from it immediately without any second thoughts. That's not normal, right?
A minor portion of KFP2's conflict is Po's inability to see how much his dad did for him, a struggle overcome only by the end of it. Po, despite loving his dad dearly, is unable to personally relate to all of the things that he did for him, so he puts him off until he can find the answers that he seeks.
Side note: this is what makes their reunion at the end of the movie so impactful for me, I also tend to emotionally neglect people by accident, and when I realise it I go out of my way to make it up to them, like Po who comes back with a lot of ingredients that his dad doesn't need just to let him know that he cares even if he doesn't show it in a normal manner.
The only time in the trilogy where Po's lack of empathy becomes a noticeable problem for him, is in Kung Fu Panda 3, where, after his biological dad tells him that he lied to him in order to make him come to the village, Po, who clearly can't relate to his struggle and barely knew him for a day, immediately rejects him, going as far as to say that he lost him.
Other minor examples are his treatment of the Furious Five, especially the scene in KFP1 where he enters Crane's room and doesn't immediately realise the problem.
4. And now, with that out of the way, it's time to confront the two and explain why their similarities make the other more interesting
When comparing the two, the thing that comes to mind immediately is that Po has a lot less emotional baggage than N, and while that doesn't mean that Po doesn't have trauma (insert Po finds the truth from John Powell and Hans Zimmer), it means that Po compared to N has lived a pretty stable life; while N instead has never been fully safe from harm since he is a robot.
Po feels like a version of N that was not as scarred from tragedy and backstabbed as the other; Po, at least in the movies, doesn't have someone who takes advantage of his kind nature to trick him into committing something bad, while N instead suffers consistently from other people abusing his kindness and thrusting nature and more often than not ends up almost dead.
While Po throughout the trilogy struggles to find who he is, who he was, and who he's meant to be, N throughout the show struggles with a worse version of that same concept by lacking self worth, which culminates in his blind thrust.
Po, thanks to his dad, has an internalised moral compass that helps him decide on his own what is right and what is wrong despite lacking empathy, while N never had anybody to explain morality to him, aside from his programming and maybe Tessa, so instead he just goes along with what anybody tells him to do, since he can't directly relate to the pain of others.
That's why comparing the two is so fascinating to me: in many ways, Po and N are each other's foil, because they are so similar in terms of personality and fandom portrayal; they are both genuinely kind individuals, but while one of them had the care and support he needed to become his best self, the other still struggles to find an healthy support system aside from Uzi.
5. Low empathy doesn't make you a monster
A lot of fans tend to dumb down their characters to just kind, sweet and innocent, despite the fact that in the actual canon works they have willingly and intentionally killed people; the general terror, it seems, is the idea that just because they have committed crimes before and they lack the societal traits that make a person traditionally good, then suddenly they are horrible people and you are glorifying violence.
But that's not the case; a lot of the mental conditions stigmatized by society, like sadism, sociopathy, BPD, are just that: conditions. They don't indicate that a person is inherently more good than the other, nor do they indicate that someone is more at risk of becoming evil than the other.
It's who you choose to be.
I hope this post gave both fandoms the insight they needed to write about these two characters properly.
You don't need to be afraid of not having the same personality type as most other individuals, we are all different people yet we all deserve to live in this world equally.
Don't you ever forget.
#murder drones#kung fu panda#murder drones n#kung fu panda po#serial designation n#kfp po#murder drones uzi#murder drones v#murder drones doll#murder drones lizzy#murder drones j#md beau#md tessa#kung fu panda 2#kung fu panda 3#kfp tai lung#kfp master shifu#kfp mr ping#furious five#master rhino#kung fu panda lord shen#character analysis#low empathy#culture wars#hans zimmer#john powell#bpd#sociopathy#nature#nurture
35 notes
·
View notes
Note
I used to see Sephiroth and think “damn he’s the Marilyn Monroe of video games and anime,” but after delving into his backstory and seeing Crisis Core/Reunion and Ever Crisis I just feel sad.
I mean when you think about it he really had no one. He only knew Glenn, Matt, and Lucia for that one mission but he never forgot about them, despite all of them leaving him behind. Then Angeal and Genesis who- I’m sorry, I know this is also an unpopular opinion- also treated him like crap. To me it always seemed like Genesis didn’t really care about Sephiroth at all. We’ve never seen him being nice to him, even prior to degrading. During that one spar we saw of them three Genesis really seemed like he was going for the throat and like he was letting his rage and jealousy take over, and Angeal had to break them up. At first I used to think that at least Angeal was a decent friend to Sephiroth, but the more I think about it the more it seemed like he was on Genesis’ side because he was his childhood friend and simply acted as a peacekeeper between them three than anything else. Sephiroth didn’t hesitate to offer his blood/cells when Genesis needed it and Angeal even commented on how Sephiroth had lost weight when he sees him the last time, probably from stress and depression.
So not only did he never have friends who cared about him and who he always cared more for than they cared for him, he was also raised in a lab his entire childhood by a psycho who’s his biological father (he didn’t know about that part but it’s still horribly messed up.) And even with all of that he still grew up to be a good person- before all the trauma drove him crazy. He still wanted to genuinely help and save people, and he got attached so quickly. Even with every reason to be horrible he wasn’t, until the whole dam of emotions and mistreatment broke.
Sorry for the long post. I was just looking back at the Seph lore and started feeling really sad 😕
Sephiroth is a very tragic character, and he was failed by every adult in his life from the very beginning, first by his parents—one being an unethical twat and the other being his mother, someone who he would later come to really yearn for and had no idea she was part of the reason why his life was the way it was. He was Shinra's lap dog from birth to Nibelheim, and the only respite he had from it all were his friendships—and he was an extremely loyal friend to everyone. He was loyal even to SOLDIER despite the program being part of the problem.
It appears Glenn, Matt and Lucia were his first friends who really taught him what it was like to care for other people. The thing is: the FS trio were as much of Shinra's pawns as Sephiroth—albeit to a lesser extend because Seph was their golden boy. And so were Genesis and Angeal. They were victims of the Jenova Project too, and had every right to be angry, and Genesis' actions are more understandable (not excusable) once you take into account how the degradation likely preyed on his mental state. Genesis and Angeal are complex characters, but unfortunately we don't have as much narrative context and content for them as we have for Sephiroth, which ultimately makes Sephiroth easier to sympathize with despite what he goes on to become later. He's an incredibly tragic character who everyone rightfully adores, also because of who he was as character Pre-Nibelheim, before he understandably lost his mind. It's a damn shame so many people disregard the compilation, because there's so much of Seph's backstory to be explored that adds even more depth to his character.
I think Genesis and Angeal were good friends to Sephiroth, but you have to understand that they were both degrading while Sephiroth was (physically) fine. So of course they latched onto each other and left Sephiroth behind, especially if they thought Sephiroth wouldn't understand their desertion and wouldn't abandon Shinra to come with them. I don't think they were bad friends, but they—Genesis especially—underestimated how good of a friend he was to them. I hope chapter 2 of FS can show Sephiroth and Angeal's (fingers crossed Genesis too) friendship before the crisis ever started. Only then will we know what their dynamic was like.
#ff7#ffvii#final fantasy 7#sephiroth#final fantasy vii#ffvii crisis core#genesis rhapsodos#ff7 crisis core#angeal hewley#discussion
49 notes
·
View notes
Text
goldleaf
pairing: hong jisoo (joshua) x gender neutral reader
genre: angst, hanahaki au
word count: 1.1k
warnings: no happy ending, mentions of death + implied main character death…eventually, One mention of swearing, unrequited love, the normal hanahaki au things (blood, throwing up, etc.)
author note: um so guess who found out she can actually write angst! it’s written in joshua’s pov the entire time and reader is just kinda in the background (they’re still important though!) also, if you want a lil more info about how i wrote this, check out my reblog! lots of love ♡
masterlist
when joshua sees you with them, he can’t deny that he feels…more than he wishes he did.
he’s sick and tired of the hollowness in his chest but it’s fine. it’ll all be fine once he sees you happy, right? that's what he says to convince himself before looking up at the sky and seeing you in the shape of the clouds and the way the sun hits them and himself.
fuck, he’s in too deep to continue to believe the sorry excuse he’s made up for himself to feel a little better. it never helps anyway, so why keep using it? he lets it go, imagining it fluttering away on a breeze that reminds him way too much of the person always on his mind.
so when the tingling in his throat comes out as petals the same golden like the colour he imagines your soul to be, he isn’t surprised. as he exits the bathroom, he avoids jeonghan’s gaze, promises that he’ll be fine; after all, it’s just a cold—whatever it takes to keep his best friend from worrying. at least he knows his promises won’t be worth much anyway.
he sees you often, your smile as cheery as the flowers haunting him in his dreams and the ones sticking to his lungs, trapped in his chest. he’s alright, he tells himself. he’ll be fine.
he doesn’t go to the doctor. he’s read and seen enough of what’s happening to him, and he knows the choice he’ll have to make if he goes. he knows that the only solution is to forget, but he would never do that. he can’t let go of wandering around in the wheat fields that one summer you two were in the countryside, or the time you laughed and laughed at a joke that wasn’t funny, or when he lost all hope and you were there, making sure he could get back up again and live. if the price of keeping the memories he holds close is death, he’s okay with it.
joshua doesn’t tell his roommates. he knows that jeonghan and seungcheol would drag him to the emergency room against his will, and force him to take the option he’s already decided against. he wouldn’t let them sway him anyway, but it’s easier if they don’t know. however, time seems to choose to leave the bathroom—even when it seems to be going too fast for joshua’s liking these days—when jeonghan finds him hovering over the sink, bloody tissues in his hand and washed petals placed carefully on the side.
the two of them say nothing.
jeonghan leaves, and joshua turns to the mirror above the sink, taking a good look at himself. he wipes off the dried blood on his top lip, noticing nothing else wrong. he doesn’t realize that after he leaves, jeonghan is horrified by the lack of light in his friend’s eyes, the spark he thought would never go out.
jeonghan hasn’t said anything since, lost in his thoughts every time he’s home. seungcheol is freaked out, not understanding the dead silence in the house. he doesn’t know that he’ll have to pay more for rent in…well, however long it takes for joshua’s lungs to finally fill up with your flowers. joshua knows he’s being cruel, but can’t he be allowed to be selfish in his last moments? is that too much to ask for after everything?
he doesn’t approach jeonghan, and instead writes. he writes journal entries in that notebook you got him a few years back, but he never used it because he was too scared to mess up in something you gave him; letters to those he’ll miss. he revises the one for his mother over and over again, crumpling paper like his lungs.
joshua doesn’t try to hide anything from seungcheol. he knows that his housemate’s blank expression means more than what he says. in fact, there is nothing said; their house is a place to rest and eat and nothing else. it’s as if there’s three ghosts, not just a single potential one. joshua sighs, wheezing out more petals. he grabs them hastily, making sure they don’t fall to the ground or worse, onto your letter. he carries them gently in his bloodied hands to the bathroom sink once again, the only companion he seems to have in the past few weeks.
joshua rinses each souvenir of his love one by one, clearing the dark red off before drying them and taking them back to the pile he’s made ever since this started. at first, they were hidden away in a small box on the corner of his desk, so no one would wander in and see them. now, he puts them on his nightstand haphazardly, the dark wood no longer visible under the various shades of yellow and red.
joshua picks up his pen—the expensive one his mom gifted him when he moved away so long ago; he never used it until now. the ink glides smoothly over the clean paper he had taken out earlier. he writes once again.
the only thing he knows how to say now is sorry. he writes it over and over again, signing each letter with the sounds he can barely make in real life, his voice hoarse from the damage done on his throat, and the lack of use.
maybe it’s time for something different? after all, this is for you, and he wants the news to be broken softly. he racks his head for something, anything that he finds good enough to become something real. he drinks the day-old water from the plastic bottle beside him, the familiar taste of blood accompanying it.
he glances at the clock he’s kept beside him since the start, and counts down two seconds; he has no time to waste.
he puts down the words he’s said so often to you that they’ve become a habit but seem to have changed ever since he started throwing up marigolds—a literal reminder of his unrequited love.
it’ll be a bit hard to be there for you when he’s dead, won’t it? joshua doesn’t mind. he never will.
he chuckles dryly, a whole flower falling out. he gets up and repeats his process for the petals before sitting back down.
joshua looks at his handiwork, pausing and adding a few more words before moving his paper to the side, and starting on another letter for his mother.
he stares blearily at the clock again, the red blinking numbers the only comfort he allows himself. it’s a new day.
joshua hopes it’ll finally be his last.
#dokries works#seventeen#seventeen x reader#seventeen imagines#seventeen scenarios#seventeen angst#hong joshua x reader#hong jisoo x reader#hong jisoo scenarios#hong joshua imagines#hong jisoo imagines#hong joshua scenarios#hong jisoo angst#hong joshua angst#joshua x reader#joshua scenarios#joshua imagines#joshua angst
38 notes
·
View notes
Note
i think the entire 911 fandom situation is very interesting to witness because we've been saying this for years: buck and eddie girlies would have been at each other's throats all this time if their common ship hadn't united them. i think the current takes show incredibly well that the same people who hate bucktommy simply wanted eddie to have the queer storyline, with or without buck. i do understand that. people can have favorite characters and want them to have specific storylines. but now, from a narrative standpoint, bi eddie and buddie seem very unlikely to ever happen in canon. buck girlies get to enjoy canon bisexual buck kissing a man on screen and being in love while they cannot and probably will never get that for eddie. at least not with a man, and let's be real, that's all the hardcore antis seem to care about. i think now, given all that has happened in s7, we're finally seeing people's favoritism unveiled (not that it wasn't obvious the entire time) and there is less unity on where the story should go for buck and eddie. suddenly, i think for the first time ever, hardcore buddie shippers are truly forced to actually view buck and eddie as individuals that live alongside each other as besties while having their own separate lives. it's funny to me that antis act as if people have "abandoned" eddie. he is getting heavy focus in s7? he is still a main character? shouldn't people be happy that his character is further explored and his trauma is hopefully finally worked on? i feel like i appreciate canon eddie more than many eddie girlies do just because many eddie girlies seem to enjoy a highly fanonized version of him only. and that fanon version is being shattered, due to bucktommy and now with eddie being confirmed to still love shannon, the love of his life. it's good for the 911 ecosystem. i hope this adjustment period will end soon, and people will finally calm down about the buddie agenda.
I truly did not even think about Eddie vs. Buck being such a huge trigger for the drama, which I why I love these constructive discussions. And I agree that if not for their friendship/the discussion of Buddie it could have created a lot of tension (“Buck’s getting more screen time, they’re making Eddie look like the bad guy, it’s not fair this and that”). It’s one of the reasons I suspect that small radical group may end up imploding because if they’re not getting the attention they want from us they’re going to start fighting amongst themselves.
I agree that if not to Buddie the idea of Eddie being queer would have never come up but then again I’m not sure any girlfriend would have been good enough? It’s a double-edged sword. And I think the show has amazing queer representation and adding another character journey so similar to Buck’s would seem too repetitive and do a disservice to the others because it would feel like a trend.
I did a post a while ago with a bit of a rant about how Ryan seems so excited about his future character development (think he’s ready to portray some good angst) and it was automatically brought back to Buddie. How is journey is really about Buddie and how it goes back to that. And talk about a disservice. You’d think people would be THRILLED for Eddie to get his own individual storyline but alas no.
I haven’t always been an Eddie fan, I may be biased towards Buck but whether it was intentional or not, I always found him to be a bit selfish and his relationship with Buck a bit more one way or another. Which could be me totally misreading it but this sesson?! OMG I’ve fallen in love with him again. He’s so silly and playful, the basketball scene where he’s doing that little head bop makes me all sorts of 😍😍😍. I feel like it’s a true representation of who he js and that’s probably why all the Shannon drama is coming up, he’s going back to himself and that brings back a lot of repressed trauma. Ryan has done phenomenal and is vulnerability as a “macho” man is so needed to be seen nowadays.
I agree as with everything you’ve said, it’s time to focus on the characters as separate entities who will always gravitate back to each other. No matter how bad a fight Eddie and Buck have or will have, they have such a special (platonic) relationship that I adore. Thank you so much for your ask, it brings up so many good points and definitely offers hope that these sorts of mindsets will drive us to continue to push the positive and ignore the negative!
#911 show#911 abc#evan buckley#eddie diaz#buddie#platonic buddie#i’m not anti buddie#i’m anti bullying and bullshit#great insight#oliver stark#ryan guzman#with a side of tommy and shannon#i feel like they’d be all sorts of sass together#anon ask
32 notes
·
View notes
Text
Frenemies
Pairings: Survey Corps - people they cannot STAND
Word Count: 1076
Warnings: none
A/N: Idk man I love a good tussle jskksks. Like give me two characters who absolutely hate each other! And with AOT I really don't have to look too far, yay. This is basically canon but it's funny to think about so here it is as well.
Eren - Jean, Weak People
I think the Jean one gets over exaggerated a little, and for good reason too, cause the girlies be EATING with those tropes. But at the end of the day they have a mutual understanding and are cordial at best. They're mostly cool because they share mutual friends and spaces but it’s no longer beef per se.
Hear me out, I don't think anyone wiping out 80% of humanity is willing to kick it with people who aint about it. Mans need someone who’s willing to stand on business behind him. Even throughout the show he’s always admitted to not liking people who’s willing to live like “livestock.” So this is not to be confused with physically weak people by the way but psychologically weak people. Essentially Eren has beef if you’re willing to take it lying down.
Levi - Zeke
Listennnn I LIVE for their fight scenes okay lmao. Like it's almost always on sight for them and their lil jabs at one another? It’s chucklessss for me omg. Lets be clear, their beef is absolutely warranted. It can be safely argued that Levi doesnt really care for most people but Zeke?? Oh baby its all smoke for him.
Erwin - The Government
I swear if it wasn't for the literal fate of humanity and his brewing theory Erwin would've just said fuck it cause baybeeee, they wanted that man GONE. They've tried to get him fired, pointed guns in his face, and built a whole ass guillotine to unalive him; in front of the entire town mind you. Maybe that was the custom back then I don't know. I don’t remember Erwin outright saying that he doesn't fuck with the government but fuck it, I’ll say it for him. Cause I'll stand ten toes down behind this one here.
Connie - Ymir
I promise you I let out a nasty ole chuckle at the thought cause he don't even dislike her fr fr. I think it's a situation similar to Eren and Jean's in the sense that their friends and environment often see them in the same places. Because if we’re being real, not only do they have little in common but they just don't really vibe like that. I think they could've been a little more cordial but Ymir be on her own timing and it's usually at the expense of the squad. Like when she made fun of Connie for suspecting his mother was a titan or when she kidnapped Historia like 3 times and put them all in danger. And I can't even be mad at Connie for being the voice of reason cause him calling her ugly was simply the truth. I, too, reared back when I first saw Ymir's titan form.
Jean - Eren, Reiner, Annie, Bertholt
The whole Eren thing is basically squashed but it’s worth noting that if he were to see him in public, he’d walk the other way.
I lowkey had to dig deep for this one cause I genuinely forgot. But even though they’re all kumbaya now, those three bitches literally watched his homie get half his face chewed off by a titan. Jean is absolutely pouring one out for Marco every birthday by the way, but yeahh it’s still fuck them. Like if they were playing uno stacked, he’d save all his draw 4’s and make them draw 16.
Onyankopon - Yelena
I'm not too sure that Ony dislikes anyone honestly. But I'm going with Yelena here mostly because she’s the reason he found himself in his current predicament. On what was supposed to be a solid plan in motion to save his people quickly turned into Ony modernizing a primitive people, helping build their resources from scratch, having people question his race (and I'm willing to bet my bottom dollar it was mfs that got ignorant), seeming untrustworthy among his peers, almost getting killed, fighting in a war he had nothing to do with, and probably losing his entire family in the rumble. Now, one or two of those things were inevitable, but if you were to view things from Ony’s POV everything went to shit over a bitch with a fatal attraction to a man with daddy issues.
Reiner - Himself
Lmaooo I LOVE a good Reiner drag. And while this started out as a joke, I'm deadass now. This man stays talking about wanting to end it all but never follows through, smh. With lots of therapy and support, I genuinely think that Reiner would be on the road to recovery and a healthy lifestyle; but there’ll always be that lingering thought on if he’s worth it or not
Honorable mention: Ymir. But solely because she would get in the way of his fantasy life with Historia.
Armin - Floch?
This munchkin is damn near Tanjiro levels of sweet cause omg who does he even hate??? He is always looking for the good in people and I'm about to dislocate my shoulder reaching this hard BUT, hear me out - It’s Floch even if he doesn’t outright say it. The same Floch who damaged the flying boat and almost ruined their mission before it even started? The same Floch who fucked it up so bad that Hange had to sacrifice herself which resulted in Armin taking on an even bigger responsibility? The same Floch who got in a lil too close with his bestie Eren? Close enough to be trusted with his future plans? The same Floch who when he lay on that ground bleeding Armin was nowhere in sight? Even at the port where they attacked the Yeagerists and Armin got shot in the face, he pleaded with his old comrades to stand down but Floch is beneath that level of reasoning huh? Whether Armin despises Floch or not it's safe to say if Floch were getting jumped, Armin would definitely sneak in a kick before helping.
Floch - Erwin
This is literally one of those cases where its like I disagree but I understand lol. That man legit made them do a suicide charge and yeah he lead the charge blah blah blah but I could never be that brave. And so that resentment is understandable but in all fairness it shaped Flochs character for the better to be honest; cause that whole pwussy boi arc was annoying.
Also adding the main cast of the Scouts lmao. They thwarted his plans and he spent his DYING breath standing on business. Gotta respect it.
Tags - @eveningatthemoviesnetwork
#Emmy Writes#Emmy Tries#eveningatthemoviesnetwork#AOT#attack on titan#aot x black reader#aot x black y/n#aot x you#aot x reader#eren x reader#levi x reader#erwin x reader#connie x reader#jean x reader#onyankopon x reader#reiner x reader#armin x reader#floch x reader
38 notes
·
View notes
Note
got too drunk at the memorial day cookout and started crying over homelander never getting the chance to develop interests of his own really. specifically the baseball thing like i just know he'd love hockey, the weird macho energy, the violence, the fast pace. and then i started spiraling about how he's probably never been ice skating and i almost got physically ill with grief. why did nobody take care of that baby good GODDDDDD
ANON...... i understand you. i really do. i will be doing something and there's nothing quite like the nausea that hits when your brain randomly attacks you with, "Homelander was denied every conceivable normalcy and then launched as a hero to a population he understands only in theory"
idk why people are surprised this character has fans when he is a modern greek tragedy. tragic, awful, all consuming. his entire existence is one grand 'what-if.' what could have been different for him, what could yet change for him.
25 notes
·
View notes
Text
Can we talk about the fact that Severus Snape left everyone, both the characters and the readers, like this: 🤡🤡
I mean, no one knew wtf was going on with him. One moment u think he's bad, the next u think he's good. And then u think he's the villain again. But then he gives his memories to Harry and we all realize that he was the fucking hero all along.
In hp1, we think it's Snape who was trying to steal the philosopher's stone, or who tried to knock Harry off his broom. But then comes the end, and we find out that he stopped Harry from falling (saved his life) and was protecting the stone...🤡
We still hated him in hp 2 and 3...
In hp4 Harry suspects that Snape had the Dark Mark, and ends up discovering that he did. There's even the scene that Harry sees: Igor Karkaroff accuses Snape in court in front of the Wizengamot, saying he was a Death Eater, and we're all like😯😃 (finally know the truth!!). But then Dumbledore defends him😐🧍🏻♀️, and no one, not Karkaroff, not Harry, not us readers, understand anything. We don't know whether to trust him or not. So, again...🤡
In hp5 everything is confusing with him. We don't know if he wants to help Harry (occlumency lessons) or not. He calls Voldemort "Dark Lord" (only Death Eaters do), we see his worst memory, which, again, leaves us bewildered and not knowing what the hell to think of him now. Harry himself doubts that his father was a good person, even wondering if James didn't force Lily to marry him, and empathizes with Snape. Then the whole thing with the prophecies, and Harry trying to warn Snape about Sirius and his supposed kidnapping. The Order arrives to save Harry and his friends, which suggests that Snape warned them.
But along comes hp and the Half-Blood Prince, Snape appears to be helping Draco Malfoy with what the Lord entrusted him with —The scene where Bellatrix accuses him, tells him that she doesn't trust him, and then she is surprised:
In the books:
[...]Do you really think that the Dark Lord has not asked me each and every one of those questions? And do you really think that, had I not been able to give satisfactory answers, I would be sitting here talking to you?”
She hesitated. “I know he believes you, but…”
“You think he is mistaken? Or that I have somehow hoodwinked him? Fooled the Dark Lord, the greatest wizard, the most accomplished Legilimens the world has ever seen?”
[...]
“And through all this we are supposed to believe Dumbledore has never suspected you?” asked Bellatrix. “He has no idea of your true allegiance, he trusts you implicitly still?”
“I have played my part well,” said Snape.
In the movies:
The line where he says “Dumbledore is a great wizard”, Snape is actually being smug and subtly saying he’s such a good actor (I mean, come on, the man deserves a fucking Oscar), he’s managed to deceive Voldemort so well that he has revealed his grand plan to him. He practically seems to be laughing at the double meaning of his own words, mocking and lying to the black sister's faces like the fucking boss he is. The way he's literally drinking a glass of wine while laughing at the Dark Lord. The whole scene is just excellent.
So at the end of hp6, Snape reveals to us that he was the half-blood prince for whom the fucking book is named, ends up murdering none other than ALBUS DUMBLEDORE, and we all learn that all this time his true loyalties were with the dark side...🤡
Oh no, wait! Hp7 arrives, Voldemort kills Snape :0 (Yes!), gives his memories to Harry, and Harry sees his memories and... (NOO😦😨😰😭💔💀). We found out he wasn't the bad guy. That, in fact, he was IN LOVE WITH HARRY'S MOM —"always" still hurts :')— That all this time he was our ally...🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
He practically played with all of us, with LORD VOLDEMORT, the Death Eaters, the Order of the Phoenix, Harry... well, WITH EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE WIZARDING WORLD. And he did it as if he were:
Harry fucking Potter named one of his sons after him, which must have made a lot of people roll in their graves (James and Sirius out of anger, Snape out of laughter).
This mf literally woke up one day and said: "okay, here begins my reputation era bitches.😎 Let's leave a few of them looking like🤡🤡"
PD: Sorry if something is written wrong, english is not my language.
25 notes
·
View notes
Text
ON MADELYNE PRYOR
Shout out to all the comic book stans who follow my blog.
So X-Men 97 inspired me to do a re-read of X-Men from the beginning. My previous read of X-Men jumped all over the place, it was basically X-Men up to Dark Phoenix and then I jumped all the way to the 2000s to 2010s. In my current read I just got to Inferno and holy fuck mom, I never thought I'd like an X-Men arc more than Dark Phoenix but here we are.
This is an entirely personal opinion which I'm not as good at expressing because I prefer over-intellectualizing my feelings, but Inferno is the only other comic book arc to make me feel the way that Judas Cotract did in how tightly and perfectly written as a tragedy it is especially for the female at its center.
Are there any women in all of fiction more doomed by the narrative than Terra Markov and Madelyne Pryor?
I mean I've written about Judas Contract before but what makes that arc so special to me is how it's about a character, a victim, a girl named Terra who by all rights should have been saved by the heroes, but not only fails every step of the way but at every point in her life really. Terra is someone how manifests her victimhood in completely unsympathetic ways but the fact that she basically had no chance in life makes her sympathetic nonetheless.
This comes from the decision that Perez and Wolfram made right from the start to kill her off and never offer her any redemption, which while incredibly callous on the author's part just makes the tragedy even stronger. That's what tragedy is, it's meat to reflect the cruelty and unfairness of life, it's kind of like reality bleeding into fiction.
George’s strength was he also understood the characters 100 percent as I did so there was never any question. He knew. We had talked enough about the characters to know we were exactly on the same page with them. So I said, “Everyone keeps complaining that we’re like the X-Men” and the X-Men had just gotten Kitty Pryde. I said, “Why don’t we really screw around with them completely?” — this is the fans — “…and make them think we’re stealing Kitty Pryde only she’s gonna be bad from Day One.”
You always had characters pop up, certainly at Marvel, who were bad that get redeemed. But this character would never get redeemed. She was insane. In fact, she was the catalyst for everything. She wasn’t working for Deathstroke. He was working for her in many ways and she was leading him because she’s crazy. She’s a total psychopath… and she’d be 15.
Terra's a total psychopath and she's fifteen and that's the tragedy. Was there really any other way that Terra could have turned out? A girl who has been abandoned, who was given incredible powers but no love, support, or nurturing and clearly doesn't have a home or any stability in her life if she's working as a mercenary at that young. A girl who thinks herself a villain and a player in the game but is clearly being manipulated by a fifty plus year old man who is smarter, more mature, and a serial user and abuser of people.
Terra's not just the villain, she's the protagonist of the tragedy walking through the play unknowing that her every single decision will lead to her inevitable end.
Judas Cotract and Inferno are two arcs that most evoke the feel of the Tower in Tarot to me. The Tower is just, ruin and destruction, a complete loss of control, the realization that everything you thought was wrong and in fact the world doesn't care much about what you think. It's a reminder that life isn't even cruel, it's nothing, it's random.
However, first you have to build up the tower before you start pulling the jenga blocks out one by one. Terra spends several arcs with the Teen Titans showing disturbing unchildlike behavior, but one of the so-called Heroes even notice that there's something wrong. When she does get close to blowing her cover, a violent incident where she nearly badly hurts Beast Boy after he comes onto her way too hard which is an understandable reaction as a victim of SA that gets brushed under the rug too.
It makes the heroes look worse as well. If they were heroes dedicated to saving people at all costs shouldn't they have noticed the trouble of someone right next to them? Yet, they all kind of collectively remain oblivious the same way that most victims in real life especially of Terra's kind of trauma are left to suffer in silence. Not to say the Teen Titans are bad, they are kids, and therefore it makes sense they don't have the emotional maturity to notice - it just makes them look more human.
So to summarize my point above what makes Judas Contract is a good tragedy and why Inferno makes me feel the same way narrows down to two reasons.
Madelyne and Terra are both doomed by the narrative, there was no saving them right from the beginning.
However, the fact that the heroes failed to save them reflects poorly on them.
Finally, Madelyne Pryor.
Oh Madelyne the world did you so dirty. I'm partially to blame because I skipped right to the 2000s in my first read, but before this point I'd known nothing about Madelyne other than that she was a clone of Jean Grey who died.
My first impressions of her when she was introduced shortly after Dark Phoenix weren't all that great either. Chris Claremont writes good female characters, that's not really a hot take. I'm sure you've heard of Storm, Rogue, Mystique, Kitty Pryde, Emma Frost etc.
However, I've noticed there are like two tiers of female characters he tends to write. There are the first stringers which are your storms, your rogues, these are characters who are meant to be independent and have arcs. Then there are the second stringers who are just meat to serve a role in the story. This isn't a criticism on the way Claremont writes women, I mean all stories have major and minor characters.
Madelyne Pryor was never meant to be a main character. There wasn't anything about her character that I disliked per se, she is independent, she seemed to have a life outside of Cyclops, she tries really hard to separate herself from the image of Jean Grey. However, she was clearly written to give Cyclops a wife and child in the aftermath of Jean's death and a reason to retire.
While the editorial mandate that made Claremont pull Cyclops out of his happy ending so he could rejoin a team with the original five x-men for the sake of nostalgia sucks, it is also the best thing to happen to Madelyne's character.
Madelyne before that point was a perfectly functional character for her role but she wasn't all that dynamic, she liked planes, she didn't like Jean's ghost hanging over her, she's pretty spunky and headstrong but she was at most a good supporting character but that's all she was. Claremont just decided to double down on that, Scott actually treats his wife like she exists to do nothing but support him and his emotional issues. Madelyne gives all the support that she can give and then Scott just up and leaves anyway. The woman who only existed to be a love interest to give Scott a happy ending, now has no other reason to exist without the man she's supposed to love and her happy ending turns to ash in her mouth.
This is the same feeling I was talking about with Terra, this is a person who was basically failed at every step of the way. A person who has no family. no support, it's almost worse in this case because Madelyne thought she did only for that person to toss her aside.
There's no saving Madelyne, and the fact that Scott didn't save her, that he didn't both trying until he was too late makes him the villain.
If anything Inferno is better than Judas Contract at dragging the heroes down to their lowest points, because The Teen Titans failing to save Terra is understandable because of how young they are but there's no excusing Scott's actions. Madelyne may run around in a skimpy outfit calling herself the goblin queen but the villain of this story is named Scott Summers. He had a responsibility and obligation towards Madelyne to save her and he failed, and it makes him a bad hero and an even worse person.
One of the key components of a tragedy is also agency. Agency is basically the freedom a character has to choose and how much their choices matter in the grand scheme of things and impact their narratives.
Tragedies are often defined by how little agency the characters are shown to have, and how limited their range of choices are. One of the biggest themes of tragedy is fate and inevitability at all. For example one of my favorite tragedies antigone is about a girl with very little power in the ancient greek city of Thebes who still makes a choice to give her brother a proper burial even though she knows she'll be executed for it.
Dark Phoenix is all about agency. Jean Grey is dealing with three different forces trying to take her mind, her agency. There's the corrupting influence of Phoenix, there's the Hellfire Club who wants to make her into a puppet, and then there's Charles Xavier who wants to put a lid on her tremendous powers. Everyone trying to take agency away from Jean eventually leads her to snap and try to take all of that agency back by embracing godhood because who has more agency, more control than a god? Even Jean's act of killing herself at the end was reclaiming her agency, it's her choice to die as a human rather than be executed, or to lose herself to the phoenix.
What breaks Madelyne is not Scott leaving her. Which made me like her character a lot, like the moment Scott left Madelyne was shown just how stubborn and determined she was. Madelyne stood out as the only normal human amongst the x-men who still held her own like Moira did (i guess Moira is a mutant now but I'm still in the 80s so w/e).
What breaks her is the revelation that she never had any agency in her life to begin with. Scott was always meant to fall in love with her, he was always meant to leave her, because she was nothing more than a womb for Sinister's breeding project. Once again it's masterful how Scott looks equally as villainous as Sinister in this scenario in how neither of them regards Madelyne as a person, just an object to project their desires upon.
(Honestly Jean Grey doesn't come out looking all that great either considering how little sympathy she has for Madelyne because she just sees her as an obstacle to getting back together with Scott. If anyone Jean should sympathize with Madelyne the most because they've both been toyed with cosmic forces out of their control, but I guess it goes to show how selfish and destructive Jean and Scott's love for each can be).
Is there any sequence more tragic in all of comics than this series of panels?
The symbolism in these panels too and how it relates to the themes of agency with Madelyne's character. Madelyne was a free and self-driven woman (or at least she thought she was) living out her dream of being a pilot which to her the ability to fly her wings represents her freedom and indepedence. The only thing she thought that could make her happier was Scott, but in the end not only did Scott take her wings away, he took away her everything and gave it to someone else.
"Time to lose those wings, Maddie. You can't really fly, anyway. You're not special like us."
If there's any words to express the inherent tragedy of Maddie's character is this, she's a person who thought she was free to fly, that she was real, that her life mattered only to have all that taken away from her. Maddie like Terra thinks she has agency that she's making decisions but she had no real choices from the beginning.
That's also a good way to express what makes tragedies hit as hard as they do. Tragedies slap you with the realization that you're not special. The hero is not a hero, they don't have plot armor, they're not immune to consequences, they're human and just like all humans they fail.
Even the act that Madelyne thinks is reclaiming her agency by gaining power as the Goblin Queen is in fact, not her choice. She doesn't choose to sell her soul, she's tricked into doing it by a rebellious demon that wants to kick Illyana out and reclaim limbo for himself. In Madelyne's one act of trying to steal back her power and freedom she is still just a pawn in another person's scheme.
There's also Madelyne going through literal hell itself to reclaim her son, only to make the decision to sacrifice him along with several other infants which seems to make her usympathetic but ironically makes her more sympathetic to me.
There's the obvious reference to Medea there. If all the parallels aren't obvious enough already, Jason and the Argonauts gets namedropped during the arc.
One of my favorite things about Medea the tragedy by Euripedes is that Medea is not just a girlboss who gets revenge on Jason and then walks away. Straightforward revenge narratives are bad because revenge is... bad actually. The decision to inflict more pain and suffering in the world doesn't break the chain of suffering.
Medea kills her children to show that Jason is not entirely in the wrong, and Medea is not entirely in the right. They are two human beings who's relationship is blowing up in the worst way possible. I mean Jason himself does have some points in the play, he's making a political marriage to save both of them, the only reason he's exiling Medea is because Medea made loud death threats at Jason's new bride. It's not just the heartbreak of being abandoned that drives Medea, it's her pride, the whole play started because Medea didn't want to settle for being a side chick.
Medea wants revenge against Jason but she doesn't take her revenge on Jason, she takes revenge on everyone around him for the purpose of making him feel as alone and lost as he did her. She'll kill her own children, even if it kills her to do so, just to spite him a little more.
Which leads to one of my favorite scenes in all of fiction, Medea holding the knife over her own child's throat, bargaining with herself trying to convince herself to do something she objectively knows is wrong.
MEDEA
I’ve made up my mind, my friends.
I’ll do it—kill my children now, without delay,
and flee this land. I must not hesitate.
That would hand them over to someone else
to be slaughtered by a hand less loving.
No matter what, the children have to die.
Since that’s the case, then I, who gave them life,
will kill them. Arm yourself for this, my heart.
Why do I put off doing this dreadful act,
since it must be done? Come, pick up the sword,
wretched hand of mine. Pick up the sword,
move to where your life of misery begins.
Don’t play the coward. Don’t remember now
how much you love them, how you gave them life.
For this short day forget they are your children
and mourn them later. Although you kill them,
still you loved them. As a woman, I’m so sad.
Why would Madelyne after going through all that trouble to find her son, instead choose to give him to the fire? It's because for a person who was given so little choice over her own life, the choice to self-destruct is still a choice. The choice to destroy something with your own hands rather than let it be destroyed for someone else is still a choice.
That would hand them over to someone else
to be slaughtered by a hand less loving.
No matter what, the children have to die.
Since that’s the case, then I, who gave them life,
will kill them.
I think I may like Madelyne more than Jean at this point?
The same way I like Terra more than Raven. They're very similiar characters, but it takes possession by Trigon to get Raven to attack the titans. Terra just tries to kill them by her own free will. She's willing to bury herself if it gives her one last chance at burying the titans to too. Madelyne on the other hand is willing to walk barefoot into hell, if it means she can drag Scott and the X-Men with her. Jean does things under the influence of the Phoenix, but she chose to die as a human being at the end of Dark Phoenix. Madelyne however made the opposite choice, throwing all her humanity away she gave herself wholly and unreservedly to the fire.
Also damn, x-men 97 did this arc so dirty by speedrunning through it in one episode. This is also one of the most well set-up arcs in the X-Men comics with so many threads like X-Factor, X-Men and New Mutants all coming together. It really deserved its own season not like 2 episodes, and then Madelyne dying halfway through this season.
24 notes
·
View notes
Note
is that a conscious canon to have kara have that undying devotion & kindness towards lena in your fics? ive noticed kara is usually selfless & pinning over lena in most of your fics she’s so understanding with lena and just takes all the pain
I think that's a core trait of Kara as a character, honestly, in all her relationships but especially with Lena because Lena is so special to her and she sees Lena as someone who is innately good and deeply misunderstood by everyone else. I wouldn't say Kara is totally selfless, but she tends to prioritize other people over her own comfort/safety/happiness - it's not super healthy, but it's an understandable byproduct of being given the responsibility of carrying on an entire culture and taking care of a baby at age 12 after a huge trauma. So it's something I tend to see as a pretty important part of who she is when I write her.
For Lena, she was raised with such a different trauma - forced to keep everything inside, constantly being told she's unworthy, and overall psychologically abused by pretty awful people. She's gonna process her shit differently, and often in a way that can hurt others before she learns different coping mechanisms, and that's something I think Kara understands more than anyone else and it means she gives Lena a lot of grace, but it's not infinite.
49 notes
·
View notes
Text
Aang was not a bad father, he was a flawed one!
It genuinely drives me a little crazy when people accuse Aang of being a bad father. Or when they say that LOK ruined his character. Neither of those things are true.
First of all, Aang was 12 at the end of ATLA. He wasn’t even old enough to fully understand the trauma he had been through. His entire nation was wiped out and he spent the rest of his life protecting the other nations. Which often called on him to compromise his values. Absolutely nobody in ATLA had any regard for the fact that Aang was the last person left to continue on air nomads tradition. The moment he compromised his values is the moment his culture dies.
And in air nomad culture, you don’t have traditional parents. You’re raised in a community. I don’t know if Aang even knew who his parents were. I don’t know if he even cared. That alone means that he has no idea how to be a parent. So no, LOK didn’t ruin Aang’s characterisation. It simply took it further than it had been when HE WAS 12! And let’s not forget that the two shows are written by the same people. They know what they’re doing.
And now, onto why Aang wasn’t a bad father. His kids loved him. Yes, he definitely had some favouritism issues. But remember, that man was the last vestige of the air nation. Once he was gone, his son would be the last airbender left. And if he left this world without teaching Tenzin absolutely everything about air nation culture, not only would the next avatar be screwed over by not learning an entire bending style but air nation culture would be at even more risk of disappearing. So yes, was it fair that Aang paid more attention to Tenzin? No! But nothing about his life has ever been fair.
And as for his kids, they LOVED him! Bumi did have some insecurity about whether or not his father was proud of him. But Kya knew. I think they both knew they were loved. And the kids may have had issues with each other but they stuck together.
Now I’m not saying Aang was perfect or even a good parent. But there’s a world of difference between a bad parent and a flawed one. And Aang sits squarely in the flawed category. And I genuinely think that when he was around all of his kids, he treated them all well. Otherwise I don’t think Kya and Bumi would’ve been so hung up on the fact that Tenzin had more time with their father.
At the end of the day, Aang’s real problem was that he didn’t have enough time or support. He was supposed to be there for everyone else, all the time. And that didn’t stop when he defeated the firelord. And outside of Katara, his friends had their own things. He genuinely didn’t know how to be a parent without a community.
And as for Katara, she may have mothered everyone in the group but she lost her mother at a very young age. And she didn’t even really have a father growing up. And by the time her dad came back, I doubt he had much opportunity to parent her. So no, I’m not surprised that two incredibly traumatised people were flawed parents.
But whatever their flaws were, they set their kids up for success. Kya, Bumi and Tenzin stuck together when it mattered. And Tenzin got to be a better father than he had. I don’t think any of his kids ever has to worry about him loving them or even being proud of them.
21 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
2ninetyfour
2NinetyFour
nuevaluz
Una Nueva Vida
lovelikecrazy14hubby
The spice of life
freytful
i really gotta change my title man
virtualbearfox
The night is crawling through my eyes