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#i think the main issue is that a lot of people insist that the characters are the same when even their previous actions are retconned
cynifer · 13 hours
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Team Free Will began the downfall of Supernatural. The show was always about the brothers. It isn’t an ensemble piece. I don’t know why fans insist on stanning extras who ultimately mean nothing to the core story. This includes Castiel. “Fans” like you are what ruin the Supernatural fandom. If you aren’t stanning Sam and Dean you can’t really call yourself a fan of the show.
Wow. This is…a lot.
Let me start by saying if Kripke didn’t add Angels and if Crowley had never appeared on the show, there is no way we would have gotten 15 seasons. No way.
Because 15 seasons of Sam being a selfish jackass, Dean pouting about it, the brothers making up and then starting all over all while chasing the monster of the week would have eventually gotten stale.
Misha, both Marks and Alex*, being listed as the main cast at various times is verifiable proof that TPTB though it was an ensemble show. Just because the finale was an epic fuck up doesn’t change that.
Fans like you can complain all you want about the “extras” but they aren’t invited to conventions for no reason: they are very popular with the majority of fans. Because most fans can see that the addition of people outside of the Winchester bloodline actually expanded the appeal of the show AND the appeal of Winchester brothers. We got to see so much more of their personalities** without them being filtered through the prism of brotherhood.
And to be blunt, Jensen definitely needed different actors to work with because Jared most certainly didn’t challenge him much. You can only do so much when your acting partner thinks a well-placed huff passes for emoting.
As much as I’ve grown to enjoy the first three seasons of SPN, the first time around I was getting annoyed midway through season 3. Dean sacrificed himself so that Sam could live and Sam spends the better part of the season either giving him shit about it or just completely ignoring Dean’s inner turmoil about it. (The Christmas episode comes screaming to mind here. Instead of thinking about how it was going to be Dean’s last Christmas, Sam spent most of the episode moping about how shitty his Christmases were as a child. It wasn’t about how hard Dean tried to make Christmas special for Sam and how Dean wanted to do that one final time, it was about Sam and his issues. As ever.)
So you’ll excuse me if I think giving (mostly) Dean friends he could both work with and trust - not only at times when he couldn’t trust Sam, but with feelings he knew he couldn’t share with Sam*** - was a great idea and infused much needed life into the show.
Castiel (and Misha) pretty much stole season 4 from Sam. His fans feel cheated Sammy didn’t save Dean from Hell so they will forever be salty that Kripke (and those who followed him) decided to keep trying his luck by adding more recurring characters after the spectacular success of Misha/Cas being added to the show.
Literally everyone except people who don’t like Misha consider him the third lead on the show. If you don’t like that, it’s a you problem, pal.
*I’m sure I’m missing others. Jim Beaver maybe?
**Insert your own snarky joke about Sam’s lack of personality here.
***Because as much as Sam would beg Dean to share his feelings, whenever Dean caved and did just that, invariably Sam would use that info against him.
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panickedscribbles · 3 months
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I've been thinking about Star Wars discourse lately, and I think a lot of the reason so much of the fandom is constant back and forth arguments is because a lot of the time, two characters can be right simultaneously while also disagreeing completely with each other.
Take the whole "Too old, he is" thing.
On one hand, obviously wrong. Anakin is nine, he's at most a few years behind, and textually managed to catch up pretty well. Like, if Palpatine and the Sith Plan weren't constantly messing him up, there is every possibility that Anakin could have become a well adjusted Jedi. Nine is by no means too old to learn a skill.
On the other hand, the council demonstrates perfectly in that scene that they are completely unequipped to deal with a nine year old who hasn't been raised in their culture, especially one from a heavily traumatized background. The pop-quiz they ask him would be perfectly acceptable for a nine-year-old youngling, but Anakin literally just walked in. They are giving an end-of-year exam to a kid who has never even seen a school. And they assume this is fine, because that's just what you do with nine-year-olds.
More to the point, they are completely failing to take into account the previous nine years of his life. They ask a kid, who up until all of about 18 hours ago had been enslaved since birth, to be open and honest about his emotions, in a room full of complete strangers, most of whom answer to "Master"! They have somehow engineered a situation so psychologically damaging that Palpatine is taking notes in the corner, entirely without realizing. When the council says they shouldn't take him in, they are one hundred percent right. Nine is WAY too old when you've spent that time as a slave, and are being entrusted into the care of people who have never had to raise a nine year old who wasn't raised like they were.
Or how about Anakin not being made a master. Was he right to insist he get the title, or was the council.
Well, Anakin should be made a master, you see, because,
He's one of the main Generals fighting and coordinating the war
And he's one of their most successful warriors. Like, he's the guy they call in whenever they need an impossible mission completed
He's more or less the face of the war effort, as "The Hero Without Fear"
As an ex-slave, obtaining the title of Master would be a huge psychological weight lifted off his shoulders.
Since they're making him part of the council for espionage purposes, making him a master as well serves as better cover
Giving him more reason to stay loyal to the Jedi after they just asked him to betray the trust of one of his oldest and closest friends wouldn't be the worst idea
Like, if ever there was a reason to give someone a promotion, those are some pretty good ones.
However, on the opposite side of the issue, literally none of that has any bearing on "Mastery" as the Jedi define it. Being a Jedi Master is all about mastery over oneself, having a deep understanding of the force, and a certain level of inner peace.
You'll notice that at no point does being really good at large-scale violence, being well known for being really good at large-scale violence, or wanting it a lot factor into being made a Jedi Master. Everything Anakin is good at, Everything Palpatine, and the war, and the council have pushed Anakin into being good at, do nothing to bring him any closer to Mastery, and in fact often push him further away from it.
In both of these examples, you can make a very compelling argument in either direction. Hell, you can make a compelling argument in both directions at the same time. And I think that's really neat.
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yourhighness6 · 2 months
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I'm announcing to anyone who cares that I'm going to be watching SPOP for the first time since I was about ten, but before I do, here is everything I recall about the characters:
There's a girl with a sword who turns into a butch lesbian whose name I can't remember. I think she is the main character but that might be Glitter
Butch lesbian girl has an evil girlfriend who is apparently a hot furry. I can confirm. A large number of people insist she is toxic, but I am saving my judgement until I watch the show again. She also apparently runs an evil empire of some sort.
There is another girl called Glitter who is also a lesbian I think?? This is unclear, as I have seen her shipped with both the hot furry and the butch girl, but also with an archer himbo dude. She may be bisexual. I am not entirely sure how she fits into the story, but I do know she has mommy issues.
Archer himbo dude is a prince I think?? This is also unclear, but I have gathered that he is best boy and the only good man in the universe, which is very cool.
There is someone named Seahawk who likes to sing, and he has a mermaid gf named (very creatively) Mermista, who is apparently the SPOP version of Mai.
Evil empire furry also apparently has parents of some sort who are very toxic? I gather that one is a witchy sort of person and the other looks like a chaotic version of the terminator. Hot furry also has a stepmother who is very cute and autistic and has giant pigtails and is very smart. I don't know exactly how they fit into the story either, but pigtail stepmom seems like the MVP.
There is also a princess of some sort who acts like Toph. I believe her name is Frosta and she is basically the short version of Elsa but a lot more violent. I am not entirely sure why she is a princess? Is she archer himbo dude's brother? (I have so many questions)
There is an annoying unicorn with very pretty hair
That's all I know but I'm excited to learn more!
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stainedglassthreads · 9 months
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One thing I think I just realized is, in addition to being dissatisfied with how stories deal with Toriel’s grief compared to Asgore’s and Asriel’s, and how I don’t see many instances of Toriel and Asgore’s quarrel being addressed in a way that satisfied me... I don’t think I see that many AUs that quite get the responsibility Asgore feels... right.
Yes, I’ve seen several that portray his grief, depression, and how badly he doesn’t want to be in this position well, even if it’s disappointing how not everyone seems to be aware of what you learn about him in a Neutral run where you’ve previously killed Flowey. A lot of people can get aspects of his characterization very well, the broken man, the goofy dad, the intimidating monarch. But I think the reason I don’t see people capture the weight of his responsibility quite as well in fanfics and comics is... well. Oddly enough it’s in the way the monsters treat him.
It’s not just the fandom that has issues with idolizing or demonizing characters. It’s also the Kingdom of Monsters themselves--and they all idolize Asgore. Yes, he’s a very grounded and compassionate individual who invites his subjects to share all their problems with him, and who Papyrus insists will just let you pass through the Barrier. But he’s also a bit of the subject of a cult of personality for his subjects. When they say he’ll absorb seven souls and become a GOD, it’s not an expression of his arrogance, but rather their own adoration. While out-of-universe the Angel is generally agreed to be either Asriel or Chara(or us), in-universe I wouldn’t be surprised if Asgore was considered the Angel.
It’s not long now. King Asgore will let us go. King Asgore will give us hope. King Asgore will save us all.
Yes, individual monsters may want to collect a human soul for their own individual wants and desires. But it’s only the capture of a human soul, or using a single soul for their own benefit, that they really aspire to. (With the exception of Toriel, who wants no souls, and Flowey, who is Flowey.) Of those area bosses who earnestly try to take just one soul, Papyrus and Undyne both want to hand you over to Asgore, and Mettaton wants to protect humanity FROM Asgore. Literally everyone in the Underground seems to fully believe that Asgore will be the one taking all the Souls and fulfilling his promises, and all are content. (Again, barring Toriel, MTT, Flowey.) No one seems to ever doubt he’ll do as he says, even his ex-wife, and no one’s greedy to take the power for themselves or take the burden of being a savior for themself, except his kid who has both a God Complex and a Savior Complex.
With Chara, and with Asgore. They take a person and turn them into a representation of something More than any singular person could ever be. And then in the worst route Chara does it again, to themself. Asgore is freedom and salvation and retribution itself, and everyone including the woman who was once married to him agrees and reinforces the role. Chara is the feeling of a number going up, and the fandom agrees and reinforces the role.
And I dunno. There are fics and AUs where Asgore never lost his kids and always remained an affable, friendly guy. There are AUs where Asgore is the main antagonist and an awful villain with few redeeming qualities. There are fics and AUs where Asgore gets to recover in a post-pacifist setting. But I’m not sure any fics or AUs have ever quite captured how everyone else just talks about the guy, for me. Toriel is simply ‘intimidating’. But Asgore is a GOD.
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suffersinfandom · 4 months
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Alright, I’m gonna talk about Ed and abuse.
“Why, V? Why are you spending your precious time on Earth typing about some dumb fandom stuff when you could be doing literally anything else?”
In short, seeing all of these “Ed is an abuser who’s inevitably going to hurt Stede” takes have been driving me absolutely bonkers since I first noticed them. They’re not going away, so I’m going to bang out an essay. 
In less-short: it’s because abuse is a serious thing and, as someone who’s experienced it, I get a little feisty when it becomes a topic of discourse in my silly pirate fandom. It’s because it’s upsetting to read meta after meta accusing an indigenous man of being an abuser. It’s because a lot of the abuse discourse in the fandom fails to separate real-life abuse from violence in a show. It’s because the vast majority of the abuse talk only acknowledges physical abuse which, while terrible, is not the only kind that hurts people and utterly destroys their lives. 
It’s because calling Ed abusive or insisting that he’s a future abuser can harm people who are like him -- people who have suffered abuse or get angry sometimes or have hurt people when they were hurt. Victims of abuse, especially those who dealt with it in childhood, often fear becoming abusers themselves. They bottle up their anger for fear of hurting someone. They hurt themselves in a misguided attempt to protect others. They don’t need to see fandom meta that enforces their fears.
And it’s because, frankly, I am unemployed and I promise I’ll stop if you give me a transcription or copyediting job, please and thank you.
Before I get into it…
I may as well come clean and say that I’m on team Ed absolutely isn’t abusive and it’s weird that people are getting that from a show that’s full of violence. 
Plenty has been typed in Ed’s defense by POC in the fandom, so I’m not going to go into how deeply unfortunate it would be to make an indigenous main character an abuser. I’m just going to say that, when you consider OFMD’s genre and attitude towards violence, it seems clear to me that you can’t call Ed abusive without calling out other characters (unless you have some kind of bias against Ed). His actions are deplorable in the real world, a bit much in OFMD’s world, deeply unhealthy, not okay by any means, and shitty and traumatizing for his crew, but they aren’t abusive.
I’m going to try to keep things polite and respectful. I’m also going to try to stick close to what the text is trying to say instead of doing that thing I did in college where, when I hated whatever I was supposed to write about, I came up with a batshit thesis that entertained me and forced the text to support me. I truly do want to present an honest, earnest analysis of something that I love. 
(If you saw this before I cut for length, shut up, no you didn't.)
The arguments in favor of Ed as an abuser.
We can’t defend an idea without knowing what we’re arguing against (with brief counterpoints that I hope to expand on later). For this section (lol, sections, that feels pretentious and weird and I’m sorry), I’ll be lightly rephrasing things and omitting sources.
“Ed has anger management issues that disqualify him from being a romantic lead.”
Counterpoint: Ed does not have anger management issues. (Even if he did, I can think of a few very successful franchises with shitty and violent romantic leads. Ew.) He gets angry sometimes, as we all do.
“I defended Ed making Izzy eat his toe because that was a single instance and abuse is a pattern. Season two made it an explicit pattern.”
Counterpoint: First, feeding people their toes isn’t a biggie in this universe. Second, Ed fed Izzy that initial toe because he stepped out of line and demanded Blackbeard; it’s likely that additional toes were the victims of Izzy not being obedient. (I’m not saying this is right or that it’s cool to feed people body parts when they disobey, btw. I hope that doesn’t need to be said.)
“The first two episodes of season two set up the cycle of abuse so well, but the show never follows through. It doesn’t even acknowledge that it set up that storyline. If they’d wanted to end the season on a happy note without spending a lot of time fixing Ed’s relationship with the crew, they could have just made Ed’s behavior in the first two episodes less dark and abusive.”
Counterpoint: Ed’s behavior in the first two episodes isn’t abusive. It’s a bit over the top and it hurts people, yeah, but Ed’s definitely not following in his abusive father’s footsteps and systematically abusing his crew.
“Season two gives us straight up abuse. It gives us Stede, still soft around the edges, being deliberately headbutted during their reunion.”
Counterpoint: There is no abuse between Ed and Stede. The headbutt was not a case of a violent person intentionally hitting their passive partner; it was a confused, unwell, and nonverbal man reacting to the presence of someone who hurt him. Also? Stede has no problem setting boundaries or speaking out. Good for him!
“As bad as the season finale was, I’m glad the crew’s safe from Ed. Now that Izzy isn’t there to protect them, any little trigger could set Ed off and lead to him hurting them. Stede, though… Stede’s stuck with Ed and the corpse of Ed’s last victim, and it’s only a matter of time before Ed destroys him too.”
Counterpoint: This take is so far removed from the text of the show that I don’t know how to address it quickly, but here we go: Ed is not a threat to the crew after episode two, Izzy did not protect the crew from Ed’s moods, Ed does not have a hair-trigger temper, Izzy is not Ed’s victim, and -- vitally -- Stede is in absolutely no danger. Ed is not destined to be an abusive partner in season three.
And an overriding counterpoint to everything is this: Our Flag Means Death is a comedy with tons of over-the-top violence. If your theory is unrelentingly grim or looks at violence and its consequences in a real-world light, consider stepping back and remembering what genre the events of the show are happening in. If you think that only the violence committed by the indigenous lead is abuse, look at the actions of the other characters and ask yourself why Ed doesn’t get the same grace you’ve granted the others.
With that quick and dirty rundown of the arguments I’ve seen, let’s move on to the next important step in building an argument: definitions.
What is abuse in the real world?
In the real world, abuse is extremely serious and not something to be taken lightly. But what is abuse? We can’t say much about it in any world without knowing what it is in ours, so here’s a simple explanation:
Abuse “includes [a pattern of] behaviors that physically harm, intimidate, manipulate, or control a partner or otherwise force them to behave in ways they don’t want to. This can happen through physical violence, threats, emotional abuse, or financial control.” (1)
“Emotional abuse includes non-physical behaviors that are meant to control, isolate, or frighten someone. These behaviors are often more subtle and hard to identify but are just as serious as other types of abuse.” (2)
It’s important to emphasize that not all purposeful harm to another person, physical or otherwise, is abuse. “What abuse really means is control. When a truly abusive situation exists, it’s because one party is seeking to control the other through abuse.” (2)
To summarize, abuse is a pattern of behavior that involves one person intentionally harming another. That harm is meant to control, and it can take on more forms than just physical. 
That said, I’m mostly concerned with physical abuse here, as that’s the only kind that I’ve ever seen discussed in relation to Ed. Going into mental and emotional abuse will involve talking more about a specific non-Ed character and I don’t want to go there. Possibly ever.
In our world, all abuse is terrible. Vitally, our world -- and this is very important, so underline it twice if you’re taking notes -- does not operate by the rules of a pirate rom-com.
Okay, so what is abuse in the silly pirate world of Our Flag Means Death?
First, we have to understand what the show is. @piratecaptainscaptainpirates lays it out nicely:
“1. This is a rom-com.The central romance between Ed and Stede and comedy are therefore the two most core parts of the show, with Ed and Stede's romance taking priority over everything else. That's not to say OFMD doesn't have dark themes, it absolutely does; it's to say that comedy is always important to how the show is written, acted, and filmed.
“2. This is not a subtle show. That's not to say it's a simple one [...]. It's amazingly layered and emotional responses by characters are often extremely complex. However, when the show is trying to tell you something, it's not subtle and it never tries to hide it.” (3)
Did you jot that down? Our Flag Means Death is a romantic comedy with one core romantic couple, Ed and Stede, whose story takes priority over everything else. It can be dark, it can be serious, but it is, at its core, a comedy, and not a subtle one at that.
Some things are just funny and that’s it.
As a rule, the most obvious reading is going to be the one to go with. The show’s meanings aren’t hidden under layers of red herrings and subtext; if you’re compelled to bring out the conspiracy corkboard, you’re probably in too deep.
But this isn’t just a rom-com: it’s a pirate rom-com, and that comes with gratuitous violence. Here’s a short, fun list of examples of things that we can consider canon-typical pirate violence:
Tying hostages to the mast and letting them cook a bit
Wanton murder during a raid (“Note the gusto!”)
Pirate A threatening his crush at gunpoint until Pirate B gutstabs him
Whippies and yardies
Cutting off toes and feeding them to people “for a laugh”
Pirates who are madly in love stabbing and poisoning each other
Literally any violence directed at a racist (this violence is, in fact, good and encouraged)
There’s also the pirate-typical killing of other pirates. Duels don’t seem entirely unusual, and Izzy outright tries to get Stede killed at several points in season one. When Chauncey Badminton and the English navy show up after being summoned by Izzy, Stede’s life isn’t the only one on the line; the rest of the crew is also put in potentially life-threatening danger. Izzy is forgiven, so I think it’s safe to say that attempted murder is the kind of thing that pirates typically move on from. Eventually. If the attempted murderer is pathetic enough.
In short, Our Flag Means Death has a lot of violence, and very few instances of violence (looking at you, Hornigold) are treated as anything other than socially acceptable. But do you know what’s really important in the show?
Feelings.
The way characters feel as a result of something is given an immense amount of weight. All of the show’s subtleties are in the realms of the mental and the emotional, and that’s where the real pain is too. 
Nigel Badminton’s death was bad because it was emotionally and mentally devastating for Stede. Ed’s father’s murder was bad because it hurt him and forced him to create a monstrous alter ego to cope. Both of those men -- Nigel and Father Teach -- are totally acceptable casualties; their deaths would be net positives if they hadn’t had such strong impacts on our leads.
Feelings are everything in Our Flag Means Death, and the feelings of our leads are the heart of the show. That’s where the story is; that’s where the complexity and ambiguity is. 
So what is abuse in this context? The casual treatment of physical violence and the seriousness of emotional distress tell us to adjust our own moral judgments accordingly. Physical violence is everyday, straightforward, and often comedic; emotional violence is devastating and complicated. Physical violence is cartoonish and, half the time, part of a punchline. Emotional violence is real and raw and not a joking matter. Attempted murder can be shrugged off; ditching your boyfriend after experiencing a traumatic event is more complicated.
When we ask ourselves if something in OFMD is abuse, we have to consider the act in the context of a rom-com that’s all about the feelings of two guys, set against the violent backdrop of piracy, and absolutely packed with people getting maimed and murdered in casual, comedic ways. 
Awesome! Now we’re a little clearer about definitions and genre and how we should adjust our expectations! Unfortunately, we haven’t jumped into the real meat of whatever the hell this essay is…
Is Ed abusive in the context of the show?
No.
Aaaand we’re done!
Joking, joking. Obviously I’m going to pick out the examples of “abuse” that people cite and discuss each one, but first: we need to talk about Ed, violence, and anger. 
Ed is not a violent person. He’s not full of rage that’s threatening to erupt at all times, and he’s not some kind of sadist that revels in hurting people. The violence of Blackbeard is a fuckery: the theater of fear, an illusion of cruelty calculated to terrify enemies into surrendering. 
Ed has his whole thing with murder that's rooted in childhood trauma. Killing his (canonically, decidedly) abusive father to protect his mother scars him so badly that he distances himself from the situation -- blames Father Teach’s death on the Kraken -- and can’t bring himself to directly kill anyone else after that. Blackbeard orders murders and causes deaths and maims and maintains his image as a bloodthirsty murderer, but Ed doesn’t do “the big job” himself until the end of season two. When Stede’s life is in the balance, Ed can kill to protect him. 
Edward Teach kills only to protect.
But that’s killing, and we’re talking about general violence. Ed is casual about the day-to-day violence of piracy. He participates in it, incites it, and doesn’t feel bad about it. No one does! It’s part of the job! 
That leaves us with the "anger problem." Ed is frequently characterized as an angry person who lashes out when enraged, and I don’t think that canon at all supports this interpretation. Ed gets mad, yes, but his anger is always at least understandable. It isn’t a constant, simmering thing that turns him into an abusive monster when he’s triggered. He doesn't always deal with his anger (or any of his other feelings) in a good and constructive way because both of our leads lack emotional maturity, but I think it's a mistake to characterize him as an angry person.
Hopefully I can elaborate on this idea -- the idea that Ed is only violent and angry in a normal and canon-appropriate way, and anger is by no means one of his defining characteristics -- by doing a run-down of all of the times Ed is accused of being abusive or showing signs of being an abuser.
Sooooo...
Ed loses his shit on a falling snake during his nature adventure with Stede (S1E7). In this scene, he’s embarrassed about the whole treasure hunt thing and annoyed by the very existence of nature. He is not relaxed. When nature takes him by surprise by falling on him, he stabs the crap out of it in a scene that is played for comedy. There’s the important part: this is comedy. Ed is grumpy and his childish tantrum is harmless and silly. It isn’t a red flag. Overreacting while irritated isn’t an indicator that someone will be abusive.
Ed punches Izzy after the English have taken the Revenge, captured Stede, and turned Ed over to Izzy (S1E9). Honestly, I think the fact that Ed lets Izzy talk before punching him demonstrates a great deal of restraint on his part! This is justified anger and fear for Stede’s life. This also isn’t some sign that Ed hits Izzy on the regular.
In his post-pillow fort era, Ed is cleaning up his cabin when that one highly contentious Izzy scene happens (S1E10). Izzy insults Ed, tells him that he’d be better off dead than as he currently is, and says that he serves only Blackbeard (Ed better watch his fucking step). Ed reacts by grabbing Izzy by the throat and telling him to choose his next words carefully. This, in my opinion, is a valid way for a pirate captain to react to insubordination. At the very least, it doesn't tell us that Ed is Izzy's abuser; there's no indication that this isn't a one-off provocation and reaction.
Which takes us to The Toe Scene.
In real life, it would be extremely fucked up for a boss to remove an employee’s toe and make him eat it. OFMD is not real life. One episode earlier, Ed was talking about the life he was glad to leave behind -- the life where The Toe Thing was done “for a laugh.” Not as punishment, but for fun. It’s set up as something that’s gross (“yuck”), not a grave punishment. When Ed feeds Izzy his toe, he gives Izzy what be asked for: he gives him a violent captain. He gives him Blackbeard. He gives him the guy who fed people toes for fun.
But what’s important here is that Ed is not having fun. He’s having a hell of a lot less fun than Izzy is, going by their expressions in the scene. This isn’t who he wants to be, but after having the possibility of a better life snatched away, Ed throws himself back into the sure thing. He becomes the Kraken -- the captain Izzy wants, the violent monster that Ed thinks he is and tries to distance himself from, and the only thing Ed thinks he can be. It’s sad. It’s desperation, not anger and abuse.
In the second season, Ed headbutts Stede after he’s revived from his coma/death (S2E4). In the next scene, Stede is holding a cold steak to his face and calling it an accident. Roach says “that’s what they all say” -- a line that alludes to domestic violence. The thing is? It’s not, and the crew has expectations of Ed that Stede doesn’t.
Ed is freshly out of a coma (or newly alive). He’s nonverbal. His brain is, medically speaking, couscous. He still has one foot in the gravy basket. When he sees the man who left him hovering over him -- the man he loves, the man who just appeared to him as a mermaid -- he tries to say something then, when that fails, resorts to a headbutt. This is a single violent action perpetrated by a confused and hurt man who doesn’t know what to do with all of his feelings. He can't talk. He can't push Stede away.
Stede understands all of this, even if the other characters don’t. He sees the headbutt for what it is: a bit of a bitchy move. He isn’t afraid of Ed. He never is. 
Stede also isn’t afraid of Ed when he acts out later that episode (S2E4). When Ed learns that Stede went back to Mary, he excuses himself from the dinner table, smashes a chair against the wall, and knocks a vase to the ground. In this entire episode (this entire season, tbh), Ed is having intense feelings that he doesn’t know how to express or work through; the reveal that Stede returned to his wife is the final straw. He takes his tangled feelings out on an acceptable target (a chair, a vase) instead of Stede because he doesn’t want to hurt Stede.
This looks a little like displacement -- when “an unacceptable feeling or thought about a person, place or thing is redirected towards a safer target.” Displacement is an “intermediate level coping mechanism.” That is, it’s more sophisticated than the ways children deal with intense issues, but it’s still not entirely mature. In an adult, it indicates a level of emotional immaturity. (4) Ed is emotionally immature, not inherently violent. He gets overwhelmed by his feelings and lashes out -- not at a person, but at something that can’t get hurt. 
Displacement is not an indicator that someone is an abuser. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s an attempt at emotional regulation. It’s not the best coping mechanism, but it’s definitely not a sign that someone is going to go into a rage and assault people.
Stede cringes when Ed smashes the chair and sends the vase crashing to the ground, but he’s not afraid of Ed. He is never afraid of Ed because he knows that Ed isn’t a real threat to him. He cringes because sometimes that's what a person does when a loud thing happens. That's what people do when chair shrapnel starts flying. Also? It's kind of embarrassing behavior on Ed's part. They're guests enjoying a mediocre dinner! That's no way to act!
And this leaves us with the first two episodes of season two, which are an absolute mess.
Ed is fully in his Kraken era. He has no hope that Stede will return, he no longer trusts the crew, and he feels trapped in a life he absolutely doesn’t want. He thinks that he has to perform Blackbeard until death sets him free. He sobs in his cabin when no one’s looking. Publicly, Ed fades into the role of remorseless and bloodthirsty pirate captain.
Needless to say, this makes for a shit work environment. Ed works the crew too hard. He drinks and does drugs and runs everyone ragged. He’s an absolutely terrible boss, but he isn’t abusive.
That isn’t to say that the crew left on the Revenge isn’t traumatized. They are! They’ve been thrown off balance by the sudden change for the worse in someone who was their friend, and they’re traumatized by the neverending violence that the constant raids -- raids that were bloody and deadly, not the fuckeries of the past -- demanded of them. They’re traumatized by that final night in the storm when Ed did everything in his power to goad them into killing him, almost murdering everyone in the process. They’re traumatized by their own attempt at murder.
In S2E4, Blackbeard’s crew has flashbacks to the violence they perpetrated under the Kraken: Jim fighting Archie, Fang breaking a man over his knee. They’re also haunted by guilt about what they did to Ed, as evidenced by their Lady Macbeth-style scrubbing. Their own violence is a significant part of their trauma in this episode.
No, that doesn’t absolve Ed. He drove the violence -- demanded it of both the crew and himself. He hurt other people because he was hurting, and that’s terrible. 
Ed’s behavior in the first two episodes of season two is horrible, but he’s not abusive. Not all bad or violent behavior is abuse.
(We also have to ask ourselves just how bad Ed’s behavior really is. Archie, someone from the pirate world who has no idea what the Revenge was like pre-Kraken, tells Jim “that’s how these things usually go” at the height of Ed’s violence. She doesn’t act like she experienced anything out of the ordinary which is, if I may be honest, kind of worrying. But ultimately, whether or not Ed’s actions when he was at his worst are normal for pirates doesn’t matter a ton here.) 
But what about Izzy, I’m sure you’re asking!
What about Izzy indeed. Ugh. Okay, let’s just… let’s walk through the first two episodes.
One of the first things we see Ed do in season two is shoot a man. At first this seems like the show telling us that Ed is embracing the kind of violence he couldn’t manage before, but if we pay attention, we can see that he’s still following his “not a murderer on a technicality” logic. The man he shoots has a sword through his chest; he's as good as dead. He also falls offscreen before Ed shoots, making the action less impactful.
OFMD is not subtle and this is a quick way to communicate what’s going on with Ed. He’s not doing well and he’s more violent than he was last season, but he’s still himself under the Kraken’s makeup. He hasn’t done a moral one-eighty. If the show wanted us to think that Ed's a monster, they would have made him a hell of a lot more violent.
So. Izzy.
Immediately after Ed tells Izzy that he’s replaceable in S2E1, we reach the scene that people point to and say, “That’s domestic violence!” This is where Izzy breaks down because he has just been told in no uncertain terms that he’s not Blackbeard’s special little guy. That’s devastating to him, and he cries when the crew shows him kindness. 
Jim tells Izzy he’s in an unhealthy relationship with Blackbeard; Frenchie describes their relationship as “toxic.” 
A toxic relationship is “any relationship [between people who] don’t support each other, where there’s conflict and one seeks to undermine the other, where there’s competition, where there’s disrespect and a lack of cohesiveness." (5) And you know what? Yeah, Ed and Izzy definitely have a toxic relationship. Well-sussed, Frenchie! And is their relationship unhealthy? It sure is -- for both of them! But the crew is, understandably, more sympathetic towards Izzy because they’ve never been present when Izzy was hurting Ed. 
(Only tangentially related, but the crew must have really liked Ed pre-Kraken. As far as they know, the man went dark with no warning or cause. They deal with his bullshit for approximately three months (assuming one raid a day), and he has to go so far before they put an end to him. Remember when they were ready to toss Izzy overboard after, like, twelve hours under his command?)
Even though they only have one side of the Izzy and Ed story, the crew isn’t accusing Ed of domestic abuse. The term doesn’t apply to the mutually fucked-up thing that Izzy and Ed have and, beyond that, the scene is played for laughs. Jim and Frenchie use comically modern language; the whole thing feels like an intervention for a stressed-out middle manager with a shitty boss. It's funny. It's a comical thing in a comedy show.
Moving on.
Izzy returns to Ed and tells him that the crew won’t throw treasure overboard to make room for more treasure. Ed says, “And that’s another toe.” Losing a toe is the penalty for failing the captain.
Which is more likely: that Ed cut off Izzy’s other toes on a cruel whim, or that Ed cut off Izzy’s toes after other perceived failures? I’m going for option two. It’s obviously not okay to punish an underling by taking toes, but we’ve already established that toe-removal isn’t a cruel and unusual pirate punishment. It’s done “for a laugh.” 
(Specifically, toe-chopping is the cost of Izzy’s failure. Frenchie disobeys and lies to Ed in his short time as first mate and he doesn’t lose a single toe. Izzy bears the brunt of Ed’s cruelty because he’s the one who demanded it.) 
This is not who Ed wants to be, but it’s who he thinks he has to be. It’s who Izzy told him to be.
Izzy makes the mistake of invoking Stede and Ed storms above deck. He holds the crew at gunpoint, one by one, and asks them if they think that the vibes on the ship are poisonous. No one gives him a positive answer and Ed turns the gun on himself. He works himself up until Izzy interrupts and the following exchange happens:
IZZY: “The atmosphere on this ship is fucked. Everyone knows why.” ED: “Well, I don’t. Enlighten me.” IZZY: “Your feelings for Stede fucking Bo--”
 [Ed shoots Izzy in the leg. Ed steps over him on his way back to his cabin.]
ED: “Throw this shit overboard and get suited up.”
I don’t want to go into speculation about the true cause of the fucked up vibe on the Revenge (it’s clearly not just Ed’s feelings for Stede) or why, exactly, Ed shot Izzy. What’s important for this post is this: Ed's actions are not unusually cruel for a pirate captain who considers his first mate out of line. This is the kind of thing that the idea of Blackbeard that Izzy worships does to maintain his reputation.
Fang cries when Ed shoots Izzy because he knows Blackbeard. He has been with Blackbeard longer than anyone else, and this isn’t Blackbeard. Blackbeard doesn’t work his crew this hard. Blackbeard doesn’t disregard the deaths of long-time crewmates like Ivan. Blackbeard doesn’t shoot his own crew. Fang is off-balance and distraught because his captain of twenty years is acting far, far more cruel than the Blackbeard he knew.
This is not Ed as he usually is. Ed at his worst is breaking all of his past patterns. He’s behaving like a different person. His actions at this point in time are not typical of his past actions or predicative of his future actions.
When we reach S2E2, Ed is chipper. He’s cleaning up, he’s tying up loose ends, and he has decided that, no matter what, this is the day that he dies. He’s determined. First, he’ll give Izzy a crack at killing him; next is the storm, the destruction of the steering wheel, and taking increasingly desperate actions to get the crew to stop him. He tells Jim and Archie to fight to the death. He goes to blow the mast away with a cannon and doesn’t react as nameless crew members are being washed overboard. 
Ed is stopped only by Izzy’s reappearance and the violent mutiny that follows.
None of what Ed does here is abuse. This is desperate violence. This is an unwell man begging everyone around him to send him to doggy heaven.
And finally, we have the big murder party in the season finale. A surprising number of fans interpret Ed’s willingness to cut down naval officers as a sure sign that he’s gotten worse and he’s more violent than ever. This is, in my opinion, a take that completely ignores everything we know about Ed and his relationship to violence.
I said it before, but it bears repeating: Edward Teach kills only to protect. He murdered his father to protect his mother. He mows down colonists for Stede. He kills for love, and by the end of season two, he has made some kind of peace with the Kraken and his own capacity for violence.
It’s sweet. Like, it wouldn’t be sweet in the real world, but in this world? In a world where physical violence is funny more often than it’s serious? In a world full of pirate characters who all have hefty body counts? It’s growth. It’s Ed healing.
Ed is doing better. He’s not a threat to the man he loves, and now he’s not a threat to himself either.
Anyway!
No, Ed is not abusive. No, there’s no indication that Ed will become abusive in the future.
“Okay, but many abuse survivors take issue with the irresponsible message that Jenkins is subtextually sending with Ed’s story!”
That’s fine. Take issue with things. Feel whatever you want to feel, but remember that abuse survivors are not a monolith. Consider, just for a moment, that the abuse you think you see in the show is not textual. Ask yourself if Ed is truly worse than all of the other characters or if you have some bias warping your view of him. 
Finally: please keep in mind that I’m not trying to present The One True Interpretation. I’m just rolling all of my arguments and thoughts into one big ol' ball and throwing it out into the wild. You don’t have to agree with me but, if you don’t, I hope you’ll at least have a bit of a think.
If you read this and liked it, please consider validating me with a like! If you read it and didn’t like it, I’m sorry for wasting your time. If you skimmed the first part and decided to dismiss me as soon as I said I don’t think that Ed is abusive… idk, peace and love and goodbye.
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whinlatter · 4 months
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sirius and ginny: a meta (part 1)
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“Excuse me, but I care what happens to Sirius as much as you do!” said Ginny, her jaw set so that her resemblance to Fred and George was suddenly striking.’
are you a very brave, very reckless, very hot self-destructive rebel with a treacherous sibling and a flair for christmas decoration, harbouring complex feelings about your mother, close ties to crookshanks the cat and spend your days plagued by the memory of your worst mistakes and dark past? do you find yourself constantly being begged to stay in a state of protective confinement to save your life by a young man with a lightning scar, bad hair and crippling abandonment issues? if so, congratulations! you might be one of harry potter's chosen family members, sirius black and ginevra molly weasley! 
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basically - i want to talk about sirius and ginny. these are two characters who don’t share a lot of scenes in canon but who, i think, have some clear (if overlooked) parallels: stubborn, fiercely protective of harry, self-sacrificing, admired, principled, haunted (in different ways) by traumatic pasts and betrayals, with complicated relationships with their families and entirely uncomplicated devoted relationships with someone else’s cat. their narrative arcs are successive, with ginny ascending in significance in the series during sirius’ period of decline and ultimate death. and ultimately, they’re also the two people who become, over the course of the canon series, family to a protagonist desperately seeking to build one. sirius and ginny are the two people harry in canon most worries about, wants to protect, and thinks of as someone who embodies the promise of family and home.
sirius and ginny aren’t mirror images of each other. ofc, ginny also has parallels with the only other family members harry claims in the series, lily and james (i mean, especially james - she’s literally a cocky funny flirtatious chaser with a years-long debilitating mega crush who can also catch a snitch like a champ. come on now). it’s also clear in canon that sirius means more to ginny as a hero/role model/ally against her mother than ginny ever means to sirius. nevertheless, the text puts in work to let the reader know we should think about these characters together as somehow aligned. from the beginning of ootp, there are clues and signals in the text that foreshadow ginny’s emergence as someone important to harry, and that subtly let the reader know that the baton of being harry’s ‘person’ is about to be passed from sirius to ginny, two kindred spirits, after sirius’ death. so that's what this meta is about! (consider this my 700th attempt to show that, as the popular fandom complaint/all of reddit still insist, ginny as a character, and especially the harry/ginny romance, did not ‘come out of nowhere’.)
the following meta is part one of two (and yet it's still too long! sorry about it). o in this part, i look at the period from the end of goblet of fire thru the start of half blood prince, exploring how the text sets up the sirius and ginny parallels as a way of foreshadowing ginny’s emergence as harry’s main love interest and place as a family substitute. the second part (tbc) will be what the memory of sirius does for harry’s view of his relationship with ginny, and the kind of positive - and negative - ways this shapes harry’s ideas about love and what family do for each other. i wrote this meta as a way of thinking through some characterisation choices for my current WIP, beasts. if you're following along with that fic, this meta can be seen as a companion piece especially to my thinking behind chapters ten and eleven, so hope proves helpful for some of my thinking behind the sirius and ginny friendship that appears in that project. it's also dedicated to @ashesandhackles, queen of metas, who has reminded me to post this meta precisely 9 million times because she is a long-suffering saint.
ok - sirius and ginny. let’s goooooo!
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sirius and ginny before ootp
before OotP, ginny is absent from any plot connected to sirius. ginny doesn’t know the truth about sirius’ innocence, nor does she know that harry, her brother and her friend are in regular contact with sirius and that harry now as a surrogate father/big brother figure to confide in and seek comfort in.  in fact, in one of ginny’s few appearances in GoF, the narration is unusually insistent that the reader knows how little ginny knows about sirius:
“And have you heard from — ?” Ron began, but at a look from Hermione he fell silent. Harry knew Ron had been about to ask about Sirius. Ron and Hermione had been so deeply involved in helping Sirius escape from the Ministry of Magic that they were almost as concerned about Harry’s godfather as he was. However, discussing him in front of Ginny was a bad idea. Nobody but themselves and Professor Dumbledore knew about how Sirius had escaped, or believed in his innocence. “I think they’ve stopped arguing,” said Hermione, to cover the awkward moment, because Ginny was looking curiously from Ron to Harry. “Shall we go down and help your mum with dinner?” 
the only other tiny crumb of sirius and ginny we get is the news that the owl sirius bought in PoA and gifted to ron as a replacement pet for scabbers has been embraced and named by ginny. sirius gifting a tiny little spitfire of an owl that annoys ron? it's giving foreshadowing, your honour.
the reader, though, knows who sirius is to harry by GoF. throughout this book, for the first time in the series, harry has a person he can claim as something like a family: someone to worry about, someone who cares about him,who can advise, guide and mentor him, as well as offer him support and consolation in difficult times (‘someone like a parent…’) although sirius has not been able to offer harry a stable alternative home to the dursleys due to his status as a wanted man, he’s still filling a role that previously had been vacant in the series: he’s harry’s person, the surrogate parent chosen for him by james and lily. he’s close by, either by the floo or eventually living (at great personal cost) as padfoot in hogsmeade, and he’s present emotionally for harry in ways that prove incredibly meaningful to his young godson. in times of great of distress, sirius is there for harry to meet emotional needs that ron and hermione (understandably, no shade to them) can’t always meet. the floo scene early on in GoF, during harry’s row with ron, is a particularly good example of this:
“Never mind me, how are you?” said Sirius seriously. “I’m —”  For a second, Harry tried to say “fine” — but he couldn’t do it. …Before he could stop himself, he was talking more than he’d talked in days — about how no one believed he hadn’t entered the tournament of his own free will, how Rita Skeeter had lied about him in the Daily Prophet, how he couldn’t walk down a corridor without being sneered at — and about Ron, Ron not believing him, Ron’s jealousy . . . Sirius looked at him, eyes full of concern… He had let Harry talk himself into silence without interruption’.
harry derives enormous comfort from sirius’ presence in his life during GoF. he writes to sirius, he repeatedly turns to him for advice, he worries for him more than he does any other person. sirius fulfils harry’s desire to be kept abreast of important information about voldemort and death eaters, doesn’t sugarcoat news for harry, and makes him feel important, cared for and understood. (harry even shows off to sirius telling him about how much of a slay the first task was. ugh). by the time of the third task, sirius is sending harry daily owls, a constant flow of reassurance and concern (‘He reminded Harry in every letter that whatever might be going on outside the walls of Hogwarts was not Harry’s responsibility, nor was it within his power to influence it. If Voldemort is really getting stronger again, he wrote, my priority is to ensure your safety.’) when harry returns from the graveyard at the novel’s end, it’s sirius who races to his side to advocate for him and offer him both words of comfort and physical affection as he processes the traumatic series of events that constitute the climax of the book’s plot. (my personal favourite part is where harry says ‘wormtail cut me with a knife’ and the text says sirius made a ‘vehement exclamation’, which i can only assume is children’s book speak for ‘fucking hell’.) harry goes to bed: sirius stays with him, a literal guard dog as he recuperates. after the most traumatic events of the series to date, the reader is at least consoled that harry potter has a person now, someone he loves for him to worry about and to worry for him, who catches him on the other side of traumatic events and makes them that bit much more bearable.
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sirius and ginny during ootp
with sirius' role in harry's life established in GoF, OotP begins with harry, cooped up and restless at privet drive, angry with ron, hermione, sirius, and dumbledore for abandoning him at privet drive and keeping him in the dark. harry arrives at grimmauld place to find an anxious ron and hermione, with whom harry is angry and frustrated for having left him out of their summer hangs and having neglected him, by his assessment, in surrey. it’s the most conflict we’ve seen in the trio in terms of harry vs ron and hermione, and sets up one of the important themes of the book, which is harry no longer being solely emotionally fulfilled by the people he is closest to, including his two surrogate parents best mates but also his godfather. when he encounters sirius for the first time after the order meeting, he finds him surly, bitter, and depressed, furious that he is confined to his childhood home, and (understandably) much less able or willing to offer harry much in the way of comfort, apology or cheering words (‘Harry, who had expected a better welcome, noted how hard and bitter Sirius’s voice sounded.’) in this sense, the book opens with harry disappointed and/or more distant from all the people on whom he most depends and is usually closest to, and that there therefore is already an absence of a certain kind of emotional support in harry’s life that the plot demands be filled.
fresh off the back of harry’s row with ron and hermione is ginny’s reintroduction to the reader. after years of being so shy in harry’s presence she was often nearly mute, the reader finds that ginny is not only now speaking, but that her presence turns out to be remarkably refreshing. from her opening scene where ginny enters harry’s bedroom at grimmauld place, the reader discovers the new ginny is confident, up to no good, in cahoots with her most troublemaking brothers trying to intercept the order meeting, enterprising in her mischief (and very happy to lie to her mother’s face about it). she’s thoroughly unfazed by harry’s great display of rage that has just startled and upset ron and hermione. (side note: in both ootp and hbp, ginny’s opening scene is her entering harry’s bedroom, which is the kind of foreshadowing i personally find delicious). everyone else is behaving pretty much as they have been up to this point, but it’s ginny who is showcasing behaviours new to the reader, a signal that she might be about to play a different role in the series than she has done up to this point.
cut to the dinner scene. sirius and ginny are in the room together for the first time. sirius is moody: though he’s still able to laugh, enjoying displays of mischief and humour (the twins and the knife), he’s more bitter than harry and the reader have seen him since PoA. it’s an important scene for lots of reasons (not least the sirius v molly beef), but it’s also one where sirius and ginny are repeatedly drawn into mental association in the reader’s mind. it’s also a great scene because the behaviour of crookshanks the cat literally serves to foreshadow the behaviour of harry james potter in ways that are frankly extremely fun.
so! the sirius and ginny hints start small. from the start of the scene, ginny is amused by mundungus the crook (a man, we will learn, so disdained by her mother):
“Some’n say m’ name?” Mundungus mumbled sleepily. “I ’gree with Sirius. . . .” He raised a very grubby hand in the air as though voting, his droopy, bloodshot eyes unfocused. Ginny giggled. “The meeting’s over, Dung,” said Sirius, as they all sat down around him at the table. “Harry’s arrived.” 
sirius and harry, sat at the end of the table, are both greeted by crookshanks, sirius’ old accomplice from PoA:
'​​Harry felt something brush against his knees and started, but it was only Crookshanks, Hermione’s bandy-legged ginger cat, who wound himself once around Harry’s legs, purring, then jumped onto Sirius’s lap and curled up. Sirius scratched him absentmindedly behind the ears as he turned, still grim-faced, to Harry…
when fred and george’s levitation goes awry, flinging a knife at sirius (now that’s how you foreshadow a death), crookshanks bolts: 
‘Harry and Sirius were both laughing… Crookshanks had given an angry hiss and shot off under the dresser, from whence his large yellow eyes glowed in the darkness…’
during the meal, ginny’s with hermione, having a laugh with tonks, a character harry has just met but whom he has already decided to both admire and like. after the meal, when harry’s cheered up a bit and had his crumble (the man loves dessert), crookshanks finally emerges from his hiding place, having been coaxed out from his sulk by - you guessed it - one g. m. weasley:
‘…Ginny, who had lured Crookshanks out from under the dresser, was sitting cross-legged on the floor, rolling butterbeer corks for him to chase.’
a grouchy character, initially drawn to sirius, but prone to lashing out and locking himself away, only to be lured back out into comfort and safety by ginny weasley? wow………. radical
after dinner, the argument between sirius and molly kicks off. sirius is arguing hard for harry’s right to know, though he makes no attempt to advocate for any of the other weasleys or for hermione. ginny’s noticeably singled out in her reaction to this scene, the text highlighting that she is particularly struck by this conflict as if it is of particular personal resonance, including someone standing up to her famously overprotective mother for once:
‘Ron, Hermione, Fred, and George’s heads turned from Sirius to Mrs. Weasley as though following a tennis rally. Ginny was kneeling amid a pile of abandoned butterbeer corks, watching the conversation with her mouth slightly open. Lupin’s eyes were fixed on Sirius.’
of course, molly loses the argument: harry gets to stay for juicy order deets (‘Sirius was right, he was not a child.’) after the row, ginny is the only person forbidden from hearing information about the order’s activities. suddenly, the roles are switched: it’s ginny who’s now furious and bitter to be kept out of the action:
‘“Fine!” shouted Mrs. Weasley. “Fine! Ginny — BED!”  Ginny did not go quietly. They could hear her raging and storming at her mother all the way up the stairs, and when she reached the hall Mrs. Black’s earsplitting shrieks were added to the din. Lupin hurried off to the portrait to restore calm. It was only after he had returned, closing the kitchen door behind him and taking his seat at the table again, that Sirius spoke. “Okay, Harry . . . what do you want to know?”’ 
it’s not just the parallels of confinement between harry, sirius and ginny that are so revealing, it’s also the dual maternal conflicts. ginny loud raging at her own mother sets off the howling relic of sirius’, serving to underline two characters who continue to grapple with maternal relationships that are complex and full of conflict, though by no means solely negative (sirius i see you sleeping in your mother’s bedroom babe. don’t think i think your relationship with walburga is just one of straight hate ok). when ginny later gets knocked down the stairs by fred and george, there’s more direct mrs weasley/walburga parallels, with the two of them literally shouting over each other during the ordeal lol. as such, the readers see that the conflicts being set up for sirius’ character in this book - frustration at confinement, conflict with a mother figure, drawn to more reckless and arguably irresponsible characters (mundungus, the twins) and courses of action - are also conflicts subtly playing out with the new ginny we’re meeting, too.
as the rest of the summer at grimmauld wears on, there are more examples of sirius and ginny foreshadowing. the scenes where the two characters interact serve to place ginny and sirius firmly in the same camp of people harry admires and has fun with, the troublemakers and the rebels. over the prefects issue, ginny not only is sat chatting with the troublemaking adults harry likes most, but actively draws sirius into conversation on the issue, likely knowing the answer will comfort harry, but also showing a curiosity and interest in sirius that suggests she admires him:
“I was never a prefect myself,” said Tonks brightly from behind Harry as everybody moved toward the table to help themselves to food. Her hair was tomato-red and waist length today; she looked like Ginny’s older sister. “My Head of House said I lacked certain necessary qualities.”  “Like what?” said Ginny, who was choosing a baked potato. “Like the ability to behave myself,” said Tonks. Ginny laughed; Hermione looked as though she did not know whether to smile or not and compromised by taking an extra large gulp of butterbeer and choking on it.  “What about you, Sirius?” Ginny asked, thumping Hermione on the back. Sirius, who was right beside Harry, let out his usual barklike laugh…’
ginny’s choice to try and draw sirius into the conversation bears fruit: sirius confirms james was never a prefect, and harry’s sour mood is suddenly lifted. (‘All at once the party seemed much more enjoyable; he loaded up his plate, feeling unusually fond of everyone in the room.’) ginny is thus beginning to provide harry with subtle comfort and reassurance, especially as sirius, struggling with his own confinement,  is taking a less active role in trying to cheer harry up. what i also like is that we have evidence of how ginny views sirius - she’s curious about him and his past, she clearly thinks he and the other new rebellious adults are cool as shit, and she’s drawn increasingly away from her mother’s cautious overprotective approach towards these resistance fighters who prioritise the fight over safety. (it is noticeable to me that ginny does not become a prefect in HBP, suggesting sirius' example proved instructive).
we see more small parallels between sirius and ginny during the cleaning scenes. the battle against grimmauld place is an important symbol of one of the important themes of OotP as a book: a battle over past traumas and their persistent and unwieldy symptoms that are seemingly never-ending. while it’s harry’s experiences that, of course, take centre stage, sirius’, too, loom omnipresent throughout the text. it’s significant, then, that ginny’s own past gets brought up for the first time in three books here, albeit briefly: 
'They found an unpleasant-looking silver instrument, something like a many-legged pair of tweezers, which scuttled up Harry’s arm like a spider when he picked it up, and attempted to puncture his skin; Sirius seized it and smashed it with a heavy book entitled Nature’s Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy. There was a musical box that emitted a faintly sinister, tinkling tune when wound, and they all found themselves becoming curiously weak and sleepy until Ginny had the sense to slam the lid shut…'
in this moment, we see sirius and ginny singled in the larger group as quick-thinking, shrewd characters, with a good instincts and common sense (if a bit of a tendency to get scrappy). their respective dark pasts are subtly alluded to. sirius whacks a spider trying to attack harry with a book that might as well be entitled my big book of family trauma. ginny, meanwhile, steps in when everybody present starts to be enchanted by a mysterious object luring them into danger by whacking it shut (gee i wonder why!) given this is the book that will see ginny mention the events of CoS for the first time in errrrr three years, it’s significant that the text is careful to draw ginny into this broader theme that unites sirius and harry, the constant reminders of traumatic pasts at every turn. we also see here the revelation that regulus black was a death eater. coming after news of percy weasley’s betrayal, sirius’ bitter dismissal of his younger brother deliberately mirrors ginny and the other weasleys’ attitude towards percy, this sense of pureblood families split over wizarding politics, often fatally. 
while harry fears his expulsion from hogwarts prior his hearing, he continues to fantasise about coming to live with sirius at grimmauld, and about being with a family member and finding an alternative home to hogwarts. sirius, as hermione astutely observes, tries to manage harry’s expectations and not to get his own hopes up: still, when harry is exonerated, sirius is visibly depressed, showing the beginnings of an emotional dependency on harry that harry feels great guilt over.when leaving grimmauld for the start of the school year, sirius, as padfoot, accompanies harry to king’s cross: unlike in GoF, though, he is spotted, and harry begins to worry much more actively about sirius’ vulnerability to capture, about his recklessness and about his judgement. concerned for sirius, and absent ron and hermione, who are in the prefects carriage, the person who stays with harry and offers him company is ginny. she sacrifices her own train journey (presumably with her own boyfriend) to find a carriage with harry and make sure he’s not lonely, bringing him to neville and luna and sorting him out after his embarassing cho run-in. it’s not a coincidence that once again we see ginny here taking care of harry crookshanks:
'“Where’s Crookshanks?” “Ginny’s got him,” said Harry. “There she is. . . .”  Ginny had just emerged from the crowd, clutching a squirming Crookshanks. “Thanks,” said Hermione, relieving Ginny of the cat. “Come on, let’s get a carriage together before they all fill up. . . '
once harry’s back at school, having left sirius behind to languish miserably in london, we see he's more isolated and alone than ever. he’s tormented by umbridge, endlessly (though often unfairly) frustrated with ron and hermione, ghosted by dumbledore, yet absent the more stable, reassuring sirius he came to know in GoF, unable to write candidly to him and faced with a much less well sirius in the opportunities they do have to speak face-to-face. as sirius’ mental health declines as he is shut up at grimmauld, his ability to support harry and comfort him starts to falter, and he becomes a much more uneven source of advice and support, particularly during his car crash floo appearance, where he’s much ruder than he has previously been (cutting off, ignoring their pleas for him to be more cautious, the infamous ‘the risk would have made it fun for james’ moment). this new sirius, clearly struggling, is much more happy to do up guilt trip to his godson than we have seen him to up this point (‘I’ll write to tell you a time I can make it back into the fire, then, shall I? If you can stand to risk it?’ - you petty little shit, padfoot). all of this serves to increase harry’s anxiety about sirius’ wellbeing and reinforce harry’s sense of emotional isolation. even sirius’ encouragement on the DA is, as hermione points out, partly bound up in more selfish motivations (‘I think he’s really frustrated at how little he can do where he is… so I think he’s keen to kind of… egg us on.’)
ginny’s largely absent in this section of the novel. in the brief moments she does appear, it’s to inject humour (eg. her impressions at the DA meeting) and in little reminders that she now has a boyfriend, no longer harbours romantic feelings for harry, making sure the reader continues to hold her mentally apart from harry. harry, meanwhile, misguidedly tries to seek out a relationship with cho chang, who is showing clear signs of her own emotional distress and inability to meet harry’s emotional needs given her own grief. still, among this, there’s still room for some small subtle sirius/ginny parallels. once the DA plot picks up, we have another little sign that ginny weasley and sirius black think somewhat alike:
“Yeah, the D.A.’s good,” said Ginny. “Only let’s make it stand for Dumbledore’s Army because that’s the Ministry’s worst fear, isn’t it?” 
“Trained in combat?” repeated Harry incredulously. “What does he think we’re doing here, forming some sort of wizard army? “That’s exactly what he thinks you’re doing,” said Sirius, “or rather, that’s exactly what he’s afraid Dumbledore’s doing — forming his own private army, with which he will be able to take on the Ministry of Magic.” 
with harry's isolation and need for more emotional support established in this first term, christmas at grimmauld offers more opportunity to subtly develop the sirius and ginny parallels, as well as to highlight ginny’s ability to fill the gaps left by sirius’ decline. after the attack on arthur weasley, the group arrive back at grimmauld:
‘Sirius was hurrying toward them all, looking anxious. He was unshaven and still in his day clothes; there was also a slightly Mundungus-like whiff of stale drink about him. “What’s going on?” he said, stretching out a hand to help Ginny up. “Phineas Nigellus said Arthur’s been badly injured —” 
could this be sirius literally lifting ginny up into plot significance? why yes it could
ofc the weasleys then argue with sirius about their right to go see their father. despite his own frustrations at being trapped at grimmauld, sirius proves the voice of reason and rational decision making against both ginny and the twins’ hotheadedness (ginny asks to borrow cloaks to go to the hospital: sirius: ‘Hang on, you can’t go tearing off to St. Mungo’s!’) crucially, though, when sirius points out that there are bigger things at stake - the work of the order and the resistance movement - it’s ginny who listens:
“Your father knew what he was getting into, and he won’t thank you for messing things up for the Order!” said Sirius angrily in his turn. “This is how it is — this is why you’re not in the Order — you don’t understand — there are things worth dying for!”  “Easy for you to say, stuck here!” bellowed Fred. “I don’t see you risking your neck!”  The little colour remaining in Sirius’s face drained from it. He looked for a moment as though he would quite like to hit Fred, but when he spoke, it was in a voice of determined calm. “I know it’s hard, but we’ve all got to act as though we don’t know anything yet. We’ve got to stay put, at least until we hear from your mother, all right?”  Fred and George still looked mutinous. Ginny, however, took a few steps over to the nearest chair and sank into it. Harry looked at Ron, who made a funny movement somewhere between a nod and shrug, and they sat down too. The twins glared at Sirius for another minute, then took seats on either side of Ginny.  “That’s right,” said Sirius encouragingly, “come on, let’s all . . . let’s all have a drink while we’re waiting…’
there’s a lot going on here: ginny’s willingness to follow sirius’ orders, but also her willingness to accept an argument based on some idea of the greater good before any of her brothers. she and sirius are aligned here, and it’s her decision to accept sirius’ reasoning that proves the catalyst for her brothers to follow. we see here how ginny has come to see sirius: someone she looks up to and admires, an adult whose judgement she trusts and whose worldview she subscribes to. (as a character prone to hero worship - see her view of her big brother bill - i think this is noteworthy, and is behind a lot of my characterisation choices for ginny towards sirius in beasts). but we also see that ginny agrees with sirius' worldview. there are some things worth dying for, and self-sacrifice is part of that.
when harry goes to sirius for reassurance about witnessing arthur’s attack, he finds sirius unable to properly console him and convince him that he was not to blame for arthur’s attack. the reader gets the impression of sirius withholding information from harry (‘He could only see a sliver of Sirius’s face; the rest was in darkness’), and the scene ends with sirius clapping harry on the shoulder and leaving him ‘standing alone in the dark’. while sirius throws himself into christmas preparations, obviously delighted to have company, harry shrinks from the cheer and isolates himself. in the end, ofc, the only person that manages to pull harry out of his dark, brooding thoughts is ginny. the text is careful to note she’s sitting beside him on the tube back from st mungo’s, when he looks very unwell. then, in the ‘lucky you’ scene, she showcases some of the same skills harry first came to appreciate in sirius in GoF. she tells it to him straight: she’s sympathetic, but not overly gushing, and she reminds him of her own intensely frightening experience which she endured alone, something harry can relate to, even if the experience of possession is not.  it’s an important scene for lots of reasons, but it’s also, crucially, the intervention that causes harry’s mood to lift, and he gets to enjoy a christmas with his godfather, the thing he had most wanted in the run-up to christmas, and which becomes the only holiday period harry and sirius ever spend together: 
‘I’m not the weapon after all, thought Harry. His heart swelled with happiness and relief, and he felt like joining in as they heard Sirius tramping past their door toward Buckbeak’s room, singing “God Rest Ye Merry, Hippogriffs” at the top of his voice.’
of course, once christmas is over, sirius slips back into a depressed, gloomy state. harry wants a better goodbye than he gives him, merely giving him a quick one armed hug (there’s a real theme throughout harry and sirius’ relationship of very sparing physical contact on sirius’ part, which is obviously a hole in harry's life ginny will fill in - er - a big way). back at school, harry returns to umbridge’s increasingly draconian rule, maks a disastrous attempt at forging a relationship with cho, and continues to feel lonely, paranoid, and angry. unable to speak to sirius properly via letter or floo - and unwilling to open the present sirius has given him to communicate directly with him, the two-way mirror - harry is increasingly sullen, a mood that only worsens after seeing snape's worst memory.
the easter egg scene is obviously important for hinny for lots of different reasons. but here i just want to highlight how the scene serves to show ginny as both the conduit to sirius for harry, and someone whose behaviour echoes that of sirius in GoF when harry first began to open up to and seek comfort in him. harry is distressed by his now complicated feelings both towards the father he previously revered and towards sirius, who seemed to encourage james’ bullying behaviour. ginny hands harry a chocolate easter egg covered in snitches: chocolate, a canonical source of comfort against dark thoughts, and an egg that reminds him of the love of parent. the act makes him suddenly emotional, though he at first denies he’s upset. ginny presses carefully and sensitively, asking the right questions to get him to confess the source of his worry, waiting for harry to take his time to speak - all behaviours that echo sirius’ own effective listening techniques. ginny’s acquaintance with sirius, and knowledge of how significant he is to harry, is important here, too, and a subtle sign to the reader that he trusts ginny with knowledge about sirius after a long time of having her in the dark about his godfather.  the reader leaves the scene having seen ginny breakthrough to harry emotionally in a way for the second time in the novel, in a way no other character has done (‘he felt a bit more hopeful…’) 
of course, the course of action ginny has set in motion is itself risky and reckless (‘anything is possible if you’ve got enough nerve’ is very marauders as a philosophy). the decision to go ahead with the plan the twins come up with is one harry sees as a decision on whether to be more like james and sirius - a risk taker - or to abandon the hero worship for the marauders he has lived with for so long. in the end, of course, it’s a win for the reckless troublemakers: he chooses to go ahead with the plan the twins have crafted and that ginny has set in motion, and to speak to sirius.
and yet. sirius is still alive - there is not need for ginny yet. for the remainder of the book, ginny has to beg to be included in the trio's plans and to be allowed to be a part of the plot to rescue sirius. she’s is often in conflict with harry, showing a lot of sirius’ bitterness at attempts at containment and to keep her out of the fighting. she grates against harry’s insistence that she is too young and inexperienced, and having to remind the trio that she, too, has come to care about sirius and wants to see him safe: 
“I’ve got a broom!” said Ginny.  “Yeah, but you’re not coming,” said Ron angrily.  “Excuse me, but I care what happens to Sirius as much as you do!” said Ginny, her jaw set so that her resemblance to Fred and George was suddenly striking. 
of course, it all ends in tragedy: sirius, desperate to go to harry’s aid and absolutely gunning for a fight after months of confinement, is killed, leaving harry alone. there a subtle clues that something has shifted in ginny’s relationship to harry and the trio in the scenes after sirius’ death, including ginny positioned as the mirror image to harry in the hospital: 
‘Harry was sitting on the end of Ron’s bed and they were both listening to Hermione read the front page of the Sunday Prophet. Ginny, whose ankle had     been mended in a trice by Madam Pomfrey, was curled up at the foot of Hermione’s bed…’
despite this, in the immediate aftermath of sirius’ death, harry is extremely alone. he is unable to work out what he needs (‘Whenever he was in company he wanted to get away, and whenever he was alone he wanted company.’) he tries to go to hagrid’s, but regrets it (‘He was starting to wish he was alone again’), leaving after hagrid reminds him of sirius’ core traits, an inability to stay out of the fight when he believes in the cause:
“But still, Harry . . . he was never one ter sit around at home an’ let other people do the fightin’. He couldn’ have lived with himself if he hadn’ gone ter help —” 
unlike at the end of GoF, harry is isolated by his grief and the revelation of the prophecy's contents by the end of this book. he goes alone to a secluded corner of the lakeshore, ‘sheltered from the gaze of passersby behind a tangle of shrubs’, and ‘[stares] out over the gleaming water’, and cries alone. there is no sirius or other person to catch him and console him in his grief. his person has died, and there’s a gap in his life again, just waiting to be filled: 
‘Wanting to impress Cho seemed to belong to a past that was no longer quite connected with him. So much of what he had wanted before Sirius’s death felt that way these days. . . . The week that had elapsed since he had last seen Sirius seemed to have lasted much, much longer: It stretched across two universes, the one with Sirius in it, and the one without.’
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ginny and sirius parallels in HBP and DH
after sirius’ death, the parallels between sirius and ginny become more important as ginny moves into the centre frame as a character. at the start of HBP, harry arrives at the burrow and discusses his grief over sirius’ death with dumbledore in the burrow broom shed, acknowledging how profoundly the loss of a family member who cares singularly about him is affecting him. ('He felt stupid for admitting it, but the fact that he had had someone outside Hogwarts who cared what happened to him, almost like a parent, had been one of the best things about discovering his godfather . . . and now the post owls would never bring him that comfort again. . . .' beasts readers: there's a reason harry clings to letters!) of course, having reminded the reader of the gap in harry’s life that now needs to be filled, harry goes to sleep, the active reflection on his grief for sirius put to one side so the novel's plot can get underway. he'll go to bed mourning sirius and wake up in a sunlit bedroom. of course, ginny will walk into this bedroom too, only now things will be different: harry potter is back to the search for a loved one, for a family, and he's about to realise ginny is the one he wants to fill it. thus the start of the plot of ginny stepping into the role vacated by sirius beginneth.
so much of who ginny is in HBP is reminiscent of sirius. she frequently leaps into battle as harry’s protector (‘You’re taking orders from something someone wrote in a book?’, ‘Give it a rest, Hermione’), she’s scrappy (RIP zacharias smith), she’s funny and laughs easily in a way that less recalls sirius in the time harry knew him than sirius as harry sees him as a young man, in photographs or memories. she's the one who commits to the insane christmas decorations, determined to cheer everyone up over the festive period as sirius did the year before. she even enjoys the widespread admiration and lust of her peers, a trait that directly recalls sirius being eyed up by his peers in snape's memory. by the novel’s end, after dumbledore’s death, it will be ginny who goes to harry’s side after the climax of the plot and catch him in his grief just as sirius did in GoF, this time over dumbledore’s death: 
‘He did not want to leave Dumbledore’s side, he did not want to move anywhere. Hagrid’s hand on his shoulder was trembling. Then another voice said, “Harry, come on.’ A much smaller and warmer hand had enclosed his and was pulling him upward. He obeyed its pressure without really thinking about it.’
their breakup has sirius all over it. taking place at the lakeshore, the place where harry wept alone over sirius a year prior, harry draws on the circumstances of sirius’ demise as a reason he must break up with ginny (‘Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to.’) the breakup does little to shift what ginny has become in harry’s mind, though, and he spends all of DH thinking of her as he once thought of sirius: the person whose safety he most craves, the person he misses, someone he claims as his, and whom he associates with (now banished) hopes of a home and a family:
“It’s not a problem,” said Harry, sickened by the pain in his head. “It’s your family, ’course you’re worried. I’d feel the same way.” He thought of Ginny. “I do feel the same way.”
of course, echoes of sirius will also come into play during open war. it’s now ginny, not sirius, who is the one left behind for her own protection: in the run-up to the battle, harry finds himself once again faced with the prospect of confining his loved one for their safety, despite their desperation to fight and do the right thing. but these are thoughts for part 2…….
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maochira · 9 months
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the zantetsu and five love languages thingy is so cuuuute!!! could you do the same for ness, kaiser, grim and gesner, please?
Okay bear with me, this is gonna be VERY LONG
Requests open! - masterlist
Tags: gn!reader, established relationship, fluff, reader and the character don't live together
Alexis Ness
Words of affirmation: He's very big on this one. Always reminding you of how much he loves you and repeating the many reasons why he fell in love with you over and over. He also tells pretty much everyone he meets about his love for you as well. He never really shuts up about it either, unless someone makes him. (That someone is usually Kaiser who ends up getting jealous when Ness talks about you.)
Acts of service: Definitely his main love language. To Ness, it's just natural to help you out with even the smallest tasks. Even if you invite him to your place, he does things like cooking, cleaning, etc. And most of the time, he refuses to accept your help. He either tells you to take a nap to get some rest or he tells you to sit down somewhere near him so you can talk to him while he does what's supposed to be your task. If you ever try to do the same at his place, he won't allow it. He loves doing acts of service for you, but always feels bad if you try to do them for him.
Gift-giving and -receiving: Honestly, Ness isn't as much of a gift-giver as you'd expect him to be. Sure, for special occasions like holidays, birthdays and anniversaries he gets you special gifts but there's not much in between those times. He prefers letting his actions and words speak for his love! But if you give him a present, he won't stop thanking you for it for at least two weeks. He always inserts "Thank you for giving me (present)" into random conversations.
Quality time: If he could, Ness would spend every single second of his life with you. He loves being around you and will never get tired of it, no matter if he's just sitting next to you while watching cute animal videos on your phone or talking to each other while he cleans your dishes. If you're simply in the same room together, that's all he could ask for.
Physical touch: Ness himself isn't that touchy and actually tends to get a bit shy with initiating physical touch. He still loves it a lot, though! You just have to be the one to pull him in for hugs and kisses because he gets flustered from only asking if it's okay to hold your hand.
Michael Kaiser
Words of affirmation: At the beginning of the relationship, he didn't say "I love you" that much. It definitely took him a while to get comfortable with giving verbal affection. It wasn't because he was shy or nervous about it, but just because he wasn't used to verbally expressing his love to someone who isn't himself. As soon as he got used to it he realized how good it feels to express his love and admiration for you in words. He also compliments you a lot and tells you how great you are over and over! The only issue is, he likes to talk other people down when he compliments you. For example, if you do better at something than someone else he knows, he will specifically point that out, even if that person is around.
Acts of service: He doesn't mind helping you out with whatever you need help with, but he usually doesn't initiate acts of service on his own. Well, that's what he thinks at least. When it comes to bigger things like cleaning up or needing something to be repaired, you definitely need to ask him for help. But subconsciously, Kaiser does little acts of service like making your favourite coffee/tea/any other beverage if he wakes up first in the morning and also opens doors for you all the time. But Kaiser doesn't consider those things "acts of service."
Gift-giving and -receiving: Kaiser is a massive gift-giver and it's probably his main love language. He absolutely loves to spoil you with anything you want and whenever you go shopping with him, you don't even need to take your wallet along because Kaiser insists on paying literally anything. You need new shoes? You saw a cute plushie? You're hungry and want food? Kaiser pays all of it. And besides that, he surprises you with random presents all the time. He's horrible at accepting any gifts from you, though. He loves them and appreciates everything you give to him very much, but he can't accept a present without giving you back the double amount of it the next day.
Quality time: You're the only person Kaiser can stand being around for a longer span of time without getting completely irritated at some point. Well, Ness might be an exception to some degree as well, but for him, there are other reasons. Anyways. Kaiser didn't expect himself to genuinely need you around as much as he does. He thought he can be just fine with how much time you already spent together, but almost every day he finds himself craving to be with you again, even if you already saw each other the day prior. Most of the time, he gives in to that and goes to wherever you are - even if you're busy with something - just to be around you.
Physical touch: If gift-giving isn't his main love language, then it's physical touch. Even before he was used to giving you verbal affection, he was very big on giving you as much physical affection as possible. Not only does he love holding your hand in public and cuddling you until you fall asleep in his arms, but he's extremely obsessed with kissing you. Not only on your lips, but also anywhere else on your body. Whatever body part(s) you're insecure about, Kaiser will shower you with kisses there to show you that even if you're unhappy with yourself, he adores everything about you.
Benedict Grim
Words of affirmation: His main love language by far. Even before you started dating he always expressed everything he loves about you very openly and he's always showered you with tons of compliments as well. So when you became a couple, that amount doubled or even tripled. He can't even say "I love you" without adding a reason why he loves you or a compliment. And that also drifts into complimenting you more and more all the time. The most surprising part is that he always seems to find new things to say or new ways to express his thoughts because somehow, he rarely repeats himself.
Acts of service: He'd do literally anything you ask him to. But only if you ask him to. He totally doesn't mind helping you out, but he can't initiate acts of service on his own that often. He needs to know, usually in detail, what you'd like him to do. And it's the same the other way around! If he needs your help with anything, he simply asks you. You just don't want each other to feel as if you'd expect the other to know what to do without saying anything to them first.
Gift-giving and -receiving: He doesn't give you presents that often, but when he does it's mainly to see your reactions because he adores seeing you happy so much! Also, he puts a lot of thought into what he gives you. You'd be happy about anything and he knows that, but that's exactly why he's putting so much thought into presents for you. He doesn't only want you to be happy, he wants you to be amazed and feel extra loved when you see how much thought he put into it. Whenever he receives a present for you, no matter how small or big it is, he acts very overdramatic over them - in a positive way, of course. He always thanks you with lots of hugs and kisses!
Quality time: Whenever you spend time together, no matter what you're doing, Grim always makes sure there will be no distractions at all. Most of the time, he turns his phone off completely so there won't be any distractions and he can put his full attention on having a great time with you. He always says if he's with you, the rest of the world needs to wait.
Physical touch: He always has moments or phases when he gets really physically close, but most of the time he isn't really that touchy. He kisses you a lot and he's also very big on hugs as a greeting and goodbye, but besides that, he doesn't initiate physical affection that often. He doesn't mind if you do it, though!
Erik Gesner
Words of affirmation: Probably his main love language, but let's just say... Gesner has his own way of showing verbal affection. He doesn't say "I love you" often and he rarely says direct compliments. He expresses his love for you by giving you silly nicknames, making jokes and teasing you instead. It's always obvious that he does it in the most loving way possible and even if some things can sound insulting, it's his way of expressing love with words. Besides, you know he'd never seriously be mean and you get to insult him back anyways. But especially because he's typically not the type of guy to say "I love you" he makes sure to say it in moments he sees as most special.
Acts of service: He does acts of service all the time, but never consciously. Whenever he's at your place, he just spots something that's broken and fixes it on the side while talking to you. He doesn't realize he's doing it and you don't tell him either because it's kind of funny to see how he's picking up something, fixes it and puts it back in its place. Also, if he sees items that aren't in their usual place, he puts them where they belong. He never pays attention to the fact that he's doing it and you never really notice him doing that either. Just as soon as he's gone you see how your place looks a little less messy.
Gift-giving and -receiving: It's not his main love language, but he gives you little presents at least once a week. It's always something small and usually silly looking as well. Just tiny things that reminded him of you like "Here's a little keychain of a chicken because we walked past a farm last week." Stuff like that. And even if it isn't romantic in the usual way, you adore your little collection of silly things a lot. When it comes to receiving gifts from you, Gesner is horrible at saying "thank you." He tries to say anything else, like a little joke, to show you he appreciates your gift. But for you, that's totally okay because you know he adores whatever you give him, even if he can't verbally express it.
Quality time: He could have you around 24/7 and never get tired of you. He just wants to be with you all the time because he's never met someone who understands him so well and shares the same humour as him. Really, any time spent with Gesner is quality time because he manages to make even the smallest things fun and entertaining. Especially if he thinks something is boring, he tries to spice it up in some way so at least you don't get bored.
Physical touch: He doesn't realize it, but he's super touchy. When you're not holding hands he either wraps his arm around your shoulder or your waist. When you're sitting next to each other he also often lifts you up out of nowhere and places you on his lap. He likes to sit on your lap as well from time to time. He really doesn't have a preference, but lifting you up is just easier and quicker for him.
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canonizzyhours · 3 months
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Re 171 (preemptively fuck terfs and Nazis op no longer engages with the Harry Potter fandom but it is a part of fandom history)
Yeah this happens like, all the fucking time. Kylo Ren and Severus Snape are the most famous examples of shitty white guys in fandom who have or had an obsessive standom that insists they've never done anything wrong ever and woobified the shit out of them. There are many many many others I just use those two as examples because they're incredibly indicative of like an archetype that Izzy follows to a T. Shitty white man is broody, bears grudges, has anger issues, is given little or no depth, dresses in black, has no friends, allies themselves with or is part of a fundamentally bigoted force because they feel a certain type of way about the good guys (be they his own parents, the main character's parents, or the main character himself). He amasses a standom and then later he gets revealed to have some depth because he got such a solid reaction that the creators feel like they should do something fun with him, the standom starts to feel vindicated, and then he fucking dies because of course he dies and the standom implodes. MASSIVE bonus points on these guys if they're kind of an incel for some reason. They love to go "oh but Snape was in love with Lily" "oh but Kylo was in love with Rey" "oh but Izzy was in love with Ed" and it's super fucking creepy every time they do it. A lot of people in a lot of desperate fandoms really genuinely think that being in love with someone who doesn't like you back justifies being a shitty boss/middle manager, murder, calling the British Navy on a crew that's 50% non white and 100% pirates and sodomites, domestic abuse, bullying children, torture, and being a fucking Nazi (non exhaustive list of things fannish types have justified by saying but he was in love). Like there's differences between these characters obviously, Izzy didn't join up with the navy he just made a deal with them and also he was well written unlike the other two, JK Rowling genuinely thinks that Snape did nothing wrong because shes actually kind of a fascist, Rey ended up sort of half way getting with Kylo because their whole writing strategy was fanservice, but ultimately this is a well known type of Blorbo: the greasy incel we make excuses for. There's more of them these assholes are prolific I'm just listing the two everyone knows about and the one this blog is about.
#175.
related posts: #171
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maoam · 1 year
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DISSECTING SAKURA - WHY IS SHE SO TERRIBLE?
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INTRO
I promised to write a post about Sakura’s character long time ago so here’s that now. If you want to read my Hinata post it’s here.
Sakura is a character that is very hated in the Naruto fandom. Many people acknowledge she’s one of the worst female characters in anime. And yet, she also has many dedicated stans that defend her character and insist she is simply misunderstood, that she’s actually a good shinobi and a person, or not as bad as people think. While there are many videos and essays about Sakura, my issue with them is that they often either praise Hinata who isn’t any better than Sakura or they do not acknowledge Sakura is supposed to be the way she is. She is intentionally written as an unlikeable person and she was never supposed to be inspiring or a positive character. I will try to explain this to you the best I can by dissecting her character. As usual, if you’re a fan of her character you might not want to see what’s next. This will be tagged under the anti tags so if you see it in the character tag that is not intentional.
SAKURA AS A SHINOBI
I will first focus on Sakura as a shinobi and her skills in fights since Naruto is a battle manga. Sakura is, as it's often acknowledged to the point of memes, pretty useless. A lot of her stans don’t understand why. She might get to punch once every 200 chapters or heal fodders but in the end she is featless. She is placed in many important situations where she does nothing to contribute or even gets in the way. This is not acceptable for a main character that has a lot of screentime. Naturally, this is something that annoys many people but it’s made even more annoying by the fact Sakura is constantly talking about how much stronger she has gotten and how she wants to be on par with Naruto and Sasuke.
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In the beginning, during the bell test, Sakura doesn't even attempt to get the bells from Kakashi and only ends up fainting. In the Land of Waves, because Sakura was able to climb the tree due to her chakra control, she became smug and overconfident and thought she doesn't need to train. Which is funny considering she does nothing except stand around during an actual fight while Naruto and Sasuke actually contribute to the fight with the main antagonists. She's tasked to protect Tazuna, yet she can't do that either, but Kakashi has to intervene and get injured. It’s also worth mentioning Kakashi pointed out that during the tree climbing Sakura was able to control her chakra better because she had little chakra to begin with. Thus Kishimoto establishes very early on Sakura as someone who brags and overrestimates her own skills.
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In the Chunin exams, Sakura hopes that Naruto and Sasuke aren’t foolish enough to cheat during the written exam, and she’s sure that she can answer the questions based on her knowledge. But what she doesn’t realize is that the real intention of the test is for the takers to use their observation and deductive skills to gather information and cheat. We find this out in the same chapter through Sasuke. Sasuke, unlike Sakura, realizes that the test makers want them to act like a shinobi. Sakura is book smart and a rote learner, but as we have seen in the Land of Waves and what we will see in the rest of the Chunin exams, being book smart won’t help her on the battlefield. Kishimoto wanted to show us that Sakura is just someone who brags and thinks she’s got everything under control, despite the fact she’s not the right kind of smart to be a shinobi, she doesn’t think like one.
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In the Forest of Death, we then see she isn’t able to actually put anything into practice and Naruto and Sasuke again do all the work, while Sakura does nothing except stand around, scream and cry. Sasuke even has to yell at her to stop merely standing around. Eventually though, when Naruto and Sasuke are knocked out after the encounter with Orochimaru, Sakura has no choice but to protect them from Orochimaru’s henchmen. But she of course fails. She sets traps that fail, and gets mocked for her amateuristic skills by her opponents. We see characters like Kiba are able to put up traps that actually work, but Sakura who is supposedly smart isn’t. Then Rock Lee arrives to her rescue. After he gets beaten up, Kin grabs Sakura by her hair and calls her out on her vanity and tells her she should have trained more, which is basically what Sasuke did at the beginning of the arc, when he told Sakura if she has time to flirt maybe she should use that time to learn a jutsu or two. In the chapter cover she is also seen brushing her hair in front of a mirror in the forest, so Kishimoto makes it pretty clear Sakura is someone who cares a lot about her looks even during a mission. Kishimoto uses the villains to point out Sakura’s flaws, since the main characters can’t do that considering she is one of the main characters. So we see Dosu point out Sakura’s lack of observation skills and talent, and Kin point out her vanity and boy chasing personality. Sakura then dramatically cuts her hair and gives a speech on how she wants to walk in front of Naruto and Sasuke and wants them to look at her back. Despite the little fight she puts up, she is easily beaten down and is saved by Ino, Shikamaru and Chouji, before Sasuke wakes up and beats up Orochimaru's henchmen, driving them away. Sakura acted like this was going to be her moment, yet it wasn't at all. She had five other characters, 4 of them supporting characters, all of whom showed much better ninja skills than her, come to her rescue.
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During Sakura and Ino's match, Sakura starts boasting how Ino is nowhere near her level. What happens is despite her bragging, she falls right into Ino's trap. Unlike Sakura, Ino actually used her wits and shinobi like strategy during the fight, using Sakura’s ego against her to successfully trap her. But because Naruto yelled Sakura's name, her inner Sakura somehow interrupted the fight and it ended in a tie. I think Ino should have won this fight but regardless it didn't make Sakura look good, just an overconfident brat who got lucky.
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The rest of Part 1 Sakura spends moping over Sasuke and getting one-paneled by Gaara in the Konoha crush arc where she again becomes a damsel in distress to no one’s surprise. Her uselessly holding a kunai has become a meme because she does it many times during the series. Despite being a liability to her team she never thinks about how to better her skills nor tries to train. After Sasuke leaves and Sakura fails to stop him, she goes to Naruto and begs him with tears in her eyes to bring Sasuke back. Considering how many support characters have contributed massively in Part 1, a main character like Sakura achieving nothing just puts it into perspective how useless she really is. She has been a damsel in every single arc. When Naruto fails to bring Sasuke back, Sakura decides to ask Tsunade to train her, and tells Naruto next time she will go with him to get Sasuke back. The thing is, she should have had the resolve to train and change herself already before Sasuke left. She should have realized she put her team constantly in jeopardy by being weak. She read all about what life of a shinobi entails yet she seemed to treat it as some playground where she can play damsel while everyone around her protects her. It’s only when her crush left and Naruto failed to bring him back that she bothers to make an effort.
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At the start of Part 2, Kakashi gives Naruto and Sakura yet another bell test, and Sakura shows some potential by showing off her chakra punch. But in the end, they manage to finally get the bells due to Naruto's plan. Some people act like Sakura is the smart one in team 7 yet she constantly fails to showcase this smartness of hers. Next, team 7 is assigned by Tsunade to rescue Kazekage Gaara. Sakura swears that this time, she will save both Naruto and Sasuke. Again, she sets up a high goal for herself, only to never achieve it. Sakura does however, mix up an antidote to heal Kankuro after he got attacked by Sasori. Next Chiyo and Sakura get ready for a fight with Sasori. Notice how this is the only fight where Sakura actually manages to not fail? It's because Chiyo is literally directing her moves, both verbally and physically. But I will give her credit for using the antidote to survive Sasori's poison, and taking the hit for Chiyo. Sasori was also apparently suicidal and didn’t avoid the last hit but I don’t dwell on that too much.
Now I need to mention something that is very important to note when it comes to Sakura’s character writing. Whenever Sakura does anything she’s complimented countless times by Kakashi, Chiyo, Sasori, and basically everyone she comes across. Kakashi starts to talk about how she might be able to surpass Tsunade, just because she punches the ground once in front of him. Chiyo hails her as a girl who can surpass Tsunade as well, before even seeing her fighting abilities. Hashirama thinks her power might be greater than Tsunade’s despite not even seeing what his granddaughter can do. And this goes on and on. This is Kishimoto intentionally raising up the audience's expectations, only to later intentionally bring them down. Superficial readers think she is smart and could possibly surpass Tsunade because other characters say so, but people who actually read the manga and pay attention can see that Sakura never lives up to the expectations placed on her.
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Right after this arc, Sakura goes back to being useless and not contributing much especially considering the screentime she gets. Despite being able to avoid Sasori’s attacks with the help of Chiyo, in the Tenchi Bridge arc she gets first knocked out by Kabuto's flying butt because she's not watching where she's going, and needs to be saved by Yamato. Then she doesn’t let Yamato do his job and gets knocked out by Naruto's 4-tailed form, and needs to be saved by Yamato and healed by Kabuto. When they finally meet Sasuke she charges at him with no apparent strategy and needs to be saved by Yamato again, who gets injured in the process.
So after the entire part 1 of being useless, and 15 chapters of not being useless, Sakura needs to be saved multiple times by Yamato while contributing nothing. To people who paid more attention when reading the manga, this arc made them realize Sakura was never gonna change and this is how her character would always going to be. But others were still starstruck by the previous arc, and would only realize it later.
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In the Akatsuki Suppression arc she pretty much does nothing worth mentioning. She is tasked to go help Shikamaru but the latter has already taken care of Hidan by himself. In the Itachi Pursuit arc she doesn’t do anything either, but only follows the dogs tracking Sasuke’s scent. In the Pain arc a lot of characters contribute in the fight against Pain, even Konohamaru who is just a kid manages to defeat one of the paths of Pain, while Sakura is again shown crying and screaming for Naruto. What was that about saving Naruto and Sasuke? If she’s so strong as she acts like she is she could have at least tried to buy some time for Naruto instead of crying like a total whimp.
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There’s also a constant pattern of Sakura trying to demonstrate her "powers" or "strategy" and failing. This happened again in the start of the Five kage Summit arc when she tried to fight with the Kumo warriors, got immediately facekicked to the ground and had to be rescued by Naruto yet again. And this is not even the worst. In the same arc she attempts to take down Sasuke by herself, drugging her teammates so they can’t help her, and ends up failing when Sasuke figures out what she’s trying to do and she needs to be saved first by Kakashi and then by Naruto. As always, she aims too high and falls flat on her face. She ends the arc moping how she can’t do anything except to trust Naruto. Of course, Kishimoto doesn’t forgot to mention that Sasuke is resistant to poison, so Sakura’s attempt of killing him whether she succeeded stabbing him or not would have been futile either way. Again, she is failing to come even close to her own goals she set for herself. She is once again a liability that needs saving. And so the audience is frustrated and annoyed with her character. They are thinking, why is this girl who is constantly bragging about her skills constantly making a fool out of herself, crying pathetically and needing to be rescued? Well, that would be because she is supposed to be a person who is completely misguided about her own skills.
In the war arc, Sakura isn’t any better. The war arc only amplifies what we already have seen and know. That Kishimoto uses subversion to show Sakura’s character as overall irrelevant, and to show she’s all talk. In part 1, Sakura is said to be smart and she boasts about her skills yet she can’t do anything in an actual fight, but has to be saved by multiple characters, including Naruto, whom she considered inferior to herself. This of course made people annoyed with her character. When part 2 started, other characters were again commenting on her potential and how she had supposedly grown. So many people got hopeful that she had actually grown a lot and changed. And yet, as I have pointed out, she tried to show off many times and failed miserably. Which made people even more frustrated with her. Because they had gotten their hopes up. The Five Kage Summit arc was definitely the ultimate breaking point. After Sakura’s ridiculous attempt to manipulate Naruto, her drugging her teammates while leaving them defenseless on the ground and her trying to take down Sasuke and failing, she was certified as the fandom’s laughing stock. But some of her stans still remained, and thought she would redeem herself. Somehow.
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Then comes the 4th shinobi war. Sakura has mostly been in the background healing people, but when Sasuke shows up, she is suddenly motivated to show off for real. She even gets pissed when Naruto is about to go with Sasuke and suggests to her that she could take a break. Sakura insists she is also part of team 7 and that she surely can keep up with the two of them. We have a panel hyping up Team 7. Then Sakura gets a moment to make a big punch after which she boasts and thinks she’s better than Tsunade, insulting the latter in the process. But she’s not paying attention to her surroundings and needs to be saved by the boys, after which she starts to boast how she will steal the Hokage seat from Naruto and how now they will all fight together with their backs to each other. She then reaffirms herself that she has finally caught up to Naruto and Sasuke. This level of arrogance needs to be backed up, otherwise the audience will get annoyed. And it did annoy a big portion of the fandom, considering they had seen for the past 600 chapters or so Sakura talking about how she wants to be on par with Naruto and Sasuke, how she won’t be a liability anymore and it all leading to nothing except disappointment after disappointment. Sakura’s confidence and ego are greatly disproportionate for someone of her capabilities, which a big part of the audience notices, whether consciously or subconsciously. And this is of course intentional.
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She is left on the sidelines again when Naruto and Sasuke are too busy being ”the main act” and fighting perfectly in sync. Sakura has to ask Hinata what is even happening with the two of them. Sakura keeps healing people, but eventually Naruto’s chakra starts to help her with the healing.
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Then we get to one of the most infamous moments with Sakura, that resembles another infamous moment in the Five kage summit arc, when she tried to take down Sasuke with a poisoned kunai. In this moment Obito is asking Sakura to stab his rinnegan eye with a kunai. In both moments, she can’t come up with a resolve to use her kunai but just trembles centimeters away from her target. Taking her time shaking she then gets attacked by her opponent, and ends up being saved. In both cases, she wastes her chance because she’s a total whimp who has no resolve to do what she pretends she can do. And thus, the audience is annoyed once again. And the people who always knew what she was like make fun of her.
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But Kishimoto won’t stop there. In the very same chapter, when Sakura is trying to heal Kakashi, Naruto takes over and not only heals him but also gives him a brand new eye, something Sakura of course isn’t able to do. Healing was the only thing she could do and even that was taken from her! So much for her being a relevant member of Team 7 who is on par with Naruto and Sasuke.
Kakashi then starts reminiscing about Team 7, and it ends with him reminding the three about his first lesson, which was team work being the key to success. So what happens?
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Sakura begans to once again nurse her own insecurities and tries to show off to satisfy her own ego by charging at Madara and telling the boys to follow her. She has no idea of Madara’s strengths and weaknesses and what would you know, her punch is stopped and she gets stabbed in the chest and is once again rescued by Naruto. And what does she do? Mopes that Sasuke doesn’t pay attention to her nor seems to care. She cares more about showing off to Sasuke than defeating Madara, even when this is about a threat to the whole world. What a great shinobi. It’s a callback to part 1 when she moped over the fact Sasuke didn’t care about her climbing the tree. Just like with her shaking with the kunai, it’s just another moment that shows she never truly changes. Not in ways that matter.
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And then we see Naruto and Sasuke actually fight Madara, and Sakura literally just stands there in awe of them. She’s shook by Madara’s power which she obviously had no clue about. Of course Sakura still tries to go after the boys but Kakashi stops her and says it’s pointless to do so unless she has a plan. And she stops, and stares at Naruto and Sasuke’s backs as they disappear. Hah. She once again, has failed to achieve the goal she sets for herself. Kishimoto hyped up team 7 yet constantly showed Sakura failing and being left behind, despite how much she claimed she could keep up with the two of them. The way Kishimoto writes her, by making Sakura herself or others hype her, and then showing she’s actually lame is very consistent and relentless.
Taking into consideration that she’s a main character, and all the times that she’s promised major improvement, what we received was just pathetic. When you add it to the fact that she’s a member of such an over-achieving team, it makes her look pitiful in comparison. But it’s supposed to be. Don’t even think this is unintentional from Kishimoto. Sakura was supposed to be someone who never changes.
SAKURA’S PERSONALITY AND HER RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHERS
Now a little more on Sakura’s personality and the way she interacts with others which is definitely one of the reasons why many people hate her.
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In the beginning, she is introduced as a shallow girl who is focused on her looks and getting the attention of the popular boy in the class, rather than being a good shinobi. She gets called out on her vanity by not only Sasuke but also by her enemies. She is pretty quick to give up on the bell test which annoys Sasuke. One wonders why is she even a shinobi when her resolve is so weak. She beats and berates Naruto and is only able to treat him better by mimicking Sasuke. Despite Kakashi’s comments on all of them maturing Sakura hasn’t changed at all at the start of the Chunin exam arc but she keeps asking Sasuke on dates instead of training and also squeals for him like a fangirl. She mopes that she’s not good enough for the Chunin exam and only gets motivated when Sasuke compliments her. This type of shallow and weak characterization made many people instantly dislike her.
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In the chunin exams we also find out she broke her friendship with Ino after she found out Ino liked Sasuke as well. This is something that gave more background to her character but at the same time made people dislike her even more, since Ino is someone who reached out to Sakura and helped her build her self-esteem yet Sakura simply dumped her and started a catty rivalry over Sasuke. In Part 2, they only interact once, and during that moment Sakura wants Sai to call Ino ugly. You can’t really call it a beautiful friendship when Sakura is constantly shown as catty and the only person who does anything for the other is Ino. It’s Ino who reaches out to Sakura. It’s Ino who comes to her rescue in the Forest of Death. It’s Ino who compliments her after their match. What has Sakura done for Ino other than wanting her to be called ugly and teaching her kid to keep Ino away from Sasuke?
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During Sakura and Ino’s match, Kakashi says Sakura isn’t the type to brag and bully others, even when we have seen her do both constantly. Already in the Land of Waves she bragged how she doesn’t need to train despite not being able to do anything in a fight. She also constantly berates Naruto and acts superior to him, aside from punching him all the time over nothing. Sakura having a bloated sense of superiority and tendency to brag about her skills is a consistent character trait of hers. But she never manages to truly back up her arrogant attitude but comes off as weak and overall irrelevant, which is yet another thing that makes her an unlikeable character in the eyes of the audience. In the war she also insults Tsunade, the one who taught her, while boasting how she is better than her like she’s some badass when she is far from it. When has she created her own jutsu or made anything revolutionary? During the same chapter she also brags how she’s gonna steal the Hokage seat from Naruto. Yes Naruto, the guy who keeps saving her useless ass all the time.
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Speaking of Kakashi, he is a character that Kishimoto used in his writing as someone who treats Sakura with kid gloves and coddles her. This is one reason why some people defend her character, and why some people ship the two of them. If you’re a Sakura stan, it must feel validating when some character constantly defends your fave’s stupid behavior. But Kakashi is someone who not only admits to not understand Sasuke, but also someone who clearly doesn’t understand Sakura, as we see from the earlier image how Sakura’s behavior contradicts with Kakashi’s claims since the beginning. Basically, if you need to know how Sakura really is like, just flip what Kakashi says about her and you’ll know. Since Sakura is part of the main team, Kishimoto needed some character to defend her behavior so she wouldn’t be confronted about it too much. But smart readers aren’t fooled. It’s also worth noting that Kakashi tells Sasuke Sakura still loves him despite the fact Sasuke tried to kill her, while conveniently omitting the fact Sakura went there to kill Sasuke herself. This makes Kakashi look hypocritical but Kishimoto needed some character to do this because of Boruto, and it’s not like he was gonna use Naruto, the one he himself called Sasuke’s ally.
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Then we have Sakura’s hypocritical behavior, that Kishimoto also consistently portrayed. During Sakura and Ino’s match, Sakura says Ino is a girl who is focused only on her looks and that she wouldn’t want to be on the same level with her, despite the fact Sakura herself was shown brushing her hair in the Forest of Death and getting dragged for her vanity. She also got upset and hit Naruto when he tried to pee in front of her, saying she’s a lady, yet thought to herself how she would like to see Sasuke pee in front of her. When trying to plead to Sasuke to not go, Sakura says revenge won’t bring anyone happiness, but when it doesn’t work she flips completely on what she said and asks Sasuke to take her with him so she can help him. Even if she acts like she cares about Sasuke’s well-being, what she really cares about are her own feelings. Sasuke unsurprisingly finds this annoying as do many readers. Sakura makes fun of Naruto and insults him, yet gets enraged when Sai calls her names and she proceeds to hit both him and Naruto. She also gets mad at Konohamaru and Naruto for their sexy no jutsus, yet when Konohamaru showed her hot boys naked, one of them being Sasuke, she went all gaga over it.
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Sakura is also introduced as a bully who beats Naruto up and mocks him in front of Sasuke who then proceeds to call her out on her terrible behavior. In this chapter, Kishimoto made Sakura call Naruto ”annoying” and then made Sasuke throw her own insult back at her when Sakura mocked Naruto, by calling her annoying. Something that is worth noting is that while Sakura also reacted to Lee badly at first, after he saved her she didn’t do anything bad to him anymore. Yet while she later realizes she was wrong about Naruto’s resolve, and that he cheers for her when she needs it, and that he saved her countless times, she keeps beating him up over nothing and berating him. She still keeps calling him stupid and acting like she knows better. This is why whenever she cries for him, it’s hard to feel any liking to her, because she comes off as more like a poser who will surely soon bash his head in if he dares to behave like himself, or drop him for the sake of Sasuke. Her treatment of Naruto is unreasonably bad at times, but it’s easily explained. In the beginning we find out Sakura dislikes Naruto because she thinks he comes between her and Sasuke. And we see many instances where this notion is amplified by the text. But Sakura is too delusional to understand the reason there is distance between her and Sasuke is simply because Sasuke isn’t interested in her, she’s too shallow and juvenile for him to pay attention to.
Her fake confessing to Naruto and trying to manipulate him made a lot of people lose all respect for her. She also showed she knew so little of Naruto she accidentally managed to tap into all of his insecurities in her confession. She also somehow believed Naruto was really chasing Sasuke for her sake and that he would give up if she offered herself to him.
Her second confession to Sasuke is also very telling of her jealousy of Naruto and Sasuke’s bond. She yells how she can’t exchange blows with Sasuke, how she can’t get close to him, how the only thing she can do is cry and beg. Considering how Naruto is the one who is about to exhange blows with Sasuke yet again, and how Sasuke after their fight talks about how Naruto kept coming closer to him, Sakura is clearly thinking of Naruto when she is having this meltdown. Sakura was shown to be jealous of Naruto’s improvement and skills in Part 1, but she is also jealous of Sasuke’s care and love for Naruto, which she wants for herself and thinks she is entitled to. Even at the start, Kishimoto said Sakura thinks Naruto stole Sasuke’s first kiss which she thought belonged to her. It’s no different at the end of the series. Her outburst is her fighting for what she thinks is rightfully hers, Sasuke, despite the fact he has given no indication that he loves her. But this makes sense. Afterall, we see Sarada come between Ino and Sasuke while Sakura laughs nervously in the background. Despite everything Ino has done for Sakura’s sake, she still sees her as a threat, to the point her own kid is doing the dirty work for her.
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Let’s talk more about Sakura’s relationship, or lack there of, with Sasuke. We know Sakura was portrayed like any other fangirl of Sasuke in the beginning, who liked his looks and how cool he was. She never tried to approach Sasuke as a friend but only kept asking him on dates despite his blatant rejections. She never says why she loves him, or even likes him. According to herself Sasuke never says anything to her. Her first confession showed how little she understood Sasuke. She was the girl with everything, with family, while Sasuke and Naruto had nothing. Yet she had the nerve to say if Sasuke left she would be just as lonely as he was. She’s comparing the massacre of Sasuke’s family to a boy she never talks to leaving her, while disrespecting her own parents in the process. How juvenile that must have sounded like to someone like Sasuke. In Part 1 Sasuke occassionally protects Sakura because she’s too weak to protect herself, and in part 2 Sakura probably wanted to entertain the thought Sasuke would still have this consideration for her. But in Part 2 Sasuke treats Sakura like a fodder ninja. She doesn’t manage to get a proper reaction out of Sasuke who focuses on Naruto everytime he meets up with his former team. Sasuke also leaves Sakura to die couple times while choosing to save Naruto instead. Despite all this, Sakura still thought she’s entitled to Sasuke, and in her second confession she started to yet again scream how much she loves Sasuke and how much she hurts due to it. In both of her confessions she is guilt tripping Sasuke and trying to make him pity her. In both of her confessions she makes everything about herself. She admits to herself she can’t do anything for Sasuke, yet she tries to win him over by pity. But she annoys Sasuke once again, and he puts her in a murder genjutsu. Sasuke then says they have no reason to love each other. And he’s right. What does Sakura know about Sasuke? Clearly nothing, considering she said the worst things she could have said during both of her confessions. She heard Sasuke talk about wanting change, yet she started to scream how if Sasuke stays with her, things can go back to how they were. It’s like the most basic things she doesn’t understand. She’s just an overemotional child who has nothing of worth to say. Kakashi who coddles her tries to talk to Sasuke on her behalf as well, insisting Sakura suffers for loving him. Sasuke then thinks of his family and says perhaps those are ties to a failed past. As in Sakura literally lives in the past. And she does. Despite the fact everything has changed, she thinks about the moment when Sasuke thanked her, and ignores him calling her annoying for her ignorant comments, or the fact someone who wants change obviously doesn’t want to go back to the way things were. This brutal rejection though still won’t slow Sakura down, but after Sasuke is leaving to his atonement trip Sakura blushes like a school girl and asks to come with him. After him mocking her and putting her in a genjutsu, this is what she does.
And Kishimoto still won’t stop there. After all of Sakura’s boasting that ended in failure, after the brutal genjutsu and her being made mostly irrelevant, we see her destroy her own house because her kid asked about her marriage with Sasuke and she got insecure. I have to ask how do some people not realize Kishimoto despises Sakura and writes her as a terrible person? She is a bad daughter who doesn’t understand how lucky she is but is ready to ditch her parents for an indifferent boy’s sake. She is a bad student who disrespects Tsunade for no reason. She is a bad friend who treats Ino and Naruto badly out of insecurity. She is a bad person who treats the target of her crush like an object instead of a person. She is a bad shinobi as well who is most of the time a liability. And she is a bad mother as well. When she’s insisting to Sarada that Sasuke cares about them, she’s sweating and looking nervous, she’s clearly not confident in what she says. Kishimoto also drops two implications that Sasuke never kissed Sakura. Because that is apparently important for us to know. Sakura then tries to insist a forehead poke is better than a kiss. Yet when Sasuke is leaving, she is waiting for a kiss and not a poke. And she is rejected, and looks like a wet rag just like everytime Sasuke rejected her before ever since she was a kid. It’s hard to think of a female character that is more pathetic than her.
And yet, we have SS insisting Sasuke surely knew Sakura could take care of herself, that’s why he left her to die and saved Naruto instead, who didn’t need saving. Surely Sasuke thinks about Sakura as an individual and not just a member of team 7. Despite the fact we have never seen Sasuke think about Sakura outside of team 7 context nor say anything about what he likes and admires about Sakura. Surely Sakura is the most important person to Sasuke, that’s why Kishi wrote Sasuke say to Hagoromo, to Naruto and to himself that Naruto is the only one he still cares about. That’s why Kishimoto wrote Sasuke say Naruto is the only one who never gave up on him. That’s why he wrote Sasuke say Naruto alone saved him. Despite the fact Sakura wanted to be part of saving Sasuke with Naruto, Kishimoto would never let her. Because he doesn’t like her, or SS.
As a final note, a lot of the manga revolved around the importance of family and bonds, yet Sakura, the girl who had parents unlike the rest of her team, is shown to disrespect them everytime she brings them up. And she’s never redeemed on this. This is also intentional from Kishimoto, of course. Sakura is too selfish, too ungrateful and shallow to understand what she has. She’d rather chase a guy who keeps rejecting her like he’s some trophy she owns, all the while trivializing his pain over the loss of his family, by acting like she understands. And she’s ready to throw away her parents, her friends, and her dignity for the sake of this guy who was never interested in her. What’s worst is she had many opportunities to change and mature, yet she choose not to. And thus she remained the same self centred, superficial person she always was.
Actually this is the final note: @sneezemonster15 is a co-creator of this post. She has also talked about Sakura on her blog, for example that war arc part here. Another example is here (but you can just generally go through her anti-sakura tag). But I wanted all this on one big text since certain people are very stubborn about us “picking” supposedly minor things to bash Sakura for when this is throughout the whole manga. And since tumblr doesn’t let her add more than 10 images to a post for some reason I decided to write this down.
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findafight · 11 months
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This is kinda jumping off the Nancy needing to acknowledge when she's fucked up
I think Steve is the only one of the main older teens that have hurt another character and gone on to feel genuine remorse for his actions.
After the fight with Jonathan in season 1, he drops Carol and Tommy, goes back and cleans the theater sign, and goes to apologise. You can tell by his actions, his words, and his tone of voice that he knows he did wrong and wants to try to make it right.
This doesn't happen with any of the others, I'm thinking the other main older teens that have caused hurt are Jonathan, Nancy, Billy, and Eddie.
Jonathan caused hurt with the photos he took. I feel that, especially after the photo with Barb and the Demogorgon was realised, he didn't feel bad because he took the photos, he felt bad because he got caught. And with the photo of Barb, it's almost like the Dufferes were trying to justify him taking the photos, as if it made it ok. He never seems to show any remorse or any intention of apologising for invading Steve's (and Tommy and Carol's) privacy by taking the photos of a private gathering at Steve's house.
Nancy causes a lot of hurt. In season 1, it's her jumping between Steve and Jonathan. This is implied heavier when she's talking to Jonathan in season 2, "I waited" "Yeah, a month." She wanted Jonathan but defaulted to Steve because he wasn't ready, which wasn't fair to either of them. Actually in season 2, it's mostly her hurting Steve. The bathroom scene, and then in the alley the next day. She doesn't apologise for her words, she doesn't feel bad for hurting Steve, she just goes on the defensive when he tells her what had happened. And then sleeping with Jonathan before her and Seve had really broken up, one minute she's insisting to Murray that she loves Steve, and the next she's got Jonathan coming into the room and hooking up with him. She never seems to care about her relationship with Steve, or how her actions might hurt him, especially because he's already shown to be insecure about infidelity (I really think it would have been more interesting for them to show the fallout of Steve finding out about Nancy cheating in s2, and have him deal with his insecurities when Nancy had previously insisted there was nothing between her and Jonathan, alongside his issues stemming from his father's infidelity. And this could have been used into s3 and 4 for why he struggled to get dates, or can't keep a relationship, because he has trust issues and wants to try to prevent it from happening again). In season 3, she hurts Jonathan with her calling his financial worries "the Oliver Twist routine", she never apologises, never shows remorse and acts smug about it when Jonathan says that he was wrong. In season 4, she hurts Robin and Steve and Jonathan. She is bitchy to Robin in the library for no apparent reason other than jealousy over Steve, and never apologises. And again, she's stringing both Steve and Jonathan along. She's showing interest in Steve again because he's the one that is there. Then runs straight back into Jonathan's arms as if nothing had happened.
Billy is pretty self-explanatory. He scares and threatens Max. He attempts to run over Mike, Dustin and Lucas. He threatens Lucas. In season 3, he bullies a kid by calling him lard-ass in front of a crowded public pool. Even with the scene where he fights back and defends El from the Mindflayer, he's not showing remorse, he's not taking ownership of his actions and how they have impacted other people. He never shows any intent to make up for the harm he's done.
Eddie hurts Lucas. He has his biases and is so ingrained in the nerd vs jock high school clique mentality that its just fine to push out a kid that has another important event conflicting with the club. And he never apologises to Lucas for not postponing and for his attitude, I don't think we ever really see Eddie and Lucas directly interact with each other. If anything, his attitude and opinions are justified by Jason's actions, which further pushes the nerd vs jock thing.
So yeah, Steve is the only older teen to take responsibility for his actions that have caused hurt and then go on to try to make amends for the harm he caused.
(Sorry, I wasn't expecting this to be as long as it was, I just started typing it and the thoughts wouldn't stop coming)
You with this ask 🤝 Steve Harrington 🤝 me always: Robin has never done anything wrong in her life, ever. I know this and I love her.
Yaaaaa. These are the reasons that it's frustrating when someone tries to compare what Steve's done to another character when!!! Steve's apologized for that! He's changed! He was an asshole, and he realized he was an asshole and actively engaged in not being an asshole. Few else even acknowledged they were wrong. Sometimes the show doesn't even treat it as wrong! That's why I have issues with them, not that they did bad thing but that they never apologized or changed their actions to be better. And the show and narrative won't let them or address it.
I looked it up for another ask I haven't answered yet but Indiana's anti peeping law was put on the books in 1983. It basically states you can't take pictures of someone's private property or of them if they have reasonable assumption of privacy (like locker rooms) and some other stuff. Jonathan took those pictures, and then chose to develop them all at school. Where anyone could (and did!) See them! What the heck. Tommy, Carol, and Steve were all also in those pics, and even though Jon says to Nancy he never should have taken them, he never bothers apologizing to the others. (Probably because he thinks they're assholes but man if you want moral high ground actually take it?) I think it'd be one thing if he took the pictures and then never developed them, it wouldn't be right but it's be better than what he did. It's a bummer his camera got broken but uh. Tbh if I found out some weird guy took my and my friends pictures while we were goofing off in my back yard, some of which contained a topless photo of an intimate moment, and then developed them at school and I was sixteen I ALSO might break the guy's camera. (Which Steve then replaced!!) I'd at least want to watch him destroy the negatives and developed photos. Comments have been made about Steve closing the blinds but his house literally back onto the woods? Why would he when he didn't think anyone would be taking pictures of his bedroom window? Idk I don't think they should have had this inconsequential but deeply weird plot point. Have Jon taking pictures of the woods, accidentally get Barb and the demogorgon in Steve's backyard, and then another of the forest. Like. There ya go.
Nancy is sooooo messy. Let her be messy!!!!! But the show tries so hard for her to be out together badass always when he relationships are just. The messiest. She's waiting for Jonathan. She's getting with Steve. She's cheating on Steve. She's with Jonathan but she doesnt understand his financial stress. She's with Jonathan and they aren't tslking. She's flirting with Steve. That's interesting. That's messy. Show us how she deals with that. How she apologizes and grows from them! Nancy often just. Gets annoyed by people not listening to her lmao. She thinks she knows best and it bugs her when people disagree with her. She snaps at them. Doesn't apologize. Could be interesting to see the fallout of that but we won't ever! For her and Jonathan fighting in S3, from what I recall it was more of a break up than stancy in S2 fnrjkjfnd also!! They were both wrong there and both needed to apologize. Nancy was right to be angry at the misogynistic journalists. Jonathan was right to be worried about losing his job! How Jonathan apologized bugs me and how Nancy reacted to it also bugs me. Not great.
Also also. I don't think I've seen anyone actually mention this. But Nancy's shown consistently ignoring how opening up the darkroom door bugs/is actually really bad for Jonathan. He asks her to stop at least twice in S3 but she does it all the time! If he was developing film negatives, then all those photos would be blown out! They'd be ruined forever! It's not a haha quirky thing, it's something that's an active detriment to his job, and his passion! There's a reason darkrooms have their little 'in use' light, and it's so you don't barge in and wreck an entire roll of film!! It's super disrespectful of her to just. Not even care that she could be completely ruining something of his/his employer's by always shoving her way in. (I think the darkroom at the school had a little idk airlock which is a tiny darkroom before the real dark room to avoid contamination like that which is why the girl that told Steve about the pics was able to go in) And nobody ever talks about it? Idk if I had a hobby/passion/work that was very light sensitive and my partner didn't respect that and barged in when she knew I was working I'd be pissed and consider having a long talk about it.
Yeah. Billy is an unrepentant racist. Like. He didn't say sorry and he didn't learn to not be racist. Sorry for the traumatic childhood but. Maybe dont try to kill a thriteen year old when you're seventeen next time. but he did sacrifice himself. That wasn't redemption that was not letting some kids die. The absolute bare minimum when he knew he was already dead anyways. Also Billy should have been fired for calling that kid lardass actually. Literally what the hell. I'm a lifeguard and legitimately sometimes almost yell at kids on the sidewalk for running, but that instinct is to loudly and clearly call out WAAALK IINGG and giving them disappointed looks. Because everyone knows not to run on the pool deck but kids forget. You don't verbally berate a patron? Who is a child?? Why wasn't billy fired.
I've already talked about the Eddie thing but yes! Exactly! Lucas deserves an apology for getting dumped by his friends and hellfire. So much for freak solidarity I guess ┐⁠(⁠ ̄⁠ヘ⁠ ̄⁠)⁠┌
When Steve said something mean to Dustin that went too far when he was frustrated he immediately owned up to it and apologized. He's not perfect but he does apologize. King shit.
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linkspooky · 7 months
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What’s your thoughts on teen titans 2005 blackfire?
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This is actually a complicated question to answer because I do love the Blackfire we get from the Teen Titans cartoon, but it isn't really my favorite adaptation of her character. Part of the problem is she's only in two episodes. If Starfire got her own season then Blackfire would probably have to be fleshed out more just by necessity.
I guess my main issue boils down to the difference between personality and character depth. Which is something I just made up on the spot but, a character can have a lot of personality but not be a particularly deep character and vise versa. More under the cut.
Cartoon Blackfire is so overflowing with personality that she's an incredibly memorable character despite only appearing in two episodes. The cartoon adaptation does a good job in general of streamlining the more complicated comic book versions into easily recognizable personalities that fit into the animated adaptation, where you still get the gist of the original.
Robin is trying too hard to be Batman, reflective of early Teen Titans Dick Grayson's habit of overworking himself and his insecurity as leader. Starfire's personality focuses on her fish out of water aspects which was a big conflict for her originally. Cyborg's portrayal leans into the disability representation aspect of his narrative and how like an ablest society has taught him to hate himself or think of himself as less than human for his cybernetic prosthetics.
The show communicates these deep ideas in more simplified personalities compared to the comic book counterparts (they have to it's a 20 minute cartoon versus a new teen titans run with over a hundred issues).
Then we get to Blackfire who also has a strong personality that immediately communicates a lot about her character. Number one she is the archetypal big sister who makes her little sister feel inferior about everything, it's like being in middle school when your sister is a high scholer. From Starfire's perspective Blackfire has always been cooler, stronger, more adult. That's something the audience can understand pretty easily because they most likely have big sisters too who seem cool and untouchable.
On top of that though as the episode progresses we learn that Blackfire isn't just making Starfire jealous on accident. Like it could have been an accident sometimes you hang out with a new group of friends and immediately grab the attention away but it's just a misunderstanding you're just trying to integrate yourself into the group and newer people tend to attract more attention. Borrowing your sisters clothes, hanging out with their friends and taking attention away, those could all just be a normal sibling conflict.
Then you find out that Blackfire's doing this on purpose, she's just trying to edge out Starfire and steal her place with her friends. It's not just because she wants to hide out from under the law and stick Starfire with the blame to get the police off her tail, no this is something she constantly does in every interaction with Starfire. She's always insisting that she's the better sister. She's reinforcing this sibling rivalry and always trying to come out on top.
Blackfire constantly antagonizes Starfire and turns everything into a competition, whereas Starfire doesn't see things that way she just sees them as sister. There are times where Blackfire is mentioned offhand and Starfire tells stories of her growing up like (Oh, my sister went through puberty and she turned purple for three days). So the rivalry thing is also pretty clearly one-sided on Blackfire's side. Even Blackfire's attempt to conquer tamaran and marry Starfire off to some ugly alien, it's a pretty clear attempt to just hurl egg in her sister's face.
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Blackfire personality-wise also has that bad girl thing going to her. She's the quintessential mean girl to Starfire's naive nice girl. Her introduction episode where she immediately takes away the attention of all of Star's friends by coming off as a cooler version of Starfire, and the night club scene where she's wearing Starfire's clothes, and dancing also calls to mind Faith, Hope and Trick, the BTVS episode where Faith the other slayer is introduced to serve as the main character Buffy's darker foil. The "Bad Slayer" to Buffy's "Good Slayer."
This is what Blackfire is set up to be, she's not only a rival / antagonistic sibling she's supposed to be the "bad sister" to Starfire's "good sister". It's a pretty shallow role but Blackfire has so much personality that she plays it really well.
The show itself doesn't really dig any deeper than the sibling rivalry and the good sister / bad sister aspect, though. Which isn't true for the comics. Which is why I consider cartoon Blackfire a good adaptation of her PERSONALITY, but one lacking in character depth.
What makes comics Blackfire such a fascinating character to me is that she and Starfire are a pretty nuanced breakdown of the golden child / scapegoat dynamic. It's something a lot of adaptations miss out on. Even the debatably canonical Teen Titans GO! spinoff Comic of the show that ran at the same time the show was running kind of misses out on this element in their origins.
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"Starfire was more liked because she was kinder and prettier..." this oversimplification that their parents did love all their children equally, Blackfire was just a bad seed / bad child who was unpleasant and hateful from the start. THe archetypal jealous older sister / cain to Starfire's Abel.
That's not how it is in the comics! Blackfire is disabled in the comics, and because of that Starfire's parents heavily favor their abled child. Blackfire's narrative is a disability narrative, she's unable to fly in her world so her parents strip her of her rightful inheritance and treat her far worse than her abled children, for no other reason than she can't fly.
I'm going to borrow heavily from another post about a character with a similiar disability narrative, where they are actively abused by their ableist parent: Toya Todoroki from My Hero Academia.
Touya, as a kid, is undergoing this painful disability, and rather than acknowledge his hand in that - because Endeavor brought him into this world for selfish reasons, without thought or care to the possibility of the Incompatible Outcome - Endeavor just turns him away and refuses to see his pain. He doesn't try to accommodate or mitigate or treat the disability, just pushes the disabled child aside and minimizes how severe the disability is. [...] Endeavor then keeps attempting to have "non disabled" children to "make up for" the disabled one. [...] Touya, however, in all of his grief and his anger, can only see that once again, he is not seen, his suffering didn't matter to his father. His disability is made to be his fault and his failure, which Endeavor, despite having a shrine to him, has cleanly wiped his hands of it. This new child is not disabled; this child is perfect. This is similar to how disabled older siblings may initially fail to emotionally connect to their abled baby siblings, and fail to see the way their parents may hurt or otherwise not nurture them; resentment at what is, real or perceived, better treatment and more displays of love, care, attention, etc builds inside.
Blackfire is born with a disability, and rather than try to accomodate for her, her parents just turn away from her refuse to see her pain and then push her aside for their "non-disabled" children. Starfire is not disabled, Starfire is perfect, and Blackfire knows that their parents treat the two of them differently.
Which is why in her pain and desperation for her parent's attention Blackfire has never truly connected or noticed Starfire, because she's incapable of seeing Starfire as anything other than the "abled" sibling in the household and the "favorite." Which isn't Blackfire or Starfire's fault, it's a conflict that's forced upon them by their parents. If Blackfire's parents had just treated her like a normal child instead of scapegoating her for her disability, Blackfire would have no reason to compete with Starfire.
However, there's an added element to this which makes the Blackfire and Starfire dynamic so good, is that Starfire does not understand that she's the golden child. She thinks their parents are perfectly normal, loving parents, and that Blackfire is the problem. Starfire refuses to ever see that Blackfire was abused and from the start believes that Blackfire just came out of the womb petty and jealous.
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To be fair Blackfire does commit sibling abuse when she's younger, and even eventually ends up selling out their entire planet, and her sister to her the enemy. If Starfire resents Blackfire for her actions she's justified, but Starfire reduces Blackfire in her mind to a mustache twirling villain.
It's like if Starfire saw a pair of parents abusing their child in a wheelchair, screaming at him for not being able to walk, Idk, pushing him down the stairs she'd get angry and think they're horrible parents, but she can't see that the behavior is bad in her own parents.
Once again Starfire is a victim of Blackfire's lashing out, but at the same time imagine it from Blackfire's perspective. Imagine knowing that your parents are abusing you, and having no one to confide in because even if you told your sister how you'd felt she'd take her parents side and say "it's your fault, why don't you just try behaving better?"
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In the comics themselves Blackfire's intense rivalry with Starfire is really her attempt to "earn" back the love of her parents by making up for the disability she was born with.
It's also sort of ironic - many disabled children (physical, intellectual, mental etc) often continue pushing themselves to achieve their parents dreams- whether it's sports, academics, work, etc - as a way to garner attention or praise or love or "make up" for being a burden/disabled until they collapse in some way - mental health crisis, irreversible body damage, etc.
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Blackfire becomes violent, obsessed with strength, because her parents have taught her that there is something wrong with her that she needs up to make up for her inherent weakness by being strong. Blackfire is who she is in reaction to an inherently Ableist society that demonizes her for her disability, and parents who punish her and a sister who (cluelessly) joins in on that.
It's a good golden child and scapegoat dynamic because as awful as Blackfire is as an adult, she didn't have to become that way. She was pointlessly scapegoated as a child, pushed, pushed, and pushed because apparently it was just too hard for her parents to love a disabled child. It's also probably one that a lot of readers don't understand because it's a little hard to swallow the idea that some parents will just treat children as subhuman for having some disability, but then be perfectly capable of loving their abled children.
What makes it such a great one though is that it eventually breaks free from assigning Starfire the hero role, and Blackfire the villain role. One thing I hate about most "Good sibling vs Bad sibling" conflicts is that they'll make the bad sibling the one who got abused. Like, wow the abused sibling that didn't get any outside help is angry and violent... no duh.
As the comic goes on they break out of their roles because Blackfire becomes a much deeper character than she initially was. She's no longer just a power hungry dictator trying to grab a throne that wasn't hers out of jealousy, she eventually wins the throne of Tamaran because she is a better ruler than either Starfire or either of her parents. We learn that the reason she's so motivated isn't because she came out of the womb a little hater, but a genuine patriot.
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She's violent and ruthless not because she has to be, but because she genuinely believes it is the only way to accomplish her goals of a better Tamaran. It is really the extreme end of what her parents did to her as children. Blackfire became violent, volatile, and determined because she wanted to earn back the love from her parents. Blackfire decides she has to be strong, cold and a killer because she has to work hard to earn the love of her planet.
Her backstory all ties into these goals, and through that we can see why Blackfire treats Starfire that way. It's not just that Blackfire is jealous of Starfire, but also that Blackfire represses her need for love. Her parents never loved her, so why would Starfire? She spent her entire childhood trying to earn that love and never got it, so she tried to deny that she ever wanted love in the first place.
Blackfire is actively killing off the part of her that desires love from people, that wants a family, because she believes it will make her lose sight of her goals. If that means she ends up turning against her family and fighting Starfire, well, oh well then she never had a family in the first place.
However, she's never completely able to get rid of her desire for familial love which is why she has this weird obsession with Starfire in the first place. Starfire's basically the only one who tried to love Blackfire and have a connection with her, even if Blackfire didn't reciprocate. Which is why Blackfire is simultaneously always trying to put Starfire down, but at the same time she can't let go of Starfire either. I think Blackfire desires that relationship with her sister too, but one it's hard not to be jealous when you see your more abled sibling receiving the love and care you want, and number two Starfire has consistently all their lives sided with Blackfire's abusers over her.
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Which is why instead of the sibling relationship they both want, which is to just be normal sisters and equals they're constantly forced to fight against each other. Neither of them actually wants this, it's their parents, it's outside circumstances, and it's their own inability to overcome their emotional flaws that makes them constantly fight. Which is just sad because Starfire has no connection with her younger brother, and her parents are just as ready to sell her out as they were Blackfire so the only person in her biological family who loves her is Blackfire... albeit in a twisted way.
They both miss out on the chance to have a close connection with a person who they grew up with, and will understand a lot of their lives especially because Blackfire and Starfire are actually pretty similiar (the same person in two different fonts) because neither of them can get over this conflict.
It's tragic. They miss out on the chance for a loving sibling relationship that they both want because they can't overcome the cycle of abuse that started with their parents.
Anyway, if you want a show that dissects the golden child and scapegoat dynamic between the two of them better you can watch Season 3 of the HBOMAX TItans Adaptation. Their Starfire and Blackfire are fantastic and the season actually shows the two of them reconciling.
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gothicprep · 5 months
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so, apparently marvel is in disarray. ahead of the marvels coming out this weekend, variety dropped a bomb on the studio's somewhat dire state of affairs, as the franchise has hit its first real rough patch since the release of iron man 15 years ago. among the issues: jonathan majors, whose domestic violence arrest continues to hang over marvel's plans to make his character the thanos-like heavy for the next sequence of movies, the weak box office projections for the marvels (which some have said is tracking lower than recent bombs like the flash), the unending flood of hashtag content on disney plus which is overwhelming audiences who are finding it harder to keep up with the interlocking stories that have served marvel so well over the years, shoddy visual effects, spiraling budgets such as the reported $25mil an episode for she-hulk, a show that looked terrible because of the shoddy effects work aforementioned, behind the scenes chaos as kevin feige works to slash budgets and kill projects that aren't coming together. one movie at risk is the forthcoming blade reboot with mahershala ali, which has gone through rewrite after rewrite including reportedly one draft in which blade was the fourth lead in, quote, "a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons".
that last line has provided a lot of laughs for people like jay gothicprep, and critics who insist that marvel's efforts to diversify the lineup have led to much of this disaster, indicative of disney's overall failure with things like indiana jones and the dial of destiny or animated projects like strange world or lightyear. while this is potentially true (i guess, it's possible) it doesn't seem true because this certainly wasn't the case when black panther and captain marvel were both cracking the billion dollar mark a few years ago. rather it just seems, more simply, that marvel has run its course. marvel was hit by a double-whammy of endings. the thanos storyline that'd dominated the first ten or so years of the project came to an end. at the same time, the pandemic began and disney plus started flooding the zone with content, creating a natural break point for audiences that had no desire to watch hours of tv to understand 1.5 plot points in whatever the next movie that's coming out is.
this preamble is getting kind of long, and i have a lot more to say, so i'm going to continue to thought dump about this under a cut.
first of all, i'm still laughing like a week later at the women led life lessons description. no one has disputed that it happened. that description is the funniest thing i've ever read in a trade industry report possibly ever. what in the hell, my friends. did a writer even talk to a producer about what blade was? it's a movie about a guy with a sword who kills vampires! it's pretty straighforward! that sounds like something i want to see! there were three of them already, and two of them were pretty good!
anyway, i think you can take that incredibly ridiculous description of a draft that maybe wasn't the main draft – this movie has been through tons of writers and directors – and see some of the real problems with marvel's creative direction, which is that they've stopped making movies that highlight the core concepts of their characters. there are other problems as well, but when's the last time they put out a movie that was like, "iron man. he's a guy in a metal suit and he fights a bad guy." or "spider man. it's a guy in a spider suit with spider powers. he's got girlfriend problems and he fights crime around manhattan and maybe there's dr octopus." they don't do that. their recent stretch of movies have all been these impenetrable multiverse stuff with ties to tv series that you haven't seen and maybe won't ever see. there was a whole 25 minute section in black panther 2 that was setting up armor wars and ironheart. and like. who needs that sequence, which was boring and looked like total garbage? and now armor wars is being redeveloped lol. they've just departed from a lot of the core concepts that powered their earlier films.
they have some other problems. they've leaned into a slate of characters that is not all that well-known or inherently super popular, even for marvel being able to deliver on making billion dollar films out of guardians of the galaxy and such. maybe with the exception of spider man, which they don't get a full cut from because sony owns the actual movie rights. then there's the fact that the streaming series, by all accounts, aren't great but you *feel* like you need to have seen them. they're all real big problems. marvel needs to go back to making movies that are named after a character who's a superhero with a clear concept. guy with spider powers fights crime in his neighborhood. even though those movies got kind of repetitive, they did well enough because they didn't stray too far from the character concept.
i think, too, as a viewer, when you have a studio churning out so much stuff that's not good, you get the impression that the superhero industry feels entitled to your time and entitled to your money while not delivering.
this summer also represents an interesting counterpoint to what's happened with marvel and dc. the sheer amount of stuff that you devote every waking minute to keeping track of the damn things got exhausting and made movies stop feeling like events. this summer we've had barbenheimer and the eras tour, and those have been both big events and felt exciting. barbie was a chance to be campy, oppenheimer was a chance to see something serious and cinematic, the eras tour was exciting for fans of taylor swift who couldn't afford to spend $3k on taylor swift. and they felt this way because they were all unlike anything you'd seen at the movies in recent years. they had a high standard of quality, and going, it genuinely felt like people were there because they wanted to be, not because they were being force marched by a cultural behemoth to be there. you can't summon that same kind of energy for a marvel movie when it both feels obligatory and you expect it to be bad.
it also feels like there's a certain contempt for the audience where it concerns quality problems. i mean, i don't think that this is the intention. marvel isn't saying "we can deliver this stuff that's garbage and people will see it anyway". but one of the things i thought was the most damning about that variety story was the fact that, on some of the marvel tv shows, the final effects were inserted after the shows were released. so if you watched the show on opening night, you probably didn't see the final effects work. the arrogance involved in that is insane. it speaks to a total vanished pride in putting out a good product.
even some of marvel's better regarded films were heavily edited and heavily worked on right until the end, in part because kevin feige would come in and fix things, so stuff would have to get reworked. that's why effects deadlines were super tight and people were always crunching at the very end of this. there was that incredible quote from sam raimi from a couple months before the second doctor strange came out where he was like, "i think it's done but i'm not sure. marvel, they work on their movies until the very end." the director didn't even know if his own movie was locked or not because he clearly wasn't the one making the decisions about what the final print would look like.
that can work if you're making two movies a year and have a supervisor that comes in during the process and says, "i need you to redo this, in this way". but when you stretch that out to three movies a year, plus god knows how many episodes of television, there's no way to do that and make it a high quality product.
an instructive lesson comes from the book "disneywar", which chronicles michael eisner's time at disney. and one of the things in this book was the development and deployment of "who wants to be a millionaire" in america. bob iger is head of abc at this time. the guys making this show do it for a week. audiences love it. it's putting up huge numbers. everybody is excited. it's crushing it in the ratings. and the people who made it wanted to keep doing special week or two week long engagements that people would show up for. and iger was like, "no. i want this every week, three times a week, forever." and audiences got burnt out on it quickly, because it was something that only really worked as a special that ran for a week and disappeared for a few months. that's what the disney plus strategy feels like with marvel.
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meircury · 27 days
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Hello everyone! I hope everyone have a nice today! I very much rarely engage in fandom directly but there's has been something nagging me for a while, and this has something to do with SOME of Grey and Gauche shippers, alongside SOME of Gauche 'fans', treated him. I'm mostly talking about English speaking side of the fandom. I feel like the need of talk about this because I really hate the way they treated canon Gauche:
(Fair warning: LONG)
I absolutely hate seeing fans turning Grey into another Marie for Gauche or a replacement of his sister and makes him simp for her just like how he acts around Marie. In the story Gauche‘s simping for Marie is called “complex” because he simps out of unhealthy familial love and attachment because of what happened to them in the past and as a result of Gauche’s trust issues. His simping is NOT normal. It’s an ISSUE. FLAW. That needs to be FIXED. Not deflected to someone else. I see a lot of shippers make Gauche shoves his problems into Grey and repeats all his complex action with her. Example, a lot of memes show Gauche being weird about Grey’s photo. Whyy? One of the charms this ship has is how it brings out a unique caring side of Gauche we rarely see, like when he told Grey to work on her magic in the seabed temple, or when she saved him with the bulls after the elf fight. Yeah. That… that side of Gauche acting tsun and shy because he’s not used to be nice or open to others. Yet a lot of fans choose to use his unhealthy simping and shove it to Grey rather than builds upon his established development.
Nosebleeding over Grey. I saw this troupe is used TONS of time by the shippers artists, specifically English/West ones, and it's bothering me A LOT. Like. This troupe is used a lot in western Grey and Gauche shippers community and it's so fucking weird because aren't the same community despise the way anime over exaggerating this troupe at the point it's destroyed gauche's characterization? (For the record, after his arc Gauche only nosebleed for 5 times in manga, while in anime? Idk 50 or smth 😂😂😂) Then why they act the same way with anime with over-using this troupe when he found Grey's cute or adorable or anything sexual? Like, I'm so sorry but this such a huge hypocrisy. Hate the way anime treated him but do the same. Do you know what's ironic? I've seen less of this troupe used in the Japanese bc ship community, where most of them didn't mind the troupe. There's more irony. Most of the nice fanarts and actually depicted their relationship right it's also from JP artists who's not even have Grey and Gauche as their main ship. They're drawing them once in awhile and that's it. It's sad because why ppl who doesn't have them as their main ship understand the ship's dynamic better more than the actual shippers?
Grey Fix Gauche. Grey will Fix Gauche. Oh my God. This is the most cringiest shit ive ever heard when it came to a ship. This is also the biggest reason why I lost all of my love I had for this ship and ended up disliking it. Like. No. Grey ain't fixing Gauche. Gauche is the one who's fixing his own problem. And if you really want to insist of using 'fixing' troupe, then Asta fixing Gauche is way more valid than her. Because, he's the one who changed Gauche's mind. If Asta didn't do this then Gauche will still not giving any shit about Grey. But yeah, I hate the fixing troupe as I'm firm believer one can and SHOULD fix their problem by their own self, not by others. This troupe is problematic and I'll stand by it. That aside, saying her fixing Gauche is literally disrespecting Gauche's own development and the others characters that help him grow up (henry, gordon, Theresa, YAMI). Like, stop. Stop thinking Grey took all of those efforts that's she's not even done. Stop being delusional. Please. Why y'all not trusting him to became a better version of himself by his own efforts? Damn.
Gauche has sister complex and I hope people especially his fans will accept that as one of his character flaws instead of being denial x') he's not some poor guy who show his love differently. I know the anime explained it like that but in my honest opinion he reads to me as a man in need of therapy help because his traumatic past of having his family killed is left untreated and resulting in him developing attachment issues to his sister, the only family he has left. (Manga - Context) Did Gauche get better at not being a full siscon? Yes. Did he enterly get over it? No. Because he will always show sister complex gags and it's the same with any other bulls with their gags (ex. Noelle's royalty tsun, Luck's fight obsessed, Vanessa's alcoholic). These are flaws that make them more humans and will need more time to smooth over. As his fan, I want Gauche to fully love Marie in the healthy way of course, and I'm happy he's not as bad as before. Some bulls already helped him with that by showing him there's others he can protect beside his sister. I'm sure Grey is also gonna help him because she's his love interest but fixing him? Nah. He’s already getting better by his and the bulls’ efforts not just Grey.
(I'm saying this again just to make sure: NOT ALL Grey and Gauche shippers act like this, there's only SOME of them (the rest are good) but the way they treated Gauche is just too much I need to make a post about it lol)
Alright that's it. I had more complains like how people keep drawing gauche with muscles (he's a twink omg y'all following anime way of drawing him 😭/hj), ignoring Gauche's canonly beautiful blue greenish eye, etc but that's my personal preferences and I believe everyone deserved to draw him in their own way x) with this vent is clear enough that I do not like and vibes with Grey and Gauche as the ship because of the shippers (also the way tabata treated them but that's a different topic lol) I know this two will eventually be canon but I don't care and I still want to give more loves for him and drawing him with others characters because he deserved to have more fanarts thats not tied to his canon ship x')
Lastly. I just wish the Grey and Gauche shippers can see more from Gauche's point of view instead of being huge biased towards Grey. Because at this point I'm convinced that the shippers is Grey fans who only cares about Gauche because he's her love interest. Please respect and adore Gauche's character as y'all do with Grey 😞
Thankyou and have a nice weekend everyone!
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useless-donut · 7 months
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just thinking about astarion is SUCH a sweet partner? like this man was barely an adult elf when he was turned, and spent the next 200 years being abused by cazador, but like
- as the durge character, he'll be accepting and talk about your mental health and reassure you
- he'll insist on staying with your half illithid character, saying you shouldnt make his choices for him if you try to leave to protect him
- also just the dichotomy of him being explicitly vain and also explicitly not shallow is very sweet
- in that one lathanders light scene, he'll tell you he appreciates you trying to fix your mistake after you caused him IMMENSE pain
- he'll empathize with and support you if you swear your body to haarlep, noting how he's been through similar and is sorry you're going through it
- hes not jealous, his issues with sharing seem to largely come from if he thinks the other party would be okay with it (like he thinks lae'zel would spear him lol), and when someone like halsin comes along he'll happily consent
- on that note, he grows enough to be comfortable asking for support and reassurance instead of possessiveness/jealousy (not that these are the only options for that scenario, but astarions seen a lot of possessiveness in his life and its wonderful how much he avoids replicating it)
- he will always attack cazador in the final confrontation if cazador starts verbally abusing you instead of him
- he puts in the work to set boundaries that allow him to engage in an intimate (emotionally, physically, but not sexually) romantic relationship with tav and apologizes for "using" him before, when his behavior was SO understandable. and also he manipulated tav by having... consensual enjoyable sex lol. he might have ulterior motives but he never actually tries to use his sexual relationship with tav to manipulate him into doing anything
- you learn how astarion felt for Sebastian and how tender he was
- you learn about the first boy astarion couldnt bear to bring to cazador, the one he called soft and sweet (or something like that) and then was punished horribly for a straight year for it
- even when you turn to a half illithid, his main concern is you losing your agency
- if you are a full illithid, at the end of the game, some people complain about him not being ride or die, but i think he shows REMARKABLE willingness and support. what he cares about most is that you are still you, and how is he supposed to know for sure? i think asking him to stay with a type of being known for manipulation and mind control after everything he went through with cazador IS A HUGE FUCKING ASK. and he doesnt even write you off immediately? thats a lot of love right there
- if you arent illithid, he will double-check you want to plan a future with him still, and only once you affirm this will he express how badly he wants it. he's actively avoiding trying to manipulate you even
and probably more stuff im just not thinking of off the top of my head. obviously this is about the spawn route vs. ascended, but im just constantly amazed that despite EVERYTHING astarion has gone through, probably centuries without a healthy, loving relationship or even examples of that nearby, he still defaults to being kind, empathetic, and caring as soon as he gets the chance
like sure, he might be minorly evil and self-serving but personally i think thats the least he deserves
more importantly, the boys from astarions past give us a rare window into what he was like before turning into a vampire—he was gentle, empathetic lover. he was kind, he was protective. and as soon as he has the space to start looking for himself again, he goes RIGHT back to that behavior. he even self-checks for his "manipulation" and tries to correct for it
it just shatters my heart and then puts it back together hes such a wonderfully written character. astarion is allowed to be lovely AND furious and vengeful and maybe its just my raised-catholic ass, but its SO cathartic to see that a forgiveness arc is never pushed for his abuser
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milolovesbmc · 8 months
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RANT ON THE BOYF RIENDS BECAUSE I'M A WEIRDO LOL (Warning: RIDICULOUSLY LONG!)
I saw someone say something along the lines of "Boyf Riends just doesn't work on (the) Broadway (production)" so I'm now gonna rant about it cause I'm a weirdo and I love be more chill (Context, this was under a video with a whole bunch of drawings of Michael and Jeremy in different productions, so played by different actors! Someone commented "Someone should add Broadway" and the op replied with the line I first mentioned, no hate to this person, I'm just being a nerd, also if they see this, your art was amazing and I have nothing against you!!) But anyways this just set me off not a whole tageant about their dynamic, so be prepared for that!
So side note before I start ranting, I'm not saying this in a "Die-hard Boyf Riends shipper" way or something, more in a "the thing this person says makes no apparent sense (at least to me rn)" , also if you want to discuss this feel free to DM me and I'll happily hear you out, I might change my mind about this if someone gives me a good argument, who knows! I'm more than down to discussing this
So anyways, this point just doesn't make sense because of one simple thing: The show's plot and main story points don't change from one production to another. Sure, some details or even dialogue, might change! Hell, the addition of LGW in the Broadway/off-Broadway (?) Run gave as a totally different point of view into Jeremy's character and motivations! But that doesn't change the WHOLE story or the entirety of the perception x person may have on said main character. This just lets us dig a bit deeper into Jeremy's character and how he feels in the moment of making this huge decision of (basically) dumping Michael.
So into why Boyf Riends does/doesn't "work" (work meaning in this context that they fit together, or are fit for each other to put it some way)
I have to start off this by saying that their romantic relationship would not be the healthiest one to say the least. Like you can see this in the platonic relationship they have in the show! And, man, of course it won't be, they're 16! They do not know enough about relationships, neither platonic, romantic or anything in between. Not to say their relationship would be toxic! They just have some codependency issues to work through, because it may not be that apparent but they are, in fact, co-dependent to each other in some ways! They care A LOT about the other's opinion and what they would do in their place, this is shown more from Jeremy's side (probably because we're seeing the story though his lense) than Michael's, we can see this in MITB mainly, whole he's essentially having the breakdown of his life, and we aren't able to see that much of his concern for whether Jeremy likes him or not because he's so okay with himself, he doesn't care what other people think, he wouldn't change for anyone! Which is also why MITB is such an important arc to Michael, because we see that he's not perfectly 100% confident, he's vulnerable too, and he cares, because, shocker! He's still a teenager, with complicated feelings and problems!! He just doesn't constantly feed his insecurities and anxieties because, unlike Jeremy, he likes who he is, he's come to accept himself and wouldn't change for anyone! This latter point is very important, because this means (or at the very least implies) that he will put himself first, not in a selfish way, but in a good way, that's healthy! However, this changes in The Pants Song. You could argue that "He doesn't change anything about him tho! He just decides to help Jeremy!" And you'd be right! But he does so by putting Jeremy before himself and his feelings! Because he's angry, he's grieving because he didn't expect his best friend to turn on him, he needs to process it at least and he deserves to be upset! He insists on not helping him at first, but at last he's convinced by Mr.Heere and ends up, basically doing what Jeremy's father should have done. He basically goes out and saves everyone's ass, even after he gets called a loser on the Halloween party, essentially beat up by a SQUIP-possessed-but-still-Jeremy Jeremy during the play etc.
On Jeremy's side, he is kind of jealous of Michael! Because in Jeremy's eyes, Michael is cool! And he's great! And Jeremy can't process why Michael doesn't hate himself like he does, because the two of them share a lot of traits that Jeremy is bullied for! Because even if not shown, Michael is probably bullied too, but he doesn't pay it any mind, his love of himself is too strong to be affected by it! Jeremy, in some way, kind of looks up to Michael, this could partly also be because of a lack of a parental figure to look up to, but that's a whole other thing. This could affect his view on things, because you could argue that Jeremy sees the SQUIP as that "parental" figure to look up to! Because it knows what's best for him, or so it says, and it's gonna solve all off his problems! So during the bathroom intervention, Michael essentially goes against this idol figure Jeremy has (the SQUIP) which, in Jeremy's eyes, is good! So in that logic, Michael must be the bad person in this! Which is what prompts him to push him away (both literally and metaphorically). That wasn't the point I was discussing tho so back to that! Jeremy needs Michael's approval, he needs Michael to reassure that what he's doing is right! Because nobody else will do the things for Jeremy, not his father, that's for sure!
The problem is that, well, Michael doesn't completely get this! He doesn't get that Jeremy needs him to make the decision for him or help him out, so he just tries to distract him from it with the whole "Cool In College" thing, and at the same time, accidentally confirms his fears, never with that intention of course! But he does. A good example is these lines from Two Player Game: "Dude you are cooler than a vintage cassette, it's just that no one else but me thinks that yet! You're just a nothing in this high school scheme [...]"
Is Michael saying Jeremy's fine the way he is? Yeah! You can understand that from his speech! Will Jeremy most probably just pick up on how he says nobody else thinks that? Also yes
So in conclusion, to end this all off because I'm writing this at 1 in the morning, Michael and Jeremy's relationship does have flaws, it has it's positive and negative aspects, but they can work through them! And about the whole SQUIP incident, I think they just need to actually talk about it and understand why they both did what they did (Mainly for Jeremy's part) and just move on forward! Could moving on forward mean going into a romantic relationship? Sure! It can be whatever kind of relationship you want! Can it also just continue to be platonic/friendship? Sure! Could both work out equally well? YEP! At least from my point of view!
Thanks for listening to me rant, I just have to say this probably went way off rail from what I was saying at the start and might feel kinda pointless, but again, it is 1 am and I'm not reading this again, I hope you can at least enjoy it! :)
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fansids · 1 year
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Alright, I gotta lotta thoughts on s4, but this is the main thing I'm not particularly happy with.
It's not very organized, I'm writing as I'm thinking so I apologize beforehand.
Spoilers obvi.
I really don't appreciate how Sun Wukong's character has been treated up until this point.
Look, I don't mind the "perfect, heroic mentor is actually not always so perfect and heroic and made mistakes that are still effecting the world now" like fine. Fine. But the way the show goes about it makes SWK look like a worse and worse person. It crosses the line of him making mistakes, to just being generally careless and not learning.
I mean: leaving Xiaotian in s2 and inadvertently neglecting him in the process, keeping the 4th ring a secret in s3 until it's too late, being the reason there was a fourth ring to begin with, the whole Macaque thing that the show seems to be leaning more towards SWK being in the wrong for, and his whole deal with his sworn brothers in s4.
It was already irritating in season 3, especially when he's shown to get yelled at by Xiaotian & Zhu Dachu then continues his usual way, often being unhelpful. I get that Xiaotian is the mc, but like c'mon. SWK is depowered, there are like a million ways to sideline him without doing that.
Season 4 is especially egregious as someone who's read jttw because the Lion, Elephant, and Peng are all terrible villains who spent a good amount of their time eating innocent people. I'm not sure why the show especially seems to be insistent on making the Azure Lion sympathetic and one that feels bad for trapping SWK...then again Macaque exists. You know what no, I don't see why they are insistent on doing that when Macaque exists. He may be one too many times, but once was enough.
Jttw aside, if in Azure Lion's point of view SWK willingly betrayed them and all the "good" they stood for, then trapped his other brothers for thousands of years, and before that was happy to join heaven's courts for like 20-30 years, then I don't know why he'd ever show that level of concern for him. If that happened to me, it would be monkey season, straight up.
(also the fact that he said he'd let SWK go when they completed what they wanted to, I call absolute bullshit. Even if he did feel bad, releasing SWK at any point in time would be a god awful idea)
From what s4 has shown, I think what the show writers wanted to do was build a parallel between Xiaotian and SWK, both having made mistakes that endangered the world and their loved ones as well as Xiaotian learning that his hero is just as human (for lack of a better term) as him. But the execution is lacking as a lot of Xiaotian's mistakes are not really his fault.
DBK taking his staff? It's not like he handed it to him.
Spider Queen using his hair? Is he supposed to stop shedding?
Red Son getting the skeleton key? Again, it's not as if he handed it to him. Also, wouldn't that make it the Bull family's fault, since they opened the coffin?
It wasn't him being careless it was him losing 2 fights and a bit of his hair. Whereas with SWK, it's implied these things happened because he didn't think about the consequences of his actions. They don't really seem comparable.
Also, if you've read jttw (and even if you haven't, but I think the context makes it worse), then lmk SWK is a very miserable character right off the bat. As we can see, he never became a Buddha, his friends are heavily implied to be dead, there are no monkey yaoguai on the mountain, or even a nation anymore, implying that his subjects left, died, or both, and in the midst of all of this he has no support system. Nor does he ever seem to obtain one in the show.
And I think some of these issues could be remedied if he was given the opportunity to tell his side of the story. Everything wrong he does is seen told through the perspective of another person. Not to say they shouldn't be upset, but the fact that SWK just absorbs whatever blame is put on him, never really giving any fair defense doesn't sit right with me. It wouldn't change any of the things he's done, but it would make him a lot more understandable as a character, instead of him consistently being some form of a fuck up.
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