#i was prepared to deal with the death of my problematic fave when that final ep aired | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

flightfoot · 2 years

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Digimon

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most)

Ken Ichijouji, obviously. He was the first character I ever got really attached to. I hated him at first in a "he's the villain who literally kicks puppies and torments and enslaves digimon and shoves Wormmon around" way, but then he was defeated, broke through the Dark Spore's conditioning (not that I knew about that at the time), realized that digimon are real and not just a video game, and went into a dissociative episode, trying to piece himself back together, and somehow make up for what he did. The other Digidestined slowly accepting him, him making friends? Just felt GOOD. Especially with that scene in the finale, with his "greatest wish" apparently being seeing himself as the Digimon Emperor being tied to a Control Spire and murdered by the digimon he hurt, and having Sam appear there as well... only to find out that it was all an illusion, and declare that he's paid for his mistakes, he's not going to continue to punish himself, and his friends all appearing to cheer him on. It was a really powerful moment.

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped)

Wormmon. That poor digimon, but one who has a lot of faith in his partner - to the point of being badly hurt, unfortunately. But eventually, he realizes that he best thing he can do for Ken, is to fight against him, against who he's become.

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave)

Sam. He's a posthumous character, but one with a MAJOR impact on Ken. I love reading fics with him. He was a bit of a jerk to Ken, with the way he yelled at him and slapped his hand away from the Digivice, but he was ALSO an eleven year old kid who was under an insane amount of pressure from his parents, and well... he did something that I'm betting he would've regretted later. Ken recognizes it too, what with following in his shoes as a child prodigy.

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week)

Milleniummon. I was SO INCREDIBLY EXCITED that he was the Big Bad in Digimon Adventure 2020, he's the perfect fit for the role! He's really obscure, only appearing on-screen in the show for a grand total of like, 5 seconds in a flashback, and DYING in that flashback, but in those five seconds he shapes the entire story of Digimon Adventure 02. Plus there are the Ryo games which give four games worth of backstory to the guy - sort of, they are only loosely canon - and it means I'm incredibly excited to see him! Unfortunately in Digimon Adventure 2020 he's a pretty generic powerhouse, he doesn't actually have much personality to speak of, which was highly disappointing. Good choice of Big Bad, but not a great execution of one.

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave)

Impmon. Yes, something not related to Ken, I do like other characters - I just have a heavy preference for the boy.

Impmon goes through quite the character arc, from being a petty annoyance of a minor bully, who torments others just so he feels less pathetic, to being a sort-of friend, ish, to the Tamers... and then being beaten so badly in a fight that he picks with someone who FAR outmatches him that he nearly dies, and makes a Deal with the Devil to get power... and then goes a bit mad with it, and agrees to follow through and try to murder all the Tamers, and ends up murdering Leomon, Jeri's partner, right in front of her eyes - and she ALREADY had to cope with her mother dying and her father being an oppressive dick to her ever since, and blaming herself for her mother's death, even when it had nothing to do with her.

And then when Gallantmon prepares to kill him, this girl, who he'd threatened to kill, and whose partner he just murdered in front of her eyes, who's sobbing her eyes out, begs for his life - not because he doesn't deserve it, but because she doesn't want to cause any more deaths, she couldn't bare another one (this poor girl, she's not responsible for any of this).

Which leads him to have a BSOD, barely being able to comprehend that she'd do that, would save him like that, would ask him to be spared. So he limps off, and purposely gets himself attacked until he de-digivolves back down to his original rookie form, the one he was so desperate to escape. The power wasn't worth it.

And STILL, the Tamers go back for him, bring him with them to the Real World.

And then everything happens with Jeri being kidnapped by the D-Reaper so it can feed on her depression, despair, and hopelessness, and Impmon - well, Beezlemon now - doing everything in his power to save her, wanting desperately to do SOMETHING to make up for what he did. He even succeeds at breaking into the bubble where she's being held captive, reaches out his hand to pull her out... and she doesn't take it. She's incredibly out of it and thinks it's Leomon saving her, especially since he used Leomon's attack... the one he acquired because he absorbed Leomon. And when she realizes its Beezlemon, the digimon who murdered her partner, she freezes and shakes, unable to make herself take his hand, too traumatized to do it, all while he's screaming at her to please take it, let him help.

Afterwards his Tamers find him and take care of him, causing them to finally earn their D-ark, and he makes peace with them as a whole. They were the reason he was jealous of the other partner digimon in the first place, since his own partners treated him like a toy to fight over, pulling him in two different directions. To be fair, they are five years old, and may have been even younger than that when they both came across Impmon, so I don't think it was really their fault: they were just too young to really know better.

Anyway, when Jeri gets out she forgives Impmon, because she's forgiving to a fault, and all the digimon, including him, get taken back to the Digital World.

I just find his whole character arc fascinating, especially since we see him BEFORE he went full-on evil, and afterwards as well - we see him at every stage, and can clearly tell he's the same character, but also how he's grown and changed over time.

Also WOW, I think Jeri's the most traumatized character I've ever seen in a kids cartoon. How was Tamers rated Y-7 again?

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason)

Yamaki. I think he's interesting, but it can be fun to make him lose his composure.

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell)

Kurata in Data Squad I guess? It's been so long that I barely remember the series, but he was a DICK.

#ask #ask game #digimon #digimon tamers #digmon adventure 02 #ken ichijouji #impmon

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shewhotellsstories · 7 years

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Your Fave is Problematic Pt. 10: Incubators With Legs

Friendly warning, this post will be very critical of Cassandra Clare’s handling of pregnancy in The Mortal Instruments.

As a general rule, pregnant protagonists are few and far between in fantasy stories, babies usually come after evil’s been vanquished. So as a reader it is safe to assume if there’s a pregnancy before the epilogue it’s probably not going to go well for the pregnant person. In fantasy from Bella Swan in Twilight to Cordelia Chase from Buffy the Vampire Slayer many a female character has had their reproductive abilities abused for a backstory or to move the story along. Similar to tropes that deal with sexual violence, the way that pregnancy is treated excludes the experience of those most impacted by a pregnancy as it becomes about other people. Now from a storytelling perspective and from a purely biological perspective, everyone has to come from somewhere and some women are capable of having children. But when women in YA are pregnant the experience is usually a horrifying one, the thoughts and feelings of the pregnant person are usually entirely absent from the narrative. All too often women are reduced to incubators whose stories end once they’ve given birth.

In The Mortal Instruments, Celine Montclaire is a classic example. The readers are told she was a fragile young woman. She was also in love with the married Stephen Herondale. That is until Valentine insisted that Stephen divorce his wife Amatis because he felt her familial relationship to werewolves made her impure. Although Stephen and Celine’s marriage is a brief one, Celine did become pregnant. However, upon learning that her husband had been killed overcome with grief Celine, eight months pregnant, slits her wrists. This isn’t the end of the story. In the nick of time Valentine Morgenstern manages to save the baby she was carrying by cutting him out of her. Not out of the kindness of his heart, without her knowledge Valentine had been feeding Celine pure angel blood for months in hopes of creating a super-shadowhunter child. He could not let all of his work go to waste. The baby boy that Celine was carrying would grow up to be Jace Herondale.

Celine is a blank slate. The audience knows very little about her except these four things: she was twenty when she died, she loved Stephen, her family was abusive, and she always looked according, to Jocelyn (Clary’s mother), vulnerable. Two out of the four details we know about Celine are things are all explained on the author’s twitter upon questioning from fans and through deleted passages. We don’t really know who Celine was or what she felt while carrying Jace or about impending motherhood. We don’t ever really have a clear idea of what her final moments were like. We don’t know how she felt about being married to a man who was clearly in love with another woman. Celine is in short a walking incubator, she’s a way to explain Jace’s existence and importantly why he and Clary are not related after all and it’s okay for them to date. Throughout the series through letters and anecdotes after the revelation that Jace was biologically not Valentine Morganstern’s son, Jace gets to learn who Stephen Herondale was for better or worse. And yet, he never learns or seems interested in learning anything about his birth mother leaving her feeling disposable.

The argument could be made that Jace is happily adopted. After the presumed death of the man, he believed to be his father he was adopted by the Lightwood family at the age of 10 and feels deeply connected to them. Even while living with Valentine, Jace has been told from a young age that he didn’t have a mother, until Maryse Lightwood. When asked by readers why Jace is utterly uninterested in learning about the Montclaire family Cassandra Clare would say that it’s because Jace already has a family that he loves. And yet, Jace read Stephen’s letters. Because he has been lied to by every adult in his life about who they are and who he is for years, he understandably has an identity crisis.

“I don’t know who I am,” he said. “I look at myself in the mirror and I see Stephen Herondale, but I act like a Lightwood and talk like my father—like Valentine.” (City of Fallen Angels 798)

Trying to understand himself better he learns about the Herondale family. His opinion of his father is understandably not a high one, and yet he takes the time to learn. By the end of the series, he finally decides to take on the Herondale name. So what makes Jace more interested in understanding his father than his mother? Stephen Herondale was weak. He had overbearing parents. He joined a cult out of a desire for freedom and a sense of superiority. He lacked character and allowed himself to be convinced to divorce the woman he loved. He loved Latin and poetry. Towards the end of his young life, he regretted the mistakes he made and accepted that the price for them, forever trusting Valentine would be his death. Importantly we learn that even though he regretted the marriage, he loved Jace and didn’t want him to resent Celine.

“The third and hardest thing you must know is that I was prepared to hate you. The son of myself and the child-bride I barely knew, you seemed to be the culmination of all the wrong decisions I had made, all the small compromises that led to my dissolution.” (Clare, “Stephen’s Letter to Jace”) Stephen is not a prominent character and yet the audience is given enough information to understand him and his feelings about his son. The same is never true for Celine. She is absent from the narrative surrounding her pregnancy and the death that it ended with. Celine’s pregnancy and death were about Jace’s true parentage, it was about Valentine’s positively immoral behavior, it was even about Stephen’s mistakes. Oddly enough, even though Celine was the pregnant person and she is biologically Jace’s parent too she is not truly Jace’s mother, she is just an incubator whose life and experiences were ultimately irrelevant beyond her ability to carry a child.

This is a trend in The Mortal Instruments. Clary Fray the protagonist herself and her biological brother Sebastian stem from mystical pregnancies. Valentine Morganstern who is Clary’s biological father experimented on his pregnant wife, Clary’s mother, Jocelyn Fairchild with demon blood without her knowledge with the hopes of creating a super shadowhunter and instead the exposure to demon blood killed his soul and created a sociopath: Sebastian Morganstern. When Jocelyn was pregnant the second time she never informed her husband, as she was planning his downfall, so when he was again dosing her food and drink with angel blood to lift her spirits he inadvertently ensured that an unborn Clary Fray would have special abilities. In the case of Jace, Valentine was also drugging Celine with angel blood hoping to create the perfect warrior. Jocelyn Fairchild’s character arc is better because through flashbacks and her own anecdotes the readers know her story and all of her feelings about what her then-husband did to her. It is very clear that she felt betrayed and violated by Valentine’s actions and is traumatized by them years later. Unfortunately, the way that Jocelyn’s pregnancies were written were the exception and not the rule.

#my senior thesis #anti cc #anti cassandra clare #mystical pregnancy trope #Jace Herondale #celine montclaire #stephen herondale #city of lost souls #valentine morgenstern #Clary Fray #feminism #shadowhunters #Jocelyn Fairchild #media literacy #media matters #YA literature

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