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brainworms-all-night-long · 4 months

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You know around the end of season 2 I just let my head run with situations about Sonic, despite knowing Nine is his enemy now, still not letting him come to any harm at the hands of anyone from the shatterverse, and I thought I was stretching it too far, that there was noooo way the show would do something like that.

But lo and behold exactly that happened and I've been losing it since whenever thinking abt it!!

Just, the last episode in particular.

Back where it all began Sonic and Nine, fighting in the workshop, Sonic on the defensive, Nine on the offensive. But this time he was way less composed, attacks wild and running on pure instinct and blind rage. He's fed up with Sonic to the point he doesn't even bother with acknowledging the other noticed the palm trees, he doesn't realize that sonic finaly undertsnds. It's simply too late for that, Nine doesn't care anymore, he just wants him to fucking shut up, to stop spouting lies, to stop trying to trick him into compliance. Because that's all Sonic's been doing up until this point really(from Nine's pov anyway), trick and betray him, beat him, and then feign softness just to repeat the cycle again, sowly chipping at his sanity. And there's only so much of that a literal child can take. (Yea I just get fucking run over by a truck when this realization hits. That's a god damn KID going mad with the powers of gods)

Then their fight gets rudely interuppted by a wall exploding and in comes everyone ever, lead by Shadow resident vibchecker of twin tailed foxes the hedgehog.

They want to hurt him, oh boy its written all over their faces, and Nine definitely finds that scene painfully familiar.

Hes has been caught off guard, cornered and outnumbered, exhausted from the constant usage of the prism and also from the emotional strain Sonic kept putting him through.

Than he's made aware of how much damage he's actually caused during his rampage and all fight immiditely leaves him, because there's nothing left to fight for. He destroyed it all, he lost.

Nine's alone, defensless, with no way to escape and at the mercy of people who hate him. Something he lived through way too many times, not even that many years ago.

Except unlike all those times in the past, Sonic was there to defend and protect him. He brought Nine back down to earth and gave him one last chance, even after no one else would.

Despite everything Nine did, despite how angry and desperate Sonic got, he always held out hope for Nine, always stepped in when someone pushed the fight on the fox way too much(looking at you Renegade). Because he was the only other person that knew and cared about what Nine went through, because he finnaly understood the core motivation behind Nine's actions, and because he wanted to set things right between them once and for all.

Looking like Tails or not, cosmic truth or not, that's a child that needed to be shown love above all else, that much Sonic knew and held by.

#sonic prime #Every scene where Nine and Sonic talk is just sooo much to pick apart there!!#Ahaha I'm finally composed enough to analyze the scenes!!!#And late also #Everyone's already analyzed everything most likely x)#i rewatched the last episode way too many times #just #this scrubs my brain in such a right way #anywaY NORMAL ABOUT THEM #miles nine prower #nine the fox #sonic the hedgehog #prime sonic #sonic and nine #sonic prime spoilers #sonic prime season 3

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fakeosirian · 1 year

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anatomy of a scene - house of anubis s2x85

joy and fabian's fight during the senet game makes me feel INSANE. i'd elaborate more above the cut but that'd defeat the purpose of the cut. so. long story short: this is one of, if not the best scene in the show in regards to character writing in the moment and as a fulcrum in the story at large (in my opinion). transcript + meta as follows:

JOY: What's the point in asking for my help if you're not going to listen to me?

FABIAN: I got it wrong. Okay.

JOY: Wrong? Fabian, this isn't chess; if we make a mistake, someone falls through the floor!

FABIAN: Don't you think I know that? I feel bad enough as it is!

JOY: So you should.

JOY: None of them have signed up for this. Even Victor chickened out when he knew what the stakes were!

(one of the top 10 funniest cuts of the series)

FABIAN: No- Anyway, who knows what would have happened if we had done your move!

JOY: Worst case scenario? We'd have lost Amber. But I would have had two players playing this game instead of one.

FABIAN: You always have to be right and rub everyone else's noses in it, don't you? And do you know why? It's because you're a bully and a control freak.

(screenshots can't do it justice -- the way her face changes is SO subtle, but her eyes get flat and her whole face tenses up. it's eerie)

JOY: Yeah? Well, you're a geek and a coward.

FABIAN: You're a witch.

JOY: Doormat.

They stare in opposite directions. Long beat.

JOY: So what do we do now?

FABIAN: I don't really think we have much of a choice, do we?

Another beat -- still not looking at each other.

FABIAN: Joy...I'm sorry.

Joy nods ever so slightly. She takes a short breath in.

JOY: Okay. Let's do this.

She only makes eye contact in the brief moment before she turns to sit back down.

not gonna transcribe the whole next scene but key point is instead of being irritated on her own behalf or shutting down completely, joy is acting more similarly to before patricia/amber fell through -- then she was visibly nervous, but now she's bordering on tears and openly expressing her doubts about her abilities. she says that she's worried about the "victor" guard because his movements are "unpredictable," but we know she feels that way because she couldn't get a good angle recording him before to study him like the others. throughout the scenes, she's gone from more plainly stating she's frustrated she couldn't get a solid reference on him to making him out to be almost sentient, something beyond her ability to predict despite the mundane reason for it. (could be that he's genuinely moving at random, but i'm choosing to interpret it the interesting character motivation way, especially considering her reasons for naming that guard "victor." girlie is projecting and i don't blame her)

fabian's also done a complete 180 in his demeanor since the fight, gently reassuring her, looking at her with the most fondness we've seen towards her this entire season tbh, and explicitly stating his confidence in her abilities in no uncertain terms. then, he does something really interesting: he lies. he says that he wants her to tell him what her next move would be, promising that he won't do it (with a tone of voice that implies he thinks it'd be ridiculous to do so and he just wants to "review"); once she does, he IMMEDIATELY does them and is totally fine. even when the guard almost whacks him in the head, he looks more defiant than anything.

the neat thing here is there's LAYERS to this fight and what each insult they throw at each other means re: the past, the present, and the future. the future's the easiest because it appears surface level -- they're both doing the opposite of what they were accused of before. joy's not looking to control anything and refuses to cause harm to him; while he's doing exactly as he's told, it's not as a doormat or a coward would. he's making a gamble by not only doing the opposite of what she wanted for him (despite it being her strategy), but even abandoning his own perception of the game (so not even being a "geek" either).

there's more implications for further in the future, but that's on like, level 4 of subtlety and narrative complexity so let's do the past first.

now, my feelings on the nina/fabian/joy love triangle are WAY too extensive to fit in this post, but i'll do my best to condense how i feel about the jabian side of things. joy overstepped repeatedly to a critical degree and was aware she was overstepping. fabian didn't trust himself to communicate his discomfort in a way that wouldn't hurt her feelings (he clearly doesn't think highly of his own interpersonal skills and defaults to other people's advice, even if he thinks it's not very good. that's how little he trusts himself), so he was caught in a bind: he's not to blame for freezing up around someone whose opinion of him he took very seriously, but despite the fact that she acted beyond inappropriately, i can see why joy would feel led on.

joy sidebar: the main things i think of here are the kiss-under-false-pretenses and the movie date. that's definitely material better left for another meta but tl;dr on my thoughts: her behavior was inherently self-destructive at its core, but that doesn't change the fact that when she sets herself up to either experience the best thing or worst thing ever because she can't stand the uncomfortable grey area between, she's setting up everyone around her for the same, which is Appropriately Selfish for a teenager, especially one fresh off of a uniquely horrific traumatic event! i love joy because she's chronically wrong!

fabian sidebar: i think he would have had a far easier time talking to joy if nina wasn't an intervening variable, despite his feelings for her in theory making it easier to turn someone down. that's all i'll say here

SO. the insults, interpreted with that context. "bully" is definitely referencing "ninagate," and while my first instinct was "control freak" referencing the exhibition/ball/how she drags fabian around in general (and i think that's what he thinks he's getting at), the more i think about it, the more i'm convinced it's projection on his part. more on that in the present section.

she reacts by shutting down because that's...kinda what everyone's been calling her already this entire season. and not without reason -- the scenes where patricia confronts her about her behavior (and they start to grow apart as a result) are well placed throughout the narrative, each triggered by something very specific and with a general trend towards distance, but it's not a straight line. joy's felt she's gotten some "redemption" lately being let in on the senet game, so having it "snatched away" kicks her right back to self-preservation instincts: fighting back, even if it means she's "living up to the reputation" that feeds the vicious cycle of her behavior.

"geek" is deliberately impersonal as an insult because her pulling back and not only seeing him so one-dimensionally, but pulling out an insult he'd hear from someone who isn't close to him (doesn't understand/appreciate his intelligence and interests) tells him she doesn't give a shit about him. she obviously does, but she can't let him think that him thinking so lowly of her would hurt her as much as it does. he'd "win." (gee, i wonder why someone betrayed by adult figures in their life, those who as a child you'd previously rely on as your foundational source of and model of trust, would make someone react that way...)

"witch" is fabian's default insult towards bullies. it's what he called patricia when she was picking on nina early season 1 despite their existing friendship, indicating it's an insult designed to set him apart from "being on your side" -- a counterattack to her doubling-down on the "bully" persona he set up for her in this conversation (though in the context of ninagate, it's not an unfair assessment, and she definitely chose to embody it (hello self-destruction) before he called it out directly).

i didn't talk about coward with geek because it's wrapped up in "doormat." she held back before he said witch -- despite the fact that she was the first to feign a lack of closeness with "geek," him seeming to confirm this sentiment tips her over the edge into stating something...particularly twisted coming from her. if anyone has taken advantage of the fact that he's a doormat when it comes to social interactions, it's her. "coward" can be localized to the senet game more easily -- she had a point earlier! why ask her for help if you're going to be bossy anyway? makes it seem like he's just trying to divest responsibility without the power and make her feel like a scapegoat! (uncharitable read, but understandable in this tense environment!) but doormat? he's not being a doormat now. he's been a doormat in the past (notably only in regards to social/relationship stuff -- he's generally a decision-maker and even "insubordinate" when it comes to mystery stuff. he defers to nina a lot, but only if he doesn't think he knows better -- see: getting patricia and alfie involved behind her back). joy knows reminding him of a big insecurity like that will get under his skin. get under his skin, and maybe he'll stop. (and he does. note that her automatic logic here doesn't consider just...demanding he stop in plain language. he probably would, but once again: fundamental lack of trust triggered! it's not "personal" to him in that he caused that issue, but it hit the button.)

does she like that he's a doormat, though? honestly, i don't think she does. she likes when he goes along with what she wants to do, but not because she told him to -- she just wants to do things with him, and she thinks she has to find the "right thing" that will "make him realize he does." when talking to patricia, she implies she truly believes fabian wants to go along with whatever thing she's pressuring him into at that given moment, despite patricia trying to tell her that he's...well, a doormat who can't say no to her. she wants him to want her out of persuasion, not intimidation. her calling him a doormat wasn't just an insult; it's a resignation. it's her giving up hope on not only a romantic connection but maybe friendship, especially since that revelation had to be dragged out of her by him finally not being a doormat and overcorrecting (as he's prone to do. see: the poem recitation to nina disaster).

speaking of...the present.

the irony of the present is that they're not in a romance plotline scene. they're in a mystery plotline scene, where fabian expresses VERY different character traits re: what i was saying before about the doormat comment. joy arguably does too -- it's harder to get a read on her because she's only one level above a human macguffin in s1 and hasn't interacted with the plot directly until This Arc, but with the small sample we have, we can see she's far more inclined to caution, knowing full well the consequences of making mistakes but without the regular exposure to desensitize her. when she asks what they're supposed to do next and fabian tells her they have One Option, he doesn't need to say what that option is, and it's not important. what he's communicating is far subtler than that; his more haphazard approach to strategy -- deliberating/mitigating but actively taking risks regardless of previous failure -- isn't borne of pure recklessness. she's optimistic you can sit out and still survive but cynical you could survive by trying; he's cynical (and correct, in this case) about nonparticipation, knowing it's Not An Option, but optimistic that if they just take one more risk they can win back and surpass their losses. they have before, and the consequences of opting out are beyond taking an automatic failure.

it ties back into his social doormatism; he wouldn't be able to live with himself knowing he abandoned nina because he can't deny her anything, even if it's her breaking up with him or her asking him to throw himself in a hole. calling that "being a doormat" is really, really uncharitable of course, but for the sake of the parallel, he has to RESIST being a doormat to joy (and has no problem doing so -- he overrides her MULTIPLE times in this plotline after telling her she's in charge) to do so, which while the "only option" for him, is obviously difficult because of the habits he's developed on the social side of things. the fabina relationship has always been part of the "plot" side of the show to me, with s2 muddying the waters/making it straddle the line with the "slice of life" stuff more by involving joy and giving them romance scenes that aren't entirely related to the mystery. this scene does the reverse for jabian -- it's officially plot because fabian finally used character traits he only has access to in a plot context to impart consequences to the "slice of life" plot, officially ending it. there's a reason no jabian turning down/closure scene before this really felt "real" -- it had to be broken down here, like this.

i think it's also for that reason that she doesn't return his apology. some of it is her still having shit on her end to work through, but i have a hunch that you could attribute the source of some of that shit to her realizing that Exact Thing. he's putting nina over her. it doesn't have to be through every hoop i jumped through up there -- it's as simple as the unspoken gut feeling of "you'd never say that to nina."

to tie up the rest of the insults re: the present, most of them are equally contradictory to their current situation/the immediate reason the fight started. (she wasn't bullying anyone/being especially "witchy" beyond being a little harsh towards him. he wasn't being a coward. him being "a geek" could be in reference to him needing to be involved in the "brains" part of the operation here, but that's a bit of a reach.)

but the most interesting one is "control freak," which i mentioned i'd be circling back to later. now is later! joy's not being a "control freak" -- he literally asked her to help and won't let her do her job. that's the projection, by the way. he's the one overstepping, and while i at least can tell it's coming from...not an intentionally bad place per se (mix of guilt running amok/being the usual "ideas guy" and doesn't know how else to deal with feeling stressed out despite it Not Helping/Genuine Concern And Fear), it's certainly super obnoxious of him to take it out on joy, and i wouldn't discount the interpretation of him being arrogant/a bit of a chauvinist here, lmao. chauvinism doesn't feature much, if at all, in his characterization as a pattern, but arrogance certainly can.

i say can because this is the 4th layer of future, LOL. the senet game serves as great foreshadowing (and in some ways, a better version of, in my opinion) fabian succumbing to the sin of pride -- to RFS himself, no less, who designed this game as a hubris trap. it's notable that sinner-fabian targets joy to insult directly, ESPECIALLY after she's had such a successful growth period while so many other people in the house became the worst versions of themselves, and i like to think that was written with this in mind.

i'm going to be saving any s3 thoughts past that for another day because they're...complicated, and i'm not sure how to best express them yet and REALLY don't want to contribute to tired-out discourse or come off like a hater, lmfao. the only reason i even Mention it is because i don't have any of the...usual? issues with it? i have no gripes with screen time balance and like that it really delves into the logical-conclusion consequences of previous seasons. if anything, it has a lot of my favorite shit (KT, joy's "redemption arc," fabian being allowed by the story to be as unreliable as other characters, eddie's maturation). my issue is more in the very-pretentious-narrative-theory zone (specifically craft stuff like tone and the specific mechanics of how character development functions on screen, not necessarily what the characters develop into), so i'll leave that for the "The Only Two (2) Functional Changes I Would Make To Season Three That Leave It Both Essentially The Same, And Yet Different Enough To Solve What I Believe Are Critical Audience Engagement Complications" post? i guess?

if you made it this far, i'll buy you some eyedrops because i know MY eyes are dry after typing this beast up in one sitting. i am terminally verbose :3 but fr, thank you! let me know what you think, ESPECIALLY if you disagree. i promise i won't call you a geek or a bully <3

#house of anubis #hoa #hoa meta #my writing #i didn't set out to write something that belonged in that tag but well. it's definitely an essay.#very funny to me that i HATED this scene as a kid. or at least it made me very upset and overloaded me so i assumed that was hatred LOL #have liked it way more on recent rewatches but working on this amv (coming soon) and scrubbing through it over and over caused Realizations

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