#she literally made this war this genocide about herself and how shes always the victim

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

Hi, first off I ship Zutara and I come in peace. I was pointed your way by a friend when I asked for people who ship kataang who are nevertheless willing to hear different views. I have lurked on blog a week and finally got up my nerve to ask how you or any other Kataang can deny that the last part of book 3 was completely Zutara but then stopped abruptly with no buildup? You can finesse tone on text so I'm not being sarcastic or bitchy, it is a serious question (1/5)

In The Southern Raiders, Katara realizes she has been wrong about Zuko. In Ember Island Players, she realizes Aang is not as mature as she thought he was, and in the finale, Katara does not care a whit that Aang is gone. I am serious and as someone who is no Aang stan but likes him, I’m actually annoyed by how little anyone cared about his disappearance. It went from “Aang’s gone!” to “Okay whatever, let’s find Iroh so he can kill Ozai.” (2/5)

Katara was all over Zuko (honestly, again not being a jerk) in the finale until for whatever reason, she wasn’t. She was giving him a pep talk about Iroh, she was going with him to Azula, she was healing him and saying he saved her not the other way around. I genuinely don’t get why this isn’t seen as romantic. I will grant you that Zuko would not have allowed Azula to kill anyone but I feel the point here was Zuko realizing his life was pointless if Katara was killed. (4/5)

And then literally at the end, Mai shows up after Zuko not talking about her at all for six episodes and declares herself Zuko’s girlfriend. And Katara kisses Aang after being annoyed with and by him arguably since The Southern Raiders. I get that Kataang “won” and I’ve made peace with that, but ... I can’t understand why Kataang shippers are okay with such a crap story. I swear on my gmom [sic] if they’d done this for [Zvtara], I’d be mad as hell. So I don’t understand, I really don’t. (5/5)

As always, I shall begin with a disclaimer: anon, you do not have to agree with this post. No one has to agree with this post, as it is strictly my own thoughts on the subject matter raised here! As per usual, I will not be putting this in the main tags - much less the Zvtara tag! - because I have basic fandom decency, lmao. If you (the general you, not anon specifically) do disagree with this post, that is totally fine, I simply ask that you are polite in expressing your disagreement (if you choose to do so at all! no one is expected to, lmao. i promise).

Alright. Formalities are out of the way!

I’ll admit I giggled a little bit when you say you lurked on my blog for a week, because I’ve actually talked about this subject numerous times in the past! I just found it funny you hadn’t stumbled across any posts about it yet, lol. So, as a heads up, know that I will be providing several links in this post since - again - this subject and related subjects have been analyzed a multitude of times before. I highly recommend reading them all! Mostly because I don’t intend to spend forever restating what’s been said over and over and over lmaooo. I will provide the resources, but it is up to each individual to take advantage of them.

To begin: your ask actually contains a few logical fallacies, anon! I do not mean this as shade or to belittle you - I fall victim to this issue all the time myself. Anyone who writes analyses or participates in debates does! Humans are imperfect and often like to cut corners to reach a conclusion. It is nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about because - as the existence of your ask in inbox indicates - you are willing to learn more. So kudos to you, my friend!

Alright. So what logical fallacies am I talking about here? (For the record: specific definitions of logical fallacies were taken from here.)

1. Hasty Generalization.

“A hasty generalization is a general statement without sufficient evidence to support it.” Numerous claims are made in this ask that I have absolutely no doubt you believe to be true, anon, but there really isn’t any concrete evidence to support it! I will go into more detail later, of course, but let’s quickly look at one example:

“In Ember Island Players, [Katara] realizes Aang is not as mature as she thought he was…”

For the time being, I will ask but one question: from the show itself, not fanon, how do you know this?

2. Causal Fallacy

Ah, this guy. My own worst enemy, tbh! “A causal fallacy is any logical breakdown when identifying a cause,” of which there are several types. “One causal fallacy is the false cause or non causa pro causa (‘not the-cause for a cause’) fallacy, which is when you conclude about a cause without enough evidence to do so.” In your ask, you claim:

“I will grant you that Zuko would not have allowed Azula to kill anyone but I feel the point here was Zuko realizing his life was pointless if Katara was killed.”

Again, for the time being, I will ask only one question: from the show itself, not fanon, what led you to believe this statement?

“Another kind of causal fallacy is the correlational fallacy also known as cum hoc ergo propter hoc (Lat., ‘with this therefore because of this’). This fallacy happens when you mistakenly interpret two things found together as being causally related.” In your ask, you claim:

“Katara was all over Zuko (honestly, again not being a jerk) in the finale until for whatever reason, she wasn’t. She was giving him a pep talk about Iroh, she was going with him to Azula, she was healing him and saying he saved her not the other way around. I genuinely don’t get why this isn’t seen as romantic.”

I will ask one question: from the show itself, not fanon, why would you believe these are indicative of romance? (Consider the context the show is situated in, too - e.g. the war, Katara being Azula’s only available match in skill, etc.)

The reason I bring up the issue of logical fallacies is again not at all to make you feel bad, anon!! You were simply trying to express your point to me and I greatly appreciate you taking the time to do so. See, your ask actually presents a larger fandom trend:

Misconstruing fanon as canon.

What you have offered to me, anon, are fanon conclusions. To clarify: there is absolutely nothing wrong with fanon. I adore fanon interpretations (an example I have used in the past is Kuzaang - like, I don’t care that there’s no canon basis! I do what I want lmao!), but a line has to be drawn between exploring fanon interpretations and expecting everyone to take that fanon as canon. Again, anon, this is not your fault! It is not any one person’s fault, lmao. It is an issue of fandom as a whole, and all of us fall victim to it.

With that in mind, I will break down the different components of your ask. I will also do my best to be brief - as aforementioned, I and others have analyzed this issue numerous times before, lmao. To avoid confusion, it would be best to read through each or at least most links as they are provided!

Firstly, there are two posts I have made in the past that almost directly answer your overarching question here in this ask. Please read them prior to continuing, as I will occasionally reference them:

This post explains how Zvtara was not built up from TSR/EIP-onwards, and how their supposed “canon enemies to lovers arc” is a completely fanon construction.

This post explains the issue of the “canon Zvtara” rhetoric from rabid zkers (and you, anon, are absolutely NOT one, in case you were worried).

Alrighty. With that out the way, let’s get into it!

“In The Southern Raiders, Katara realizes she has been wrong about Zuko.”

Gotta start by saying that TSR is not about Zuko. TSR is, first and foremost, about Katara. Katara does not realize she was wrong about Zuko, because here’s the truth - she wasn’t wrong about him. Zuko did horrible things to the Gaang. Katara was not wrong to hold him accountable for that. What Katara does realize is that holding such rage so close to her chest is bad for her. This rage was not solely anger against Zuko, either; it was of course about Yon Rha, too, but it was also anger towards Kya and Katara herself. Essentially, TSR is where Katara realizes she has to forgive herself. Zuko is only one part of her journey (similar to Aang’s role in the episode, if a different end of the spectrum).

This post explains how TSR was fundamentally about Katara.

Additional resources about TSR:

This post explains Aang’s comments to Katara in TSR and how Katara herself recognized their validity.

This post explains why both Aang and Zuko were important to Katara in TSR.

This post is an extensive breakdown of Aang and Katara’s relationship within TSR.

“In Ember Island Players, [Katara] realizes Aang is not as mature as she thought he was…”

You provide no context for this claim, so I’m going to work with the assumption this is about their reactions to the play itself and the infamous kiss!

There is something important we must keep in mind when discussing EIP: the play they watch is literally imperialist propaganda. It is meant to demean the entire Gaang, and indeed it does exactly that. You mention Katara and Aang specifically, so I will recap what I have explained before about their depictions in EIP: Katara, an indigenous woman, is hypersexualized and portrayed as overly emotional (and thus “irrational”). This reinforces the Fire Nation sentiment that women of the Water Tribes are less intelligent and less suited for “responsibility” than Fire Nation women. Aang, a pacifist and the sole survivor of genocide who is also canonly the male character most comfortable with femininity and spirituality, is portrayed as a flighty, airheaded woman (this is a well-known imperialist tactic meant to emasculate the target, seeing as masculinity was often equated with power in fascist regimes; thus, they effectively belittled Aang before the FN audience). This reinforces the Fire Nation sentiment that the Air Nomads were foolish, weak people who deserved to die.

In other words, of course Aang and Katara were upset about how they portrayed in the play. It is understandable that tensions would be running high and consequently that mistakes (we all know the one) would be made.

This post explains how EIP belittles each member of the Gaang (and why the play is not indicative of Zvtara).

This post talks specifically about EIP and their portrayal of Aang and Katara.

Now onto the kiss. As everyone knows and no one has ever disagreed with, Aang was wrong to kiss Katara. Point blank!

But what people do misunderstand is Katara and Aang’s feelings regarding the kiss. Given your above quote, I assume you believe Aang kissing Katara supposedly made her realize that Aang wasn’t as mature as she once thought. On the surface, this seems like a logical conclusion! But digging deeper reveals… well, there’s nothing that indicates this conclusion at all. Even jumping ahead to the finale, when Zuko has doubts over Aang’s return, Katara demonstrates her faith in Aang (although of course she’s nervous - I won’t deny the obvious, lmao) as she says, “Aang won’t lose. He’s gonna come back. He has to.”

In other words, nothing in canon suggests that Katara believes Aang is immature because of what happened in EIP. She still trusts in his return, as she did even before she knew him (and arguably is more confident in him now, given the 60~ episodes of them growing closer). Furthermore, when Aang does disappear, Katara doesn’t have an outburst about how “immature” it was for him to “run away again.” The viewers know Aang didn’t run away, of course (fans who insist he did are not worth arguing with, anon - they don’t understand the show, rip), but that is a luxury the rest of the Gaang is not afforded. And yet even though Aang has vanished off the face of the planet, Katara still believes he will save the world. If anything, that signifies the utmost confidence in his skill and maturity!

To go back to the kiss itself, this post explains the true source of Katara’s conflict in turning down Aang (hint: she says it herself in the episode! you know, the whole war going on) and why the EIP kiss did not sink Kataang’s relationship.

Additional sources about EIP:

This post explains how the EIP kiss was resolved through narrative parallels.

This post explains how the EIP kiss is so often blown out of proportion.

“… and in the finale, Katara does not care a whit that Aang is gone. I am serious and as someone who is no Aang stan but likes him, I’m actually annoyed by how little anyone cared about his disappearance. It went from ‘Aang’s gone!’ to ‘Okay whatever, let’s find Iroh so he can kill Ozai.’”

As I already touched upon, Katara didn’t need a soliloquy to emphasize her connection to Aang once he disappeared. She trusts that he will return. She says so herself. I guess I just don’t understand how you got from Point A, Katara has consistent faith in Aang, to Point B, Katara and the rest of the Gaang didn’t care about Aang’s disappearance. It’s honestly a bit more like Point A to Point Z, lmao! If you would like to expand on your logic here, I would love to hear more!!

There are a few specific aspects I want to note about your rationale, though. You argue the Gaang moves from ‘Aang disappeared’ to ‘let’s find Iroh,’ but the Gaang actually went from:

1. Aang disappeared!

2. They search the entire island for him.

3. Okay, they couldn’t find him, so they track down June and have her try to find Aang.

4. June says to them, “No, I mean he’s gone gone. He doesn’t exist.” (And she clarifies to Sokka that she doesn’t mean dead, either - she means Aang has totally blinked out of their world.)

5. Only after all of this do they decide to track down Iroh.

The Gaang cares immensely about the fact that Aang is gone, and you could actually argue they waste time by trying to track him down. They don’t give up until June essentially tells them that some Spirit World shenanigans were involved. Even if you don’t think they reached that specific conclusion, I have to ask: What else were they supposed to do? They were told Aang didn’t exist! How are they supposed to fix that?

Well, they can’t. So they do the next best thing: they find Iroh, the man who knows Ozai better than anyone and is also one of the most talented firebenders in the world. In my opinion, that’s a very logical step to take.

“Katara was all over Zuko (honestly, again not being a jerk) in the finale until for whatever reason, she wasn’t. She was giving him a pep talk about Iroh, she was going with him to Azula, she was healing him and saying he saved her not the other way around. I genuinely don’t get why this isn’t seen as romantic.”

I’ll be blunt here, lol: in my opinion, nothing of what you listed in your ask is inherently romantic.

Okay. I am going to assume you’ve read the first two posts I linked earlier (“Zvtara did not have an E-L arc” and “the ‘canon’ Zvtara of rabid zkers has issues”), because I do not intend to rehash everything they contain, lol. Consequently, I presume you realize by now that there was no canon romantic interest between Zuko and Katara.

And as I always say, just because there wasn’t a canon romance doesn’t mean people can’t take fanon routes! Of course they can! That’s the entire point of fanon! But fanon is not canon, and I am strictly referring to canon in my discussions.

You claim Katara was all over Zuko, which in itself I don’t think is an accurate assessment, because she doesn’t really do anything with Zuko outside the three points you bring up (other than the June gag, which I addressed in one of the aforementioned linked posts). So I’ll go ahead and break down each instance you provide!

1. “[Katara] was giving [Zuko] a pep talk about Iroh”

Katara asked Zuko if he was okay. She asked him if he was genuinely sorry. She reassures him that Iroh will forgive him. That’s… all. Not to diminish the significance of this conversation, but it’s not exactly an intimate, romantically-charged discussion (unless fanon-ized). But on that note, let’s tackle the canon significance of this moment!

Katara knows firsthand the challenge of forgiving Zuko. And she knows that Zuko understands how hard it was for her to forgive him (note: Katara’s anger was totally justified, and anyone who disagrees is probably a rabid Zuko stan lmao). She also recognizes that Zuko is terrified it will take Iroh the same struggle to forgive him that Katara went through. This scene is not related to romance at all. It’s about compassion. It’s about Katara and Zuko’s friendship having progressed, slowly but surely, to the point where she’s not afraid to extend empathy to him anymore (seeing as the first time, beneath Ba Sing Se, did not go so well; you know - Aang died and all). It’s about Zuko recognizing his own fallibility (and the audience recognizing how much he’s grown). He questions how he can even face his uncle after all he’s done to the man, which is a far cry from his entitled attitude in TSR, where he demanded to know why Katara didn’t trust him when everyone else had forgiven him.

To make this moment, this moment about Zuko’s relationship with his uncle who is all but a literal father to him, this moment of vulnerability, of guilt, of remorse, of growth, to claim this powerful moment is about a nonexistent romantic relationship? In my opinion, that is incredibly reductive to what this scene is supposed to signify. And again, there is nothing wrong with people exploring such a possibility in fanon, but in canon? Nah. It doesn’t track.

2. “[Katara] was going with [Zuko] to Azula”

Don’t forget that at first, Zuko planned to take on Azula alone. He doesn’t request Katara to accompany him until Iroh tells him that he’ll need help. As such, Zuko’s immediate agreement with Iroh is reflective of his personal growth (Book 1 and 2 Zuko would have argued and insisted he didn’t need any help). It also demonstrates, however, that Katara was not obsessively on Zuko’s mind. He doesn’t choose Katara until Iroh points out that Zuko will need assistance in taking Azula down. This means that Zuko’s choice of Katara to join him is a tactical decision, not an emotional one. And by all accounts, it’s a damn good decision! Zuko witnessed firsthand beneath Ba Sing Se a) how powerful Katara was (e.g. that wave after Aang died) and b) how Katara was the only one who could take on Azula*.

Of course, besides the fact that Katara was the only match for Azula, who else was Zuko going to choose? Sokka and Suki, while talented in their own right, were no competition for Azula. Toph, while the greatest earthbender in the world, was needed to metalbend the airships. Katara was the only (and the best!) option.

Also, on their trip to face Azula, the only thing they talk about within their three lines of canon conversation are Azula and Aang. Not exactly a romantic flight, lmao.

*Zuko never saw Aang fight Azula on the drill.

3. “[Katara] was healing [Zuko] and saying he saved her not the other way around”

Actually, this is what the transcript says:

Zuko: Thank you, Katara.

Katara: I think I’m the one who should be thanking you.

You’re right about how their lines refer to them saving each other, but you posit it as a romantic moment, when the lines are actually pretty straightforward. Zuko thanks Katara as she heals him from the partially-redirected lightning strike, and Katara thanks him for trying to redirect the lightning away from her and in doing so saving her life. In terms of canon, there’s nothing romantic about this, lol! (Which I talked about extensively in the E-L post, if you need to reference it again.) The reason being is that you have to take the show itself into context when you do analysis. If there was no canon romantic buildup between Zuko and Katara, why would these lines in canon (not fanon! fanon is free rein, lmao) be interpreted through a romantic lens?

Well, they wouldn’t be interpreted as such. Plain and simple.

“I genuinely don’t get why this isn’t seen as romantic.”

Because looking through a canon lens, they aren’t romantic. That’s all. You are of course welcome to view them as such through a fanon lens!! It’s just about recognizing the line between canon and fanon.

“I will grant you that Zuko would not have allowed Azula to kill anyone but I feel the point here was Zuko realizing his life was pointless if Katara was killed.”

I asked earlier what content in the show itself led you to believe. I have wracked my own mind, and I cannot think of anything that would point to this conclusion. Zuko was in Katara’s good graces for 5 episodes. That’s 8% of the show. Not exactly a lot of time for Zuko to start believing his life would be pointless if Katara was killed, is it?

This post explains the improbability of Zuko having a crush on Katara within canon.

This post explains how Zuko’s racism towards the Air Nomads in TSR and the finale is, well, exactly that - racism (and not a sign of a crush on Katara).

And, of course, as has been said a million times, Zuko taking the lightning for Katara out of romantic interest would completely undermine his redemption arc. Since it has been said over and over and over, I will be brief: Zuko taking the lightning is significant because it is a selfless act (one of his only in the series), and it directly parallels his selfish act of choosing not to intervene when Azula killed Aang with lightning beneath Ba Sing Se. This moment demonstrates Zuko’s growth, how he has learned to accept unconditional love from Iroh and the Gaang and Mai and even Ty Lee and sure, even from Appa and Momo, too. To make this moment of pure selflessness about a nonexistent romance? To force a fanon romance in replacement of canon redemption and canon platonic significance?

Such a decision speaks wonders about a person’s priorities, in my opinion, as well as how amatonormativity impacts them.

Furthermore, Zuko’s choice cements Katara’s position as his surrogate sibling, as she is Azula’s primary foil. Zuko chooses the sister who heals over the sister who harms. I won’t go too much into it here, because it has already been talked about extensively before! Thus, I offer you this post that explains how Zuko and Katara - in canon - are positioned as surrogate siblings as well as Azula’s role in this matter. I also offer this post that lays out through screencaps how Zuko and Katara - in canon - treat each other like family.

Additional sources about the final Agni Kai:

This post in part discusses fanon misinterpretation of the final Agni Kai and why such a lens is not true to canon relationships.

This post explains why the final Agni Kai is not intended to be romantic.

This post explains how the final Agni Kai is primarily about Azula and how reducing it to be a big Zvtara moment is detrimental to both her and to Zuko and Katara themselves.

“And then literally at the end, Mai shows up after Zuko not talking about her at all for six episodes and declares herself Zuko’s girlfriend.”

This point could probably get a post of its own, lol, but fortunately I and others have already written a few! I will link them below - first, however, I question your choice of “declares.” Technically, yes, Mai does say outright that it doesn’t hurt how the new Fire Lord is her boyfriend, but your phrasing implies Zuko resisted her proclamation. When… he doesn’t. In fact, he embraces it, asking if that means she doesn’t hate him anymore (read: he asks if they’re back on good terms again). Zuko clearly doesn’t have a problem with the girl he loves wanting to be with him again - so why do some parts of fandom so adamantly insist he does? (Not you, anon - I am referring to the rabid fanoners, lol.)

Also, regarding how Zuko hasn’t talked about Mai for six episodes, we’ve gotta be realistic with this assessment in terms of canon:

1. It was the crux of the war. They were either going to live or die. There was no time for romance at this point! Sokka and Suki weren’t professing their love on the battlefield, lmao, so it’s not exactly strange that Zuko didn’t bust into a monologue about how he missed Mai. I think they were just a little bit distracted by the possible end of the world, lol, and all that jazz.

2. Zuko probably thought Mai was dead. He knows what Azula is like. He knows his sister doesn’t have time for people who get in her way (Aang can testify to this, lmao). So can you blame him for not wanting to think about how the girl he loved had died (to his knowledge) to save him?

You gotta cut the kid some slack, lol. Anyways! Additional sources about Maiko:

This post breaks down the notion of Maiko and “deserve.”

This post rationalizes through a canon lens why Mai’s arrival at the palace surprised Zuko.

This post is the mother of Maiko metas, explaining in tremendous detail why their relationships works, is relevant to canon, and was well-implemented for what its role was.

“And Katara kisses Aang after being annoyed with and by him arguably since The Southern Raiders.”

What in canon has led you to the conclusion that Katara was annoyed with Aang? What specific moments from TSR to the finale made you think Katara was annoyed with Aang and remained annoyed with Aang? Are there any, or are you thinking about fanon interpretation? (Canon vs fanon strikes again!)

In TSR, Katara explicitly thanks Aang for understanding her perspective. Nothing there is indicative of annoyance (and as in the links provided earlier, she was not angry at Aang/Zuko/etc. so much as she was at herself. well, she was a little bit angry with Zuko, lmao). In EIP, Katara is understandably angry at Aang’s decision to kiss her, but Aang completely backs off, and we see in the part 1 of the finale that there are no hard feelings or weird tension between them. Katara in fact actively expresses concern for Aang after Zuko sporadically attacked him when she demands of the firebender, “What’s wrong with you? You could have hurt Aang!” Even when Aang and Katara do butt heads later in the episode as Aang tries to think of a way to defeat Ozai without killing him, Katara doesn’t stay frustrated. Like I said - when she and Zuko are flying to Azula, she demonstrates her unwavering faith in Aang through her belief that he will return. So… where is the annoyance that you feel was present?

With all this mind, i.e. looking strictly at canon, Katara wasn’t annoyed with Aang during this time. Thus, Katara kisses Aang because she loved him. Because he backed off and gave her the space she needed to make a decision about if she wanted to be with him (hence Katara being the one to initiate the kiss). Because the issue was never about if she reciprocated his feelings (they both knew they loved each other) but rather it had to do with the war. At the end of the finale, the war is over, and there is nothing that prevents them from being together. Simple.

This post explains how Katara’s feelings for Aang develop throughout the series (and were not neglected, as rabid zkers like to claim, for some reason? again - you are not one of them, anon).

This post also covers Katara’s interest in Aang throughout the series.

“I can’t understand why Kataang shippers are okay with such a crap story.”

I mean, you definitely don’t have to ship Kataang. It may not be your cup of tea, and that’s totally okay! But as the above links demonstrate, Kataang was a fantastic story. It was well-implemented into the narrative from Day 1. The soulmateism is unparalleled!

Also, it’s worth noting that A:TLA itself was essentially pre-written. The writers knew how the story would end from the get-go, including that the show would end with Kataang. A few Zvtara gags were thrown in to add a sense of “who will Katara choose?” drama as the show aired, but Zuko and Katara were never planned to end up together. One reason so many newer fans are fine with Kataang from the start is that there’s no tension of waiting a week for a new episode when you can watch all 61 episodes straight through on Netflix, lmao. It’s even more obvious now than when A:TLA was airing that Aang and Katara will end up together, if that makes sense. (Although I talked about this in the E-L post linked earlier, so you probably understand this point already, as it was explained in detail there!)

All of this is to say that Kataang is not a “crap story” in terms of writing (again, personal taste is a different matter) because it was woven in from the beginning and had powerful narrative significance! (Kataang represented numerous complementary components of the series, such as yin and yang, push and pull, air and water, Oma and Shu, etc.)

Now. If you really and truly want to understand why Kataang shippers like Kataang, anon, consider reading some Kataang fanfics or exploring some Kataang headcanons. I read fics involving Zvtara more regularly than you might think, lol, because… well, it’s just a ship. I understand the appeal of romantic Zvtara and I can actually appreciate it when it’s well-written! I’m sure if you’re willing to put in just a little legwork (you don’t need to go the whole mile, lmao - ‘tis just fandom), you’ll realize why people like Kataang, even if it isn’t exactly your thing. You have the range, anon!! You got this!

I hope I managed to answer your questions, my friend! As always, you do not have to agree with anything I have said here. It is totally fine if you and anyone else disagrees! Everything above is simply my own perspective on the matter. Thank you for taking the time to read my response and all the different links I provided! I hope it has expanded your understanding of the subject at hand!

#i spent all day writing this lmaooo #TWO WHOLE HOURS SPENT COMPILING LINKS #amy answers #anon #amy analyzes

[transmalewife]

"don’t bring real life fascism and opposition to it into it" Are you high? The original villains of this franchise were modeled after Nazi Germany. Star Wars has ALWAYS been about opposing fascism. And if you think otherwise, then I sincerely doubt you understand what politics in media looks like.

Have you even read my post? I specifically mention how the original villains and some of the new ones fit the definition of fascism. Also, even though the empire was very obviously inspired by nazi germany in aesthetic, their ideology is kind of sanitized of any real world political implications and kept to an all encompassing pure evil, so that the heroes can be made into a universal good, fighting to restore the system that was there before, without having to consider for a second how that system might have encouraged that ideology to flourish. To bring in real world politics into it for a second (in a way infinitely more relevant than antifa as ill explain in a moment) it's comparable to america fighting fascism in europe without really examining how the eugenics it was based on actually started in the US, and how capitalism allows for and even encourages sorting people into human and subhuman categories. Which is actually why we're dealing with a resurgence in fascism in real life currently, mostly stemming from america. So the empire in the original trilogy is overtly inspired by nazi aesthetics, I won't deny that, but even in the OT it has very few ideological similarities (or really, very little ideology at all). Mostly bc in 1970's america nazi germany was a really simple cinematographic shorthand to show a government is evil. It follows that the rebellion would share some aesthetic similarities with the allied forces, while very firmly being in favor of restoring an old system and not instituting a new one, to avoid any uncomfortable self reflection in the silly sci fi movie or worse, any potential assosiation of the rebellion with a communist revolution.

However, neither the prequel, sequel, or original trilogy villains share aesthetic similarities with modern day fascism (firstly because for a topic like that to be safe to explore in a silly sci fi movie you have to wait for a good 30 years so it's not too soon, and second of all bc modern day fascism has a really pathetic aesthetic) nor is the in universe oposition to it in any way similar to antifa, who are in support of a revolution to build a new system instead of desperately trying to restore the old one as it crumbles in their hands. and ideologically, it's even further from it. modern day fascism's core tennet is racial purity, (not the cult of personality single dictator thing that was the most obvious ideological similarity between the emire and real world fascism) and while that topic is alluded to with the empire's having only humans in prominent roles it's never actually explored in any great depth in the movies.

Ideologically, how is palpatine a fascist? what is his ideology even? it really does boil down to a universal evil kill everyone power for power's sake evil wizard politics. Even his genocide of the jedi is a very clumsy allegory for the holocaust bc the jedi were killed for being an actual credible threat to him as an organisation, which jews weren't in nazi germany. Dooku has that human supremacist motivation explored in the rots novel, but again it's not really shown in the movies or series at all. This is why it's extremely tone deaf to compare anakin or palpatine to modern day fascism, and why comparing the pro-establishment, conservative in the most literal sense of the word, pro-liberal democracy jedi who opposed them to antifa is borderline offensive.

Now, finally coming back to anakin. aotc anakin specifically, since that's where i see the term "baby fascist" applied more often, usually in the context of "how could Padme marry a baby fascist???". and yeah, how could she marry a mass murderer, a child murderer? those are terms strong enough to cause the outrage you want to, and actually useful for exploring her motivations and how fucked up the whole situation was, you don't need to compare him to the most destructive and evil political ideology in human history. And I say compare, because it certainly isn't character analysis. The modern idea of a fascist is "disilusioned young white man with a penchant for murder" and Anakin certainly fits that definition, but stopping there is ignoring so much context the whole thing gets absurd. The reason young white men in america are the group most likely to become fascists is because they are the most priviledged group in society, and in recent years increasingly being told that they are, while still being fucked over by capitalism like we all are, so they really don't feel like they're reaping the benefits of that priviledge (even though they are and everyone else is worse off compared to them). Anakin is not in any measurable way priviledged. His distrust in the system, his political ideas stem very directly from him being part of an oppressed group, a former slave, then being forced to assimilate into the system that ignored that slavery while his mother still suffers under it. (and also from palpatine telling him how cool it would be if he had absolute power over the galaxy since anakin was literally nine years old). His lust for power (which, very interestingly never actually involves HIM getting more power, just enforcing it for "someone wise") isn't a lust for more power than he already has, it's a lust for any political power to protect people like him being hurt by the current system. His masacre of the tuskens, while undoubtedly racially motivated (and as such, handled extremely poorly by the narrative), is not actually genocide: his aim wasn't to wipe the entire tusken population, nor is it in any way comparable to fascist violence: it's not politically motivated, or caused by hatred of the minority group in question for their very existence, it's very direct revenge for a personal hurt done to them. In fact, considering tatooine has no legal system we know of and its inhabitants solve problems with casual extreme violence, Anakin was probably justified (within that society's mindset, in which he grew up) in murdering the tuskens that actually killed and hurt his mother in an extremely violent way. (i mean the tuskens killed shmi violently, not that anakin was justified in using extreme violence specifically) He undoubtedly went too far in killing the entire village, and as a jedi he should know better than to kill in revenge at all, but he knew that it was the only way the actual murderers would be brought to justice, since tatooine is outside the jurisdiction of the republic's legal system, and has no legal system of his own. This is personal, emotional, desperate revenge for an actual harm done to him by (most of) the victims, not a calm and cool extermination of an (in his mind) subhuman race for being that race and no other reason. It's deeply, profoundly wrong, a sign of how low he can fall when pushed, directly causal to how he reacted when padme was in danger in rots, and a massive red flag for padme herself in aotc. It is not, however, fascist violence, it's homeric violence.

#thank you for the ask i love writing meta right after i wake up and this actually gave me an excuse to explore this topic in more detail #star wars meta #anakin skywalker #anakin skywalker meta #mine #tw fascism #ask #anon

[hawkeyedflame]

Okay! This is all from memory so forgive me if I've forgotten something.

Starting with Roy: while I still maintain that he's a himbo, I think he's more complicated than I initially gave him credit for. When I sent the previous essay I was fully expecting him to go from this morally gray Dirty Harry style government figure to the white knight hero who saves the day and becomes a saint, but he maintained his moral ambiguity, which i REALLY appreciate in a character. A common theme throughout the show is being haunted by your past, and Roy is no exception, while he might have justified his actions at the time with the guise of doing his duty and patriotism he always knew what he did was wrong, and this ate away at him more and more as time went on. And to find out the atrocities you committed were not justified, but in fact utterly evil? Devastating. That's why I think the confrontation with Envy is so powerful, not only did Envy start the war, but they also killed Roy's best friend, and this truly set Roy off the rails. Perhaps he thought that by destroying Envy he could somehow vindicate himself. But that's not true, if Roy lost himself down in the tunnels he would only have spiraled downwards out of control, and it took a guiding hand to bring him back from the edge.

Speaking of, Riza! When I first spoke of her I Thought she was just a cool lady with guns, now I see that she's more than just a cool lady with guns, she's another example of a broken individual just trying to do the right thing. I think she's had a hard life, I can't imagine growing up with an alchemist father was easy, especially when his subject of choice was so dangerous, but then to have said dangerous work permanently marked on her own skin and told to keep it secret is tragic. It must have taken so long to precisely tattoo on her, and longer yet for Roy to study it. She must've trusted him enough to allow him to study it, so I imagine her thinking "did I make a big mistake?" upon seeing Roy use flame alchemy during the war. Speaking of the war, Riza appeared to be very young when she was involved, which is also tragic. It's like she had her youth and Innocence ripped away by forces she couldn't control. And while Roy might have had a higher body count, Riza was a sniper which meant she had a more...intimate relationship with the atrocities she committed. This is reflected in the scene where she buried a person she killed and asked Roy to disfigure her back to rid the world of her father's burden. She felt it was her mistake. Another very powerful, defining scene. Her father's work, the war, that moment, all stuck with her for the years after. Changed her. She clearly became very close with Roy during the war and they decided that they had to stick by one another.

To touch on their relationship very briefly, I honestly don't have the words to describe how just PERFECT their relationship is tbh. Like, their relationship inspired me to alter how I portray the relationship between two of my own characters, so that should tell you how much I like them. The dynamic is just great!

anon i love you, but you understand that himbos are like.. dumb and nice, right? roy is pretty much a genius and like.. he's not very nice, despite being a good person. i concede that, at times, he absolutely radiates himbo energy, but he is NOT a himbo. i will throw hands with you on this hill.

also, yes i completely agree that i prefer he was not relegated to a boring white knight. he is much more interesting as a man seeking redemption than a man absolved of his past. the confrontation with envy is easily the most impactful moment of any piece of media i've ever engaged with, personally. the life-and-death stakes of that moment were so unconventional compared to life-and-death in other stories. in most stories, the danger of death is coming from the opponent the hero is fighting. you're on the edge of your seat because you don't know if your protag is going to dodge the attacks, find the opening to strike, and be able to finish the job. but roy has already won. he has overpowered envy with very little effort and reduced him to his weakest and most helpless state. the danger is not from his opponent here. in this moment, the greatest threat to roy's life is his own hatred. we don't want him to finish the job; it would mean his own undoing if he did. we ache for the pain that he is in, but we also know deep down that riza is right, that what he is about to do will bring him to a place where nobody, not even she, can reach him. and it hurts so badly, because what brought roy to such unbelievable hatred is the unmitigated intensity of his love. because we all love. and to see such love turn into such hate is to see a crossroads in our own souls, the choice between hatred and grief. i am certain that choosing grief is the more difficult path, and i cannot imagine the state of his heart and soul in that moment.

as for riza.. god.. she fucking kills me, man. it's not in the anime, but in the manga when she tells edward about ishval, she tells him that she was brought to the front lines when she was in her final year of the academy. so she was about 20, maybe 21, when she was taking part in a genocide. as a cadet. the unfortunate thing about it is that she didn't actually have her innocence quite ripped away without her control, not as she sees it at least. she maintains that she made the decision on her own to join the military, and she knew she would have to kill people. she says she has no right to see it as a burden. i think this is partially because of her own body count, but also because she feels responsible for every single ishvalan who died at roy's hand. i cannot imagine her feelings when she first sees roy there. in the manga, she actually saves him and hughes from an ishvalan assailant, and then hughes brings roy to meet his savior, and that's how they reunite. it is not clear whether riza was aware of roy's presence on the front lines via rumors, or if that moment where she rescued him was the first time she knew of his being there. either way, it's fucking tragic to realize that the boy you trusted because he told you of his naïve dreams for the future turned out to be using the powers you've given him to kill thousands of innocent people. even after she speaks with him, finds out he feels the same way she does about the war.. i simply cannot fathom the war inside of her over how she feels about him throughout the war. i have to wonder if him agreeing to burn her tattoo off was what convinced her that she could still trust him. and then she goes on to stay in the military, at his side, in spite of everything she went through and knowing there will be more to come. she bears this guilt by his side; even though she could have walked away, she would not have found rest in a civilian life, not after everything she did, the things she facilitated. she tells roy, in the manga when she reports to his office after graduating from the academy, that she likes guns because she doesn't have to feel her victims die. roy tells her this is nothing more than self deception, and she tells him she knows, and that she will continue to deceive herself for his sake, so that he can reach his goals.

and their relationship....god. i could cry. i have never loved a fictional relationship with anywhere even approaching the intensity of my love for royai. it's just so... fucking good ksjdfhgjksdhfksud like... god. the tenderness, the trust.. the fact that they literally have already been through hell and would go there again for one another willingly. the absolute dedication. the fact that they know each other so well, when riza hesitates for only a fraction of a moment, roy knows immediately that something is terribly wrong. all the little looks they give each other. god. just. GOD. damn it. i love their love so much.

#Anonymous #long post #fmab #fma talk #royai #roy mustang #riza hawkeye #otp: even into hell #sorry for longposting back at you but you Activated me... so...

[comradekatara]

If you don’t mind my asking, I’m not certain of your stance on Katara x Aang. In my opinion, it’s poorly developed and somewhat toxic. What is your opinion on this? (Feel free to ignore this, too, asking entirely out of curiosity.)

TOXIC????? TOXIC?????????? britney didn’t die for u to call aang and katara TOXIC.

I do think bryke failed at writing the romantic aspects of their relationship in a compelling way, but I do love them and their dynamic and will talk about how I interpret their relationship later in this post. for now, I want to focus on things I’ve seen people say about their relationship that I believe is a deeply unfair assessment.

katara is NOT aang’s mom. the fact that katara loves and supports aang does not mean that she is his “replacement mother”???? katara is a CHILD. she is in MIDDLE SCHOOL. she and aang get into ANTICS and give sokka TENSION HEADACHES. the very first thing they do together is go penguin sledding! aang is the first friend katara ever made, and the first time she allowed herself to have real fun since her mom died and she began carrying that burden, that guilt, grief, shame, and determination.

aang and katara both experience a similar trauma of being the last of their people, and they are able to bond over that in a way no one else truly can (katara tries to with hama, but we know how that goes). there is a deep love and understanding there, but at the end of the day, they are both KIDS. they are traumatized beyond belief, but they help each other preserve their idealism, their childhood innocence, their sense of wonder. sokka is the cynical straight man to their wide-eyed optimism and pure intentions.

they both shoulder heavy burdens, but refuse to become jaded or assimilate to the world around them out of survival. they actively resist being colonized, which is a matter of mindset and strength of character as well as just forceful acquisition of land and resources. they will behave rashly and irresponsibly for the sake of preserving their cultures, or doing what they believe to be right. katara steals from pirates because she knows that scroll is her right to own, but sokka gets mad because she doesn’t place enough caution in the consequences of stealing from pirates. aang and katara trust jet despite sokka’s warnings that he’s bad news because they want to believe in this smooth-talking revolutionary. they literally commit ecotterorism together because they believe it is the best way to save a village. they are children, with the best intentions, but children who both behave like children nonetheless.

hot take, but katara treats zuko like a brother and aang like a love interest, and the only reason people don’t see that is because they do not understand katara. katara teases zuko not to flirt, but to roast! it is the exact same way in which she talks to sokka, her primary big brother. meanwhile, katara talks to and about aang almost reverently, the same way she saw jet before learning the truth. katara consistently makes fun of sokka, toph, and zuko, but she NEVER teases aang, only treats him with absolute love and adoration.

I think the kiss in the finale makes sense, albeit not feeling entirely earned. they love each other SO MUCH, and it only makes sense for these two children who mean everything to each other to want to embark on a relationship now that the war is over. their love is real and potent. that said, my personal favorite interpretation of their relationship is one where they break up at some point as teenagers upon realizing that despite their love for each other, a romantic relationship would not be tenable.

as I’ve stated about one billion times by now, katara should 100% no question about it be chief of the southern water tribe. while she and aang are both victims of genocide, they both have an obligation to their own cultures, and that means that katara would rather stay in the south pole, while aang would live mostly nomadically. I do think that they would try to make long distance work at some point, but I think they would realize that they work better as friends. the love is still there, of course, and they never resent each other for their breakup in their teens, because they will eventually realize that love can be just as potent even when it’s not necessarily romantic.

their love story is one of childhood wonderment, and while it’s adorable, it’s not necessarily tenable. they both need partners who support them unconditionally, and that means not having to juggle the preservation of their culture with the preservation of someone else’s. their love is revolutionary, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t get messy fast. that said, they totally act like a gross couple and hold hands everywhere they go and cuddle all the time even once they’re broken up. they’re best friends for life and they love each other so much, always.

foh with “toxic”

#the bones fall #asks #aang #katara #aang&katara #analysis #:( #with the taste of your lips im on a ride????????

[thegreymoon]

just read your convo on Mordred. Agreed that his betrayal was horribly written. Dude took a knight's oath to defend and protect Camelot and her king and he forsake that oath for someone who knew about his oath but still went ahead with her assassination attempt? In those Middle Age Arthurian tales, breaking that knight's oath is enough to make Mordred the villain. ps that deleted scene was touching and explains Mordred's odd little smile when he is killed by Arthur.

I’m just not a fan of BBC Merlin’s Mordred. Usually, I love Mordred, but in most adaptations, he owns his choices and is dedicated to his betrayal (and usually, it isn’t even betrayal in the true sense as much as it is a long con). It is consistent and his reasons are understandable. In contrast to that, BBC’s Mordred turned his back on the magical community and embraced Camelot and all its anti-magic laws when it suited him. He literally led the knights when they hunted the Bendrui priestess in that one episode. He betrayed Morgana (she was evil and insane, but still) for his own ends (literally stabbed her in the back, btw), and then, after all that, he flipped again and betrayed Arthur, who had been nothing but generous and loving towards him. 

I mean, yes, there is an entire conversation to be had about Uther’s war on magic being an actual genocide and on how BBC treated the victims and made them out to be the villains, while Uther, a certified genocidal, homicidal, hypocritical, self-serving, narcissistic megalomaniac was treated with kid gloves, but Mordred is not the one to put on a pedestal as some brave freedom fighter here. They had all the backstory, all the material they needed for a fantastic character, but they wrote him in a way that left him with no likeable or redeemable qualities in the end. 

I hate how people blame Merlin for the way he turned out, because, yes, Merlin did not live up to Mordred’s expectations, but the catch is that Merlin owed him no loyalty to begin with, except being morally obligated to save the life of a child (which, after a crisis of conscience, he actually did). Mordred proved on more than one occasion that as an adult, he truly was untrustworthy and a false ally and friend to everyone he came into contact with, on both sides. Merlin was a fantastic judge of character and Mordred did not pass the sniff test with him, but he had nothing concrete on him to oust him from Arthur’s company except for the fact that the vengeful dragon who had once tried to burn down Camelot told him that he’s bad news. In addition, he was conflicted because he did not know whether Mordred truly was a bad apple, or if he himself was prejudiced against him because he was so afraid of losing Arthur, which is why it took him so long to act directly against him with no evidence.  

(I think it is also important to mention here that Merlin might have “turned his back” on the magical community, but here’s the thing: Merlin never switched loyalties! He was Arthur’s creature from day one, he made that choice very early on and he remained faithful to it until the end. It was other people who had expectations of him that he couldn’t meet, because Arthur’s well-being was always his no. 1 priority. In the meantime, he did the best he could to save as many people as possible from Uther, and later from Morgana. Blaming Merlin for Mordred and Morgana’ self-serving, murderous ways and unsavoury choices is a pet peeve of mine.)

As for Kara, I would find her a sympathetic character if they had put her anywhere else! Her hate for Arthur is perfectly understandable, her wanting to kill him is also legitimate, she was a revolutionary and wanted to die a martyr. I’m all here for that! After everything that happened to her people under Uther, and Arthur never really renouncing him or his laws (and also taking part in the persecution while Uther was still alive), she was totally justified. But, I mean, of course Arthur was going to execute her, and I don’t blame him for it either. This is a medieval warrior king we are talking about here, how could he not? Also, it is important to note that he did not execute her for using magic, but for murder, treason and attempted regicide, and on top of it all, he still threw her a lifeline to save herself, but she rejected it! In public! She signed her own death warrant. 

The point is that even though Kara’s reasons justify her, they do not apply to Mordred and even though I like her on her own, the whole thing is obnoxious in context, as a part of a plot device to give Mordred a ~sympathetic~ reason to betray Arthur. I am so not here for Mordred’s manpain and a woman having to die for the incompetent writers to advance his horribly written character arc. 

Anyway, this turned out to be way too long! Sorry for the essay, anon! In conclusion, still no love for Mordred!   

#merlin #merlin meta #kara #mordred #no love for mordred #Anonymous

[megashadowdragon]

ironwoods tragic fall from grace

comments on youtube

When a hero becomes the villain, all hell breaks loose. Especially when the fallen hero is general of the Atlesian army.

The only thing that I noticed was that Ironwood has constantly grown a Beard as time passes. He's slowly decending towards from Hero to Villain as a "Fallen Hero" Catagory. James Ironwood WAS a good man, utterly dedicated to protecting his people. It was with the best of intentions that he charged down the path he’s taken... but you know what they say about good intentions.

I didn’t think his semblance was much of a factor into his decisions before Vol 7 but now as he’s become more unhinged every chapter, it’s becoming even more strikingly obvious that he’s become a slave to it. The fact that his semblance increases his resolve to go through with bargaining with Watts, willing to blow up Mantle just to save Atlas.

He's like the antithesis of Leonardo Lionheart

You know, this is a really good counter for all those people saying Ironwood is suffering character assassination. He's not. He's giving in to fear and letting his worst aspects take command.

I’m personally asking again why would the writers talk about something like Ironwood’s semblance outside the show when for the most part the majority of people only watches the show, that’s like how the Russo brothers (the writers and directors of Avengers Infinity War and Endgame) choose to answer the hows and why on Twitter when the majority of people are only watching the movies I personally love those movies but it also would’ve been nice to see those things get explained or talked about in the movies just like how it would be nice to at least mention Ironwood’s semblance in the show

Honestly, I love what they're doing with Ironwood. His slow, inexorable descent into extremism is a wonderful exploration of how an idealistic person who believes themself to be the hero can tumble into villainy without trusting others to keep them grounded. It's the very real problem of the philosophy of "The ends justify these particular means;" if you can justify one morally gray decision to achieve a good goal, it gets easier to justify the next, darker gray decision. Without someone outside to call you on your bullshit, you're eventually justifying genocide because it will be for the "greater good."

Ironwood is literally the Darth Vader of RWBY. He starts of as a respectable character, commanding his own army for the good of all. But he gives in to all of his fears, looses a limb or 2, and slowly turns misguidedly evil, willing to kill ANYONE who stands in his way.

I've said before that Team Rwby is a foil to the Headmasters. Ruby keeping secrets like Oz, Leo/Blake, the faunus who ran away when things got hard, and Ironwood's parallel is Yang.

Not just obvious stuff, like both having metal arms. But both of their semblances are double edged sword. Yang get stronger taking damage, but if she leans on it too much, an enemy that takes one hit just destroys her since she can't fight back. Volume 4 has her training with Taiyang to correct this flaw in her thinking, leading to her overcoming Adam in her rematch in V6.

Ironwood's semblance can be incredibly powerful. Just off the top of my head, he basically no sells the Apathy, which is an incredibly dangerous Grimm in a group with other, stronger Grimm. But it has downsides, and we're seeing it. The correct way to use it is after you've made a choice, to focus on the task at hand. But making large choices while under the semblance is not smart. He's too focused on one action to see others that have opened. Atlas has to be raised, because that's what he's already decided to do. The idea that they've made contact with the world and reinforcements might be coming never entered his mind. Similarly, he's so focused on forcing Penny to heel that he's not seeing he has a chance to have her come willingly by aiding in Mantle's rescue.

He's so focused on winning this one battle (Having Penny raise the city to escape Salem immediately) that's he's making choices to doom the larger war (defending the kingdom's people, defeating Salem, reuniting the world).

He clearly knows that it isn't smart to rely on it this way, since he's shown the ability to take criticism and adjust his thinking in Volume 7 (Nora would've been Slate'd if he couldn't). But the combination of Yang/Blake going behind his back to tell Robyn, Ruby/Oscar not telling him the truth, Qrow seemingly killing Clover, and, right when he thought that he'd saved everyone, the idea that every single thing he's done might've been exactly what Salem wanted has fairly understandably shaken his faith in the others around him. He can't rely on them to rein him in, he has to do that... which is exactly the problem with his semblance. If the only person who can stop you is yourself, and you're convinced you're always right, you've doomed yourself.

I'm assuming that he could probably be talked down by Glynda or potentially Oz or Qrow (fat chance of that one) if they can break his aura, but as it stands, unless someone beats him down, he's not going to be able to stop himself.

With Ironwood I am reminded of a very profound quote from CS Lewis, that I feel summarizes him very well: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."Show less

Dude Ironwood didn't have a problem with trusting people and didn't have a mentality of not being able to trust people. He trusted to much and trusted people who both betrayed his trust (Yang/Blake) and didn't reciprocate the trust he gave them (Ruby and the rest of the main cast). Honestly, he would have been perfectly right to have immediately put the relic of knowledge into the vault at the start of v7 and then send the students on their way and have nothing more to do with them.

Ironwood saw Atlas and his fleet as a way to inspire hope. It's ironic that his plan was one of lifting them up so high that nobody would ever be able to see them anymore.

My only criticism with Ironwood is that I really really wish his semblance was brought up in the show. Are they ever going to bring it up? I absolutely LOVE how he has been written and watching his tragic descent into becoming a villain but having his semblance mentioned in show would be great. Is someone going to have to break his aura or something before he or someone else mentions it?

In a way he is. His semblance is a double edge sword, as someone in Ironwood's position is all about making calls. Ironwood was able to climb through the ranks because his semblance allowed him to follow through with his actions to save people (I also still wonder what happend to halve of his body as he already had a metal leg and arm in volume 2, we can asume the paladin project, but some confirmation would be wonderfull). Now he's following through on his words agains Salem, that Ironwood isn't going to let Salem take the relic of creation. Ironwood essentially only has this thought he is focused on and is disregarding everything else. Right now Salem is piecing herself together again and Penny is going to the vault, if Ironwood semblance of Mettle wasn't interfering he would be able to see the bigger picture of let Penny open the vault, take out the staff of cration and chuck whatever goop Salem is right now with the bit of land she is piecing herself on right now and throw that into the vault and close it for good by blocking off the entrance with concrete. Voila. Ironwood doesn't notice at this point his actions as he even thought councilman Slate, who was asking Ironwood to explain his action got put down by Ironwood himself. Same for Marrow later on, but Winter was able to step in. Ironwood needs to be saved from this mindset and I think the team up of Qrow and Robyn (also who ever was on the elevator, I think it was Winter and Marrow as Winter was taking him away to be put in jail) could save Ironwood to the point of breaking his aura that way the influence of Mettle will loosen.

Gonna be honest, I dislike the whole concept of his semblance and it being what's driving him to this is just dumb to me. I loved him as a character and this entire volume feels like every bit that made him an interesting character has been ripped away. It's likely just me, but prior to Oscar using the built-up magic to beat Salem it felt like they had painted themselves into a corner. Either Ironwood was proven right that some sacrifices had to be made for the good of the people, or Salem was going to be beaten and even if she can come back, she no longer feels like a huge threat to me. I loved Ironwood in volume seven and many of team RWBY's choices have infuriated me for how contrived and stupid they manage to be while also contradicting themselves so easily. To be frank, I feel like his semblance was just an excuse for this utterly stupid character assassination they're trying to justify.Show less

I kind of feel like the writers 'forced' Ironwood to become a villain. Some of his decisions just don't make sense.

#rwby #james ironwood #rwby ironwood #rwby volume 8 spoilers

[missmarthanightingale]

empire - exploitation & erasure

exploitation & erasure are constant themes throughout both s11 & s12 in the leadup to the reveal in the timeless children.

going episode by episode, we start with the stenza in the woman who fell to earth.  they’ve been coming to earth, for lord only knows how long, hunting humans & bringing them home as trophies to prove their prowess.  this is a way of proving their superiority - in this case, a ritual demonstration of their ‘right to rule’ - & it’s a fox hunt.  the details are different, but it’s a fox hunt.  bc the stenza are an empire, & in doctor who, every empire is the british empire.

then we have the ghost monument, which properly delves into the stenza as a civilization.  angstrom, played by an irish actress, talks about how her people are suffering, how the stenza invaded & occupied their world & are now committing genocide, how the only way to save her family is to win the race so they can afford to emigrate.  this was blatant.  the other obvious theme of exploitation is the scientists of desolation, held captive & forced to give up their secrets in the name of scientific progress - this is, remember, the same episode in which the idea of the timeless child is introduced.

rosa is, at heart, a conversation about the civil rights movement & neo-nazis.  krasko is literally trying to erase rosa parks - &, by extension, the civil right movement - from history.  rosa parks is not the entire civil rights movement, but krasko’s an idiot, so let’s roll with that idea.  neo-nazis today are constantly trying to rewrite history; this episode is a call to refuse to allow it, & a reminder that the work of the civil rights movement is yet unfinished.  in britain, as well, as ryan & yaz’s alley conversation clearly shows.

next we have arachnids in the u.k. which is very blatantly a condemnation of corporate pollution.  it’s not explicitly about exploitation, except that jack robertson is exactly the sort of man who exploits anything & everything he can, & who gets ordinary people killed for his greed, just more dramatically & directly than most corporations that dump industrial waste wherever they damn please.  we also suspect that robertson will cover it all up & get away with everything, as his sort generally do.

the next episode that deals with empire is demons of the punjab, which really doesn’t fuck around.  the partition of india is a particularly shameful & very poorly handled chapter of the history of the british empire, following a century of exploitation & abuse, which resulted in a lot of bloodshed & death, & ongoing tensions even now.  it’s also generally ignored aspect of british history.  also ignored are the indian soldiers - indeed, the soldiers from across the commonwealth - who fought in the world wars.  this episode also deals with the forgotten, unacknowledged dead.

kerblam! is definitely about exploitation.  it indirectly deals with the exploitation of workers - on a meta level, i find it almost funny that they don’t dare call amazon out more directly - with things like the tracking anklets, the invasive monitoring of employees, the rebukes for even interacting with coworkers while on the clock.  & the system is explicitly being exploited by charlie, being used to harm people & intended to be the scapegoat for his actions.

the next episode has a strong theme of exploitation is the battle of ranskoor av kolos.  the ux are very blatantly being exploited - the younger, a black man, is physically trapped & used to create things for the benefit of t’zim-sha, while the elder, a white woman, is psychologically trapped by having her faith used against her.  interestingly, she also is made complicit in keeping the younger enslaved.  the ultimate goal of their labour?  reducing entire planets to objects that can sit on t’zim-sha’s metaphorical mantlepiece.

the exploitation in spyfall is about calling out tech corporations which treat people as products, harvesting data & selling it on.  or, in this case, use it to erase dna - destroy that which makes a person what they are.  that theme of erasure carries through to the doctor removing noor & ada’s memories; memories are a significant part of what makes a person who they are, & removing them is erasing a part of that person.

orphan 55 is a grim projection of the end result of exploiting the earth - explicitly attributing the bulk of the blame to the wealthiest & most privileged - even as kane refuses to stop trying to get something out of an already dead planet.  there’s also the appropriation of land which is already inhabited by the dregs, & yes, i’m still sulking about how the doctor had nothing to say about how kane was by some standards an invader & a colonizer - worse, the descendent of someone who abandoned the land, now trying to reclaim it from those who had no choice to remain behind.

next we have nikola tesla’s night of terror, which is a condemnation of both capitalism & empire!  edison exploits his employees & denies them credit for their work, taking all the acclaim for himself instead; tesla, despite his brilliance, is largely forgotten by history.  it’s interesting that the doctor makes a point of saying that the erasure of his contributions doesn’t make them or him any less valuable in long run - it is what you do, not what is remembered, that truly matters.  the skithra, meanwhile, are another empire, very strongly paralleled with edison, who try to exploit tesla’s brilliance - the tesla, i remind you, who is explicitly compared with the doctor - try to use him to further their own power.

praxeus is a more subtle & insidious sort of exploitation, using earth as a petri dish in order to solve another planet’s problems.  they also use adam lang as a test subject, keeping him in a lab & injecting something foreign into his body; rather the opposite of what happened to the timeless child.  suki’s actions, interestingly, are said to be born of fear & desperation - she says that her species are all but wiped out.  the shobogans, in the timeless child, are said to be very few in number; perhaps a future storyline for tecteun will feature similar motivations.

the next episode is also about exploitation.  the villains of can you hear me play at destroying entire worlds for their own amusement, they literally harvest nightmares, & they use the doctor to free rakaya - by convincing her that rakaya is something other than what she is, that’s she a prisoner & a victim.  the doctor always does take the side of the victims.

& finally we get the cybermen.  this isn’t an origin story for the cybermen, which is the most common type we get on the show; this is the cyber empire, which is set on eradicating the human race, sometimes hunting them down just to kill them, sometimes using their bodies for parts, literally erasing their emotions - their humanity - & turning them into obedient machines.  however unusual ashad may be, these concepts are impossible to divorce from any cyberman story.  which makes them the perfect lead-in to the timeless child reveal - the exploitation of a child’s body, with no care for them as a person, being the foundation of an empire.  which probably also makes the master’s cyberlord scheme a particularly satisfying just desserts, in his mind.

& of course, throughout both seasons, we have the doctor’s past as a constant theme - in the first episode she has no memory of who she is, but is nevertheless completely herself; she subsequently continues to erase her past, in a way, by refusing to discuss or even acknowledge it in s11; she never tells her companions the full story in s12; fugitive of the judoon, of course, has her running into a former version of herself she has no memory or knowledge of; all culminating in the discovery that she has aeons worth of lives that have been erased, not just from herself, but from the matrix as well.

also, i know i can’t shut up about ireland, but i reiterate that every empire in doctor who is some shade of the british empire, so i find it really very interesting that the hidden truth of the doctor’s life, disguised as the brendan metaphor, was set in ireland.  & he was working for the police.  Very Interesting Indeed.

#sorry to meta at you in the middle of this withdrawal spam but i started Thinking & #anyway this is pretty rushed & not very in-depth so i'd love to see what anyone else has to say about these themes! #doctor who #dw meta #original

[cross-d-a]

Why Anakin is still the Chosen One

Here are some tired thoughts before I go to sleep:

Anakin literally tells Rey to bring balance to the Force like he once did. He defeated Palpatine in episode VI and brought balance then. Yeah, Palpatine apparently lived but that doesn't mean Anakin didn't bring balance.

Ever since Force Awakens I can't help but think that this whole sequel trilogy is an allegory for our current political state, specifically: Neo-nazism. The Empire is modeled after Nazis. There's no question. Fascist totalitarianism wrapped up in a genocidal Empire?? Yeah, no thanks.

But then we've got the First Order. They're trying to revive past ideals, trying to revive the Empire. They're a whole mix of people: born into a fascist family like Hux, original Empire loyalists like Pryde, children stolen and brainwashed into it like the stormtroopers-- racism and hate comes from a lot of different backgrounds (it can be taught, it can be learned), but they all tend to latch onto certain beliefs and political structures. It helps the First Order that (from what I can tell) the New Republic was a copy of the first. From the prequels it's easy to tell that it's a broken system. The Empire didn't just spring up out of nowhere. Palpatine was a crafty son of a bitch but even he couldn't sway billions upon billions of people to his side. Those feelings of hate and prejudice and greed had to already exist- Palpatine just took advantage of it and stoked the flames (not even gonna go into real world parallels here).

There is a reason why I'm talking about this. I'm talking about Anakin, who was raised a slave. Who was already a victim of hate and all the evils in the galaxy because he was a SLAVE. A little boy who only wanted to help people, who wanted to break the system that allowed him and the rest of his people to suffer. Then he was freed and thrust into a position of privilege within the system that made it possible for Anakin to be born a slave. And there he was, told over and over that he was the Chosen one. That he must bring balance. But it wasn't the kind of balance he sought since he was a little boy. I think Anakin just wanted everyone to be equal, and the kind of balance the Jedi believed in didn't necessarily mirror that since they were an integral part of the Republic.

But I digress.

I'm bringing up Anakin's childhood in slavery (and arguably, his whole life of slavery) because Anakin is was folded into this Nazi-like Empire which went against everything that he believed in as a child. Everything his mother believed in. Palpatine and the Empire twisted him and yes I love Anakin to death and he is such a victim of circumstance (and he is such a nuanced, interesting character), but he did some pretty terrible things as Darth Vader. He became everything that he ever wanted to fight against.

And then he said no.

He watched Palpatine torture his son. He watched Palpatine try it use his son. And we all know how much Anakin values family. Anakin chose to end fhat circle of hate and suffering. He was the first one to stand his ground and save the person he loved and actually succeed- and with that action he became the catalyst for defeating the Empire.

The thing about Anakin is that he has always been the catalyst. His birth was a seemingly impossible thing. The Jedi discovering him set in motion both Palpatine's plan and the Jedi's defeat. And then Palpatine's eventual destruction.

I'm not discounting every single other person in the Star Wars universe who has suffered or fought for what is right (shout out to Ezra 'spark of the rebellion' Bridger). But there is no doubt that without Anakin we would not have a Star Wars series. Everything revolves around him, whether it's believing he's the chosen one, believing he is the villain we must defeat, or knowing he is someone we must live up to and emulate.

Without Anakin's sacrifice, without him remembering what's truly important (family, love, freedom), the Empire would not have been defeated. Luke would have died. Leia probably, too. Palpatine would have utterly destroyed the galaxy (maybe we'd see some actual Dark!Rey way down the line). Anakin stood up, stood his ground and said No.

The real reason why Anakin is the Chosen One is because he IS that catalyst. Because he did rise from oppression and servitude and had the strength to say No.

I'm going to bring up the Neo-Nazism again: the New Republic rose up to replace the Republic. The First Order rose up to emulate the Empire. I would argue that the First Order became so powerful because the structures that allowed the Empire to rise in the first place still existed.

Yoda says in the original trilogy: There is another. (Yeah you know what like I'm talking about) You could argue that it's Leia (it certainly meant to be at the time). You could argue that it's baby Yoda (my boy!!). But I would argue that it is the next generation.

You see, you can't just defeat evil once and be done with it. We certainly hoped we would when WWII ended, but the fight is never done. Neo-Nazis still exist. Terrible, terrible people still exist. And maybe it's learned, maybe it's passed down through the family-- you can learn to hate in a lot of different ways. The structures that allowed Nazis to rise up like they did still exist today. We still face racism and homophobia and anti-Semitism. The battle is not over.

That's why I think these sequel movies are important (despite my problems with it, but I won't go into that here). I would love to think that after episode VI everyone lived a happily ever after. There was no more evil, no more suffering and slavery and thoughtless killing. But it doesn't work like that. Even though that's the ending I want, even though that's the ending I sometimes need-- every generation faces its own threat. Its own call to the past.

I have my own confused reservations about Rey parentage, but I adore that she rejects the legacy of hate. We see what she is capable of. We see that (just like Anakin) she could give in to what she thinks is the lesser of two evils. (It's okay as long as the people I love get to live, right?') We see that she is fully capabale of it even. She struggles with it, much more (I would argue) than either of the other two movies. She struggles to reject that part of herself and she struggles to acknowledge that she is born from that legacy (as so many would). Who would be proud to know they came from a family of Nazis? Not many people I hope.

And maybe it's because her parents chose to "be no one" that she is able to find the strength to think "maybe I don't have to go down this path." I would love to know more about her parents and how they chose to completely defy expectations, but I'll content myself for now with this:

Rey chose to reject the legacy of hate, and instead followed Anakin's own defiance. She's choosing her own legacy: combatting of hate and violence. Embracing love and hope. Learning from the mistakes of the past.

In a way, Ben Solo is right: let the past die. We must destroy the hatred and intolerance of our past. We must tear down the structures our forefathers put in place that allowed this hatred to arise and take over the galaxy. But he's also wrong. We have no way to know how to be better than our forefathers if we don't remember their mistakes. If we don't remember what they fought for and believed in. That's why "a thousand generations live within [Rey] now." She chose to follow the legacy of love and hope that the Jedi embody. And yes, the Jedi have their own problems, but that doesn't change the fact that they did their best to fight for what they thought was right. And, this is something to remember:

Yoda said: We are what they grow beyond.

Luke and Leia continued on that legacy of hope where Anakin and Padmé and Obi-Wan were unable to continue. They succeeded where those three failed. And, I hope, Rey (and Finn and Poe) will be able to succeed where Luke and Leia and Han couldn't. Where the Jedi couldn't.

It's up to everyone that comes after us to remember where they came from and discover how to grow beyond where we failed.

And now I'm back to where I began: Anakin. He tells Rey to bring balance to the Force like he once did. We hear many other voices (Luke's, Yoda's, Ahsoka's, even Kanan's and Ayala Secura's), but to me Anakin's was by far the most prominent. I love that we hear Obi-Wan's voice first ("These are your final steps"), and perhaps this is a parallel to Obi-Wan trying to call Anakin back to the light so many years ago. But Anakin's is so prominent. Ben and Rey are extremely important each other (and there is so much to unpack there), but Anakin's final push is what gives Rey strength and hope.

Anakin reminds Rey of the past. He reminds Rey that He broke free from that cycle of hate and that she can, too. Anakin is so, so important. He's the prime example that you can end the hate. End the violence. You don't have to be a Nazi like your shitty grandfather.

"Be with me. Be with me," she repeats over and over and over again. She trying to connect with the past. She's trying to understand her position in the universe. And she does, once she accepts her heritage. Once she accepts where she came from. And Anakin is there to help her take those final steps.

This whole sequel trilogy is about legacy. It's about repeating the mistakes of the past. It's about desperately trying to live up to expectations and failing them. It's about desperately trying to forget where you come from and trying to find yourself amidst the echoes of a chaotic past.

And, as always with Star Wars, it's about finding hope in the darkest of places. It's about love and family and saving the people who can't save themselves. This is the legacy that Anakin Skywalker left behind when he saved Luke from Palpatine, and this is the legacy that will continue to be remembered for every generation to come after that.

So Anakin Skywalker is still the Chosen One. He's that bright little slave boy who grew up twisted and lonely and got beaten into submission, yet still found the strength to claw his way back to the light. We all have that strength within ourselves to be better people, and now Rey can carry on that lesson and pass it down from generation to generation.

#tros #the rise of skywalker #meta #anakin skywalker #star wars #rey #long post #the chosen one #prophecy #tros spoilers #i spent way too long typing this up after texting my friend #luke skywalker #leia #i apologize for any typos #racism

[ghostmartyr]

SnK 121 Thoughts

Where’s the clip... someone had to have clipped it. Or I could just not interfere with my tentatively obligatory aesthetic and do this the less fun way. Less fun  does  indeed sound like me, so

There’s this DragonBall Z Abridged line.

From one of the Bardock specials.

You know. Bardock.

He can see the future.

He has a line about all the conveniences this ability causes his life.

-ahem-

USELESS ASS PSYCHIC POWERS.

Do I even need to write this? Can it just be a chorus of what the fuck over and over? Because sincerely, what the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck what the fuck what the fuuuuuuuuck.

That doesn’t even have a tune. I sort of imagined one in my head, but I’m sort of caught up on how this makes everything worse, better, and changes absolutely nothing because it’s still Eren and Zeke being on the most disastrous family trip this world has ever seen.

Let’s review.

In the way that Angelica reviews Alexander Hamilton’s quality choices in the musical.

So we’ve got Eren, who is basically dying after his epic war games decision (good grief I haven’t even read War Games, but is he Stephanie Brown in this analogy? is that what we’re dealing with? is he somehow both Stephanie Brown and Batman?) that was intending to lead into him holding his brother’s hand.

His head is shot off.

Lest we forget.

Zeke caught it.

Because he’s a Good Big Brother.

That quality pro-genocide big brothering.

Brought to you by Dad.

Yeah so. Zeke and Eren,  down  memory lane. In an Inception of their own making, only like. Actually Inception. I am going to make this post take nine times longer than it has to because I’m going to keep making pop references  instead of dealing with the content.

Inception is a movie where the plot is for a heist team to go in and plant an idea inside someone’s head so that it grows into a genuine change for the world, breaking up a giant monopoly of power and slowing human civilization’s speedy erosion. #Spoilers, I guess.

...The things I bring up in these posts are always keenly relevant, good fuck.

So that we continue to all be caught up, Eren is playing out the part of the first time this is done, where the main character plants an idea in his wife’s head that leads to the destruction of his life and her death.

With his dad playing the part of wife.

Anyway, Zeke and Eren are having an Inception.

In the real world, Zeke is holding his little brother’s decapitated head while Paradis is attacked by Marley (soon to be the entire world) due entirely to Eren and Zeke’s choices. The objective of which, for each of them, was holding hands.

Eren’s aim for that is unknown, while Zeke is shooting for a passive genocide  that the narrative is making look like the more reasonable decision based on the fuckery that has become of the unscrewed nuts and bolts inside Eren’s head.

To be clear, neither one is being reasonable.

This is a trash fire of bad decisions.

Where the person rooting for genocide mostly just has the edge of probably being the same person throughout the entire chapter, as well as his life history, while the person with the unknown aims is looking like a really good case of Inside Eren Yeager, Titan Attack You.

That was funnier in my head.

The joke is that the Attack Titan ate Eren.

Is in the process of eating Eren?

Is periodically nomming on Eren.

Results may vary.

V original theory do not steal.

Ahem.

Going back to our plot summary!

Eren and Zeke, being the quality brothers they  are,  want to hold  hands,  and being the quality human beings they are,  start a massive war  of death and  trauma  on their way to holding hands,  then they fail to  hold hands because the natural  result of the quality of their quality  is  that Eren’s head  got blown  off, so  they’re settling  for Zeke holding  Eren’s  head.

Eren is presently cast as the clear antagonist, Zeke’s idea is still awful, and they’re locked in an extradimensional space where no one else has the power to point out that their main achievement so far is being useless dumbasses.

On top of a field of bodies.

Boys.

What in the fuck.

Forget what they want to do.

By all evidence, even in the midst of other horrifying details coming to light, all that needed to happen was them making contact. That’s it. Whatever massive plan is ongoing, they just needed to hold hands.

Cue a bunch of people dying. Including probably Eren.

This is a bad plan.

I’m okay with that.

It is still one of the most insanely complicated monuments  to a zero sum game that I have ever read, and it becomes very obvious that the reason these characters have Titan powers is because if they didn’t, they would be dead the first chapter they showed up, lacking the good sense to not be dead.

First volume, sorry.

This is not a complaint. I would happily eat mountains of popcorn to the tune of canon agreeing that yes, letting Zeke and Eren come up with their own original ideas is maybe bad. It is hilarious. They are not good at this.

I realize Zeke didn’t have hands back then, but at this point both of you have to be considering that maybe you should have just bumped shoulders on the plane.

I’m sort of on the fence for how to react outside of heavy amusement, though. The downside of Zeke and Eren being so bad at this is that literally nothing is going well. Paradis is on fire again, Marley exists yet remains to let the members of its cast who sort of have morals die shocking deaths, and the fate of the world is being decided in the split second before Eren’s death between two people who should be in charge of absolutely nothing.

The rest of the cast, barring the inevitable reveal of what the fuck Eren’s got up his  sleeve, has no power over any of this.

It’s. I guess it’s what you would call appalling.

Yelena’s point of view is really the closest anyone in canon has come to understanding the situation, and boy is that telling. She sees these two men as gods. She believes in their ability to remake the world. All that falls to her is  facilitating their union.

She might have her battle lines a bit crossed, but yeah. Once Eren and Zeke make contact, all the rest of the world can do to discover its fate is wait.

That is a key Epic style plot, only it’s drawn out by Eren and Zeke both clearly not being gods. Zeke is a broken child who has made all of his decisions from a belief that the world is too cruel to be worth living in.

Eren is.

...

Eren, I’m coming back to you.

For now, let’s just dub him a disaster.

So you have the storyline of gods clashing while the mortals sit back with bated breath, but the scale of it is stomped all over because mortals who should not be making these decisions are still  making them, and neither one seems  entirely sane.

Locking Eren and Zeke in a bubble has been a source of grand entertainment, but as a story feature, the idea of these circumstances determining anything is something of a letdown.

Eren’s known for years what he’s wanted to do, and he still ends up with his head shot off while he runs too slow to stop his brother from initiating the death of their people.

Something has to give for this to feel like it matters, because right now the prevailing feeling is that these people should be as far away from power as humanly possible.

The darkness of this story is often, I feel, exaggerated. Sometimes by the author. It is a story where horrific things happen,  and are  attempted, but the hearts of all the characters we’re invited to sympathize with have always been crystal clear. There has never been a question that Zeke’s plan is wrong. There has never been a question of genocide in all its forms being inexcusable.

Reiner breaks down a wall. Bertolt breaks down a wall. Annie calls monsters to the broken wall.

Thousands of people die because children were handed power and thrown into a situation they had no hopes of understanding.

All three of the traitor kids end up traumatized. Reiner’s mind splits, Bertolt retreats so far into himself he barely engages with the world, and Annie literally crystallizes herself through the desperate desire to make it home.

There is no question that they could have been something besides murderers. They probably all would have preferred that.

This is not a grimdark series where everyone has forgotten what good things look like. Hange can design trains with prisoners of war. Niccolo can learn to care for people he’s been taught to hate. Children can be protected regardless of side.

Where the darkness comes from is not from the absence of light, but the deterioration of faith in that light.

Annie wants to go home. Bertolt and Zeke want it to end. Reiner doesn’t know right and wrong, but he’ll fulfill his duty and extend sympathy to a fellow victim  of chaos he’s not equipped to understand.

They stop seeing their fight as something that has true meaning. The most proactive hearts come from Bertolt and Zeke, who share the same mind of simply ending things, not forging a new beginning.

That’s where things get sticky with Eren and Zeke.

This chapter paints Eren in such a dark light it’s hard to hope he succeeds in whatever he’s doing, but Zeke’s wish is still something that can’t be allowed to  happen.

The scenario presented is one where the light has gone out, and the person who was counted on the be its champion has lost something essential in his humanity.

Obviously that doesn’t mean this is over, but every time the immediate entertainment of Zeke and Eren being  the worst strategists to ever live  passes, the question of what’s being fought for here comes up, and there’s no clear answer. Not with this version of Eren.

Cultivated distrust in the protagonist is nothing new, but the extent of this is impressive.

Trying to put this the simplest way I can, for the chapter, I like how this is going.

For the story, the only two people who seem to have power over changing the  state of the world are people who should have that power taken away as soon as possible.

If this weren’t all happening while Eren’s head was still falling to the ground, it would bother me less. But as things stand, nothing anyone else is doing has any impact on the story, and Eren and Zeke are impossible to root for.

That it’s probably by design doesn’t do much to make it more palatable.

Leading us into the only part of this post anyone is actually here for.

Eren.

The fuck.

I feel like it’s a fair thing to say that this might not be good.

Outside the usual realm of not good.

Also, now obligatory monthly mention that Eren looks a hell of a lot like Frieda and I want more to be done with that besides the current holder of Frieda’s memories murdering actual Frieda.

He fucking looks like Frieda.

This is why people thought Geographia was a female Eren. Even before his hair choices. Fight me.

As referenced earlier, I think a good chunk of Eren’s problem is that we’re finally dealing with the Attack Titan. Features include an immunity to the First King and the ability to see into the future.

With mixed conclusions about mindless raging.

Funny story about that! Your sons think differently. Have corpses receipts, can verify

...Hell, sorry about your life, Grisha.

(Side note, I’m pretty sure this panel is Frieda. Why? Because Isayama went to the trouble of making one of the long-haired Founders have their ears showing. That is literally the only way I can tell, and even then I’m only sure because Eren comes with a lot more extra shadow this chapter and the very next page.)

Okay, so. Uh.

Here’s where I wonder if I have the right caps for this comparison. I’m pretty sure I don’t yet. This noted time gap brought to you by me typing while I think even though no one reading this would ever know the difference.

The first thing that occurs to me is Mikasa, and cue the rabbit hole about her inheriting the Attack Titan and saying goodbye to Eren in their memories. Add in some bonus flavor about how in Trost, Mikasa’s vocalized motivation for living was being able to remember Eren. The Attack Titan is looking like a very good fit for her.

As for why Mikasa occurs, well!

Note that the key difference in these scenes is that Mikasa is encouraging Eren to transform so fewer of them will die. Eren is encouraging Grisha to transform so the Reiss family absolutely will die.

Sorry, ‘encouraging.’

I feel like I’m more at peace with some of Grisha’s interactions with Eren the last night of his life. As well as the display involved in killing the Reiss family. That’s always been one of the bloodier massacres we’ve played witness to. I passed it off as Grisha being unhinged by how badly everything was going and how it was all his fault, but...

T-tatakae?

-scrolls through images-

Hey so anyone else have fond memories of chapter 63? You know, back when Historia’s allegiance was in question because she was siding with her father and being a very generous-minded child about why Eren was strung up in chains and gagged?

Remember how she got all her memories of Frieda back and glared at Eren even though his father was the one who killed off her beloved older sister, and it was an amusing moment of irrationality in a sea of Historia having a low wisdom score?

Look at her glaring at the last person who deserves to be glared at over the massacre of the only family who treated her kindly!

...

Yikes?

Like, I don’t think she knows, because as tolerant as Historia is of people committing atrocities, Frieda is a sore point, but I think at this point, Isayama probably knew what actually went down with the bloodbath.

Easter eggs. Fun for the whole fandom.

In other fun news, I’ve made the comment several times that one of the sad points of Historia’s situation is Eren is her best friend, given how the story has limited her contact so thoroughly with the other people she cares about.

My brotp has seen better days.

The effect of Historia’s hand coming out of the darkness, Historia herself completely shrouded in the shadows as Eren takes it and discovers the worst moments of his life he hasn’t lived through yet...

Hell, the layout of this chapter is beautiful. All of it, including the very obvious descent into Eren being not quite right.

He’s unlocked the Attack Titan’s powers, and with it, I think a will that is more indomitable than anything Eren the person would have been okay with. Really, I don’t know how much of this is Attack Titan brain sickness, and how much is that Eren already saw himself doing all of this crap, so how bad was doing it one more time?

He’s lived through betraying his friends. He’s killed children. He’s killed the entire family of a friend who saved his life.

What’s doing it twice?

In the grand scheme of all Eren has seen, how bad is anything he’s done recently? Civilians are dead, but bad people are too. People who would hold power the wrong way.

I want to say that Eren’s choices are a result of the Attack Titan having a mind of its own, and between that and the other memories in Eren’s head, his intentions have been corrupted, but that’s mostly me trying to find a way for Eren, as he has been, to survive.

Eren looks at the Reiss family, sees his father hesitating, and takes the lead himself.

The Attack Titan can travel the Paths through time, and Eren, the character most angry about cages, decides that the way things were is the way things should be, even if what happened was wrong.

I realize it’s partly my priorities with the series which keeps the thread of fate so active a plot point in my mind. I’m always going to see Ymir demanding to know  why Kristoria’s strength hasn’t turned into trying to change her own fate as a key theme of the series.

Eren had choices.

Maybe something catastrophic would have happened, but nothing forced him to make his father murder the Reisses. Going by his expressions, he’s not entirely okay with it, and the second they step into that cavern he knows that he’s at the hard part...

But he still does it.

He chooses to let the story play out as he knows it instead of allowing his father’s kindness to change the world.

I don’t know what Eren plans to do with the Founder’s power. Evidence points to him still wanting a better world for the people born into it. He disdains Zeke’s plan.

Nothing about this screams that this is what he wants. There’s a person in Eren still, recognizable as the young boy who wrapped a scarf around a cold girl’s neck.

Eren’s eyes are firmly on Mikasa and Armin when he walks his memories of them. He���s ignoring Zeke completely to stare at the warmth of his childhood. That isn’t someone who’s completely lost.

Yet he still pulls the trigger on this.

This isn’t what the Eren we’re familiar with would call freedom; adhering to what happened in the past just because it already happened.

Fight. If you don’t fight, you can’t win.

Zeke isn’t fighting, for all he’s holding back Eren.

Eren’s fighting something, but holding to the path already plotted instead of changing it.

I can’t imagine what Eren saw to push him this far. He’s not happy. He’s not winning. Not even over Zeke. He’s lost the love and confidence of everyone who has ever cared for him

Frieda only transforms after Grisha does. She waits for him. She waits to see if peace wins out.

The Attack Titan, as ever, has other ideas.

Not good ones. Just. You know. Different ones.

In conclusion Eren is a Billie Eilish fan.

#Shingeki no Kyojin #SnK 121 #Eren Yeager #shingeki no spoilers #SnK spoilers #spoilers #tl;dr #chapter post

[thecaroliner]

That awful CBR Kataang article

I don’t normally do metas but this was so bad I had to respond. I think I actually had a stroke reading it

1. She shouldn’t teach him waterbending

At the beginning of the series, Katara was a waterbending novice, barely capable of maintaining a feeble orb of water in midair. As she traveled with Aang, they grew as waterbenders simultaneously, each growing through their journey to the north pole where they were taught by the same teacher.

After that, Katara assumed the duty of Aang’s waterbending tutor, which doesn’t really make sense considering that they should both be at the same approximate place in their training. In fact, Aang was shown to be more naturally adept at waterbending and capable of picking up the techniques easier.

So, like, did you completely miss the episode where Katara is shown to have advanced more than Pakku’s other students who have been training for months or maybe even years at this point? Yeah it’s a little weird considering that she’s only been there about a month, but Katara is just really, REALLY good at waterbending once she had a proper teacher. And yes Aang did pick it up really quickly but we also see in said episode he was lounging around playing with Momo rather than practicing, unlike Katara who it seemed like practiced hours each day.

2. They did their best work separated

Both Aang and Katara were intensely powerful benders who accomplished many amazing feats through their powers. However, it’s interesting to note that their most formidable feats were accomplished by themselves and separate from one another. Katara learned her most powerful techniques, bloodbending and water healing, completely without Aang’s aide. And the amount of incredible things Aang accomplished without her are immeasurable.

For starters, he was able to embody the spirit of the ocean, beat Fire Lord Ozai, and impressed the last dragons. In fact, he had to intentionally abandon her to attain his highest form and gain control of the Avatar State, pretty much definitively proving that they are more powerful when separated.

....What does this have to do with anything. Like, seriously, anything. Should they not be amazing, powerful benders unless the other is there to help them?? I genuinely don’t understand the point you’re trying to make here. Also do you not know how the Avatar state works? 

3. The Cave of Two Lovers

One of the defining moments in Aang and Katara’s romance was the episode “The Cave of Two Lovers.” In it, Aang and Katara are separated from everyone else in a system of caves on the way to the city of Omashu.

The romantic nature of the story inspires Aang to hint his true feelings to Katara and, after some rom-com levels of shenaniganry, the two almost kiss for the first time as their light goes out. Without the light, however, the pathway of glowing crystals becomes clear and the two are able to escape. The episode is generally never brought up, both in discussion and the show’s lore, because it is, for lack of a better word, cringy.

Great argument, just explain what happened in the episode and then don’t explain why it’s bad or weird

4. Political Disagreements

Their biggest obstacle came in the comics, where they came within moments of splitting up over political disagreements. Specifically, their fight was over the Harmony Restoration Movement, which attempted to remove Fire Nation colonies following the end of the war. After Zuko had a change of heart and wanted to keep the older colonies in place, Katara agreed with him.

Aang was initially of the mind that all Fire Nation presence in the Earth Kingdom needed to be removed to ensure peace. Their conflict came to the point of violence when Katara had to talk Aang down from the Avatar State to prevent him from ending Zuko.

Again you just explained what happened and not why it was bad

5. Aang’s grandkids are better without him

There’s clear evidence that Aang and Katara weren’t the best parents, as evidenced by the emotional and psychological hang-ups of their kids, but the most telling proof that they weren’t fit to raise kids is how their grandkids turned out. Given that Aang never met them, Tenzin’s kids were never directly influenced by their grandfather and they were all nearly ideal children. Sure Ikki and Meelo are hyperactive, but they’re kids and are shown to mature somewhat with age while retaining their energetic personalities.

Free from Aang’s influence, Jinora even becomes a more powerful spiritual advisor than her father, who was so burdened with Aang’s pressure that he was never able to fully embrace his spiritual side.

Um, WHAT? Are you freaking serious right now? Of course we gotta go with the dumb “Aang was a bad dad” argument, AGAIN, which obviously was blown way outta proportion. But I can’t believe you’d actually say that they are better off not knowing him

6. They both have PTSD

While to romance between Aang and Katara is often framed as being between two kindred souls who knew from childhood that they were meant to be together, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Even from the first moments they met each other, both exhibited acute symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder.

Katara’s maternal instincts are likely derived from witnessing her mother’s demise and the prospect of vengeance. Aang had a tendency to misdirect, project, and avoid his issues over abandoning his culture and being lost in time. He also demonstrated a consistent lack in ability to process his anger, often snapping and yelling at his comrades over his perception of their failures.

ONCE AGAIN. WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING. Also, are you literally implying that PTSD victims shouldn’t be in a relationship? ok

7. Aang kept her from seeing her dad

In one of the most despised episodes of the entire series, “Bato of the Water Tribe,” also featured a moment that probably should have destroyed Katara and Aang’s relationship. In the episode, Aang intercepts a letter that would provide Katara and her brother information on where their father, who they haven’t seen for three years, might be stationed and give them a chance to see him. Worried that they might abandon him, however, Aang hides the letter from them.

Katara’s father was at war and could have died at any time. If Aang had prevented the water tribe siblings from seeing their father, there’s no guarantee that they would have ever seen him again.

This is as close to a legitimate point as this article gets. But I guess they’re forgetting how Aang felt guilty about it and how neither Katara nor Sokka took it lightly and it took a while for them to forgive him. 

8. They gave their kids inadequacy issues

If there’s one thing that could be gleaned from the Legend of Korra spin-off series, it’s that Aang and Katara weren’t the best parents. The oldest, Bumi, was born a non-bender and even in what appear to be his mid-50s, and after an illustrious military career, was still dealing with the inadequacy issues imparted by his father who always wanted an airbending child.

His sister Kya was so affected by her parents’ pressures that she spent several years traveling the world by herself before being forced to return to the south pole to take care of her co-dependent mother. Tenzin, the only airbending child was denied a childhood by his father hoisting the burden of an entire culture on his young shoulders.

Nothing in the show implies Kya was forced to come back and live with Katara. Katara was an elderly woman, devastated by the loss of her husband of 50+ years. My grandpa died many years ago, and if we hadn’t already lived in the same town as them, my family would’ve definitely moved up there to be with my grandma who was all alone. Taking care of your family is bad, I guess.

9. Their relationship got worse in the comics

The romance between Katara and Aang was a slow build on the show, developing infrequently from beginning to end. After the show ended, the generally laudable comic series took over the narrative and fumbled their relationship worse than a clumsy wide receiver. After affirming their relationship, the series depended entirely on an unfair dynamic between the two.

Katara was jealous of Aang constantly flirting with other girls closer to his own age, Aang bragged about being able to kiss her to everyone who would listen, and neither could think of a better pet name than “sweetie.” Overall, their romance just sort of went on automatic in the comics.

Show me ONE TIME where Aang flirted with other girls. Being friends with other girls is not flirting with them. Aang only mentioned being able to kiss her ONCE, and it wasn’t in front of close friends. He didn’t freaking go out in the middle of a crowd and go “HEY EVERYONE LOOK I CAN KISS KATARA”

10. Their kiss at the end was weird

The only time when Katara and Aang’s romantic relationship really picked up steam was in the final season of the show, culminating in the final scene of the original series where the two finally share a reciprocated kiss. As romantic as the tone was, it was offset somewhat by the atmosphere between the two leading up to that moment.

Mere episodes earlier, with the looming threat of genocide, death, and continued global war hanging ever-present over their heads, Katara was still uncertain and upset over Aang’s advances and made that abundantly clear to him.

Whoa, Katara took time to think about her feelings before jumping into a relationship?? Wow, how stupid of her.

11. They worked better as friends

The Kataang relationship was present throughout much of the series, but was only addressed and developed a few times at sporadic intervals. For the vast majority of the series, their relationship was one of matriarch and dependent. Aang needed Katara to keep him humble and focused while Katara’s motherly nature made her want to keep Aang safe.

Put bluntly, they were friends and their relationship worked well in that regard. But whenever romance was forcibly inserted into the equation, Katara began questioning how she felt about Aang and stated openly that she was uncomfortable with his affections. I.E. red flags that they probably should just stay friends.

Man, how dare Katara and Aang have a solid friendship before being romantically involved!!!!!!! You’re not supposed to be FRIENDS with your significant other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

12. The age difference

Though Aang is technically over 100 years old, he’s biologically only 12. And though Katara herself is only 14 at the start of the series, the gulf between a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old is far greater than that between a 30-year-old and 32-year-old.

Despite having moments of genuine sage wisdom, Aang’s everyday behavior is more on par with an 8-year-old than anyone in his actual age bracket. This might not be his fault as his isolated, holistic upbringing instilled in him a strong sense of detachment, which might have prompted some of his more selfish actions, but even the most mature 12-year-old should not be making out with someone two years older.

I am forever baffled by y’all thinking that someone with a fun-loving, carefree personality is childish. When you get to a certain age are you supposed to stop having fun?? Stop telling jokes??? What a miserable life that would be

13. It was a one-sided relationship

When Aang was freed from the iceberg he’d been trapped in for the past hundred years, his first instinct was to fall head over heels in love with Katara. However, she didn’t see things the same way for quite some time. In fact, during the entire series, their romance was viewed through Aang’s lens with little to no input from Katara’s opinions on the matter.

In fact, she made it obliquely clear from the beginning of the series that she saw Aang more as a little brother or pseudo-child rather than a potential love interest, a view that didn’t change until very late. And even then, she was more embarrassed and confused by Aang’s affections than reciprocal.

Yeah, because relationships in real life are always 100% mutual from the beginning, and one person is never interested before the other is. That NEVER happens.

14. Their romance was unnecessary

While they were one of the primary pairs of the show, Katara and Aang’s relationship was only focused on in a handful of episodes in the original show’s three-season run. And those episodes tended to be considered weaker or filler between more significant arcs. Overall, their ship was not integral to the narrative of the show, both figuratively and thematically. You could remove all the Kataang content from the show and it wouldn’t change anything.

It wouldn’t even effect the series’ general quality, only improve it slightly. This might have been an issue in the writing staff as central breeding pairs are a trope in most shows, animated or otherwise. But just because stereotypes exist doesn’t mean they have a purpose or need to be used.

This was a show about magic, martial arts, and war. All the romance on the show was technically unnecessary. Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have happened.

15. Zuko would’ve been a better match for her

The main rival of the Kataang ship is the Zutara vessel, the faction of viewers who believed that Katara would be better off with the series anti-hero Zuko. And they’re probably right. Zuko and Katara have expressed an interest in each other before, launching their ship in the first place, but it’s more because Zuko is more mature and, for lack of a better word, attractive than the alternative.

There’s also the pretty significant matter that they both have similar emotional baggage. Katara has issues with her father abandoning her for the war, Zuko has problems with his father being a dictatorial jerk, and they both lost their mothers at a young age due to the intricacies of politics and conflict.

*eye roll* “Zuko and Katara have expressed interest in each other before” Where? Show me where.

Ok so before you said that one of the reasons Kataang doesn’t work is because they both have PTSD. Buuuuut Katara and Zuko having PTSD is a reason..they should’ve been together? And full offense, but Katara having hard feelings towards her dad for a short time in one episode that was resolved quickly is in no way equal to Zuko experiencing lifelong physical and emotional abuse by his father. I’m actually really angry and kind of offended you would even think this was a reasonable comparison.

16. Their personalities never changed

One of the most important aspects of fictional characters is how they change. Round characters are indefinitely more interesting than flat, one-note characters. And while Aang and Katara are in no way flat characters, they didn’t change much within the confines of their relationship. That is to say, while their presence in each other’s lives changed the others’ personalities, they did not change all too much to each other after their childhood.

As seen in Legend of Korra, Katara is just as maternal and wise as she was in her youth. Korra’s brief flashbacks to Aang’s life demonstrated that he grew somewhat more serious as he aged, but was still immature enough to pose for pictures of him doing his marble trick.

fklafj;afjea;fef; if AANG MAKING A FUNNY POSE FOR A PICTURE IS IMMATURE. god i’m just. i am so done with this article.

17. Aang decided how many kids they had

One of the biggest decisions a long-term couple can make together is if they want to have children. It’s a choice that, if made in the affirmative, can never be taken back, and if they do decide to have kids, they both need to determine how many kids they want or can afford to have.

While Katara never said anything on the subject, their kids were more than happy to discuss how Aang was insistent on having children until at least one of them developed airbending so he had a surefire way to pass on his near-extinct culture. Presumably Katara was more than happy to have three kids with Aang, but if Tenzin had turned out to be a water- or non-bender, he would have demanded that she continue.

LITERALLY WHAT SHOW ARE YOU WATCHING HERE, MY DUDE. Where was this EVER said or even implied. Might I point out in Legacy where Aang literally says that he and Katara were open to the idea of having more kids after Tenzin

18. She lived without him for 20 years

t’s stated in Legend of Korra that Aang died when he was 66. Given that Katara is approximately two years older than him, that means she was about 68 when he passed. By the end of the spin-off series, Katara was 89, according to the official wiki.

That means that she had around 20 years to live, grow, and evolve as a person without Aang around. In all likelihood, if Aang had somehow returned to her after all that time, he might not even recognize Katara as the same woman he fell in love with. As far as the series is willing to tell, Katara’s only company after Aang’s death was her daughter, the Order of the White Lotus, Korra, and infrequent visits from her other children.

Wow, how dare Aang DIE and leave Katara all alone. What a jerk!!!!!!!! I guess my grandpa is a jerk for dying and leaving my grandma all alone, too! Men SUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

19. She had a crush on Jet first

Kataang shippers tend to consider the start of the relationship to be the moment Aang saw Katara. He looked at her through rose colored glasses the moment she broke him out of the iceberg, framing her in light and a romantic breeze. It took Katara a little while to come around to having feelings for him, but she had a few different non-starter relationships along the way.

The first, and by far most impassioned of these, was with the freedom fighter Jet, who she met all the way back in the first season. Her crush was apparent and strong enough that she was disproportionately upset when she saw him several months later. She may have wound up with Aang, but she clearly had stronger initial feelings for Jet.

Wow because nobody in real life ever has multiple relationships throughout their lifetime or crushes on other people before meeting their significant other. And yeah, Katara totally shouldn’t have been upset to see the guy who tried to wipe out an entire innocent village unless she was madly in love with him

20. The (older) age difference

Despite only looking like a pre-teen, Aang is actually over 100 years old. He was born and raised before the start of the 100-year war at the Southern Air Temple. Upon learning he was the reincarnated Avatar, Aang was surprised. He and Appa were caught in a ferocious storm that sent them below the waves.

In a moment of self-preservation, his Avatar state activated for the first time and he bent himself into a frozen iceberg, which preserved him as he waited for a century beneath the seas near the Southern Water Tribe. The series is riddled with Aang’s hang-ups about his long-dead culture. It often causes rifts between himself and the other characters.

What does this have to do with their age difference or Kataang at all

#kataang #kataangtag #meta #atla

[ai-adler-blog]

Game of Thrones’ problem with female characters and why Daenerys’ twist failed

This is something that has been bothering me for a while, but it became too evident to ignore in the last couple of seasons.

The show tends to suggest (since season 6 or so) that the only way a woman can be "strong" is through embracing violence, or showing how much better they are at things than the male characters. Think about it: Sansa was portrayed as a victim and almost unable to make her own strong decisions until she escaped Ramsay after enduring his torture and later killed him. Then she started to be portrayed as an amazingly intelligent and capable character able to put everyone in their place. Daenerys began embracing violence and using her dragons with the dothraki (although, to be fair, that has always been a part of her plotline and the issues with her "madness" are not strictly related to that). Cersei as well, but this has always fit with her character. Lyanna Mormont was great but she was never allowed a moment of insecurity or a second to remind the audience that, despite her "badass" estatus and how much she was liked, she is still a child. Arya... Arya deserves her own paragraph entirely.

I think one of the main problems with Arya is that, as they merged her plotline with Lady Stoneheart's, they ended up having a character with two opposite roles in the story. Arya's storyline has always been about the pain the smallfolk have to deal with in war and loss of identity as she abandons who she was, finding herself and her home again and how revenge can only lead her to more suffering. Arya is a character that needs to see that embracing that dark side will only make her lose herself even more, and coming back to Winterfell should have proven that she is willing to try to heal even if all wounds will never heal completely and find herself again as Arya Stark of Winterfell. She said so herself when she left the House of Black and White in the show; however, the person that came back didn't change from who she became in Braavos, and kept on embracing violence. They should have had her be conflicted over all she had to endure and all she did now that she is finally home and in touch with the little girl she used to be. By adding Lady Stoneheart (the literal embodiement of inhumanity)'s plotline to her own, her character was not allowed to feel any sort of remorse or insecurity over her own actions, because that is not part of Lady Stoneheart's direction nor character. Merging a character whose story is about regaining identity and finding herself and her home to the embodiement of violence and inhumanity creates a character whose personality by the start of the series doesn't fit with the one she has by the end of it, because Arya by the end has taken on a personality that was never her own. There have been plenty of moments when they could have humanized her and shown that she still has some flaws or insecurities, or that she is willing to open up to someone without keeping the "badass" facade: when she flirts and sleeps with Gendry (something that ended up serving no other purpose to the story or her character development than fanservice), when she is with Sansa, when she meets again with Jon...

The other main problem that not only affects Arya but that becomes incredibly evident with her is that, if the character is a hero, they are not allowed to be wrong or make mistakes. They are always right and they know it and everything they do, they do perfectly well. Compare this to Jon who was completely shat on this past season, to Jaime who got his character development thrown out the window as foreshadowed by the first episode, and to Tyrion who has literally not made a single good decision since season 5. Arya suddenly becomes this incredible assassin despite not really doing all that much assassin training in Braavos, defeating even Brienne who has way more training than her and would be on a completely different level just based on size and strength alone, somehow being able to run on snow without being heard, surviving the destruction of King's Landing. She is always portrayed as a badass and edgy in the way she talks and carries herself even though it's not even human-like. Sansa kills Ramsay and suddenly becomes the smartest person in Winterfell just by making basic logical statements with a serious face, and talking down to Tyrion. Daenerys, at least in seasons 6-7, was almost always portrayed as being right and ready and her mistakes during those seasons were because of someone else (Euron's fleet, the Night King killing Viserion because she was saving the Fellowship of the Wight). Even Cersei has somehow been right in every decision she's made. They are hardly ever allowed a moment when they are not expressionless and show hints of humanity, like affection, insecurities, flaws or just putting down their walls. Hell, one of the most intimate moments of season 8, Brienne sleeping with Jaime, was done solely for the same reasons Arya and Gendry hooked up: for fanservice, and to indicate that a woman is somehow not "complete" if she hasn't slept with anyone. At least, that's what I thought it meant, given Arya's reasoning of wanting to do it in case they didn't survive and Tyrion shaming Brienne for being a virgin despite the fact that she is a highborn lady and it's probably not that easy to find birth control while on the road. It didn't serve to advance any plotline of character. Jaime even regressed as a character entirely.

And speaking of Cersei, her character is another one that got a personality change for no particular reason except to indicate that her caring about her children shows that she is actually a good person and misanderstood and loving all along. She doesn't kill Tyrion when she has the chance in season 7 or 8 for no reason, and her baby didn't serve any purpose to the story except to remind the audience that being a mother means that you are capable of love and loving those who you seemingly don't... and Catelyn Stark and Selyse Florent should have been an indicator that this was going to happen.

Catelyn got that scene back in season 2 or 3 talking about how Jon got the pox and she prayed for him not to die, but was unable to love him. Despite the fact that that scene proves that, when faced with death, she did care about Jon as she did for her other children. Maybe not as much, but she still cared for someone she was supposed to hate, because somehow motherhood solves all flaws related to love. Selyse, who was a complete fanatic of the Lord of Light and took pleasure in watching people burn alive, and didn't care at all about her daughter, somehow became caring after watching her be executed and killed herself, showing that her love was above her fanatism. So what do they do to Cersei to have her be in a scene with Tyrion and not kill him right away? Remind the audience that she, as a mother, cared about her children, and Tyrion saying she is not a monster. That obviously must mean that she is capable of love and therefore even loves Tyrion deep down. This is such a disservice to who Cersei used to be. And it angers me even more because Cersei being a mother and caring about her children doesn't make her less of a monster and an unredeemable person. But suddenly, now that she is pregnant and "able to love again" she gets humanized and gets to have a tragic ending à la Romeo and Juliet with Jaime.

Which leads to what, in my opinion, is the biggest problem with Dany's sudden descent into madness. If all female characters are "strong" and "empowered" by the use of violence, and a character like Cersei can be redeemed, why is Daenerys own use of violence prior to episode 5 so unnaceptable? The show started going for the "good guys" vs "bad guys" route and making everything much more black and white with the characters, especially the Starks vs Cersei. So whenever Arya or Sansa used extremely violent methods, like feeding Ramsay to his dogs or the genocide of House Frey (which is a plot point that will probably be a part of Lady Stoneheart's plot in the next books, not Arya's) which would probably have made things even worse for the Riverlands, it is because we had the clear "good guys" vs "bad guys". And the audience cheered because we all wanted those who made the heroes suffer to suffer as well. I mean, I smiled when Joffrey died, although it's quite fucked up because he is, at the end of the day, a child dying in the arms of his mother. Cersei blowing up the Sept and killing the Tyrells solidified her as a villain even more. But then suddenly everyone was concerned about Daenerys' own use of violence. It is understandable, because the dragons are massive weapons of destruction, but as far as everyone could tell Daenerys kept them under control. The only moment that hinted at her "madness" this past season was when she burned the Tarlys, which only served to create more conflict between Jon and her. And then comes episode 5. Daenerys has lost a lot of people she cares about and learns Varys and Tyrion are plotting against her for no reason. And suddenly she hears the bells and goes crazy. And d&d go "oh, she was always mad, she burned people and didn't react when Viserys died". But Sansa smiled when Ramsay died and Viserys was also incredibly abusive towards Dany, and Arya killed and cooked people into pies and slaughtered an entire house with no consequences. Her violent actions which made her "strong" in the first few seasons are supposedly an indicator that she will go mad when they are in par with other violent actions by characters the season wants to portray as heroes. And then Cersei, whose actions have portrayed her as a villain, gets a sudden change of personality and is humanized when she did probably the worst, most violent act among all female characters (blowing up the Sept of Baelor), and Daenerys gets dehumanized despite most of her violence being used for what she believed was doing the right thing. When the heroes commit the same atrocities as the surprise villain and only her gets punished for it, and the main villain of the story commits horrible acts of violence as well but is humanized because she is now a mother and to make the surprise villain look even worse, the twist is not going to work because the reasoning behind it isn't particularly noteworthy.

I'm sorry for the rant, I just had so much to say and didn't word it very well (English is not my first language), but I'll try to edit a bit tomorrow.

EDIT: I forgot to mention one of my early "wtf" moments related to the treatment of women in the show. After Jaime loses his hand and Brienne scolds him for whining because she thinks this is the first time he's suffered, she says "you sound like a bloody woman". It feels a bit insulting considering that Brienne herself is a woman and that this, coming from another character, in this world, could make sense, but given the respect both Brienne and Jaime have for women, it feels out of character. In the books, iirc, she says something like "are you so vain?". In this show this line feels like it was added just for the sake of being edgy.

tl;dr: the show tries to imply that a woman is complete when she is no longer a virgin, that she only becomes a strong character when she embraces violence and has no flaws, and that being a mother can redeem any bad actions and make you a good person despite everything else proving otherwise. The reason why Daenerys's madness does not work is because her use of violence is condemned when characters who are labeled as heroes have done the same or worse without punishment, and the villain is humanized despite her own terrible violent crimes to make Dany "the surprise villain" look even worse.

#you can also find this analysis on my reddit account #game of thrones #got #got season 8 #game of thrones season 8 #got 8 #got8 #a song of ice and fire #asoiaf #feminism #writing #d&d #d & d #george rr martin #grrm #daenerys targaryen #sansa stark #arya stark #cersei lannister #catelyn stark #brienne of tarth #selyse florent #shireen baratheon #lyanna mormont #jon snow #game of thrones season 8 spoilers #got season 8 spoilers #emilia clarke #sophie turner #maisie williams

[getoffthesoapbox]

Hello. :) I'm really learning a lot about how to read characters, plot, themes, etc. from your posts. Thank you! 🖤 Can you do a character analysis on Zero, please?

I’m delighted my posts have been of use to you, my friend! =) It’s always a pleasure to hear that my work has been helpful to those who share their own precious time reading it. =) 

A character analysis on Zero is a fairly tall order though, given how many facets there are to his character, fufu. But I can give you a “brief” overview of his character over the course of the original series and the sequel, and I’ll link you to a few other posts I’ve written on him if you’re interested in exploring further. =) I’ll be placing the majority of this post under a cut, since it got a bit lengthy. ;)

Note to readers on mobile: Please switch to a laptop or desktop computer to read the remainder of this post, as tumblr “read more” functionality doesn’t work for mobile.

The Man, The Myth, The Legend

On the surface, Zero is a challenging character to engage with for a reader. He’s rough around the edges, he pushes people away, he’s actively acidic to everyone who tries to come near him, he’s not charming, he’s brutal, and he has a huge (very justified) chip on his shoulder about vampires and purebloods in particular. But, in a story where vampires are romanticized, the reader is naturally not going to be sympathetic to his viewpoint because the reader is being selectively shown only the “pretty” sides of vampirism. 

Since this is how Zero is introduced, in contrast to the charming princely Kaname, it’s easy to see why on first impression (and first impressions are the only things that stick with most casual readers, which given most readers’ busy lives is what most readers are) Zero seems to be a huge headache and too much of a hassle, not a good candidate for a romantic relationship. Kaname is the dreamy choice, the ideal boyfriend, the sweet/kind/caring/obsessed only with his love interest type of guy. Zero, on the other hand, is dead set on revenge and dripping with anger and pain, not at all interested in wooing the ladies or being charming. 

It’s an easy choice for a reader to select who to root for, until it isn’t. Let’s explore why. ;)

Zero, VK Arc 1 [I]: The Knight of Bandages

Zero begins the story as a surly tsundere who is always cross and impassive, who constantly disagrees with our heroine’s starry-eyed wonder of the alluring members of the vampiric Night Class. It’s easy to brush Zero off as unnecessarily “emo,” and many do–but when we break down everything that gets revealed about this boy, it becomes clear that he has good reasons for being the way he is:

The reason he pushes people away is because he knows he’s been turning into a vampire for four years and wants to protect them from himself. (We see this from him as early as when he first arrives to Kaien’s home right after the Shizuka incident–in Night 44, he hints at his fears of what he might one day do to Yuuki.) He struggles alone with this for four years. The reason some readers gloss over the meaning and importance of this silent struggle is because the story is told from Yuuki’s viewpoint, and she had no idea it was going on. 

After he attacks Yuuki the first time (when his instincts go out of control) he tries to commit suicide. When Yuuki stops him, he tries to leave her. Yuuki stops him again, and promises him she’ll kill him if he’s ever out of control. Then Yuuki is the one who creates their drinking pact–she is the one who initiates the Forbidden Act with Zero, and that’s why he continues to drink from her throughout Arc 1. But Zero tried to leave her twice in order to protect her, first by killing himself and then by walking out. At last he leaves his life in her hands both literally and metaphorically; she’s given a bracelet that can subdue him and she’s also given a gun that can kill him (though of course her Artemis can too). During arc 1, Yuuki is in full control of Zero’s life and her own body, so she is not his victim, despite what he claims and what some readers may wish. 

The reason Zero hates vampires is because Shizuka murdered his family unjustly and then turned him into a vampire rather than allowing him to die as a human with his family. Now, it’s important to note that before the Shizuka incident (and even afterward–as we see when Zero shoots a Level E to protect Yuuki and a kid early on in Arc 1) Zero was sympathetic to vampires. This is actually one of the reasons Yagari gets his eye gouged out–Zero hesitates to act against Yagari’s Level E fiancee due to his natural sense of compassion.

Zero’s prejudice against vampires doesn’t form until he has a personal reason to hate them–and even then, his prejudice never spills over into anything unlawful. The only Pureblood he intends to kill with his own hands is Shizuka. As we see during the Shizuka arc, he always intended to kill Shizuka and then kill himself. Although he hated purebloods and vampires on the whole, he never intended to commit genocide against them at any point. It wasn’t until Yuuki inserted herself into his life and made herself important in his life that he changed his mind. 

So as you can see above, Zero was always a hurt, damaged person from the beginning of the story. The important thing to keep in mind is that he was made this way–he started out being a kind, sympathetic person who didn’t hate vampires and rather sympathized with them. Zero’s hatred is something that resulted from circumstance rather than from Zero’s own nihilism and despair. 

The good thing is, and this is something I think Zero detractors frequently miss, is that the story never justifies Zero’s position. The story is sympathetic to his plight, but it always makes sure to a.) never let him go so far with his hatred that he begins acting out genocide and b.) always attempts to redirect him in ways that are more productive (such as connecting him to Yuuki, and later to Aidou and the other Night Class students, as well as having him learn from Ichiru, Shizuka, and the other Level Es he encounters). 

The first arc really emphasizes Zero’s empathy. He has a deep ability to understand people’s pain, and his empathy for the Level Es he meets (as well as Yuuki, the nobles, and the purebloods) is constantly at war with his anger and desire for vengeance and his righteous pain. 

So the first arc is about setting up Zero’s situation and his flaws as a character and the obstacles he needs to overcome to grow (as all good heroes do): 

He needs to learn to accept vampires as being as nuanced as humans, with the potential for both evil and good within each of them.

He needs to let go of his anger and desire for vengeance.

He needs to find a reason to live and forthrightly move his life forward into the future rather than devoting it to the past with the hope of ending it all. 

Now Zero begins the process of addressing this right after the Shizuka arc–he accepts that he wants some kind of a future with Yuuki in it, he does not go through with killing Shizuka and himself (when he does shoot Shizuka, it’s because she’s after Yuuki, not for revenge), and he is beginning to understand vampires better thanks to his own experience, his experience with the Level Es, his bonding with Aidou, and his reunion with Ichiru. Of course, he’s still not perfect yet–when Kaname frames him for Shizuka’s death, Zero accepts the framing because he knows in his heart he was willing to kill her. He also is still dead set on Yuuki not becoming a vampire, despite the decision being her own to make. 

Because this is the beginning of the story, his situation needs to get worse before it can get better. The Rido section of Arc 1 rises to fulfill this need.

Zero, VK Arc 1 [II]: The Fallen Avenging Angel

Kaname throws a wrench into the works when he turns Yuuki during the Rido mini-arc at the end of Arc 1. Zero had been afraid Kaname was intending to do this to her all along, but he wasn’t prepared for the truth: that Yuuki herself all along had been a pureblood, not some innocent human child Kaname’d taken a fancy to. This puts Zero into the suicidal descent into nihilism and despair that is his darkest point in the series (at least until VKM 13) and is the point in which many people rightfully point out that he makes a great many mistakes. 

Zero makes three egregious mistakes in this part of the story:

He refuses to accept Yuuki and rejects her despite her attempt to reach out to him. 

He points his gun at Yuuki twice (once in Night 37, and once in Night 43).

He threatens to kill Yuuki (and then all the purebloods) in Night 43. He reiterates this in Night 46 when he pushes Yuuki away for the final time.

Now, these are certainly horrible offenses, but they’re not insurmountable thanks to character development. All heroes must reach a “low point” before they rise, and this is Zero’s low point. I think his situation here is very understandable if we step outside of our natural sympathy with the main character/protagonist (Yuuki) and think about the situation from Zero’s perspective:

Zero had only recently found the strength and the desire to live, and that was thanks to Yuuki (the human girl he loves and who he’s struggled against loving because he fears he’s unworthy of her due to him being a vampire–this is all stuff he reiterates to Kaname when he tries to convince Kaname not to go through with the forge plan in Night 92). 

He finds out very suddenly that Yuuki was actually a pureblood all along (one of the very beings who destroyed his life and the lives of many of his friends). He has no idea if she was “in on” the “plan” or what’s going on or what the circumstances were–only that the girl he loved may never have “existed” at all (we will see him struggle with this in the future).

Now this doesn’t justify what he does to Yuuki in Night 37. But think of it this way: Yuuki had Kaname and the Night Class kids there to help her work through her transition and help reorient her and normalize things for her. Zero had no one helping him understand this–Kaien and Yagari, who both arguably “knew” the full situation, just lock him up and leave him to brood over it alone. They don’t sit him down, explain what happened, and help him work through his understandable feelings of anger, betrayal, and hurt. 

But, as we see when Kaname approaches Zero’s jail cell to taunt Zero about how he’s won everything and Zero’s lost everything and is still going to serve Kaname anyway, Zero by Night 39 is already beginning to soften toward Yuuki again. His thoughts continue to turn to her, and he is clearly torn about what to do regarding her. Had events unfolded differently than they are about to, Zero might very well have sorted himself out in that jail cell and gone out to help Yuuki willingly and stand by her side and sort their friendship out amicably if he’d been allowed some time to process alone. 

However, Hino drives the knife into Zero’s side one last time. On the heels of losing the girl he loves, he loses his brother as well. It makes me laugh a little how people are so sympathetic to Yuuki moping for 70 years over Kaname’s “death,” but Ichiru’s legitimately traumatic death in Zero’s arms is something Zero’s supposed to “magically” get over instantly and become Yuuki’s lapdog for…reasons. The same sympathy people extend to Kaname’s behavior about the Hooded Woman when he lashes out at Yuuki due to a 10K+ year old emotional wound or to Yuuki for being unable to function 70 years after Kaname’s “semi-suicide” is rarely extended to Zero who suffers a similarly tragic loss and is forced to stand up and fight and function anyway. Yuuki wasn’t asked to fight after Kaname’s “death”–she was babied and allowed to just stand around moping. Yet Zero is expected to “buck up” and “fall in line” instantly as if his brother’s death is meaningless. Honestly it’s preposterous to me, but hey, what do I know. 

After Ichiru dies in Zero’s arms, Zero loses his last reason to live. Remember, before Yuuki came into his life Zero was suicidal. Without Yuuki, and without Ichiru, Zero returns to being suicidal. This is confirmed by Zero himself in Night 44 when he finishes his flashbacks of Yuuki–he flat out tells her he would be completely fine if she killed him then and there. Internally, he asks her and Ichiru why they both want him to live on. It’s implied that he has no idea why he should live on when the people he love are “gone.” This ties us back to the things he needs to learn as a character and reinforces them–how to live forthrightly and walk toward his goals and dreams despite the hell surrounding him. 

When Zero is reunited with Yuuki in Night 42, he’s coming right on the heels of the fresh loss of his brother (which she doesn’t even know about until Rido taunts Zero in front of her). Zero acts cold toward Yuuki, but he still does what he can subtly to keep her free from the fight. Even though his manner is rough (he pushes her off a building), it’s no more rough than what Yuuki does to Aidou (she also pushes Aidou off a building), and Yuuki herself cuts Zero’s face in her anger over her family and over him not letting her help him. At this point, Zero is at his lowest–he’s gone cold and isn’t even hot anymore. Rido is easily dispatched between Yuuki’s first blow and Zero’s final, leaving them to a staredown where Zero breaks down in front of her. His leading statement to her makes it clear (or should make it clear) that even now he’s conflicted over her–he flat out says he wants to put an end to it all, and that if he does so, surely his murdering her will be forgiven (which implies he knows full well she’s innocent and that she is not to blame for this) and he reassures her that she’s done nothing wrong. This is the point where Zero at last switches to genocidal thinking–that if he were to wipe out all the purebloods, it would all be over. It should be noted that Zero is not the first to think this: Kaname, Kaien, and Yuuki have all at one time or another considered genocide. To hold this against Zero while forgiving these other characters seems silly to me, and so I won’t hold it against him here, especially since he never carries it out. Thoughtcrime

When Zero and Yuuki part ways, Zero first comforts her, confirms she wants to be with Kaname, checks to make sure she’s okay now that she’s got her memories back, and then encourages her to return to the man who can walk the same span of time as she can. He then erects a wall between them: if she comes near him again, he’ll kill her. At this point in time, we don’t know if this is an empty threat or not, and so it’s a legitimate criticism to hold this against him (but it is a criticism which ultimately will not pan out).

As these two part ways at the halfway point of the story, we’re left with a Zero who has at last hit rock bottom (at least his first rock bottom). He’s lost literally everyone remaining in his life that he loved in the span of a single day. He still has yet to address the issues from the Shizuka arc, and he’s now added one more:

He needs to learn to accept vampires as being as nuanced as humans, with the potential for both evil and good within each of them.

He needs to let go of his anger and desire for vengeance.

He needs to find a reason to live and forthrightly move his life forward into the future rather than devoting it to the past with the hope of ending it all.

He needs to accept that Yuuki is Yuuki, regardless of “what” she is.

Now, before we move to Arc 2, I want to say one last thing about Arc 1. If Zero’s story ended here, in Arc 1, I would say his critics have a leg to stand on as to the fact that he’s a bitter, resentful, angry young man who isn’t worthy of Yuuki and who is prejudiced against vampires (though not without good reason). However, it’s up to Arc 2 to demonstrate whether or not Zero continues to fall (a tragic hero a la Hamlet) or corrects his course of action and begins to rise (a regular heroic arc). If he begins to rise and address the issues I’ve identified above as his character flaws, that indicates growth on his part, and indicates that he is moving forward as a person. If someone grows from where they were, they should be judged by where they are now and by how far they’ve come from where they were rather than where they once were. This is common sense. Let’s see if it applies to Arc 2.

Zero, VK Arc 2: The Hampered Hero

You can tell the form a character’s arc is going to take by how a creator introduces them. In Night 49, Hino tried to obscure Zero’s trajectory by showing him attacking a Level C servant of a pureblood we never found out more about. Before Night 50 came out, it was legitimately reasonable for people to speculate that Zero was going to become the new villain that Kaname and Yuuki would have to destroy. 

In Night 50, however, Hino subverts this introduction to show us that Zero was protecting a child, who he kindly returns to her mother. This is a direct parallel to Kaname protecting Yuuki at the beginning of the story, only Zero’s variant is legitimately altruistic because he does not intend for Mii-chan (the little girl) to “repay” him in the future (as we will see in VKM 10, when he meets Mii-chan as an old woman who has had a happy life). 

Hino’s choice to show Zero rescuing a small child rather than leaving him in more ambiguous state makes it clear Zero is still our hero, despite where his character arc is “beginning” in Arc 2–his introduction makes it clear he’s still struggling with the situation from Arc 1. This is something he’ll struggle with throughout the entirety of Arc 2, until he at last comes to terms with things on his own. 

Before the vampire soiree where he meets Yuuki again, Zero begins a round of narrative criticism given to him via side characters: Kaien and Yori both hold him accountable for his perspective on Yuuki, and both of them will stand in his way if he means any harm to Yuuki. Zero, of course, has already set aside his desire for genocide before Night 50 even begins. He has decided to play within the “rules” of the Hunter Association–meaning he will not hunt down purebloods unless they’re “on the list” and have become a legitimate threat. It’s clear he still hates Kaname (with good reason), and he’s still torn about Yuuki, but he’s no longer suicidal and homicidal–he has grown past that over the course of the year. 

Zero is then handed a watchdog, Kaito, to “keep him in line” and make sure he doesn’t get out of control. Kaito is not Zero’s friend. He is a spy for the Hunter Association because Zero is a rogue element now. So Zero is under constant surveillance once Kaito is set on him. This means the likelihood of Zero being honest and opening up about himself becomes lower. Hino also shuts us out from his mind, which means his thoughts and feelings are a mystery to us. 

Over the course of the next few chapters, Zero reunites with Yuuki and Kaname. It’s clear he’s still very mixed up about Yuuki and very emotional when it comes to her (and the same from her to him). But he continues to keep up his facade of a wall between them–she is his enemy, and he is hers. After the ball, however, we find out from a discussion with Kaito that Zero is waiting and watching Yuuki to see if the new vampiric version of her will degenerate into typical pureblood vices. Until then, he’s giving her the benefit of the doubt. This is an incredible change from a year before, and this is all before he’s even interacted with her much. 

At this time, Zero also is struggling with his own vampiric nature, his lingering feelings for Yuuki, and his brother’s death. We see this play out when his desire to hunt Sara nearly escapes him, and when he breaks down at his brother’s grave and speaks to his brother’s fragment. Talking with Ichiru begins the process of helping Zero accept vampires, himself, and Yuuki. Right after this, Zero rescues Yuuki from Touma. Rather than harming her, he takes her to a Hunter safe house and waits for her to wake up. His body language clearly is open to her her biting him, and though he tries to play it cool when she realizes her near-mistake, he’s deeply affected by the moment they exchange. This scene makes it clear his feelings are no more dead than hers, despite his insistence on keeping the wall between them. After this, he and Aidou bond a bit, and Aidou tries to encourage Zero to go after Yuuki, since Aidou’s in the best position to know what’s best for both of them. 

It’s Yuuki’s return to the academy that pushes Zero’s growth the most. Here are the things her return accomplishes:

Zero begins working with the Night Class to help Yuuki in secret (he encourages Aidou to stand by her side).

Zero reveals to Maria that he’s never blamed Yuuki for the events of Arc 1.

Zero remains kind to Maria.

Zero tries to help Yuuki when he realizes she’s struggling with her thirst. Although he does use a rough manner, it’s merely because he’s trying to keep a wall between them.

Zero helps Yuuki to rescue the Night Class from Sara’s pills.

Then Sara drops the bombshell on Zero: Kaname was responsible for unleashing Shizuka on his family. It’s here that Zero at last breaks down and opens up to Yuuki again–the last bits of his wall come crumbling down:

He reveals he tried to see human Yuuki as dead, but can’t keep up the act anymore.

He takes Sara’s blood only to power up to help capture Kaname for Yuuki.

He stands by Yuuki’s side in the fight against Kaname with no intention to kill Kaname, only capture him for her.

Despite having never seen Yuuki’s butterflies, he respects their power.

He returns to encouraging Yuuki (telling her not to lose focus when Takuma grabs him, protecting her from the forge going out of control, patting her on the head when she isn’t able to stop Kaname from leaving).

The only part of Zero’s wall left intact by the time he and Yuuki leave together in Night 86 is the wall protecting his love for Yuuki. We find out in Night 86 that Zero sees very clearly what Yuuki is in his life: she’s both a walking disaster (the fiancee of the man who helped destroy his life) and the person to whom he owes all his happiness in life. He doesn’t blame her for the former, and he wants to explore what’s “real” about the latter. But before they can do that, Yuuki betrays him and takes his memories from him. 

It is in this final memoryless section that Zero completes his character growth. Without his memories, we get to see who Zero is “without” Yuuki. We find instead of an angry, bitter young man, a compassionate, thoughtful, kind person who is sympathetic to purebloods. Although Zero pulls a gun on Yuuki immediately upon waking, Yuuki herself knows he won’t shoot it. All of Zero’s threats are empty, and the more often he threatens, the emptier his threats become, until the point where Ruka can create an illusion of Zero shooting Yuuki and Yuuki doesn’t believe it’s true. Zero is, as Yuuki dubs him, a Mr. Nice Guy, and this holds true even when his love for Yuuki is removed. He still struggles to pull the trigger and instead prefers to bark. 

When he and Kaito arrive at Kaname’s mansion, he’s genial and open. He reluctantly accepts Takuma’s offer of tea, and while he’s sitting with Kaname and Yuuki, he mildly remarks to Kaname that Yuuki appears uncomfortable. He then leaves to give them their privacy, a thoughtful gesture. He’s not openly antagonistic toward Kaname (much to many a Zeki’s annoyance), because he no longer remembers what was done to him. And, as he sees Yuuki struggling, he increasingly becomes agitated on her behalf, even to the point of railing against Kaname without knowing why. All of this indicates where his heart truly has settled at this point in the story–he’s a person full of compassion who has accepted both himself as a vampire and the vampires in his midst. Without the pain of his past and his losses dogging him, he’s able to be the person he was meant to be. 

When he regains his memories at last, after he rescues Yuuki from being turned into a human again, he carries this newborn freedom from his pain with him. Here is where he fulfills his character’s arc and reveals he has at last come to terms with his four faults:

He needed to learn to accept vampires as being as nuanced as humans, with the potential for both evil and good within each of them. He accomplished this throughout Arc 2–being an ear for Aidou, helping the Night Class students, rescuing Yuuki from being turned human, reuniting the human/vampire Yuuki as one person in his mind, protecting Sara from Kaname.

He needed to let go of his anger and desire for vengeance. He chooses to try to reach out to and to save Kaname despite having full knowledge of what Kaname did to him and his family. Although he does not forgive Kaname, he does make peace with him. 

He needed to find a reason to live and forthrightly move his life forward into the future rather than devoting it to the past with the hope of ending it all. Zero chooses to be true to his feelings and to live and fulfill his goal as Ichiru told him to, which is to stand by Yuuki’s side and be honest about his feelings with her. 

He needed to accept that Yuuki is Yuuki, regardless of “what” she is. Zero does this twice: first when he stops viewing human Yuuki as “dead,” and second when he rescues her from being turned human in Night 91.

By the end of his journey, Zero has transformed completely as a person. No longer is he bitter, angry, and resentful, out for vengeance with a side of suicide. Instead, he’s looking toward the future, showing compassion toward his enemies, and trying to be true to himself. His personality is still intact, of course–he will always be a stoic kuudere who trends toward the snarky side. But what truly matters is that he changed and he changed for the better–the young man who cries out to Kaname to change his mind is light years away from the young man who said he’d end it all and cut off Kaname’s hand in Night 46. Like or dislike Zero’s personality as you will, but there’s no doubt he grows to become a better person by the end of the story. Although he misses out on a few beats of the heroic character arc thanks to Hino’s tragically retconned ending, he does still achieve the growth necessary to place him back on the hero’s pedestal, rather than the anti-hero’s or villain’s. 

It’s up to VKM, of course, to take his journey home. 

Zero, VKM: The Struggling Saint

When VKM’s first special chapter was announced, it was announced as Zero’s story. I thought at the time this only covered VKM 1, but now I’m of the opinion that VKM itself is Zero’s story. The other characters feature of course, but unlike VK (which was Yuuki’s), VKM is Zero’s. As such, I have a few theories about Zero’s unfinished heroic business from the original series, which I’ve already speculated about in previous meta. I’ll just link them here for anyone who hasn’t seen them yet and might be interested:

Takuma as witness to the “salvation” Kaname rejects

Zero as “salvation” in VKM

Rather than getting into that, I want to go into briefly how Zero’s character has continued to grow since the original series:

He accepts Yuuki’s love for Kaname (his enemy) unconditionally.

He accepts Ai (his enemy’s child) unconditionally. 

He waits nearly 70 years for Yuuki to look his way with very little complaint and no emotional blackmail.

He considers killing all the purebloods to give Yuuki Kaname back, but decides against taking the easy road because he wants to give Ai a better future. 

He reforms the Hunter Association’s practices so that they give fair trials now before sentencing vampiric criminals. 

He’s close friends with many of the Night Class vampires. 

The biggest thing Zero does is in VKM 1. He tells Yuuki he regrets what he did to her in Night 46 and that he wishes he could go back and do things differently. This addresses the legitimate criticism of his behavior during the Rido mini-arc–Zero regrets his actions and wishes he could go back and change them. But since he can’t, what he can offer Yuuki instead is what he does offer her: unconditional love and a reassurance that he believes her existence in his life is a blessing. 

Zero in VKM has overcome his faults, but has reached a new plateau where he will once again have to grow–this time, he must learn how to negotiate to have his own needs met in a relationship while still meeting the needs of his partner. This is a skill he’s never learned, and the last one he needs to actualize himself fully. It may have taken him over a human lifetime to learn this lesson, but hey, who’s counting? ;) In the meantime, I think it’s clear how far he’s come, and that of the three main characters, he’s come the farthest and in the most positive direction. =) If anyone has earned his happily ever after, it’s Zero, and I’m sure he’ll receive it one way or another. Only time will tell. 

I’ve written a ton about Zero’s character arc and trajectory in VKM, so I’ll stop here for now. If you’re interested in my other perspectives on him, I’d recommend checking out these posts:

Meditations on Kiryuu Zero 

Zero’s flaws in VKM

Zero as Ai’s acting father

My VKM chapter reviews for more detailed information on each chapter.

I hope this ridiculously long post has been of service to you. =) Please do stop by again if you’d like me to clarify my thoughts further. Thanks for dropping by!

#vampire knight #vampire knight memories #vkm spec #vkm speculation #kiryuu zero

[medievalcat]

ok. I finished Children of God (sequel to The Sparrow), and while I was able to follow it better than when I first read it (I think I was really distracted a few years ago, and had trouble focusing).....I didn’t like it as much as the first one, which I’m aware isn’t an unpopular opinion, even though I didn’t hate all of it. Here are my thoughts on why it didnt work imo and what I did like about it.

The Sparrow would naturally be a hard act to follow, and I get that sometimes sequels do different things than the first installations. book one is about Emilio and book two is about Rakhat. Okay. I think there’s a lot of interesting material that could have been made of Emilio, John, and all the new guys visiting Rakhat years after the first expedition. It’s what the author did- and, really, this was present in the first book as well, and one of the first book’s issues, but here it’s really one of the main points of the story and far more prominent than ever before- that didn’t succeed. It’s the story of Rakhat....but given how Rakhat is written, maybe it shouldnt have been. This book honestly ranged from “enjoyable” to “disappointing” to “implicitly or explicitly expressing horrible views”.

It’s one thing to make an oppression storyline in a fantasy setting- FMA for example does this. But in that, the victims are humans. In this, not only does the story do an oppression narrative about fantasy creatures, which is already a very difficult thing to pull off, she repeatedly draws comparisons between nonhuman aliens and things like the Holocaust and genocide and oppression of Native Americans. She even has her one native character draw this comparison and *stay behind on another planet instead of going to earth* for some “reservation” plotline at the end.  This is a good example of why when we criticize media sometimes we have to focus specifically on the writers who choose to make these events happen, who choose to write certain stories and who choose to frame them in certain ways. I’m kind of glad this book doesn’t have a fandom, really, because tumblr types would focus on which aliens’ side is “right” and not on the fact that the author chose to write some fantasy creature oppression story with incoherent imperialism commentary while trivializing real genocides. I remember a really uncomfortable paragraph in the first one that implied the Ottoman Empire was some kind of safe haven for all ethnic/religious groups as well as a line (keep in mind these were written in the 90s) about how Bosnia is violent because of ............ “blood feuds”. Many people have said this story is weak because it focused on these new alien characters and the Rakhat storyline so much. This, for me, is the main reason why that storyline was so weak.

One thing I liked was some of the new characters. I liked Danny and Joseba and Nico and Sean and Gina and Pope Gelasius. I think this book kind of did a “later season of Vikings” so that there were suddenly all these new people but few of them got good development. So that was a weakness but I didn’t mind many of the characters in and of themselves and enjoyed these new additions. Sure they weren’t like the people in the first book but that’s okay. They added new perspectives. Danny had a lot of interesting stuff about forgiveness that I liked. I also liked initially how Sofia was revealed to be alive but....she was shafted. We barely see her in favor of her badly offensively written written son (I know this was written 20 years ago but. the way he and his disability are portrayed as like...literally “alien” even though ths is supposed to be a “positive”.... is honestly....why  the living fuck did she do this....) and Supaari’s daughter who he CONCEIVED FROM RAPE and we’re just supposed to be ok with that bc the author very conveniently wrote the victim to be as unsympathetic as possible and because “uwu miracle of life!! yay children!” I’m supposed to buy that Sofia, a child trafficking survivor, is allies and friends with a man who not only is a rapist but sold a person she loved into sex slavery.......after the narrative called to attention how similar Sofia and Emilio’s experiences were, and the first book was an imperfect story but a deep introspective exploration of the effects of SA.....lol ok. And then she gets killed off at the end offscreen in a single sentence.

There’s also....I really doubt she intended some of this but it’s clearly in the story .... it really has bad implications, that the only relations between men are abusive in both books. there are literally no other relations between men, even though there is a gay character (who I understand  is a celibate priest, and having a gay priest is cool!) but....it just doesnt have good implications that relations between men are only ever presented as bad. especially because the thing that truly “heals” Emilio is being with a woman and I think in our society (and thus our media) we have a real problem with thinking that “healing” as a sexual abuse victim means having sex with a man if youre a woman and with a woman if you’re a man, and that male sa victims of men are only really victims if they like women (and, of course, women sa victims in general just have to like men). Of course there is nothing wrong with Gina, I loved her, and nothing is wrong with writing an sa survivor who is able to have a relationship after. But MDR killed her off for no good reason. The other crew members dying in the first book, those were well written character deaths. and how many times did she do the “this woman died but thats whatever narratively, because she has a kid uwu miracle of life” thing in this sequel. I think MDR is like GRRM in that she has good intentions clearly, and has such good sff works/characters and takes oh the Human Experience and everything, but doesn’t always know how to handle issues in a responsible way and it’s really glaring even if there are obviously worse people in media. To be honest (and again, here Im glad there’s no fandom, because people are so weird about this stuff) MDR should have just had Emilio and John be together. “Your friendship should have been proof enough of God” ???????? hello??????  Their relationship was one of  the things that actually was well fleshed out in the sequel until John and all the other guys who weren’t in the Camorra  just.....stayed on Rakhat forever.

Part of the handling of Sofia seemed like a broader pattern of the plot being completely forced. Everything happens for some sake of The Plot- this is something later seasons of GOT have been criticized for. This plot in particular, in addition to the alien oppression metaphor, seemed to want to make everything about the story in particular its end be some kind of “bookend” to mirror the first book. Sofia dies (for real this time. honestly....her death in the first one was good writing!), Emilio and his unlikely escorts go home, no one else gets to go home, there’s a huge societal upheaval on Rakhat because of the humans, a huge reveal about Rakhat’s “divine” music. I have nothing against this kind of narrative device but when it’s this forced to the point where the story is blatantly constructed for the sake of this......it didn’t work. The “music” plot twist was like..............really??? All of that? They’re staying on this planet? If they had all gotten more time in the story (because this book is the same length as the first book but has far more different subplots and far longer of a timespan and far more narrators) we might  find that more plausible. I don’t think everything needs to be spelled out for us. In the first book when everyone is stranded, it’s clear that they think this is tragic, but they are trying to make the best of it because they all love each other and are together. In this one they don’t all have that kind of bond and it’s dependent on the long-winded and incoherent Rakhat political storyline. Because a lot of it isn’t even that well developed in addition to the earlier addressed things. We go between random one-off characters. So much is about the war but it’s written so anti-climatically. Sofia broke down in the first book when she learned they were stranded, and now she doesn’t care at all about returning back to Earth because the Runa are “her people” now, but how much of that is really what she tells herself to cope with what she lost- and what she experienced on earth in her youth? we don’t know. The Pope just....sent Emilio who became probably the most infamous person on Earth, back into space, and it wasn’t a big deal for the Church or at all? And all it took for it to happen was a handful of Camorra men with Vatican connections, who were just adapted so well to space travel and extended time on a new planet that initially made the people in the first book sick when transitioning into life there? And let me reiterate we’re supposed to accept that the divinely ordained reason all this happened was because Isaac wrote music inspired by human and alien dna and it sounded wonderful? 

This just felt very forced. “Emilio never wants to go back to Rakhat so obviously this book has to be about how he goes back there and accepts that it actually happened for a Good Reason bc of some music, and music was the way they found it in the first place.” How about how he accepts that it happened and comes to terms with what happened to him without either hating himself for his actions or thinking it was all For The Greater Good Actually, because you cant undo the past, aka what the first book was building up to and culminated in? idk. the first book was all about how bad things happen and that this doesn’t mean we have to give up our faith even if we question our faith. this was more like “every cloud has a silver lining lol”.

There were many nice things- Emilio’s friendship with Nico, many of the moments with Sofia towards the end and her reuniting with Emilio, John getting more to do, the new Pope, Celestina ending up having an important job as a theater and leaving a trail of men in her wake lol. I don’t want to say don’t read this. But if you like the first book you might not like this one, and if you’re considering reading the first book, it.....works best as a standalone.

#i say things #book blogging #given that this talks about uh certain Things i'd prefer no reblogs lol

[aimmyarrowshigh]

I'm down with Rey experiencing temptation and making tough choices, even wrong choices- and learning from them. As long as she doesn't choose the side of genocide and fascism and/or double down at every chance she gets to correct her path in order to continue to pursue power at great cost to others. Kylo being tempted by the Dark Side or "making tough choices" isn't why he's reviled in the way of villains. It's because he's a fucking villain. (Who mind rapes people.)

Exactly. We’ve SEEN Rey make tough choices already, and we’ve seen her tempted by the Dark side! But being tempted and choosing not to give in is what makes her Rey. It is the essential difference that is what Star Wars is ABOUT. 

I feel like one of the big schisms in SW fannish interpretation comes down to whether you think Star Wars is “ultimately about” redemption or choice. I think it’s about choice. I might disagree with the idea that Vader was redeemed in the moments before his death – and that disagreement is shared by every character except Luke, js, which I think is canonical evidence supporting the idea that even in canon the idea of “redemption” is about interpretation – but he absolutely made a CHOICE in those moments, and that choice affected his destiny.

Choice is the through-line of all of the big narrative-changing/“galaxy-changing” storylines in SW. Luke chooses to return to Bespin rather than stay on Dagobah. Han chooses to return to the Battle of Yavin. Leia chooses to trust Lando to devise the plot to save Han. Ben Solo chose to turn his back on the ideals of the Light, and he chose to become Kylo Ren, and he chose every action he’s taken as Kylo Ren – including the massacre at Tuanul, the forced and painful penetrations of Poe and Rey, and the murder of Han Solo. Will he make different choices in TLJ? I mean, yeah, given that it’s a sequel and his storyline is ongoing. But if they want to make it believable that he’s choosing the side of the Light again, they’re going to have to work HARD. And I still will fight tooth-and-nail for Rey, Poe, Leia, Chewie, and Finn to have the dignity of being allowed NOT to forgive him.

We’ve seen Rey wrestle with choices, both before and after she was aware of the Force. Like, TFA wouldn’t even have happened if she had made the choice to put herself and her own well-being above BB-8 when Plutt offered her a month’s worth of food. Especially since we know in her backstory from BtA that she’s having a particularly lean time at the moment since the closest thing she’d ever had to a friend just swindled her out of 10,000 portions and fled Jakku, leaving Rey with no portions and out several weeks’ worth of salvage! It would have been SO much more beneficial to Rey, in the immediate moment, to trade in BB-8 and take the portions.

But the Light guided Rey. That’s one interpretation. Another is that Rey made the choice to trust her own skill – she’d find more salvage and be able to earn some portions, even if it took a while again – and have mercy on this little being that was left behind on Jakku. It was important to her to give someone else what she never got, and that was more core to who she was than the temptation to be selfish and have something come easy.

Now: I absolutely can see how that same reading of her personality could lead to the idea that she’ll have mercy for Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. If that’s how the filmmakers go with it, then it’s not out of the blue, or anything, and I can rationally understand the argument that it would be logical. I just think that it would be boring as fuck reductive storytelling to once again make the female lead character have to put herself aside for the benefit of the male villain, even at the expense of herself, and I think it would be… Frankly, I think that showing narrative empathy for the First Order, in the climate that we live in in 2017, is insulting and dangerous and would be an unforgivable, for me, choice for Lucasfilm as a company to make. Not that that means I don’t think they MIGHT, because like, lbr, Disney has always been antisemitic as fuck and racist as shit, but. 

Here’s what I was thinking about last week: the entire neo-Nazi crowd at Charlottesville? They see themselves as Kylo Ren. They see themselves the way he sees himself, as the lone warrior strong enough to see through the lies of the Jedi and the New Republic, to turn his back on the teachings of Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, to find a wiser teacher in the deification of a long-dead fascist who sought to kill all of those who would challenge him. And they also see themselves as Kylo Ren, the white male major character who by Rights and Logic deserves to win in the end and get the girl and defeat his enemies and be proven to be the Most Human Of All and definitely, definitely get his due over anything that the Black or Latinx or Asian main characters could ever earn. If Star Wars’ Sequel Trilogy does give Kylo Ren forgiveness, redemption, a win over Finn or Poe or Rose, the trophy of having Rey love him? Lucasfilm and Disney are giving those neo-Nazis their stamp of approval. They’re saying, yeah, you’re right, we let Black and Latinx people and antifascism have one movie, but in the end, it’s all about you. You get to win, again. You are the chosen ones.

And I think that’s literally nauseating to consider.

And granted: TLJ was written and filmed before the election, but not before all of this shit was brewing. I absolutely don’t think that any media creator is BEHOLDEN to be morally and socially responsible, because media creators are human and as long as there are repugnant people, there will be repugnant ideals in media. But I do think that Star Wars, so far, as a franchise, has been clear that they don’t side with the Empire. I don’t think they’ll give the First Order any quarter of empathy or forgiveness or “redemption” that they didn’t give the Empire. But, I also think that there’s absolutely the chance that they’ll execute the story in a way where they try to make Kylo Ren some kind of outlier who can earn his way back into the Light. I don’t personally think he can; I think he’s too far gone. But I do, in a lot of ways, expect for them to try. Some of that, too, I think is because of the prominence of shitty-ass neo-Nazis in Star Wars’ viewing audience: either they’ll be trying to say, it’s not too late for you (sorry fuckos, it is) or they’ll be trying to say, just keep reaching out and maybe they’ll listen (they won’t; they’re fuckos). But, again, I think that execution would be irresponsible at best, actively harmful at worst. 

I want Kylo Ren to go unredeemed because I’m absolutely sick of the coddling of men who make the active, agential choice to harm people and are told they can come back from that choice. 

Kylo’s victims can’t come back from what he did to them. So neither should he.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, right, Rey’s other moments of choice and Dark side temptation in TFA. There’s the obvious one, which I see most commonly as the one that Reylo shippers use as evidence that they’re connected more deeply than Heroine and Villain, which is the moment Rey chose not to kill him. 

I feel like it shouldn’t NEED to be explained why the hero chooses not to kill, morally/ethically speaking?

But the other is one that I haven’t seen a lot of people talk about as being a moment of Dark side temptation, and that I think is up there with the BB-8 choice as being one that’s particularly interesting: her choice to flee on Takodana. First off, you wanna talk mirroring, that’s her mirroring moment with Finn. Both of them are trying to get away from Takodana, away from their destiny, away from the Force itself, even if they don’t necessarily know it yet. 

Rey succumbs to the temptation, on Takodana. That’s her Moment of Refusal when it comes to her Hero’s Journey, and in Star Wars, that’s classically because of temptation by the Dark. If you want to look at it in terms of “the Force creates Rey’s destiny,” she has to succumb in that moment so that she’ll be taken to Starkiller Base and be able to witness the murder of Han, get the lightsaber in the snow, be able to open herself up to the Light to defeat Kylo Ren. But I think that reading of the choice strips Rey of her agency. (As does the whole “the Force is in charge of all choices” in general, but whatever.) 

In choosing to flee, Rey CHOOSES the Dark. She chooses selfishness. She chooses her own needs above those of the Galaxy. She chooses, maybe, in that moment, Finn, running through the forest to try to find the ship he’s leaving on. She chooses fear. Fear, passion, selfishness, the self above others – it’s a classic, perfect Dark side choice. And again, BB-8 brings her back. She stops running to give BB-8 cover to make it back to Han and the Resistance. She is again brought back to the Light by BB-8, and her empathy for this little being who trusts her. The key to Rey’s moral compass is compassion. That is a Jedi belief, not one of the Dark. (And I think it’s interesting that two of the three major choices she makes wrt Dark temptation in TFA, she chooses the Light because of BB-8. BB-8 is shaped like a friend.)

So when it comes to TLJ? I absolutely expect to see Rey wrestle with the Dark side. Just like Luke did. Just like Leia does. But that doesn’t mean that I think Rey will choose it in a way that READS as Dark, per se – her flight on Takodana IS Dark, but doesn’t Read as Dark, yk? You wouldn’t look at it and think, “evil.” I don’t think that it serves Rey’s character to make her choose EVIL even if, and when, she chooses Dark. I don’t think she’ll be willing to give up her selfhood, and I really hope, more than anything else in TLJ, that the writing team gave her enough respect to allow her that continued selfhood. I absolutely expect for Rey to be tempted by selfishness; I think that as far as the Dark side goes, that’s kind of her achilles’ heel – Rey getting to have something and not wanting to give it up would be very in-character, IMO, and I totally expect to see that. I also expect for her to be tempted to give into her very real anger and confusion at the death of Han Solo and how she (selfishly!) wanted to keep him and be kept by him. Same with Finn; she wants to keep him, dammit, he came back for her and the First Order cannot have him back. I’m anticipating her being tempted by her hatred of Kylo Ren, too, and to be tempted by the Dark whispering that she should have killed him in the snow. I don’t think that Rey is the Perfect Encapsulation of the Light insofar as being only compassionate and selfless, because that wouldn’t allow her the breadth of agency and selfhood that she deserves. And that she’s already shown.

In a meaningful way, Rey has to be tempted by the Dark to NOT forgive Kylo Ren. Forgiving him would be being that Mary-Sue-perfect-Light that people accuse “antis” of seeing Rey as, because it would be putting him and his feelings and his needs above her own. I want Rey to be selfish as FUCK and say NO. He doesn’t get that Light and Good part of her. He doesn’t get her compassion. Rey owns herself. And she’s not giving that up.

Forgiving Kylo or Rey somehow putting Kylo Ren on a path to redemption would not show Rey’s compassion, it would be subsumption of her Self. It would say to the audience that he had a right to use her body, mind, and soul to gain his own personhood back, and that’s fucking disgusting.

#|franchise| star wars #**star #asks #25

[comradekatara]

omg amazing do you have Thao songs you would assign to the gaang+?

instead of answering this ask like i did, for example, the fiona apple one, i’m gonna answer it like i did this ask, focusing on a singular album and the feelings it evokes. i’ve been listening to temple a lot lately so i felt that it made sense to focus on, especially considering its overarching themes. 

temple is about intergenerational trauma, specifically between a mother and daughter, and the pressure of the daughter to live out the dreams her mother could not due to the ruination of war. therefore, i feel like it applies to katara in multiple ways: living out the dreams of her mother, grandmother, hama, and other waterbenders and/or women whose lives were lost to genocide, imperialist warfare, and even arranged marriages. but also, as a victim of that war herself, and reconstructing the southern water tribe as the only southern waterbender left, passing on that legacy to her daughter, and to korra, (and her other waterbending pupils, i would imagine,) knowing that they got to have the childhood free of war she had always longed for. i believe that korra would feel that mantle of responsibility strongly, as an extremely privileged kid growing up in a society that was on the brink of extinction less than a lifetime ago, and being mentored by someone who was exposed to the worst horrors of the war firsthand when she was only a child, and spent the rest of her lifetime trying to repair the damage. katara and korra’s relationship just means a lot to me okay.... 

phenom okay this song can definitely apply to lots of different characters: katara (”when the scorched of the earth / come back by sea”), toph (i know she’s extremely upper class but she’s also a disabled woman and as we see that puts her in an extremely tentative position that forces her into a position of docility and humiliation that she staunchly resists), mai & ty lee (irt their relationship to azula, their families, and the fire nation at large), but it first & foremost reminds me of hama, her overwhelming power, and her unquenchable thirst for revenge after the horrors the fire nation put her through. 

lion on the hunt reminds me of azula’s rage & despair when she realizes that ozai doesn’t care about her and was only using her for his own ends, taking credit for all her (evil imperialist conquest) hard work while he just sat on his throne basking in the glory of having finally taken ba sing se. obviously the original context of the song itself is nothing so insidious, but the lyrics “they said I polish and astonish, and so why not me? / and then they said it's complicated and some wah, wah, wah / I made the map and you put you on it, pay me handsomely” really does remind me of that scene in “sozin’s comet” when we see azula’s reaction to ozai discarding her. 

pure cinema this song is absolutely fuel for my “mai and sokka become best friends after the war” agenda because it totally resonates with both of them! they both feel like hollow shells driven by fear, a mere fraction of a person, just one incomplete piece of a puzzle. crucially, the difference lies in sokka’s eventual growth, later helping toph and zuko with those same feelings of displacement from their families by finding a new one. despite having loving and supportive biological family members, sokka is a depressed cynic with a fear of vulnerability, and it is the fact that he reaches out to them from a place of understanding that solidifies their respective places in this new family (suki too but she’s a far less developed character). concurrent to sokka, toph, and zuko’s ingratiation into the group, mai continues to feel alienated by azula’s insincerity and fear-stoking, and it is only at the end of her arc that she is able to stand up to azula and act authentically, but once she does, she is finally able to realize that she had true love all along.   

marauders reminds me of the tension established in sokka’s relationship with suki in “the serpent’s pass:” how his guilt and trauma over losing yue makes him push suki away out of fear that he won’t be able to protect her. but by promising to protect him in turn, she proves to him that their relationship can be an equal partnership devoid of obligation––that their romance is not doomed despite his misgivings.  

how could i makes me think of sokka’s guilt complex when it comes to not being able to protect the people he loves. katara was present for kya’s final moments, but sokka was on the other side of the village when she was murdered, and didn’t know what had happened until it was too late. and then, he considers it his fault that yue sacrificed herself for the moon spirit, because arnook explicitly told him to protect her. her physical body literally died in his arms. and as we see later, in moments such as in “the swamp” or “the serpent’s pass,” even though it was the fire nation’s fault (yon rha & zhao specifically) that kya & yue were forced to sacrifice themselves, he is still plagued by guilt. 

disclaim evokes iroh’s legacy with his son(s), the guilt of realizing too late the devastation and atrocities for which he is responsible, and how he considers it his responsibility to shape zuko into the man he iroh should have been, and lu ten could have been. of course, the line “I was once an honorable man” is both incisive & ironic, since honor is an arbitrary construct, and iroh is no longer considered honorable because he developed morals. “I don't believe it's your destiny / to always chase my memory / how could it be insincere / to very clearly disappear” is interesting in this context because iroh clearly wants zuko to assume the throne and redeem the legacy of the fire nation, but in book 2, he’s also perfectly content to open a teashop and close himself off to the world outside the walls of ba sing se, along with his nephew. he knows that he and zuko have a duty to redeem the sins of their family, but there is a very large part of him that would be perfectly content with ignoring the outside world in favor of letting zuko heal. iroh is a complex character, but his love for zuko is never in doubt. 

rational animal reminds me of toph’s arc: abandoning her oppressive environment (specifically, her abusive father) and choosing to live authentically: not conforming to society’s standards and limitations for her as a disabled girl (who also rejects femininity). the bridge of “i believe my own eyes” becomes even more powerful due to the fact that toph’s experiences are constantly invalidated by authority figures due to her disability. she is keenly perceptive and empathetic––and not despite her blindness, but, in large part, because of it. 

i’ve got something is an extremely zuko song tbh. having the humanity & compassion stamped out of you to fulfill an imperialist agenda only to resist it due to your capacity for caring & overwhelming sensitivity that is impossible to ignore––that’s what it’s all about babey!!! 

marrow is actually about all of them because they are all children of war who are capable of being loved and of loving in return! but aang and katara’s genocide trauma and their unbreakable bond over their shared grief and desire for understanding, companionship, and happiness is especially potent, as always. 

#posts that are for 3 people one of them being myself #analysis #not tagging every character lmao #finally answered this cause im trying to clear out the inbox #(only 33 asks left to go!) #sorry it took so long #i have questions from february..... oof #anyway this is a hell of a lot of words for a post no one's gonna read #asks #edgarallanhoetry #synthesis #atlamusic

[dangan-analysis]

Character Analysis - Mukuro Ikusaba

Name: Mukuro Ikusaba (戦刃 むくろ)

Title: Super High School Level Soldier (超高校級の「軍人」)

Appearances: Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (video game), Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - The Animation (anime), Danganronpa: The Manga (manga), Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc IF (light novel), Danganronpa/Zero (light novel), Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope’s Peak Academy - Side: Despair (anime), Super Danganronpa 2.5: Nagito Komaeda and the Destroyer of the World (OVA // cameo), Danganronpa Gaiden: Killer Killer (manga)

WARNING: UNTAGGED SPOILERS FOLLOW

Introduction

Mukuro Ikusaba. The sixteenth student. Lying hidden somewhere in this school. The one they call the SHSL Despair… Watch out for her...

This ominous quote from Kirigiri from the end of Chapter 4 is our first introduction to the mysterious and potentially dangerous Mukuro Ikusaba. 

Revealed to be Enoshima’s older twin sister and right hand woman, Ikusaba helped her sister plot the downfall of the world into despair. Following her sister’s instructions, Ikusaba disguised herself as her sister and participated in the School Life of Mutual Killing; however, she was ultimately betrayed by Enoshima in the end, violently stabbed to death by multiple spears in a surprise attack. Not only did she die brutally, but Ikusaba’s corpse was disfigured in an explosion during Chapter 5, serving as the trial victim for that particular chapter. The topic of her true identity arises during Chapter 6 and highlights Enoshima’s willingness to achieve ultimate despair.

Ikusaba’s character arc allows for very little information about her past and personality. However, from what we can infer from her FTEs where she breaks character and her accompanying side novels, Ikusaba was an emotionally distant but kind, loyal older sister, albeit submissive, who truly cared for her sister and only wanted to guarantee her younger sister’s happiness.

Backstory

Ikusaba’s FTEs are truly unique because not only is she acting as someone else during them, but you view them a whole different way after you realize her true identity.

One of her first slips in character is when she complains about how she’d rather be homeless, which she’s “done before, ya know”, than be bored in the Killing School Life. 

This is obviously her attempt at mimicking her sister’s hate for boredom, which foreshadows Enoshima’s love for despair later on. 

Regardless, this slip, among many others, reveals that Ikusaba and Enoshima must’ve lived in harsh environments as they grew up. 

And yet, if Ikusaba and Enoshima were homeless, how could Ikusaba run away to join Fenrir during a surely expensive family vacation to Europe? 

In addition, what environmental factors inspired her interest in the military, encouraging her to win a survival game tournament and began writing for military magazines during elementary school?

A possible theory is that Ikusaba and Enoshima were raised by a parent, relative, or guardian that was involved in the Japanese military somehow. It is also likely that this guardian was not very responsible, given that their environment was described as “harsh” and the sisters were once homeless at a certain point in their past; perhaps the guardian was discharged from the military.

Regardless, I believe that, despite Japan’s strict legal system that “almost never cuts parental rights”, the twins somehow up under the care of a foster family. If this so, the sisters must’ve been under the age of 6 since Japanese adoption regulations won’t allow adoptions of children older than 6. A new foster family would satisfy the fact that her family had enough money to go on a vacation despite being raised in a hostile environment. Perhaps Enoshima met Matsuda while she was with her new foster family. 

Of course, there are more possibilities for the twins’ past considering how little we know about it, but this seems more realistic and plausible than some other theories.

Now that we’ve cleared up some sketchy childhood questions, let’s talk about a bit more well-known part of Ikusaba’s past — her past as a member of the mercenary group Fenrir. As previously stated, Ikusaba somehow made her way to the Middle East to join Fenrir after she ran away during a family vacation in Europe. What happened then?

We know that Ikusaba was constantly catcalled by her fellow mercenaries. Her first FTE consists of mostly telling Naegi to not plan any sexual activities with her, claiming that “all men eventually turn into savage beasts”, “men always gather around me”, “I always have to keep them away!” This level of generalization is similar to Koizumi’s, and yet Ikusaba immediately brightens when Naegi agrees with her (we’ll find out later why).

Like any soldier, Ikusaba went through harsh experiences on the battlefield. For example, here’s a portion of her second FTE:

Ikusaba: Don't underestimate sleeping outside! It was a warzone! You never knew when some kind of enemy would attack you! Naegi: ...Warzone? Enemies? Ikusaba: I mean, there were guys preying weak and helpless girls all around. Isn't our entire world nothing but war zones and enemies? Oh, well. Since I've left that cruel life behind me I only became stronger...

Despite a young, inexperienced prepubescent female, Ikusaba somehow trained herself so that she made it out of several years on the battlefield without suffering from a single injury. Her abilities, demonstrated in Danganronpa/Zero, including dodging bullets and administrating first aid.

And despite being such a talented soldier,

Although Ikusaba was a Super High School Level Soldier, her skills were largely limited to battle. In fact, even an average high school student could probably best her in matters of war strategy and negotiation.

There’s some pretty interesting things to conclude from this revelation. First of all, both war strategy and negotiation involve foresight. In order to strategize well, you need to be able to see all possibilities in a given situation and know the results of choosing each possibility. Similarly, negotiation involves social skills and being able to make compromises that give you the most benefits. Since both skills involve insight, we can thus conclude that Ikusaba isn’t dumb, she’s not as holistic as she needs to be to be able to use those skills well.

On the other hand, Ikusaba is smart enough to manipulate her enemies into fighting each other on the battlefield (see: making Genocider and Oogami fight each other in DR:IF) and understanding of Enoshima enough to outsmart her  escape Hope’s Peak Academy with the other students in DR:IF. So she’s not dumb, she’s just too focused on one singular thing to see the big picture, which is necessary in war strategy and negotiation.

Also, a bit of trivia that might be worth noting: the kanji for her name literally translates to “corpse warblade”. It is extremely likely that Mukuro Ikusaba is a code name, not her birth name, and likely why Enoshima is so tired of explaining the “cheesy” reason she and Ikusaba don’t have the same surnames despite being twins.

After spending at least two years fighting with Fenrir, Ikusaba returned to Japan to be with her sister. Around this time, Enoshima was inspired to start “The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History” — The Tragedy. She enlisted her sister’s help in accomplishing ultimate despair by initiating a series of unfortunate events at Hope’s Peak Academy. Enoshima enrolled both her sister and herself in Hope’s Peak Academy as the part of the 78th Class, and while attending Hope’s Peak, Ikusaba met Naegi, who would eventually change how she perceived the world.

Character

Ikusaba’s character consists of key qualities for a SHSL Soldier, yet her care for others heavily contrasts with it.

For example, she’s determined to achieve her goals. Whether it be an order from her commander or a personal one, Ikusaba makes sure her goals are completed, no matter the obstacles, making her capable of initiating change. 

And despite having the capabilities of taking initiative, Enoshima’s deprecation of Ikusaba during their childhood has transformed her into a generally submissive, shy, and not very emotionally-invested or eloquent individual. But her care for others is genuine; it’s so great that she virtually has no concern for her own safety or opinions. Her singular goal in Danganronpa/Zero is to help all of her cherished classmates escape Hope’s Peak while hesitating to betray Enoshima despite her commitment to her.

Additionally, although she can’t really see the big picture, her high detail orientation allows for near-perfection in fighting on the battlefield and executing plans.

Thus, Ikusaba’s character can be summarized into the following qualities:

Determination and commitment

Submissiveness

Focus on details

Selflessness and loyalty to others

Although these characteristics combine in negative ways (following orders blindly), the events of the Killing School Life help Ikusaba discover herself as an individual.

Killing School Life

We know that Ikusaba had never quite agreed with Enoshima’s vision of wrecking despair all over the world; however, since she wanted to guarantee her sister’s happiness, Ikusaba put aside her morality and helped her sister initiate The Tragedy.

Again, since Ikusaba’s never really had a voice for herself, Ikusaba agrees to participate in the Killing School Life disguised as her twin. I’m not sure what Ikusaba felt about sending her classmates into doom like this, but again, her devotion to Enoshima negated her love for her classmates.

Outside of her FTEs, Ikusaba doesn’t play a crucial role in the storyline — while she’s alive, that is (and she serves more as a plot point than a character postmortem). Again, acting as a loyal sister, Ikusaba does her part to make Enoshima’s plan of scaring the other students into submission successful. Following their plan, Ikusaba attacks Monokuma disguised as her sister, expecting to be imprisoned for rebelling against the headmaster; however, Enoshima releases a trap that kills Ikusaba. 

In the moments before he death, Ikusaba is shocked; why would her sister, the person she cared about the most in the world, deliberately betray her? Ikusaba dies heartbroken, not knowing that Enoshima had killed her to bring both of them what she valued the most — despair.

During her FTEs, however, we see a side of Ikusaba that we don’t really get to see until DR:IF. Ikusaba reveals that she’s emotionally sensitive, such as when Naegi worries about her. Although she’s initially shocked by Naegi’s supposed perception of her as a potential killer because she’s hurt that he sees her as a monster, Ikusaba is touched by how Naegi worries about her. Living with abusive people (including Enoshima) has resulted in Ikusaba receiving little concern from others, so she’s moved by how Naegi cares for her.

Meeting Naegi changed how Ikusaba perceived the world; previously apathetic and content with murdering for the sake of her love of the military, when Ikusaba meets Naegi, she realizes the importance of showing love and care for not only other individuals but herself. In her final FTE, she becomes motivated to search not only for her dreams but discover herself; unfortunately, she never finishes this as she is soon stabbed to death.

Danganronpa:IF

Unlike Danganronpa, DR:IF is primarily focused on Ikusaba’s narrative. It offers a great amount of insight into her character, such as her crush on Naegi and relationship with Enoshima.

DR:IF reveals that Ikusaba isn’t really aware of her thoughts and feelings — she really doesn’t realize that she likes Naegi until Enoshima points it out, and she doesn’t realize her disgruntlement as a SHSL Despair, dissatisfied with both wrecking havoc upon the world and following in her sister’s footsteps. In fact, we can easily point out that the only reason Ikusaba is involved in SHSL Despair is because Enoshima, who represents a major figure in her life, is involved. Specifically,

Mukuro Ikusaba, meanwhile, had neither hope for the world nor despair at it. At least, not while she was a member of Fenrir. She had only come to believe that she was among those who brought despair because she grew up with Junko. She had nothing against the world, and only followed her sister because she believed this was her mission.

Up until the events of DR:IF, Ikusaba’s entire world was “Enoshima, Enoshima, Enoshima”. I mean, what else would you do if you’ve never had a proper guardian to show you how to find your own purpose in life? Although Enoshima was abusive and showed little care for Ikusaba, she at least gave Ikusaba a life purpose.

When she meets Naegi, everything changes. Again, as I previously stated, she realizes the importance of showing love and care for not only other individuals but herself. When Naegi shoves her out of the way of the Spears of Gungnir, Ikusaba is spurred to action; because of her previous submissiveness, she has followed in Enoshima’s footsteps of wrecking havoc on the world. But now that her passiveness has resulted in the injury of her cherished classmate, the person who has revolutionized how she perceives the world, she can’t take it anymore; Ikusaba wants out of SHSL Despair and Enoshima’s vision. 

This is why she sacrifices almost everything that she’s ever known — Enoshima, Fenrir, SHSL Despair — in a seemingly-futile effort to defeat the SHSL Analyst and escape with all her classmates alive. And through her skills and determination, she succeeds; and when Enoshima ultimately rejects her, Ikusaba feels pain, but she’s even more motivated to fulfill Enoshima’s dream of ultimate despair for both Enoshima and herself by moving on with her betrayal. 

Summary

Mukuro Ikusaba never received much care from the people in her life, causing her to feel very apathetic about the state of the world and preventing her from developing a voice of her own. She blindly follows her dreams of serving in the military and making her sister happy, much too focused on these two goals to realize the negative effects of her unconditional loyalty and selflessness.

However, upon meeting Makoto Naegi, Ikusaba learns to care for both other individuals and herself. In Danganronpa:IF, she tests the limits of her skills and dedication in an effort to save her classmates from the cruelty of her sister, determined to find a new dream for herself after leaving behind her past.

The evolution of Ikusaba’s character in Danganronpa:IF is truly extraordinary; she transforms from someone without a voice for herself to a caring, motivated individual that abandons all she’s ever known in hopes of creating a better world.

Author’s Notes

Oh my god. This took waaaaaaayyyy longer than expected. Like how hard do you have to procrastinate on something to take almost one whole month to write? I’m really really sorry about taking this long :( Thanks to all of you for your  patience.

In all honesty, there was a lot of content to cover (and exactly why this ended up begin 2600+ words), and I felt conflicted about skipping out on the less important parts (DR3 for example, but I wasn’t a big fan of it in the first place and I like to pretend it doesn’t exist :P). Regardless, I hope that this analysis was less of a ramble that it ended up becoming and more comprehensive instead.

Anyways, the next character up for an analysis is Byakuya Togami SHSL Imposter, who I’m definitely excited to write about since he’s one of my favorite SDR2 characters. Hopefully, he’ll be done faster than poor Ikusaba.

As always, the ask box is open for any lingering questions you have. Again, thank you for reading this character analysis and your continued support of this blog! I hope you enjoyed this analysis as much as I enjoy Ikusaba’s character :)

#mukuro ikusaba #ikusaba mukuro #dr #dr1 #dr:if #dr spoilers #dr1 spoilers #dangan ronpa #danganronpa #character analysis #dangan-analysis