#valid for his situation | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cryptocism · 2 months

Text

Since I think about clones like I’m getting paid for it, I've been rotating those alternate universe "what if Bart and Thad were actually raised together" scenarios in my brain, with Thad either post-redemption-arc or pre-villainy. Because adjusting Thad's character to fit an ally role while still keeping true to his core motives and personality is so so fascinating to me.

Like I think there's an immediate first instinct to slot Thad into a "bad" twin category: ie rebellious and prickly, doesn't get along with people, mean lil shit. And obviously it's not wrong bc we're outside the realm of canon, but the reading still feels a little left of center.

Because Thad is mean and prickly in canon. In the Impulse comics he belittles Bart and Bart’s friends/family constantly in his appearances. He loves to goad, and monologue about his own superiority and intelligence. He’s very Not Nice, and he causes many problems, and he even does it on purpose.

But, I think it’s important to consider the context. From the jump Thad knows very little about anything except which team he’s on and who he’s playing for. He gets his orders from an unseen authority and he carries out his tasks because success means his team wins.

For all his self-aggrandizing talk, everything he does is in service of an end goal that doesn't actually center him. He's trying to get revenge for grievances he's never personally suffered, retribution for actions never committed against him. Everything he does is on someone else's behalf.

Thad sees in black and white, us or them. Up until the final few issues of Mercury Falling, Bart and co. are Thad's enemies, of course he's not going to be nice.

So Thad's motivation seems pretty simple: Thawne Supremacy™.

But it’s in Mercury Falling where this starts to fall apart, and the real core of his motivation gets revealed. Thad pretends to be Bart and suddenly Helen is nice to him. Bart’s friends think he’s funny. Bart’s teachers are impressed with his grades. Max ruffles his hair and gives him hugs and tells him he’s done a good job.

If he was actually an inherently mean and standoffish character, if Thad actually had significant personal stake in the Thawne VS Allen conflict, the weight of such tiny acts of kindness wouldn’t completely break him the way that it does in canon.

Thad thinks his goal is superiority and revenge and Thawne Supremacy™, but he's chasing validation. Thad doesn’t have a personal stake in the Thawne VS Allen conflict. He wouldn't get much satisfaction if he actually destroyed Bart and his family. Thad's personal victory would be the recognition after the fact: the praise and attention from the other Thawnes (a group of people he has literally never met) for his success.

He wants validation. That's basically it. And the fact that he gets it so easily from Bart's family and friends doesn't align with how he's told himself things are supposed to work.

Actually tangentially, Bart and Thad’s respective relationships to authority is so diametrically opposed and tbh kind of subversive in a superhero narrative. Where the hero is the one carving his own path without regard to social or societal rules, no fucks to give what anybody thinks of it. And the villain is a chronic people-pleaser.

Just based on Thad’s reaction to simple praise and affection from Max I really think Thad’s motivation has more to do with the response he gets than whatever the details are of any given task. He has no actual personal convictions beyond getting positive attention, and whatever he did have crumbled as soon as Bart’s friends laughed at his joke one time. Which of course leads into the core of his whole conflict at the end of Mercury Falling. He cares too much about Bart’s friends and family now, he doesn’t want to kill them, but worse than that, he’s faced with the sudden realization that he’s on the wrong side.

The Allens gave Thad everything he actually wanted and needed, but his conception of himself is inexorably tied to the Thawnes: who gave him jack shit. These two facts are in opposition to each other, and he can’t reconcile the reality of it.

Anyway all this to say, in an AU where Bart and Thad are raised together or Thad gets an actual redemption arc etc etc, I think my personal take on Thad’s personality whether it be pre-or-post-villainy would be one that is extremely socially conscious. He is much more of a people-person than Bart. Whether he's actually accurate in assessing people's feelings and how to respond to them can be hit or miss, but he wants to behave in a way that gets people to like him.

Pretending to be Bart isn’t remarked upon as, like, a difficult task for Thad. In his internal monologue he’s literally bragging to himself about how easy it is. But what’s especially notable to me is where his act differs from Bart's typical MO. Everyone notices, and lots of people comment, and presumably if Thad didn’t have the excuse of Max’s illness to “motivate” Bart to do better he would’ve been found out immediately. And those things are, specifically: paying attention in class, doing his chores, staying on task, and being helpful around the house. The one thing about Bart he chooses not to emulate is Bart’s rebelliousness.

Thad wants to prove himself, constantly, to whatever authority he respects (probably Max in this scenario) and will do whatever it takes to make that happen. In contrast to Bart, who only listens to authority when the shit they're saying actually makes sense to him. It’s excessively difficult to convince him to go against his own interests. (And I think a key part of that is Bart’s security in knowing that no matter how much he fucks up or doesn’t listen, the people he loves will always love him back.)

Thad’s got the people-pleaser in him that has to deserve whatever he’s given. It’s why he’s happiest when he’s given a clear goal or objective to complete, because it gives him an opening to prove himself.

All this to say that if we are quantifying Bart and Thad as a "good" or "bad" twin, in the eyes of every authority: Bart is the bad twin. Bart is the bad twin, Bart is the bad twin. Bart is the one who doesn’t care about school and whose grades vary wildly depending on his personal interest. He’s the one who goes off to do dangerous shit for fun and gets in trouble constantly and doesn’t do his chores and is thoroughly unconvinced by any authority figure trying to sell him bullshit.

Thad is the one who needs to know all the rules just so he can experience the joy of following them. Relentlessly obedient. He'll put all his effort into doing all the right things that’ll endear him to whoever he wants to impress - meaning he’s the asshole who reminds the teacher about the assigned homework. Bart might be the most popular boy in school, but Thad is a pleasure to have in class.

Like Thad can (and should) still be high-strung and short-tempered and sarcastic and edgy and mean, because he is. But he can’t be doing all that without rhyme or reason. Colouring every interaction has to be that one-zero binary of ally or enemy. He needs to have somebody he’s proving himself to: a team he’s on and a team he’s against. He’s not an inherently rebellious character. He can go up against The Enemy, whoever he deems as such, but it has to be in service of a hypothetical future in which somebody eventually tells him he did a great job.

And in the interest of continuing to beat a dead horse, it connects to their respective upbringings. Thad and Bart were both raised in VR, but Bart’s experience had the side effect of basically hard-wiring him against insecurity. His world was a playground tailor-made for him, and he was never made to feel bad or insufficient about any aspect of himself. His first interaction with a real human person was Iris moving heaven and earth to save him, without him knowing her, without her knowing him, with no reasoning for the act needed beyond Being Her Grandson. Which is probably a significant factor in why Bart moves through the world with frankly atomic levels of autistic swag.

Thad’s VR upbringing installed self-consciousness in his psyche before any other personality trait. As in: he is immediately made conscious of himself and his relationship with everyone he will ever encounter. He’s told two things: he’s a clone of someone else (inherently derivative, lesser) and that he was made to be superior (a status to achieve). Which is such an instant clarifier for Thad’s everything. Where superiority is a condition that everyone either has, or does not. It’s the one-zero binary again: are they better than me or am I better than them. Being above others is mandatory, and if his superiority is ever challenged by hard evidence or god forbid nuance Thad’s brain physically cannot take it. He needs to be better, to be worse is unthinkable, and there is no other way to be.

And this status of better or worse is, crucially, not up to Thad to decide. He needs The Authority to validate him. Bart never tries to prove himself because he has nothing to prove. Thad’s entire identity hinges on the self-worth he gets from doing a Good Job.

It is such an inherent part of his motives in the Impulse comics canon, which is why it always feels a little off when he’s interpreted as a jackass indiscriminately.

Like I don't think he needs everyone to like him. But I do think he has either one person or a set of very particular people that he needs to like him. Everyone else is either in that circle or outside of it.

(Which is why Bart is such a great foil for Thad tbh. There is no set of words or behaviors that’ll change Bart’s opinion of Thad, because Bart is unaffected by obedience or charm. So ironically Bart is probably one of few people that Thad doesn’t bother to put on even a little bit of an act for.)

While Bart goes with his instincts, his personal beliefs and convictions at all times, Thad is hyper-conscious of big-picture goals. They balance each other out that way. Thad's keeping track of whatever expectations he has placed on him, and how his actions reflect on him and the team beyond short-sighted solutions. He's a team player. AND he's an asshole.

#soapbox #dc #thad thawne #thaddeus thawne #inertia #bart allen #impulse #like he cannot be mean indiscriminately... u must interrogate WHY hes mean and to whom #if hes being raised with Max and Helen he would not intentionally do anything to make their lives more difficult #if hes being raised by Meloni same situation #he needs to be trying to get validation from SOMEWHERE u know #and of course he'll mess up and hurt the people he loves or wants to impress he is a human being #but while that can sometimes be the result #that is never the Goal u kno #not his Core Motivation #i feel like the more i talk about this the less sense im making

225 notes · View notes

fromtheseventhhell · 7 months

Text

"Sansa = Ned 2.0 and Arya = Catelyn 2.0" is one of those takes where you can just tell people are more attached to the aesthetic than anything. "The Stark girls are most like the parent they look least like" sounds good on paper and people run with the idea, regardless of how it actually fits into the story. A majority of the justification relies on misinterpreting all of their characters + a healthy dose of fanon. What gets me is that this is the same fandom that insists that Lyanna, only compared to Arya in the text, is equal parts Arya and Sansa but Ned and Catelyn, two fully fleshed-out and complex characters, have to be more like one girl or the other? There's just nothing in the story to justify being so adamant about these comparisons. Arya and Sansa have parallels with both of their parents but at the end of the day, they are unique characters with their own stories. I'll never understand why people want to flatten these complex characters down to their most basic tropes and fit them into restrictive boxes just for a "poetical~" comparison.

#arya stark #sansa stark #catelyn stark #ned stark #house stark #asoiaf #BORING YAWNING SLOPPY #notice how these takes never come with actual evidence from the books to make direct comparisons from the text?#/ned is a gentle quiet poitican/ and he physically attacks someone + constantly shows his frustration and voicing his opinions #our first introduction to him is him executing a man and we know he's done so several times that year #he says that his toddler son needs to grow up and stop being afraid of a giant wolf cause /winter is coming/ and Northern life is hard 😭#/Cat is a feral wild woman/ and her chapters are full of her holding her tongue and trying to mediate situations #people literally switch their characterizations cause the second a woman shows emotion she's /feral/#and a man can be the most wild unhinged character ever and still be /kind/ and /gentle/#like yeah fanon sansa is fanon ned 2.0 and fanon arya is fanon cat 2.0 but their actual characters are more complex then that #the only valid /2.0/ comparison is between Lyanna and Arya but somehow she gets split between Arya and Sansa 🥴#my hourly frustration at this fandom not caring about the story and only being here for /the vibes~/#like Ned hates Tourneys and protests one as a waste of resources while Sansa is planning a Tourney and using resources while winter #is arriving and smallfolk are going hungry...but she's Ned 2.0? Where? How? Huh?#And yeah Ned deals with politics in KL but that's relatively a small aspect of his character #and even him constantly speaking his mind and challenging Robert directly is the exact opposite of Sansa's approach 😭#/courtesy is a Lady's armor/ vs. /I'm gonna tell Robert he's an idiot right to his face/ oh yeah totes the same #Arya is the character following his advice and guidance for a reason just saying #like if Sansa was doing the same I could see it but she..isn't? Her approach is much closer to Catelyn's than Ned's #I don't understand why people have all of the sudden decided that the Sansa/Cat parallels are shallow when they're #very similar characters and Sansa's current plot actually revolves around that fact #obviously they're not exactly alike but no two characters are or even meant to be...their comparisons are still very valid #tired of being expected to accept an idea just because enough people repeat it

275 notes · View notes

robntunney · 22 days

Text

Don't use rational thought as a defense with me, not after all you and I have seen. Vaughn, you and I live and breathe madness every day on the job...there is no...rational thought! I can't even pretend to have a conversation about anything else with you. What it comes down to is faith.

100 notes · View notes

dealwithadeer · 2 months

Text

That scene in episode 5 but with pilot!Radiousk:

Alastor walked down the hallway. Lucifers presence was not entirely.. welcome and he certianly did not like how the King of Hell was taking away Charlies attention, trust and dependence away from him but considering he was mostly just here for his own entertainment and any of his plans have yet to fail him, Alastor is not overtly angry about him. This was just a small, insignificant set back and even if it wasn't Alastor was sure that he would find some way to at least find some entertainment in it. Besides, Mimzy was here for a visit. It had barely been more than half a year since they have last seen each other but he was glad for her visit anyway. At least some pleasant company to outweight the bad one.

Trying to ignore Charlies charmingly naive but neverending chatter about 'redemption', Alastor was not all that annoyed nor tense when he heard Huskers voice coming from behind him. "Oh Boss, can I have a word?" For effect and drama rather than intimidation he turned his head back in a way more fitting to an owl than a deer or man.

"What is it?"

"You and I both know that Mimzy only shows up when she needs something . That b*** is trouble. And who knows what kind of demons she f*** with to come running to you this time."

And wasn't this slight underlying tone of mild concern just adorable? Even after all these years, Husker still thought that there was something or someone out there who could harm him, the Radio Demon? And while Alastor did not understand the cat demons bleeding heart for nearly everyone around him now that he was much more sober throughout the day, he thought that perhaps it was only natural for there to be some strange sort attachment Husker must feel for him. How amusing..

"Don't you worry your fuzzy head, Husker.", Alastor said as he ruffled the fur on top of the cat demons head a bit in a gesture that managed to be both condescinding and affectionate. "Who in their right mind would cross me?."

Husker was, as usual, not very appreciative of Alastors gestures.

The tip of a claw touched Alastors chest, something which in any other case would have left the one doing so in quite the painful state.

But this was Husker and Husker did for the most part know how lucky he was.

"You may own my soul but I ain't your f*** pet."

A twist of his spine and a sincere laughter at Huskers expense and Alastor was off.

While he was walking, Alastor said.

"Relax, my feline friend. I was only joking. Or maybe I wasn't."

Another laugh.

"You.. You...", oh Husker was really angry trying to come up with something to mutter under his breath and Alastor was all too happy hear what one of his favorite souls would come up with.

Only to be met with the satsfying "Oh forget it.", as Husker failed to came up with anything.

Yes, everything was just wonderful in this game, once one (Alastor) was able to ignore the King of Hells short little visit.

#husk hazbin hotel #alastor hazbin hotel #radiohusk #Pilot!Alastor and pilot!radiohusk #because their dynamic was a lot more different #and Alastor just being there for giggles and fun at others expensees #would make for a much much looser leash #because Husk has absolutely nothing that he could bring up #in this situation #Alastor and his at this point undefeated and validated god syndrom #making Husks live easier

58 notes · View notes

statementlou · 11 months

Note

why do you talk about Louis using blue and green signalling as if it isn't about Harry, that what the blue and green are- do you not believe in larrie?

short answer for the reading challenged trolls to cut down on asks yes I am a larrie, not that anything is wrong with not being one. But longer (much more interesting imo) answer: We know H and L were together, but no one really knows if they are still or again- I personally mostly believe that they are, but I get why people don't think so and can't see any reason to get pressed about it. But you make a solid point- blue and green and certainly things like Louis wearing the H shirt don't potentially signify anything other than larry right? Well that's what makes it so interesting to me- I kind of don't think Louis IS using those things that way! As my recent anon pointed out (and I agree) he wants people to think he is Freddie's dad, he is not presently trying to be perceived as gay in the face of people trying to force him in the closet- he is in charge of his image and is choosing to publicly put forward that he is a guy who got someone pregnant and dates women. And I do think him and H are together, but I don't think he particularly wants to talk to us about that, if that makes sense? But I believe he does want to connect with his beloved fans on a more personal level, to revel in the acceptance and love and shared wink, I know you know I know, me and you until the end, our eyes meet, together we're the greatest- and I think he uses the larry imagery to do that, rather than to talk about his relationship. I could do this for days he gives us SO MANY examples to choose from but just to pick one: the all blue and green lighting for All This Time. Think about it- if he actually had images of a rainbow flag on the screens at his shows or waved one or something, it would make the articles and press and be a whole thing and revive every rumor ever about him in every tabloid! But if he makes the entire lighting and screens for a song blue and green (or wears a shirt with a giant H on it or any of the other one million coded things he does), well so what? No journalist would think a thing of it, nothing to see here- but the larrie majority of his fanbase hears him saying "you were right about everything and yes I am gay and I love you for seeing it" and go completely bananas! It's fucking ingenious tbh, SBB at his finest! And the fact that the song he chose for his current unhinged bluegreener fest was All This Time was for me the thing that really cemented this theory for me; I know some people disagree, but to me that song reads as being about him being closeted and his public life and the fans and choosing this lighting for that rather than for like We Made It or something really feeds my conviction that he is bluegreening on main as a way to tell us that he is gay rather than to tell us anything about his personal relationship. TLDR yeah I DO think he is signaling, a lot, but I don't think it tells us anything about the status of his relationship with Harry or anyone else and the reasons I think they are together don't have anything to do with Louis' stage lighting choices, but also that means I don't think it makes sense to say he's not signaling anything ever because you don't think they're together; both can coexist and I think it's just weird to act like he's not making pretty clear choices

#yeah yeah like I said I know some people disagree and think ATT is about harry #but that's true about literally anything he's ever written (which is annoying tbh) and I just don't agree ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ sorry #none of us know for sure! your take is as valid as mine! but this is mine #SBB #this is just about Louis harry blue greens and other things like mad too but with him #well I don't feel the same tbh #I think he is talking about Louis specifically much more often #but then his situation around what people think and what he wants them to think is different so there ya go

260 notes · View notes