#just treated rather surface level imo

[lilies-n-slander]

Hazbin Hotel would be so much more interesting if charlie’s naïveté and surface-level kindness were treated as the actual flaws they are and didn’t work. Heads up, this kinda just turned into a text wall of charlie neg and ranting so don’t read if you don’t want to see that.

How she currently is, she just doesn’t make that much sense in the setting. I’ve seen ppl say that charlie is a fresh take and contrasts the edginess, but I just don’t see how she is possible. You’re telling me she’s been in hell for 200 yrs but still has this childish and naive personality, is still disgusted by the sinners being cannibalistic, violent, and even just horny, and is so detached from those she calls “her people”? She was born in hell, shouldn’t that make her more used to the sinners’ depravity and not less? She doesn’t seem to have a good grasp on what the sinners want or how they behave. It would make more sense if the show leaned into the toxic positivity white savior nepo baby angle (or rather, actually portrayed it as a *bad* thing) and rather than naïveté, her ignorance was out of self-centeredness and/or lack of true empathy for the other sinners. She would be more interesting as a character too imo.

She looks down on the other sinners (and honestly so does the show?? When she’s showing lucifer around and introduces him to her friends, they’re framed as unappealing as a joke… these are the characters the audience is also supposed to care about.. and many of the bg chars, such as the cannibal town residents, are portrayed as simple-minded brutes), there’s a lot of condescending “….ooookay” type of lines and she constantly has to think of nice ways to frame the clearly negative things she thinks about others. So why does she want to save them so much? The more reasonable explanation is a sense of white savior-ness than actually caring about them.

She’s eager to excuse whatever sir pentious did (which I’m assuming she doesn’t know?) and let him in, despite how he makes the other residents (including her own gf!) uncomfortable. And yes I say excuse, because she never inquires about his past sins or discussed him repenting. It seems to start with sorry, but also end with sorry too. This could’ve been made interesting if she simultaneously looked down on but also excused all sorts of heinous acts. Like val is the most openly manipulative and scummy character, he licks her arm, and yet she’s still apologetic about ruining things (Side note, if she’s genuinely apologetic, then she’s actually an idiot because why is she talking to the boom-mic employee *while they’re filming???*).

She doesn’t know what she’s doing and has no concrete plan but gets incredulous at ppl who don’t blindly trust her. Angel has to leave in ep 4 and she gets SO frustrated over it, like you seriously expect everyone to drop all of their other commitments for you? She has her webster definition notecards for the meeting with heaven and has to improvise and rely on angel being good at the club but she gets mad that lucifer isn’t 100% behind her plan?

Also, trust falls? Really? Then she goes “why isn’t this working? We’ve tried everything!” But on that note, the actual episode portrayal is kinda exactly what I’m going for. Not only do the trust falls not work, charlie says, “I love all of you so much,” pulls her puppy eyes, and only vaggie catches her. It’s surface level and shallow, and does not win anyone else over.

In contrast, vaggie’s attempt at building trust, throwing everyone into a battle, *actually works* (despite vaggie only being in hell for 3 years and being heaven-born, she already knows how things work better than charlie!) and yet charlie talks about it as though it already failed. She says “we work best as a team,” with the underlying message being “I can’t trust you to do things on your own.”

If she was waiting so long to reconnect with lucifer, then why hasn’t she called him in years?? Altho I’m currently rotating lucifer in my brain so I might be a bit biased

“If angels can do whatever and stay in the sky” they can’t?? Your dad is RIGHT there. I. What

She has a power dynamic with every other character except lucifer since she has her demon powers, not to mention she’s giving them a place to stay. When vaggie says she appreciates that charlie doesn’t use her powers, charlie doesn’t say “it wouldn’t be right,” she says it would be too *mean.* But if someone pushes her buttons, who’s to say they wouldn’t slip out (see her flip on a dime after val hits angel. Obv it’s justified in this case, but it shows that she’s willing to use her powers on sinners)? Again, it would be interesting if the show actually leaned into this angle. Imagine if she put on a nice front, never swore, seemed genuinely touching and understanding, but the second someone annoys her she annihilates them and becomes threatening and violent. Then she turns around and is nice again. Too much like alastor? idk

Also, many characters refer to her by calling her lucifer’s daughter, so clearly ppl know that if they cross her they’ll face his wrath by proxy (this also fits in thematically with what lute tells her in the first episode, that she’s exempt from the exterminations bc nepotism privilege). So realistically, everyone else would be a bunch of sucking-up yes-men bc they’re afraid of her. Which they kind of are when push comes to shove?

At first, she doesn’t help at all during the war and lets everyone else fight for her. Doesn’t want to get her hands dirty ig, even though all of this was caused by her in the first place. She only starts fighting at vaggie’s urging.

Like husk points out, every meeting charlie has with the angels makes things worse for all the sinners. Despite lucifer’s warnings that the meeting with heaven won’t work, and against vaggie saying to calm down, charlie basically picks a fight with heaven at the risk of *everyone else EXCEPT HER.*

What were charlie and lilith doing to stop the exterminations before lilith took her 7 year leave? Hell, what was charlie doing during those 7 years? Why does she have 0 connections outside of vaggie, who she only met 3 yrs ago? Why does she have to introduce herself to rosie, rather than her already knowing her name?

Also in ep 7 she says to alastor “I can’t believe how you can do exactly what you told me you would do!” (standing by and watching everyone fail at redemption) almost like she wasn’t paying attention to him at all.

“Why would vaggie hide that she was an exterminator” -> Rosie asks “how did that make you feel?” “It made me mad and doubt if she loves me” like I get it, it was a betrayal, but IS she stupid

Ready For This is charlie manipulating a town of ppl to join the army. Her pitch includes “on the way to the hotel the scenery is nice and you can make friends :3” and “have you ever wanted to die for a cause? Notably I myself am spared from being killed but uh that’s your problem.” Alastor pipes in that you can eat the angels and that’s what actually moves the crowd, because he understands them.

Her perspective on violence and where she chooses to draw the line is really confusing. Why does she care about sinners being violent to each other if they’ll just respawn? She stops alastor from beating up sir pentious at an arbitrary point, but is fine with him eating and presumably killing the gangsters who come after mimzy. (Edit: forgot to point out yet another example, that she was fine with vaggie tossing sir pentious and angel off the balcony but stops her from tossing niffty as well for no reason.) Why is she so apologetic to the angels actively killing sinners but was distraught over vaggie having partaken? Why was she opposed to the CANNIBALS being eager to eat the angels and saying “idk, they seem kinda murder-y” WHAT. What? I’m struggling to even begin to describe how ignorant that is during a WAR. What did she think was going to happen, that she wouldn’t have to fight anyone herself? Why did she stop her dad from killing Adam but doesn’t react strongly to Niffty finishing the job? If it mattered so much to her, the lack of reaction seems strange to me.

Isn’t it just so poetic that her weapon in the war is a shield that she uses exclusively on herself, which she hardly even needs due to her contractual immunity?

Why doesn’t she think to use her powers to build and maintain the hotel? That doesn’t require any violence or domineering. Yet when lucifer comes over it’s run-down and falling apart. Or ask lucifer to help her build it? She was concerned that asking for the meeting with heaven was such a big ask—why not start with this small thing? Father-daughter bonding.

Why does the show end w lucifer + the sinners congratulating her, and in particular, rebuilding the hotel? Hell doesn’t know that sir pentious got redeemed, so from their pov charlie’s idea didn’t work at all.

Can you tell that I’m writing this while I’m rewatching the show?

Aaand that’s that. Her char has always come off to me as somewhat condescending/fake, but I keep finding more and more things to dislike about the way she’s been written. Unfortunate. Honestly tho I might enjoy watching her more if I read her through this lens. You could probably write a similar post for most/all other chars in the show, limited only by the amount of screentime they get lmao

[mswyrr]

why i think agatha has never walked the Road before

Based on the song lyrics, if she had walked it before, she would have needed a coven to do it, and we have every reason to believe she hasn't had a coven since her first betrayed her.

Gather sisters fire Water, earth and air Darkest hour, wake thy power Earthly and divine Burn and brew with coven true And glory shall be thine

Even if she had previously bamboozled some poor bunch of witches into the Road, if they didn't become her "coven true" in that process, the attempt would have been a failure. Perhaps she has survived a previous, failed attempt, but she's never walked it successfully. To walk it successfully would mean to have community at the end, and that would require her to be changed in key ways.

Another lyric talks about "fate" and another about facing your "fears." If Agatha had faced her fears or fate successfully in the past, she wouldn't be the person she is imo. She's currently someone who is in constant flight from her past, her own feelings, other people. Only Wanda's magic trapped her, pinning her in place, forcing her into community with others. And that has just (for the moment) made Agatha double down on running and using. At least at the surface level.

Moving beyond the specific lyrics of the song, there's two broad categories of how to handle magic in stories. The first treats it like a possession--like a powerful weapon or tool in a character's hand--something that belongs to them and they can do with it what they wish and, pivotally, who they are is separate from it. The second treats magic as something that transforms you -- it's not a tool you wield, to wield it creates/requires a change in your very being. I think the way they're writing magic on the show is the second (to me, vastly superior) approach rather than the first.

The song itself and the use of a Road both point to this. The idea of a walking a path or road and being changed by it is widespread in global spiritual practices -- many religions articulate the religion itself as a road/path to walk -- the process of walking the path is supposed to bring you more and more into alignment with the power/enlightenment you seek, rather than the power becoming a thing YOU own.

Agatha herself is so deeply unenlightened at this moment in her life that she is TREATING the Road as if it is the category one kind of magic. Just a tool or a weapon she can grasp and possess without changing. She's treating the magical commitment she's made to this coven similarly, as if it has no weight to it. But I think she's dead wrong about all of that. That the magic in this story is of the second category, and through walking the Road--and committing to a coven-- she will experience change and find a "coven true." Not that she will become all nice; not that the coven will be all sweetness and light. But that it will simply be real and true.

As Jac herself has said about community:

"I hope what people take from the show, is that yes there is a tremendous amount of benefit from the circle, from the tribe, that you can have communal power, and your can find your own internal power in that circle. But also it was really important to me to show that there can also be in fighting in that circle. And there can also be bad decision-making and backstabbing, and the complexity of these witches no being able to get along. The goal for them (coven) is to harmonize both literally and figuratively, and they fail at it! You know, in a number of occasions, a circle can give you so much. But it's always going to be an imperfect thing." --podcast interview with Jac Schaeffer, quote transcribed by the lovely @isagrimorie (thank you! <3)

Even at its best, community is hard work. A "coven true" doesn't mean easy. Just real and sincere. Agatha lost the "grounding" of herself in her youth (my meta on that is here) and she will be more grounded again.

At its worst, as Agatha learned in her youth, community can become monstrous and terrifying. A prison rather than a home; a death sentence rather than a safe place to live and grow. But even when things aren't in that failure state, it can be painful and difficult -- its own hard road to walk. But on that journey you *become*. And others become along with you. By committing to each other, you are not instantly made whole and enlightened. But you allow yourself to live and breathe and become. To do the hard work of becoming. And it is that process of becoming (of living) that Agatha has cut herself off from by cutting herself off from people.

[laura1633]

(sorry lando fans, look away)

i need to say this just in addition to a recent ask, but i always, always knew that lando would not keep up with being friends with max as soon as they‘d battle on track. like, always. i don‘t want to say he‘s a fake friend per se, but lando never seemed to see max as much of a friend as max sees and likes lando as a friend. it‘s been pretty obvious to me. they have their first „fall-out“ on track and lando goes running to the media to bash max when he knows how max is treated by the media, british media especially. max was and is much more mature in this approach regarding everything. lando straight up acts immature most of the time. his persistens comments lately about „he should have won instead“ after races….boy, you won once. uhm. get your head back on the ground. i have nothing against confidence, but with lando it often seems like loud arrogance rather than calm confidence, like max exudes for example.

maybe they‘ll talk and cool down but IMO (!) lando is not the friend to max that max seems to think he is. maybe this opened his eyes though

also absolutely agree with everything you said under the cut of that ask, laura!

Hi anon

I do think you have touched on the thing that disappointed me most about yesterday. I'll respond under the cut again so people can ignore if they want. I think this is the last ask I have about the subject so I will then resume to the normal service of me posting insane (mostly nsfw) fan fiction ideas and random pics of Max and Charles 😂

I have always given Lando a lot of leeway with some of the things he says because I feel like he is quite harsh on himself so when he says "I should have won" I read it along the lines of him admitting he messed up and should have won.

I also have never really commented on Max and Lando's in real life relationship because I don't know anything other than the surface level stuff we see online and it's none of my business. I personally didn't like the way Lando was so openly dismissive of Max's friendship but they are both grown adults who know their relationship better than anyone else so if they are happy with it then fine.

However, I completely agree with what you have said about how Lando spoke to the press yesterday. It is blatantly obvious to everyone in that paddock that Max has had to face a lot of booing at races and a hell of a lot of negativity both online and directly from the media. As a friend I can't see how Lando would want to fuel all of that. It felt to me like he just threw Max to the wolves yesterday and was happy for them to do their worst.

I do understand adrenaline and being angry after a DNF but when you are meant to be "friends" I feel like you should at least try and calm the situation and talk privately first rather than saying inflammatory things. Maybe Lando and Max just aren't that friendly or maybe it was immaturity on Lando's part.

It really hit a nerve with me because I hate the "Max is the bad guy" narrative that gets pushed (and that Lando will be well aware of). As Max gave a more dignified response I feel like the narrative is now being led by Lando's statements about how it was all Max's fault. Honestly it made me a little sad to see Max's reaction to hearing what Lando had said, he deserves better in my opinion.

I guess I am not going to go around bashing Lando going forward as what is done is done and we will just have to see what happens going forward.

I don't think I'll be writing any Lando fanfics going forward though 😂

[yudrein-aile]

I'm just on a meta run today so more thoughts on the political situation in Orr! I'm going to elaborate on this in my big meta essay someday but for now...

So, when Thais Yulman and Alik come to visit the Cavalry, Yuder makes the following observations:

Yuder had seen in his previous life how sensitive the court mages were to power. It was only natural since those who wanted to gain power rather than improving their magic skills often became court mages. On the surface, they professed loyalty to the emperor alone, but behind the scenes, they colluded with various nobles and engaged in dirty dealings. (64)

This is rather interesting as the two institutions the imperial power in the capital is based on are the Court Mages and the Imperial Knights. Of course we also have the Southern and Northern Army, but they are also filled with commoners, manpower for open conflict, not particularly for the intrigues of court. While the corrent Commander of the Imperial Knights is on good terms with, at the very least Kishiar, several of his subordinates are not subserviant to that - Kiolle being our best example, and how the Cavalry in general receives harsh treatment from them.

Similarly, we learn that Hellem Caspirl used to be the head of the Imperial Mage Division, aka the Court Mages (378). She treats Kishiar like her respected Lord and Nathan like relative - she supports them and has an amicable relationship to them. Kishiar went out of his way to hire her when she considered retiring. Now, I maight be reaching a little here, but...

'Thais Yulman must have known that the Emperor and Kishiar wouldn't completely trust the court mages, so he came running. (65)

... wonder what it says that she retired, but is still more than capable of working and, according to sensing-powerful-individuals-at-master-level Yuder, still is quite powerful.

All while the Court Mages apparently keep detoriating further. And, to make this about my most special babygirl again, this also says quite a bit about the Cavalry and Yuder's time as Commander. We know the Cavalry dominated and quickly put every other group out of a job - all while, apparently, being the only group you could consider fully loyal to the Emperor. Naturally, this was in part because Yuder very much ruled with an iron fist of violence that didn't tolerate disobedience, but also because the Cavalry essentially was the institution pushing for, well, let's call it Awakener Rights.

The Cavalry has to perform well, or, to quote Katchian, "Show me your worth, the reason I should keep the Cavalry around" (1031).

All other imperial institutions are riddled with corruption, which Katchian himself used to get into his position, and then the Cavalry itself is kept on a short leash, standing, IMO, represent for the wellbeing of Awakeners in the Empire in general.

[butididntpourthewhiskeys]

So I have a lot of thoughts on the sourdough comment so I might as well tell you because I'd rather do that than work on my assignment :/

When that interview first came out, I remember a lot of people defended/interpreted it as him saying "oh we're just such an in-tune couple, that making art together for us is as basic and natural as making bread". Which, imo, is certainly a fair interpretation and a good faith one to make.

My problem with it then (and in hindsight) is that on a surface level, its just a very awkward and clunky answer, and he could have actually benefited more by giving a textbook PR "it was such a great experience, yay!" type answer.

On a deeper level, it showed me three things:

A degree of indifference towards her career/craft, given how monumental and pathbreaking FolkMore were for her. And it may have been unintentional indifference, because he was 'sick of being asked about her'. We'll probably never know, but there was definitely disdain there. You're a part of this album, my man, you could at least be a little more excited about it!

Fits into a larger context of him refusing to say a single good thing about her in public: A reflection of how he treated/praised her privately? [Not to Tayvis-ify this essay but] a helpful comparison to draw is Travis, who heaps praise on her publicly so effusively and loudly, that all our soft hearts are wondering how cute af he must be privately. Joe's refusal to even acknowledge her in public and songs like YLM hint at a dynamic where he just turned away from her.

My friend's interpretation, which is also an interesting one: In another interview, he said "he didnt see himself writing any more music with her and it wasnt in his plans". In light of the Grammy win, I think he realised it had gone from being a quarantine hobby they did together, to something he would now be forever associated with in a professional capacity, and for a man who HATED headlines about anything other than his acting career, that stings. Imagine having to cope with the fact that you'll probably never win the highest accolade in your own field - an Oscar - but you were handed a Grammy because of your girlfriend's talent and her craft.

Maybe the answer is he simply needed a better PR team and more media training (someone needed to tell him its fine to say your favroite TS song and it just makes you more likeable if you do) but it's just such an interesting analogy to have drawn in an interview. Thanks for entertaining my TED talk, Sarah!

Wow queen of argumentation 🥰 THIS ⬆️

[mechahero]

@anestofocs asked- We could see people giving Fandom Lambda the Rose Quartz treatment ™️ were all nuance flies out the window the moment Lambda does something that is morally complicated even though being morally complicated is baked into him. People will yell at others at how he's "the real villan" even when he's in the middle of trying to save not just his city but the world. Especially when he has to chow down on human flesh even though he would rather not. Tell me what the “fanon” interpretation of my OC if they were a canon character would be (accepting!)

//I hate how true this is because you guys are absolutely right LMAO.

Because yes, when it comes to morally complicated characters and the actions they take, fandom tends to ignore that? Or flatten it out to "he did this thing, so he's bad!" and treating him like he's a piece of shit even though there's a reason why he did that? And it straight up gets ignored??

And that's always funny to me. And I'm really glad Rose Quartz got brought up because both she and Lambda would be in the same boat? Granted, his character progression isn't shown in reverse and built up to where you see why he chooses to do something like with how Rose Quartz's character was explored but still. The surface level treatment of characters and their actions can be straight up damaging, imo. There's always a reason why they're going to do something and they're not a monster for doing a few shitty things. (Though greater fandom would have you believe otherwise cough cough. And it does depend on how shitty those actions are.)

Also if you ask me, fandom tends to blame the character as opposed to looking at a writer and being like "Hey, where are we going with this?". Or if they do look towards the writers, they would gripe about how the characterization is wrong when it's being developed or played out or something.

Honestly, a lot of it comes down to people not getting why a character might choose to do something morally ambiguous or complicated or simply not wanting to get it.

[10hourshift]

So, Bonnie, right?

⚠️🚨❗Warning❗🚨⚠️

this thing is really long and might not make sense, idk, I'm not proofreading that, I spent a day and a half on it

Ok, before I get to the point I'm trying to make I have to say this post doesn't come from hate, on the contrary, I've said before that I really like his character, but to be honest I like him more in the sense of "putting him in a petri dish and studying him🧫" rather than "this character is just like me fr" or smth like that (just let me explain it will make sense later I hope)

So, here it goes

Bonnie is a really fucking weird character

And one of the weakest overall imo

First of all, I'm comparing his character to others like him. Since not all the characters are treated the same.

The way that I see it, there are four types of characters in the series

Wow, they are really going thru it. These are the characters that have a lot of development throughout the series (like Freddy, Fred or Bon) and, more importantly, that had some visible growth onscreen (< this is important)

Hey, you got over it really fast. Unlike the first type, these characters don't have a lot of development in the story (or they had it off screen and just reappear w all their problems solved after), but are part of the story (like Chica, Joy, Fox, and Bonnie)

They sure are there, huh? These guys appear somewhat regularly and have some development, but aren't as important to the plot like the first two (Mai, Puppet, Springtrap, idk)

Haven't seen you in a while. These are the characters that barely get any attention, appearing in one episode for like every ten. Bc of this you wouldn't expect them to have any development at all (the nightmares, the funtimes)

Ok, so the category that I put Bonnie in is mainly formed of those characters that are necessary to the story, or to some characters stories. Like Joy, because she's important to Fred and Bon at some point in S2, so she gets some development, but gets thrown to the side for other things, even with that, her character is important for the plot, since she wasn't there for the contest, and she needed to be rescued by Freddy and Fred.*her character is also done so dirty, but that is for another time*

But anyways, back to Bonnie. He's relevant to the story in two ways. He's a member of the main band, and he's the romantic interest of Bon** and he doesn't have any big problems of his own w anything.

**I know that the whole bon thing is not part of the main plot, but it takes a significant part of the whole series that I'm counting it (the AUs will not be counted on the main analysis, maybe I'll cover them in here idk)

Let me do a quick recap of his role in story to make things easier 4 me.

Staring w the 1st video on fnafhs, we see what kind of person is Bonnie on a surface level

Description taken from wikifandom, this is supposedly a transcription of what edoochan says in her video "como serían los animatrónicos de FNAF si fueran adolescentes", this is not the full section of Bonnie btw, it's missing his relationships w the others, but ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

During the beginning chapters we just see him getting dragged along to the situation, being knocked over by Freddy and Fox, showing that he was sleeping in class, forced to clean the classroom w the others, and pretty much manipulated to be part of the team, assigning himself as the guitarist of the band. In them, Bonnie is just a smartass and apathetic to the world around him, to the point of sleeping in class and mentioning that he gets beaten up so much that he is inmune to it, maybe bc of his stereotypical nerdy look, and the whole "he's a little quirky and strange" bit he has going on. It's not until chapter 9 "el Bonnie oculto" until we see his ability w the guitar, and that he has like a whole different personality that he has when playing, given that the chapter is mainly the guitar cover w pictures of Bonnie and bon playing the guitar, we can only assume what this personality is. He seems to be more confident, and happy while playing, showing that the guitar is something he's really passionate abt, and that he likes to show his abilities off.

At this point we have a somewhat solid idea of who Bonnie is at the start, and of what we can expect from this character and what his role in the band will be.

Me: Boy am I excited to see how Bonnie finally gets to beat his apathy w the power of pop rock anime covers and friendship by his side :3

This gay mf:

Look, this is where my "problem" starts, bc from this chapter forwards Bonnie's character is changed drastically. Whatever type of development he has gets put on the side just to make space for the whole "is this love or friendship? 🥺 I love my tiny gay babies". In this chapter Bonnie is looking for Bon because he wants to practice w him, and invites him to do so when he finally finds him, and doesn't wait for him to respond, assuming he will be there. Being from Bon's perspective, we don't really have any idea of what does Bonnie feel for him, y'know, besides admiration, and considering him to be better than him, also we see that Bonnie changed some parts of his personality in this chapter, he doesn't have any sarcastic or smartass comments, the "weirdness" of his actions is more prevalent (reading upsidedown, surprising Bon from a branch) and he gets his recognizable "hehehe" laugh thing.

The next chapter he makes an appearance in is "la pesadilla de Bonnie" where we see him getting beaten up by the nightmares, and defended by Fox. Later we see him in the park practicing w bon, when asked about the bruises he claims again that he is inmune to them, dismisses Bon's concern and talks abt what to practice. The next day, he is threatened by the nightmares again, but now Bon and Fox stand up for him, and he also puts a stop to the abuse, when Fox asks him why he decided to defend himself, he says is because of his friends.

He showed some development here, finally starting to take care of himself bc others care about him, and fighting against the apathy towards life in general, though since we only see Bon's point of view we can't really see how he decided to change, and how this affects his life. This means that whatever growth Bonnie has, it will be as an incentive for Bon's growth as a character, making Bonnie nothing but an objective for Bon, because "we"* as an audience are expecting these two to end up as a couple (imagine that Bonnie is that romantic interest girl in movies/books/etc. that doesn't get any development and that you're supposed to ship w the male protagonist, when he has more chemistry w his rival). Another thing that I noticed that supports this idea is the changes that were made to Bonnie's personality to fit the romantic trope. He stopped being a smartass sarcastic dude and changed into an oblivious "uwu" boy, where his funny comic relief comments play around these new characteristics, AND, on top of it all, the apathy he shows to everything, like getting his ass beaten, is changed to an "aw that sucks :/" reaction to the things that go wrong.

*"we" in this case, is the audience that was pushing the bxb ship when the series aired, since fnafhs was really influenced by what the fandom wanted, specially at the beginning, it's necessary to recognize the parts that had more influence from the fans, rather than what edoo wanted. Like, clearly, the huge amount of bxb content, both in the mainline series, and the AUs.

One funny thing I wanna mention is that from this chapter on, Bonnie and Fox are stablished as Friends™, given that it was mainly Fox the one that motivated Bonnie to defend himself, and in later chapters Bonnie is shown to be closer to Fox than the other band members (Tbh I think these two are easier to ship than the bxb imo), without leaving the others behind and showing that he cares abt the band.

His last "main" appearance before the "camp arc" (yeah that's how I call it) is in chapter 21 "Bon, amor o admiración" where he is w the band worrying abt golden, and then going to practice to Bon, giving him a personal song of his, just to be rejected by bon and him humiliating him in front of the toys. Again, we don't see his reaction to everything that just happened to him, like, imagine that the only person that you shared your most important thing with just pushes you away one day w no explanation. That is something really big that would have been an interesting character moment. But whatever, this is not what this is about. I'll just keep pointing out the moments that keep being shown as "big shipping moment 😱!!" Bc is the only time that Bonnie gets some attention, that only focus on one side of the story (mainly Bon's) anyways.

Uhh, during the "camp arc" Bonnie is just, kinda there, again, bon is the one going thru it, we see that Bonnie misses Bon, but REALLY brushes off what Bon did to him as "he's mad w me but idk y :(" and he helps out Bonsoir even after discovering that is Bon, now, when confronted by him on why he isn't mad with him, he basically answers with "dude you are really weird, but so am I, we weirdos gotta stick together" and the moment ends up in a friendzone joke.

😐 this resolution has always felt wrong for me, mainly for the way that Bonnie was handled (obviously), and the implications that the only conflict that was between him and Bon is that the later just kept avoiding an akward conversation w Bonnie. I know this may be nitpicking from my part, but I do believe that this takes away any agency that Bonnie has in the situation, not only is he not mad abt the papers, and humiliation that he got from Bon, he also brushes off the fact that bon was avoiding him during the whole camping trip, like, I'm not expecting him to go to Bon and tell him to fuck himself or smth, but at least that he mentions that he was mad at him at some point, or disappointed, it doesn't even need to be a full on chapter, some comment can do well enough, idk.

I finally got to season 2 (!!) In this one Bonnie doesn't do anything else than his usual comic relief comments (now is a mix of bluntness, misunderstanding of the situation, and tiny bit of sarcasm). Now he and bon hang around as friends, and he decides to help Bon w his issues w joy (ig he's just there for moral support, bc he doesn't do much in there). During the whole "oh no we're eliminated" thing there's nothing of interest, up until chapter 16 "verdaderos sentimientos", where Bon finds him and goes w the whole "let's find our friends, as friends" and this bitch responds like this

OH MY FUCKING GOD*

Let's unpack that later, please let me finish the series recap.

Ok, in the last chapter Bonnie thanks BON for helping him to get friends, and the band and stuff, letting he know how much he appreciates him, and before gets to respond he goes to help the other w the thing that is happening to Fox.

Aight, now that I showed Bonnie's development throughout the series (and gave my analysis and opinion on it) I will just point out the general issues that the character has.

First, there's the lack of clear development and growth. Even though he is necessary for the story of Bon, he doesn't do anything in the series, as I said before, he, such as other characters, lacks a conflict, and the ones he's in are related either to Bon or the band (one way we can see how much attention a character gets is w the amount of solo songs they sing in series, Bonnie doesn't have any)

The second thing is that the only way we see Bonnie is trough an outsider perspective (mainly Bon's), so any development he gets, it will be incomplete bc we never see his journey to whatever resolution he gets.

Then there's the thing that makes Bonnie so interesting to me, his character, unlike the others that are like him, is being constantly changed to fit Bon's conflict,* this makes him really ambiguous of "who" is Bonnie. When the Bon subplot was introduced he was changed to fit the uwu romantic interest, then, his carefree (or apathetic) personality is used to excuse Bon's actions*, and THEN when Bon finally starts to accept Bonnie as only a friend is shown to us that now is BONNIE the one with the crush to create more conflict between them(I hate the "will they, will they not" trope)* that will never be solved bc the series is cancelled anyways. These changes make Bonnie a less defined character, and since he is mainly used in Bon story, other interesting aspects of his character are put aside and ultimately forgotten.

*other characters like Chica, for example, that are less developed are still well defined, even if it is shallow, chica is pretty much the same throughout the series, this is the case w Joy and Fox, for example.

*not that Bon is without guilt, he is really the one who gets development of all this mess, but that the fact that Bonnie doesn't give it much thought to Bon's actions pretty much gives the idea that "it wasn't such a big deal". Tbh, I want to make an analysis on Bon later but he is SO MUCH MORE messed up than Bonnie, if this thing is long I can't imagine how will the Bon analysis turn out 😵‍💫

*that last scene really bothers me for a few reasons, does it mean that Bonnie has feelings for Bon?, If so, since when?, Did he go through the same inner conflicts as Bon?, If the feelings are recent, what started? Are the feelings romantic? Was this supposed to be more bait for the viewers? Who knows, I'll try to not think too hard abt it

Well, I guess that's all I had to say, of course it looks really negative, but I really like him, I enjoy his funny comments in the series, his whole relationship with Fox, and I'm very fond of the "weird, probably autistic coded" trope, I find him relatable at times, uh what else? I liked the route they took for him on zer0* and he's always been one of my favorites, even when I first started watching the series and hadn't developed this opinion of mine, and even now, these things that I do are one of the way that I interact w my interests (why couldn't I be satisfied enough with just drawing characters in solid backgrounds? unu)

*I'm making this quickly, but I think it's neat how they took on Bonnie's apathy and developed trough it, I don't think it was necessary to make a whole new character to justify it or whatever they wanted to do tho. I also want to dive into the zer0 series later lol

That's all now, for real, this thing was really long, I speedwatched the series to make the recap, uhh, what else?

Box (BonnieXFox) > BxB

Thanks to anyone who read this post to the end, if you have anything to comment or to add please feel free to do so, I want to see what other people think

Ok bye now

[rosehearrt]

gives you leona >:3

NO LONGER ACCEPTING ━ Give Me a Character;

Leona Kingscholar.

How I feel about this character

Omg okay, I like Leona a lot. I think that he's a character out of Yana's usual comfort zone which I find extremely interesting, if that makes sense? I don't think she's written anyone quite like him before, and as an avid fan of her work since Rust Blaster, that's very intriguing for me and was the first draw to this character. I can see parallels between personality for so many other characters to those from other works of hers ( cain and lilia, kei and silver, ciel/o!ciel and riddle, sebastian and jade/malleus, druitt and rook, kalim and soma, sebek and edward, etc. ) But Leona is pretty new characterization imo, especially given the pretty clear information we're given that he struggles with depression. It isn't easy to write characters with mental illness, but so many of the TWST characters have some type of it and they're all very well written. Leona's way of coping is what's perceived as his ' laziness ' or the constant napping. I think that's fabulous. He doesn't explain himself regarding it and he doesn't want to; he's a very private person when it comes to personal matters and he hides that behind an uncaring and sometimes borderline cruel facade in order to make sure people give him a wide berth so that he can deal with his own stuff and be alone with himself while simultaneously not letting it affect others. He does this a lot, with the Spelldrive tournament and his OB being the exception since that clearly meant a lot to him, and probably brought out/triggered a very old inferiority complex surrounding his relationship with his brother ( deemed the successful golden child ) whom I'm sure he saw parallels with in Malleus and his success.

Beyond the portrayal of his complicated mental health and complexities surrounding his family, however, I also love his not-so-secret soft side that comes out in small ways, mostly around his underclassmen. From letting Riddle sleep on his lap for three hours after they were kidnapped, to allowing Epel to follow him around all day to ' observe his manliness ', and even protecting Jack from upperclassmen who were bullying him, Leona is quite good to those who are younger, and often times in a sense weaker than he is, which fills my heart because it just goes to show that he has some innate instinct towards caring for others, something which he probably used to have towards the people of his Kingdom as well, but something that he's struggled to uphold as he's become more and more jaded whilst growing up and seeing how little he himself mattered in comparison to his brother, in the eyes of both the royal family and, very likely, his people, since he's merely the ' spare ' rather than the ' heir '.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Ruggieeeeee. My OTP is 100% Leoruggie. They make me so incredibly happy. I picture Ruggie as the type of person who simply doesn't bond with over people beyond surface level as a defense mechanism. He grew up extremely poor, literally having to eat out of garbage cans while he took care of his elderly grandmother and lives under the oppression of lions. But I fully think that the reason he first started sticking to Leona wasn't actually money or favors or anything of the sort, but because he saw something in Leona that he hadn't seen before. I think Leona is probably the first person of high status that Ruggie has ever met, the first royal, and the first lion to treat him like anything more than trash on the side of the road. After meeting Leona, they spoke normally, joked like equals, and all of that probably made Ruggie feel like he'd found a kindred spirit...as did Leona's frustration that - despite having all the skills to do so - he couldn't seem to climb higher than the station he was given at birth.

Still, I think Ruggie decided to start following Leona because he became a beacon of light for him, and of hope that if they were somehow able to get him on the throne one day, things might change for Ruggie's people. Or even if he didn't get to the throne, as a royal, Leona could still do something to participate in moving their society forward and uplifting the less fortunate. But I think he wants to help hoist Leona up in the world however he can regardless, because Leona is so different from everyone else he'd ever met, and because he sees the world from a different point of view. Different ideals, and all of that. And besides that, I think he probably felt like he’d found belonging with him.

But as for the ship part, man, Ruggie has to love him in some sort of way, because how could anyone let themselves be nearly murdered by someone and still want to be by their side afterwards if there wasn’t love there? Leona seems to be the only person Ruggie truly trusts, and honestly I think that goes both ways. The two of them clearly have the type of bond other people probably can't understand, the type that allows them to stay together normally even after a murder attempt. I have a lot of feelings about them - I just love seeing them together. They've both suffered and been lonely their whole lives in their own ways, but finding each other has changed things. I adore them.

Honorable mentions: Leona x Riddle, Leona x Epel, Leona x Jack.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

This is weird but probably Cheka? I just love any chance to see their interactions. He loves his uncle so much, and despite the fact that Leona clearly has plenty of unresolved issues surrounding his brother that he needs to work through and that he projects onto his nephew, he's also not necessarily cruel to him. I think Leona is probably very special to a child like him because he's being raised with all of the weight of the world on his shoulders as the next in line for the throne, and is going through what I'm sure is a very rigorous education for it. I can't imagine he gets much time to be a normal child, and I can't imagine there's anyone in his day-to-day life that treats him like one, which is why Leona is such a significant figure for him. Leona just treats him like his pesky nephew, which for a developing brain desperately seeking a bit of normalcy, is a big deal. I also think that regardless of whether or not he realizes it himself, Leona also benefits in a big way from having the unconditional love of a family member in the way that Cheka gives it to him.

My unpopular opinion about this character

See above, where I discussed that he's not just lazy or mean like some enjoy writing him off as.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I want to see more of his relationship with his family, specifically his brother. I'd love for the two of them to reach a breaking point in Leona's resentment towards him and finally have an actual discussion. Maybe he doesn't even realize that Leona is feeling the way he is. Idk.

I'd also like to have a bit more information on how Leona and Ruggie fully made up after his OB, or if they even really talked about it beyond what we got. They're both the type to bottle up their feelings and pretend something didn't happen, so who knows - but Leona almost killed him. That seems like a pretty big deal, and something you need to discuss in order to move past.

[dashiellqvverty]

can i ask why u didn’t like jade in season 3? i liked her overall but haven’t done a deep dive into her character & would love to hear ur thoughts!!!

there are people who have spoken on this better than i can and i will try and find some posts to link but theres as i see it theres a few things at play. for one thing it's just not what nate needed for his story, giving him a romance to say "look, girls DO like him" as a resolution for his insecurities (specifically feeling emasculated) instead of like... giving him a sense of self worth independent of womens' perception of him was just a really bad call imo. i think the best parts of his arc this season was the stuff with his family but it all felt so rushed when it finally got to that, and so much of the time spent with jade could've been spent building up to his resolution with his family

and then also the writing for nate is just really racist overall, and his relationship with jade is a factor in that. like, including his relationship with jade/the way she treats him. like specifically she is so rude to him in their s2 interactions, for no reason except presumably because he is kind of awkward? and i genuinely don't think the writers intended for her treatment of him to read as racist, but. it definitely does or at the very least can. and the lack of intention is not an excuse, but rather its own form of racism. that is, failure to consider the implications of how you write/treat a character of color is a racist thing to do. like, i don't think they wrote her as racist on purpose, but thats because they don't seem to ever once consider how nate's race might effect his experiences in any way (despite the fact that his experiences as a man of color make a lot of sense as a factor in his s2 characterization if you look at it with anything beyond the most surface level analysis). this is a larger problem with the show i think, but it's at its worst in how nate is written.

so jade just kind of ends up being a very bland character who serves no purpose except to make nate want to be nice again??? i guess?? (part of a larger trend of pointless characters in season 3) which especially sucks when you combine her previous treatment of him with the fact that they COULD have used this time to further explore his relationship with his family which would have been more interesting, tied in more to the themes of the show, and just better served his character

anyway this got longer than i meant it to but it's also largely influenced by other stuff i've already read so here's a couple posts on the topic i was able to find:

on romance being bad for nate's arc

on jade's racism towards nate

[zushimart]

hi idk if this is a weird ask or not bc im half asleep but i just wanted to say that i started following u on my old blog in late 2022 like maybe december and your posts about bpd scara made me feel so seen. i wasn't diagnosed then but it was recently on the table as a diagnosis for me all of a sudden and it was terrifying because i feel like pwbpd are demonized and hated everywhere i look. and just like scrolling thru ur bpd scara tag was like looking at a diary of my own mind or smth. so it was really new to me to see someone talk about borderline as something that brings love and pain into our lives and not just as some scary evil-people diagnosis. like ur definitely my fav writer on this app by far but also u make me feel really validated in my emotions i guess? wow idk sorry like i actually have no idea how to describe it but hopefully u can read minds ‼️ 🤞 i have since been diagnosed with bpd with a criteria score of 9/9 so 😳 idk where id be rn in september 2023 if i hadn't sort of started to learn to love myself from your writings exploring a character. so yea this is probably a strange ask so feel free to ignore it. also im going on anon bc im scared of interacting w ppl. ALSO U R SO FUNNY ND YOUR HUMOR/RANDOM FUNNY TAGS FEEL SO SIMILAR TO MY INTERNAL MONOLOGUE

this is such an open & genuine thing to say to me . i like had to sit with it for a second because it was so .. idk like how to communicate it . my devaluation of ths blog is pretty frequent, treating it sort of like a big boy version of the 2000s children’s diaries with locks.. my thoughts tossed in here nd piled nd piled nd piled, endlessly messy. nd it objectively is a writing blog , like yeah, on a surface level, i own& maintain a writing blog, but i would never tell people that. when people ask my hobbies i always say writing & ill show them my poetry pieces but i never tell them i have a blog because im kind of embarrassed by the very seriously delusional self indulgence i pour into this thing . but then i hear about.. like, for ex. we learned ab and have to maintain our own commonplace book in class, which is essentially where people collected anything and everything they felt needed to be archived from their day and tucked it into the pages of a journal . like how thomas jefferson’s commonplace book will have his serious philosophical & political ramblings side by side a recipe for cornbread because it was just a place to put everything big & small . the practical & the theoretical. just, whatever Means something to u. and leisure, indulgence, pleasure r concepts just as important as virtues imo. anyway i say all this to say that what u said to me makes me want to treat everything better, even this place. it like, makes me feel really proud of my writing& analyses that i might normally b quick to label as inconsequential or childlike because im scared people will think i care too much about something so culturally insignificant. but i do care!! obviously!! a lot. i was like kind of bummed today for a number of reasons frm feeling a bit isolated to feeling like living out my principles& ideals (connecting w community, peer centered thinking etc etc) is almost impossible because im sooo freaking shitty at social convention. so when u sent this in & i read it, it was almost like when ur spacing out nd someone snaps 🫰🫰 in front of ur face to get ur attn. so busy trying 2 b significant to someone to realize that u Already are significant in a myriad of little ways. that it’s not something u search for or insert urself into but rather an inevitable outcome of existing. Anyway . not to b sentimental but i wanted 2 b as candid with u because i really did think it was sweet of u to share & im really happy that i was able 2 positively shape & support a little space of ur life because really thats all i ever want to do. Soooooooooo if ur ask was weird then my response is even weirder. Handwritten thank u:

[21st-century-ninja]

apologies in advance for a long ask.

adding onto previous anon(s?) as an east asian person (not to say that asians can talk abt this, but rather that talk of east asian hcs and ninjago’s culture will naturally hit us closer to home) i just want to say that i love when people make asian hcs for any/all the ninja and i think the fact that they’re not all asian coded in the show/movie is very off (especially bc Lloyd has only asian coded relatives but is not given the same treatment.)

that said, Jiang as a surname makes sense on a surface level, but i still am not a fan. depending on the character, it is often associated with rivers, which makes sense given jamanakai’s geography and nya’s powers, but frankly jiang kai and jiang nya sound… a little awkward? tbh im not a fan of smith, either, because i still don’t know why a heavily japanese/east asian inspired setting like ninjago would have English names (unless it’s the “they’re blacksmiths so they cal themselves smith” which is pretty funny). plus, ray and maya are not Chinese OR Japanese names, so this all goes back to the fact that ninjago refuses to give even its most asian coded characters asian names.

also, i would feel uncomfortable if people depicted kai and nya as Chinese if the jiang/smith sibs were the sole East Asians in a predominantly japanese setting. why use japanese setpieces, words, cultural artifacts, or titles if there are no japanese people? i would feel differently if the people who employed these hcs made other characters japanese. still, it’s up to each individual fan to decide what hcs they want to use, and I can’t police anyone’s behavior.

we all know that ninjago is horrible with cultural accuracy. i love the show and appreciate the creators’ work, but im still upset over the scene when nya says kimonos are a traditional dress for women, implying that all kimonos are a) exclusively for women instead of being a gender neutral clothing and b) what her qipao-looking dress can be vaguely considered a kimono. don’t get me started on the concept of garmadon as a surname (wu garmadon will never sound right to me) but I digress.

ultimately it’s the creators failing to accurately represent these cultures, and I love that some fans are respectfully trying to fix those mistakes in their headcanons even if it’ll never be perfect. i have mixed feelings about the use of jiang as a surname but it’s DEFINITELY preferable to treating the most east asian coded characters as non-east asian. (side note: it would be nice if we could extend Asian headcanons to other characters, Japanese or otherwise. for example, jay is literally voiced by south asian actor kumail nanjiani and has his distinct pakistani accent in the movie, and Jay is a common component of many names derived from Sanskrit.)

but all of my complaints, opinions, and personal wishes are ultimately bc ninjago a) has orientalist worldbuilding masked as pan east asianism and b) refused to consider that their characters’ designs, names, and general ethnicity coding have implications for the world they inhabit. it’s all rather, uh, culturally distasteful.

tl;dr: ethnicity/naming headcanons are weird because ninjago is japanese/east asian inspired on the surface but the final product ultimately does not care about cultural accuracy or Japanese/east asian representation. headcanons that try to address that are great, but may not be perfect because fans are working with a flawed source material. sorry for rambling, you don’t have to respond, the end

not gonna respond to all of this bc it's late and honestly the conversation is starting to get out of my depth now which is ok!! I'm east asian too but I was raised with little to no ties to my heritage and that definitely affects my perspective on this matter :D which i think is good bc that just means more perspectives here, and imo there's not even a right or wrong position on this.

I think it's entirely valid to like jiang as a family name (not that u need my approval or anything lol) and to find it preferable to a non-asian name! in regards to potential meanings, @spinbitchzu made a really nice commentary in a response to the first ask here. Also check out her website about basically this issue here if u haven't already :D

re: pakistani jay directing u to this one pakistani Jay artwork that's really cute

also i don’t necessarily agree that using smith as a family name makes a person’s treatment of kai and nya as non-east asian.  plenty of people use smith as a last name and still try to preserve their heritage.

[itsclydebitches]

This is a nitpick honestly, but I was so interested in what they were going to use the Lamp's final question for, what new lore we might get. But then Cinder uses it for something the audience already knew. It was disappointing, and I eventually got over it, but upon reading the commentary and learning that the reason they had Cinder use it was because in their own words "it’ll be really frustrating" for those theorizing some other kind of final question? Honestly, why do I bother?

Yeah, I've been in the same boat, anon. As you say, the question ends up being a rehash of what the audience already knows, so the only way in which this forwards the story is with the bad guys learning about our heroes' plans. And yes, that leads to quite the finale: Penny dead, RWBYJ "dead," the Relics lost, and some undetermined portion of Atlas now stuck in a grimm-infested desert. From a surface level A to B perspective it does work, but I keep coming back to the question, "Why use the Lamp for that?" Yes, the result was appropriately dramatic (if badly executed imo), but there are any number of ways that Cinder could have found out about Ruby's plan without wasting the last question on that. Have Neo spy on them at some point and learn something significant. Have Watts hack into a scroll and overhear the conversation. Hell, you could have the baddies standing around arguing over what to do next and then what do you know, these strange, glowing portals suddenly start popping up nearby. Don't you think that's something worth checking out? Ruby's plan was to evacuate all of Atlas and given that the bad guys are on Atlas (something she... forgot about?) her plan, if she succeeds, automatically results in them finding her and learning what's going on. The bad guys never needed to discover what the heroes were up to. The heroes were already doing everything possible to bring the villains to them, simply by virtue of evacuating an entire kingdom at once with no regard for who was using those magical exits. (And, interestingly, if we start any sort of defense about there not being enough portals for Cinder to reliably find one, or they wouldn't know what to do with it, etc. then congrats, Ruby did not evacuate the whole kingdom. If the portals are too few or too confusing for the bad guys, then that's too few and too confusing for a lot of Atlesians too. Either the portals are a full-proof evacuation method for every living person, or they're not). So from a writing standpoint, it's significant that nothing within Jinn's vision helped the bad guys win. There was no reason why specifically watching the dining room and courtyard scenes was necessary for Cinder to achieve the victory she did. Once they're through the portal, it's just fighting. Neo wasn't doing anything more than that. Watts wasn't doing anything important behind the scenes, especially not once Cinder decided to kill him. It was literally just a "Bad guys find good guys and attack them + it's inevitable the bad guys would have found them if the heroes' plan works" situation, which, as said, could have been achieved without using the final question fans have waited three years for.

The only other reason why I think having Cinder witness those scenes is potentially worthwhile is if getting to observe Emerald with the heroes has a big, emotional impact... but it doesn't. Cinder just looks at her. That's it. The one redeeming benefit here - something character driven rather than plot driven - simply doesn't occur. And yeah, that's real disappointing not just due to the wait, but because fans have spent those years coming up with far better possibilities. Since the Lamp was introduced, people have been talking up when "Aladdin" would secure it, or how Neo would use it to backstab Cinder, or how this would finally be the moment when Ruby asked something about her mom. Instead, we were treated to the Relic used as an exposition tool with a character impact (Ozpin) that's never acknowledged, given a grimm attracting trait that's quickly dropped, not put in the vault because the characters are consistently written to make stupid decisions, not used to answer any of their many questions because again, written to make stupid decisions, inevitably stolen by Neo, given to Cinder who doesn't want it, given to Salem who can't use it, used by Oscar who won't take it, stolen again by Neo again, given to Cinder again, and then finally used to... show us two scenes we watched last episode, resulting in approximately nothing plot or character-wise. Now the Lamp is just a lamp, no more questions for another 100 years, and Salem will most likely start this all over again with the Staff: how many ways can characters foolishly not use it, not protect it, and lose it, before it eventually means nothing to the story anymore? Honestly, idek if I'd call it a nitpick. The show introduced the Relics as the cornerstone of this battle, but have failed on most fronts to do anything - not even interesting - but just satisfying with them. The Lamp was awesome for all of an episode when it gave us the much sought after backstory for Ozpin and Salem, but it's been pretty much downhill from there.

[ducavalentinos]

To what extent do you think the prejudice the Borgias faced in Italy as Spaniards and specifically because they were from Valencia shaped their lives and the stories that were later told about them (the Borgia myth)? Everything I've read kind of dismisses or glosses over it.

Hm, yeah, the themes of prejudice regarding the Borgia family do tend to get dimiss or gloss over it, you’re right. Most works I have read only scratches the surface about that (and many other things, too), the one I found covered it the most was José Catalán Deus’s bio about Cesare, so if you speak Spanish, it might be worth a try, even though I still think he was rather shy about it and he failed to make the right connections at times. Without getting too much into this, the main problem I noticed in terms of literature is that, with some exceptions, you have a group of biographers/historians who seem clueless about these prejudices, and who underestimate the impact it had in the Borgias' lives, and how they and their actions were perceived and recorded in history. Many of them don’t see it as being a particularly relevant issue in order to tell their history, not how they want to tell it anyways, it is treated as a side issue rather than a fundamental one, which imo it’s one of the causes that leads to messy, lazy and unsubstantiated claims and conclusions on their part, or the repetition of it.  The Borgia family, in their eyes, were just another noble family, when it’s not quite so. Their situation was more complex than that, and unique in some ways, the dynamics they had to deal with, both on a personal and political level, for the most part was different and specific to them. And then you have a group of biographers/historians who are aware of it, to varying degrees, however they seem either unwilling or not interested in delving too much into it, because doing so brings a direct conflict in how one must approach, and use the primary sources, especially when it comes to Rodrigo and Cesare, (there is such a wild arbitrary selection of how these sources are used with them, scholars really pick and choose which pieces of what sources to use depending on what they want to present, and they take so many things at face value, gladly so sometimes, it’s extraordinary to notice), and that in turn would conflict with much of the general, common narratives and character assessments made about the Borgia men, and that's not something most of them want to confront and/or recognize, I think, for various reasons, so they just make a quick mentioning of these prejudice-related issues, mostly the Spaniard one, and they move on with their story. That being said, I’m not sure if there is a connection between the prejudice the Borgias faced in Italy with the fact they were from Valencia specifically, anon. I’ve never came across anything pointing to that in my readings, but if you have something, please let me know because it would be interesting to read about. To my understanding, Italians of the time didn’t seem to make these region distinction with foreigns. It didn’t matter to them if a Spaniard was from Valencia or Barcelona, for example, what they saw was that he/she were a Spaniard and they were all put in the same group, as Spaniards, with the same ideas, right and wrong, being attached to them and their characters, as well as the same loathing Italians usually felt for them. The prejudice faced for being Spaniards is very pronounced in the historical material about the Borgia family, from Calixtus’s papacy to Alexander’s papacy and afterwards. Together with the prejudice faced due to nobility rank, (they weren’t seen as noble enough, or at all, by those who came from more ancient, noble families, and that carried a huge importance in the society they lived in), and the antisemitism linked to the suspicion, which only grew stronger after 1493, of Rodrigo and his children being “marranos”, particularly from places like Venice and Florence. This term “marrano”, which initially might have meant “atheist” from Savonarola and his fanatic followers, over time it started to also or exclusively mean “secret Jew”, and it was used as a way of describing the Borgias, and the Spaniards around them, as an insult, or as a reason not to trust them, and at least on one occasion, there is a historical record showing that even the word Jew was openly used as an insult against Cesare in 1503, he was called a “Jewish dog” by his enemies who wanted to kill him in Rome. So overall, these prejudices, alongside the politics, have shaped the Borgias’ lives and the stories told about them to a large extent, no doubt. On a personal level: for the first Borjas who went to Italy, namely: Alfons de Borja, and his nephews: Rodrigo and Pedro Luís de Borja, they had to adapt to a different culture while getting used to the fact they would always be seen as foreigners, Spaniards foreigners no less, which made things more difficult and it earned them another kind of treatment from others, we can’t know how that made them feel, or how much it might have upset them, but in any case, it was just a fact of their lives in Italy and they had find ways of dealing with it. For the Borgia children: Juan, Cesare, Lucrezia and Gioffre, I don’t think the culture part applies to them, given they most likely were born in Rome, and they were raised in Rome, but the second part does, and maybe for them it was confusing too, because if they were born in Rome, technically speaking they were Italians (or better said Romans), but Italians did not see them like that because of their Spaniard family roots, and because they were proud of it, openly displayed it by speaking the Spanish tongue among themselves, dressing in the Spanish fashion, dancing the Spanish dances, participating in the bull fights, but most of all: of clearly preferring the company of Spaniards who were part of their household, which seems to have bothered many around them, the fact they stood firmly with their own culture and people, see: they weren’t rude, Cesare in particular is noted as always being polite, patient and amiable with them, but he didn’t seem inclined to cater to them and their customs, although I think he incorporated a lot of the Roman customs, as did his siblings, but never above his own, and not in the way they wanted him to, so it rubbed them the wrong way, and it’s a constant complaint you see made about him, his father and his sister. As they grew up and entered the public/political stage, esp. after the election of Rodrigo as pope Alexander because that was the moment their lives really changed and everything became more real and dangerous for them, I think they all became more aware of these issues, and it’s something they also had to get used to it, the different dynamics and the insults made about themselves and their family, not only on the basis of being Spaniards, but as I said above, on the basis of social rank and the strong antisemitism sentiment of their times. I speculate sometimes that it’s possible this made them even more united and loyal to each other as a family, to only trust family members and people inside their circle, it was a matter of safety as well as comfort. Their situation was not one other nobles families shared, actually, maybe with the exception of the Medici family, they had little in common with them I'd say. And in addition to that, I can see how the hostile environment they lived in might have helped them further in building character, in learning how to be resilient. They display such creativity and diplomacy when solving problems, and definitely persistance in achieving their goals. It's one trait I really like about the Borgia family as a whole, but in particular with the trio Rodrigo, Cesare and Lucrezia, it's how they worked around obstacles and adversities, instead of sitting around feeling sorry for themselves, going "Oh, how unfair!" about these prejudices they faced, they worked hard, and they just kept going, patient and persistently. The unfairness, the hatred, the jealousy, the setbacks didn't stopped them, it seems they paid little mind to it (perhaps to a fault), and I think it even encouraged them to succeed, given so many people wanted them to fail and/or die. And on a political, historical level: it heavily influenced the defamation campaigns made about them by their political rivals, these campaigns were primarily motivated by political motives, yes, but they equally echo very clearly a high dose of these prejudices against the Borgia family, it is in their words and narratives used in the pamphlets and rumours that circulated Italy and Europe, the double standards applied to them and their actions, (which are still around today, even within the modern section of Borgian literature depending on which Borgia they are talking about), what Rodrigo, Cesare and Lucrezia did or were said to have done always generated more gossip and hypocritical condemantion than the actions of the other Italian nobles and European monarchs. There is a ridiculous sense of self-righteousness that started when they were living and never stopped. The ways they were used as scapegoats (Cesare most of all) for the social and political problems of the 15th century Italian society, and by Protestants in the 16th century and onward. All of this consolidated the Borgia myths, how they are seen in history, their terrible reputation, our ideas about of their characters, their actions, etc, some of it has been challenged, even if shly so sometimes, but much of it sadly is still presented in modern history as “facts” or as “the truth” about the Borgias, most of all when it is about Rodrigo and Cesare Borgia.

[nightwingsbf]

Well to me he simply just gives me that vibe, like he's surely a person who went through lots of trauma throughout his life and probably alot of things left the mark. He definitely strayed away from the idea of love after Geto, and given the huge possibility that he felt or rather both felt attracted to each other but unfortunately never got the chance to express those feelings, as we saw how it ended. Not to mention that there's no other person who would treat him the same way Geto did, this is also one of those things where it tells me "No other" for example so besides Geto, except Shoko and Yaga and his students, nobody really bothers knowing Gojo on a more meaningful level, he's not stopping them, they just don't want to. And that tells alot actually.

Now i don't have much thoughts on his sex life or if there even is one (doubtful) but we all know that he fears the form of vulnerability, it's true that he lets his limitless down only around those he trusts (eg his students, Yaga, Shoko) overall though i don't think this is a really important aspect, i know alot of people like to think about it mainly for "thirst" reasons but as i said, unimportant. Like there are plenty people out there that just simply don't crave or care about it enough to bother and find a fling. Imo not being interested in sex doesn't mean one's a loser and i doubt Gojo cares what someone thinks about him based on these kinds of things. He strikes me as the guy who craves genuine human connection (not romantic or sexual because it feels withdrawn from what kind of character he is) -- (He is also quite busy and gets little to no rest/days off! Like, we learned that he rents flats and only can slack off when he's on trips, Jesus someone cut him some slack!)

Anyways, those are my thoughts, Gojo is a very complex and interesting individual and character, what he appears on the surface does not translate to who he truly is and how he truly feels. Lawd let this make sense, english is not my first language x(

Interesting take. I think I'd also personally agree on the idea that he's not the kind of person to go looking for romantic love anywhere, especially outside of his circle. At least not from my own understanding of him as a character. I think that deep down he craves for connection, the type of connection he had with Geto. But this connection isn't labelled. It's just love and understanding, which can be platonic, or romantic, or whatever else. Though, externally he seems to reject/avoid connection.

And, of course, not being interested in sex doesn't make you're a loser and, as you said, I doubt Gojo would care about what anyone would think in regards to that.

So again, who knows! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Personally, I like the idea of aro Gojo, but maybe because I'm also sort of aro myself hehe And no worries about your English, I got ya! Eng isn't my first language either.

[aspoonofsugar]

So what do you think RWBY could have done to draw out the full potential of Adam's design?

Hello!

Well, this is kind of a complicated question and a highly subjective one. More under the cut.

Personally, I don’t think it is just the design, but Adam’s character in general. I think he needed to  either be simpler, so that he could fit the role he has in the narrative or to have the complexity he is set up to have explored.

This does not mean to have him more sympathetic of to change his ending, but to explore all the themes and questions his characters arises honestly and I do not think it was done effectively.

Imo the problem with Adam is that he ties up within himself two very different and sensitive themes and exploring them in a nuanced and complete way is no easy at all.

On one hand he is a domestic abuser and a stalker. He is never shown anything, but abusive towards Blake. Even in his character’s short, it is obvious he is emotionally blackmailing her.

On the other hand he is a victim of an abusive and discriminatory system. It is shown Adam has effectively suffered at the hands of humans, so his anger is understandable.

The narrative solves these different themes by highlighting how Adam is specifically weaponizing his victimhood to hurt others. He is given a support system, but instead of nurturing it he chooses to have it wilt. He is given a rose (love), but fails to properly take care of it.

This is not an ending that is necessarily unsatisfying. It can actually be really interesting and challenging. It can convey interesting questions about victimhood and how you can’t help an abuser and so on. It could have actually been interesting to have a character like Adam in a series with other “bad victims” getting redemption.

Still, these questions and potential ideas needed to be explored. The story does it only on a surface level and basically tells us everything about him:

Blake: At first I thought Adam was "justice", then I thought he was "passion". But over time, I realized I was wrong. He wasn't any of those things. He was "spite". Not "hatred", not "rage", "spite". He won't accept equality, only suffering for what he feels the world did to him, and his way of thinking is dangerously contagious. That's what worries me about Ilia. She's not like Adam, not yet at least, but I don't know how long that will last.

Adam can’t be saved because Blake says so. Still, this is not an interesting exploration of a character or of a theme. It would have been more poignant for Blake to say she specifically can’t help him because of their shared past. She can’t help him because Adam has personally hurt and brutalized her, in a way Ilia has not. So, of course Blake can’t and does not want to help him. And she is right about that.

Anyway, in general, Adam is a character that is mostly told imo, rather than shown. We are told Blake used to admire him and to love him. Still, we are not offered a reason why. We can rationally see something like that happen. It is not impossible to imagine. However, we are not shown it and their relationship is not really explored. It does not feel personal (imo).

Let’s compare it to Cinder’s relationship with Salem or her relationship with Emerald and Mercury. They are all abusive relationships, but they are all different and we clearly see why they came to be and why the characters are all intertwined. We see how Salem treats Cinder and we understand why Cinder does not leave. We are shown Cinder replicating the same dynamic with Emerald and Mercury and we understand their reactions to her.

Last volume Emerald leaves Cinder specifically after having seen the dynamic between Salem and Cinder play out. It is implied she leaves because she finally sees the truth about herself and Cinder. We did not really need to be told so (I think the topic will be addressed in the future because it needs to be addressed more to be honest; so this is kind of an extreme example in the opposite direction).

In short, Cinder’s abusive relationships are explored, intertwined, but still specific (for example, her relationship with Em is not the same as her relationship with Mercury). Adam’s relationships are not.

The same can be said about Adam’s past and motivations that are clear, but also vague (so not so specific).

And here we arrive at how his design is used:

This design choice is extremely powerful. Because of this, it is a pity it was not used to its full potential.

Such a scar is necessarily going to be triggering and to rise a lot of questions and I am not sure revealing it when the character dies is the best choice. Especially, since so far Adam’s story is never touched on again (if not briefly in volume 7 and it is more about the idea of having to kill a person).

What is more, the scar is underused not only when it comes to Adam’s background, but also when it comes to Weiss. Weiss’s main conflict is to face the wrongdoings of her family and overcome it, so that she can be her own person. At the same time, it is also about taking her family legacy back, so that she can repair Jacques’ evil doings. Such a scar could have been extremely challenging for her and having her completely uninvolved is a pity.

Just to be clear, this does not mean the choices made about Adam’s character makes no sense. This is simply not true. Even at surface level there is a lot ot analyze about him.

For example, as @hamliet noted and will probably write in a future meta, Adam means dust, so to have him branded with the SDC mark is foreshadowing of how the SDC is weaponizing people in an utilitaristic way. It serves as a symbolic introduction to the Schnee Family, which is explored in the Atlas Arc. It fits with volume 6 being a way to solve plot-lines of the Mistral arc while introducing the themes of the Atlas arc (see Cordovin is a comedic parody of Ironwood).

Similarly, him uncovering his scar and using it to manipulate Blake is in itself an interesting choice and a potentially powerful one. It is also an action that conveys the essence of the character. Still, I think that to properly work the scar should have been known by the viewers beforehand.

For example, if Adam had revealed the scar to the viewers at Beacon, there would have been time to “digest” it and to even de-power its meaning. Then he could have shown it again in the final battle, coupled with the accusation that Blake is worse than the ones who made it. In this way, the viewers would have been less shocked by the revelation and could have clearly seen Adam’s reasoning and actions for what they are... aka bullshit.

In short, I don’t dislike what happens with Adam, but I think the execution could have been better and deeper. As for how this could have happened, there are honestly many different answers and not a specific one.

That said, I still think what we have in show is still competent. I don’t think it is where the show writing shines, but I surely do not think it is bad (just to make clear, I really like Yang and Blake’s battle against Adam and how it shows how much they have grown).

Thank you for the ask!

[bigskydreaming]

Alright a noob's question to a veteran fan, when do you think the blatant hatred for Dick started? I've heard from old, 50+ years old fans that he was the best, he was badass, better than Batman A lister. What changed? I know DC can't stand their legacy characters and they've always put abuse in their books, but I want to know about the fandom. When I joined I fell for the Tim Drake Best but Underrated Robin thing until I realized that was polar opposite of the truth. When did That start?

Okay, well it took me forever to get back to this ask and finish like I promised, but I kept my promise, huzzah! Long as fuck theorizing on this topic below:

So here’s the thing. I’ve been fucking around fandoms since the 90s, and I can 100% confirm that Everyone Hates Dick Grayson absolutely was not always a thing. Its a large part of WHY I’m so convinced that modern fandom is just fucking WEIRD about him, because like....I actively have something else to compare it to. I can absolutely remember what Bat fandom was like in regards to him back in the days of the Bludhaven yahoo group and squidge.org and other random URLs that mean absolutely nothing to 99% of you, lolol.

Like, there is very much, distinctly, DEFINITIVELY, a difference in how the majority of fandom views him and interacts with his character now, as opposed to like.....the first decade or so I was in fandoms.

And if I had to trace it back to a specific time period where there was like...an actual, visible sea change....the only thing I can come up with is around the Battle for the Cowl era, the start of the Morrison/Dickbats run. Not so coincidentally, this was the precise time I moved away from Batfam fandom after having pretty consistently being in it for a good ten years by then, BECAUSE there very clearly IMO was this change in how people were writing about Dick all of a sudden.

Like, there had been tensions building towards Dick’s character for awhile, probably ever since Jason’s return because like....in a sense, Dick’s too far removed from say, Tim, to be directly in competition with his character. What I mean is, there’s too little overlap in what people like about Tim and what people like about Dick for them to ever be like...a threat to each other’s fanbases in that respect, and push people to make a choice there. But with Dick and Jason, there’s enough overlap in them and what draws people to them - even just purely in terms of positioning within the Bat franchise, as an older Bat-sibling and former Robin that nevertheless is no longer Robin himself - that like....ever since Jason came back, you could start to see ‘fractures’ in how people viewed Dick. Because now there was another alternative to his character who occupied a similar......not sphere, but perhaps ‘level’ of the Batfamily franchise, and so people kinda started....picking sides, even though no actual sides had to be picked in the first place because its not actually a fucking competition.

And this isn’t to say the view of Dick in fandom and how he’s interacted with is the ‘fault’ of Jason’s return, not at all, just.....this is just me talking analytically, in terms of patterns and causality. Not trying to assign blame here, more just kinda explain the way it appeared to me anyway.

But then things all came to a head in the Battle for the Cowl era, and ignited stuff that had been lurking under the surface in SEVERAL different areas of fandom, and brought into direct conflict long-held assumptions and views and biases that had only never been in conflict before because they didn’t NEED to be in conflict before.

Basically, my Big Thesis about why fandom is the way it is about Dick, is that I feel its not so much that fans of other characters hate him, its that I think many of them RESENT him for very specific things and how those things like....make him a narrative obstacle to the kinds of stories they want to read and write about the Batfam specifically.

With the biggest examples here being Bruce fans, Jason fans and Tim fans.

See, my take is this:

1) I think a lot of Bruce fans resent Dick on some level because he’s actually the biggest obstacle standing in the way of the Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent view of things. As much as people have always liked to claim and take for granted that Dick is Bruce’s favorite or whatever, the truth is there is a far longer and far more VARIED history of Bruce and Dick being at odds than there is between Bruce and any other of his kids.

Essentially, in order to really sell Bruce as CONSISTENTLY being a good parent, regardless of what canon says or does at times.....DICK is the character you MOST have to rewrite or write around, change or ignore his stories, reframe his past interactions with Bruce in order to make this stick.

I know people are probably going “Umm what about Bruce and Jason though?” But the difference is, Bruce and Dick’s conflicts cover a lot more ground than Bruce and Jason’s. Its not that Bruce and Jason’s clashes aren’t epic and that Bruce’s behavior with Jason in stories like UTRH hasn’t been massively shitty....its that in terms of Bruce and Jason, these things are a lot more....confined, than they are with Bruce and Dick.

Basically, most of the major conflict between Bruce and Jason CAN be rewritten or avoided by simply addressing three or four definitive things: the Garzonas case and aftermath, Bruce’s actions/response in regards to the Joker killing Jason, Jason’s return and his wants and needs in regard to Bruce in UTRH, and Bruce’s view of Jason’s actions and ideology post his return.

None of these are small things by any means. But they are FINITE things. They’re concentrated into specific stories, specific areas of canon....and thus, more easily navigated around by anyone who wants to avoid engaging with these things in the form of Bruce being a shitty parent, and rewrite and reframe Bruce and Jason’s dynamic in the vein of Bruce is a Good Parent.

In contrast, with Dick and Bruce, to rewrite and reframe Bruce and Dick’s OVERALL dynamic in the vein of Bruce is a Good Parent......you’ve got a LOT more ground to cover.

There’s Bruce firing Dick as Robin, there’s Bruce not reaching out to Dick and being content to stay estranged from Dick for all the years they barely interacted, there’s the effect Bruce’s adopting Jason and making him Robin without a word to Dick in advance had on Dick, there’s Bruce still not using the conflict between them over that to make changes in how he interacted with Dick like say adopting him now, there’s Bruce’s actions and behavior towards Dick in the aftermath of Jason’s death, there’s Bruce’s inconsistent appearances in Dick’s stories in all the many times Dick very much needs help or comfort juxtaposed with Dick’s consistent appearances in Bruce’s stories any time he so much as calls him and asks him to show up due to the fact that canon writers can consistently be counted on to prioritize Bruce’s needs as more pressing than Dick’s needs, narratively speaking. There’s Bruce’s clear judgment of Dick in Last Laugh and failure to reach out and help Dick through its aftermath. There’s Bruce’s non-involvement in the extended greatest hits album that is one of the lowest periods of Dick’s life, encompassing Blockbuster, Tarantula and the destruction of Bludhaven, and Bruce’s non-helpful ‘fix’ in the wake of all that, which can be summed up as him yelling “suck it up, buddy.” And in the New 52 you’ve got Bruce’s shitty handling of the Court of Owls revelations and his treating the effect of these revelations on Dick as a total non-issue, there’s the aftermath of Forever Evil, there’s Bruce’s failure to say anything about why Dick went to Spyral even after seeing the effect it had on Dick’s relationships with the rest of his family, there’s the absolute disaster that was his handling of the Ric Grayson situation.....

See what I’m saying? Its not that Bruce doesn’t have plenty of fodder for being a shitty parent in stories with Jason, its just that the times and the ways he is are more isolated and contained, relatively speaking....thus more easily ‘treated’ by anyone who wants to FIX those parts of canon in order to realign it all in the framework of Bruce Wayne Is A Good Parent.

Its nowhere NEAR as easy to do that with Dick when you ACTUALLY engage with the full extent of how shittily Bruce has been written interacting with his eldest over the course of decades....

And so for fans of Bruce who very much WANT Bruce to be a good parent, that’s what they want to read, that’s what they want to write, that’s what they’re HERE for and stuff OUTSIDE that is stuff they (understandably) do not want to engage with....

This makes Dick actively an OBSTACLE to all of that. It makes him a Problem. Dick and his stories and his dynamics with Bruce, in order to truly align with Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, have to EXTENSIVELY be tackled and rewritten and reframed, and this is no easy feat or no small process.

And for fans of Bruce who are here for BRUCE first and foremost, not Dick, and who thus don’t want to and aren’t thrilled to be confronted with a need to PRIORITIZE him and his stories to such a large degree in order to ACTUALLY ‘fix’ canon - which for the record has nothing to do with Dick being more important of a character or anything to do with character preferences whatsoever, but rather is simply symptomatic of the ROLE Dick occupies in Bruce’s life, and is an extension of the fact that in any scenario in which Bruce Wayne Is A Good Parent, Dick, as his son, logically MUST be as much a priority at least some of the time as any other of his kids because THAT’S WHAT A GOOD PARENT DOES, HE MAKES HIS KIDS A PRIORITY.....

Like, its honestly understandable (even if thanks, I hate it) that people who really just WANT to focus on Bruce and his Good Parent-ness and don’t want to be forced into HAVING to make Dick and fixing or rewriting how Bruce has screwed up with him into a priority when writing fic that ultimately, for these fans, is still supposed to be ABOUT Bruce.....like, its not exactly rocket science, grasping how this could easily lead to people being even less keen on the guy, because he complicates so many stories they want to write without remotely being one of the characters they’re inspired to write in the first place.

So I mean, yeah. Dick very much became an object of resentment for a lot of Bruce fans, I think, for that reason specifically, and for the narrative obstacle he innately presents to anyone who just wants to write Good Parent Bruce and doesn’t want to have to write Bruce Actively Fixing His Mistakes With Dick in order to do so.

And again, this is pretty much JUST Dick in this particular role (especially as of the time I’m talking about) because much like how even though Bruce has his fuck-ups with Jason, they’re more finitely contained to specific narratives and TYPES of narratives....the same is true of Bruce’s interactions with his other kids. Yeah, he has his fuck-ups with them too, but again, they’re more isolated, more traceable back to singular sources and stories that are a lot more easily sidestepped and navigated around by anyone who just does not want to engage with Bruce Being a Bad Parent and the EFFECTS this has had on various of his kids throughout their stories as a result.

So you have this thing, about Dick, narratively speaking, not even a matter of character like or dislike. And its been there all along, slowly building story by story....

With it all coming to a head, I feel, in the Battle for the Cowl era, where Bruce is shuffled off-stage for a time, and REPLACED by Dick as Batman.....while at the same time Dick is cast in the same role of surrogate father figure to newcomer Damian, that Bruce was cast in with Dick when he and Dick were of similar ages to Dick and Damian now.

And Bruce was absolutely celebrated for how good he was with Dick back then - and with reason - BUT, I think this period with Dick and Damian, and the stories it told, brought front and center the fact and the awareness that it’d been a LONG TIME since Bruce was so uncritically celebrated for being a Good Parent, and with Dick specifically. And then additionally it made and kept front and center at this exact same time....people celebrating Dick for being a Good Parent (in essence) in much the way that they HADN’T celebrated Bruce for quite some time. And add to that the fact that Dick was doing this WHILE in the role of Batman himself, the same role Bruce had occupied in the parallel situation....so it made all this into a parallel that couldn’t easily be dismissed or discounted by saying things like “well Dick didn’t have the pressures of being Batman to deal with, being a good parent throughout all of this and STAYING that way would have been innately easier because of that.”

And thus....long-simmering resentment of the obstacle alleged favorite son Dick poses to actually writing Bruce Is A Good Parent content without significant revision or ommissions....ignited. With kinda the insult added to injury that now Dick was getting the same kind of praise and attention that these particular fans came to the franchise to see BRUCE be the focus and recipient of, not Dick.

2) At the same time, you have another large segment of fandom by this point, Jason’s fans. Or to be more accurate, you have a select but EXTREMELY vocal subset of Jason’s fans.....

Who come to Jason’s fandom with a very specific angle: they LIKE Jason as the misunderstood outcast of the Batfam, the black sheep alone and apart from the rest of the family who Just Don’t Get Him And Never Will, thus making him eternally sympathetic in this specific regard. But with that specific regard, in order to STAY eternal…..requiring that….nobody in the family gets him or cares or ever has really.

Thus once again, Dick just by the existence of him and his actual past dynamics with Jason, is a narrative obstacle to writing THIS specific narrative.

And so of course it had to be reframed and EMPHASIZED that Dick had always been a jerk to Jason, barely a brother, heck they barely even knew each other apparently - even when Jason came back and one of his first interactions with Dick post-Return was to clearly express that he’d always seen Dick as family, which very much does not mesh the idea that Jason and Dick barely knew each other or barely ever interacted before Jason died.

It also, of course, does not mesh with the idea that there’s nobody in the Batfamily who understands Jason, or is capable of seeing things his way instead of Bruce’s, or who cares enough to avenge him……because Last Laugh very much DOES exist, and puts the lie to all of that. Dick’s not only killed at least once (actually more than just once) and still remained fundamentally the same Dick Grayson he’s always been, but on top of that, it was the very person Jason desperately wanted to see dead as some kind of evidence, some sign that he had MATTERED to his family, that him being taken away from them hurt them enough that they felt driven to DO something about it, beyond the usual toss ‘em and lock ‘em.

Dick actually did that, ‘gave’ Jason what he wanted, and for the very same reasons Jason wanted it, to know that it was because of him, because of the loss of him, because he MATTERED and his absence HURT….and while of course, Dick was never the person Jason most wanted to see do that deed, want to see that evidence from….nonetheless, it very much does remain as significant evidence towards the fact that Jason mattered a great deal to Dick, enough even that having differing beliefs about killing would still be unlikely to ever stand between Dick having some kind of relationship with his returned-from-the-dead brother - because not only was it because of Jason (and Tim as well, admittedly, I’m not trying to gloss over the fact that he was part of the story and part of Dick’s motivation, this is just a matter of topical focus at the moment) not only was it actually BECAUSE of Jason that Dick crossed the line that so often he otherwise rigidly adheres to…it was never that realistic that Dick would judge and condemn Jason for killing, at least not by any narrative that took Last Laugh into consideration.

Because not only has Dick done the same thing himself, and MORE than wanted to do it on many other occasions as well thus he very clearly understands both the temptation and the arguments made for it…..BUT just as significantly IMO, is the AFTERMATH of Last Laugh. Where Dick very clearly was shown wrestling with and being affected by Bruce’s implicit judgment for what he’d done. Meaning not only was Dick never actually likely to condemn or judge Jason….he also is one of a handful of people most able to empathize with being judged or condemned by BRUCE for crossing that line. It never made sense or was realistic that there’d be this great divide between Dick and Jason after his return, that Dick was unable let alone unwilling to try and bridge, even for the sake of spending time with the brother he thought he’d never have a chance to spend time with again. 

(And yeah yeah, its not like he was embracing Jason with open arms in Brothers in Blood, but I maintain that had more to do with Jason’s approach than Dick innately being predisposed to being stand-offish with Jason. Like, when you announce yourself by impersonating your brother and getting him a rep as a manic killer being hunted by the police, instead of just like…ringing the doorbell, its kinda like, well, you may have to shoulder some of the blame here. Not to mention there still was the specter of what Jason had done to Dick’s other little brother Tim, with this still unaddressed between the two as of that time).

So yeah, for the above reasons and many more, Dick once again presents a narrative obstacle to a specific KIND of narrative that happens to be the one a lot of Jason’s fans most want to tell. The one where Jason sticks it to all his uptight family and rides off into the sunset with his NEW family, one that appreciates him and holds him in proper respect and positioning, the one where Jason will always be at least a somewhat tragic figure, forever apart from the family he does still very much love, because THEY can’t reconcile who and what HE is and believes.

Cuz once you take Last Laugh into consideration, AND add in Jason’s own words at the end of Brothers in Blood and the fact that they DIDN’T hate each other back when Jason was Robin, nor was it just one-sided on Dick’s end of things…..well, with all that taken into account, it becomes a lot trickier pulling off the above narrative, doesn’t it? When the in-character behavior of Dick according to THAT characterization of him would never accept any version of events where Jason was cast out for good (and yes, yes, RHATO and Bruce exiling Jason from the city, I know that in the New 52 that’s pretty much exactly what happened and Dick didn’t do anything about it, but he was kinda busy getting shot in the head right around that same time, so, y’know. That cuts into the ability to intervene on Jason’s behalf).

But basically, this is IMO why Last Laugh barely gets acknowledged by a lot of Jason’s fans, even though on the surface, you’d THINK its exactly the kind of story that would appeal to anyone who wanted, well, a story where someone in Jason’s family showed that they actually gave a damn the damn dumb clown still wasn’t dead. Its an in canon story that showcases and even highlights very clearly Jason’s place in that person’s family and memories, and the importance and weight with which he was regarded by that family member. Isn’t that exactly what Jason - and thus by extension his fans - have always wanted?

Well….yes, except it was the wrong family member. To have the weight, the significance that a lot of fans TRULY wanted from that story, from that outcome, it needed to be BRUCE that did it, not Dick. There’s no real place in that particular narrative or dynamic for an older brother who does actually give a damn. Like yeah, its great that Dick cared and all, but when its viewed as being more of an all or nothing situation, like, it has to play out with Bruce in that role and no one else, or it doesn’t count, doesn’t mean ENOUGH…..once again, this positions Dick to be more of a narrative obstacle to a certain (popular) kind of story than a benefit. 

And so Dick has to be repositioned, reframed, rewritten…..to be something and someone writers can actually work with when writing the kind of story where Bruce’s acknowledgment is the only one that ultimately matters. Him being likely to WANT to help and support Jason from an in-character standpoint, simply doesn’t help writers for whom this just becomes an unwanted plot complication that inherently bumps Dick a little higher up the Priority Ladder, because his status as a Rare Ally rather than Yet Another Antagonist pretty much inevitably paves the way for more screentime for his character, and again….he’s just not the character these writers want to write about (and yeah, again, this part is totally understandable), and they’re really just not interested in allotting him that much screentime, let alone a role that could feasibly steal focus at times from Jason, edge the narrative into being more of a co-lead than the single protagonist it was definitively intended to be.

So. Fandom subset number two is equally predisposed to resenting Dick simply for the narrative obstacle he presents to one of their preferred stories to tell - with again, this pretty much taking off right around the Dickbats era, fueled in no small part by Morrison’s shitty take on Jason, which, while I maintain it was Jason that was most out of character in all of that….DOES still very easily play into that take on him, where he’s misunderstood and eternally at odds with his family. 

And which also, I suspect, is why Morrison’s run tends to be weirdly popular with a lot of Jason fans who in most other places are quick to point out earmarks of Jason’s usual characterization that are entirely at odds with Morrison’s take on him, like that he’s extremely against the idea of younger sidekicks in general at this point (especially pre-Reboot), which uh, makes him taking on a younger sidekick a very….Strange Choice.

3) And then lastly we come to Tim, and a lot of his fans’ issues with Dick Grayson - which I think are heightened by a kind of feeling of betrayal that ties in here, and emphasizes the fact that just a year or two prior to Battle for the Cowl, most of these same fans would have sworn they loved Dick’s character and he was a great big brother to Tim.

See, the problem here, I think, lies in the fact that Tim is THE definitive Robin for an entire generation of readers. He’s who they see in the role every time they close their eyes, because he’s who’s always been in the role as far as they’re concerned. Back issues are just that - back issues. They’re about the history of Robin. But in the present, the here and now, for the solid twenty years or so before Battle for the Cowl, for all intents and purposes there really was only one Robin and it was uncontested that it was Tim.

And again, on a lot of levels I totally get this. I’m somewhat similar when it comes to Kyle Rayner and Green Lantern. Kyle was ‘my’ Green Lantern, the one I grew up with, the one starring in the stories that were current and ongoing for me as I aged. I was pissed as hell when they brought Hal Jordan back and he resumed being front and center in the GL franchise…..not because before this I’d had any real strong feelings about Hal one way or the other, outside of how I felt about him in the individual stories he popped up in…..but simply because Hal front and center happens to coincide with the starring GL of the solo title I personally would consider the definitive GL run….like….pretty much getting shoved offstage entirely, most of the time. I get that. It sucks.

Except that’s not QUITE the situation here.

Like the thing is, I do believe that for a lot of fans, Tim IS Robin and Robin IS Tim. That’s how its always been for them, that’s the way they like it, that’s how it should remain until his character is ready to launch into a new persona and identity of his own character’s volition. And its not like it was ever a secret that other Robins came before Tim, and that Dick was actually the creator of the mantle, the guy that all the other later Robins, including Tim, were literally the legacy OF. And its not like Dick wasn’t around in Tim’s stories, and wasn’t a familiar presence to Tim’s fans….its just that for almost twenty years, the WAY Dick appeared in Tim’s stories only added to them. There was no angle from which he took away from Tim’s stories, or the fact that they were Tim’s.

Like yes, he was a reminder that Tim was not the only Robin and never had been, that there were others with just as much claim to the title, if not more……but in a very background way. Not in any way that presented any kind of ‘threat’ to Tim’s actual status as Robin. Dick Grayson’s days as Robin were way in the past, and there was no real likelihood that they were ever going to put him back in that role, so his ‘claim’ to the Robin mantle was never at any point one that potentially contested Tim’s own. It was simply a non-issue. Instead, Dick’s status as the original Robin juxtaposed with his current roles of doting big brother and secondary mentor figure….like, at the time, this actually ADDED to Tim’s own wearing of the mantle. Dick’s presence was less a reminder that he was the one without whom the mantle wouldn’t even exist, and more just a kinda embodiment of the Robin LORE, the fact that Tim’s superhero mantle came with history and the prestige of past accomplishments accomplished by the Robin name, and the gravitas of the dangers and downsides that potentially came with the cape as well. It gave Tim an additional angle that even most of his friends and teammates in various books didn’t have, made him stand out even more. 

And it didn’t hurt that pretty much any time there was a guest appearance from Nightwing in Tim’s stories, he was firmly slotted in the supporting character role, there to help Tim but not overshadow Tim, to support him but not claim credit for Tim’s ultimate victory in any given story’s climax. And there weren’t many occasions when things went in reverse, where it was Tim guest-starring in Dick’s stories and thus him clearly slotted in the supporting character category, the B character role….simply because the older veteran hero needing to call upon his younger, comparatively inexperienced ally just was never as likely - and thus, occurring as often - a story as one where the younger, relatively new hero calls upon his more experienced predecessor for help or even just some advice or someone to listen to whatever was troubling the younger hero at the time.

Thus there’s the additional angle where for almost two decades, Dick Grayson’s presence in a Tim Drake narrative was for one reason and one reason only - to support Tim in whatever endeavor he was in the middle of, and to be what Tim needed, when Tim needed.

But then of course, once again we reach Battle for the Cowl….and all of that gets upended, not even because of Dick making Damian Robin per se, IMO…..to me, its always felt like the bigger issue has always been many of Tim’s fans resenting just….the reminder, the newly centered awareness that no matter how long Tim had been THEIR Robin, he wasn’t the only Robin and never had been….and that supportive, helpful older brother whose presence had previously only added to Tim’s stories and their weight, never threatened anything that was ‘his’ narratively speaking…..not only did he also have a claim to the Robin title, he has literally the biggest claim possible, the one none of the others can match due to the mere fact that they are quite literally HIS legacy characters.

Which, not at all incidentally, is IMO the reason a lot of Tim fans are so vocal about dismissing or minimizing the impression/association of Robin with Dick’s first family. Always quick to emphasize that it being his mother’s nickname for Dick was a later addition to the canon, because it ties Dick to the Robin mantle in a way none of the others ever will be. But of course, like I’ve always maintained…that’s besides the point. Whether or not Dick named himself Robin because it was a cherished nickname, because he was a fan of Robin Hood, or for any other reason, its still equally true that he’s the creator of the mantle, plain and simple. It doesn’t exist without him, it was his aims, his intentions, his DEEDS back when he wore the (clearly circus themed and inspired, no matter what else is said about the name’s origin BUT I DIGRESS) costume originally…..like, those are literally what Robin WAS because they were what Dick created Robin to be. It was only something for others to take up later, let alone to even WANT to take up, with it coming with a weight of history and past heroics that later Robins were proud to embrace….all of that’s only because of what Dick imbued the mantle with in the eyes of the world, not to mention his own successors….via what he DID in the costume, while wearing it, coupled with the fact that there’d never really been anything like him before, a kid kicking bad guy ass alongside the more intimidating specter of his mentor.

Dick being the first Robin isn’t just a matter of linear progression, like its not just a matter of him EXISTING ahead of the others ‘in line,’ so to speak. Rather, being the first Robin is a matter of…..its literally HIM and HIS actions that every later Robin is the LEGACY of. He’s the SOURCE of the legacy. And you can’t really go…’how dare the guy I’m literally part of the legacy of, like, think he has the right to decide what happens with the mantle he and he alone created, long before I ever came along’…I mean….y’know? Boiled down to that, that doesn’t really….work, like its pretty plainly evident why the originator of a legacy mantle would think its his place to be the definitive voice on what’s done with his own damned legacy. Regardless of why he named it what he did and what specific associations the name had for him originally.

But there’s always been a determined focus on kinda…..shifting attention away from the question of who actually DOES have the right to say who wears the Robin mantle and when, because I think there is generally an awareness that like….Dick wasn’t out of line to think that his own damn creation was his to give in the name of adding to their circle of family, the same way as it did twice before. Its not that there’s NO angle from which even Tim’s fans might admit that who created a legacy matters in the question of who gets to decide who carries that legacy next. Its more that like….just the reminder, the newly centered awareness that yes, Tim is not the only claimant to the Robin title and never was, like…I think that grates a lot of people, tbh. 

It may have been something that there was always SOME awareness of, the whole time, but previously it was in a way that was supposed to be ancient history, not something that could ever end up ‘taking away’ something they strongly identified with being Tim’s and Tim’s alone. Especially when the character suddenly exerting a prior or greater claim on that mantle just so happens to be one that a lot of Tim’s longtime fans had long-since internalized as being part of TIM’S supporting cast, not another protagonist in his own right, one whose decisions could have a shaping effect on Tim’s narrative rather than the other way around, the way it felt like ‘its supposed to go.’

And bringing it back to the overlap with the first two fandom impressions I talked about, I think again, yeah, this resulted in a kind of resentment of Dick’s character and the narrative obstacle he presents to…..well, keeping Robin associated with Tim and Tim alone, practically speaking. Its not so much giving Robin to Damian in the first place that’s the problem, its the fact that he COULD. That within the actual canon narrative, this was acknowledged and supported as something that ultimately, Dick did have the right to do whether individual characters liked it or not, and no, that didn’t make him the same as Bruce when he’d taken it from Dick originally (assuming they acknowledge that version of the story at all in the first place).

Because due to the fact that its not something NEW that was introduced to the story that led to Dick being ABLE to do this, but rather just him choosing to exert an option he’d had the entire time and just previously chosen not to use……inevitably, this creates a slight shift in the framing and context of even previously consumed stories. Suddenly Dick’s presence in many of those previous stories ISN’T incidental, because now they couldn’t help but be viewed through the lens of….remembering what had been kinda hand-waved away as inconsequential the entire time Tim was Robin. The fact that ultimately, Tim was only Robin because Dick endorsed him. That if Dick could give Robin to Damian later, then Dick COULD have, by the exact same token, the exact same claim and association with the mantle he’d been the one to create….he could have stuck by his initial stance, which was that Robin died with Jason. 

In all fairness, as I’ve said many times before, this NEVER had anything to do with whether or not Tim became Bruce’s PARTNER, specifically. I’ve never been of the opinion that even Dick’s status as the originator of Robin had nothing to do with who ended up Bruce’s PARTNER after him - that was always going to be between Bruce and that person, and no one else. But whether, as that partner, Tim went by the name Robin….with everything it embodied and signified and carried with it already….that, yes, Dick had always had the option of saying no, I’m not okay with this, I do not give you permission to wear the SPECIFIC mantle I created, what my brother died wearing.

I mean, granted, Bruce and Tim could have done what they wanted anyway, but much like people try and dismiss or invalidate the version of events where Bruce fired Dick as Robin and stripped him of the mantle precisely BECAUSE there’s no real way to go with that version and NOT get that Bruce looks like a douche in it one way or another, simply because that was never his to take….like, same deal here. They could have powered on without Dick’s approval of someone else wearing the Robin costume, but ignoring the wishes of a mantle’s creator, to let it rest given that someone had literally died carrying that very same legacy, HIS legacy….like, that was never going to look good and would have stained pretty much Tim’s entire career as Robin.

So yeah, I think the third corner of this Isosceles of Suck is that I do believe on some level, a lot of Tim fans resent Dick’s character simply for where and in what ways it exists in any and all Robin narratives…..as the one who ultimately CAN NOT be overlooked as inconsequential, because its literally HIS legacy that Tim and all other Robins took PRIDE in embracing. And everything with Damian simply hammered that point home and made it front and center and impossible to avoid confronting, no matter how much a long time fan wanted Robin to belong to and be associated with Tim and Tim only…..with the ironic part being that I truly do GET why this would bug….because again, if you’re here for Tim, if its his stories you want to read and write, if HE’S the one you’re a fan of, and if for whatever reason you just don’t like Dick Grayson all that much even if you don’t actually hate him…..

Yeah, its likely going to lead to resentment if you yourself feel, purely from a narrative standpoint, like….’pressured’ to write Dick being afforded more respect or importance in the other characters’ eyes than you personally feel like writing. But that its hard to avoid or becomes something you actively have to write AROUND any time your own story backs you into a corner where the origins of Robin are directly relevant to the plot, and logistically, and given there’s really no plausible angle from which Tim would have embraced or taken up (let alone taken pride in) a legacy belonging to someone he DIDN’T look up to or view as worthy of respect….like…in this kind of specific plot tangle, it could very easily feel like if you want to keep things feeling in-character, you have no CHOICE but to have Tim talk up or speak positively of a character who, if it were up to you, would never command that kind of respect from Tim, a character you happen to think is just plain better than the one you feel like your story is MAKING you say is so great. Bam. Once again, you got yourself a recipe for Instant Resentment Ramen.

(Again, not at all incidentally, I think the above also has a lot to do with the pretty prevalent trend in Tim-centric stories of having him pretty much ONLY fixate or focus on Jason’s time as Robin, citing him as ‘Tim’s Robin,’ not just as like, a preference but almost to the exclusion of Tim having ever had any kind of interest in, let alone appreciation/respect for, Dick’s version of Robin before Jason stepped into the role. A lot of people would rather the respect/admiration that would normally be afforded by any legacy hero to the person whose legacy they’ve chosen to carry, like, go solely to Jason instead of Dick, just because they like him better and would rather Tim was just his successor, no one else’s.)

And with all three of these angles/elements coming to a head at the exact same place and time in the comic books and fandom……it IMO created kinda the perfect storm right around the Dickbats era, where suddenly all these totally disparate sections of fandom all felt weirdly in agreement on one thing and one thing only….Dick Grayson was really just kinda bugging them, and what’s so great about that dude anyway?

And from there I think they all kinda just fed into each other and grew exponentially, with the individual ‘workarounds’ used by each other characters’ fans to get around the narrative obstacle that Dick represented, like…..I think these all became so prevalent and widespread throughout fandom because even these totally separate corners of fandom that had very little else they agreed on, were more than happy to take each other’s ‘rewrite’ of Dick and his place/depiction in the overall narratives and canon and just run with it….because not at all coincidentally, each other ‘group’s’ revisionist take on Dick Grayson made their own even easier to sell within their own stories. And thus you also ended up with correlating trends like Jason and Tim being besties and bonding over their resentment of Dick, because why not, both their fanon narratives now predominantly shared the same deliberately unappealing depictions of their eldest brother.

With the New 52 and post-reboot storylines then doing absolutely NOTHING to negate or derail all of the above, but rather just reinforcing all of it. Because as Bruce kept being written behaving worse and worse with his children, including Dick, it only added to and expanded upon the problems Bruce’s fans already have with Dick’s character, even if just in terms of how big a plot/characterization obstacle he presents for the stories they want to write. 

Just as the way Lobdell wrote Jason equally fed into and built upon the issues a lot of Jason’s fans have with Dick’s character and the tangle he creates for a number of stories. And then with the frequent conflicts over how two of the characters Dick’s historically been closest with had been practically cut and pasted from Dick’s stories and history into Jason’s stories and history instead, like, that just threw more fuel on the fire, particularly when it happened to ignite defensiveness among fans of the Roy/Jason/Kory trio who additionally resented having to defend their usage/embrace of a trio that canon threw together, not them, that they just happened to like. And that in turn hardly making them any less predisposed to resenting how complicated Dick’s character makes things for certain key narratives. 

And then lastly, DC’s just complete and total fuckery with Tim’s character in the New 52 as a whole, but specifically in his issues with trying out various personas post-Robin but never finding/creating anything with a truly firm sense of its own identity, the way Dick has Nightwing and Jason has Red Hood, and thus give fans of both characters no REASON to mourn the loss of Robin or wish for them to go back to it….whereas without ever settling into something similar, that was both strongly and uniquely Tim Drake in premise and execution, there was no reason for his fans NOT to begrudge the loss of the Robin mantle and wish for him to go back to it/to have never left it, at least not until he’d found that other persona to actually ‘graduate’ into.

Phew. *wipes brow*

Anyway, that’s my big theory on why fandom as a whole is the way it is about Dick’s canon vs fanon. Am I right? Probably not completely, and even if I am its not like this is universal or that there aren’t other reasons for why fans engage with Dick’s character in the ways they do, including but not limited to “I just don’t like the guy, so what.” And its not like there’s any way to know for sure, or to get a sense of how much of fandom this theory IS on the right track with, at least in some ways. But overall, I do think there’s at least some of the above present in various ‘parts’ of fandom or with various specific fanon trends. *Shrugs* YMMV though.