#// character meta

[pesky--dust]

the "diagnosis" Chilton gave Will during his trial was the one closest to the truth ("Will Graham has never been diagnosed. He won't allow anyone to test him. He has carefully constructed a persona to hide his real nature from the world. He wears it so well, even Jack Crawford couldn't see past it. (...) There is not yet a name for whatever Will Graham is.")

unlike Alana Bloom or Jack Crawford, he saw what a manipulator Will was and that in front of them he played a poor, confused, wounded bird ("(...) A particularly-manipulative one at that. Poor, confused, wounded bird for Agent Crawford and Doctors Lecter and Bloom. And for me, well, I get the psychopath's triumvirate: charm, focus and ruthlessness. The charm, of course, being debateable.")

he believed Will that Hannibal may be the Chesapeake Ripper and said Jack Crawford: "Hannibal once served me tongue and made a joke about eating mine. It's hard not to at least consider it.". Jack ignored him. (I think Jack was already planning some large-scale action against Hannibal, but that's a topic for another post)

he called Dr Lecter "Hannibal the Cannibal"

he understood that Will Graham was alive because Hannibal Lecter liked him that way

criticized Jack for letting Will and Hannibal get closer to each other and then leaving Will alone ("You dangle Will Graham and now you cut bait. You are letting Hannibal have him hook, line and sinker.")

when Jack expressed hope that the relationship between Hannibal and Will was one of those friendships that ends after the disemboweling, Chilton told him: "I would argue, with these two, that's tantamount to flirtation. Will is going to lead you right to him." and let's be real, he was right.

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

It's actually funny, in a meta way, how people are salty about Miquella being a villain. Because, like, that's how it is in-game too.

The people of the Lands Between wanted Miquella to be the solution to their problems. To be the promised savior. The God who would get it all right and do what Marika tried to do and failed so resoundingly, bring an age of infinite prosperity.

But, no, it doesn't work like that. Gods can't solve their problems. The Gods want their own ends and then convince people that what they want is what's best for them. The fans are the same as the poor bastards in the Haligtree, waiting for their savior, only for it to turn out he's just another spoiled kid.

It's brilliant, from a writing perspective. They kept Miquella vague, letting the Soulsborne fandom do what it always does, theorize, investigate, and build up ideas. We built up an image of Miquella as a savior, a hero, one of the only truly heroic characters to understand and get it right.

But in the end, Miquella fooled us as well as he fooled his own people.

[suguruhul]

i understand why people are upset about gojo's ending, but it definitely aligns to what gege planned for him as a character. not many people (if more than one: suguru) really cared about gojo satoru beyond the facet of being the strongest sorcerer alive, their main weapon, the six eyes.

from beginning to end, from birth to death, gojo satoru was made to serve jujutsu society.

you can count on one hand how many times the other characters are shown to really care about his mental, emotional and physical status beyond the fact that he can actually fight to protect them and the world. this is just how his relationship with others was. he was more an entity than anything else.

the few who got close (suguru and arguably sukuna) and tried to get close (shoko, yuji, yuta...) were still met with a barried he put between himself and other people, mostly because gojo himself recognized his role as the strongest, and to a point even enjoyed it. he didn't care for his family, had a few friends and wasn't even the typical mentor figure you usually see in anime. even the way megumi talks about the years they spent together is proof of that.

the people in this world mourning him as the strongest is something they need to do. but people mourning him as gojo satoru, the man, don't really exist in it anymore.

gojo only cultivated superficial relationships with every and anyone that came his way because he actually acknowledged his importance to the world. that doesn't mean, somewhere, somehow, deep within himself he didn't long for it. unfortunately, he didn't achieve that in his lifetime.

gojo wasn't written to be a happy character. he was written to show what the pinnacle of jujutsu society has to offer: tragedy, loneliness and war. however, that doesn't mean he was unfulfilled with it: he liked being the strongest, he liked fighting, he liked being gojo satoru.

people who cared about him, he acknowledged them. helping his students, his friends and colleagues. people who didn't, he dismissed. that's who he was.

so no. i don't think people "moving on" from his death is out of character. i think it's pretty much spot on to his character setting. he had his own version of a happy ending: dying in battle against his greatest enemy, meeting a loved one in the after life, and helping build a better society/world to the youth he fiercely fought to protect.

i think that, for him, in a sense, it was enough. for the fans... that's another story.

[warpedpuppeteer]

It's interesting how Buck's love interests are all written in a way that ends because of the reason they meet/happen in the first place and then of course, we have Eddie.

Abby, who changes Buck's view of a healthy relationship but then turns around and ghosts him, making him wait for months on end and letting him realize she's not coming back on his own.

Ali, who meets Buck during a dangerous situation in his line of work and then leaves him for how dangerous his work is.

Taylor, who lashes out at Buck for using her as a fake date and saying she thought she could trust Buck to be a friend who then ends up using him for her career and chose to put his friends in danger.

Natalia, who's there to help him embrace and deal with his temporary death but it leads to their break up because of the constant talk surrounding death when Buck's not comfortable with it.

We can't confirm for Tommy till it ends but it's important to note how he offers to get Buck into his interests like flying and muay thai yet doesn't show effort with Buck's interests like dressing up according to the bachelor party theme despite Buck being stressed about it. And we also have the fact that the entire reason they got together was due to Buck's jealousy for Eddie which he then claims to be was for Tommy. Makes me think they are either going to end because of differing interests OR because of the jealousy issue popping up again.

Funnily enough, every scene above has an Eddie parallel:

Eddie co-parents with Buck and not only does this not stop after a dangerous event but Eddie also has Buck down as a legal guardian (healthy relationship - Abby).

Eddie is in the same dangerous line of work and they have each other's backs. This happens right off the bat too.(dangerous job - Ali).

The Lawsuit era and The Dispatch era - both where they "betray" each other but manage to work through it (betrayal/lie - Taylor).

Eddie doesn't pressure Buck to talk about his temporary death until Buck's ready and is more focused about him living than in his death (death doula - Natalia).

Eddie who has different interests than Buck (poker, basketball and UFC/MMA) but also manages to show interest and actively takes part in whatever Buck comes up with; he suggests their outfit for the themed party AND ends up staying there for Buck even when others leave (different hobbies & showing interest/taking part - Tommy).

Absolutely fascinating when you start noticing that Buck's relationships keep failing for one reason or another and then we have him and Eddie who face the same sort of situations but they still come out of it stronger together.

It's clear that there's a reason Buck is able to overcome anything when it comes to Eddie (that conversation with Maddie about being there for each other even at their worst 👀) and we've already established that everything Eddie looks for in a partner is already something he has found in Buck. So really, all that's left is for them to realize that hey, the one I'm looking for is right in front of me! 🤷🏽

And yes, it's been said to death (hah) but you don't find it son you make it. And Buck and Eddie have already made it.

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The "Luffy's fruit is a Zoan" reveal/retcon was extremely controversial when 1044 was first released; do you think Oda did a good job foreshadowing it?

yes!! it addresses a lot of idle questions i had about luffy's powers for quite some time (while also raising a ton more, of course, but that's the nature of one piece).

(all of my thoughts here and on gear 5 in general owe some credit to @grainjew, who has been my main discussion partner on this topic)

luffy's fruit has always been, from what we've seen, kind of weird for a paramecia? obviously since the categorization of 'paramecia' is sort of a grab bag and a lot less well-defined than logias or zoans, that's kind of a hard claim to make, but generally speaking, most of the paramecia users we see throughout the series do not have their powers always on. (the strongest counter-example i could think of to this trend is brook, and even that is one i think you can argue.) luffy's power is way more passive, in the sense that he doesn't have to activate it- it's just there, always. even seastone and seawater do not make luffy not rubber, they just sap his energy and stop him from stretching himself, as we see as early as arlong park.

that is weird! what we see of most other paramecias is that they have to use their powers intentionally, even when those powers do involve transforming their body in some way, like with mr. 1 or alvida. there's a whole plot in dressrosa about knocking a specific paramecia user unconscious so she'll lose her grip on her power and it'll disappear. luffy will stretch when he is asleep, when he is underwater, and without knowing he's doing it. he's always rubber.

so luffy is weird for a paramecia, though not completely unprecedented. his power has always seemed to me to be... almost logia adjacent, in the sense that he's made from a specific material and all his powers are based on being that material, but that doesn't quite track either. aside from the fact that the thing he's composed of is tangible and, again, he can't turn it off, he clearly has access to a greater level of complexity in his transformations than logias do (whose devil fruit powers seem to be basically a binary system).

which actually leads me to compare him to chopper, who is the zoan we know the best, and who, conveniently, also ate a version of the hito hito no mi.

i think the way luffy and chopper interact with their powers is actually very similar. much like luffy, chopper was fundamentally altered by his consumption of a devil fruit in a way he cannot return from. he can still look like a normal reindeer, but he can never actually be one, because the most important trait his devil fruit gave him was human sentience. and he would still have that if you put him in seastone, he just wouldn't be able to transform. similarly, luffy had his body fundamentally altered by his fruit in a manner he does not seem to be capable of even temporarily reversing. he can't make himself not rubber any more than chopper can return himself to being a normal reindeer.

like chopper, luffy's power progression has been based around finding new ways to transform his body and force it into new and more powerful forms. his gears are roughly comparable to chopper's points. that is zoan stuff! chopper is the main other person we see interact with his fruit in that specific way. so, yeah, i actually do think it does make sense for luffy's power to have actually always been a zoan. at the very least, it makes more sense than him being a paramecia, to me.

however, having said that, i also don't think it's as straightforward as luffy just being a zoan instead of a paramecia. we see that the awakening of his fruit definitely has both paramecia and zoan qualities, since he's transforming both himself and the environment around him, as well as other people. (the wiki puts this down to him being a mythical zoan but i just don't think that's true. kaidou is also a mythical zoan and he is completely baffled by what he's seeing.)

i made a bunch of jokes in discord about luffy being devil fruit nonbinary while i was reading this chapter- there's three genders and you have to pick one, and you can't just go switching it up, etc- and i do think that what luffy's fruit indicates is that the sorting system of devil fruits itself is imperfect. outliers do exist that don't fit cleanly between the lines- which we already knew! just look at katakuri.

[0rb0t]

"Why is sonadow being forced on us now"

no no, you don't understand... nature is healing. this is how it WAS 15 years ago. what you're calling sonadow now is just how sonic and shadow used to be before sega butchered sonic and shadow's characters

[naranjapetrificada]

It's not that I don't love a little bit of gossipy, interfering Lucius, but I got to thinking about the look on his face just before he tells Ed off in This is Happening:

He's not delighting in/frustrated by their back and forth, he's annoyed. He's looking at all the work his bizarre little boss put into trying to show Thee Blackbeard a good time, and Ed's been whining about it the whole time, and how Ed isn't seeing how torn up Stede is about the whole thing.

And like, we know for a fact that Lucius has picked up on the vibes, and not because his character is standing in for some world-weary queer who's seen it all. We know because in a previous scene (that is literally the episode title) we see him see it. Even if he had entertained the idea before, he's seeing it happen in front of his eyes. He's not saying "Oh my god this is happening" he's saying "Oh my god this is happening."

And if it's happening, that means Stede isn't just demanding the treasure hunt as another of his misguided little ideas or out of naivety (although both are definitely in play because it's Stede). It also means Stede isn't pouting just because his plan didn't pan out. Lucius, who is regularly shown to be one of the most empathetic people on the crew (aside from my beloved Oluwande), now understands that Stede is desperate to keep Ed entertained (and why) and that the plan for the Day of Adventure falling apart has much higher stakes to Stede for good reason.

So yeah, he's mad. Mad enough to tell off Blackbeard. And I feel like we Flanderize him sometimes and make him intervene in their relationship in fanon just for the hell of it. But when do we actually see him get involved?

When he's mad and feeling protective:

When Stede is sad about Ed leaving:

When he's telling Ed how sad Stede is:

And I guess in way that's less directly about their relationship and more about just being supportive, when Ed is sad in the blanket fort:

I'm not saying it's wrong to write nosy gossipy Lucius, lord knows I've done it. I just think we sell him short if we ignore his empathy and how much that motivates his actions.

[syncstones]

The last two to leave work for the day

[wwillywonka]

SPOCK: CHILD OF TWO WORLDS

[sparring-spirals]

Still emotional about Fy'ra Rai and Opal, actually. Thought dump time bc i. dont have the energy to cut this down effectively.

Because at that point in the episode, Opal is doomed. Not in the fun little "oh things are getting worse ;)" kind of way we'd been experiencing leading up to the fight, or even IN the fight. At that point in the fight, Cyrus is dead. Dorian and Dariax have their minds twisted, bodies clambering away from the fight. Morrighan has felt, firsthand, just how far gone Opal is, holes in her mind, her friend broken. The heartbreaking sentence of. "You can always come back." understands that she is gone already. She's lost already. Opal has forgotten Ted. Opal has forgotten herself.

So at that point in the fight, we know Opal is doomed. Us as the audience, the cast, the characters. Aabria is running through each of the other crownkeepers and it is more of a goodbye than a round of combat. Defying the Spider Queen invites death, with zero hesitation- Cyrus's body as physical evidence of that. The terms were very clearly set: You leave Opal, you let her be lost. Or you die. (Leaving Opal anyway).

and Fy'ra Rai then. Grasps the crown, understands intimately that she can break it off and it will kill Opal. (I will free you, if you want me to. We would lose you but you would not be taken). And asks, what do you want me to do. What do you want.

and Opal says, I want you to leave. (I want you to live.) and Fy'ra Rai functionally says. No. Sorry. That's not one of the options.

If you wanted to go. I will do that (your blood on my hands). If you want me to stay, I will. But I'm not going to leave you.

There was the point where Fy'ra Rai broke into the communication and I felt my insides sink because. Look. Lets be real, Aabria had already demonstrated the stakes here. The gesture would not be rewarded for the gesture alone. The Spider Queen's terms were: You leave Opal. Or you die.

And Fy'ra Rai said: no.

I don't think I'm overstepping to assume that if Fy'ra Rai had failed the intimidation check, she would have died. This entire thing hits me so hard because I think Anjali knew that too. I think Fy'ra Rai knew that too. Yes, Fy'ra Rai convinced a Betrayer God to negotiate. She carved a third option out of a non-negotiable situation. She knew what would happen if she failed and did it anyway, with no fear, no regret, no waver in her resolve. She had lost enough sisters. She wasn't going to lose anymore, no matter the personal cost. That's part of why it succeeded, I'm sure, but.

Just. Fuck me. The amount of resolve. The amount of love. The amount of conviction. "I am. A protector." You know your friend- your sister- is doomed. So no more negotiating away from that. You step to her side and you grasp her hand and say- doom me with her.

And in some, sideways way, this saves you both, at least for a little while.

Because this story is a tragedy. This ending is a sad one. We know this already. But think about- Opal, under Lolth's bidding, alone in the dark. Think about Fy'ra Rai, alive, intimately aware that she had failed to protect yet another sister.

And think about what we got, instead: the two of them, in deep darkness, danger encroaching- holding hands. Someone they love at their side. A champion. And her champion.

This is still a sad story. But it's not the same one. Fy'ra Rai stared down a Betrayer God and made her change her mind. She stared down a Betrayer God, and her love and conviction changed the nature of the story. It shouldn't have been able to. But she did.

Fy'ra Rai chose to doom 2 people instead of one, and the sheer strength of her love and will managed to save them both, at least for a little while. Isn't it funny how that works? Isn't it devastating? Isn't it. fucking incredible?

[salroka]

The people who are personally offended when Bull betrays you after sacrificing the Chargers just confuse me. Bitch you did that to yourself. Did you really think he was gonna choose you (the person who let everyone he loves die) over his people? You think he's gonna just ignore orders from a superior when you've given him no reason to be loyal to you? When he has every reason to be more loyal to his own people?

[killugon-truther]

someone compared the needle illumi drilled into killua’s head to being forcefully medicated, and i stg that literally opened my eyes bc i didn’t even think abt that.

it makes perfect sense; the way he begins to experience and feel his emotions to a deeper extent (both the good and the bad) after removing the needle, the way tsubone said (and i’m paraphrasing here bc i can’t remember exactly what she said) that when he was under his family’s control, life was “easier” for him…

illumi’s needle is probably one of the best representations of abuse i’ve ever witnessed in media bc it manages to be so realistic and tragic, despite being so encapsulated in fiction.

[exaltior-a]

Personally the amount of people who are either "Jake is a stupid himbo" or "Jake is actively malicious" blow my mind. No, Jake isn't stupid, and he's not evil. He's a sixteen year old who is implied to have a mental disability and/or brain damage (it's not exactly clear, Caliborn claims they have the same developmental disorder and Dirk iirc worries that Jake hit his head too much, I guess you can take either with a grain of salt but I digress), and has not had meaningful real life interactions with other human beings in years. He is in the wrong for his actions, but it feels. Purposefully ignorant to claim he's just stupid or just evil for them.

He's socially stunted. He wants to emulate heroes in movies but lacks self esteem and experience. If the alpha kids had enough time to be more fleshed out (and let's be real, if Hussie cared about Jake) this might have been explored more thoroughly. He'd never had the opportunity to learn how to cope with a relationship, how to communicate his needs, or understand that he can't control how other people perceive him like he can through a computer screen.

He doesn't know healthy boundaries because he's never had to use them, and this goes both ways (allowing his friends to sexualise him and treat him like an object, as well as constantly complaining about his relationship with Dirk to Jane) Like yeah he does run away instead of communicating with Dirk and yeah he does dump all his problems on Jane. I love Jane, but one of her problems is her bottling up her feelings and people pleasing until everything blows up. She should have told him off much sooner, and while he was being a dick, it was partly because she allowed him to feel like it was okay to do, since she never told him it wasn't after the first few times or when she was starting to get aggravated.

His problems with Dirk are a little more complicated because we're never actually shown their relationship or how it broke down, but from what we can gather, Jake felt overwhelmed by Dirk's intensity and decided to ignore him rather than tell him try and avoid confrontation but leading to Dirk being frustrated and breaking up with him. Dirk claims he feels like he bullied Jake into a relationship, and though I personally think that's him making it seem worse than it was, it does mean that Dirk probably was trying to go too fast. I've best heard it is Jake being an introvert pretending to be an extrovert.

This is not to say I don't think people can't dislike or even hate Jake, but it's like. Idk. Misinterpreting a character and disliking that version of them is a little redundant to me.

[sunnie-angel]

Jason Todd is Orpheus, but he’s also Eurydice. The Lazarus Pit, with its sickening green light, is that place between dead and alive that no man has true control over. Jason Todd dies and he fractures into pieces. Robin is forever trapped in the depths, the casualty of a bad man’s insanity. The Red Hood is born there, irrevocably changed.

If Jason looks back, he is lost. If he looks forward, what beckons is an empty wasteland of revenge. There is no ending to this story where both Robin and Red Hood, Eurydice and Orpheus, come back to the living together. No man has the power to make it so. So Jason Todd looks forward, leaves his past in that cave with its eerie green glow.

And all Bruce sees is Orpheus coming out of that cave alone.

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

actually re: saturn insulting akainu in the newest chapter, this is also something i was thinking about earlier this arc, when akainu was fighting kuma at mariejois, and as he was attempting to fend off this quite genuine threat, the celestial dragons were just sort of hanging around and whining at him about all the minor inconveniences in their privileged lives.

akainu is the most committed servant of the world government's vision. he questions no orders and has no doubts of the rightness of his cause. he will destroy an entire ship fill of civilians on the off chance that a single scholar may have snuck aboard. and what does it get him?

it gets him the very people he's defending demeaning him because they can't have lobster. there will never be any gratitude for that loyal service he's rendered, because the celestial dragons see it as nothing less than their due. and as we see in the most recent chapter, even the slightest or most unavoidable failure will get him ruthlessly insulted. at the end of the day the celestial dragons see akainu as, like all other people, fundamentally lesser, and therefore unworthy of respect.

this is the system you're slaughtering for, akainu. hope you like it.

[thedomesticanthropologist]

Astarions Agonies

Why WOULD you want to love someone after everything has been taken from you? Everything but your name. Everything but your name

Your sense of taste, the warmth of your skin, your own heartbeat. Your reflection in the mirror. Your home, your clothes, your friends, your family. Your history, memories, your life.

Stripped of all of this, left with only the ability to feel. Mentally. Physically. And then that, too, is broken. Because it cannot be taken, so it must be controlled.

Anyone you care for, murdered. And not just murdered, but you have to do it. You have to bring them to their death. Maybe you have to watch. So you protect yourself, you protect them- whoever they nay be, whoever they could have been. You cannot care. You cannot. The consequences are too high.

Your body, every touch you delight in is perverted by the same solemn end. How can you enjoy this, even as a distraction from the more violent touches you are forced to endure, when you are still being forced? You cannot choose the sweet, the kind, the gentle, for they meet the same fate as the cruel, the evil, the fools. Picking soft touches over harsh ones fades to picking at random, to grabbing whoever you can get. Because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It all ends the same way.

And then there is the pain. The Punishments. At first, tastes of who you are- who you can be, are traded out; exchanged for physical torment and 'correction' of your behavior. But the punishments so hea ily outweigh the benefits of a snide remark, a night out too late, a prank, a room visited after being informed it is off limits. A victim you refused to hand over.

This life- no, this Un-death allows for a greater torment than any living person could survive. Hunger, thirst, pain, psychological abuse, sexual abuse. Never, ever ending. There is not a second in the day for two hundred years that you are not watched, used, handled, beaten, starved. Even in your rest there is no relief, for you cannot sleep but only enter reverie- a skill wherein your mind re-lives what you have been through, over and over.

So why would you choose to try to love someone? Why try to trust? Why, when you know what happens when you do?

Perhaps you've been allowed to believe you made it out before, only to have been captured and dragged back. Perhaps you've been allowed to believe a friend or a lover has escaped before, only to be called into a room and advised to clean up their corpse.

The only difference now is the sun on your skin.

The distance between you and that place.

The days, and days, and days that begin to pass with no retribution for your insolence, for your escape.

And these people, these idiots keep... not trying to kill you. Even when they find out what you are. One of them keeps looking at you like they might really care. You can use that, can't you?

Why would you love, when you could use their love to get your revenge?

But... in the wee hours of the morning, in the arms of a living, breathing person who has bedded you more than once and still is not gone forever, you think... maybe, maybe He didn't take it All from you.

Maybe even if he did, you could get it back.

Maybe you could love.

Maybe you could... try living, again.