#I don't like how characters like Jack are treated in that context

[jacksintention]

I'm thinking again on the fact that so often comments, criticism and readings on Jack dwell a lot on how he is barely human/a person/doesn't have a personality at the point of the story and, while I somewhat understand these points, I find them so lacking. I find them... ableist? I'm always doubtful to use the word here because I'm not sure if it's applied in this kind (mental health) of context, but something like that. And I find them extremely simplistic.

However, honestly, a big part of the reason for these readings being so popular is that the manga itself words it that way. But that's one of the problems I find in the manga. When I say P.andora Hear.ts is very good but unfortunately it is very manga-like at times, besides the 2000s homojokes and the like, I'm usually thinking about things like this. I feel like often characters and situations that are (potentially) very intricate instead of getting insightful deep overviews often get screwed by the writing itself, which falls into very manga tropes a lot in a bad way (not that every manga has to fall into them, or that every manga trope has to be bad or written badly).

I don't know... For instance, I'd argue R.askolnikov's capacity for love in Cr.ime and Punishmen.t is debatable, but it's never treated as if it made him less of a person, a human being or made him not have a personality. I'd say not even Svidrigailo.v, who is as much a Bad Guy™ as a character can be, gets that treatment by the writing. I'd say that even him or Mikol.ka are written as fully fleshed human beings with their intricate internal lives and feelings. Svidrig.ailov's last scene with D.unya is fascinating for both characters and spins the whole dynamic and makes you question the entire narrative and veracity of not only those two characters, but brings to mind several other conversations among different characters and throws light (and doubt!) on the main plot between R.askolnikov and Porf.iry.

In similar situations, Jack's humanity, personhood and personality are debated, doubted and even full on accepted as vanished. No one reads Crim.e and Punishmen.t and comes to the same conclusions about Raskolni.kov, Svidrig.ailov, Sony.a or Razu.mikhin. The writing doesn't allow it. The writing doesn't allow you to forget that humanity is diverse and multifaceted, that it can be sad and cruel and loving and monstrous, even all at the same time, or that a person may struggle with feeling at all; and one is still a person.

[cheapshrimpysheep]

Yuutsum 3

SUMMARY: What if you also have a Tsum? Then your Tsum and the Tsum of the person you like keep giving signs that they like each other?

CHARACTERS: Twisted Tsumderland 3 Tsumsitters (Ace; Trey; Ruggie; Jamil; Vil; Idia; Malleus; Silver)

TAGS: Fluff; GN Reader 

WARNING: Spoilers for the Twisted Tsumderland 3 Event and the Tsumsitter cards Vignettes.

WORD COUNT: An average of 810 words per character.

COMMENTS: This was originally a request from @taruruchi for my 1k celebration. Which you can read here. And since so many readers liked it, I decided to do what I normally do when this happens: Do this for ALL the characters! Grouped by event in this case.

The request also includes Jamil's and Silver's tsums, but I wrote them before part 3 was even announced on the JP server. In other words, I had to pretty much guess what their tsums would be like, but now I could write them more accurately.

And I ended up get carried away writing Vil's and Idia's parts. 😅

I hope you enjoy 😉

Yuutsum 1 (Riddle; Cater; Leona; Jack; Floyd; Epel; Sebek)

Yuutsum 2 (Deuce; Azul; Jade; Kalim; Rook; Ortho; Lilia)

CONTEXT: Like the original Twisted Tsumderland 3 event, this takes place after the events of the first and second Twisted Tsumderland. And, surprise, your Tsum is back! But it’s the only one, all the other Tsums that came with it are completely new visitors.

Just like the other times, your Tsum seemed restless and wanted to leave Ramshackle Dorm, probably to go look for the other tsums. You decide to take a walk around the school building first and you notice a gathering in the cafeteria.

“If you give it devoted, loving care, I'm sure it'd be willing to show its gratitude!” You hear Ace's voice say from behind a wall of other students.

You come closer, with your tsum in your arms.

“So... Who wants to look after the tsum?!”

“I'll do it!” a Scarabia student offers.

“What are you talking about?” A Pomefiore student counterposes. “That's gonna be me!”

And an argue begins. You stand on your tiptoes and crane your neck to look over some students' shoulders and see an Ace-tsum on the table.

“Okay, easy, guys. You can all take turns trying your hand at looking after it.” Ace interrupts. “If things go well, you might get to see more tricks. And hey, if they don't do any, you can just return it tonight.”

Even though you know this is about Ace and his tsum, you can't help but feel a little sorry for the things Ace is saying. It's like he just wants to get rid of his tsum. Poor little guy. And your tsum agrees.

“I can take care of it!” Your voice rings out, Ace and Deuce recognizing it immediately.

The students in front of you turn and see that you have another tsum in your arms. They make way for you while commenting on how cute it is.

“(Y/N)?!” Ace and Deuce say in unison.

You lean over to look at Ace-tsum who is looking at you with bright, surprised eyes. You say you can take care of it since Ace doesn't want to. Your tsum jumps from your arms to Ace-tsum's side. You add that you have your tsum to help you supervise it and that you already have some experience with an Ace. He blushes a little.

“Wait (Y/N)!” Deuce says.“This is supposed to be Ace and my task. And you already have your tsum to take care of.”

“Don't worry, Deuce. We both can take care of it. Right, Tsum?” Your Tsum agrees and rubs its cheek against Ace-Tsum's cheek. “Better us than someone who treats it like a burden.” But Ace-tsum moves away from your tsum and Ace grabs your arm to pull you with him to talk to you alone.

“You dummy!” He tells you in a lower voice. “Listen, I'm not just trying to get rid of my tsum, okay?! I'm trying to find someone who adores it so much that they would love to fawn over it and take care of it. This will be better than being with someone who is only taking care of it out of obligation.”

You ask, then, why can't you take care of his tsum.

“Because I was trying to get some idiot to do it, not you!”

Then you hear and see that more students have joined the group that fawns over Ace-tsum. And it seemed like they were finding something cute?

You two go back to the table and see your tsums having fun with each other. Ace-tsum was showing magic tricks to your Tsum and seemed happier with your Tsum's surprised reaction than with the students' applause. Your tsum approached Ace-tsum and began to rub their cheeks against each other, like cuddling. Ace blushed again.

“Fine...” Ace gives up. “It seems like it wants to be with your tsum anyway.”

“Why don't we all take care of the tsums together again?” Deuce suggests, “Like we did when mine was here.”

You and your tsum agree.

“Yeah, I guess we can do that.” Ace says, then smirks. “At least now I can split the work between three.”

Surprisingly, Ace's Tsum is much calmer when it's around your Tsum. In addition to being extremely affectionate with your Tsum, it also seems to really enjoy impressing it with magic tricks and things like that. As if it loved having your tsum's attention and affection back, completely ignoring Ace's embarrassment.

Your tsum wanted to go somewhere, so you pick it up and let it guide you out of Ramshackle Dorm. You pass the Botanical Garden and the Alchemy Workshop and arrive at the Hall of Mirrors. Your tsum wants you to cross the mirror to Heartslabyul.

You do so, enter the building and you end up crossing paths with Trey in the hallway. He was carrying a cake container. You feel your tsum move slightly in your arms when it sees him.

“Hello (Y/N).” Trey greets you. “I see your tsum is back.” He smiles at it and you feel it move again. “This time one similar to me showed up too, so I'm also tsumsitting. I assume you're here to see it.” He chuckles seeing you and your tsum nodding. “It is in the lounge. But before that.” He opens the cake container revealing a beautiful cake with icing and grapes decorating it, and some slices already missing. “Do you want to try a slice? Tsum decorated it.”

If you like grapes, he will be happy to see you eating a slice. If you don't like them and are sad because you would like to try the cake, He will suggest that you go to the kitchen and take out just one piece that doesn't have grapes for you to taste.

“Here.” He says taking just a forkful of the icing cake. “This one doesn't have grapes.” He holds out the fork with the piece of cake in your direction.

You can take the fork and eat it yourself or you can eat it while he holds the fork. If you do this last one, he will laugh and then smirk slightly. Independently of what you do, you'll feel your tsum moving in your arms again, but not enthusiastically.

Trey asks if everything is okay with your tsum and you answer that it might be sad because it can't taste the cake, after all tsum don't eat.

“Oh, don't worry.” He says to your tsum with a sweet smile. “You liking the way it looks is good enough already.”

Your tsum makes that happy tsum sound and suddenly jumps out of your arms towards Trey who catches it and you see it nestling in his arms.

“Ha ha ha. Your tsum is more cheeky than mine. No, that's not a bad thing. I find it quite cute actually.”

If you are more outgoing, your tsum will make that happy sound again and smile at him with its eyes. If you are shy, your tsum will shrink a little and hide its face in his arms.

He will, happily, carry your Tsum in his arms to the lounge where his Tsum and other students are, but when the three of you get there...

“Is everyone done? I'll get the dishes - uh...” Trey and you see what appears to be his tsum attacking students with a toothbrush. “What’s going on here?”

Cater explains the whole madness with Tsum wanting everyone to brush their teeth. Trey ends up taking his Tsum's side and the students run to brush their teeth. Cater tries to apologize by saying that it took him longer to eat and even tries to say that he wanted to spend some time with your tsum. But it's no use, both Treys look at him with a menacing smile.

“Ah, I'm sorry! I swear I'll brush therm! Don't come near me with that smile on your face!” And he leaves the lounge as well.

Only Riddle, you, Trey and your two tsums remain. Trey-tsum points his toothbrush at you with that smile.

“Let's give (Y/N) a pass this time.” Trey defends you. “They are from another dorm so their toothbrush and toothpaste are not here.”

Trey-tsum lowers the toothbrush in agreement. Your Tsum jumps out of Trey's arms and lands next to his Tsum. They both make a happy sound and the two begin to rub their cheeks against each other as if cuddling.

“Your tsum is very affectionate, isn't it?” Trey comments with a smile.

Trey-tsum jumps onto your shoulder, presses its face against your cheek as if it were giving you a kiss, and jumps back to your tsum’s side. Then the two jump onto one of the sofas and snuggle up together as if they were nesting.

“How cute.” Riddle comments with a slightly mocking smile seeing Trey blush.

You were taking a walk around the school campus with your tsum in your arms when you heard Jack's voice calling you.

“Hey (Y/N), glad I found you.” Jack says. You turn around and he sees your Tsum in your arms who greets him smiling with its eyes. “Your tsum is back? So you should already know that other tsums have appeared too.”

You say you had already assumed that and ask if he was looking for you.

“More or less. The truth is that I was looking for someone who could help Ruggie with his tsum.”

You feel your tsum move in your arms when it hears Ruggie's name. Jack tells you that everything seemed to be going well between them until they started arguing, or rather fighting over the money they earned. Your tsum has the same reaction as you, probably an unsurprised sigh.

You agree to help and go with Jack to Savanaclaw. You find Ruggie and his tsum in the lounge fighting with each other. Riggie has an envelope in his outstretched hand trying to get it away from the tsum, while the tsum jumps at Ruggie to try to get to the envelope while hitting him.

Your tsum jumps out of your arms and sneaks up on them while they are focused on fighting each other. When it is close enough, it prepares itself and as soon as it sees an opening, it jumps and takes the envelope from Ruggie's hands. Then it runs to you with the envelope where its mouth would be and jumps back into your arms, handing you the envelope.

Ruggie looked at your tsum and you with the most threatening look you've ever seen on him, until he realized it was you and his expression changed drastically and his ears went down. His Tsum's reaction was the same. He even stutters your name in surprise.

“And h-hey, your tsum is back!” He tries to divert the conversation and ease the situation.

You don't fall for that and ask why they were fighting over the money. Ruggie explained to you that he still tried to give 20% to his Tsum since it doesn't need money to eat or things like that and that's why it seemed fair to him. But his tsum didn't like the idea and was trying to keep most of the money.

You ask your own tsum if that money is the same as in the tsum world, basically asking if it would be of any use to Ruggie-tsum, and your tsum shakes its head no.

“See?! It's not even any use to you. And I would be generous enough to give you twenty percent.”

Ruggie's tsum turns against him again, your tsum jumps out of your arms and throws itself at Ruggie-stum, hitting it. But it doesn't hit your tsum to retaliate, instead it tucks its tail between its legs and lowers its ears while your tsum seems to scold it.

Ruggie laughs at that situation and approaches you asking, also with his ears down and his tail between his legs, if you could give him back the envelope. But you reveal that, knowing him, you knew that he was not taking care of the tsum, but rather taking advantage of it to earn more money with its work.

“Hey, The tsum was the one who wanted to work for m- I mean with me. We earned that money by working together by choice.”

“So why not split it fifty-fifty?” You suggest.

“WHAT?! Are you cra-”

“If one of you worked as hard as the other then you deserve the same amount, don't you?”

He tries to bargain by reiterating that Tsums don't need to eat, but you continue the discussion saying that if it's not like that they won't stop fighting and it will never be resolved. If Ruggie keeps rejecting ot, your tsum will throw itself at his head to hit him. And then he will finally give in and split the money 50-50.

After that your tsum will convince Ruggie-tsum to just rest with it, trying to push it onto one of the lounge chairs. But instead Ruggie-tsum seemed to want to play with your tsum and the two of them started play fighting like two cubs. Which ends up looking more like they are hugging and cuddling.

Ruggie comments that despite what happened they seem to really like each other. After playing with each other for a while, Ruggie-tsum will come over to you to see if it can get some petting from you for being so cute. And if so, it'll turn over on its back so you can give it belly rubs. Ruggie will tell you that you're spoiling his tsum while trying not to show that he's jealous.

You find out that a Tsum similar to Jamil has appeared and is with him in Scarabia by crossing paths with Kalim while you were taking a walk with your Tsum around the school campus. Needless to say, Kalim was super happy to see your tsum again.

On the way to Scarabia you could feel the enthusiasm of your tsum. When you arrive, Jamil and his tsum are in the lounge playing a card game.

The two Jamils realize that someone has entered the lounge. They look at whoever has entered just to greet them, but as soon as they see that it is you, they both smile.

“Hello (Y/N). I see your tsum is back.”

Your tsum jumps from your arms and approaches Jamil's tsum. When it gets close enough, they brush each other's cheeks. Jamil blushes and pulls his hood a little tighter.

They will finish the game they were playing and then invite you and your tsum to play with them. You will play against your tsum, Jamil will teach you and his tsum will teach your tsum while you both play. Jamil will try to make you win, while Jamil-tsum is trying to make your tsum win. And perhaps for this reason, he teaches you by whispering in your ear so that the tsums don't hear your plays. Even if you don't win, Jamil will say that you played well and will be happy that you understood how to play.

You play two or three more times. Whenever you or your tsum win, it's because Jamil and his tsum agreed to lose to see you both happy. But in the last round Jamil-tsum climbs onto your lap while your tsum goes onto Jamil's lap. Thus forming pairs for the last round.

While Jamil-tsum helps you with the best moves, Jamil asks your tsum for its opinion with a cute smile. They both know that your tsum can't help him win, but he enjoys interacting with it in the same way he enjoys interacting with you.

The two teams end up tied. There is a good chance that the bouth Jamils planned this result.

You were going to get up so Jamil could prepare something for the two of you to have a snack, when you heard something. The sound of an insect coming in and cetting closer to you. Jamil jumps and runs to the door leaving your tsum behind while his tsum uses you to hide. You feel it trembling against you. The insect lands on one of your cards and you see that it is a... little ladybug.

If your reaction is something like, ‘Aww, a cute ladybug.’ Jamil will complain, outraged.

You ask Jamil to bring you some jar with a lid with holes and leaves inside. When he asks you what for, you say that you're going to put the ladybug inside and release it in Ramshackle Dorm's garden. He thinks you're crazy but that's okay as long as you lock that thing up and take it away. He brings you an empty spice jar with two leaves inside. You ask if they are poisonous plants, he sighs and says no. You smell the leaves and they seem normal.

The ladybug was on your finger, you open the jar to put it inside but it flies back towards Jamil who screams and runs away again. When the ladybug returns, it goes after Jamil-tsum, who also starts to run away through the lounge. The ladybug finally lands on your tsum's head and the two of you put the insect in the jar and close it. You tell Jamil it's done.

When he comes back, you try your best to contain your laughter as you remember him running away from a ladybug, but he notices your little smile and looks at you sullenly, despite thanking you.

Something similar seems to happen with the tsums, but your tsum dosen't contain its laughter and Jamil-tsum attacks it with what appears to be tickles. After your tsum surrenders the two seem to start cuddling each other.

Jamil is embarrassed by this and pulls his hood even further to hide his blushing face.

You were walking around the school campus with your tsum in your arms when you arrived at the Courtyard. A group of Pomefiore students focused on photographing something separated you from Vil and Rook on the other side. You and your tsum noticed that they were photographing Vil's tsum, and it seemed to be enjoying the photoshoot itself.

Your tsum jumps from your arms to the ground and tries to pass between the feet of some students to get closer to Vil-tsum. But those students notice something moving near them and look down at your tsum.

“Aw, it's another tsum.” One of the students says.

“Yeah, but this one doesn't look like anything special.” Another student comments.

“In fact, it looks so ordinary.” A third student agrees. “Could you please not interfere with Vil's Tsum photos?”

Your tsum still tried to advance a little further, but the students stopped it by putting their feet in its way. And even if you were complaining, they didn't care, they were in the middle of a photo shoot, the staff and spectators shouldn't interfere.

“Listen, if your tsum was half as beautiful as Vil's tsum we might still consider it, but I don't believe his tsum would even want to be seen with yours.”

With this, your tsum becomes too sad to keep trying and returns depressed to you. It doesn't even jump into your arms, you have to bend down and pick it up.

Meanwhile, the photo shoot stops abruptly and you hear some students say: “What's wrong?”, “Why do you want to stop suddenly?”, “Did we do something wrong?”, “Have we crossed boundaries?”

You see the students in front of you make way for Vil's tsum. When it sees you, its eyes shine, but when it sees your tsum, sad and curled up in your arms it gets upset and turns aggressively towards the students.

They realize that the tsum is upset with them for insulting your tsum, but it doesn't know which one was and they start saying it was the other one.

“You're the one who said it didn't look like anything special!”

“’In fact, it looks so ordinary.’ that's what YOU said”

“And who said their tsum wasn't even half as beautiful as Vil's tsum?”

“At least have the decency to admit your rudeness.” Vil appears, also unpleased, and with Rook beside him. “None of you have the right to decide who can or cannot approach the tsum. It is the one who decides who deserves such a privilege.”

“What a disappointment to have dormmates with such little tolerance for other unique types of beauty.” Rook says sadly. “And so insensitive too. ‘I don't believe his tsum would even want to be seen with yours.’ Which of you has the courage to claim such a phrase?” Rook looks at the three main suspects with an amused smile but a menacing look.

Both Vil and his tsum got angry upon hearing this.

“It was him!” The other two pointed to the culprit.

“It is also quite ugly to denounce someone so shamelessly.” Vil rebuked them and clapped his hands decisively twice. “The photo shoot is over. Go back to your duties. And the three of you have a meeting scheduled with me later in the Pomefiore dorm. Do I make myself clear?”

“Y-yes Housewarden. We regret our words.”

“I sure hope you do. But that won't lessen your punishment. You may go now.”

As the Pomefiore students leave, the others glaring at the three who insulted your tsum, Vil-tsum turns back to you and jumps into your arms, knowing that you would catch it. It cuddles up to your tsum as if it were comforting it, rubbing their cheeks and giving it kisses, or at least that's what it seemed like since tsum don't have mouths.

“How can they belittle such a demonstration of love and such a beautiful couple!” Rook says dramatically. “Je suis choqué!”

When you start having trouble holding two tsums at once, Vil approaches you and puts his arms around yours to help you.

“I am deeply sorry for the atrocities you heard.” He tells you in a soft voice but then smiled smugly. “You can help me think of an appropriate punishment if you like.”

Knowing that you were having difficulty holding them, your tsums end up jumping from your embrace to the ground. Your tsum still looks a little sad and Vil's tsum doesn't take its attention away from your tsum.

“Don't listen to them.” Vil says to your tsum. “Just because you don't fit their standards doesn't mean you're not beautiful. You should only care about the opinion of those who you really care about and who care about you.” He looks at you. “They are right about one thing, you two look ordinary.” He will smile in amusement if you look at him sulkily. “But who said that was ugly? The beauty of the ordinary is the most difficult to perceive, only those who truly recognize it deserve to appreciate it. And if you want to know my opinion, two extraordinary things become flashy, but one common thing brings balance and harmony. The kind of thing whose value and importance you only realize when it disappears.” He looks back at your tsum. “Don't listen to the opinions of ignorant people.”

Rook was crying with emotion and murmured how beautiful that moment had been. Your tsum, also moved by his words, jumps into Vil's arms. He almost got a fright, but he caught your tsum.

“*sigh* How cheeky.” Vil said, smiling softly. He holds your tsum as if he were holding a beloved baby.

Vil-tsum approaches you calmly, with an aura of dignity and sophistication. You lower yourself, kneeling on the ground and it climbs onto your lap. Like a cat demanding in the way you pet it.

Vil-tsum won't let anyone else take a picture of it unless they want to take a picture of it and your tsum together. If your tsum is too shy and doesn't want to take pictures, then Vil-tsum will also refuse.

Vil's tsum will try to convince him to give you and your tsum a beauty treatment. And if it doesn't succeed the first time, he'll steal Vil's cosmetics for your tsum. But since it's you, Vil ends up accepting.

Vil will have to keep an eye on Rook because he will become obsessed with your tsums together.

Your tsum was restless in Ramshackle Dorm and seemed to want to go somewhere. You picked it up and let it lead you out of the dorm. Your tsum made you pass through the Botanical Garden and the Alchemy Workshop until you reached the Hall of Mirrors, where it made you pass through the mirror that lead to Ignihyde. Once inside it doesn't take long for Ortho to appear to greet you.

“Hi (Y/N)!” He looks at the tsum in your arms. “Oh! You're back too. It's great to see you again! Are you here because of my big brother's tsum?”

And now you know why your tsum wanted to go there. Your tsum nods its little head. Ortho doesn't even bother to tell you where they are because they can only be in one place, but he says he'll have to leave because of the meeting with the Film Research Club and wishes you luck in dealing with his brother and his tsum. You go to Idia's room and knock on the door.

“Ortho? Did you forget something?” Idea asks instead of opening the door.

“No. It's me, (Y/N).”

He stammers your name in surprise. “W-w-w-what are you doing here?!”

You explain that your tsum was the one who took you to Ignihyde and that Ortho told you that an Idia lookalike had also appeared. Suddenly you hear a commotion inside the room and Idia asking in panic what it was doing.

The bedroom door opens. You see Idia lying on the floor in the middle of the room and in front of you an Idia-tsum staring at you. When your eyes meet his, his own sparkle and the blue in his hair takes on pink hues at the tips.

Your tsum jumps out of your arms and lands right on top of Idia-tsum. What no one expected, not even your tsum, was that Idia-tsum's reflex would be to take advantage of this to take your tsum, as if kidnapping it, to a kind of fortress made of cardboard boxes in the corner of the room.

“Welcome to the club.” Idia tells you as he stands up. “It also kidnapped my tablet. Now it has two captives.”

As soon as you enter, the door closes behind you again. You go to the cardboard boxes, kneel down and look inside. You see, through a gap in the boxes, the two tsums very close together playing a co-op game on the tablet.

“S-sorry about that.” Idia tells you embarrassed. “I can't get along with this tsum. I've been trying to get my tablet back for hours but it is so stubborn. ...What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

You think about it and say that if they stay calm like that until it's time for them to go back to their world, there shouldn't be any problems, right?

“OF COURSE THERE IS! MY LOGIN BONUSES! Why do you think I'm trying to get my tablet back?! Listen, I don't care what the tsums do as long as they don't cause me any problems or interfere with my games. And this tsum manages to do both. My room wasn't this disorganized before, but it keeps fighting me. You're good with delinquents, help me!”

If your tsum is really like you, it wants to get Idia-tsum out of those cardboard boxes like you want to get Idia out of his room. Which means if you have an idea you know your tsum will help you. You think about that co-op games and how Idia can be competitive when he believes he have a good chance of winning. Aka: in video games.

So you have an idea, but to do so you have to whisper the idea in the Idia's ear so the tsums don't hear. When you get closer he gets flustered. You suggest playing a 2 vs 2 game and invite the tsums to play, and encourages him to be as provocative as possible to ensure that his tsum accepts the challenge.

“And then what?" He whispers back to you "We'll have to entertain it while I get the tablet back.”

“I can handle that part.” you guarantee him.

You both follow the plan, luckily Idia has 4 controllers, probably because they are all different models. At first, Idia-tsum doesn't fall into the trap, but soon Idia's smugness kicks in

“Of course you don't accept the challenge. You don't even have opposing thumbs, how could you beat us?” The boxes move. “Or is it because you're a noob?” The boxes move again and it looks like Idia has an idea for the ultimate strike. “Oh, I see, it’s because your teammate is a normie who sucks at games.”

One of the boxes jumps like a spring and almost hits Idia in the face, as if whatever was underneath it had exploded. Idia-tsum jumps towards one of the controls with an irritated look and his hair completely red. Idia himself gives one of those scared YEPs, but for some reason he smiles when he sees that reaction from his tsum.

Your tsum jumps to the other controller next to Idia-tsum who looks at it and waves like a true duo preparing for battle. Idia gets prepered beside you and gives you a similar determined smile before he starts the game.

During the fighting game, it was as if Idia had forgotten about his tablet and whenever it seemed like you were having trouble he would get upset on your behalf and defend your character with his. His tsum did the same to your tsum.

It was only at the end of the round that Idia suddenly remembered the tablet and jumped out of his chair to pick it up from the floor next to the cardboard boxes. His tsum did the same thing, but you managed to catch it in time and held it in your arms with a strong hug. It struggled at first, but when it remembered that it was you who was grabbing it, its hair turned completely pink and it covered its eyes with its little hands.

“I collected...”  Idia raises the tablet in his hands. “The Tablet!”

He looks at you with a triumphant smile, but if you are giving his tsum affection and kisses because it’s so cute, the tips of Idia's hair will also turn pink and he will be flustered.

Your tsum will jump right up to his face and give him some affection too, like rubbing its little face against his cheek.

“H-h-h-h-have you never heard of personal space?!”

You were walking with your tsum in your arms around the school campus when Lilia suddenly appeared.

“You're back!” Lilia surprises you and your tsum by appearing upside down in front of you. “Hi (Y/N)-tsum. It's so good to see you again. This is actually perfect.” He turns around and puts his feet on the ground. “You see, a Malleus-like tsum also appeared.” You feel your tsum move happily in your arms. “And Malleus decided to throw a party for it. I was looking for you to invite you, but now that I see that your tsum is back I know that both Malleus would love to have both of you at the party.

Your tsum gets so excited that it almost falls out of your arms.

“Good thing you're excited, because we're already late. Come with me. The party has already started.”

Lilia accompanies you and your tsum to Diasomnia. The lounge is full of Diasomnia students paying attention to Malleus and his tsum. Lilia asks you to follow him down the stairs and when you reach the last step the students in front of you look at you and respectfully make way between you and the two Malleus. Like soldiers taking positions on both sides of the road.

The two Malleus look confused to see what the students were doing and when the two tsums' eyes meet your tsum jumps out of your arms and hops towards Malleus-tsum very quickly. Some of the students (Sebek included) took one step forward to stop your tsum from "attacking" Malleus' tsum, but stop immediately at Lilia's signal.

Malleus-tsum did not move, excitedly waiting for your tsum to reach it. Your tsum did indeed attack Malleus' tsum, but with love and affection. Your tsum gave it a lot of affection and Malleus' tsum simply accepted it with smiling eyes, only occasionally reciprocating the affection. Malleus also looked at your tsum with a special affection in his eyes.

You approached the tsums to get a better look at Malleus’s. It approached you with that dignity that Malleus himself also has, looked at you for a few seconds and bowed. All the other students at Diasmonia suddenly did the same. Even Sebek, although he did so a little reluctantly.

You bowed back and asked if you could pet it. The other students looked at you again with extreme attention and some held their breath. Malleus-tsum pondered, creating suspense in the lounge, but then it made that happy tsum sound and jumped into your arms, super happy. It accepts any and all affection coming from you and it doesn't matter how strong your hug is, just like Malleus his tsum is also extremely strong and resistant.

Meanwhile, your tsum also jumps into Malleus' arms without warning. Hence the students' gasps echoing through the lounge.

“So fearless, jumping towards me like that.” Malleus smiled smugly. “You really don't fear that I might crush you?”

The other students were wary, but your tsum didn't seem to care what he was saying and jumped onto the top of his head, nestling between his two horns. Once again the students gasped in fear. Only Lilia and Silver were calm. Lilia was laughing.

“My liege, please forgive this insulting-” Sebek said, but was quickly interrupted by Malleus's good-natured laughter.

“How cheeky. I wonder who gave you permission to go up there.” He raises his arm to bring his hand closer to your Tsum in his head, touching its little nose affectionately before patting its head.

While you were hugging Malleus-tsum, one of its horns stung your cheek. It immediately stopped and looked at you worriedly when it heard you say ‘ouch’. When it realized it had hurt you, its little eyes watered. You said it was okay, that it hadn't really hurt you, it was just a little sting, you were fine, you hadn't even gotten a mark. But even so, you had to keep comforting it.

After that, Malleus-tsum wanted to dance with you and Malleus with your tsum. You did so. And the next one, the two tsums wanted to dance together. Following this same logic, Malleus invited you to dance.

At the end of the party, when your tsum gets tired, Malleus-tsum will accompany it to you and Malleus who are sitting together. But your tsum will lie on Malleus' lap, and he will pet it lovingly. Likewise, Malleus-tsum will lie down on your lap, even if it is not tired. It is extremely happy for you to pet it.

Malleus laughs happily when your tsum turns over onto its back so he can give it belly rubs.

Malleus-tsum looks at you and Malleus and thinks you're not close enough. It jumps from your lap to your side and gives you a little nudge on the leg with one of its little horns. You jump and lean against Malleus. You apologize, but Malleus still puts an arm around you. And now satisfied, his tsum returns to your lap, which is so close to Malleus' lap that the two tsums can nestle together too.

You were walking around the school campus with your tsum, but it got tired of always walking in your arms and now it was jumping around by your side.

You were crossing the bridge that led to the Mystery Shop grounds when your tsum, who was jumping on the edge of the bridge, slipped and fell into the water below you. The current took your tsum to the lake in front of the Hall of Mirrors building, you followed it running. Your tsum managed to grab onto a ledge in the rocks very close to the waterfall.

You didn't know what to do. You couldn't get down there and there was nothing to help you.

But at that moment something jumped into the water near your Tsum, grabbed onto it and grew so big that it was blocking the passage to the waterfall. It was Silver's tsum!

And speaking of him, Silver appears right after and uses his magic to make your tsum levitate and fly back into your arms. But what about his tsum? The water coming from the lake was accumulating and creating more pressure on the tsum.

But the two Silvers seemed to understand each other well and the Tsum quickly returned to its normal size and let itself fall down the waterfall, but Silver managed to use his magic to catch it in the middle of the fall and bring it back to land safe and sound.

Your tsum jumped out of your arms to hug Silver-tsum, who hugged it back, or at least the tsum version of a strong and affectionate hug.

If you do the same to Silver to thank him, he will be surprised at first, but will hug you back gently with a smile on his face.

“I'm glad you and your tsum are safe now.” Silver tells you. “My tsum and I fell asleep nearby. We both woke up to the sound of something falling into the water and your fright.”

Neither your tsum nor silver's tsum wanted to let go of each other.

“Were you heading back to your dorm? We will accompany you.”

He used his magic to dry your tsum and you for grabbing it right after it came out of the water. Your tsums seemed to agree on something and then your tsum jumped into Silver's arms while Silver-tsum jumped into yours. Your tsum was nestling in Silver's arms, while his tsum was on guard and alert to your surroundings.

“I think they want me to protect your tsum while my lookalike protects you.” Silver assumes, placing his arms protectively around your tsum.

You go to Ramshackle Dorm together and as soon as you arrive in the lounge, your two tsums go to the sofa and snuggle up very close. And now in a safe place and next to your tsum, Silver-tsum falls asleep very soundly. Both you and your tsum find it funny how soft he looks when he sleeps so deeply.

“There goes another attempt to stay awake for as long as possible.” Silver says smiling, also finding it funny. “But I can't blame it. I also feel very relaxed around you.”

You stay with your tsums in the lounge. There's a good chance Silver will fall asleep next to you. Or on your lap if you let him.

If you would like to read more from me, you can find it in my pinned post: INDEX

[linkcharacter]

Really like the recent analysis. I know I speak of curly in a more defensive way than most but I generally try to get the point you made across at the end of the day with my analyses on him and his behaviors.

People love to lock analyses around Curly solely based on what he could’ve done as a physical action and have this avoidance to acknowledging the realistic barriers at play when it comes to those solutions. It’s. The game tries to treat the pre-crash section as if they are grounded in social and organizational realities. So the what if he did this questions about the situation always fall short when the real answer is he either couldn’t or it wasn’t an actual viable option. But then when they talk about what he actually did do it’s surrounded by such bad faith interpretations that his actions were completely intentional or still not affected by outside sources. He’s a very much “road to hell is paved with good intentions” character. He cared too much and that’s a big part of his problem.

There’s such a “perfect victim or nothing” mindset in the fandom where people can’t admit that there are no such things as perfect victims but that also shouldn’t mean that even if there were it would absolve them of the mistakes they made. People want to moralize every action of every character that they don’t realize that some actions are done without any specific morale factor. People just do things, like you said. People assumed failed intentions immediately flip the thought process behind them “he meant to do good but bad happened, he must be bad” and that just is not how people work. It’s how perceptions work but only of the observer.

It’s such a sensitive topic because, yes, you are supposed to be frustrated, even mad, at what Curly didn’t do, but you have to acknowledge the fact these were good intentioned acts even if that good intent did jack squat in the end. That his responses are human and it’s supposed to be uncomfortable and hurt that they were realistic faults of his.

He enabled his friend and it ended bad for everyone including him. No one really tries to argue this fact but everyone seems to think it has to be tied to the morale dilemma and not certain human natures and social factors.

This is all to ask, why do you personally lean towards thinking Curly wouldn’t turn Jimmy in? Are you speaking in the short term of realizing how bad he got or long-term/overall? I feel like he could but it would not be easy and no matter the necessity he’d always have this guilt at feeling bad for doing it.

Ah yes Curly the most imperfect human man character.

Yep yep yep absolutely, people love to assign morality onto characters and call them good or bad and diminishing the depth and nuance of Mouthwashing, filling discussions with bad-faith interpretations or speculating on inconcrete understandings of the incomplete, intentionally vague, context. I adore Mouthwashing to no end for having this oppressive suffocating and constant atmosphere surrounding everything in the game. Really shows off that the environment festers, no one well-meaning guy could create a happy ending with individual actions alone because it's all systematic.

To elaborate from your question tho, at the point Curly was in (if Anya wasn't pregnant scenario), definitely no don't think so (would depend on Anya a too on whether or not she would go to the authorities outside). Curly knew Jimmy was a danger, and I do believe that subconsciously Anya's report to him on Jimmy gnaws at him, but not vividly enough. I want to point out a moment where Anya tells him about the pregnancy, he begins asking "Who would you-", then he's nudged by Anya that she told him and he should know who it is, and he does, instantly saying he's known him a long time and will talk to him. That moment of, for a second not connecting that Jimmy is the assaulter responsible just makes me drag my palm across my face for how much of a man (derogatory) Curly acted like for one dialogue line. Like he just 'forgot' for a brief moment that Jimmy harassed Anya prior? Granted, he instantly believes and takes Anya seriously, immediately dropping the search for the gun he was on in that scene, realizing the severity of the situation and of Jimmy. We also don't know what Anya has told him specifically, how long ago it happened, etc. but the 'implications' of the scene make me believe Jimmy's known sexual harassment on the ship slipped Curly's mind due to him being more invested in "the bigger picture" of Jimmy, not latching onto a harmful and a very serious fucking trivia fact about Jimmy because of his perception of who his friend is as a whole (and with his foggy sleep-deprived mind at the moment), 'losing a needle in a haystack' with how much unknown history Curly and Jimmy shared, so to say.

Maaaybe in some other circumstances, like if Jimmy didn't crash the ship or smth long term I could see him doing it, it would take a lot effort like you said, no matter the necessity. We will never know. If we're going into speculation and imaginary scenarios though, if Anya HERSELF were to try and get justice, Curly would be backing her up undoubtedly (still not disconnecting himself from Jimmy though and feeling guilt on his behalf). But that's all suppositions from my reading of the characters.

[tfp-is-my-lifeblood-lol]

Reasons Why I Think TFP Jack is Underrated:

Welcome to my organized bullet list of why I think Jack is cool. I used to think he was boring too, but now I think he's the goat and here's why:

-He has Main Character Energy, but he's more snarky than most cliche main characters

In fact, he is a petty king:

-He doesn't wanna be on Team Prime at first, but eventually accepts it...

...He then proceeds to BURN Airachnid's ship to the GROUND with a stupid survival kit for babies

-HE DEFEATED THE ALIEN SPIDER QUEEN WITH NOTHING BUT A LIGHTER AND A POCKET KNIFE, BRO

-HE WAS DONE WITH HER BULLSHIT LOL

-Plus he tricked Silas by pretending to beg for mercy, when really, he was stealing his walkie talkie.

-Jack is boring, BUT the fact that Jack has nothing special about him IS his superpower; Miko has the Apex Armor and her brave personality, Raf has genius level computer smarts, and Jack has PURE SPITE. It's beautiful.

-He has zero skills, but he'll figure out how to defeat his enemies anyway, SOLEY because he's tired and doesn't get paid enough for this shit.

-For example, in one of the Titan Magazine comics, Jack literally kicks Silus in the balls

Evidence:

Iconic✨

Apex armor? Cybertronian technology?

Screw that. How about I KICK you in the balls?l

-A true legend

-He's also a mess though, and I relate so hard

-He's so petty he talked two aliens into helping him cheat at street racing to piss off his classmate

-His romantic subplot is treated like a complete joke, and I love that. Normally, the Main Character✨ is awkward, but gets the girl in the end. Not Jack, though. Nope. He just constantly looks stupid in front of Sierra, nothing ever happens between them, and Arcee is just watching with popcorn as his life falls apart. It's hilarious.

Also, if I'm correct, isn't the last time we see Sierra when she sees Arcee's homoform, and thinks Jack has a girlfriend, and then Jack is like "She's my mom😅." And Sierra's all like: "Your mom looks good in leather😐...on your bike😐😐😐😐..." Maybe I'm wrong, but if that's the case, it's funny. Jack is a simp and it gets him nowhere.

-His sarcasm works perfectly with Arcee's sarcastic attitude.

-Also Tailgate is voiced by Josh Keaton (Jack's voice actor) in the flashbacks, so I headcanon that Jack reminds Arcee of Tailgate, and that's why she has such a soft spot for him.

Tailgate and Arcee's dialogue had the same vibe as her and Jack's

Also, it gives more context to why she was so scared to lose him when Airachnid showed up. It would've literally been like losing Tailgate all over again.

-Jack is Team Prime's designated Good Ideas Guy

It was Jack's idea to hijack the spacebridge to send him to Cybertron

It was also his idea to drain the dark energon out of The Nemesis when it came alive and froze everyone

-I'm probably just projecting, he has generalized anxiety disorder vibes

-I feel like he prefers a comfortable, predictable life because he gets nervous easily

-He's always the first to freak out, and overthink, and Arcee always has to calm him down

-And she's so patient with him it's so sweet😱

-I agree the writing behind his existence is meh, and a lot of the cool stuff about him is probably unintentional, but I don't care, so take that!

Anyway, the moral of the story is:

Jack is just an angry little harmonica boy. Leave him alone. He's trying his best😭

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

About Malleus new years card, given how heavily Japanese culture it goes into. It might be a hagoromo, a white cloth/scarf that floats in the air around a goddess. Given that Malleus is the strongest mage, it might be a symbolism of that. Even so it's used for goddess, Vil and a few others worn clothing meant for women. It wouldn't be unusual to be used for Malleus.

[Referencing this post!]

These asks are all about the fashion of the New Year’s Attire cards and how they relate to Japanese culture, so I thought to combine them ^^

Since I’m responding to three asks in one post and it takes a while to explain things, I’ve placed everything under the cut :> There’s a lot of discussion of Japanese clothing, culture. and folklore in this, so if you’re interested in those topics then you’re in for a treat!!

To the first ask: Though Twst is fairly gender fluid when it comes to dressing its characters, I'm certain that's not a 羽衣 (hagoromo/"feather garment/cloak"; typically worn by celestial women in Japanese mythos). Hagoromo are thinner, longer, and more scarf-like than what is depicted in Malleus's initial card art. You can tell that he's clearly got a sheet that covers his entire body there. The fabric also doesn't appear to be floating like a hagoromo would.

The first two images depict 被衣 (kazuki/katsugi); the latter two images depict 羽衣 (hagoromo); you can see there is a notable visual distinction between them.

To the second ask: It’s possible that the artists looked at kabuki fashion for inspiration, but they most likely did not base the entirety of the New Year’s Attire outfits on that alone. As Yana states in one March 2023 interview, she and her team try to avoid creating outfits that too closely resemble a single real-world culture or brand. To that end, they seem to pull their inspiration from many different cultures and time periods, which is why you'll see a mixture of traditional and modern Japanese elements in the New Year’s Attire.

歌舞伎 or Kabuki, for those who don't know, is classical form of Japanese theatre which mixes dramatic performances with traditional music and dance. I consulted with a few friends who are familiar with Japanese culture (hereby referred to as A-ko, B-ko, C-ko, and D-ko) about the topic and they had some enlightening information to share. Because I am not familiar with the art form or how to gauge it myself, I will be relaying the information provided by those friends in addition to my own research. A-ko informed me that kabuki used to be co-ed (or at least did feature women; the first kabuki troupe formed was all-women) and modern kabuki is all-men. As for the poses, B-ko remarked that they can be considered common "festival dance poses", not strictly kabuki poses. C-ko added, "[...] There is very little, if anything, kabuki-like about the New Year’s cards apart from possibly SOME of the poses [...] Jack is probably the most kabuki we’re going to get because of the dynamic palm thrust and gaudy composition of his attire." The eye makeup being red and of that design also invokes the image of kabuki makeup without it fully committing to its extravagance!

Overall, the group seemed to agree that the New Year’s Attires lack the over-the-top expressions and elaborate costumes of kabuki. There’s also the more obvious lack of full-face stage makeup, but it’s kind of a given that Twst is wouldn’t go this route, especially since the context of these cards is helping out in a store and not putting on a dramatic performance.

On the topic of Malleus and oni (Japanese yōkai, demon, orc, ogre, or troll), I don't think he's intended to look like one??? Sure, he has the horns, but as B-ko said, "[Malleus] always has those horns." Very little in his actual outfit resembles the costume a kabuki actor playing the part of an oni would wear--unless you count the excessive black, as that's a color typically used for oni, but that black is usually paired with red. As for the hair styling, D-ko explained, "Oni usually don't have hair [...]". I find it interesting that some oni masks I found do seem to have hair, but it's usually very sparse omg balding!Malleus real???? and/or a middle part and not the sideways part that Malleus is sporting. Additionally, while oni do have horns, the shape of them is nothing like Malleus’s.

It's true that fur is rarely seen in historical Japanese clothes, but they don't seem to be that common in kabuki either?? According to C-ko, "fur and pelts [...] were a luxury few could afford. Thus, only those people decorated with furs would be royalty or individuals vying for power.

B-ko suggested that the reason why Jack wears fur in his New Year’s Attire isn’t to emulate Kabuki—which tends to feature fluffy wigs, like the one pictured below—but to emphasize his “wolf”-ness and to keep him warm from the cold. C-ko pointed out, however, that “[…] fur accents (like what Jack has) became the trademark for popular and celebrated figures [...] towards the end of the warring states period; when kabuki came into vogue, many plays were inspired by the lives of such personae as well as the legends surrounding them. This is why much of kabuki is characterized by the term basara—of grandeur and ostentatious eccentricity. The actors themselves would not have had access to furs, so they focused instead upon conveying that same sort of energy through their theatrics and outlandish couture. They still used substitutes, of course.” C-ko also added, “The most memorable kabuki roles feature things like fur—which many associate with kabuki.”

Finally, the group altogether said that, “Vil isn’t [dressed like] a geisha. His outfit bears no resemblance to what geisha wears.” 芸者 or Geisha are highly trained Japanese hostesses who entertain guests with song, dance, and conversation—furthermore, there’s a rigorous training process and a very specific appearance they take on. Makeup aside (if Twst is not doing kabuki makeup, why would they do geisha makeup?), a feminine figure and long, flowing kimono is not enough to get the “the look”. B-ko commented, “[…] Calling Vil [dressing like] a geisha just because he wore a feminine kimono […] Like, damn. Does that mean every woman who wears that style [of a] kimono is a geisha now?” It takes considerable time and dedication to achieve this to earn the title; it’s not meant to be taken lightly!

From D-ko, “Overall Vil’s outfit is kinda westernized.” This is due to the hat, gloves, bows, fishnets, and laced collar. A traditional geisha’s outfit lacks the bells and whistles that Vil’s design boasts. The silhouette also seems to be wrong. Why? “Because technically you try to make your silhouette as not curvy as possible when wearing a kimono,” but Vil’s silhouette appears more hourglass-like. The devil is in the details!!

Lastly, to the third ask: Going to skip over talking about Jack's umbrella pose and the kabuki inspiration, since I already addressed that earlier in this post! I'll briefly add that it's not for sure that Malleus is meant to be a certain thing unless Yana and/or her team come out and say it. B-ko agreed, saying "I don't think you can say Malleus is definitely [Ushiwakamaru], since I literally gave [other examples of what] he's dressed like [...] I can understand 'taking inspirations from', though..."

In the final ask, Anon remarks that Jack and Malleus's looks may be inspired by that of 弁慶 (Benkei) and 牛若丸 (Ushiwakamaru), two characters from Japanese folklore. Ushiwakamaru is the nickname of Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who, according to C-ko, "[...] fought and recruited his loyal vassal Benkei in a fabled confrontation on a bridge." While some elements of Jack and Malleus's New Year's Attires resemble what Ushiwakamaru and Benkei are usually depicted wearing--especially Malleus's veil--not all of it matches up. For example, as B-ko notes, "[...] what Malleus is wearing under the veil isn't what Ushiwakamaru is wearing, but looks [like] more of a kannushi (神主/"divine master (of ceremonies; often Shinto clergy)")." B-ko linked this site and recommended checking it out to make clothing comparisons; the kannushi garb was just an item they picked out for similarities on a cursory glance. This brings me back to a point I mentioned in the second ask: Twst's fashion takes inspiration from many sources and blends them.

"I think it really boils down to [Malleus and Jack] evoking the atmosphere of that famous [Ushiwakamaru and Benkei] print," C-ko continues. They drew comparisons between Malleus, a character twisted from Maleficent (commonly depicted with her raven Diablo), and Usiwakamaru, who is the disciple of a tengu {crow/raven yokai). They also compared Jack, a steadfast and virtuous individual, with Benkei, who is a monk with similar traits. Furthermore, in the famous folklore story, Benkei is depicted as having felled 999 men before facing off against Usiwakamaru, a supernatural force. So, like Jack, Benkei is a powerful combatant up against an even more powerful supernatural force, Usiwakamaru/Malleus.

jxxbisbsjJvsjsb I didn’t think we’d be talking about Japanese fashion, history, and folklore to this extent, but here we are 🤩 I hope that, if you’re reading this, maybe you learned something new and interesting from the post!! I know I certainly did while chatting up my friends.

P.S. Thank you to A-ko, B-ko, C-ko, and D-ko for their knowledge and perspectives! Couldn’t have written this without you.

[angelsdean]

like i'm sorry but show me a time sam spends genuine quality time with jack? cas beyond like connect four? dean takes him fishing. teaching him how to drive. gives him the perfect day when everyone else decided against jack's own wishes that he should stay put. spends countless hours together off camera showing him movies and giving him his pop culture education. half the time cas is off on some mission, but dean is there. and jack looks up to him and values his honesty. they both have the same views on self-sacrifice. both decide to turn themselves into bombs for the greater good. they get each other. and i will just never understand how people watch this show without seeing how good of a bond dean and jack actually have. people get so blinded by their rocky start, which jack is actually more hurt by how sam initially treats him--seeing him as a tool to be used to get mary back--than dean's frostiness. and then the soulless stuff getting so misinterpreted and blown out of proportion. jack WAS a threat! to the world! and dean was not the only one who agreed he need to be stopped / contained until they could figure out how to save jack / get his soul back. the whole POINT of "jack in the box" is that they don't want to kill him, they want to be able to save him, but he's going around killing innocent people and he's the most powerful being in the universe after chuck and amara. he IS the supernatural threat to the world at that moment and needs to be contained. and sam was on-board with containment. cas even suggested the cage. rowena was afraid of soulless jack. sam asked rowena to figure out how to stop / kill him. dean didn't get on board with the idea to "kill" jack until chuck started putting that in their heads, which was exactly what chuck wanted, it was his plan, his storyline. he was manipulating the outcome. but then dean crucially thwarts his plan and refuses to go through with it. but people refuse to remember that, and instead just focus on the fact that dean picked up the gun in the first place. disregarding the context that brought him there. also a few bad moments don't negate all the good either. especially when you consider the context, literal god manipulating the situation, god bringing these characters to their breaking point again and again. that context does matter and influences the actions characters make.

[sophiemariepl]

Honestly, there are days in which I would like to enjoy HotD and GoT in peace, but then some idiots gain incredible popularity and remind me of how much I’m done with THE FANDOM.

And yes, I’m talking about this meme.

For the context: in HotD S2E2, Ewan Mitchell (Prince Aemond Targaryen) has a naked scene. Not much is revealed in it, but apparently some idiots out there decided that bodyshaming the actor is just so-so funny 💀

I’m not even talking about the fact that actors (usually male actors, but not only) have to either loose weight or dehydrate themselves for nude or semi-nude scenes in order to expose their muscles (Henry Cavill also dehydrated himself for the bathtub scene in the Witcher season 1, from what I remember).

Like, people, how old are you even? Can’t you even understand the difference between disliking/being critical of a particular character and hating on the actor playing the role? And even openly bodyshaming them?

I’m seeing similar tendencies in the way a large chunk of the fandom treats Olivia Cooke (Queen Alicent Hightower) and Fabien Frankel (ser Criston Cole). Olivia is being harassed with blatantly misogynistic texts. Fabien had to limit his Instagram comments under some of his posts because of how much hate he has received.

Have you guys forgotten how people harassed Lena Headey just because she played Cersei Lannister on Game of Thrones? How someone even publically called Lena a “b*tch” during an actual fan meeting?

Or how Jack Gleeson, despite his obvious talent and great job prospects after GoT, resigned from acting for several years, specifically after he received waves of hate for playing Jeoffrey Baratheon?

Like, people, allow actors and actresses to do their f*cking jobs without being harassed.

Lena, Jack, Ewan, Olivia, Fabien and many other actors out there are not criminals by earning money through their jobs. There are far worse people in the film industry who don't receive even half of the hate that actors and actresses who play disliked characters do.

It should be obvious, I’m so ashamed that I have to explain this to an audience composed of mostly adult people.

[sapphicsigh]

I don't want a 3rd szn without Izzy. I just don't. Call me dramatic or whatever, but I'm so genuinely heartbroken by his death. I feel so betrayed. Izzy was the heart of the show, and now he's gone.

The aftermath of his death felt rushed, he wasn't buried at sea (like what the fuck, a lifelong pirate like Izzy would've wanted to be buried at sea) and the crew was just happy to get back on the revenge and set sail without their unicorn? Everyone just gets a happily ever without Izzy? Izzy died a painful death shot by a pompous asshole and for what? Some metaphor about the end of the golden age of piracy? Piss off. Closure for Ed? That could've been achieved a number of other ways. Izzy couldn't get any assurances that HE was loved? Even on his fucking deathbed? The man who protected the crew with life and limb? It doesn't feel right, and it never will. Izzy deserved so much better, and so did Con.

And worst of all, perhaps, is that Djenkins was planning on killing him all along. The whole time, while we were falling in love with the little angry man, rooting for him and rejoicing when he wore makeup in front of the crew and was vulnerable with them...he was a dead man walking.*

*I've seen ppl make rlly good points about how death was treated throughout the show and I wanted to add that context here. If I can find whose post I'm thinking of, I'll tag them

**Edit: Izzy's death was an incredible shock. EVERYONE ELSE IN THE SHOW survived their near death experiences!!! Stede got choked near to death, stabbed (twice!), and survived all of that unscathed. Ed got his head smashed in by a FUCKING CANNONBALL, pumbled by the crew and made it out with barely a scrape. Even Calico Jack could've (apparently) escaped death after being shot with a goddamn cannonball. The Swede was poisoned but was already immune to it. Wow! We (at least I felt this way), as an audience, believed that there wouldn't be any character deaths due to the overwhelming evidence we'd been given thus far. So after alllll the in show evidence that the laws of medicine or physics don't apply to ANY of the pirates, why suddenly apply it when it comes to Izzy? Hmmm??? It makes no fucking sense. It's cruel and unusual punishment. They really killed off the queer disabled elder??? Jesus christ. Did not a single person in the writer's room have a qualm about it? The optics alone are bad. But more importantly, killing off the queer disabled elder is inherently political, whether djenkins thought of it that way or not (& i dont think he did). The mere existence of queer people is inherently political in a society (the US), which wishes for our eradication. So killing off a beloved queer disabled elder, on a show which seemed to promise us queer joy and a happy ending, IS POLITICAL. it's a slap in the face and a punch through the fucking gut.

It feels doubly awful because we, as an audience, were given something we've never had before, an unapologetically queer show. One that didn't soften or censor itself for straight viewers. It was created with such love, at least it felt like, for us. So to be given that gift, and to feel recognized and seen and appreciated, only to have it snatched away...

I can only speak for myself, of course, but it's genuinely heartbreaking. I'm so utterly disappointed. I wish so badly that Con got more time with Izzy. I think Izzy means a lot to him, and he means a lot to us, too.

❤️‍🩹🦄❤️‍🩹I love you, Izzy, and I always will. Rest in peace, my little meow meow, you were and are so loved.❤️‍🩹🦄❤️‍🩹

[queermania]

hi i recently came across your blog and have been reading a lot of your posts about dean - your analysis is incredible. i was wondering... in your opinion, which arc is the worst when it comes to deancrits misunderstanding/critiquing dean unfairly?

so i'm 50/50 on whether this is genuine or bait. if it's not bait, i'm so sorry. you did nothing wrong. it's just that i get a lot of messages that are so very clearly not in good faith. if it is bait, well, joke's on you because i'm about to say a bunch of words and a bunch of people are gonna read them. so.

i think the most obvious answer to your question is the jack situation but i'm not sure it's the correct one. i think by the time we even get to jack (especially to the soulless!jack part of it all) a lot of people have already sort of lost the plot on why dean is ever behaving the way he is. there's this tendency to view his behavior as if he wants to control the people closest to him, not always because he's inherently malicious but often because he wants to keep them safe and keep them close to him to the detriment of himself and everyone around him (see look! it's not deancrit! we know he's not a bad guy. we're just being objective and he's just an abusive asshole who should burn in hell). and i get it. i see how they got there.

but it's frustrating because how they got there is by 1. taking every single thing the characters say at face value despite all evidence to the contrary 2. viewing every single thing dean does or says in a vacuum, removed from any and all context and 3. forgetting that supernatural is a fantasy show, not a family drama or sitcom.

take the demon blood story line for example. what we actually see is:

sam going on a mission for revenge regardless of the costs or consequences (which he's aware exist even if he doesn't know the exact details)

dean trusting his brother until he finds out his brother's been lying to him

sam being told that what he's doing is wrong on multiple occasions by multiple people

dean offering ruby his gratitude for saving sam's life and an apology for the way he's been treating her since he got back from hell

sam continuing to lie and act shady

dean telling sam that he doesn't care about the demon blood/sam's powers, he just cares about sam's behavior

sam draining an entire nurse and killing her

sam almost killing dean on purpose and telling him he's not strong enough, not like sam is

dean still being the one to offer an apology when all is said and done, twice

but all of that gets rewritten into a narrative that dean's just never trusted sam ever and sam was only doing something he thought was right because all he ever wanted to do was save people. how could he have possibly known something bad would happen? and now, even after the fact, even after sam's said he's sorry, dean still won't let it go and holds it against sam forever and ever.

this narrative persists throughout the fandom. why? because sam threw a few tantrums in which he rewrote what was happening and dean didn't protest and the fandom took it at face value. (1)

on top of that, deancrits treat each of dean's actions like they happened in a vacuum. one of the things deancrits fixate on the most regarding the demon blood plot is dean saying, "You walk out that door, don't you ever come back." in 4x21. they treat it as if dean was being controlling and manipulative; abusive, even. they treat it as if, out of nowhere, dean just decided to throw john's words in sam's face because sam simply wouldn't do what dean wanted him to do.

what actually happened, however, was that sam had been lying to dean for twenty-one episodes about what he was doing, despite the continued warnings not to do what he was doing, and now sam had beaten the shit out of dean, left him bruised and bloodied on the floor, to go do something that dean had been told repeatedly, from a source they all thought was the authority on the subject, that sam absolutely should not do. what actually happened was dean made a last-ditch desperate effort to stop his brother from doing something dangerous that would get himself and possibly a lot of other people killed. (2)

the deancrits also tend to magically forget they're watching a genre show, not a family drama, when it comes to analyzing dean. the source of conflict wasn't that dean just didn't like sam's new girlfriend because sam trusted her more than him. it was that sam's new girlfriend was a demon and dean had just gotten back from forty years in hell being tortured... by demons. it was that dean had angels of the lord, before he really knew that the angels couldn't be trusted, telling him he needed to stop sam. it was that the angel that rescued him from an eternity of torture and becoming a demon himself told him that he needed to stop sam. (3)

so the deancrits frame this conflict between sam and dean as if dean just didn't trust sam, for no reason other than sam was hanging out with somebody else, and dean was being irrational about it. after all, sam was only trying to stop lilith, right? dean was being irrational and controlling. and it sounds reasonable when you look at it from their perspective. but their perspective is not anywhere near the reality of what was actually happening.

and that happens over and over and over again. we see it with the idea that dean is the one who is codependent to a toxic degree, despite all evidence to the contrary*. we see it with the idea that dean thinks all monsters should die and sam wants to save/help them. we see it with the conflict in s6 being framed as dean just being angry that cas dared to do something without his permission. we see it with the fractured relationship between the brothers in s8, both regarding dean's return from purgatory and the trials. we see it with the gadreel arc and then the one with cas leading the angels. we see it with the mark of cain and the darkness. we see it with mary's return. and then we see it with jack, and most especially we see it with soulless!jack.

it's all so exhausting. by the time we get to jack, the deancrit has piled up the same way the narrative circumstances weighing on dean have, and so it feels like deancrits are fundamentally misunderstanding the situation more severely than they have anything else but i think in reality it's just the last straw.

so i guess what i'm trying to say is that the misunderstanding isn't necessarily about the individual arcs but about the way a genre story is told in general. they're not just unfairly critiquing an arc. they're mischaracterizing a whole ass dude and fifteen seasons of a show.

*dean dragged sam back into hunting. how do we know that? because sam said it. what did we actually see? dean bringing sam back to stanford for his interview. sam going back to hunting because of the fire that killed jess. dean wanting to take a break from hunting several times while sam kept pushing them to keep going. dean wanting to split up and stay away from each other for awhile after the demon blood thing. sam leaving amelia before he even knew dean was alive/back from purgatory. dean telling sam to go back to amelia. sam choosing, all on his own, not to go back to amelia. sam basically threatening suicide because dean had other friends. sam unleashing the darkness because he didn't want to be alone. etc. etc. etc.

**also i think there is a conversation to be had about dean's coping mechanisms and trauma responses being less palatable though not anymore harmful than both sam's and castiel's but that's a different conversation for a different day

[scoobydoodean]

Honestly I think that a lot of the reason why people view dean as abusive towards jack is because they genuinely think of him as a baby/toddler and not someone with the cognitive abilities of an older teenager/young adult who just happens to not really know much about the world. Obviously there's more to it because people ignore that cas wanted to put jack in the cage and sam wanted to use his power, but I stumbled across a post the other day about how they (the writers and the characters) should've given jack a capri-sun instead of a beer because he's a "literal toddler"... which is just completely incorrect and considering he has the body and brain development of someone who's older, there's no reason to not give him a beer. (also is anyone really a dad unless they give their 3 yr old a beer /j)

Context

It's funny because the whole point of the beer scene is to establish that Jack is not a child and that treating him like one would be ridiculous.

[DEAN grabs and opens a bottle of beer. JACK imitates him.] DEAN Wait, wait, wait, wait. How old do you think you are? JACK 3 days, 17 hours, and 42 minutes.

(From 13.02)

When Jack proves that he has such an advanced understanding of communication and time and such an unusual awareness of exactly how much time has passed, Dean immediately realizes that treating him as if he's a baby makes absolutely no sense because he clearly isn't one. Treating him like a child would be infantilizing, and we see Jack rebel against the notion that he's a baby a few times.

There's some push I think to separate Jack's intellectual abilities from his emotional coping abilities, but even these I think are more or less on track with other young adolescents around the age he presents himself to be when controlling for traumatic experiences. Jack's initial emotional regulation abilities don't read like those of a toddler, but of a young adult who's confused and upset and has been through a lot. Without powers in the mix that he doesn't know how to control, his emotional regulation abilities seem fairly standard for boys his age (at least to me). I don't think for example, that the anger he experiences and the reasons he experiences that anger can be equated with toddler-like tantrums, and any other person whose been around a toddler and sees what kind of things make them furious knows what I mean.

Granted, there are things Jack is naive about that are probably connected to him being "born yesterday". We see this early on when Asmodeus tries to manipulate Jack into opening a hell gate. At the same time, this interaction also highlights Jack's innate sense of right and wrong as a counterbalance. I personally find it frustrating when people try to take away Jack's understanding of right and wrong (rooted in his love for others) and cast him as a baby to the extent that he isn't even capable of understanding the golden rule, when Jack shows over and over how seriously he takes the personhood of other people and the weight of their lives. This is what allows him to see through Asmodeus's trickery in a very confusing situation, simply realizing, "you're hurting my friends". Jack using his care for others as a foundation to navigate Asmoedus's trickery also serves as excellent contrast to soulless Jack in 14.19. Soulless Jack was not able to grasp that Dumah was manipulating him because he was missing this crucial piece of himself—his love for other people including strangers. Because he was lacking that part of himself at that time, he was unable to grasp that filling someone's body with worms for not wanting to be turned into an angel is horrible and cruel and couldn't be a good thing. His naivety played a role in what happened, but it was the crucial missing soul that actually allowed this situation to transpire. I think a lot of people just straight up think normal Jack also would have been manipulated into killing people for Dumah in this circumstance and I really just don't think that's true at all.

[onbearfeet]

Kat watches Moon Knight

Okay, so with the encouragement of several people on here and the emotional support of my roommate, I have finally (in February 2024) started watching Moon Knight, a show whose basic concept scares the shit out of me.

Context: I had an adopted older brother with DID. Note that I said "had". That's past tense because life treated him so appallingly poorly that he died (horribly, in prison) when I was 19. Part of that abuse was enabled by pop-culture depictions of DID in the 1980s and 90s that convinced everyone who knew about his condition (including the court system) that he was a walking time bomb.

One of my earliest memories is of my brother as a young adult, playing Super Mario Bros with my toddler self. Another is of him patiently teaching me how to make friends with a large dog. I never met any of his alters, afaik; I was small and cute and safe for him to be himself with, so he probably didn't need them around me. He was a profoundly gentle man when he was allowed, and it hurt like hell to see him turned into a monster in movies and on TV. I've turned off a lot of "psychological thrillers" in sorrow and disgust.

Ironically, I loved Moon Knight comics as a kid in the 90s, BEFORE he was retconned to have DID circa the mid-2000s. Because those comics came out right after my brother died in 2002 and leaned HARD into making people with DID seem like violently unstable monsters (for reference, see the cover of Moon Knight: God and Country), I stopped reading them around 2008, when I couldn't take being poked in the trauma by a comfort character anymore.

But I do love Werewolf By Night, and there's been a lot of good fic mashing Jack up with Moon Knight without dehumanizing anyone, and several people have encouraged me to try the show. So this post will be a place for my thoughts as I try to work my way through with my Essential Editions in one hand and my memories of my brother in the other. I'll add to it as I watch.

If this entertains the Moon Knight fandom or provides useful fic reference, so be it. Just don't be jerks on my post.

Also, anyone who chooses to be shitty about my brother will be eaten by bears. I don't make the rules.

Episode 1

Okay, we open with Steven as our POV character, and he's...convinced he's a sleepwalker. All right, not terrible. Steven is now a bumbling nerd, which is probably an improvement; good luck making a billionaire playboy sympathetic in the 2020s. Jake would be the logical everyman POV from the comics, but I understand from fic that he's got a different role now. I'm confused about the accent, but it's only episode 1, and Steven clearly doesn't yet know who Khonshu is, or that Marc exists, so obviously there's a ways to go here. (Is Marc ... undercover inside Steven? Ugh, this is a trope I have seen and do not like.)

Did Marc kill Steven's fish? Did Khonshu kill Steven's fish? I'm baffled by the fish. Which is a nice break from the larger anxiety. I'm gonna try to worry more about the fish.

The bits with Steven losing time and finding himself in odd situations were distressingly close to the old tropes, but both of those happened to my brother, so I'm not going to bitch about them quite yet. I want to be as fair as I can.

Oh, hey, I recognize Harrow from the comics. What up, dude. How's the cult biz treating you?

The end of the episode, with the jackal thing chasing Steven into the bathroom, came RIGHT up to the line for me. I realized that what I was most afraid of was that the story would assign "good" and "bad" labels to the alters--make Steven the sweet, innocent one and Marc (or maybe Jake, I guess) the monstrous killer. The early flashes of Steven covered in blood didn't really help allay that anxiety. And now Marc is demanding that Steven let him have control in a pretty threatening manner. But so far, it seems like the contrast between Marc and Steven is one of competence--Marc is better at fighting and Steven is better at ... panicking? Unclear. At least Oscar Isaac is playing the protagonist, so his character(s) might remain sympathetic. Nobody has been monsterized quite yet.

I finished the episode with every muscle in my body locked up, waiting for the emotional punch in the face. But I did finish it, and I think I'm gonna try episode two.

[herzspalter]

Rise of the Beasts spoiler thoughts:

I had a guy next to me who got really nitpicky with their buddy about Elena being stupid for standing so close to Airazor going rogue, but I genuinely don't think that was the character being dumb for the script. That felt like an impulsive bad decision to me that someone might do in her position. She wanted to help and didn't think twice about how small she is. I don't know, characters doing something stupid isn't always bad writing, sometimes people do dumb shit irl too because they got tunnel vision and, in her case, just wanted to help because someone was in distress.

I personally never enjoy ultra violent Optimus Prime killing people left and right, but it didn't bother me as much here as it does in the other live action movies. He's not presented as the perfect guy, he's flawed and frustrated, and even though I prefer Optimus being a gentle but stern guy, I don't mind him Scorpion-Fatality-killing a dude in this because I think within the context of the movie, it makes sense. I always hated him in the Bay-directed movies because he's presented as this perfect hero, but he also kills people who are defenceless and begging for their lives, and that just doesn't work for me :) Crazy, I know!

This movie wasn't a big jack off session for America so I liked that a lot, the other live action movies are a fucking propaganda fest (I havent seen Bumblebee so I dont know about that one)

I like that the US military isn't a part in this movie at all thank god, but I'm worried about the GI Joe stuff at the end. GI joe is extremely stupid and can be a lot of fun if treated with the silliness that the original cartoon is, but man I hope they don't turn this into military propaganda :( I know they very likely will because that's what GI Joe is, but I can still wish hahaha

I like Noah, he reminded me of Raoul from G1, I think both him and Elena are likeable, I didn't mind hanging out with them

Mirage is MVP I'm so happy Mirage finally gets to do something

[novelhater]

finished kaleidoscope of death volume one by xi zi xu

the translation leans toward barebones localization rather than preserving exact original meaning which i think is fine, although it's generally not my preference. there's exactly one footnote in the whole volume. as a result, there are a few things that are probably hard to understand if you lack the requisite context, which many english readers probably do. the most unfortunate of these is the discussion around ruan baijie's name which occurs in the first couple of pages and probably comes across as strange to anyone who doesn't get the joke. the fact that it happens so immediately makes me worry that it might be an impediment to getting into the rest of the novel. but then again, it's a fairly minor thing, all things considered, so maybe not. oh well.

i don't exactly have encyclopedic knowledge of the original so i can't speak to accuracy, but the rest of the volume flows smoothly. there are a few distinctly english phrases and sayings that pop up here and there but they don't come off as strange or forced. the use of "all work and no play makes jack a dull boy" was particularly interesting since this has its own horror-specific connotations. even the "hooman," though i resent it in general as a colloquialism, fits the context.

as for the story, i've already read kod all the way through and loved it (though i, like many, have mixed feelings about the ending). it was a first for me in many regards and has a special place in my heart as a result. in particular, it was the first infinite flow novel i ever read. and i love ruan nanzhu/baijie.

(immediate caveat that the following is about the first volume only because my memory of the rest of the series is just not detailed enough orz)

i think it's tempting to judge ruan nanzhu's gender and the way it's treated in the text against contemporary online standards regarding trans expression and discussion, but i don't think that's entirely fair. for one thing these kinds of positive gender presentations are EXCEPTIONALLY rare in bl/yaoi/shounen ai. there is a whole backdrop of casually transphobic "okama" characters that appear behind ruan baijie in the timeline. these characters are often the butt of the joke, and when they aren't, they're almost universally relegated to side roles. on the other hand, ruan baijie/nanzhu is the leading love interest. lin qiushi's perspective adds a somewhat conservative filter - he conceptualizes ruan baijie as a crossdressing man and considers those who view her as a woman as unwittingly deceived - but the narrative runs subtly counter to this construction and lin qiushi subconsciously accepts the gender-swapping as normal fairly quickly. (i'm also uncertain how much of the grammatical gendering is an artifact of translation.)

ruan nanzhu makes it clear from the start that this is part of his identity rather than a deliberately constructed farce (it's his "hobby" i.e. something he enjoys doing for its own sake - he quite literally plays with gender presentation) and only secondarily brings up the fact that it has benefits. the gender-swapping as something akin to bigender identity is further reinforced throughout. for example, an exchange between ruan baijie and another girl is described (free of lin qiushi's perspective filter) as a "mutual exchange between women." and as lin qiushi notes - because he finds himself missing ruan baijie! - ruan baijie and ruan nanzhu behave as if they were very similar but distinct individuals. ruan nanzhu isn't merely putting on a disguise - he's becoming ruan baijie.

well, it's a fairly complex discussion, and ultimately i wouldn't describe ruan nanzhu/baijie as stellar "representation," but his/her existence as an object and agent of desire is honestly pretty unique and radical with the context of the genre and i really think it's wrong to dimiss it because it's not perfect. (my opinion on this is also strongly influenced by the story's conclusion, but more on that amother distant day in the future...)

in regards to the horror elements, i don't find kod very scary, but i'm also aware that my horror threshold is pretty high compared to most people. at the very least, the concepts are distinct and vivid. could the plot be improved from a structural and logical standpoint? yes, undoubtedly. but i've given up in irritation and disgust (and not the good kind) on nine out of ten of the contemporary horror novels i've tried to read in the last five years so i consider this to be batting a thousand. at the very least kod doesn't belabor the point and insist on explaining each and every minor spook, even when explanation only serves to draw attention to their faults.

*deep inhale and exhale as i let go a belly full of unrelated complaints*

[agenderpunked]

just finished lost. will not be recovering, ever, me thinks...

I'M GONNA RAMBLE BECAUSE WHAT WAS THAAAAT OUUUUUGH I DIDN'T SEE ANY OTHER WAY FOR IT ALL TO END BUT THE FACT THAT IT *IS* WHAT THEY WENT WITH hURTS

I have so many thoughts and many of them are spoilers so if you haven't watched Lost (2004) stop reading this and go watch it instead.

- Jack dying in the same place he started. The cinematography and spiritual implications of making a trek back to the beginning and finally closing his eyes... DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON VINCENT LYING DOWN NEXT TO HIM I CRIIIIIIIIIIIED. THE DOG KNOWS "LIVE TOGETHER OR DIE ALONE" AND HE MAKES SURE JACK DOESN'T DIE ALONE IM IN SHAMBLESSSSS DONT TALK TO ME

- rose and bernard. i care you so bad. i want a bob ross energy survival show spin off that just follows them making their cabin and garden and traps and such and exploring the area around their cabin. Unproblematic favs, truly. THE FACT NO ONE BELIEVED ROSE WHEN SHE SAID SHE KNEW HER HUSBAND WAS ALIVE???? who visited you and told you that? are you just that faithful??? Did that hope, faith, and love protect both of you from dying on the island before you found each other??

BC ALSO. sorry but i view faith as energy, and when you focus and devote that energy to something it becomes concentrated, and what do our brains run on? electricity. what is everything about Lost about? electromagnetism. What can spirits fuck with? electromagnetic frequencies. That energy can be used to attract what you're searching for. Rose is such a necessary character ESPECIALLY for Jack's development because of how she displays such radical acceptance when she knows there are things she cannot change, ie. cancer, being trapped on the island, being surrounded by danger, and focuses instead on what she can, confirming her husband's status, creating an environment that feels safe, and enjoying the time she has left with the people she loves.

- Boone and Shannon getting into a bar fight at the end??? Boone walking up to Hurley and chatting??? Boone and Shannon are severely underrated characters in my opinion, and it's 100% from the emotionally incestuous aspects of them, which is a shame because I truly believe they are one of the most realistic depictions of relationships like that that I've seen in media. I didn't immediately like Boone. I thought he was an asshole because the show presents Shannon and Boone to you as they would an unhappy romantic relationship, but they never confirm it, even joke about it, to the point I nearly immediately realized 'They're not dating at all. They're siblings that were emotionally neglected by their parents and are codependent as all hell.'

Watching further, I was so scared to think I'd find Boone slander all up and down in the fandom while Shannon gets victimized and absolved of her fucked up actions, because of the way we immediately see Boone treat her without the context for understanding their relationship and that Boone was only on 815 to bail her out of another abusive relationship. But what I actually got from the fandom was NOTHING. ABOUT EITHER OF THEM!!!!

HOW ARE WE NOT TALKING ABOUT BOONE HALLUCINATING SHANNONS DEATH AND ADMITTING THAT HE WAS UTTERLY RELIEVED 😭😭😭 IM GONNA BLOW MYSELF UP ABOUT IT GOOD GOD.

The fact that Shannon also does find a potentially healthy relationship with Sayid, and that Sayid can allow himself to feel and care for someone and have gentle and tender moments in such a hostile environment while serving as the groups main mercenary, and make her feel safe, regardless of her clearly morally skewed history of dating. Sayid has morals, and he wants to stick to them, but he's been put in environments that do not allow him to adhere to that. He has restraint, and emotional intelligence. The glimpse we get into Shannon's life shows she hasn't been around men of those qualities, at least recently, save for Boone, who even then, doesn't compare next to Sayid. Imagining how Shannon would have felt about Sayid being brought back in the temple and seeing how extremely empty and different he is 😟

- Thinking about the general implications of what the island is, as well... Did they ever survive the initial crash? When they leave the island, were they alive? or was it merely an illusion of life? Is death on the island equivalent to someone accepting that they're dead and moving on for realsies? Is the island symbolizing purgatory? The themes of duality and shadows and light and twins are also not lost on me and rank this media even higher because these were not on my bingo card or prior knowledge of the show and they are damn near a critical criteria for intriguing me and getting me into a media.

Are the souls whispering in the forest of the island trapped there? Michael says they can't move on, but is it a personal choice grappling with what they did? Or is it related to actions done after death, while passing through purgatory, that decides whether you are bound to a place or able to move freely???

Oooooooough.....

[wallbeatjournal]

Have you ever noticed there are loads of surface level plot similarities between the pilots of riverdale and dawsons creek. Also mr honey is the actor who played jack and greg berlanti worked on both projects. Just a topic i used to like to think about a lot….

yes yes yes omg yes!! sibling shows!! and this is intentional for sure, i was looking at articles about riverdale from pre-series (circa 2015-16) yesterday to cite the perks of being a wallflower movie as a core inspiration for s1 and roberto mentioned dawson's creek regularly, too. actually way before the twin peaks pastiche started getting promoted, dawson's and perks were coming up.

it's really really wonderfully apparent if you're into the gay-auteur genre of teen dramas or the intersection between teen dramas and gay horror media. dawson's creek ran so riverdale could soar (lean in even harder on genre-archetype-and-trope-as-social-construct, not be hung up by don't-ask-don't-tell era tv writing restrictions...except by choice for queerbaiting fun and spite). and even failing to soar, dawson's creek season 2 might remain a perfect season of television for me.

(note for the readers who aren't operating in the 5th dimension like me and anon, yet: kevin williamson made our favorite genre-aware homoerotic slasher movie, scream, and dawson's creek both, and the only functional difference between them is what genre conventions he was allowed to play with to make it. in scream he got to have his repressed closet cases do murder. in dawson's creek, dawson must pick up the camera and make his friends into Characters, instead.)

dawson's creek and riverdale are suuuuch spiritually similar shows, at least the parts of DC that williamson was involved with - so for sure seasons 1-2, and then his comeback many seasons later for the finale (which i think the riverdale finale also riffed on heavily. mwah). you've got:

the original controversial "teenagers don't fucking talk like this omg cringe" ft. heightened theatrical hyperstylized dialogue full of movie references

comphet camp. no character is truly coherent unless you pepper in the fact that they're lgbt and repressing it as hard as they can. barchie, meet dawson/joey. it sucks here sooo bad but it's certainly in the social script and legacy expectations. might try to make it last a lifetime!

meta plot about the whole show possibly being the creation of the most repressed and judgmental (and asexual) control freak main character. plus many in-universe metaplots where said character makes autobiographical work romanticizing/projecting all over his friends

titular location (riverdale, the creek) is both a story setting AND a narrative mousetrap that the characters are trapped in.

there are tons of direct DC<>rvd plot and character riffs and web-weaves. like anon mentioned, principal honey really does play like a later-in-life continuation of kerr smith's role as jack in dawson's creek, with dawson creek jack's values and beliefs. most of the s1 rvd characters make more sense in the context of dawson's creek archetypes, too (especially jughead, veronica, kevin imo). many plots seem yanked off a teen drama tropes bingo card that dawson's creek filled out for them (complimentary!!!!).

they also both just have a really similar character writing approach to their campy genre pulp. the shows are very arch and into their coding games and doublespeak, the text is a fluid thing never taken too seriously or held too dearly. but the characters are nearly always treated earnestly and with love, we're allowed to grow so fond of them as an audience bc the narrative is one of love (sometimes an oppressive love full of meta-projections from its unreliable narrator-creator, but LOVE!!). it's a priority that while the weird tropey shit is happening, we still really are allowed to care about how it feels to be archie or pacey or jen or betty, and the emotional repercussions of any weird tropey happenings are carried through fairly consistently*. dawson is THE WORST. but he's beloved. he's vivid. he's coherent. his feelings are wrong but they're real and we do care. we do!! we must!!

anyway. you made me go back and look at posts from when i went back and rewatched dawson's creek in 2022. here's an assortment of random hot takes and fawning fond adorationisms, if you even care. look at my closeted friends from the creek. they're stuck like this!

PS: i made a list one time of the 6 essential dawson's creek episodes (i would add the 2-part whole series finale to this list in retrospect, so 8 episodes total) that one could watch out-of-context to open their <understanding gay-auteur camp teen drama comphet-lamenting queer-coding tropes and conventions> third eye. it's here on my personal blog! most recommend the daddy/mommy issues fishing trip ep (parent<>child dynamics and gender...riveressentials) and the gay two-parter (principal honey!!).

PPS: @kevin-keller-artistic-director used to post about rvd and dawson's creek semi regularly and probably would have great thoughts about this topic beyond what i just dredged up <3 also interested if anyone else wants to riff on the topic of riverdale as a successor/sibling to dawson's creek 👀

*pacey's CSA plot (DEROGATORY) a notable exception to this. but that's because dawson's creek isn't trying to depict abuse, it's trying to do a queer closet metaphor, where "being in high school but dating an adult woman" is the same as "having a same-sex relationship with a peer" in terms of secrecy and shame and social impact...just NO thought to power dynamics or trauma AT ALL. it's basically the kevin/moose plot from riverdale and pacey is impacted by it like kevin is. gross!!!!

[gunnerkriggcritical]

The ambiguity in Annie's love life has always been really compelling to me. I'm gonna discuss some of the facets of this below.

First off, Annie responds to Mort's supposed romantic "claim" on her (via the blinker stone) with a level of anger that shocks both Mort and Kat. That's such a fascinating scene to me. I think it's the first time in the comic that we really get a taste of Annie's temper, and it's in the context of her not wanting to be claimed by a suitor against her will.

Then there's Jack. Annie doesn't seem to know how to act around him, while the question of whether she genuinely has a crush on him is left unanswered; she veers between acting awkwardly and not seeming to know how to treat him, to deliberately manipulating him to hurt him after hearing about her mother doing the same to Renard (and based on Irial's advice), to - this is my interpretation, anyway - offering him a kiss because she thinks that's what you're supposed to do in such situations, not because she genuinely wants to. The way Jack refuses her kiss and gives her a hug instead always seemed to me like, to a certain level, pity? He's learned over the course of the chapter that Annie is a mess who has no idea what she's doing, least of all romantically, and he doesn't want to take advantage of that. At least, that's how I always interpreted that moment.

"The Torn Sea" really makes a point of emphasizing that Annie has no partner while most of her friends have paired off. I'm still not sure why - and it's possible, I guess, that the chapter only does this for comedic effect. It's also more than possible that we haven't reached the point in Annie's arc that will make all these past moments make sense in retrospect. There's also, of course, the moment in "Dealing With HER" where the Annies briefly discuss having a crush on someone. And the moment in "Annie and the Forest" when Annie is asked if she has a "love back home," misunderstands the question and says "Yes, my friend Kat," and then, when it's clarified, mentally scrolls through the list of boys she knows before settling on Jack with a confused look on her face. And speaking of "Annie in the Forest," there is, of course, her crush on Kamlen, which is also contrasted with a (maybe?) crush on Jones in "Divine," hinting that Annie might be bi.

A lot is going on here, but it all fits into the broader context of who Annie is. This is way more apparent in earlier chapters than later ones, but socially, she's a strange, underdeveloped girl who was raised in isolation and doesn't quite know how to navigate the world of school-age drama. Her awkwardness and lack of experience in romance are part of a broader character arc that highlights her social ineptitude; while her peers pair off, she's left alone, and attention is drawn to this by the narrative, both in terms of friendships and romantic relationships (although she does have a small group of friends other than Kat by the later days of the comic).

She learns how to behave based on mimicry, which, in the romantic context, is especially apparent in "Faraway Morning," when she mimics her mother's behaviour and Irial's advice to manipulate Jack, to disastrous results, before eventually relenting and admitting she regrets it. She does have crushes, but she doesn't know how to act on them properly. In fact, since the question of whether she actually has a crush on Jack or was just trying to manipulate him for revenge is left unanswered, I don't know if we've ever really seen Annie acting on a crush at all.

With all this in mind, I don't really have a concrete opinion or theory on "who Annie will end up with," only my personal opinion that I would rather she didn't end up with anyone at all.

It's very very common for main characters to "end up with" somebody, but the way the comic has treated Annie's love life has, so far, been much more complex and nuanced than that. I don't think she's aromantic (although I totally understand and respect why someone would headcanon that) - I do think she has romantic crushes, that there's canon evidence for her being bisexual, and that the comic wants us to pay attention to everything it's doing in regards to her romantic leanings. I also think, and hope, that Gunnerkrigg intends to subvert the "who will the main character end up with?!" question that every other piece of media in history has asked, by saying: "No one." That answer is, to me, far more in keeping with the nuance the comic has managed towards Annie's romantic leanings than "she ends up with Kat," or any other possible pairing, would be. I would rather the answer be left cryptic instead of made concrete, like many other concepts in the comic have been.

To finish: I have long thought Gunnerkrigg is about the fierce, loyal, powerful platonic love between Annie and Kat. The dyadic friendship that unites forest and Court, technology and magic, fantasy and science fiction. The idea of them being in love with each other is nowhere near as compelling to me as the idea of them caring about each other so deeply they would do anything for the other, without being in romantic love.

(If Annie and Kat do get together, I would also question how quickly and unceremoniously Paz got booted out of the comic to make way for this pairing, but that's neither here nor there, lol.)