#I usually don't like people seeing my process cause I know is disastrous

[ratguy-nico]

If you remember this one I just can say... AAAAWWWW 😊

This is from way back, ending september, when I was just ending Bob's Burgers and I was totally down on my knees fully in love (not much different from now)

So because is so old Im pretty sure Im not gonna end it. This is one of my favorite episodes for sure, and I literally had this scene as a wallpaper in my pc.

I never like to post things withouth giving something better than rough scketches so im gonna also put the process (pls dont judge) I see so many people who since the fucking start is like perfect and mine are blobs. Just my life.

Blob-Rough Scketch-Scketch and then comes Lineart but this one doesn't have it.

And the reference cause you may notice this is a strange take in the scene and this is because for a strange reason I was basing my drawing in religious art. It's worth say am agnostic pagan so this is purely my head saying this sound like a good idea.

[grimgiggles]

Sigh.

I dislike jumping into discourses as contentious and subjective and BIG as the discourse over Ludinus' conversation with BH in the last episode, but there is a point that I haven't seen anyone making (idk, maybe people have been making it and I just haven't seen it) about his side of the argument, and I think it's worth consideration.

Ludinus values being right over being good.

Most people are thinking one of two things right now:

1. Yes, obviously, so?

2. What's the difference?

Let me put it another way: Ludinus values being correct over being kind. To him, Truth is more important than Compassion. He is the kind of person for whom a hard, blunt truth is a greater expression of love than any expression of softness or gentleness that is not 100% true. I hope that clarifies it.

At this point I want to make it clear that nothing that follows is a justification of Ludinus' actions, or an attempt to make him more sympathetic or anything. This is all exposition and analysis, on my part.

So, when I listened to his conversation with BH, I did not hear him trying to justify his own actions while condemning the gods' very same actions, and I didn't hear him trying to deflect blame for the wrongs he has done or that others have done for him. He admitted that he had done much wrong in pursuit of his goal. He knows the (many different) kinds of people he works with. He knows that there are parallels between him and his enemies (the gods), he KNOWS that he isn't the Good Guy (none of this matters to him). Every time it sounded (because that's what people expected to hear) like he was defending himself, what I heard was factual correction. He wants people to get their details straight. Because that's Truth.

But he believes, he KNOWS (and we don't know if he's right or wrong) that if he accomplishes his goals, everyone in the world will be, on balance, better off for it. For him, this is a labor of love (and sure, it's also motivated by hatred for the gods born from trauma, the two things aren't mutually exclusive). It's a very non-personal, universal - you could even say clinical - kind of love, but it is love.

But (and I know this from experience) it is SO difficult to convey earnest conviction and humility at the same time. It is almost impossible to say "I know I've hurt people and I know that's bad but I swear I swear I SWEAR I am doing this FOR you please LISTEN to me" without coming across exactly the way that Ludinus does: as a villain trying to justify himself. And he knows this, so he doesn't bother trying to make himself look like the Good Guy (again, he doesn't care about being Good, he cares about being Right), even while he DOES try to present his case in a way that he hopes will be understood.

He IS a villain, to be clear.

He has fallen into the classic INTJ villain trap (whaaaat meyers-briggs? In my meta? BTW this is a legitimate mbti stereotype, it's kind of messed up), which goes:

1. The INTJ experiences grief.

2. The INTJ identifies the cause of their suffering as a universal cause of suffering.

3. The INTJ processes their grief by intellectualizing it and devising a way to eliminate the cause of suffering completely, forever. They see this as not only personally cathartic but an act of service to everyone.

4. The INTJ gets tunnel vision about their goals.

5. The INTJ's methods hurt people, which forms an opposition to their goals.

6. Attempts at peaceful resolution fail because the INTJ is usually quite bad at connecting to people and making themselves understood on an emotional level (despite usually being very good at understanding, at least on a surface level, the motivations of others), and most other people simply don't even realize that they are not understanding.

7. One party or the other succeeds, usually with disastrous fallout for both sides. The only way to prevent this is to make a strong personal emotional connection with the INTJ - which is extremely difficult because the grief back in step 1 caused them to retreat WAY behind walls of Intellect, Pragmatism, and Cynicism - and through that connection remind them that actually the ends don't justify the means.

The other thing that makes Ludinus a villain is that he wants to commit genocide (technically he wants to enable genocide). He wants to eliminate an entire population of entities who are, he even conceded himself, basically just people. And he's okay with that, because it will, in his mind, be a net benefit for everyone else, and because in a truly wild subversion, he sees the gods as less than people. His hatred of the gods has morphed in his mind into a weird doctrine of mortal supremacism. He may or may not (personally I'm leaning toward probably not) be Correct about what will happen if he succeeds, but he is Wrong either way.

I digress. I veered a little off my point there, just to make it absolutely clear that I do not agree with Ludinus. He is a Bad Guy who must be Stopped.

We just saw step 6 fail, predictably, because BH and Ludinus spent the whole time talking at cross-purposes. Imogen probably got closest to actually communicating meaningfully with him, with her line of questioning on Predathos, but she didn't get very far because he has no reason to trust her with everything he knows. They were just fishing for more information, and he was just fishing for angles to hook a vessel.

My point is this: that conversation in Aeor was nothing. BH did not score any points, and neither did Ludinus (although he came pretty close with his little trick with Delilah, and he got away with the orb). Neither party came any closer to actually understanding the other or making themselves understood.

All these posts going around celebrating how BH "got him" or whatever are completely.

Misunderstanding.

Ludinus.

And so is BH.