#NOT indicative of his character.. you understand..

[morniealantiemornieutulie]

Take responsability for your own mistakes and actions. Instead of continuing your abusive behavior and try to make a villain out of Nicola, out of Luke, or both, admit to yourself that you were the ones who put meanings where there were none.

You decided to believe, and some of you because you follow narcissistic cult like leaders who told you what to think about Luke and Nicola.

You decided to dismiss them saying they are friends. You decided that you can't have a unique relationship with a friend when clearly not every friend is your co-star, leading a season in a huge and very successful show that shared with you the fears and joys of that, that of course is the only person to understand that with you because it's living the same experience, sharing it. You decided to put a romantic spin on that.

And even when Just friends were said, you called her a liar, you decided that she was lying. And that wasn't even necessary, nobody has to tell people, when they talk about a friend, that he or she is just friends, you just say this person is my friend. But even after that, you decided to ignore it.

You manipulated every gesture of friendship and the love of a friend to create your world of fantasies. You edited videos, pictures to paint a picture that didn't exist.

You decided to believe the traditional Irish rings she told it wasn't about any man was about one. That her shirt for a charity was his. That music shared was about him. That memes or fun videos were about them and you created hurt and pain where the was none. They never said that. They never indicated it was. You decided.

You decided to lie to yourself that his girlfriend was not part of his life anymore and never meant anything. You decided to even doubt the words of his mother. And your own eyes when GQ event happened, LA, Spain and Italy happened. You decided to dismiss her with him, videos and pictures. You harassed people with any fanaccs about seeing them together and ignored her being called his girlfriend, something he never denied.

You, in the arrogance of your ignorance, decided someone's sexuality, to fit your narrative. You decided to lie to people and to yourself about why they are together, you created justifications, you denied for her what she has not denied herself. You decided that it doesn't mean anything, even after so many actual evidences on the contrary.

You decided to ignore the obvious and factual because you don't want the reality. You want the fantasy and your want power over those people's lives because of your shipping dreams. It makes you cruel, makes you entitled, makes you hate them for the crumbs and morsels that you created, that you decided to put a meaning on and say they did that. You decided to get nasty, attacking looks, age and characters, being awful about them when they are not following the script you wrote.

You manipulated everything in their words, their actions and their lives to fit your own desires, your own agenda, feed your own narrative. People that have never, ever told you they were anything but friends, and you dare to act like you were played or manipulated?

You did that. You don't have the right to pretend you didn't. We watched you do that for months, from lying about them being somewhere with their partners and why, to elaborated NDAs and blackmail plots, to gross pregnancy speculations. YOU HAVE DONE IT.

Now, WE, the sane and respectful people of this cursed fandom, decide you don't get to play your little games, you don't get to pretend the fault is not yours and your inability to be happy for people whose only sin was having chemistry and entertain you, bring you joy. You will not be allowed to turn this into a hateful, vile web of lies to cover up your own mistakes and behavior. Behavior that was naive for some, but plain disgusting for others, who actively made people believe in things they clearly could see it was not real and would hurt real human beings. Who led hatred and harassment to Nicola and Luke doorsteps - also to their loved ones- and now, in the last stand of cowardice, you have the nerve to shift your actions, beliefs and assumptions into an attempt to bring more hate and blame anyone but yourself.

You either correct your own mistakes, admit to your nonsense, and enjoy reality, or leave it, if reality is not interesting to you, or you continue this abusive, intrusive and ridiculous conduct, embracing the role you so badly want to paint them as: the villains. You decide to continue to hurt them for nothing but your own broken decisions.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Okay already the single most annoying trend in Arcane discourse is emerging on this post which is the compulsive need to stack the characters onto some kind of moral leaderboard based on their perceived politics. Which is neither the point of the show nor the point of this post.

Silco is a horrible little rat man who has no qualms about using drug addiction and violence to control people and his being in a position of power is overall a net negative for Zaun (although no more than any of the other people who are gunning for the job) and he also is a revolutionary, in the objective, descriptive sense of wanting to change the existing political structure of Piltover and Zaun. Not all revolutions are social revolutions that rearrange the existing class structure. In fact the tensions between national identity and class loyalty are one of the main political divisions within many independence/national liberation movements; plenty of Marxists from oppressed nations have written about this.

Part of Silco's tragedy as a character is that I think he could have been a very different person in the midst of a thriving Zaunite nationalist movement, which theoretically could have held him accountable to the kind of broader vision of improving the lives of everyone in Zaun that he, Vander and Felicia seemed to be talking about in their youth. But there is no broader Zaunite nationalist movement, and an isolated revolutionary can quickly become frustrated, bitter, and self-serving.

Ekko is the single most unproblematically selfless, good-hearted character in the show and he absolutely has the most liberatory, egalitarian vision for how his particular small community is organized. And I also wouldn't call him a revolutionary, an anarchist, or a community leader of Zaun as a whole, beyond the scope of the Firelights. He has carved out a small space of what seems to be relative equality and compassion within the Firelights' commune, but that is a mitigation strategy for the inequalities of their society. It works on a small scale when there are enough resources to go around, but we see how precarious it can be when demand increases and their main resource, the tree, comes under threat. The Firelights are active in disrupting the distribution of Shimmer in what is more or less a gang war with Silco, but there is no indication that Ekko is trying to change the overarching political structure of Piltover and Zaun or even thinks that's possible. We don't really see enough of the Firelights' community to know exactly how it is run and how decisions are made. Ekko may very well have broader political ideas about how society as a whole should be structured but we don't hear them clearly articulated, which is why I hesitate to put a political label on him or almost any other character in the show.

This really deserves a longer meta that I will hopefully have time to write soon, but to me THE key to understanding the political landscape of Zaun in the show is the lack of broad collective struggle based around either class or national identity.

On a Doylist level I think this is because the show is written by liberals (again, I say this in a descriptive not pejorative sense) who don't believe revolutionary change is worth the risk of extremism, instability and violence it could produce--and, even if they did, never intended that to be the main plotline of the show.

On a Watsonian level, I think all of these characters living in the wake of a defeated uprising, culminating in the massacre on the Bridge of Progress, explains everything we see. What kind of political actions emerge when most people think successful collective struggle is impossible? Accommodation to power in the hopes of minimizing harm to those you care about, no matter how humiliating and unsustainable a strategy that is (Vander). Vigilante violence that may inspire admiration but is ultimately accountable to no one (Jinx). Looking to one lone hero as a figurehead instead of relying on political self-activity and self-organization (the Jinxers). Positioning yourself as a strongman who has the correct ideas and will do anything to accumulate the power necessary to execute them (Silco). Trying to make things better on a small scale for the immediate circle of people you care about and maybe a small part of the community you can impact (Ekko). None of these characters have a bulletproof strategy for broader social change because that is not the main focus of the show.

It’s very funny to me when people call young Silco an anarchist because he once threw a Molotov cocktail at a cop. That man is a bourgeois nationalist if I ever saw one. If anything he’s sort of a moderate developmentalist—a lot of the demands he lists out in his independence proposal are about economic sovereignty that would allow an independent Zaun to compete with Piltover as a trade nexus via the Hexgates. He wants a state and he wants to be at the top of it. This is not a commentary on the merits of anarchism or nationalism as ideologies, I just think it’s funny cause he’s one of the only characters in Arcane with a well-developed, self-aware set of politics and Smash The State ain’t it.

[thegreatmelodrama]

Hamlet and Neil Perry

In a deleted scene of Dead Poets Society, Neil and Todd are running through lines together outside while walking to the lake. Neil can be heard reciting a famous line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “to be or not to be, that is the question”. While I’m not sure if RSL just improvised it or if somewhere in the original script it has Neil reference Shakespeare, I think the scene offers a potentially deeper understanding of Neil as a character. Hamlet has many themes and motifs, however I want to discuss those of play-acting, filial duty/father-son relationships, and death as it relates to Neil in DPS. 

Play acting

Within Hamlet, play-acting is a central motif with Hamlet constantly blurring the lines between reality and performance. In an earlier scene, Hamlet’s mother asks him why he stilll “seems” upset over his father’s death. Hamlet becomes takes offence to her usage of the word seems, but then comes to reluctantly agree after describing at length his clothes and outward appearance: “these indeed ‘seem’ for they are actions that a man might play” (Act I, scene ii). “But”, Hamlet adds, “I have that within which passes show” (Act I, scene ii). This quote is indicative of one of the main struggles Hamlet, and indeed the audience, must face throughout the play: telling apart those feelings which are pretend or performed from those which are within and which characters, including Hamlet, cannot show. 

Throughout the play, the distinction between reality and performance becomes even more blurry. Hamlet reflects this when he tells a troupe of actors, “the purpose of playing…is to hold as ‘twere the mirror up to Nature” (Act III, scene ii). For Hamlet, acting should be as close to reality as possible, however this is a slippery slope as it becomes harder for Hamlet and the audience to distinguish what is real and what is performance in Hamlet’s actions and feelings. 

As Hamlet lays dying, the motif of play-acting emerges once again as he acknowledges those “that are but mutes or audience to this act” (Act V, scene ii). His final request is to “call the noblest to the audience” in which he asks that his story be told and the events that led to all these deaths be repeated (Act V, scene ii). 

Play-acting also serves a role within Neil’s story. When Neil is talking with Mr. Keating after his confrontation with his father, Keating tells Neil that he is putting on a show for his father; he is playing the role of the “dutiful son”. Indeed, Neil struggles with this from the beginning of the film up until the end. He conceals his true emotions from his father, and even from those around him, putting on the face of a boy who is happy and without struggle. He only ever lets this mask slip a couple of times. This, I think, is one of the reasons why a handful of viewers reduce Neil’s suicide to simply being upset over not being able to act or see it as brash and out of the blue. However, if you recall the scene where Neil lies to Keating about his father letting him stick with the play or the scene where he quickly dismisses his care of having to quit the annual, then you will see these moments where Neil is play-acting. He puts on a performance that masks his true feelings the entire time. Before committing suicide, Neil takes a final bow, signalling that his performance is in many ways over. However, as his performance ends, the performance of others as they navigate life and the struggles of conformity persist. However, much like Hamlet’s story is destined to be repeated as he wanted, the film itself is in part a story about how societal expectations and norms can be dangerous in themselves. 

Father-son relationships:

Hamlet struggles throughout the play with his sense of filial-duty. He props his father up on a pedestal and when his father’s ghost comes to him telling him to take revenge, Hamlet struggles with this prospect as he struggles between balancing his morality with his sense of filial duty. 

This points to the struggle of living up to parent’s expectations and the toll that it can take. For both Hamlet and Neil, filial duty and parental expectations ultimately lead to their deaths. 

Death:

“To be or not to be” is a key line within Hamlet and for Neil, it is the central question he faces throughout the film. Neil was constantly searching for that spark and to know what he really wanted for himself. The Dead Poets society gave him that first taste of that joy and passion; a flicker of hope in the form of rebellion. Acting is what turned that flicker into a burning flame. However, his father’s expectations and the possibility of having to confront his father was always looming over him. Deleted scenes also reveal Neil having self-harm tendencies when he pricks his finger with his Welton achievement pins and draws blood. Neil masks his own troubles, but there is reason to believe that the question of “to be or not to be” was one that Neil had pondered before, perhaps only briefly.  

Hamlet wants to die but he fears what comes after death and if it is really worth it. Is it better to die or to go on in the face of insurmountable anguish and burdens. Hamlet is ultimately killed at the end of the play and his final words are “the rest is silence”. Such goes back to his famous soliloquy of “to be or not to be” and the question of what comes after death. As Hamlet lays dying, in that moment he accepts death completely as a rest. It is nothing more than silence–a freedom of sorts. 

For Neil, he sees death as his only escape, his only means of being free. There is an added weight in the fact that the gunshot which kills him is silent. If we view it through the lens of Hamlet, the gunshot being silent reflects the meaning of the quote “the rest is silence”. It is at once both a barbaric yawp and a marker of the finality of death; that once you are gone you leave a silence behind in place of where your voice once was. For Neil, death is a silence from expectations and the pressures which weighed so heavily on him. However, much like Hamlet gives his voice to Fortinbras to tell his story after his death, so too does Neil give his voice to Todd and the fellow poets to tell his story. 

[blushft]

generational cycles of abuse, of course

(+ isolated guys w/o shading because i spent a good amount of time on them)

[sskk-manifesto]

Bungou Stray Dogs: Dead Apple and how “ability users” (opposite to “normal people”) learning to accept themselves through the acceptance of their own abilities is a queer metaphor of acceptance of own's sexual orientation and gender: an essay by me

[otaku553]

The eventual kazuha and sanemi dynamic

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

wanna ask how you feel about the eridan bpd headcanon/theory(?? not sure what to call it!) you're so good at your character analysis and i'd love to see your outlook on it

Since I don't have a degree or any formal training in psychology, I feel deeply uncomfortable diagnosing characters. I've made an autism joke before but only because I'm on the spectrum. He's definitely traumatized and anxious, but I mean those as descriptors of his behavior rather than capital-D Diagnoses. I try to focus on those when I can - the cause and effect of cognition, self-image, and behavior - and those factors may very well match up with DSM criteria, but I try not to touch an actual diagnosis with a ten foot pole unless the author has explicitly stated that X character has Y condition.

[bubsbobgers]

i think this got too far away from the style but we move

[amelikos]

Spinel's relationship with Blacky really gained layers, I'm kind of fascinated.. the thought that they live in their world only they can understand.

[an-obligatory-blog]

Is.

Is this a safe space for me to say that I don't like the trope of "Infinite thought his squad was killed by Shadow but in actuality it's a deception by Eggman"?

[happyk44]

It's kinda funny because w/ my Zeus kid OC (who I've been thinking about renaming as Araceli, 'cause it means altar of the sky, apparently, which I like 'cause sky-themed-ish but also like. A little bit I wanted something that meant cloud the way Coral's name means... Coral) the implication is that she takes after her father to an almost mirroring degree because I developed her and my other PJO OCs (who also all got retconned into an OG work) at the same time I was playing around with my ideas on the Big Six, and the gist at the time was supposed to show how the Big Six could've turned out if they weren't so weird.

So the dynamics of the friendship was supposed to be very similar to the dynamics of Big Six's relationship to each other (e.g. Mary having a major crush on Hera's "representative" but also being attracted to literally every other person that walked by, Nico being the soberminded big brother figure, etc). It's also one of the reasons Mary would get angry whenever someone would compare to her dad, because similarly I think Zeus would get angry if someone compared him to his dad.

And then eventually as I got older and the daydream moved around with whatever obsession I had at the time, the characters and general storyline began to change away from that in some ways but core features sort of stayed and so I ended up with a version of Zeus that ignores his daughter's pleas for help because he loves her but her pain hurts him because he can't do anything about it and it's his fault she's suffering.

She got this intensity from him, it's ingrained into the way it's ingrained in him. But he was able to rebuild the world according to his own needs and wants and beliefs. And she can't really do that. So he doesn't have any advice he can give her when she's on her knees begging for help with all the noise and pain in her head. He doesn't know what to do! It's like he can just go and rip it out of her.

But she's suffering because she's different and she's weird and she knows it and she knows it's his fault which is why she's asking but he just doesn't know and he can't handle watching her suffering and listening to her cry when there is no helpful answer to give her because "I don't know" isn't going to fix it.

He's supposed to fix things, he's supposed to have the answers. He's king of the world, by damn! He's a problem solver. He supposed to have a solution, and a million backup solutions. But he doesn't! There's nothing he can do to make the noise stop because truth be told, the noise never really stopped for him! It just got easier and quieter. So he turns away from her because he loves her and he's failing her and he can't handle that.

But also in the same breath, I think he recognizes similar aspects of himself in Jason, who isn't even asking for help, and fucking despises him for it, lol.

✨ Girl Dad ✨

[lem-argentum]

i once saw someone contrast miko.fuu by claiming that f.uuta’s individualistic while mi.koto is not, but i would argue that miko is the one who puts himself first in his mind in most situations…….??? ?

[boysnberriespie]

Honestly sometimes I really hate how pigeon holed Good Representation has become because sometimes I want to write queer characters that just wouldn’t describe themselves with specific terms because it’s not how the character thinks and operates in the world

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

still very disappointed they cheated us by making this guy be able to uwu his way out of being a villain

[minakoaiinos]

Animating this season like you can't have the slightest bit of jest and god forbid jesting about yaoi

[karmaphone]

it's genuinely really sad to me when there's a legitimately good adaptation - but it still falls into the trap of 'we can fix the lack of female characters by making some of the existing characters female, right?' without considering the broader implications that are actually more misogynistic than the original lack of female characters