#Never seen so much vitriol towards a character that genuinely didn’t deserve it

[arlathvhenan]

Given the new developments I think it’s bonkers that there’s still people out there foaming at the mouth to murder Solas in the most hideous way possible like my brother in christ you need to calm the hell down and accept that the character was never the villain you wanted him to be and BioWare probably isn’t going to let you cave his skull in with a hammer.

[an-svu-sideblog]

Women of SVU Week - Day 1

Priorities

Characters: Kat Tamin, her girlfriend, Fin Tutola, brief Olivia Benson

Warnings: language, almost smut but not quite

Dua Lipa blasted from the phone lying on the bathroom counter amongst scattered makeup brushes, eye shadow palettes and fake lashes. The bass sounded thinner than it should through the small speaker.

Kat leaned forward toward the mirror, her mouth forming a small “o” as applied her eyeliner, tapering it to a perfect wing. “Is Kristina bringing her new girlfriend?” she called.

“What?” a voice called back from the adjacent bedroom.

Kat finished her makeup and strode into the bedroom, leaving her phone near the sink. “I asked if Kristina was bringing her new girlfriend.” She approached the bed where her girlfriend was perched on the edge, currently pulling sheer tights up her calves. Kat reached into her purse and began shuffling around for her earrings.

“Which new girlfriend?” Jo asked derisively.

Kat paused, wrist deep in her purse. “Wait, another one? Isn’t she dating that nurse from Queens? The one she brought to the Halloween party?”

“Turns out the nurse was fucking an EMT so that didn’t end well. Now she’s dating a girl she met at that bar uptown. You would’ve met her at the New Years party if you had been there.” Jo’s statement had little vitriol in it, but it stung nonetheless. The frequency at which Kat was suddenly called into work was often a source of contention in their relationship.

Kat tried to ignore it. “Okay, what does this girlfriend do? She’s not another bad tattoo artist is she?” she asked, half-joking. “Kristina doesn’t need another Chinese character that says ‘water buffalo’ on her ankle.”

Jo laughed snidely. “No, this one is an Instagram influencer. Don’t let her start trying to sell you her miracle juice cleanse mixes. Kristina says her intestines haven’t been the same since.”

“Noted.” Kat replied with a wince. “I’m just glad she has someone. She’s so busy all the time; it’s good that she can make time for a girlfriend.”

Jo didn’t reply.

Earrings in place, Kat gave her tight dress one last adjustment and turned to face her girlfriend. She threw her hands out to the side, asking for Jo’s opinion. Jo smiled and lifted herself off the bed to close the distance between them. Kat, already in her heels, gazed down at her girlfriend, her hair hanging down to frame both their faces.

As they met, Jo ran her hands across the smooth fabric that was hugging Kat’s hips and pulled her body even closer.

“You look so good,” Jo said, her voice low. “You’ve been so busy lately. I’m glad I finally have you to myself for a night.”

“I’m all yours,” Kat matched her tone and leaned in for a kiss. Their hands roved over each others bodies as the kiss deepened. They pulled each other close; any space between them was too much.

Jo started pulling Kat toward the bed, craning her neck to ensure their lips never parted. “We’re going to be late,” Kat murmured into the kiss.

“So?” Jo retorted with a smirk. Their knees met the mattress, and Jo pushed Kat down to sit on the edge of the bed. She straddled Kat’s lap, her dress riding dangerously high around her thighs. Kat’s hands slid slowly up her girlfriend’s legs and hips, tracing the folds and seams of the dress now bunched around her waist.

Jo gently gyrated her hips to the still-blaring pop music from the other room. Kat moaned slightly into their kiss.

“You’re fucking kidding,” Jo said with a sharp sigh. The music had suddenly been interrupted and replaced by a harsh vibrating sound against the porcelain counter.

Kat paused, her eyes still closed as if she could ignore the ringing phone. The woman sitting on her lap was more determined to ignore the unwelcome distraction. Jo kissed her harder. Kat allowed herself to succumb for a moment before her rational brain won out.

“I have to get that,” she said ruefully.

Jo groaned and leaned back to give Kat a disappointed look. “You said you had off tonight.”

“I did have off, but if we catch a case I have to go.” Kat lightly patted her girlfriends thigh, a gentle request for her to vacate Kat’s lap. “C’mon, I have to see who it is.” Jo didn’t move. “Jo,” Kat added with a stern look.

She let up, and Kat rushed to her phone, her heels clicking on the tiled bathroom floor. It was, of course, her Sergeant. When she returned to the bedroom, her face said everything that Jo needed to know.

“I’m sorry,” Kat insisted, grabbing her bag off the bed. “I’ll make it up to you I promise.”

Kat was rushing too fast to see the utter defeat on her girlfriend’s face. Jo didn’t say anything as she watched her girlfriend disappear from the apartment.

***

The fluorescent lights of the precinct were a harsh contrast to the darkening sky outside. The squad room was mostly empty as she arrived. Only Fin and Benson had arrived so far, and Benson was busy in her office preparing to brief her squad.

Fin looked practically scrubby in his jeans and button-up compared to Kat’s elegant and very low-cut dress. She hadn’t had time to go home and change, and he didn’t waste the opportunity to comment.

“Which club is missing you tonight?” Fin asked with a sly smile on his face.

“None you’ve heard of,” she retorted.

Fin winced dramatically, “I’m not that old!”

Kat smirked. “When’s the last time you stayed out past 11pm?” His wounded silence was answer enough. She moved past him, still smirking at his defeat. “I have clothes in my locker; I’ll change before we start.”

Kat returned from the locker room, looking much more professional. She shed her party clothes and adopted her usual steely attitude, now ready for the job. The only tell that her night out had been abruptly interrupted was the heavy makeup that still adorned her brown eyes.

Benson briefed them on the situation. A brutal rape/homicide had culminated in the victim stumbling, bleeding, into a corner store. After being rushed to the hospital, she died in surgery. The victim was left with no wallet, no ID. There were no solid suspects.

With no leads on where the girl came from, Benson directed Fin and Kat to start at the corner store.

***

In the midst of an unhelpful interview with the store clerk, Kat felt her phone vibrate several times in her pocket.

After discovering no helpful leads, Fin thanked the clerk for their help and they moved to leave. He and Kat stepped back out into the cool night air, hypothesizing what to investigate next with such little info.

Kat ventured a glance at her phone and felt her heart jump into her throat as she read the notification.

from: Jo <3

9:21pm

[I’m sorry Kat, I can’t do this anymore. I don’t feel like a priority, it’]

The preview ended there, but Kat had seen enough. A surprising mixture of emotions cascaded over her. She felt disappointed, confused, and overwhelmingly indignant. A breakup by text? Seriously?!

Fin had gotten ahead of her on his way back to the car. He quickly realized she hadn’t kept up. “Tamin, you have an epiphany or something? Let’s go.”

She wordlessly closed the distance and joined him in the car. She worried her expression was giving away too much, but she couldn’t seem to collect her focus enough to erase the emotion on her face. Her heart may as well have been on her sleeve.

As the car pulled away from the curb, Kat started out the window, hoping her Sergeant wouldn’t pry.

“You good?” Fin asked after a long moment of silence.

She internally cursed the occupational hazard of having coworkers who were very insightful. “Fine,” she replied shortly.

“You’ll do your job better if you’re not distracted.”

Kat paused a moment to consider the veracity of his statement. He was right, annoyingly, and she knew he was also implying that talking about it was the remedy to the problem of distraction. Giving up on hiding her sour expression, she turned to him. “Well, I’ll have a lot more time to do my job. I won’t need time off for date nights anymore.”

“Did you just get broken up with by text?” he asked incredulously.

Kat lifted her phone and gave it a little shake to indicate that she had indeed.

“That’s cold. You’re too good for her,” Fin said adamantly.

She scoffed in response. She knew he meant well, but it sounded like the kind of compliment that a mother gives: genuine, if not cloying, and completely subjective.

“I’m serious. The job is hard, but you deserve someone who can handle it just like you do. I lucked out with Phoebe; she knows exactly what the job is like. Not everyone can get it.”

“I just don’t know if it’s worth it. Dating is so much time and effort. Meeting someone you’re actually interested in seems impossible, and then as soon as they realize the work schedule is insane and unpredictable they bail.” She let her eyes follow each street light as they drove through the city. “Don’t get me wrong, I love the job. I just don’t know anymore...”

“Once you find that someone, it is worth it.” Fin’s voice was softer than Kat was used to hearing it. The seasoned Sergeant with a killer quip ready for any perp was being uncharacteristically soft. “Even if you only get to see that person for a few minutes when you wake up or for a quick coffee at lunch, it’s worth it. For both of you. The right person will get it.”

Kat felt the anger in her ebbing away, leaving only the sadness in its place. “Thanks Sarge,” she told him sincerely.

“Now you owe me fifty bucks. Therapy’s not cheap.” He said this with an even, serious tone, but the shit-eating grin on his face said otherwise.

“Ha ha,” she replied sardonically. “Don’t quit your day job.” Her tone was dry, but she was thankful for his attempt to lighten her mood. It worked, if only for a moment.

The details of the surrounding city faded from her focus as Kat tried to push the breakup from her mind and refocus on the case at hand. She failed and instead, she found herself re-living every suddenly canceled date, every small argument, and every time a tough case had consumed Kat’s mind and prevented her from being fully present during what little time she had with her girlfriend.

They say hindsight is 20/20, but it felt like these memories were viewed through the wrong prescription lenses; whatever the opposite of rose-colored glasses are.

She unlocked her phone once more and swiped the notification away, willing her eyes not to read the letters as they scanned the preview once more.

She does deserve better.

[comingupforblair]

I’ve seen a few people advocate for the next Batman film to have a lighter and more humorous tone in the vein of the MCU and the Lego Batman movie and it honestly infuriates me

Not because I’m against the idea in itself (although I am annoyed that even the one character fans will allow to have a more serious adaptation is being pressured to join the rest in being “fun”) but because of how they treated the Schumacher Batman films and how they’re currently treating the Zack Snyder films

Joel Schumacher and his films spent two decades as every nerd’s favorite punching bag, second only to the Star Wars prequels in terms of invoking extreme vitriol and complaints about ruined childhoods.

Schumacher was seen as history’s greatest monster, a man who desecrated the character until Nolan revived him. 

The reaction those films got was so extreme and so personal towards Schumacher, who didn’t deserve any of it just as Snyder didn’t, it was obvious that Warner Bros were going to be careful to avoid ever risking something like that again and when the Nolan films came along, everyone was okay with throwing Schumacher under the bus the same way they are doing with Snyder.

Fans spent two decades declaring those films as abominations never to be repeated and are now wondering why the studio would be hesitant to take such a risk again?

I remember Empire saying “making Batman lighter is like asking Captain America to immigrate” in regards to the film in 2007 and now publications like that are calling for the films to have Batman smile more.

To be clear, it wouldn’t bother me if people realized they acted too harshly towards those films and admitted as such but they’re just skipping over their own behavior and not addressing it at all, acting like WB pulled the idea that Batman can only work with a serious tone out of nowhere.

I’m not proud to say I was part of that and said the same things and I don’t feel that way anymore, now genuinely liking both Batman Forever and Batman & Robin and seeing them as legitimately good Batman adaptations.

It’s impossible not to see similarities in how those same fans, critics and bloggers are now treating the Snyder films not as flawed films or films which just need a better balance of tone or an improvement of their intent going forward but as films to be regarded as similar grave mistakes to be atoned for indefinitely, that avoiding any possible repeat of must be the main goal going forward, even if it means losing actors involved.

The films have become everyone’s favorite punching bag, an easy way to score points and Snyder gets more hatred than legitimate sexual predators because he deviated from what many have come to believe these films must be like, just as Schumacher did.

And I believe that years from now, those same fans or a new generation will start to wonder why WB aren’t willing to take a chance on a different kind of Superman story and they won’t see other fans or themselves as being partially responsible for that just as they don’t now.

Some folks have started to come around and acknowledge Schumacher was unfairly treated but don’t see an issue with doing or looking the other way on the exact same thing happening to Snyder now and they won’t see it until years from now when their actions have had a serious effect on this genre and these characters.

The other side is that they’re okay with films which deviate from the tone characters are associated with but only when it’s a case of making serious characters lighter (I’ve seen MCU fans advocate for a PG-13 Daredevil adaptation) which is just plain hypocrisy and shows they don’t care about fidelity to the tone and source material as much as they claim.

Since I can already hear people saying “the idea is fine but those films were bad”, that’s kind of my point. Fans didn’t send a message that the idea just needed some or even a lot of improvement but that the intent itself was the issue and the thing to be avoided from now on and that was the message Warner Bros learned and what fans are encouraging this time again without any thought to the future of the characters.

This is a classic case of fans being their own worst enemies and never being able to see that because they beat away any kind of introspection by saying they care about the characters, thinking that grants them an immunity from criticism.

Comic book fandom is a perfect example of the old saying about how those who don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it.

[gumheel]

“hi! sorry that this is so long aaa it’s kind of a complex situation that i have mixed feelings on so i couldn’t word it very concisely… also i hope you have a good day! ty for being so nice about this

also this isn’t meant to be a “you guys are horrible and i can’t believe you wrote this!!!!” b/c i don’t think it was intentional at all, just had some bad connotations… but w/ blanche’s writing i. hm i hope this is worded well but i feel like making him mentally ill kind of didn’t mix well w/ his narrative role as someone who’s supposed to be irredeemable/bad, especially b/c he also comes off as specifically someone dealing with low empathy and difficulty recognizing others as real/tangible people who can be hurt + difficulty knowing what to do When he’s hurt others which (as someone with multiple cluster b personality disorders) is a big issue when you’re cluster b.”

i’m putting the rest of this under the cut not to minimize what was actually done but so the root and answer can be easily addressed! you don’t have to apologize for it being long you spoke very concisely and worded the issue well and i appreciate it being brought up a great deal :] i’m also happy you brought this up because this was something i was struggling with a lot being blanche’s player and i do have a lot i would like to say that will hopefully explain, but that isn’t really necessary reading and the main thing i and the other mods want to say is that we are sorry for pushing that kind of narrative. there are more reasons behind this that i’ll go on to talk about below the cut, but at the end of the day an author’s issues with oneself like... should be addressed via other means and not worked out through a medium like this, it leads to a reading that, as unintentional as it may be, is still present and we’re sorry about that.

“and kind of contributes to a narrative of mentally ill people who’ve messed up/hurt people multiple times due to their illness/don’t automatically become better people when their negative actions are pointed out, especially when the character is shown to be in a neglectful home/recieving no treatment/is 16 (which is when a lot of us can start developing our more severe symptoms/cluster b pds really start showing up), are like. irredeemable/shitty people/don’t deserve sympathy. especially b/c a lot of cluster bs end up doing shitty things/hurting others without meaning to before we’re able to recognize what we’re dealing with, idk it’s just… hurtful for the narrative seen in media to be that we can never change and become better, even if we’re shown to want to (which blanche does at multiple points- i could go more into this/different points where he’s shown to regret what he did, want to change etc but i don’t want to make this even longer than it is hh)

and of course this doesn’t mean everyone had to make nice with him or that he’s perfect or even necessarily a good person, the narratives that people Can change/heal and aren’t inherently irredeemable and bad and the fact that people hurt By those people don’t have to forgive them, associate with them, be nice to them etc don’t contradict each other (especially b/c the mods Do kill blanche physically and kind of just go. whoops, our mistake, oh well)

and i want to end this with: again i don’t think this was intentional, and i can’t speak for the mental health of any of the writers, but as a cluster b reading that, it really felt as though the message of dailyaes was that people who fuck up and hurt others who aren’t instantly sorry and doing everything to fix it don’t deserve sympathy/can’t change, even if they do eventually try to change, and it really hurt to reread it (and honestly reading it a few years ago when i was a lot less in recovery contributed to my own internalized ableism, looking back)

i’m so sorry again how long this is!! i really hope i explained this well enough hh”

thank you again for bringing this up, and there are like.. three/kind of four key points that i’d like to explain here because these are relevant to what wound up happening and it does like... it does suck, waht wound up happening, and i’m sorry that that was the ending, i hope this can like... assuage some of that and assure that that isn’t the ending people who struggle with those issues deserve

the first is that uh.. blanche was conceptualized as a... kind of self insert at a time when i was struggling a lot with what it meant to be a person and more importantly a good person. that reading of his character (mentally ill & neglected) came explicitly from things i was unsure and in denial of, and low empathy/struggling to recognize others as individuals were they not immediately tangible was a large part of that. as a result, thsi character who i cast as a sort of inverted self insert (ie. encompassing what i felt was bad about me at the time) took on a lot of aspects of what you called internalized ableism which is. a really good term for it. i’d come out of an environment where i felt as if i was not stretching myself thin to help others then i was not being a good person, and blanche turned into a sort of representation of that. this does not like, excuse what ended up happening to blanche, but i hope it comes of some comfort to learn this did not come from a place of external hatred rather than genuine issues with myself. they still should not have made their way into being that kind of a representation of a character with those issues, and i’m sorry for that.

the second ties into why one of the mods ended up being cast out of the group altogether, which was being a shitty person all around, one facet of which was like. a Lot of hatred towards blanche. it’s not my place to speculate or speak as to why, but it was definitely a big part of why they got as shitty an ending and treatment as they did -- efforts at suggesting or even joking that blanche was not like. a  Bad Person were met with immediate shutting down and vitriol. that behavior wound up being part of why we cut ties with them, but it still worked its way into the final form that dA took, and for that i’m sorry. as much as it sucked we still became complicit in that, and we should not have been; we apologize for that.

the last thing i’d like to say here, and i hope it will give some hope for the future, is that, if i’m being honest, blanche’s story is an incomplete one. the since deleted third part (due to how heavily it was tied with the mods we disassociated ourselves with) provided some minor resolution, but still an ending that felt unsatisfying and incomplete. another mod and i are also working on a true third installment with the aim of proving blanche is capable and worthy of love and happiness and with a true and satisfying conclusion for their character, because the truth was those things you picked up on of regret and desire to change were like... real. i wanted to and tried to write blanche with that note of someone who is capable of apologizing and changing for the better, and the next part that we’re working on now will hopefully really show that and provide a resolution that doesn’t feel so cruel and hopeless.

thank you again for sending this, it isn’t like. rude or out of the realm of possibility at all, they were a mentally ill character who was treated unkindly by the story we told and we’re sorry for that. i hope this can provide some bit of reassurance and hope for the future, and this was a really great chance to reflect on shortcomings in our work and take stock of the effect it had. i don’t know how much this will mean but like... being past that point of young and neglected and feeling beyond help, that isn’t like.. how it is. your symptoms don’t make you evil or undeserving of happiness, and we truly are sorry for winding up with that reading of the work. i hope the actual final installment of this story, should you choose to follow it (which, of course, you do not have to -- it’s understandable if the work as a whole is spoiled) will reflect that

[linkspooky]

You've brought up the negative aspects of the dynamic between Seidou, Akira, and Amon several times before; do you think their relationship has any prominent positive traits? (Also, I do like the more negative or pessimistic posts as well. Your metas are always thought-provoking.)

No, you can’t make me. 

Well okay.... Amon paid for their food once when they all went to eat together, that was nice of him.

Amon, Akira and Seidou really are the only friends each other has. Their social circles are completely dominated by other work acquiantances, but the three of them are the only ones who can be described as roughly on the same level. Seidou had Houji, but it was shown in the end Houji didn’t seem to value him that much. Amon had Shinohara to look up to professionally, and Mado as a father figure but both of those people also were distant from him. Mado had no one, and even in Re: the closest she has is Sasaki who she holds distinct power over, and Arima who holds distinct power over her and literally ordered her to form a bond with Sasaki Haise to help control him. 

Friendship requires spending time together, and being on relatively equal ground without clear power differences. It also requires communication. The Akira we see in :Re is well respected but she has no friends. She also communicates far less than we ever saw of Akira in Tokyo Ghoul. 

One might question what is the point of spending about 10 chapters on Akira’s emotional development rather than goat’s efforts to fight back against the CCG, and that’s most likely because Akira has spent 100 chapters before that point not expressing herself at all. Despite having the motivation for development, IE rediscovering Seidou, and discovering proof of Amon we saw no onscreen reaction to either of those things which leads to the belief that Akira did not react to those things, she did not discuss them, she just repressed. Another reason why substituting Amon and Seidou for Haise was a move that led to her stagnation, because of Kaneki’s gigantic fear of confrontation and decisiveness, he never would have pushed her on those emotional issues in a thousand years, even if he had the empathy to notice that something was deeply emotionally wrong with Akira.  

We don’t even see her react to Shirazu’s death onscreen, only comforting somebody else over it. Which is one of the few unquestionably bad things Akira could have allowed herself to react to, it’s not complicated like her old friend being a ghoul, but not only a ghoul a dangerous one that murders old CCG agents with little remorse. Perhaps not all 10 were necessary, but a round of catchup was in order to establish what Akira’s emotional issues were in text rather than subtext, and then bring her right to before the point of change. With the hope of course that eventually she will change after the moon arc and it’s mass stagnation has concluded.

That is primarily what Re: is about and the way it’s chosen to tell it’s story when incorporating the old characters. The new characters like the Q’s get fairly straightforward arcs, even Mutsuki’s goes straight down. Characters who were not super important in Og TG also get more straightforward arcs that add more importance to their characters, the two biggest examples of this being Seidou and Kurona, them both receiving entire emotional arcs with ups and downs in the time it’s taken for Amon and Akira to basically just show up and catch up to exactly where they were at in Og Tg. 

Whether or not you agree with this being good writing or not, that is one of the major themes of :Re. The idea of false returns. That things can just resume from where they were three years ago, that people can just act as if nothing has changed even while the world is actively pressing down on them. Perhaps it’s also a symptom of this socially stunted cast that they never made any more significant friendships in the three years they were apart from each other, and each of them can just slide into place as if nothing has changed. 

The idea that you can simply begin again is a false one, but that doesn’t mean these three characters have nothing to contribute to one another. As I said before, Akira’s two problems are lack of communication and repression. This is true even to this moment, Akira couldn’t communicate her true intentions to Haise, and without Seidou around she repressed the majority of her feelings that motivated her to save him once again and she’s left feeling like nothing. 

One thing about her previous relationship with Seidou and Amon, is she was much less repressed among either of them. Seidou and Akira bickered yes, and while Seidou was the one who usually started it by exercising his inferiority complex all over her

However, he did get a response out of Akira. Arguing is a form of communication even if it’s a bad one. The intent in this scene can be clear, Seidou was concerned for Akira, and Akira wanted to tell him not to worry about her, but it comes out as bickering instead. Also bickering as a bad communication for two people who are otherwise deeply concerned for each other but have no idea how to express it is really common shorthand, see like every romantic comedy ever made. 

If Takizawa’s attention were unwanted, it would perhaps be an unhealthy relationship. I’ve seen a few posts that insist Takizawa basically doesn’t deserve Akira’s attention because of his whole exercising his inferiority complex out towards her, and that her actions to save him were more for Takizawa’s manpain than for her own emotional growth. To that I have to say that assuming Akira is better than Takizawa, that Takizawa is just some character development parasite on her and only looking at their characters in terms of masculinity and femininity dynamics and power balance is kind of missing the point of their characters. It also ignores that Akira is also kind of a shitty person. (She didn’t even say thank you to Banjou. We need a new morality scale in TG that’s just how nicely a character would treat Banjou to judge whether they are a good or bad person). They all are. That’s kind of the point of the trio. Three shitty people who have the potential to do better, and also happen to provoke those better sides out of each other.

I already said long ago when I made my Nakira post was that the result of Akira’s long repression over Seidou and Amon would probably be an explosion of emotions that leads her to making an irrational (read stupid) decision that has her acting with her emotions first even in a situation where that is potentially dangerous. That is exactly what we see happen, Akira shielding Seidou even though he can regenerate and she can’t. It’s a decision that came about entirely from her character flaws and long emotional repression, but on the other hand it was also a change that was specifically brought about by Seidou. That never would have happened had the emotional timebomb known as Seidou not interacted with Akira. It’s also one that needed to happen, as Akira needed to feel her own emotions if she was ever going to come to grips with them. 

This is the connection we’re presented with, that Akira genuinely does hold feelings for Seidou. Perhaps mixed up ones emotionally, but that means ever since the academy days she’s had someone whose somewhat of an equal and a friend to look to, lonely Akira who only lived to fulfill her father’s wishes. 

The brief flashback we are given to Akira and Seidou’s past tells use everything we need to know about what Akira saw in Seidou. 

When other’s saw a purebred investigator, a child of her parents, something Akira was trying desperately to live up to being but also could not entirely conform herself to the mold at the same time. Something that even Amon has difficulty seeing past in Akira. Seidou only ever saw Akira. He saw her as an adversary yes, but those were always her talents he was competing against, not her parent’s. 

At the same time that’s what Akira gives to Seidou, somebody whose desperate for validation. Just to be seen in her eyes is enough for Seidou. 

In an arc of characters making stupid shitty selfish decisions, we have Seidou going from only living and caring about his own survival and validating his hero and inferiority complexes through violence, basically being a walking paradox of those two complexes stitched together as sloppily as Kanou tore him apart with that chainsaw, to him being able to make one of the more selfless decisions of the arc.

While it’s true that this move is partially rooted in Seidou’s assumption that neither Akira nor Amon will be happy with him around, it’s also a relationship he was once intensely jealous of. We see characters make moves to monopolize people who give them any sort of positive affection so they can live off of that affection alone, but instead Takizawa grows from that one moment of ackonwledgement from Akira, and then his next decision is made with the intention of wanting to return her happiness. 

It is of course not complete as suddenly Amon and Akira were whisked away into the fantasy of each other, and Seidou went back to simply surviving as a ghoul hoping he could stay away from them and not damage them any further with his destructive self, but still the change they were able to inspire in each other in such a short time, in one interaction is significant. 

The question is then what role does Amon play in this, as they are a trio after all. I think for a long time a lot of people’s, even mine assumed that Akira was a sort of go to in between the two clashing egos of Seidou and Amon as that is often the role of the girl in a trio consisting of two other boys. That is a wrong assumption and I think it’s now the opposite, Amon is the cool headed one, in between the two drastically clashing egos that are Seidou and Akira.

Where Seidou and Akira are often vitriolic and trying to provoke one another, Amon exercises his role as the patient one. It was after all Amon who interfered in Seidou and Akira’s failure of a coversation and prevented Seidou from strangling her. I think what’s more important there is not that Amon fought, but he got beat up. That he allowed himself to get hurt but still continued to keep trying to convince Seidou, and to listen to him, that he still deserved to live. 

That is even the old role he played in the group, the calm and patient mediator between their two extreme personalities. 

While his saving of Seidou turned out to be self righteous, I still think the intention and results were good. An action can be both things, it can be multifaceted, Amon could have done it to save himself, to reinforce his worldview that human half ghouls are still good and need to retain to their humanity, but he could also have done it because he genuinely cared about Seidou. It could be both things. 

Amon generally when acting as a listener has much better communication skills than he usually shows. He’s patient with others and genuinely wants to see the good in them. He also tries (usually) to remove his own self interest from the situation and think to act in a way that’s best for them. He also has a quality of making the other person feel special, feel ackonwledged. Kaneki goes on and on about how Amon’s mere act of wanting to talk with him, made him feel like the only investigator who ever acknowledged him as a person. 

At the same time Amon tends to also preach as much as he listens. There’s a reason he wears a cross on his neck, and his father who he’s afraid of becoming like is a ghoul who wears and acts like a priest and manipulates others. Amon’s zealotry is a genuine problem and one that comes in combination with his communication skills. If he were able to simply listen without having to assert his moral highground, (or in most cases cling to it) at the same time he would be a much better moderating force than he turns out to be at the moment. There it is, that great potential for growth again. 

In that case the role Seidou provides to Amon is pretty signficant. While not thought of as one of the stellar intelligence of the series, Seidou is shown to be generally observant about the situation around him and self aware to a greater extent than most characters. 

What he says in his internal monologue are things Amon desperately needs to acknowledge himself and hear. 

As I said character relationships are complicated. Amon can inspire Seidou, but also make him feel like he’s inferior at the same time. The ideal then would be to try to preserve the former and work on the latter.  

Amon is no better than Seidou, as evident from the fact that in their phsyical fights Seidou has won twice now. Seidou at the same time is no better than Amon, after all it was Amon who went to face Akira. The strength of their relationship is that the two of them have the potential to see each other as equal. They are both, victims of the same torture in Aogiri.

Seidou, going to much darker places but coming out from the other side could act as a reassurance to Amon that he doesn’t need to be morally pure all the time, he doesn’t need to be constantly repressing his own pain. It’s okay to be hurt without making it into a crusade. It’s okay that he was a victim. Part of Amon needs to acknowledge and feel that pain.

He’s the one of course who talks about being empty like there’s nothing left in him, when the answer lies in simply just acknowledging and feeling his feelings. Nobody is truly empty, nobody is without feeling, no matter how much they may feel otherwise. 

The answer towards filling that emptiness does not lie in attaching yourself to other people, but rather in yourself. Except for this trio, they can only be themselves it seems, when they’re around each other. As each one of them in their own way validates and provokes feelings from the other.