#Shadow is so goal-oriented because he was literally made to achieve one specific goal

[movie-robotnik-positivity]

"Dark Beginnings" brings up something that was likely implied before but I never considered, which is that Shadow didn't share Maria's fascination with Earth.

Maria would often tell Shadow about Earth's beauty but he never returned the enthusiasm, he only cared about curing his sister. Besides, the ARK was all he had ever known.

So of course Shadow's disinterest towards Earth turns into hatred after the GUN incident, and his revenge is only stopped thanks to Maria's memory. Even in the present, you could argue Shadow doesn't care for Earth very much.

[fortenik]

why do u think tenma would be a slytherin ? :0

OMG I LOVE THIS QUESTION ☝️

First of all let’s clarify something that Slytherin≠ evil, villians, or bad people.

Second of all let’s settle down the Slytherin traits, at least the most significant for the house: Goal-Oriented · Ambition · Self-Confident · Cunning · Natural Leaders · Shrewd · Loyal · Self-Reliant.

Tenma is literally all of those in a healthy (or almost healthy) way.

He’s goal oriented, Tenma doesn’t take any step without a plan or a goal in mind, he’s always calculating and analyzing the area. Every step on his journey was to obtain something (Stop Johan) and not a single person on earth could stop Tenma.

Ambition is always associated with something bad. But ambition also speaks of a strong desire to achieve something specific. Here it could well be Tenma's unstoppable steps across the country to stop Johan and get rid of him at any cost. Also his vision to save as many people as possible, "to the last consequences."

Slytherins are people who will do anything to achieve and accomplish their goals. Tenma is someone who would do anything for his own goals (of course always without compromising anyone or seeking not to harm anyone around him) but is capable of sacrificing himself. Although it is clear that to protect someone else if he has to, he will resort to measures of violence and the use of weapons.

He is someone who forced himself to almost give up little by little his humanity in order to pursue, find and finish Johan.

Tenma is a truly intelligent, cunning person, but over time he became too calculating and surly. Such a characteristic and the circumstances made him to reveal a part of him that wasn't so outspoken. We learned that Tenma is actually an omnipresent observer, on more than one occasion we were unaware of his whereabouts, but not because he was elsewhere but because he was there observing and analyzing from the shadows to generate the big picture and thus be able to proceed to action in a premeditated and calculated way.

In Another Monster we got to know a bit more about Tenma's personality from the perspective of people who have known him since he was a child. Here we discover that Tenma is actually a very selective person with his friendships, and it was overemphasized that gaining Tenma's trust is really difficult. Yes he’s sweet and for him, human relationships are extremely important but to gain Tenma’s trust you have to prove him you’re worth it.

From Ch. 1 we know that Tenma is always a warm and kind man to all people, however, gaining his trust and friendship is certainly "conditional" on the attitude of the person in question that he demonstrates to Tenma.

A lot of people he would considerate him a Hufflepuff and I can see it but Tenma’s philosophy in some cases differs a lot from Hufflepuffs philosophy and matches Slytherins.

[mittensmorgul]

1/2 I think the endgame issue is so difficult because the feelings about it often come from two different mindsets. People want to see what a relationship would look like between Dean and Cas, but also see a same sex couple represented. Also, people are gun-shy from past experiences where there's been the same kind of subtextual story only for there to be no resolution or confirmation. Or just flat out queerbaiting. People are tired of largely subtextual queer relationships.

2/2 This is taking destiel to a very general, bigger, more complicated conversation about queer representation and media. But on a smaller scale, focusing just on SPN, the show is just going by the formula and format they want to go by. Why are they waiting until endgame? Because they just are. Yet it's often spoken about on that larger scale when the actual issue is about SPN specifically and how they're choosing to do this. It's not always about grander scale, sometimes it's individual.(same anon) Not that i'm invalidating the people who's issues about destiel revolve around the much weightier "queer representation in media" thing. It's just that sometimes you gotta look at the specific, individual show and what it's doing and not necessarily "it's doing the same things those other shows did so it must mean (whatever)." It's tough. And we just don't know and won't know until we know.

Hi there, first off. :D And yeah, it is one of those “zoomed into the specific context of this one show and how they’re telling this story” versus the “zoomed all the way out to a very specific issue in the larger scope of media representation.” The frustrating thing is when the two are conflated specifically for the purposes of generating wank about one specific show and how they are seemingly progressing toward what could potentially be an unprecedented and absolutely unique sort of representation that’s practically impossible to even begin in this exact way in this day and age.

A while back (and I can’t remember who wrote it, so apologies...) I read a spectacular assessment of this exact situation. When Supernatural began, nearly thirteen years ago, the environment was very, very different from how it is today. The way queer stories were told in general was very, very different. Hollywood was only barely beginning the shift away from clinging to the Hays Code with regard to how non-straight characters and relationships were handled on tv, and we were only about seven years post-Ellen coming out (which essentially ended up sinking her sitcom). Queer characters were almost universally tragic characters, and they didn’t get happy endings, if they could even be portrayed as canonically queer and not only subtextually so.

And when Supernatural started, even in 2005 it was very much rooted in themes of the past-- everything from the ‘67 Impala to classic rock to the Winchester Brothers living in the eternal shadow of the tragedy that had touched their family in 1983. The entire concept of “Star Wars in truckstop America” evokes a very specific and gritty flavor of the past. This is what the show was built on-- classic horror tropes and uncovering the truth about urban legends and monsters. Even the “On The Road” references from Dean and Sam’s names to the concept of Sam’s “magical qualities” being paralleled to Dean’s more subtle queercoding right from the pilot episode have long been meta’d into the ground.

The thing is, Supernatural has now been running long enough for the general media culture to have made substantial inroads into progressively more honest queer representation. At any point, Supernatural could’ve made a genuine leap into canonizing Dean’s sexuality as something other than perfectly heterodudebro straight. Because if that’s what the subtext has actually been implying all these years (which from the pov of “queer reading” and “queercoding” of the past-- again, see the Hays Code-- it’s obvious they have been), then why are they hesitating in this modern era where shows are not only actively portraying queer characters more and more frequently, but are receiving critical acclaim and public praise for doing so? I mean, it sounds logical that if they actually intended to “take the story there,” then they should just go ahead and make it so. Right?

But for a show like Supernatural, that’s rooted in this “old school” format, and a narrative consistently told through that same lens, with the same applicable tropes, and the same genre conventions regarding queerness and horror that it was built on back in 2005, this would literally defy the integrity of the narrative.

And therein lies the frustration. This is why people shout queerbaiting. This is why people have quit the show in frustration of feeling like if they really intended to go there, there’s very little reason to hold back at this point.

Well, except for Authorial Integrity.

That’s a big one.

It’s also one I’d hate for the show to compromise on. Because pulling out core subtextual character traits after thirteen years of consistently yet very slowly dragging them into the light, and making them fully textual before the run up to the series end would absolutely compromise the entire structure of the narrative.

As a viewer and a queer person, yes I would LOVE to see a textualization of Dean’s queerness as a “coming out later in life” and “it’s never too late to openly acknowledge who you really are” narrative, because that would be incredibly powerful at this point. The fact that I am actively seeing this happen (albeit in glacial slow motion compared to how it might happen in more “modernly rooted” shows where characters are often textually queer from the word go) and happening within the same narrative conventions that Supernatural has always been written within is more than enough to sustain my interest for now.

I sincerely HOPE that the show will eventually “do the right thing” with this subtext. I HOPE that the eventual endgame will finally textualize this, but it is literally the endgame goal of this series. I don’t know how else to explain that even while newer series will have characters come out and then just carry on under this “new normal” for the character, this is something so completely rooted into Dean’s “endgame character goals” that at this point to make it textual would bring far too much of his own core character development to a premature conclusion.

In writing, when you create a character, you start out by asking questions:

Who is this person?

What essential traits make him who he is?

What does he fear?

What does he love?

What does he hope for?

What is the source of his happiness?

How can I keep him from achieving his goals in a believable way?

How does he hobble himself from achieving his own goals?

What is his ultimate endgame goal?

In tv writing, this is part of what’s known as the “Show Bible,” or the guide to characterization so that the characters and plots and general narrative structure of the series can remain consistent from writer to writer. That’s why we have consistently seen Dean progress from where he was in s1 to where he is now. He’s clearly become more and more comfortable with himself, more and more open about things he loves (think “no chick flick moments” in 1.01 and “you love chick flicks-- yeah I do” in 11.23). But they aren’t going to bring his character’s Major Personal Arc to fruition when the show is still being written without a concrete endpoint in place.

Because that’s being true and honest to the narrative structure and character development of both the genre of the show (classic horror) and the evolution of media in general since Supernatural began.

I know not everyone is comfortable watching the show continue as it always has with no guarantee of paying off more than a decade worth of subtext. Not everyone is willing to remain emotionally invested in a show that may eventually end on a huge queerbaity rug pull. But there’s an increasingly real chance that it won’t, either. I mean... if you can maintain expectations and understand there’s always a potential for disappointment in the end, it’s a lot easier to enjoy the story as it unfolds.

For other folks it’s probably easier to wait and see how everything turns out before emotionally committing to the show, and that’s fine too.

But I’m really tired of the blatantly unfair comparison of Supernatural-- a 13-year-old show being told through the conventions of the traditional horror genre that’s maintained a consistent narrative for thirteen years regarding the character development arcs and the specific way they’ve been telling this story this entire time-- and brand new shows that can essentially set up entirely different characters and write from a different baseline from the start, where a character’s sexual orientation hasn’t been sculpted into what has always been connected with the closing of that character’s narrative arc.

Yes, technically Supernatural could defy genre, defy their own storytelling, and explicitly make this textual right away, but that’s like... the dictionary definition of jumping the shark in this specific case. And that’s not something I want for Supernatural, or for Dean, or for Destiel.