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softgrungeprophet · 6 years ago

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it’s that time again. time for me to be annoyed/frustrated at the comics that came in the 20-teens that simultaneously responded directly to the 2000s, followed in the 2000s’ continuation, but completely glossed over and ignored the very serious topics that were brought up. and then we get the fucking 2018 run which does NEITHER and just seeks to make it worse for shock value without being even remotely thoughtful about anything it does! wow.

we could have had some really interesting growth for eddie and the symbiote’s relationship by honestly addressing things like eddie’s illness, hypocrisy as anti-venom, his status as a victim of abuse, and so on...

of course i know if i say “eddie is a victim” people will get hissy but like.... i’m not saying he’s an innocent blameless baby who was manipulated into being the weirdo he is... i’m just saying... he’s a victim of abuse. he’s been taken advantage of a lot. almost any help he’s received has required some kind of reciprocation.

he’s a shithead and he went off the deep-end after new ways to die because remender’s version of eddie fucking sucks, he’s smug and weird and violent, and also he’s been neglected and tortured and abused and experimented on and he needs therapy and blah blah blah

he’s also not some fuckin accidental drunk driver who was hit into thinking he’s innocent. that’s so fucking--jeez. everything about these retcons donny has been doing miss the point even more than the comics he says he loves so much. it’s wild. like i don’t like new ways to die OR new ways to live, remender’s run was okay but i hated the way he wrote eddie, marvel knights spider-man just sucks in general, the hunger 03 also sucks, but like they do feed into each other in a way that.... sort of makes sense....

i just wish there was a way any of the comics would have said, “hey look there are some ways in which eddie is a victim but there are also some ways in which he needs to take responsibility for his actions”

but that kind of nuanced take is impossible for the way these comics are put out and canceled and retconned and so on forever.. it’s so ... ugh.....

the hunger 03 sucks... it also influenced over a decades’ worth of Venom comics including costa’s in its own weird way.... and i just wish we could simultaneously be like, Yes the symbiote is not inherently evil or corrupting but Also it did abuse Eddie, and Yes Eddie has been treated poorly for a great deal of his life and Also is a motherfucker who needs to be held responsible for his actions.

Is this hypocritical to be like, “can we address the 2000s” while also saying “2018 run is not valid”

in my defense even the shitty 2000s were like a continuity and didn’t try to fully retcon every single aspect of venom lore that ever existed (tho it sure did plenty of retconning....) whereas the current run... is doing exactly that....

of course this goddamn run will probably also influence the following comics unless the next writers retcon the retcons or like, ignore it and it gets put into its own earth or something. idk. like no one really counts dark origin right? and that works cause it also had a negligible influence on the rest of the comics. but like, the bad hunger had a very lasting impact on the comics. so i guess we just hope that donny cates, despite currently selling super well, does not actually influence any of the comics that come after?

i don’t fuckin know. i just think it kind of sucks that like “eddie was abused” is something that gets used as either a “lol no that never happened and if you talk about it you hate the symbiote�� or else an excuse to demonize the symbiote even after its own character growth arcs in the apparently supremely unpopular gotg and space knight stuff... lol

maybe if every fucking series from 2013 to 2016 (minus costa which is honestly more 2017) didn’t get canned we could have gotten more. like honestly, 2016′s Carnage--for all its flaws--seemed like it had something to say about Eddie as a character, about his flaws and so on, and I gotta wonder where that was going. It flat out says “Venom didn’t make Eddie Brock a bastard” so like? But then at the same time all of the symbiotes in that series were completely silent so? I don’t even know.

Cullen Bunn was clearly going somewhere too but I have no idea where other than “symbiote is alive but has trouble communicating” and “eddie is coming down from his murder spree as he realizes flash thompson is in fact helping people as agent venom”

the two fit together in a very strangely complementary way. sometimes i gotta wonder about a universe in which those two comics in particular ran concurrently to address venom, flash, toxin, and eddie’s many issues. but toxin’s probably gone... though in my heart they are with jubulile and her mom in south africa, learning what it’s like to be part of a loving family...

man. the resigned “Okay.” at the end of twav...... twav good imo.

anyway

i don’t even know what the point of this is. i’m all over the place in this post. it’s frustrating that donny has made it kinda impossible to bring up eddie’s victimhood without like... qualifying it to the ends of the earth to clarify that you don’t think he’s some kind of pure cinnamon roll who’s been dreadfully manipulated for 12 years....

I feel like I’m not making any sense!!! Words are hard.

I feel like I’ve kinda been avoiding writing about the symbiote though in part because it’s hard for me to balance that many characters and in part because of Donny’s stupid bullshit, which is dumb as fuck but I guess that’s what he wanted huh!!!! Need to read Lethal Protector to cleanse my palate but it’s taking forever to get it from the library because they only have one copy.

ugh

The symbiote is not an evil creature like he wants everyone to think... goddammit.... but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t carefully address both its and Eddie’s mistakes without fabricating new different mistakes to obscure the previous ones. Or whatever. Fuckin I don’t know lol the entirety of the continuity is just a bunch of bullshit. 80s-90s continuity largely separate from 2000-20...15ish continuity largely separate AGAIN from the 2016 continuity yet also directly tied to it, against completely separated from the 2018 continuity which is off saying “fuck you” to literally every venom writer to ever exist since Eddie’s conception, ironically including the guy who wrote the cursed hunger

What am I trying to say! I don’t know! i feel like a broken record. There’s a lot of empty space between Agent Venom and 2016 that was never filled! also between 2016 and 2018 lmfao.

Donny “everything went wrong and I’m not going to explain how other than ‘God’ and ‘Eddie lost his job cause screaming symbiote’“ Cates really pullin some shit. what do you mean eddie tends to work toward solving his own problems EVEN WHILE DYING. waid’s mini-story in NWTD showed that eddie, despite being sad and sick and exhausted was still like.... eddie, stubbornly searching out his own solutions and getting angry. ofc i’m not sure how well it succeeded at parts. the comics in those days were still pretty steeped in the weird symbiote hallucinations that it was never clear if they were meant to be caused by the symbiote or just eddie’s sick brain. like the Last Temptation. I have a love-hate relationship with those two issues... I think they’re pretty well-done but also something about them just rubs me the wrong way.

Anyway back to Cates: it’s not like there wasn’t space for a spiral after FH or anything. You could have really dug into Eddie and the symbiote’s insecurities wrt family and parenting. but nah. let’s just make it so there’s a SECRET CHILD, and oh the pre-established sibling? we could have dug into her and made her a real character. but no, she doesn’t exist, women are either fake or dead or violated.

asshole.

but again like..... the 03 hunger, cursed and bad... like... it’s still workable. you can work with the corrupting forces, the addiction metaphor (on the SYMBIOTE’S part, with adrenaline) and the intense codependency, and still have them move on and into a healthier-by-comparison relationship.

but cates’ run is like... much harder to recover from if it has as lasting of an effect, because it leaves no part untouched, and goes beyond “normal” abuse into really weird unforgiveable territory... like the canon of that comic is the canon in which everything has been completely changed into something unrecognizable.

i joke about my AUs being unrecognizable because, visually at least, they WOULD be unrecognizable for most Venom fans, but the comics inform them as characters a lot in the stories i write in those AUs, from the 96 good hunger, to the 03 bad hunger, to space knight to venom inc, and so on. But donny cates really is out here essentially reverse-engineering retcons to justify his characterizations.

barely related: the way eddie was raised and the way he coped by overachieving and so on and so forth makes me think he would have--despite presumably gaining a great deal of confidence in college once out of his father’s home--been really vulnerable to being taken advantage of by like, other students or teachers, but idk how exactly to articulate what i mean like... uh... not even that he WAS taken advantage of but that his need for validation would have left him open to it... i guess??

that’s got pretty much nothing to do with this post though but kinda ties into what i’ve said before about how i think eddie was a withdrawn and isolated adolescent who only opened up in college. why i disagree with donny’s retcon for that reason in addition to other reasons--the way he’d been shown to be bullied as a kid in previous comics, as well as the lack of history of alcoholism, the clarification in lethal protector that carl wasn’t physical, so on and so forth.

again that’s not related to this post really... and it’s like, a good 50% headcanon, but it makes sense in my head as something that fits his history?? i guess?

#nadia reads venom #this is way too fuckin long what am i even talking about anymore i don't know #long post #this is basically half of what i think about 24/7 #sometimes u just gotta barf out a bunch of words #to organize your thoughts #now... did i succeed in organizing my thoughts? never.

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valeriemperez · 6 years ago

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Any other asks about the latest fandom incident are going under this cut, and I will not be making another post about it:

Just kinda feels like you're placing more of the blame on GG then you are on the actual media that could do better. I feel that GG has a right to stand up for himself. And it's suddenly his fault and his responsibility to shield CP from racism.

Though it may feel that way, it’s not what is happening. This is why I retweeted and liked tweets directed at media outlets, whereas all I did to Grant was like his post and say “no one deserves to be body shamed.”

Honestly no a week won't a difference in a long run imo. I don't think as racists keep piling on her she'll think "oh well I had that one week that wasn't so bad so I guess this is fine " I guess for me what GG does for CP behind the scenes has more of a long term effect then making things a little less worse for one week.

I am sure that Grant and Candice’s actions BTS have more of a long term effect on the show, I never suggested otherwise. On fandom behavior? Not at all.

I think you're giving the uglier side of the fandom way too much credit. When GG supported the "run iris run" it only inspired parts of the fandom to be against it. Take a browse through the comment section of the iris poster that's on his IG. I legit argued with a GG Stan on Instagram that they should be kinder CP cause she's GG's friend and the response was "I don't care if GG likes her I'm still going to hate her." At most they'll pretend to be nice for a week then go back to being horrible

G supporting RIR inspired some people to comment negatively, sure. But him making a post after that saying, “If you are hateful and racist towards my friend and costar, I will block you” probably would not cause that same reaction. But we will never know.

I actually disagree if you think public support is more important than the private support he's given her. I think a lot of you have some unreasonable expectations of GG making a post and the fandom going "guess we won't be racist anymore". GG is not enough to make someone give up that kind of hate in their heart I'm sorry if you thought he'd be the one to solve that problem. What he's done for her BTS and to the producers has a much longer effect then maybe the fandom playing nice for a day

I don’t think public support is more important, and I don’t think it’ll stop racism. This sounds similar to the ask above, so I think the same answer stands.

Yeah he'll shut haters up for a day. Then the SB fans who hate when GG does something nice for CP will get more jealous and aggressive. The fanboys who hate CP and will always hate her will continue to attack her. I'm not saying him publicly saying it won't be nice but if it does happen I think a lot of you will be disappointed in that it probably won't change anything.

We’ll never know.

Honest I feel like GG could publicly speak out but when it doesn't fix anything the fandom will continue to blame GG for everything. Especially since to me it makes more sense to confront media sites for not doing more for CP then to blame GG for having the gall to stand up for himself.

We have been confronting the media sites about it, don’t worry.

So Grant is only allowed to publicly defend himself if he defends other people? Also at some point it became his sole responsibility to defend everyone else? Maybe I'm reading you wrong but you're coming across as saying "Since he's not showing the support I want him to show that means he's not supportive to Candice".

I never said that, he is very welcome to defend himself. And yes, you are reading it wrong, because I have specifically stated that he is supportive of Candice and that she receives and appreciates that support.

Your stance on this seriously is that the reason CP continues to get racist attacks is because GG never made a public statement. I think you have this idea that GG is willfully denying CP any relief from being attacked. Even with GG's case the people who supported him are the ones who always supported him. The people who attacked him were pretty much laughing at him saying they won't stop because he made a post. GG got some press for sure but it won't change anything in the long run.

No, that is not my stance. My stance is that Grant has the power to make more people aware of the situation, and to make some people feel shame for their actions, but he hasn’t used it. Several people who attacked him beforehand apologized in the comments and said they hadn’t thought about it that way.

Several of his coworkers commented on the post he made supporting him and Shethority reposted his statement on their IG story to show love. Whereas when he accidentally liked the comment saying Iris should be killed off, he did not make a comment on Candice’s insta saying “I love working with you and can’t wait to continue!” or whatever, he merely went to the IGs of people claiming he wanted her killed off to say he never meant to like that comment. Whether things will change in the long run or not, all I said is that Grant doesn’t make videos or posts or leave comments when it comes to the hatred his co-stars have been sent. That’s it, that’s the whole point.

I know you're not saying more but I want to say this last thing. You're actually not simply saying he's doesn't publicly support her you're twisting it into a thing where GG is the reason CP gets racial attacks everyday and assuming you know what the outcome will be if he supports her the way you want her to be supported. You're more accusing GG of something that's not his fault.

You’re twisting it into that, I’m specifically not saying that. I already said we don’t know the outcome if he were to speak out publicly.

I mean he gave a lot of support for Candice for the Run Iris Run episode. He actually did say how great she was in it which goes along with the "I love working with you" comment that you want him to do. I guess I'm confused cause he has given that kind of public support you want him to give her but you don't want to recognize it?

I already acknowledged that he’s given her support. I’m specifically talking about pushing back against the hatred, as opposed to “I don’t see that in my mentions” or whatever. I don’t know what else you want me to say, because I still enjoy Grant as an actor and their dynamic as costars.

But lets be real here no matter what GG does he ain't changing anyone's mind. Him making a post might make you feel better about things but I doubt it'll actually making any difference to how the fandom treats CP. It just sucks that to you none of the previous support GG has given CP matters because to you the only thing that matters is that he give a public statement that would maybe have the fandom behave for no more than a week.

I already said that we will never know what would happen, and that it isn’t the only thing that matters. You’re the one twisting my words.

I don't get it tho wouldn't GG's actions having more of a long term effect on the show be more important and useful to CP? I certainly find it more important. I'd rather GG stick up for CP and WA behind the scenes and ensure their place of importance on the show then him making this grand public statement you want that might (and this is a big MIGHT) make the fandom play nice to CP for a short period.

I’m very happy with the support Grant has shown Candice behind the scenes, and I know she is happy with it as well. It’s not an either/or situation.

You're kind of sounding like Candice hasn't received support from Coworkers, producers, and shethority. Yes for one day they showed support to Grant but that doesn't erase the support they've given Candice in the past and will continue to do so in the future. It feels like you're mad people showed GG support, are they not allowed to do that?

I have already explained several times that Candice is not without support or friendship. My original statements were as they stand. Grant supports Candice and presumably others in private and in a way that satisfies her. Grant has not publicly spoken up about fandom racism or the misogyny directed against his costars. CNN and TIME etc. would need a lot more than a post from Candice or Anna to write up pieces meant to shame the racists.

Well, reading all of that was draining. I'm glad CP doesn't require the support of others to stand up for herself. I'm disappointed that she is so often there alone fending for herself (on social media). I don't know what goes on BTS and don't care. It's like having your racist grandma around a POC..."she'll call you n-word but she's old and you know I'm not like that." "Can you just tell her not to call me that?" "Huh, oh no, she won't change, just ignore her, but I like you so its ok."

I’m sorry it was difficult to read. :( And I definitely understand that feeling of helplessness.

(1)Wow. I’m really srry ppl keep misconstruing what you were saying about the GG incident. Some fans seem to be getting VERY sensitive about this situation on his behalf. You were literally just stating facts. He has never publicly defended CP from the negativity she receives from fandom. He’s not obligated to do it, but it would be nice if he did. She clearly has his support BTS but that has little to no effect on negative fandom behavior. (2)GG publicly defending CP wouldn’t automatically make the racist misogynistic haters like her, but them knowing they would potentially catch a block from him would definitely curb the negativity thrown her way, & anyone who doesn’t think so really underestimates GG’s power in this fandom.

Thank you, love. And yes, that’s pretty much all I’m saying.

What was the AV club incident ? And the dm grant sent ? :)

Grant accidentally retweeted an article praising Flash S1 that said Candice’s Iris was the weak link and she should then be recast. He picked one fan to follow and DM his apology that he hadn’t actually read the whole thing and that he loves his whole cast, then deleted his retweet. AJK kept his retweet up despite backlash, meanwhile.

I think the wording is what's throwing some Anons off. You're not saying GG has never publicly supported CP cause we all know he has The support he gave RIR being one example. I think what's being said here is people wished he "called out" that racist part of the fandom. Like you said it's not an either/or situation. GG has shown CP support both publicly and BTS but in this one area some wished he did more. Doesn't make GG a bad person nor does it remove the love and support between him and CP

You’re probably right. And yes to everything you said!

#the flash for ts #anonymous #tatiana's thoughts #more asks under the cut

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bthump · 7 years ago

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The Brightest Thing - A Griffith Analysis

Part Three - you made Griffith weak

Part One Part Two

To Griffith, the dream is emotional security. It’s assurance that if he’s dirty, then it’s because it’s necessary to be so, so he can keep winning for the sake of the dead. It’s a way for him to repress his guilt and self loathing, because when he gets that kingdom-shaped seal of approval, it will have been worth it.

So when I say that Griffith’s relationship with Guts is beginning to replace the dream, that’s what I mean - rather than relying on the dream to reassure himself that everything he’s done, even his very existence, is worthwhile, he could rely on Guts for that. He starts opening up to Guts, rather than repressing through his dream.

Despite Griffith's Promrose Hall speech, nothing actually changes on his end. He prioritizes Guts above the dream again when he sends a search party after him and Casca despite the nobles he’s trying to suck up to telling him he shouldn’t. He drops everything during the Battle of Doldrey to have a quiet panic attack when Guts’ sword breaks. His first reaction upon achieving a huge milestone on the path to his dream when the Band is officially integrated into the royal army is to find Guts and share the moment with him.

And boy I love how the chapter that depicts Griffith’s moment of triumph for his dream ends with Griffith just smiling at Guts across a vast ballroom.

The story between Promrose and the end of the war is filled with little moments that are suggestive of Griffith’s reliance on Guts. Another of my favourites:

I just hope he stays calm and composed.

Casca worried that volunteering to defeat an army of thirty thousand with five thousand men might be an act of recklessness because a predatory pedophile who took advantage of Griffith’s extreme self loathing when he was like fourteen is the leader of that army? Naaaaaah impossible, Griffith would never let that faze him. Oh and speaking of Griffith being calm and composed, this is my last battle, it’s almost time to leave.

But Tombstone of Flame is the main attraction here.

This is the second night of assassinations, and it’s a neat mirror to the first. Where Guts came away from Julius’ assassination consumed with inadequacy, self-loathing, and generally feeling like a monster, now it’s Griffith who comes away totally fucked up and filled with self hatred.

Between Promrose and Tombstone we learn Griffith’s backstory. This adds to the mirror image effect between these assassinations by revealing Griffith’s insecurities to us so we can understand his perspective, and it serves as its own parallel to this scene.

And this is the scene where we see that not only does Guts surpass the dream in importance to Griffith, but he could have potentially become a much more emotionally healthy alternative to it. This is where we see how Griffith could have not just prioritized Guts, but replaced the function of the dream with his relationship with Guts.

And I want to emphasize the emotionally healthier part. One of Berserk’s most consistent themes imo is that relationships with others are a superior way of dealing with your issues compared to dreams and swords.

eg, Godo, our favourite dispenser of wisdom, has some pretty telling lines to that effect.

You were right beside those irreplacable things... yet you couldn’t bear to immerse yourself together in sorrow with them. So instead... you ran away so that your own malice could burn inside you.

Guts’ personal growth post-Eclipse is associated with making friends; his backsliding and mistakes are associated with going off on his own to fight monsters; he begins to overcome his revulsion to touch when he becomes part of the Hawks;

on the rooftop after the Zodd conversation Guts recalled the night he killed Gambino and wondered if this was the answer he’d been searching for since then (family) before dedicating his sword to Griffith; part of his healing process for his childhood trauma is talking about it to Casca; etc. And Guts and Griffith’s relationship is very much included, even though it’s far more of a tragic missed opportunity.

The second half of Tombstone of Flame Part 2, aka my favourite chapter of Berserk, abruptly shifts tone from triumph and pure badassery to quiet, contemplative vulnerability halfway through. As a chapter I feel like it really encompasses the highs and lows of Griffith’s character, from defeating his enemies and cooly predicting Foss’ actions to wrap everything up in a neat little bow, to highlighting his guilt, self-loathing, and emotional dependency on Guts.

Here, Griffith opens up to Guts in an intensely vulnerable moment.

I involved you in this filthy scheme... and I didn’t even get my hands dirty. I left all the dangerous, taxing work to you...

Idiot! What kinda question’s that for the guy who killed a hundred men?

This is another scene the significance of which cannot be overstated. There’s so much to unpack here I hardly know where to start. Like... this is the moment. This is what Griffith flashes back to when he’s fucking Charlotte and burning his life down around him. This is a moment Guts remembers when slowly realizing that Griffith loves him. This is what the Godhand shows Griffith to get him to agree to make the sacrifice. Guts remembers this after Griffith makes the sacrifice. This moment is basically the linchpin of Berserk.

This is both a mirror to Guts overhearing the Promrose Hall speech, and a call-back to Griffith in the river after Gennon.

So first, the set-up of this chapter recalls Promrose Hall strongly. It’s the second night of assassinations, Promrose Hall took place on the first night. When Guts assassinated Julius he came away from that encounter wracked with guilt over accidentally killing Adonis as well, strongly and traumatically reminded of his childhood, and basically thinking of himself as a monster in a way inseparable from his own childhood trauma:

Guts is consumed with self-loathing, comparing himself to monsters like Zodd overtly, and like Donovan symbolically. He’s also reminded of killing Gambino, like, basically this event just brings a pile of old issues crashing down on Guts’ head.

In a concussed daze he wants nothing but to find Griffith, presumably for reassurance. I don’t want to get too heavily into Guts’ side of things here, but remember that this is shortly after he dedicated himself to Griffith when Griffith told him he risked his life for him for no reason. I think it’s safe to say that he wants that reassurance again, he wants to feel the same sense of being valued and respected that he got during that staircase conversation.

And instead he overhears Griffith telling Charlotte that he has no friends. More to the point, what he gets is Griffith’s dream blocking the emotional bridge that Guts is trying to cross like a troll.

In Tombstone, Guts and Griffith assassinate the Queen and this time it’s Griffith who turns to Guts for emotional reassurance in a moment of vulnerability.

The way killing Adonis reminds Guts of his many, many issues is echoed in the strong parallel between Tombstone and Griffith in the river. We don’t get to see what’s going through Griffith’s head the way we see into Guts’, but we can infer an awful lot based on this comparison.

In the river, Griffith asked someone for reassurance after doing something he considers shameful for the sake of his dream.

Casca’s response isn’t all that reassuring.

She cuts herself off in the process of automatically reassuring him and instead she asks why he was with Gennon. This is totally understandable and not at all something I blame Casca for lol. She’s a kid, she’s understandably disgusted at the thought of Griffith having sex with Gennon willingly knowing that he’s a pedophile, and she’s out of her depth in a highly charged, difficult discussion. But that doesn’t change the fact that Griffith probably took her answer as a “yes.”

Griffith then goes into his self-harming dream spiel, as he reiterates to himself exactly why it was worth it to dirty himself for his dream while tearing open his arms. What may have been his first attempt to open up to someone else in a moment of extreme emotional vulnerability was shut down, inadvertently, so he violently returns to his original justification and defense mechanism, his dream.

The saddest thing about Tombstone, to me, is that this time Guts brings up the dream for him.

Ain’t this part of the path to your dream? You believe that, don’t you?

Guts’ answer is a depressing double-whammy of both implicitly agreeing that Griffith is cruel, and reminding him that the cruelty is necessary to achieve his goals. This second time we see Griffith try to open up to someone is also shut down, inadvertently, and the fact that Guts is the one to bring up his dream this time rather than Griffith tells us that the dream wasn’t even on his mind. Guts’ answer comes as a very painful reminder.

Like, imo this is huge. In the first part of this meta I tried to show how wholly reliant Griffith is on his dream. It’s what he clings to as his shield against his intense self-loathing and guilt. It’s a way for him to tell himself that everything awful and dirty that he’s done was worth it, and that one day he’ll be able to prove that.

Well this moment shows Griffith forgetting all that in the face of Guts’ potential acceptance, until Guts reminds him and his self loathing comes crashing down on him all at once.

If his dream was what he turned to for validation from fate or some higher power, then now Guts is who he turns to for validation. He needs Guts’ reassurance that he isn’t cruel. He needs Guts to see his “dirty side” and continue to remain by his side - that is all the validation he needs now. Not fate, not a kingdom, just love.

The same way the only thing Guts needed in order to feel like he was where he belonged wasn’t his own dream, but the knowledge that Griffith loved him, the knowledge that he had after their staircase conversation about Zodd, and which dissolved after Promrose.

But instead Guts, with Griffith’s dream on his mind getting in between them again, says the wrong thing and Griffith looks the exact same way he looked when he felt like he was responsible for a kid’s death.

So, to sum up, Griffith feels self-loathing, tries to open up to other people to assuage his sense of self-loathing in the hope that, having seen him at his worst, they don’t see him as filthy/cruel the way he sees himself, and each time his self loathing is only reinforced. The first time he clings to his dream in lieu of Casca’s reassurance, while the second time Guts is the one who brings up his dream, in so many words pushing Griffith away and telling him to cling to the dream instead of him.

Each time the dream serves as a replacement for real human connection and love.

The first time Griffith was able to close himself off, place a hand on her shoulder, and tell Casca, “it’s nothing,” when he realized how emotionally vulnerable he was in that moment. But when it comes to Guts, he’s much too far gone to separate himself and play the perfect leader.

Now, as opposed to putting the mask of perfection on and saying, “it’s nothing,” with Guts he says:

Unlike Promrose Hall, Guts putting the dream in between him and Griffith and thwarting Griffith’s efforts to open up to him and take comfort in his potential reassurance doesn’t immediately ruin their relationship. I’d say that Griffith is very accustomed to seeing himself as a monster by now, so while Guts’ implicit confirmation of that fact is incredibly fucking depressing considering what could have been, it’s nothing Griffith didn’t expect to hear.

Guts remains the man allowed to see behind the mask and into the real him.

And then there’s this contrast:

This is depicted as a cute moment, but it’s also indicative of how utterly weak and emotionally vulnerable Griffith is now that he’s let Guts in. With Casca he was still able to step back and remove himself, put the mask back on, and be the one to comfort her despite clearly needing it more.

Now Guts is the one to put his hand on Griffith’s shoulder. It’s not depicted as a hugely significant and character revealing action the way this moment in the river is, but it’s a perfect illustration of what Griffith finally realizes after it’s too late:

And it’s exactly the moment Miura uses to show us how emotionally vulnerable Griffith has become to Guts. Griffith couldn’t separate himself when he tried, and now he doesn’t try, he just accepts Guts’ assessment that his cruelty is necessary with a sad smile, and intends to continue on with Guts at his side.

Finally, there’s seemingly one thing missing from this comparison between Griffith in the river and Griffith in Tombstone of Flame: the self harm.

But, well, it’s not actually missing, we just don’t get to see it until a month later:

And the reason we’re not shown Griffith’s self-harm scratches*** until this scene is because it’s actually another big contrast between Griffith’s reaction to Casca and his reaction to Guts.

Presumably, based on the other parallels I drew between Tombstone and Casca’s flashback, and based on the placement of these panels - Griffith’s memory of Guts reminding him about his dream and questioning Griffith’s resolve followed immediately by our first glimpse of those scratch marks on Griffith’s shoulder - Griffith self-harmed at some point closely following the assassinations.

One can imagine it following exactly the same pattern we saw with Casca: Griffith asks someone if they think he’s X thing he hates about himself, doesn’t hear a no, and then some time following he reinforces his resolve, tells himself that it’s ok, it’s necessary for him to do these dirty, cruel things for the sake of achieving his all-important dream, for the sake of the people who have given their lives for it, for the sake of making their sacrifices meaningful, etc, while self-harming. Just like he did in the river.

The contrast comes now, after Guts has left.

Griffith could probably convince himself after Tombstone that the things he does for the sake of his dream are necessary and important and it’s worth becoming a monster to achieve his goal. “You believe that, don’t you?” Guts had to remind him, but Griffith agrees. “You’re right.”

But after Guts leaves him?

When Guts leaves, Griffith takes it as a rejection. Those little moments that by themselves never ruined their relationship or amounted to more than mild rebuffs have probably turned into wholesale condemnations in Griffith’s mind. Guts saying, “just order me to do it,” goes from a mild reminder that they don’t have an equal relationship to, “I won’t dirty myself voluntarily, but I’ll do it if you order me to because that’s my job.” Guts saying, “ain’t this part of the path to your dream?” turns into, “your dream is paved with cruelty and I’m sick of being dragged through the dirt with you.”

Griffith winning Guts’ loyalty in a fight turns into Guts being forced to associate with him, and leaving as soon as he’s accomplished what he thinks Griffith wanted him for, thereby fulfilling his end of the bargain.

The moment Griffith is remembering here is our first glimpse of them together. “It’s funny... you’re the first person I’ve ever spoken to like this.” It’s a memory of Griffith choosing to open up to someone and share his innermost thoughts for the very first time. And he’s convincing himself that Guts was disgusted by him from the very first glimpse he got of the Griffith underneath the perfect image, and wanted to escape him since the beginning.

Ironically, we know exactly how Guts felt in this moment: “At that time he shone before me as something beautiful, noble, and larger than life.” It makes the choice of this particular memory all the more painful.

The other thing this particular memory signifies is Griffith’s driving motivation behind his dream. This is the scene where he tells Guts all about his belief in fate and his desire to know what he’s destined for - it’s our first indication of what Griffith’s dream means to him. It’s a contrast: Griffith then, just beginning to open up to Guts and explaining the pragmatic philosophy behind his dream, and Griffith now, falling to pieces because he believes Guts is rejecting him.

In other words, Griffith then, reliant on his dream, vs Griffith now, reliant on Guts.

The very fact that Griffith is the one challenging him, refusing to let Guts go without a fight demonstrates how far the dream is from Griffith’s mind. Remember how important it is for the Hawks to choose to follow him? How even when Guts first joined, the duel and the stakes were chosen entirely by Guts and Griffith just went along with it? Now that’s not even a factor. The feelings of guilt lying just below Griffith’s surface don’t matter at all in the face of Guts leaving. Griffith is now so far beyond distancing himself from Guts with reminders that he may die for his dream that he’s willing to risk killing him directly, in an irrational attempt to negate Guts’ rejection.

“I guess it’s because they themselves chose to fight,” is a careful rationalization, and Griffith is no longer anywhere close to capable of rationalization in this moment. This is what happens when the emotions he buries and spends his life denying burst to the surface. Despite being more emotionally open with him than he’s ever been with anyone before, he’s never put a label on his feelings for Guts and never even identified them to himself. He asks Guts, “do I need a reason each time I put myself in harm’s way for your sake?” he tells Guts, “it’s for those reasons that I’m asking you to do this,” he tells Guts, “you’re rough enough to share this with. To the end,” he tells Guts, “you’re the first person I’ve ever spoken to like this,” but he never tells Guts that he cares for him, prioritizes him, trusts him, loves him, and I don’t think he’s ever told himself either.

Having ignored and rationalized away his emotions for most of his life, now he’s finally run out of logic and rationalizations. He has no experience dealing with feelings like this because he lives in denial of them; I genuinely don’t think he himself understands what he’s feeling or why as Guts announces that he’s leaving, so he ends up lashing out through an established framework that he does understand, that Guts himself once suggested as a way to win his loyalty, that, might I point out, Judeau, Corkus, and Pippin all think is reasonable, and Guts is reassured by lol.

Griffith won Guts in a fight, so Griffith will keep Guts through another fight, because he can’t bear the thought of Guts rejecting him.

Which brings me back to the scratch marks on his shoulder.

He remembers the moment Guts implicitly agreed that Griffith is cruel and called his resolve into question. “You believe that, don’t you?”

A month earlier his answer was yes. He scratched himself and told himself that everything was necessary for the sake of his dream.

Here’s his answer now:

No.

He doesn’t scratch himself - he traces the marks, trying to remind himself that yes, it’s worth becoming a monster for the sake of his dream, even if it drove Guts away... but it isn’t. Now instead of self-harming he curls up and cries. No blood this time, just tears.

Griffith scratching himself is tied to affirming his dream and repressing his feelings of self-loathing, and the pointed absence of scratching here tells us that he can no longer affirm his dream or repress his self-loathing. It’s not worth dirtying himself for, it’s not worth the deaths on his head, it’s not worth becoming a monster, because that, he believes, is why Guts left, and nothing was worth losing Guts, not even his dream.

This whole sequence with Charlotte*** is Griffith’s attempt to fall back on his dream after losing Guts. Charlotte represents his dream perfectly - Judeau even reminds the audience of that fact in the chapter preceding the second duel (chapter 34). The key to his dream is Charlotte, and Griffith showing up at her window is an irrational attempt to attain his dream now, no matter how premature it is, because he is in dire need of the emotional reassurance his dream provides him.

Guts is gone, seemingly having rejected him, and Griffith retreats to his dream the way it’s always been a defense against his self-loathing and a way of repressing his emotions.

Take all the frightening and sad things... and cast them into the fire.

But again, it doesn’t work this time - it’s not enough to cope with the loss of Guts.

I think there is also a strong component of self-destruction here. Griffith knows how risky sleeping with Charlotte is, she even points it out while he’s standing in a tree outside her window. The King alludes to Griffith “destroying himself,” as well, and everyone and their horse except Corkus, stubbornly, connects Griffith’s meltdown after Guts left to the way he and the Hawks are declared traitors the next morning. It may not be a planned suicide, but it’s an act of self-immolation just the same, and something Griffith did knowing the risks full-well.

It’s no surprise when he lands himself in a dungeon.

Oh this chapter. This chapter this chapter this chapter. I’ll admit, it’s been giving me some trouble, not because it doesn’t fit with my point, but because it fits too well lol. I debated for a long time whether I’d try really delving into it or whether I’d omit some stuff and just like, ignore the fact that I genuinely believe this is the meaning behind it.

But lbr I’m taking the first option, as hard as it’s been to find a way to talk about this shit that doesn’t like... give entirely the wrong impression, because it’s basically the capstone to this part of Griffith’s character arc, and therefore this part of this meta, and it encapsulates everything about Griffith’s self-loathing perfectly.

Everything he calls the King out on is something he hates about himself.

You’ve lived on by resigning yourself to the monster [war] you envision. But you’ve by no means tried to harness that monster.

The second part is fairly obvious. The King was born to the throne and didn’t even bother to use his power for anything worthwhile. Griffith wasn’t born into that power but he spent his life trying to attain it, and just as he was about to succeed he threw it away, ultimately accomplishing nothing. "This is... worthless.” Both of them failed to utilize that power.

The first part, the mockery of the King’s feelings for Charlotte, was the part that tripped me up for a while, because frankly, it’s such a clear parallel to Griffith’s feelings for Guts, to the point where when I tried to write this section while ignoring it it felt like a really glaring omission, but oh man, let’s be real here, it’s unpleasant as fuck.

I’m choosing to give Miura the benefit of the doubt because while I don’t think he’s above comparing gay pining to incestuous rape, I do think, as I’ve said, that this scene is about Griffith’s self loathing, and Griffith considering his own feelings to be just as pathetic and grotesque as the King’s lust for his daughter makes a depressing amount of sense to me.

First I want to explain why this parallel is so clear to me because I’d hate to look like I’m making this up. So first, once we’re agreed that the King bemoaning the weight of lives on his shoulders and assuming Griffith has no idea what that’s like, and getting a very knowing look from Griffith in response, is as clear a parallel between Griffith and the King as you get, I feel like it’s impossible to ignore how neatly obsessive love for someone fits in as well.

Griffith’s feelings for Guts have been defined by giving himself in exchange for him, risking his life and his dream/kingdom for him, as Casca points out at every possible opportunity. And now he finally has given up a kingdom for him - or at least, because of him.***

We know why Griffith is in that dungeon. Griffith knows why he’s in that dungeon. (“He was the reason I’ve been thrown into this darkness”) Casca knows why he’s in that dungeon. (“Because you left us! Because you abandoned Griffith!”) Rickert, a little kid, knows why he’s in that dungeon. (“What I think is... it must’ve been over you, Guts.”) Eventually even Guts gets a clue. (“Was I the one who brought all this upon you?”)

Like, just to reiterate the main point of this meta, Griffith’s narrative so far is about becoming emotionally reliant on Guts as a defense against the weight of death on his shoulders, instead of the dream which had been his defense until Guts. This scene is about the King’s emotional reliance on Charlotte as a defense against the weight of death on his shoulders instead of using the “sword called the throne” to defend himself against that weight by doing something worthwhile with it - something to justify what the King’s subjects have been dying for.

And it’s no coincidence that the throne is described as a sword.

In Berserk, swords are coping mechanisms. Griffith is mocking the King for his emotional dependence on someone else to shield his heart rather than using his “sword” for that purpose, which is, of course, exactly what led to Griffith ending up in a dungeon.

The King goes on this diatribe:

I would give myself... even this kingdom in exchange for her! She’s my whole life!

What value is there in this world? Wars rage on and the people’s lives are lost like they were insects! After how many decades of war and how many tens of thousands of corpses, we’ve finally built a time of remembered peace, but it’s only for an instant! On the underside, the monster named war is always seeking new blood, starting to brew itself anew! In the face of that monster, the will of one land’s king is powerless! The wisdom of one man is folly! And yet I cannot cease being king! There’s no way I can stop! In this... blood stained, meaningless world... if there is one single ray of hope to be found... it is... warmth. Only warmth covers and protects me from this world.

You’ve taken that one flower that gives me that warmth... and plucked it! Unforgiveable!

Alas, my poor Charlotte. I’ve brought her up for seventeen years. She knowing no impurity... now that she’s given herself up to the sport of a commoner... I’d rather that... rather that...

Directly from the King lamenting that monster called war and the lives lost to it, to declaring Charlotte his one defense against the world. His one means of protection from the weight of “the lives of all the people, all on [his] shoulders.”

Again, Guts was becoming Griffith’s defense against his feelings of guilt. A large portion of Griffith’s story revolves around how his relationship with Guts is in part a coping mechanism, a defense against self-loathing.

And not in a negative way - remember, compared to dreams and swords as coping mechanisms, finding emotional support in a connection with someone else is by far the superior option, according to Berserk as a whole.

Griffith’s expression of his feelings for Guts wasn’t altogether healthy, because Griffith is not altogether emotionally healthy lol. He’s an extremely repressed guilt-ridden obsessive dude who self harms and thinks achieving an arbitrary goal will justify his existence, and who fell in love, had no way to understand those feelings, and became very emotionally dependent without even noticing.

Hence freaking the fuck out, challenging Guts to a duel and thinking as he strikes that he’d rather kill him than let Guts reject him. But despite that, overall, we’re shown that Griffith’s feelings for and relationship with Guts could’ve helped him grow as a person, had their relationship been given a chance to flourish without misunderstandings getting in the way.

I’m pointing all this out because I’m trying very hard to avoid coming across like I’m saying that Griffith’s relationship with Guts is at all equivalent to the King’s relationship to his daughter.

Griffith and Guts’ relationship falls apart because of a failure to communicate and because neither realize that their feelings are mutual. Griffith believes that Guts is rejecting him when he leaves, but we the readers know that in reality Guts is leaving entirely because he loves Griffith and wants to be worthy of his friendship.

I believe that the parallel here between Griffith and Guts and the King and Charlotte is so utterly loathsome because it reflects how Griffith feels about himself, not because it’s anything close to an objective parallel or a commentary on relying on relationships with other people as a means of emotional support.

The King is nothing more than a lonely, miserable man who can’t find any reason to live beyond the one person he loves, while Griffith threw his life away over Guts’ perceived rejection, and he knows it. As much as he represses, he can’t deny this - when he curls up and weeps beside Charlotte, that’s Griffith failing to deny his feelings for Guts, and he later describes him as the reason he’s been thrown into the darkness of the torture chamber, and the sole sustenance keeping him alive. Griffith is realizing that somewhere down the line his life had switched from revolving around the dream to revolving around Guts, and he thinks it’s pathetic.

The distinction Griffith makes between the King wanting Charlotte to have him rather than having Charlotte is relevant too. I used to take this line as little more than Miura feeling like he needed to justify why the King eventually flees instead of continuing his sexual assault attempt - ie because Charlotte’s rejection was too much to bear - but it works within the framework of Griffith’s feelings for Guts very well, particularly in light of the second duel.

I mean

And again like, ngl I hate to do this lol, like I said I’m not thrilled by this parallel, but fuck, it works perfectly and I do think it’s deliberate:

The King attacking Charlotte is a parallel to Griffith challenging Guts to the second duel. In a way. Again, not an objective way, not in a way that’s truly comparable - hell, we get Guts’ inner monologue and he’s literally comforted by Griffith’s challenge while Judeau and co think it’s perfectly reasonable as former mercenaries - but within Griffith’s self-loathing mindset where he sees himself as a rejected monster, he sees himself in the King and his fucked up attraction to Charlotte. The King’s subsequent attack and “rejection” by Charlotte mirrors Griffith’s perception of attacking Guts and then being left, rejected, in the snow.

Griffith makes the distinction between having and wanting to be had because everything about his own breakdown revolves around Guts’ perceived rejection of him. Griffith thinks Guts sees him as a monster, and, through their duel, from Griffith’s perspective, Griffith was trying to keep Guts with him despite that rejection, against Guts’ will. In hindsight, removed from the heightened emotions of the moment, he believes his actions to be as pathetic as the King’s lust for Charlotte. He tried to “have” Guts against his will, when what he wanted was to be “had” by him - wanted by him, loved by him, accepted by him. He wanted Guts to want to stay with him, not to be forced to stay.

And of course, the supreme irony is that Guts did love Griffith, and that’s exactly why Guts was leaving. He wanted Griffith to want him, he just didn’t recognize Griffith’s irrational actions as a show of desperate need until it was too late. This is directly stated in the text several times, so I’m not going to try to justify this statement through a big tangent about Guts’ decision to leave. Here’s one of the most self-explanatory moments where Miura tells us what happened from Guts’ perspective:

So, again, the King attacking Charlotte is not an actual objective parallel; it’s a parallel when filtered through Griffith’s false framing of what happened between him and Guts as a vicious rejection, which ofc fits because Griffith is the one bringing it all up and condemning both the King and himself.

At the end of the day I don’t particularly care whether “If I can’t have him, I don’t care,” is taken as a super dark moment or barely a drop in the pond when it comes to dark things people do in Berserk. Judge Griffith harshly for it or go ‘meh people try to kill each other in Berserk all the time, he wasn’t even trying so much as accepting the possibility,’ I just want to draw a clear distinction between that and a father trying to rape his daughter, which I think is fair.

And now the King’s final condescending judgement.

“Such a worthless matter.” We know what that worthless matter is. The King thinks it was lust for Charlotte that landed him there, but we (and half the cast of Berserk, vocally) know that it was his feelings for Guts.

And on the very next page we transition to the King’s assault of Charlotte. The King is doing some projecting himself here - he mocks Griffith for destroying himself over lust for Charlotte (Guts) which is what the King immediately proceeds to do. This attempted rape decimates him as a person; the next time we see him he looks like he’s aged thirty years, and he’s growing senile - just as Griffith is tortured to irreversible physical damage after Guts’ rejection.

After Charlotte wakes up and screams a horrified no, we return to Griffith for the last page of the chapter:

Charlotte’s assault is perfectly bookended by Griffith in the dungeon, and the repetition of “worthless,” a word used three times in this chapter.

The first time it refers overtly to the King not utilizing his power to justify his existence and assuage the guilt on his shoulders, instead comforting himself with Charlotte, with the implication that this is how Griffith feels having thrown away his dream over Guts.

The second time the King uses it to refer to the matter that Griffith destroyed himself over, ie stupid, impulsive actions based on feelings for another person. The King thinks it’s Charlotte, but we know it’s Guts.

The third time is how Griffith feels about himself, a final conclusive statement after his mockery of the King's feelings for Charlotte, the King’s accidental mockery of his feelings for Guts, and Charlotte’s assault. The way this chapter is structured essentially tells us that the attempted rape scene applies in some way to Griffith’s final declaration of his own worthlessness, and hopefully I’ve made a convincing case for how it’s an illustration of his self-loathing regarding his feelings for Guts.

Griffith, thrown into the darkness of the dungeon, may as well have been plunged into his own self-loathing. “Worthless.”

SO! What’s left? The torturer rips off Griffith’s behelit a short while later, nicely symbolic of the lost dream. A year passes. Guts returns. And Casca neatly condenses this enormous meta into the four sentences I stole for titles and writes the conclusion to this section for me:

Griffith had to make himself strong - remember, that refers to the way he represses his emotions and projects his image of perfection, the way he smiled at Casca and put his hand on her shoulder after violently self harming.

Guts made Griffith weak because Griffith was starting to open up to him rather than repressing those emotions and relying solely on his dream to defend against everything that haunts him. Do I need a reason? It’s for those reasons that I’m asking you to do this. Do you think that I’m cruel?

After being rejected by Guts and believing that Guts sees him as a monster, the promise of his dream was no longer enough for him to rely on, and he crashed and burned in an implosion of self-loathing and feelings of worthlessness.

Griffith’s no good without Guts anymore because his feelings for Guts made him weak. He came to rely on Guts to sustain his heart, because people need other people, and Guts was the person Griffith needed.

Wish Casca could’ve written this whole thing for me, it would’ve been a lot shorter and neater lbr.

That’s the end of Part Three. The next and final part is going to explore how Guts growing more vital to Griffith than the dream leads, contrary to expectations, to Griffith sacrificing Guts for his dream.

Part 4 - Griffith’s no good without you

*** There is a common misconception that this is one big, thick scar rather than scratch marks, presumably thanks to the anime depicting it as such, but frankly, the anime got it wrong. There is zero reason for Griffith to have a scar there, and it would have no significance - Guts’ sword didn’t touch him, and if it had he’d have either a bruise or a gaping wound lol, not a scar. They are two parallel lines that you can see Griffith trace with two fingers right as he starts crying, and since we already know Griffith has a tendency to scratch himself, this leaves no doubt to me that they are two scratch marks, not one big mark of unknown origin.

*** I think the scene with Charlotte is deeply flawed, and I’m treating it as consensual sex in this analysis because I believe that’s what Miura intended it to be read as, despite shitty, misogynist, tropey writing. More on that here, if you’d like a further explanation.

*** I remember an old conversation I had with I think @yesgabsstuff and @mastermistressofdesire where one of you suggested that Griffith burning his life down by fucking Charlotte could be interpreted as a childish act of bargaining, at least subconsciously. Griffith trying to trade his dream for Guts. And I’m js, that rang true to me and this comparison made me remember it.

#griffguts #griffith #berserk meta #a #b #this is so long i'm sorry and i think the next part is even longer #character: griffith #theme: dreams #scene: tombstone of flame #theme: self loathing #theme: coping mechanisms #theme: self harm #arc: ga #scene: second duel #scene: casca's flashback

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winterchild-loves-sunshine · 8 years ago

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thanks for being realistic. the fact u think of the % of how many real ships we might have within 7 guys got me. honestly, i ship km really hard, but sometimes the reality hits me harder. like i know many shippers are actually overhyped a specific km youtuber, but for me, half of her stuffs might be a little reach. don't you think jm is a little hard to read. i totally down for jk, but sometimes jm makes me think he's doing fanservice, or maybe not, bcz he's such a tease and unpredictable.

hi anon~, welcome back (I guess you’re the one who asked about that particular ask) ^-^~I’m sorry for my late reply again, I’m so wrecked today too and I needed time to think about it.

Okay~, I dunno if it helps, but here is what I tell myself a lot (as much as I love them, ship them, basically root for them, want them to be happy together if possible of course): “My ship ain’t real until they confirm/say it themselves that they’re real”. And even until then, there’s still sth to consider, called “marketing strategy”, since this is the Kpop world we’re talking about (there have been idols dating simply for promoting their groups). However, with all my honesty, and my (biased) belief, BTS and Big Hit will never go that far. The members treasure the members themselves, and the members also treasure us fans.

This is getting so heavy somehow so lemme insert a gif to make things a little bit brighter

Okay I’m good to go. So does that mean they don’t do fanservice at all? Of course not. But they’ve toned it down throughout the years. I don’t follow other members as much as Jimin (it’s the truth, I’m a Jimin stan afterall), so I can’t really tell you about it. But for Jimin, I agree with some other people, that the Jimin now we see is more like the real Jimin, not less than the Jimin back in 2013-2014. That, by no means, implies that he was fake either. He could’ve been himself, but at the same time, he had to push himself outside his own norms too. It’s nothing unusual, since they just debuted, plus he was young, they needed attention, they needed to be entertaining, as rookies, they needed to do a lot of stuff.

Back to our babies Jimin and Jungkook, to be honest and realistic again, of course 100% things they do to each other can’t solely be on their own accords, without being driven by what we call fanservice. However, honestly again, has Jikook/Kookmin always been a popular ship? No, not until recently. Imo, the more popular ship has the tendency to do fanservice more. I think Sajeon-nim also talked about this somewhere in her asks. And one more important thing, Jikook/Kookmin is mostly known for being subtle (but probably not until recently, thanks to our Jeon Jungkook-ssi being so whipped and seems to have no intention of hiding it or toning it down. Well, not that I don’t encourage you, keep up the good work, baby bunny ♥). Like you really have to pay attention to it to actually know it, but once you notice it, you notice it all the time, it’s like a pattern, a series that never ends.

All the “I got my (heart) eyes on you” here, here, here and there:

Most of the time, there’s basically no reason for them to do fanservice at all, because it happens too fast (for a few secs, or not even 1 sec), and basically no one is really watching, they’re not in the center of attention etc. …

All the time Jungkook made fun of himself simply just to make Jimin laugh, and he even checked if Jimin actually laughed…

The time they got caught walking together in the back in Bon Voyage, ate with the same spoon (I’m sure they have plenty of spoons in airbnb houses) even tho Jungkook tried not to drink directly from the same bottle with others (no offense to any ship really, I just can’t find more examples in my rusty mind)

I mean, there’re plenty of Jikook/Kookmin shippers out there have talked about them being subtle much much much more better than me, so I guess I don’t have to go too deep into this. I suck tbh xD, but I do hope that you understand my point.

And yes, exactly as you said, I also think that Jungkook is like an open book, it’s all written on his face (pretty much) and in his reactions, but Jimin, yeah not so much.

Imo he’s one of those extra careful guys with whatever he does and says. I mean, can’t blame him when he’s got tons of shits for things he didn’t even do. And as much as an angel he is in my eyes, that angel is still dangerous. He knows what he wants, what he does that will make (most) people fall for him (those constant hair stroking, body rolls, shoulder flashing), and he IS a tease, as you said. Remember in ASC, he didn’t wanna say I love you to the fan so he said I liked you. In the Vlive when fans told him that his beanie was cute he just took it off… (Taehyung and Jimin are kinda similar in that perspective). But regarding our Jungkook again, like Sajeon-nim said, he has Jungkook wrapped around in his small hand. He triggers where it’s ticklish for Jungkook.

Who always exposes Jungkook? Isn’t it our dear Jimin? Saying all stuff like he comes to our room everynight, he brushes his teeth in our room, he doesn’t come when I call him etc. etc. Jungkook doesn’t expose Jimin in relation to himself at all, from what I remember.

It’d be nice if you could give me some specific moments when you think that Jimin’s doing fanservice, then we can discuss about them together. Since I have a memory of a goldfish, I can’t really remember anything TT_TT.

So my point is, and also what I do is, just for us to be on the safe side, I don’t take what they do on-camera too seriously. One example I can tell you is their part in 21st century girl. As much as I love watching it and await what will be next, I don’t put too much thoughts into it. Even tho it seems like it wasn’t planned on Jungkook’s side, it was still planned on Jimin’s side. As a perfectionist he is, he sure thinks carefully what he’ll do before carrying it out, even if it’s just a small tiny little action. On stage, he is a performer. So I strongly believe that he didn’t do it out of nowhere, spontaneously. However, no one, you or me can tell if it was fanservice, except for Jimin. But one thing I know for sure, he KNOWS us fans like it (and perhaps Jungkook too xD).

Still cute tho…

Well, that doesn’t mean that we should disregard their on-camera moments either. So it really depends… But yes, to answer your question directly, I do think that Jimin and Jungkook do fanservice once in a while too.

However, one thing we can rely on without solely focus on our main characters, is looking at the other members’ reactions. Hobi is one of the most obvious (how quickly Hobi retreated his hand as soon as Jungkook turned around)

How Namjoon knows about Jungkook’s Ph.D in Jiminology so he asks Jungkook to confirm about Jimin’s facts instead of Jimin himself, one example is in the MAMA stage reaction

You can tell these aren’t scripted/planned at all.

And yes, about that specific youtube channel, I know exactly what you’re talking about, I feel the same way as you do. There are times I’m like omg that’s such a small detail how they noticed it adlasfdshfsgh yayyyy my ship is sailing and there are times I’m like oh…okay…okay…how did we reach this far? So yeah, *high five*. But we can’t control what others actually perceive and take in the info they’re given.

The thing is this ship gained a considerable amount of shippers thanks to that channel. But I just hope some new shippers can be a little bit… chill (somehow stuff I’m talking about is always offensive, but I mean no offense). Yes we have every right to express our own opinion, but it’s sad seeing things like “Jikook/Kookmin is so real how can people ship …?” and start talking bad about that ship constantly… I mean, each person has their own preference. Just because you see it this way doesn’t mean another person will see it that way too. Lemme tell you an example, this moment to me

Jungkook closed his eyes leaning on Jimin’s shoulder is like it’s his most peaceful place in the world and he could forget about his surrounding just for a little bit, but to my friend who is a non-shipper, she told me he was just posing for the camera, there’s this type of pose that you close your eyes, and I’m like TT…

What I mean is that I don’t wanna see Jikook/Kookmin shippers become arrogant and aggressive when people don’t agree with us. We all know how Jimin got attacked and trashed by some shippers from a particular ship, and we really, really don’t wanna get there. So instead of wondering why people can ship other ships when our ship is so “real”, we can just sail our own ship and appreciate their moments, be flustered, fangirl/fanboy about it with other shippers, like try to be positive instead of being negative?

All in all, I’m sorry anon, for kinda going off-topic and can’t really give you a clear answer at some point. But I really did try my best. Just that my memory is really not as good as other shippers’, and I’m really not good at expressing what is going in my mind either. I hope that you can somehow understand me. Thank you so much for sharing your opinion with me, anon. Love 🌸🌺💜

🐥🐰💞

#ask #jikook #kookmin #my mind is terrible these days #i hate myself sometimes

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tinnefoil · 8 years ago

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Feelings about Supergirl Season 1 versus Season 2

Since there is some interesting (albeit again non-rebloggable) discussion going on about season 1 versus season 2 of Supergirl, I thought I would collect my own thoughts on it.

I’m a very erratic tv watcher. I check out most superhero shows (well particular the DC comics ones) at least a bit, because I have a bit of a background in the comic fandom. I also drop in and out of it. I used to watch the first few seasons of Smallville faithfully and then became a very irregular watcher, like, I usually tuned in whenever there was something very special happening (for example, Lois first episode, Clark as reporter first episode, Aquaman episode, Green Arrow first episode, that weird Lex dreams of an alternate life episode), I almost exclusively watch the Captain Cold episodes of Flash. I tried watching Arrow when it started, but it was just too much of a departure from the comic book characters, especially since I always followed Arrow/Canary in the comics.

In that context, I watched most of season 1 of Supergirl (I actually only recently at a rewatch discovered that I had somehow missed episode 3 when it originally aired). IMO there were things about season 1 that were boring and that I didn’t like or were childish. But there were a lot of things I really liked. I liked the big focus on female villains. I think the strongest aspect of season 1 by far were that Max and Astra were really, really, really good villains. And to me the biggest flaw of season 2 is actually by far that Cadmus is weird and erratic and has stupid plans and that Rhea was introduced too late into the season (and for all we know, her final masterplan might still suck).

I think the main reason why I bothered to stick with season 1 was J’onn since I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Martian Manhunter in the comics and I was floored that a live action tv show was doing him. And that I really enjoyed Cat for the entertainment value.

To me both season 1 and season 2 have their upsides and downsides. Both have some brain breakingly terrible episodes. My liking of Karamel came mostly by default. I watched season 2. I examined which episodes entertained me the most (Mon-El falsely accused to have attacked the president, Mon-El at CatCo, Kara and Mon-El captured by Cadmus, the Medusa virus episode) and it turns out, most of them it was because of the Karamel storyline.

I don’t like every Karamel episode and I’m not afraid to call out the ones I don’t like. But in general, fairly Karamel centric episodes have fared much better with me that non-Karamel centric ones (for example: to this day I haven’t fully seen Martian Chronicles. I WANT to like it. It has J’onn/M’gann stuff, I has Alex/Kara stuff, both things and relationships I really like. But lord, I just can’t watch this episode. And I have tried several times. It just bleeeeeeeeeeeeeds boredom to me. It feels like the infamous cheap bottle episodes from when the shows ran out of budget.)

I think the less Kara centricity of season 2 has given us J’onn/M’gann and Sanvers, two things I consider very positive changes. The main thing I wish I could have back from season 1 is a character as strong and fleshed out and charismatic as Cat (sorry, Lena is nice, but she isn’t nearly that, and while Mon-El entertains me and even if I overlooked that I would rather have a female character for that, I think the writing for Cat was way more thought out and consistent across the season) and better central villain arcs.

I also really like that season 2 Kara is not as meek as season 1 Kara. I actually didn’t dislike season 1 Kara, but looking back and comparing her to season 2 Kara, season 1 Kara is just way over the top, it becomes grating. Her simpering over Clark/Superman is the worst. I can kinda see when people complain about season 2 Kara spending more time serving other people’s storylines, but in retrospect, they made season 1 Kara that meek and helpless to justify the strength of other characters, which kinda doesn’t really sit well with me either.

I’d like to note, I don’t really consider myself a “badboy” fan. In fact, I consider myself somebody who is super, super picky when it comes to “badboy” characters. I hate the majority of fandom’s favorite badboys (such as: Damon, Logan, Chuck, Spike), or at the very least they bore me. As in, I don’t care. Their backstory episodes bore me. I’m a big fan of “cool motive, still murder” (I didn’t really watch much of the Kai storyline of VD, but I have a feeling that he probably would have fallen into this category for me, like, yeah, nice, but I’m not that impressed; I also thought the Klaus/Caroline chemistry was amazing, but I still thought the Klaus storyline was kinda stupid and I could never get into The Originals).

I keep trying to pinpoint how come Mon-El doesn’t really trigger this response with me. I think a large part of it is that he doesn’t whine as much/doesn’t self-pity as many of the others do. And then there’s the fact that lo and behold, he hasn’t randomly meanspiritedly murdered people (well aside from indirectly the guard on the ship, but hey, Kara too killed Parasite to our knowledge). And, I love SciFi and I love Teri Hatcher, so I’m actually interested in the backstory he brings (I swear Teri Hatcher is like a 50% bonus to why I like Karamel, just like Dean Cain’s Jeremiah was the only thing that had any emotional resonance for me in the Cadmus storyline, even with how stop and go the story has been written).

Would I watch if Mon-El left/was written off? Hmm, that’s hard to say. I think it depends a lot on whether by then they would have introduced other characters I’d be interested in following. Yes I like the regular cast. But like I said, Astra was a huge part of why I liked season 1. I’m one of those weird people who actually cares about plot and not just about character relationships. I don’t watch “coffee shop shows”. I want a large plot where I’m actually interested in what happens next. So, I could picture myself stop watching even if he was still on the show if I thought the plot was boring/the writing was weak. Just like I could picture myself continue watching if they found something else to entertain me in a similar way.

I see a whole slew of ways that Karamel could break up or Mon-El be written off that would be really satisfying and tragic and cool to watch. And I could see myself sitting in the first row and praising that writing. If the ending was shitty that would probably bug me, but then again, I think that goes for most instances of bad writing (ie the bad writing for James/Kara really bothered me even though I wasn’t deeply invested in their couple, but I’m invested in some amount writing consistency, which is why I keep hoping that James/Kara will be addressed again eventually, even if it were only to lay it to rest in a more satisfying way). I would be really pissed if they fuck up Sanvers. I’ll be really pissed if they make Rhea a really pathetic villain because it would make me feel like villain-wise the entire season was a total waste of time. I get grumpy over the way they write and don’t write the sort of political/social parallel stories.

I care about good, interesting, entertaining stories more than I care about couples being together. A think a really epic and emotional separation can be amazing. Of course stable couples can be amazing too. If it’s a good story I will watch. And if a story entertains me, I’m more likely to like the couple that is attached to it.

#supergirl #supergirl meta #supergirl critical #karamel

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