#and potentially violent person who has killed and hurt people and needs like. a support network and mental healthcare

[vamptastic]

worst most evil thing in the world is when a morally gray character has a redemption arc foreshadowed for years and then they just pussy out of writing it and make up a New Guy. yeah no we're not going to talk about that tragic backstory we gave them or have them confront the repercussions of their actions or anything. now they're a New Guy who has zero unpleasant personality traits dont even worry about it.

[val-of-the-north]

Alberich Headcanons

Ok, starting from a headcanon I have had since I saw his face data, and one I've infected my friends with lol: He is the son of Gideon Ofnir and his study of thorn sorcery was actually encouraged and supported by him at some point. Once he learned all that he could from it though, he stopped caring about his son's pursuits, letting him know time and time again that it would be leading him to a dead end. This made Alberich really upset at him, because he thought his father didn't see the bigger picture and especially HIS worth as an asset. So yeah daddy issues... Gideon tends to do that to people apparently. It doesn't help that he really didn't step in to help his son when people made fun of him and his practices. Heck, the biggest perpetrator was Ensha, who was basically his sidekick. (My friend @katyspersonal explains this one here lol [X]) This is how little he ended up caring...

Gideon DID teach him good manners though, so at least, he did something good for his development. In fact, his politeness is the only thing he clings to sanity with. He could have been in the presence of someone he wanted to kill real badly, but his brain would instantly switch to "acceptable" mode and he would pretend to not be hurt or phased. He bows down to anyone, kisses the hand of a lady, offers people favors and tea and what have you. But while he is really capable of acting polite, in his head he is probably shifting around several topics at once, even contradicting ones, and the mask might slowly crack the more you interact with him. He starts relatively normal and even pleasant and devolves from there. However once you give him reasons to snap, he will snap, spilling everything he thinks and even getting physical or violent. In recent years he has fully lost his mind, so he attacks anyone who approaches the lower part of the Roundtable. Despite that, he still can't shake off his polite attitude fully.

In spite of his violence and having no qualms with murder and sacrifices, he is also deeply attached to the concept of repentance. He will kill you if you wrong him, but killing is wrong to him, no matter what, so he will punish himself for any misdeed or sacrifice. Repentance and punishment is a key part of the reason sinners are able to see the Blood Star and Red Glintstone, so he performs self-flagellation with the use of thorn sorcery, kinda like what's implied the Fire Prelates do to bolster religious fervor/encouragement by making thorny whips in the style of the briars of sin. This is how his experiments led him to start growing Red Glintstone on his head. He sins and punishes himself, and will do this for as long as he needs to really understand the profane world only repenting sinners discover. He is pretty much insane in that regard lol

He still wishes his father will crawl back to him once he really discovers the true potential of this form of sorcery... it's no surprise then that he actually REALLY hates Nepheli and thinks she took HIS spot. He hates her so much, even though he'd probably like her as a person under normal circumstances. They have personally never interacted, and Nepheli only knows Alberich from stories she has been told... she actually feels really sorry for his fall from grace. His heresy goes against her beliefs as a warrior, but she'd actually respect his willingness to punish himself for doing what he does... though personally, she'd still rather he didn't do it in the first place, as it still sullies his honor and very soul, at least according to her.

He is incredibly lonely and yearns for someone to keep him company and understand him, someone that might indulge in his insanity and rituals. He's had no luck, and most other thorn sorcerers aren't really interested in the way Alberich pursues his goals. They are just suffering from their sins, they don't need to know anything else... besides, they are always accompanied by the Fire Monks who act as their wardens, so it's not as if they can leave anyways. He has had a few chats with Rogier, seeing as they are both heretical sorcerers, though the latter knows very well not to jump down where Alberich resides, despite the numerous invitations of his "friend" from below… it's unclear if Alberich would actually hurt him if he jumped down. Even the man himself doesn't know what he'd do. He still desperately hopes to find a kindred spirit that would understand his need of sacrificing and punishing himself... also his taste for blood.

He is kind of addicted to that stuff and sees it as the most intimate way to get close to someone... to consume each other's blood is a divine experience in his eyes... You'd think that he'd be attracted to Mohg's blood covenant then, but he actually despises them with fervor. They revel in violence and corruption, completely skipping the part where they repent for their misdeeds. They are barbarians to him, their blood formless and teeming with insects and filth, while his is pure and solid, taking the form of thorns and gems. That's the true form of power through blood, not their cessblood. To him, the Mohgwyn Dynasty is a bunch of charlatans and lunatics. (something something pot calling the kettle black lmao)

He also thinks Raya Lucaria is ran by ignorant fools. He cannot even step in because of their aversion to his abhorrent sorcery. He, like Sellen, is permanently banned... but unlike Sellen he was never even there to begin with. This is how much they hate the dude ahah, but he hates them right back. Speaking of Sellen, She and Alberich might actually get along. She doesn't seem like the type to judge and might even enjoy the dedication that brought him to grow glintstone on his head like the old masters Azur and Lusat. They also both hate those idiot followers of the Lord of Blood, so yeah, they'd be friends ahah. Sadly though, they only know of each other in passing and neither ever looked into the other since they are doing different pursuits.

And while I gave Kat the ugly with my "Alberich is Gideon's son" headcanon, she gave ME the ugly with her "Alberich is trans" headcanon ahahah. The fact the Academy closes its doors to him means he can't do the rebirthing ritual that Rennala offers and that might have actually pissed him off quite a bit. Though there are still methods for him to appear masculine without the full rebirth process. Still, it must be incredibly annoying to be denied that by a group of people that you despise. (Also, just to clarify, I don't think the jeering tongues that brought him to madness included transphobia ahahah. I assume no one freaking cares in a world like Elden Ring's)

So yeah, here's my headcanons on him. I love this guy, he is such a creecher...

[tenebrius-excellium]

Right, so... all in all, I have to say that the middle and the ending of Book 11 were faaar better than the beginning of the book!!! LOVED the conclusion! Though I admit that I deeply struggle with the doomy and gloomy vibes in the Httyd books. Upon having read The Queen's Thief series, I realized how much more fun everyone had there. The Httyd books are so dire. There was barely any warmth, fun, and comfort to make up for the cold, damp, barren, evil and violent world. Almost all the good people were weak or dumb for their goodness, and only evil was cunning, scheming, and sly. Why were the good ppl always struggling so much..., like, why wasn't there a much larger dragon-human alliance somewhere even before the final war? Imho, the good people needed more solid wins. Anywho. Moving on to Book 12 :)

So Hiccup has amnesia and recognizes no one. Yass, finally some humor...

I was rooting for that poor Vampire Spydragon so much you don't even know. Cute boi just wanted his teeth back!!!!!!!!!

HOGFLY FOR THE WIN - FINALLY SOME SILLINESS

Hey look. Why was the 'Hiccup having amnesia' plot never used in RttE? That would have been so much fun!! I get know what the book!fandom was complaining about when they said that the show had the potential to be much more book-oriented... what a waste!

I find it highly...HIGHLY... interesting that Cressida found it necessary to validate Hiccup's reign by a sort of 'religious' power. Especially when all the Norse Gods had very much NOT been actively part of the plot before. Again, comparing that to The Queen's Thief where the Gods do play a role and therefore have a say in who gets or doesn't get to be King and Queen... it seems arbitrary and strange to need to validate Hiccup by the skies. Why does humanity keep feeling the need to do that, huh? Maybe because humanity isn't supposed to be the highest authority on earth because we tend to screw it up, hmmm??? Maybe because someone independent should look into each of our hearts to determine who is best for a certain office, hmmm????

The danger of the Dragon Jewel finally gets explained, THANK YOU. Would have been more of a narrative hook if that had been done much earlier, to be frank!!!

I'll say it again: One of the greatest bits of the 12th book was that BOTH of Hiccup's parents got to live and support him as they watched him become King!!!! They did not ridicule him!!! They did not rival him!!! They realized he was the man for the job and were there to fight for him!!! That is so rare in stories!!! So often at least one or both parents get killed off before someone rises to rule... Httyd2 cough cough I hated that

Fishlegs, Sidekick for 12 Books, Contributes To The Plot At Last

Hiccup and Furious' talk was so important. They finally developed an "us vs. the problem" mentality.

...although the peace they managed to negotiate felt rather feeble. That's what happens when the creatures of Earth think they have to govern themselves: There is never safety or satisfaction without the independent judgment of a deity to make sure it holds, huh. Shame.

Alvin's and the Witch's deaths were quite unspectacular, what happened here???

Annnd dragons and humans can't seem to share the world here either, just as in the movies. I'm surprised that people thought the conditions that forced the "dragons must leave" arc to happen differed so vastly comparing the books to the movies. I don't recognize much difference, except that in the books, the war had already been going on much longer and much crueller. It had taken its toll on dragons and people for centuries, and everybody was tired and hurt. Httyd3 wasn't all too different, except the dragon war began to take a toll on Hiccup's and Toothless' personal lives and on their tribes. The tiredness of everyone might not have become as apparent, but it was definitely there - in the first, in the second, AND in the third movie. Different solutions were explored. Fighting dragons didn't work, building a dragon utopia didn't work. And the dragon-human alliance couldn't work because of different identities/ needs/living conditions/scattered fearmongers and troublemakers. And because of armies that would keep coming for dragons. Granted, the "army" point wasn't pressed enough. It could have been Mongolians trying to expand their kingdom into Europe. It could have been Romans wanting to capture dragons for warfare, status, and gladiator fights. No, Httyd3's reasoning wasn't solid enough, but it wasn't THAT far off from the books either, I think.

If you have any thoughts on what I wrote, send me an ask!!!

How To Betray A Dragon's Hero & How To Fight A Dragon's Fury Book Review

Part of #Reddie's liveblog from Dec 2021 - Oct 2023

Wow you guys I almost took 2 years I'm so sorry pfffft XD

As I said before, I think it makes the most sense to scream about Book 11 & 12 together because they only take place over a span of about 48 hours. Also I will not be talking about any quotes. Feel free to send me your favorite sayings in an ask though!!!!!

Let's get to it!!! Lean back and listen as I recall...

burning forests. The world being a wasteland of fire and ash. And Hiccup being at the center of it. Gosh.

They were incredibly stupid to let Snotlout into their secret hideout... at least blindfold him or something so he can't give the location away should he double-cross them???

I like those ambiguous characters who don't choose to identify themselves with any side of a war... it was a smart explanation of Snotlout to give about why he didn't take the Dragonmark. The more I think about it, the more suspicious it becomes to demand of anyone to take a literal tattoo on their body in support of whatever group. How quickly such a symbol's meaning can change depending on what people currently associate with it, the books have shown. To force people to distinguish themselves physically for or against a highly political opinion is...shady at best O_O but of course, this doesn't help to make Snotlout believable in the moment. As I've read the Return of the Thief recently, I side with the diplomatic strength of non-inked folk Eugenides cough cough, although it makes them dangerous, hated outsiders and able to play multiples angles as well.

The Wodensfang's "betrayal" was a deep stab into my chest. Hiccup had already gone through so much, and the Wodensfang was one of his most trusted advisors - a member of his own party. The Wodensfang literally carried the lives of three kids and so much more with his actions. It doesn't matter that the dragon didn't betray Hiccup in the end - the very fact that he went so low to even TALK about betrayal with Furious was heartbreaking. The Wodensfang, himself thoroughly scarred by the break of trust, should not have played with Hiccup's trust as if it were an asset to be sold or traded. At some point, when you've seen a person's heart, you have to believe them. And once you understand that most errors and most abandonment happens out of fear and not out of outright disloyalty, it gets easier to forgive.

It brings me a lot of joy to think about the cave scene again... that was awesome. What a victory!! I love returning to this scene. The setting of a city behind a waterfall was epic. It's always great to have explosions and mayhem. And Hiccup's little sailboat escapes! Annnd this is where Snotlout finally realizes the downside of being the traitor: Now he's hated and mistrusted by all sides.

The final confrontation with Snotlout was nothing short of awesome. His reasoning was sound - to be dethroned by the birth order and then additionally discovering that the guy doesn't even seem to be worth it... that does some damage. I'm glad they reconciled!

Snotlout taking Hiccup's clothes hnnnghhh... it was a noble deed, but tbh it was hard to believe he died. Because book!logic happens to be very random and plot-subservient... if Cressida had written any more Httyd books, Snotlout would have been 'resurrected' in one of them, I'm sure.

So Hiccup's plans are foiled by the weather, huh?? Convenient lol.

The glorious despair as Hiccup washes up on that shore. Fantastic.

That concludes Book 11.

[headspace-hotel]

Fuck that. I absolutely have the right to criticize people who have done nothing but sit around and complain in their online echo chamber, and then decide “welp, time for molotovs and guillotines.”

If you read my posts more carefully, you would realize a crucial truth:

We are on the same side of this

First of all, "execute all the people in power and start over" is a different thing than "violent protest." People call even destruction of property violent. There are levels. That is important.

Secondly—I cannot stand the people who think violently overthrowing the government will automatically fix everything. They haven't thought about infrastructure. They haven't studied history.

I actively detest the sentiment among certain USamericans that "voting does nothing, don't bother voting." Voting, especially in local elections, can make things materially better for people in your community. At the very least it doesn't hurt. Vote. Don't only vote, but fucking hell, don't pitch a fit about feeling criticized or whatever for not voting when people fought tooth and nail to give you that right in the first place, and politicians are fighting tooth and nail to take it away any way they can. I live in a state where 9% of the population is LEGALLY disenfranchised. Read history and read the fucking room.

But I am still firm on this—history tells us that violence is on the way when a people has been unhappy with their oppressive government for many many years. I would LIKE to avoid violent unrest and upheaval but it is something that happens when other means of petitioning the government have not worked.

For me personally, it is incredibly hard to support or condone the extreme version of this—complete violent upheaval— when the likely consequences will be devastating. If the US government crumbled, we would end up under the control of the fascists. Y'all realize that, right?

I am not on the same side of the "revolution is the only way" people. Have y'all been paying any attention to the January 6 hearings? We had an actual attempt at a coup less than 2 years ago. I grew up in the Bible Belt embedded deeply in a nest of terrifying whackos. At least one person I personally knew participated in the attempted coup.

One of the USA's main political factions is dominated by theocratic fascists involved to varying degrees in a batshit crazy conspiracy cult, and these people have more guns than probably any other group of civilians in the world. They are better organized, more galvanized and a MILLION times better armed than everyone else. Electoral politics has one saving grace if it has anything, and that's keeping these people occupied.

I firmly believe we need to be forming support networks, building our own community infrastructure so everyone will have someone to call on when the shit hits the fan. We seriously need to start organizing in ways that let people access food and medicine and fresh water when infrastructure breaks down.

Yesterday our electricity was out for nearly 5 hours after a windstorm. What would happen in a scenario where there was no one to mobilize teams to get out and fix the problem? The systems that sustain life in America are a crumbling, dilapidated joke. Our infrastructure genuinely has the potential to kill millions in a disastrous scenario where people have to travel long distances to get help. Highways will get backed up, people will be stranded, and there will be nothing for miles around because 93% of the land in this country is The Middle Of Nowhere.

My posts about this are referring to the entirely compatible truth that "peaceful" protests are a display of power and a threat display to the people in power, and when more peaceful means of protest are ignored, things get more violent. This is not a judgment I'm making, this is just how it goes. And ultimately, the ability to protest peacefully is connected to the potential to protest more violently—it's a chance for the people in power to course correct before things get worse.

Under ideal circumstances, peaceful protest would be sufficient. But the responsibility is on our leaders to listen. If they don't listen, fear for the future and desperation will drive people to more and more radical action. Again, this is just a thing history teaches us.

One last thing: I have made this mistake in the past, for sure, but never assume that someone you see posting online is not involved with activism in real life. If you don't see evidence of their real life activism, it just means they're being smart and not posting about it online.

[actingwithportals]

Since we’re talking about the deplorable Portal movie again, I’m gonna drop my two cents into why this bothers me particularly, on a personal level, in what a Portal movie might do to the story. (Buckle in, this is a long post.)

(Also, for anyone who doesn’t know the “Portal Movie” has been in production hell for literal years and it feels pretty unlikely it will escape that anytime soon, if the movie does eventually get made at all, so this is a mostly theoretical discussion but one I think is important nonetheless.)

(Also also I’m going under the assumption of a Portal movie following the characters and story we already know from the games as opposed to giving us new characters and plot and just centering it around the concept of Portal. This is also theoretical and isn’t confirmed that that’s how an actual Portal movie would go.)

So, I think the objective biggest concern to have with what could possibly go grossly wrong with a Portal movie is the Hollywood need to whitewash characters of color, aka Chell in this instance. Plus how they might handle her muteness, how they would handle her as a woman protagonist, how they would handle GLaDOS as a woman antagonist, and the overall themes of Portal that ultimately centers around these two women characters who both experienced abuse, either from each other or from Aperture itself. But there are people who are more informed to speak on those issues than I am, so I’m gonna leave that to them and talk about something that I’ve got the experience to discuss instead.

My boy Doug Rattmann. (note: I’m schizophrenic.)

In the event of a Portal movie that follows the main storyline of the game(s), Rattmann isn’t likely to be a character we actually see (outside of potential flashbacks), but his presence would be made known because his presence and influence in Aperture are both very integral to the story and Chell’s ultimate success. It’s very likely he would get brought up, even if just by showing us his murals and referencing who he was in life and the role he played as an Aperture employee, and as the only person to survive GLaDOS’s attack that put the facility into the position Chell wakes to find it in.

And I don’t trust like that. I don’t trust that filmmakers with the motivation of fame and financial gain will take a character like Rattmann - a schizophrenic who throughout most of his relevance to the main story is unmedicated and in the midst of a very severe psychotic episode - and treat him with care and respect and sympathy.

We see how movies treat mentally ill people, especially those of us with “scary” illnesses like schizophrenia. We see how we’re constantly reduced to being “crazy and unhinged and morally dubious because the voices in our heads tell us to hurt people”. We see how we’re used as jokes, as villains, as “pathetic” fodder to get killed off for shallow sympathy and shock value, and you know what? I don’t anticipate Rattmann would get a much more nuanced approach from a JJ Abrams film than... that. It’s hard for me to imagine he would be presented to the audience as anything much more than the “crazy ps*cho” who survived because of his paranoia (because “a broken clock is still right two times a day”) and wrote some funny iconic line on the walls in his madness such as “the cake is a lie”. That’s what I fear we’d get, because I know that’s how most of the world sees us. Because that’s how people see me when they learn I’m schizophrenic.

The Lab Rat comic did something that’s rarely seen in a lot of mainstream media I think. It gave us a schizophrenic protagonist who we as the readers got to see both in a successful career - medicated and well and seemingly having an average life despite where he worked - and in the midst of what was a very frightening psychotic episode, because medication was not available to him and he had no other option but to let things progress to that point. And he was Still a hero. He was Still sympathetic. He was Still treated with respect and as someone we were meant to root for and connect with. His humanity wasn’t taken from him, and in fact it shone through clearly. Because psychotic people are still people even when we’re experiencing psychosis.

And, you know, let alone the fact that the comic didn’t drop him into the trope of becoming a violent or otherwise “evil” person when he was unmedicated. He retained the same morals he had when he was medicated - the paranoia didn’t take that away from him. I like to think that my paranoia doesn’t take that away from me too.

I just.. I don’t feel good at the thought of something so beautifully done, something that we almost never get, being reduced to bad tropes for the sake of suspense and theatrics and a good buck. I mean, it might not happen; I might just be critical and overthinking. But it usually does, and I’m usually not. There’s endless evidence in media to support this pattern, and I think it’s a valid concern to have.

I don’t think people can’t be excited about a Portal movie - I know that I would be over the moon if a Portal movie came out that did the source material justice. But people are going to have concerns due to the fact that many things in these games were done with a lot of nuance and care, and it’s hard to believe something like this could be repeated, especially when copied over to a new medium. I mean, as it was recently pointed out to me even Valve themselves dropped the ball by lightening Chell’s character model between P1 and P2. The source material itself still does have its faults despite its successes, so who’s to say people can’t be worried that a movie would do something equally egregious or worse?

Portal means a lot to me. It has for many years and it will continue to mean a lot to me for a long time to come. The validation I found in Rattmann’s character at the exact moment in my life when I needed it most is not something that just happens any day. So I’m going to be critical, I’m going to be skeptical. I’m happy for people who are excited, but please don’t tell me or others that we shouldn’t be concerned.

I’ve got this one really incredible schizophrenic rep that Portal Lab Rat gave us. I’m allowed to fear that getting taken away.

[redrobin-detective]

I am going to regret asking this and giving you another chance to drag me in this fandom... but what's the problem with Danny's parents? Is there something else than the fact they really really want to dissect a ghost?

For me, the issues with the Fenton parents boils down to two main issues: 1. their complete and dangerous obsession with ghosts and destroying them and 2. the negligence to their children. I think Jack and Maddie are good people who love their children and can be good parents. But the problem is their ghost hunting work was always the priority in the family which Jazz and Danny clearly suffer from.

Point 1. The Ghost Obsession

I don’t know what happened to Jack and Maddie that caused them to develop an all consuming obsession with ghosts and, moreover, the need to destroy them. Fandom has pointed out that while they claim to be scientists, they clearly are more interested in weapons to hurt and destroy ghosts than anything even resembling normal scientific study. Amity Park has a high number of violent ghosts (mostly there to play fight Danny) but most ghosts everywhere else are just vibing. The ghost obsession hurt Danny long before he became part ghost (but I’ll save that for Point Two) but it went from an annoyance to an actual threat to his life.

First off, as many others have pointed out, having a dangerous lab in the basement with untested equipment/weaponry that your kids not only have ready access to BUT also have to go down there for assigned chores? Not great, Jan. I’ll give the Fentons the benefit of the doubt, we see clearly that Danny/Jazz know how to work the equipment in their house so they obviously have been drilled in usage and safety. Danny gets his ghost powers by being dumb and 14 and messing around with his friends like any normal kid would. Danny is now the very thing his parents want to hunt and destroy and a mainstay of the series is he is so scared of their reaction that he hides his powers/identity from his parents but not his ghostly enemies. Can you imagine being that uncertain that your parents love for you outweighs their obsession that you hide such a fundamental part of your life? What a miserable reality for a young kid.

Jack and Maddie spend the entire series going off about their hatred of ghosts. Danny has to sit there and listen to them talk in extreme detail how they’ll dissect and obliterate any ghost they come across. They’ll be making deadly weaponry made to kill beings like him at the kitchen table, weapons that do respond to his ghostly signature. They especially hate Danny’s alter ego, Phantom, because of his supposed trickery by pretending to be a hero. The canon things said in the show would certainly make me nervous about sleeping in the room next to them. They are capable of working with Phantom when push comes to shove but it never lasts long and they go back with guns blazing. Danny and the show mostly play these threats off for laughs but the fact that Danny straight up doesn’t tell them is telling enough on how it effects him. 

Point 2. The Negligence

‘Hur Dur parents are bad’ is a well known cartoon trope but the Fentons take it to an extreme. Jack and Maddie are obsessive with their work, absentminded and reckless, none of which create a safe and stable home for children. I love Jazz and Danny but they clearly are not entirely normal children (even before the whole ghost thing) from growing up in such a home. Jazz develops a reactionary personality, delving into psychology and being right as a way to kind of understand/get back at her parents (source? I do this exact thing with my mom) and Danny was quiet, overlooked and not given the attention to really flourish, instead being a sort of ghost in that house before he ever became one. 

Jack and Maddie 110% love their kids but do they encourage them in a meaningful way? Support their interests? Be available to help? Not really. I hate The Fright Before Christmas bc Danny gets blamed for being a “scrooge” instead of acknowledging he hates the holiday for his parents destructive fighting every year. (source? Again fucking me. I hate Xmas bc mom and I scream every year)

This issue only exacerbates once Danny gets ghost powers. His whole life is affected by his ghost fighting: he’s getting injured in fights from human bullies and ghosts, his grades are dropping from lack of studying/sleep, he’s absent from the house more often than not, he’s sullen and depressed and scared and anxious all the time. It’s a radical change and yet Jack and Maddie kind of brush over it, focusing instead how Danny’s changes affect them (IE Danny not being around to do his chores). This boy comes home, beaten from fights, stressed and feeling alone only to get yelled at because his parents miss all the signs he’s practically radiating that he is Not Okay. He eventually becomes a good enough fighter and actor to skip over but it’s truly heartbreaking that he can’t confide in the people supposed to support him the most. But it’s not just the ghost obsession, even without all the powers like if Danny was doing drugs or in a gang, his parents barely notice and, when they do, they don’t really do anything other than blame him. 

Now I’m going to end this long rant by saying that I love Jack and Maddie, I think they are fascinating people and want to see them developed. The situation as it is for most of the series is not okay in the least but I do believe they have the potential to be good, supportive parents. There’s a couple of eps where they DO find out about danny’s powers and instantly all the negligence and hostility is gone, its all acceptance of his powers and apologies for their behavior. Its not a perfect situation and could be borderline abuse apologism if done wrong. But I’d like to think that once they got over the shock and did some serious priority and soul searching, they would learn to correct themselves. Growth isn’t just saved for the teen protagonists, everyone has the chance to be better. Danny clearly doesn’t hold his parents behavior against them and would be nothing but ecstatic if they loved and accepted him. I do believe in a happy, functional if abnormal, Fenton family dynamic and I’m all for it.

[absolutepokemontrash]

MC is Half Demon and Blah Blah Blah-

Time for the Group Retreat!

Part 1 Part 2 Lessons 1-5 Lessons 5-6 Lessons 10-12 Lessons 13-15 Part 3 Part 4

I’m quite hyped for this one, ladies, gents, and esteemed readers! For simplicity’s sake, since this is before M!MC and A!MC arrive, L!MC will go back to being referred to as just MC. Enjoy the Headcanons!

Since the previous Underground Tomb incident ended much less violently, Lucifer is now more worried than angry about MC’s rampant shennaniganery.

Like... his kid was poking holes in his totally foolproof “Your cow-uncle went to live on a farm in the human world” story. What if MC somehow got into the attic and got hurt?!

It didn’t help that they were still in this weird phase of their father/child relationship. On one hand, Lucifer obviously cares for his kid, and his kid likes him... but it’s also only been less than three months and we all know how emotionally constipated Lucifer is.

MC’s also getting REAL sus of all the secrets their dear old dad is keeping... doesn’t help that they STILL haven’t went up into the attic.

Anyhoo~ the announcement for the retreat was a barrel of laughs.

“I’m proposing, a group retreat!”

Everyone met Diavolo’s announcement with the exact same confused reaction. It’s like the entire assembly hall was doing the ‘Guy Blinking’ meme.

“A... group retreat?” Lucifer repeated slowly. “For what reason exactly, Lord Diavolo?”

The Crown Prince was giddy with excitement as he explained. “MC told me about their middle school overnight trip and it sounded like it would be quite fun!”

Simeon, Luke, MC, and Solomon were all seated next to each other in the ‘exchange student seats of less importance’. Luke leaned over and whispered a question to MC.

“Why are you so friendly with the crown prince?”

MC smirked and shrugged. “Lucifer had the Demon-Flu and couldn’t go meet with Lord Diavolo last week so I went for him. Lord Diavolo’s surprisingly bad at Connect Four but has really good luck in Snakes and Ladders.”

Luke’s jaw dropped in complete and utter shock and horror.

“We’re playing CandyLand and the Game of Life next time, want to come?” MC added.

“Play CandyLand... with him..?” Luke looked at Diavolo, who was still explaining his plan for the retreat, then looked back at MC. “I’ll only go to shield you from his corrupting influence.”

“Yeah... Corrupting...” MC had to hold back a laugh at the thought of Diavolo, who during MC’s visit lit up like a Christmas tree upon being called ‘Dia’ and believed that Mood Rings were the greatest human invention ever, being a corrupting influence.

“MC! Torture dungeon or no!?” MC was snapped out of their conversation by Mammon shouting at them from his seat.

“What?”

“Do ya think there’s a torture dungeon under the castle, or not?”

“I’m not sure,” MC turned to Diavolo. “Lord Diavolo, is there a torture dungeon under the Demon Lord’s Castle?”

There is in fact, no torture dungeon. Presumably...

Everyone packed up and headed out to the Demon Lord’s Castle!

The fabulous seven all broke several speed limits and traffic laws in order to be there early. Listen, they had to get there before Purgatory Hall, it was a matter of pride.

Besides, what’s the Royal guard going to do? Arrest six of the seven rulers of hell and a kid? Ha. No. Not when Diavolo controls their paychecks.

The rooming situation remained the same, Asmo, Simeon, and MC were roomed together, and MC got to watch Asmo get psychologically profiled by Simeon. It was truly a sight to behold.

MC was nice enough to assure Asmo that they really liked him and thought he was very sweet.

Asmo, not used to being complimented on his personality, almost started openly weeping.

So, the tour of the Demon Lord’s Castle began! Asmo got yelled at by his ex in the painting and the usual batch of idiots got sucked into the catacombs under the castle.

Lucifer wasn’t terribly sure how or if he should express his concern for MC being stuck in the labyrinth.

All these new fatherly feelings of worry are very very odd. He didn’t worry this much for Satan, mainly because Satan was usually the threat.

Even as a baby...

Lucifer found himself checking his DDD every few minutes to see if MC had texted or called from wherever the painting dragged them to, never mind that if they did text he’d hear the phone ding.

“Lucifer, don’t worry too much,” Diavolo patted Lucifer on the shoulder, a bright smile on his face. “Your brothers and MC will be perfectly fine! There’s nothing too dangerous in the catacombs that they wouldn’t be able to take care of.”

Resigning himself to the fact that MC was under the care of his last choices for babysitting, Lucifer put away his DDD. “I know they’ll be fine, but I’m not overly pleased with the situation.” He shot a glare at Helene in the portrait, who rolled her eyes and crossed her arms.

“Lucifer worrying about someone, I’m truly, genuinely shocked.” Hearing Satan’s attempt at goading him, Lucifer, flawless demon that he is, resisted the urge to throw his DDD at his brother.

“Quiet, Satan.”

————

“WHY THE FUCK IS A SNAKE DOWN HERE?!”

“ITS HENRY 1.0!”

“YEAH THAT REALLY CLEARS STUFF UP, LEVI!”

MC and Levi continued their screaming match as the group ran for dear life from a giant snake.

Yeah... nothing the brothers couldn’t handle... sure, Lord Diavolo...

They made it out of the scary catacombs... don’t worry.

Lucifer did that parent-thing where he cleaned the catacomb dust off MC’s face with a napkin.

Yay! Parenting!

Failed pillow fight attempt #1 happened that evening. Because Mammon was obsessed with being the fun-uncle and saw his brothers encroaching on his place as favourite uncle.

MC doesn’t know how to break it to him that he’ll probably always be the favourite uncle and he doesn’t have to be such a dumbass to keep his spot.

Scavenger hunt went on as canon dictates.

Asmo had his diva tantrum and stormed off, but MC also wanted to win so they didn’t go after him.

Clearly expecting someone to go beg him to come back, Asmo was very annoyed when no one went after him.

“Um, helloooo? Anyone going to comfort me~?”

“Nope.”

“Well I don’t want your comfort anyway, SOLOMON.”

It was very close, L!MC insisted their loss came from sabotage. No evidence was found but just LOOK at Satan’s face.

Time for the Formal Dance~

If you’re wondering why Luke didn’t say anything when MC was suddenly poofed into their demon form, you’re assuming that Mammon wasn’t in on the “let’s prank the chihuahua” plan.

“Mammon..? Is MC behind you?”

“Nope! Why?”

MC was able to get to the other side of the ballroom with Luke none the wiser! Hell yeah, nothing like screwing with your friend!

So it’s canon that Lucifer is like, a solid 20/10, therefore MC is ADORABLE. What I’m saying is, some of the younger demons asked them to dance.

Asmo was also being MC’s hype man, which was very nice of him. Mammon also tried to give advice on how to be cool and suave. Beel was there for moral support.

“Alright kiddo, you need to be aloof and mysterious! People love aloof and mysterious, that’s why I’m so popular.”

“Don’t listen to him, MC. He flew into a wall as a kid and it killed all his brain cells. Just be proper but not snooty, sweet but not saccharine, friendly but not annoying,”

“Ask them if they want to share some of the hors d’oeuvres.” 

“Okay, first, aloof and mysterious are the last words I would ever use to describe you, Mammon. Second, Asmo I have no clue what you’re asking me to do. Third... Beel that’s the best advice I’ve received in recent memory.”

None of that mattered anyway because MC got swarmed with dance offers.

“Well,” MC smirked and held out their hand at the demon that was bold enough to ask them to dance first. “I admire the confidence.”

The demon’s smile brightened, then dropped completely when their gaze drifted behind MC. “I uh... on second thought... I’m gonna...”

MC’s potential dance partners all quickly scattered to the snack table. The half demon growled and turned around to see their father acting like he didn’t just scare away MC’s groupies.

“Father! What was that for?!” MC huffed, Lucifer rolled his eyes and grabbed MC’s wrist and began to pull them away from the dance floor.

“You’re too young to dance.”

“That’s crazy! They looked like they were my age.” MC protested, their wings fluttering in annoyance.

“Even if they looked to be your age, MC, they’re hundreds of years older.” Lucifer said calmly.

“What about that equivalent age stuff you told me about? Like how Luke is hundreds of years old but by angel/human standards he’s technically younger than me?”

“That doesn’t matter right now.” Lucifer lightly pushed MC towards the hallway that led back to their room.

“But I want to dance with someone!” MC felt their wings involuntarily fluff up.

Lucifer turned and smiled at his dear little brat, crouching slightly to get to their level. “Not on my watch.”

MC’s face was literally this: >:0

Lucifer is out here being the dad in every comedy that involves someone bringing home their partner to meet their parents.

MC was banished to their room, they spent their time angrily reading the manga they had packed.

When Levi escaped the party slightly later MC grilled him for details of what went on after they left.

“Nothing too interesting... except... um...”

“Spit it out, Levi!”

“...lrddiavlondlucferdnced”

“I can’t understand you, stop mumbling.”

“Lord Diavolo and Lucifer danced together...”

“...”

“...”

“I MISSED THAT?!”

So yes, MC’s desire to get a picture of Lucifer sleeping stems from VENGEANCE!

How DARE their father send MC up to their room and make them miss their OTP dancing together!?

So they call up their troupe of idiots and get ready to go be menaces to society.

MC also invites along Asmo because he seemed like he could use the adventure.

And because MC couldn’t plan the prank without Asmo noticing so it was better to just implicate him as well...

“Grrr...”

MC brightened and clapped their hands. “I know that growl!”

“It’s not my stomach, I packed snacks.” MC couldn’t see this, considering the room was pitch black (it must’ve been some kind of magic because demons have excellent night vision), but Beel waved a bag of chips in the air and got to eating.

“No, I’m not talking about your stomach, Beel.” MC skipped towards the source of the growling despite Mammon and Levi’s pleas for them to stop.

Ah! There he was!

“Cerberus!” MC cooed, the three headed dog stopped growling and barked happily. “Whose a good boy? Is it you?”

Cerberus let lose a bark that would probably make anyone crap their pants, but MC giggled and kept petting him. “Yeah! You’re the good boy! You like cuddles! Yes you do! Yes you do!”

A flash of light from a camera caused MC to drop their baby talk voice and stare angrily in the direction where the light came from.

“Whoever took that picture better delete it or I’m going to feed you to the dog.”

Cerberus growled in agreement. What a good boy.

“Well, as nice as this is...” Asmo huffed. “We’ve clearly been duped because this is not Lucifer and Diavolo’s room.”

“Oh well!” MC chirped and continued to pet the three headed dog. “Look at the doggy!”

“MC, you’re crazy. Dontcha ever forget that.” Mammon whimpered as Cerberus growled at him.

So yeah, they couldn’t get out of the room, so they ended up opening up the other door and falling into the catacombs like a bunch of lemmings.

Asmo charmed Henry, and they got out of the labyrinth no problem.

Yay! No consequences! Oh no- hi Lucifer.

Lucifer gave them all the mother of all lectures. Satan showed up with the rest of the gang and brought popcorn.

Belphie wasn’t there, okay? Satan needed to be a little shit for him.

Ah yes, the pillow fight... Mammon’s crusade to be the best uncle culminated in a massive pillow fight that ended with MC, Lucifer, and Diavolo standing over everyone’s unconscious bodies.

So they uh... won the pillow fight.

MC couldn’t sleep. They legitimately couldn’t. As exhausting as the pillow fight victory had been, everyone was snoring, and MC was bleary eyed and awake at one in the morning.

They eventually sat up and looked around, Asmo was passed out in a very unflattering position, Solomon was chanting god knows what in his sleep, Levi was half hanging off Simeon’s bed, Simeon and Luke were sleeping like angels (hehehehe-), Beel was in the middle of eating his pillow in his sleep, Mammon appeared to be dreaming about winning the lottery, and Satan was... suspiciously absent.

He was there a minute ago... weird.

Deciding that this wasn’t worth it and they should just go sleep somewhere else, MC got out of bed and avoided stepping on anyone as they vacated the room.

The Demon Lord’s Castle at night could rival the House of Lamentation in terms of overall creepiness. MC had gotten used to the spirits and curses that littered their home, but they had only been to the Demon Lord’s Castle once before, so they were extra careful not to accidentally touch anything. Their stomach rumbled and they frowned.

Damn, they had the midnight munchies... they needed a snack.

MC made their way to the kitchen and on there way, noticed a peculiar room through a half open door. Taking a few steps back to peek into it, they noticed... doors. A lot of doors. And ivy covered steps. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to any of the placements, and the room was... weirdly chilly.

“You can come in if you’d like, MC.”

Barbatos’ voice nearly caused MC to hit a high note that they hadn’t been able to hit since their voice began to change. They straightened out their wrinkled pyjamas and stepped inside.

The butler himself was walking down one of the flights of stairs.

“Um...” Quickly remembering their manners, MC straightened their posture and cleared their throat. “Good evening Barbatos.”

Barbatos smiled and inclined his head in turn. “Good evening to you as well, MC.”

“How did you know it was me outside? You were up there a second ago.” MC asked.

“It’s a part of my powers. I can see possible futures, and I foresaw you passing by my room and getting curious.” Barbatos explained.

“Oh,” MC said, half nodding and continuing to look around. A the sound of a door closing out of MC’s vision made them squeak and look around for the source of the noise. “What was that?!”

“It’s nothing to be worried about.” Barbatos raised his hands in a placating gesture. “These doors in my room are gateways to different timelines and some are gateways into the past of this particular timeline. That was another version of me passing by.”

“Does this... happen often?” MC knitted their eyebrows.

Barbatos hesitated before answering. “Not really. It’s quite rare. Lord Diavolo has expressly forbidden me from using my full powers freely.”

“Ah... makes sense...”

“Now, I believe you came down for snacks?”

MC blinked in surprise. “How did you- oh... the time magic...”

“Yes, the time magic. Now, would you prefer yogurt and fruit, or apples and peanut butter?”

“Yogurt and fruit please!”

I’m sure MC’s knowledge of how Barbie’s room works will totally not come into play later. I’m sure.

Solomon and MC graced the brunch table with their cooking. I think you can guess how it would have turned out if Barbatos hadn’t intervened.

Rest In Peace to Beel’s tastebuds.

Anyway, the rest of the retreat was all fun and good.

MC may or may not have slipped up and called Diavolo ‘Dia’ in front of Lucifer. It would’ve sparked a lecture if Dia’s puppy-like excitement wasn’t so damn adorable.

Lucifer’s got a heart... somewhere... it’s probably all shrivelled up and tiny, but I’m sure it’s there.

Everyone went back home, brought closer together through... pillow fights and surviving Solomon’s cooking I guess..?

Anyway, MC got home, unpacked their stuff, watched Kakegurui with Levi and Mammon, let Asmo paint their nails, made and ate dinner with Beel, continued their piano lessons with Lucifer, and received a 100% fake smile from Satan.

It was a nice day with their new family, MC curled up in their bed and prepared to go to sleep.

“Help me!”

MC lurched upwards in their bed, whipping their head from side to side, trying to find the source of the voice. Their room was completely empty, the perks of being half demon extended to being able to see in the dark. No new smells either, they were alone in the room.

Auditory hallucinations were common before falling asleep after being sleep deprived, creepy, but not too unusual.

“MC!”

Okay- that one couldn’t be ignored. It was common knowledge that the House of Lamentation was definitely haunted in some capacity, but the ghosts never really bothered the demons living inside, MC was partly convinced that some of the ghosts didn’t even notice that the demons were there. So it couldn’t have been a ghost calling their name.

“MC! I need help!”

The voice reverberated through their head, like it was trying to hit every part of their skull to make sure it was at least felt if MC couldn’t hear it. MC massaged their scalp and got out of bed.

The House of Lamentation at night truly lived up to its haunted reputation. Cold, clammy, dark, even by demon standards. No spooky old house was going to scare MC though, they walked down the hall with their head held high.

They walked closer to walls and furniture, knowing that the floor was less likely to creak in those areas. How did they know that? Mammon had told them it worked like a charm. Well, it’d work better for him if he stopped tripping over the furniture and alerting Lucifer.

MC was much more nimble and careful, stepping slowly and lightly around the hallways until they reached the door to the attic. They reached out to clasp their hand around the doorknob, then froze. It smelled like…

Oh no.

MC leapt away from the door like it was rigged to explode if they touched it and practically dove for cover into an alcove. The all too-recent smell of Lucifer’s fancy cologne and the increasing sound of someone coming down the stairs made them clamp their hand over their mouth and crouch down.

What was their father doing up there?

He had said the attic was full of old junk and there was no reason to go up there, so why exactly did he-

The door slammed open and Lucifer stomped down the hallway back towards his room, MC presumed. They were about to let out a sigh of relief when the footsteps paused. MC felt their heart drop right into their gut when they heard the footsteps coming back in their direction.

What were they going to say to him when he found them? ‘Sorry! This isn’t where the bathrooms are!’ The last thing MC wanted was to add to their father’s ever growing list of stresses. MC was totally responsible and grown-up, their father didn’t need to worry.

MC clamped their eyes shut and tried to slow their heart rate. Demons were beings of darkness and shadow, they could blend in quite easily. They took a deep breath, cleared their head, and felt the shadows of the hallway shift and cover them like a blanket.

Lucifer’s footsteps stopped, MC heard a tired sigh, then the footsteps started up again, this time in the direction of his room.

They allowed themselves a sigh of relief before relieving themselves of their hiding space and opening the door leading to the attic staircase.

If the rest of the House of Lamentation was considered clammy, cold, and foreboding, the attic staircase was that multiplied by a factor of twelve. MC felt themselves shudder involuntarily when they stepped closer to the staircase. Every primal part of their brain was telling them to turn around and walk away, but one tiny part was holding them back. They placed their foot on the first step, waiting for any kind of resistance, nothing other than the feeling of passing through invisible cobwebs.

“MC?”

Upon hearing their name, MC craned their neck to try and get a look at what could be waiting for them at the top of the stairs.

“Are you coming, or not?”

The cascade of warning sirens that began to blare in MC’s head went ignored as they continued to scale the staircase.

When they reached the final step, they were met with a long hallway, with a single door on the right side of the wall.

“H-hello?” MC tried to instill some force into their voice, but it still ended up quavering a little.

“Down here.” Someone knocked on the wall next to the door, almost causing MC to jump.

Oh. Oh no. MC stood straight in front of the door, and when they saw who was looking back at them they nearly passed out.

“Belphegor..?”

Belphegor’s eyes flashed as he gave MC a once over. His eyes narrowed when his gaze snapped to MC’s. The analytical expression melted into a lazy grin.

“That’s me,” he said softly. “Nice to finally meet you, MC.”

[trekkie-in-space]

Straight Fact about Marsella/Marseille from La Casa de Papel and some following Headcanon/Theories ✨✨

- Fact -

- Very discreet, he observes a lot and talk a little, called at a least at two reprises a mute (by Bogotà and Denver)

- Close to animals, especially dogs, love them, respect them, trust them more than human. He is against animal suffering.

- Ex-Soldier, has been called an assassin (by Bogotà) and Hitman (by Denver), killed human, killing a human is not a problem (straight up threatened Denver to cut him in half)

- Lost all his friends during war

- Had a dog during war, the dog was very loyal to him, stayed when human left (That dog was probably not Pamuk)

- Had a dog, Pamuk, very loyal/close to him too, got killed by children playing war

- Know many languages : Spanish, French, Italian, German, English, Croatian, Serbian

- React very quickly to Denver grabbing his arm/to physical provocation was trained to react that way + probably has a sharp instinct, not shy to threaten physically and orally someone

- Answer quickly to the professor order, see him as the chief/boss and obey him. One word from him is enough, do not discuss order.

- Extremely lucky - dude crash a car and get out pretty much without a scratch - I BEG YOUR PARDON ? - the car rolled and all, what if it had deformed to the point he couldn't get out ? What if he had broken a bone in the shock and couldn't dash out ? Because you can protect yourself all you want, getting in a crash, even one you plan, is very dangerous. Dude was like 'I have things to do and nothing will prevent me from doing them' and just walked out like nothing happened. Wtf man ?

- Has a lot of respect for the professor and to his plan. Will defend the plan when the professor wants to take risk but still follow change in plans if the risk is less than the gain (When they fight after Lisbon 'death' and then go into the crowd disguised.).

- Try to provide emotional support to the professor, he is clumsy about it but do his best and tries a lot of things

- Caring toward the professor, with (and I'm sorry but I don't know how to say it differently, but..) A certain tenderness. Like anybody in the group (or most) they are not just colleagues. But there is just a softness with him.

- React to Palermo 'Boum Boum Ciao' the same way the professor does. Seem annoyed, middly ashamed but also taken by the energy around (to crack a smile like the professor).

- Can be very intimidating if choose to, but in relaxed situation seem very kind/soft and not unbearing or obnoxious/showing.

- Extrapolations on Canon, Theories and Headcanons -

- The last hit he gave the professor when they were fighting is not because he misread the situation but because the professor just said Lisbon could betray them (which is technically true) and his hit was his way to say, 'have some faith/respect in your wife'

- During that fight he intentionally took hit from the professor to allow him to unload stress/give him a win. Why ? Because he is a trained ex-soldier who clearly shows good physical abilities, he knows how to fight and could probably take on Sergio even if he know how to fight too. Prior to this we see two scenes. One in a relaxed sitting (the soccer match) where Helsinki give him a slap and he doesn't react badly, he takes the hit and laugh, they were in front of each other he could have potentially avoid the hit, but did not hold grudges for that hit, basically taking a hit or two is not much for him and won’t be enough for him to get angry/escalate a situation. BUT during the pig scene to remove a micro, he reacts badly to physical provocation by Denver after he had to defend his position not to touch the animal with the rest of the team. Even if just a few said something, the whole team was baffled by his decision/principle, it was a moment where he was 'alone against all' and he defended himself in a quick and efficient manner.

They are in a middle of a heist, they are allies and he clearly does not want to fight, he fights because Sergio wants to fight and he probably doesn't give his all but just enough not to get bullied and give Sergio a mean to keep unleashing on him. (Man I swear you're doing too much)

- Definitely have some trauma and problem concerning human and trust. In two separate points, he has lost a lot or enough, and he had been deeply hurt by that (his friends all dead, his animals), probably have some unhealed emotional scars or one that heal badly and one way to cope is to keep a bit of distance + he seems to have a certain discipline/restrain in general.

Second, he mistrust humans, he is careful around them. Probably (definitely) has seen a large panel of the worst humanity has to offer. Probably don't trust easily but love when someone proves him they are worth trusting - which I think is what happened with the professor. Otherwise probably work alone or keep some distance.

- Jumping on that. He completely agreed to the professor as the boss, and his boss. Coming from a military background, he is used to having someone above him giving order and he answer promptly to the professor order or demand without questioning it/arguing (except when it touch to something the professor explicitly stated they should not do like improvisation, then he will argue). Overall he trusts him, might even admire him or have a deep respect for him and his plan/what de does/his personality.

-> I also believe his personality is one of a 'shadow' by that I mean he is his best as close support to someone/something acting behind for the good of the plan (which he does in the series), but I think he thrives in that role. He is a real doer. Dude will do anything that need to be done. like, he is perfect for a second, with someone above him to direct the action.

- Always had a good relationship to animals, now it had become a coping mechanism and a way to have companionship without the burden of 'human' nature. Not that he doesn't miss more close relationship to humans. Nor is it not painful when he loses someone or an animal close to him. it's just he find solace in animals compagny.

- Very soft, kind, caring inside. He let that out for the people he care about/trust. We see him mostly with the professor and above it being his role to care for the professor and all the 'beside' matter and needs. There are a lot of moments where he is very attentive to the professor or caring in ways that go above a professional setting (I'm sorry but when in the latest season when he put the cover back on Sergio as he sleep.. Such tenderness I swear ! or the way he tries to offer him emotional comfort/help)

-> Also the way he care for Sofia..

- Give off asexual vibe, sorry not sorry but it's true. That man is ace.

- Why is he on the heist ? I think outside of money and personal material gain he might be in for revenge against the system. He was a soldier, an executor in the government hands, he may want to fuck the system, give shit to a system that has used him, that took a lot from him. Maybe he was betrayed by that government and the people in it, root for his mistrust of human or just added enough to a preexisting base.

- The way he reacts physically and violently to Denver grabbing him when he turn away is very telling. He has a strong instinct and sharp reflex. But also definitely found himself in a situation where this would have been a life of death situation or overall high danger. This is absolutely pure speculation but outside of his work as a soldier and now hitman this reaction could be rooted deeper in child abuse and trauma, which could also reflect to his discreet and unshowing personality, he keeps to himself.

Anyway this looked like reflexes from training and from past traumatic experience. -> In a way his reaction seemed a bit too much (definitely) for the situation they were in, but also somewhat 'slow' (I'm interpreting too much the acting but whatever) as if he thought about reacting the way he did, nearly didn't but still did because he was pissed off from earlier and had been triggered. So he just decided to go with the outburst, and set his position straight.

-> Being grabbed from behind/prevented from leaving might also be from a fear/trigger to be trapped (the way he place himself behind in the class, close to the door (which could be nothing lol x) )). Which could also be tied to his time in military where his agency had been stripped from him completely/where he was lacking freedom and had to do things he didn't want to do.

- A big BIG softy, but also those hands have killed and will kill again. (in a way him and Helsinki are a bit alike)

- Keeps most of his emotions inside, tend to stay mostly neutral and what he show is just the tip of the iceberg, but don't be fooled, that man have a lot of emotions.

- Probably need a lot of time to open up, but do info dump at time when he think it might be relevant (ex: during the pig scene, or in the car with Sergio after Lisbon 'death') and you're like 'what ?' very likely need to be asked question if you want to know things about him.

- He likes honesty, but probably won't be himself, tend to be secretive, probably a good liar. He will be honest on a few important things otherwise...

- That man way of love his act of service x)

[thefirsttree]

A personal update + my next game

OK, time to do this. I’ve been meaning to do a big DAVID WEHLE™ update for a while now and explain why I haven’t released a new game yet, but you know how life gets in the way. Especially when life is a quarantine hellscape, you have three beautiful, amazing, exhausting kids to raise, a spouse’s job you support, a viral YouTube channel that turns your brain to mush, a thousand emails waiting in your inbox since your game is free on the Epic Games Store (with an impressive number of redemptions too! … meaning lots of emails and customer support issues), etc., etc. What also contributes to my lack of updates is because… I just don’t really like posting online. Fascinating correlation, I know!

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a venting/ranting blog post (well, maybe a bit), because my life is seriously AMAZING and INSANELY BLESSED and LUCKY. I can’t believe how many dreams keep coming true, so much so that I feel I don’t deserve it and I really pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes… but I did want to at least be honest, because I owe that to myself.

Wow, where do I even begin? Well, how about we start with the reason I’m even a full-time indie game dev now: The First Tree. This small hobby project I worked on at night morphed into this gargantuan beast (or fox) that took over my life the past 5 years. Which is great! I’m living the dream! And yet, I really didn’t expect it to do as well as it did. At its core, my game is a slow-paced, sad walking simulator (ahem, I prefer the term “exploration game,” but you know what I mean) that somehow seemed to launch at the right time to the right audience. It resonated deeply with some of you, and for that I’m eternally grateful. I still get emails almost daily how my game changed their lives in some formative way. I’m beyond honored.

However, with that spotlight came criticism and demands from the ever-present, insatiable internet. I would randomly be surfing the gamedev subreddit trying to decompress, and I would see a comment by some rando saying how much I didn’t deserve my success, and how it was all one huge lucky fluke. And I believed them!

And to add to it, some devs considered me an indie marketing “guru”, which I was uncomfortable with. I worked hard to market my game every week, and after my GDC talk, people assumed marketing was my passion; the reason I got up every morning. Just to clarify… NO, I don’t like marketing, and I hate being the center of attention. I don’t like asking people for money and wishlists. But I did what was necessary because I was passionate about telling stories, and I wanted to give my story a fighting chance to be seen on the crowded pages of Steam.

So now, you’re probably wondering “well then David, why did you make fancy YouTube videos showing off your success? Not very modest if you ask me.” This honestly could be a long blog post all on its own, because my experience of putting myself in the spotlight and becoming a “content creator” is… complicated. It was an unusual step for me, especially since I never even showed my face online (as a game developer) until my GDC talk.

First off, I always wanted to teach and start a YouTube channel. I love video editing, especially since I’ve been doing it longer than making games! It’s a huge passion of mine. And teaching people who didn’t know they could make and finish games was a huge motivator (and it’s been so rewarding already). But the second reason is, I was scared. I was self-employed, and I was riding the success of a “huge lucky fluke” that would probably not happen again. I wanted to make sure I could provide for my amazing family, and give them food and health insurance and security in these tumultuous times. I was turning my lifelong passions and hobbies into a business, and it wasn’t as simple of a mental transition as I thought.

So, I went all in on YouTube and the accompanying online course called Game Dev Unlocked. I spent years editing the scripts and videos, and polishing them to a shine. At first, no one watched my videos, no one was buying… and in the blink of an eye, the YouTube algorithm picked up my main autobiographical video (“How Making Indie Games Changed My Life”), and I started getting 5,000 subscribers a day. Right now, I’m at 150,000 subs, which is still hard for me to believe. I always had a dream of earning 100k subs on YouTube, so I was pretty happy with the whole thing. Sales were OK, but mostly people didn’t want to buy the course. Then the emails came in…

Something you should know about me: I am a textbook “people pleaser,” and if someone asks for my help, I take it very seriously. If someone is mad at me, even if I didn’t do anything wrong, it’s all I can think about, and it ruins my day. So, taking an onslaught of people begging for help and multiplying that by an impossible amount of people for my brain to truly comprehend thanks to the internet… and let’s just say it wasn’t a healthy mix.

I received thousands of emails from people who were begging me for some kind of reassurance that everything would be OK. That their dreams would come true too. And I wanted to help every single one of them. I went from a nobody working on a game for fun to becoming a spokesperson for the indie game dream. I couldn’t even get a shake from the Chick-Fil-A drive-thru without someone recognizing me and asking for game dev advice. And it didn’t stop there… I would get emails from suicidal kids asking for help, teenagers from Afghanistan asking me to get them out of their country, and on one occasion I received an email from a hopeful game developer in a war-torn country who had just experienced a bomb blowing up their neighboring village. His friends were dead, and he was hoping he could finish a game before he died too, and he needed my help. How do you say no to something like that? Didn’t I owe it to everyone because I was lucky with my hit game and I needed to “pay it forward”? (Something people constantly reminded me of)

And then to top it off, after you’ve given everything you’ve got to other people in need… you get hate mail in your inbox. You spend the whole day serving your children and strangers on the internet, then when the kids are finally asleep, you hit the bed to relax and take a look at your phone to decompress, and you randomly come across an angry gamer in your Twitter mentions telling you your game they got for free sucks, and that you took away a potentially great game from them and that your apology isn’t good enough.

Long story short, I went to a mental therapist for the first time in my life. I was broken trying to care for two toddlers and a new baby in a pandemic (which is very, very hard), taking care of my course students who gave me their hard-earned money and demanded results, and the countless people begging for help on the internet. I was this introverted, internet-lurker trying to take on the weight of the world. I was so tired and hurt that no one cared about me and my needs… only what I could do for them.

Quitting my day job and making this hobby my full-time job has stirred up… mixed emotions. This statement may disturb some of you, but I was definitely 100% happier when I had a full-time job and I was working on my game at night. I missed working with the amazing team at The VOID, working on Star Wars… back when the success of my game was this abstract thing I could only daydream about. Mostly, I was making my game for me with no outside expectations to pay the bills or satisfy the ever-demanding internet, and that brought me a lot of joy.

It’s not all doom and gloom though! I’m actually very happy now and in the best shape I’ve been since the pandemic started. I’ve had to confront my weaknesses and personality quirks, but I’m a better person for it (and I’m sure these issues would’ve come out eventually). I hired an awesome community manager for Game Dev Unlocked who is helping SO MUCH with the emails, I can’t even tell you the mental burden it alleviates. I even leased a co-working office to help separate work from my home, and that’s been a huge help too. I’ve decided to work with my old friends from The VOID on a cool, new VR experience. It will take me away from my projects a bit, but I’m ecstatic to work with a great team again (and not manage anything, whew).

These are all things I would’ve never guessed I needed, because I thought I knew myself pretty well… turns out I didn’t.

The reality is: running a business is HARD. Running it solo is even harder. You have to remember, I was burnt out on The First Tree well into the Steam release in 2017, but I kept working on it for 4 more years due to my fears of failing again and not earning enough money for my family.

So, I was wrestling with the age-old concept of commercialism and art. There was this dichotomy of doing whatever I wanted and being true to my vision (what most people assume the indie dev dream is like), and doing only what customers wanted to buy. This is something that has killed me with YouTube… in one specific instance, I was super excited to make the exact video I wanted to make. I loved every part of its creation, and I thought it had a message that would inspire everyone. I lovingly edited it over several weeks, posted it, and excitedly waited for the stats… and it was by far my worst performing video.

This is not a new problem. Even the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo was a commission forced upon him by the very violent Pope Julius II. My wife and I regularly talk about the fine balance between artistic integrity and commercialism, a problem she is very familiar with as an artist who constantly needs to balance what she wants to make with what the customer wants to hang up in their home.

For The First Tree, I was lucky. It was pretty much what I wanted to make (I had to compromise a lot of things of course), and it turned out millions of people wanted it too. Recently, I thought the safe business decision would be to do it all over again, so I started work on a spiritual successor to The First Tree (an idea that I may revisit one day since I do love the story idea). But that isn’t happening anytime soon. Trust me when I say I am now currently burnt out on animal exploration games.

So that realization left me with a question: what do I do next?

I’ve decided I need to make a game that I want to make, for me. It will be a bit different and I’m almost certain most fans of The First Tree will not love it… but it’s an idea that gets me super excited. It’s an idea that could help me fall in love with game development again.

A few more details: this game will be story-driven, first-person, and will use the Unreal Engine. That means development is gonna be slow going, because I have to learn a whole new tool. The “smart business” decision would be to make something quickly in Unity which I’m already familiar with… but I want to do this for me, and UE5 looks like a lot of fun. I’m also shooting for an early-ish release date so I avoid burn out and I keep the game short: I want to release it in Fall 2022, but knowing game development, it will probably take longer.

With the help of my therapist, I’ve also concluded that I’ve been too accessible on the internet and that my self-worth isn’t determined by the amount of people I try to help online. Of course, I love helping people and seeing them succeed, but I need to step back and focus on my family and myself. I will delete my social media apps on my phone (I will still post big updates occasionally) and stop responding to most emails, tweets, DMs, etc. It’s not that I’m ungrateful… in fact, if I don’t say thank you or at least acknowledge the incredibly nice people who share a sweet message about my game or want to tell me how I inspire them (still hard for me to believe, lol), I feel a ton of guilt… but I need to let that go. Please know I’m extremely grateful to all the fans who follow my work, so even if I don’t thank you directly, I truly mean it: thank you.

I will still post and stream occasionally on YouTube when I want to (and I still do live Q&A’s for my GDU students). The online course sales will help support my family as I work on a potentially risky game idea (and my new job will help alleviate the risk too). I’m gonna try one more marketing experiment and sell a mini-course soon (and add an Unreal section), and after that I’m done working on it. A gigantic thank you to the people who bought my course and are part of the amazing community, it has helped me and my family tremendously, and it’s inspiring seeing the games you make!

I’m a bit worried about the whole thing since this new game idea could flop, which could definitely affect my family. But a sappy, high-school yearbook quote is coming to mind…  I think it applies here: “A ship in harbor is safe—but that is not what ships are built for.”

Thanks for reading,

David

[rokhal]

I need a reason for Robbie Reyes to get it into his head that he needs to go to El Paso/Juarez and kill Amparo Cardenas aka crime lord La Dama aka the loving and supportive aunt of one of Blue Beetle���s oldest friends.

In Blue Beetle 2006, La Dama was the head of a trans-national criminal organization that dealt regularly with Intergang (a larger, multinational criminal organization in the DC universe). She built her empire on smuggling and financial services for other criminals. Since taking in her niece Brenda, she has avoided killing people very often, which, given the nature of criminal organizations, probably means that she has abandoned those arms of her business that require killing people very often. She is a crooked but stabilizing presence on the Texas-Mexico border.

In 2006.

Since 2010, the real-world criminal violence situation in Mexico has gone tragically off the rails (not that there’s an “on the rails” for criminal violence, but “less” would be nice), and the Juarez-El Paso border crossing has been a flashpoint for cartels seeking to monopolize the transport of drugs and people into the United States. We still get fun news stories like the guy who laundered money from Mexico into the US through the quarter-horse industry, but the guy’s brother stole a tiger from a circus so he could feed his enemies to it. It is much harder to carve out a role in which a fictional crime lord can remain profitable and palatable.

Weighting her activities on the US side of the border, as a lender, money-launderer, and wielder of influence, would make La Dama less openly violent by necessity, but she would still be exchanging money and favors with some very evil people, dependent on them and supporting their operations. She does have a motive to use her influence to moderate between the warring factions in Juarez and southward. Perhaps throwing her support behind a single, potentially-dominant faction might seem to her to be a reasonable strategy to protect her two cities. A single drug cartel is bad, but five smaller criminal factions all trying to kill each-other at once in the town where you live are five times worse.

Or maybe Amparo Cardenas goes straight and runs for mayor of El Paso.

Robbie Reyes thinks of himself as a person who minds his own business. He doesn’t, but he has to think that he has a personal reason to fight any particular crime, whether it’s because he hasn’t transformed in a while and needs someone to beat on, or because someone he cares about is hurt or in danger, or in Uberverse, if innocent blood triggers his Ghost Rider instincts.

I don’t see him going to El Paso or Juarez uninvited, unless someone he knows has a connection there in need of rescue or vengeance. Maybe one of his coworkers, former classmates or teachers, neighbors, or caseworkers has a relative in Juarez who disappears, so Robbie goes to investigate. Once in Juarez, he sees evidence, or perhaps a baseless accusation by a criminal faction, that La Dama is behind the disappearance, and he decides, as he does, to take his vengeance straight to the top. Problem is, Robbie isn’t stupid, and throughout Uber!verse, it’s been very important to him to be certain that the person he plans to kill has actually done something that he believes deserves death. It can’t be just a false-flag narcomanta or a dying accusation by a spiteful footsoldier; it has to convincingly point to La Dama as having ordered the murder or torture of the person Robbie came to save or avenge.

Otherwise there’s no reason for Robbie to try to teleport into La Dama’s compound and get snagged on the magical wards.

[thevindicativevordan]

On Maxima

Every time DC wants to put Supes in a relationship with someone other than Lois, I always wonder why they don't just go with Maxima.

Especially since she's basically what they turn Diana into every time they try to hook the two of them up. Why not just go with the actual Superman Rogue/supporting character who is also a warrior-queen? Who is already almost as violent as she is horny, forcing Clark to try to get her to chill out, even as he's tempted to join her? If it isn't already clear, I like Maxima. Her character archetype, the supervillainess who tempts the hero with sex appeal, is one that's pretty damn popular for obvious reasons. Also for obvious reasons, this kind of character can provoke a backlash nowadays.

Personally I think she can still work just fine, she just needs some revamp. The basics of her character and backstory are still solid and offer storytelling potential. She's the Queen of the alien Empire of Almerac. Maxima is drawn to Superman because of his power. The real big fix is changing why she's attracted to his power, and why she came to Earth in the first place, shifting it away from eugenics to something else.

What I'd Do With Maxima

So I'm going to take some cues from the DCAU incarnation of Maxima in that the reason she seeks Superman out is because she's been deposed.

DCAU Maxima got deposed after she met Superman, but she lost her throne because her people judged her too self-absorbed and immature to lead them. Which she totally was, and changing that formed the crux of her character development over the course of the episode. I'd take a similar route with reworking comics Maxima's backstory.

Maxima has just taken the throne when the Interstellar Empire of Almerac comes under the assault of Mongul of Warworld. Crushing Almerac's defenses, Mongul gives the world an ultimatum: Turn over a selection of their greatest fighters to fight for Almerac's continued right to exist in Mongul's gladiator arenas or he'll reduce the entire planet to ashes. He also demands a sizeable portion of the population be turned over as slaves tasked with keeping Warworld running, and he wants Maxima to be among those slaves as a symbol of Mongul's authority over Almerac. Maxima angrily refuses, but her people don't trust in her leadership on account of her youth and immaturity, and Maxima is overthrown. She's handed over for transport to Warworld, but while en route she breaks free and seizes control of the transport. Alone and without allies, Maxima sets a course for Earth to seek out the one person she's heard is a match for the Lord of Warworld: Superman.

Only interested at first in his power, and planning to use and dispose of him afterwards, Maxima at first presents herself to Clark as a potential mate. Her hope is that will entice him to support her on what could be a suicide mission, and that offering power and wealth via marriage will cement his loyalty. Being betrayed by her subjects still stings her though she takes great pains to pretend otherwise. Superman turns down the marriage offer, but agrees to follow her to take down Mongul and free Almerac. The two travel back to Almerac which is in the midst of choosing who will fight on Warworld. Clark pretends to be a native of Almerac and is chosen as one of the champions. Initially planning to stay on Almerac and purge those who betrayed her while Clark fights on Warworld, Maxima chooses to give herself up to Mongul, after he announces that he will be vaporizing an entire continent as punishment for the Almeracans failure to turn her over to him. Amused at her compassion for those who betrayed her, Mongul adds Maxima to the roster of gladiators, and she departs with Clark to the arenas.

Over the course of a series of battles, Maxima and Clark butt heads, watch each other's backs, and gradually fall in love with each other. Maxima admires Clark's resolve, restraint, and maturity, traits she's forced to admit she lacked. She's skeptical of his idealism however, seeing it as a flaw that undermines his effectiveness, particularly when it comes to killing. Clark admires Maxima's passion, bravery, and refusal to settle for anything less than the best in anyone including herself. All traits that make him ponder if perhaps she does have it in her to be a good leader. He dislikes her arrogance and entitlement however, particularly when it comes to her royal right to rule. A frequent source of fights between the two is whether the common person should have any voice in government with Maxima scoffing at that and point at how the mob gave in to Mongul, with Clark countering that Almeracans had long felt unheard and cut off from their rulers. Obviously that they're both super hot doesn't hurt as part of why they end up sleeping together.

Ultimately through a series of events Superman and Maxima succeed in freeing Almerac and driving Mongul away. Then everything promptly goes to hell. Having fallen for Clark for real over the course of their adventure, Maxima repeats her offer to him of marriage, except genuinely this time.

The two have had sex a couple times already, and Clark is genuinely tempted at the prospect of sticking with Maxima. He's grown to enjoy her company (having sex tends to do that), he enjoys the freedom to be himself without having to hide his powers, the Almeracans embrace him as their champion, and as Maxima's consort he could take an active hand in shaping society. At the point in Clark's career where I'd want to do this story, he's growing out of his youthful rage, but he's still not at peace with his lot in life. Earth's inability to meaningfully change at the pace he wants frustrates him, and leaving behind the restrictions of life there does entice him. My point is that I think the appeal of Maxima to Superman should and can be more than just breeding little Clarks as has been the case in the past.

However Clark ultimately rejects the offer. He can't bring himself to cut ties with Earth, Maxima's unwillingness to cede some of her power to her people isn't something Clark can accept, and Clark is also concerned that taking up her offer would compromise his ability to be a hero. As you would expect, Maxima is pissed at his refusal, treating it as another stab in the back. Due to his help in freeing her people and reclaiming her throne, she spares his life but exiles him from Almerac, declaring him persona non grata throughout the Empire.

Unbeknownst to Clark, who leaves after it's made clear the Almeracans don't want a civil war, Maxima is pregnant with his child. The child allows her to avoid entering into a political marriage, maintaining her independence since she now has a heir. This daughter will be groomed in hidden to take over the Empire, which Maxima now has plans to expand. The humiliation Mongul visited upon Almerac has had a big impact on her mindset. Now she's focused on eliminating any potential threats to her people, and she wants to transform Almerac into the greatest Interstellar Empire in the Milky Way. Then it will never be at the mercy of a foreign power ever again.

For stories, Superman and Maxima are clearly going to clash given she's become an imperialist herself, no better than Mongul. You can tell stories about Clark foiling Maxima's attempts to conquer other worlds, or Earth itself. Maxima would occasionally dispatch assassins or go personally to attack Clark, for the purpose of preventing him from getting "soft". The public reason for this is that he's become a roadblock to her aims, and needs to be eliminated. Secretly, her goal is to constantly push him to be stronger because she wants him to meet his daughter one day. Not for any sentimental reasons mind you, Maxima wants Superman to teach their daughter to be his equal in ability and resourcefulness. After learning everything she can from Clark, said daughter will be charged with leading the invasion of Earth. Conquering Earth, and defeating Superman, will be the girl's rite of passage into cementing herself as Maxima's heir. The world of her father, Superman, is destined to be her own Throneworld as Almerac's is Maxima's.

Think you could have a lot of fun in giving Clark a "Damian" of his own to deal with. Personally I'd have it so that the "daughter" would be akin to the New 52 Maxima who I thought had some potential. You could have Maxima and Maxima Jr. argue about the morality of Almerac's expansion, with MJ ultimately taking her father's side which causes enormous problems for her mother since she can't disown her daughter without a replacement heir. I think that could be a fun family dynamic to explore.

Wondering where Maxima will show up next. Part of me was hoping Almerac was that part of underdeveloped Superman lore PKJ talked about fleshing out, but that seems to be either Warworld or the Phantom Zone. I still think Maxima and Almerac have a lot of potential to be major players in Superman's world, but it's going to take someone being interested in fleshing them out. Maybe the upcoming Superman cartoon will accomplish that? If not I'll just have to hope someone will down the line.

[shihalyfie]

Adventure, 02, pragmatism, and humanism (morality of fighting, conflict resolution, the importance of personal choice, etc.)

Adventure and 02 are naturally very idealistic series, but despite being idealistic, there are times when they can get rather pragmatic -- even uncomfortably pragmatic in ways that seem a bit unusual for a kids’ show. The entire last quarter of Adventure and almost all of 02 dealt so heavily with the topic of “is it okay to fight, even if it means incurring deaths?" to the point it’s pretty hard to miss, but both series have an approach towards the morality of fighting, the possibility of potentially having to kill enemies (including former friends that have turned antagonistic), the approach to dispute resolution, and the meanings of “moving forward positively” and “not getting hung up on needless negativity” that are surprisingly nuanced. At times, there’s even a strong message that warns against getting hung up on preachy principles that sound noble on their face but actually don’t get anywhere in practice.

This is a handful of topics, and it’s to the point where it may seem a bit strange to condense all of these under one meta instead of dedicating separate posts to it, but I decided to on the grounds of the fact that they’re all very tied to each other in the course of Adventure’s narrative. Overall, both series are very kind to the feelings and mentalities and thoughts of the young children involved, having the characters not only be kind towards each other but also encouraging the audience to understand their feelings. This is an approach towards understanding oneself and others that happens to be very applicable to life in general, even for adults; both series float a balance of being pragmatic and yet humanistic, kind to the struggles and internal thoughts of all of the characters within, and have a surprisingly nuanced look at what it means to take part in conflict and what the “best thing to do” in such a case is.

As said above, this is a long and complicated meta, and it’s to the point where I’ve considered separating it into multiple parts or posts, but in the end could never bring myself to because of how interrelated all of these topics keep ending up with each other. So, to spare those of you who are intimidated by the sheer length and winding-topic nature of this, here are the main points:

One who is not emotionally ready to fight, or is unwilling to fight, should not be forced to fight. On top of it being inhumane, emotional exhaustion is treated much in a way similar to physical exhaustion; especially in a world where fighting strength is linked to emotional will, one whose heart is not in it will not even be able to effectively fight in the first place. Even when joining the fight is the obvious ideal solution, one who needs to sit out should not be blamed or scorned for it. A choice to fight is exactly that, a choice, not an obligation; the world is messy and imperfect, and the most you can do is try to do whatever you can within the best of your ability. If you do, there is no reason you should be scorned for it.

There are many meaningful ways to contribute to the overall fight that don’t necessarily involve direct physical violence; those ways are still valuable and necessary, and those more attuned to those roles should embrace those roles if it makes them more comfortable to do it that way.

If an extreme result -- such as killing the enemy -- is reached, it needs to be done with the first and foremost priority being to protect people and prevent casualties. A diligent effort should still be made to preserve as many lives as possible (which means this isn’t something where you get to go all “knight templar” and beeline for a violent solution) -- but sometimes, there will be times when push comes to shove and that most extreme solution will have to be reached, even if that “enemy” was originally a friend, because inaction will very obviously lead to more people being hurt.

When a dispute about important points like the above is reached, everyone’s feelings must be acknowledged. This is not to be confused with philandering around with a “both sides have a point!” compromise; in fact, Adventure and 02 both make very firm stances on the above issues. Rather, it makes it clear that said points need to be made while not invalidating the other person for having those feelings -- that is to say, there’s a huge difference between “your opinion is wrong” and “you are stupid and unreasonable for having that wrong opinion.” Dispute resolution and understandings can only be reached when you properly understand why the other person came to that conclusion, and treat them with proper empathy and compassion while you try to work it out. You don’t have to acknowledge their point, but you have to acknowledge their feelings. (For those of you who have seen Appmon: Shinkai Haru is a master at this technique, and there are multiple times during the series where he will very assertively make his case against others while still appealing to the other person’s feelings and never denying their right to have them. This is also an extremely useful technique for dispute resolution in general, and I recommend that those reading this consider employing it more often, at least assuming you’re dealing with someone who’s open to listening.) Likewise, to truly reach out to someone and support them also requires understanding their feelings -- you can’t truly “support” them unless you’re capable of doing so.

There is a certain limitation in which adhering too closely to “moral principles” ends up becoming impractical, and don’t end up contributing to anything in the long run -- fixating over things like grudges, revenge, “punishing” people, and even the concept of forgiveness can quickly turn into platitudes. The best way to move forward is to not fixate on those principles or get hung up on the past, and rather think “now that we’re at this point at the current moment, what’s the best way to move forward in a way that helps others the most and minimizes harm?”

Adventure and the morality of fighting, and the necessity of personal choice

Believe it or not, the question of how feasible pacifiism is was first brought up as early as Adventure episode 12, when Takeru states that he has no intention of fighting Devimon. Elecmon calls this mindset out for the naivete of thinking they can just waltz up to Devimon and ask for answers instead of him trying to murder them on the spot -- and, in fact, he is completely right, because Devimon is not someone who can be reasoned with and indeed immediately tries to murder everyone on the spot one episode later, which results in Angemon’s death and Takeru trading out this very idealistic, naive mindset for the no-compromise, strict anti-darkness stance he takes in 02.

So there are two things to get out of this. The first is that, while Adventure and 02 are certainly very idealistic series, they are absolutely not naive. There are bad actors out there like Devimon who can’t be reasoned with whatsoever. Already off the bat, we have a clear statement from Adventure that an “everyone should stop fighting and get along!” mindset, when applied ad absurdum, is not going to get anyone very far.

The second is that none of the Adventure (or 02) kids like fighting. Takeru’s reaction here is certainly as extreme as it is because the idea of “fighting” presumably triggers his trauma from his parents’ divorce and the resulting split, but there’s no actual indication that any of these kids are necessarily fond of it. Certain ones like Taichi might get a little cocky midway through the battle when they’ve gotten it in the bag and are on an adrenaline high, but there’s also no indication that they’re interested in beating stuff up for the sake of it. Note that all of the fighting in Adventure episodes 1-10 was done out of sheer self-defense, and no Digimon was killed in any of the resulting battles (we’ll assume that the giant Bakemon in episode 11 doesn’t count mainly because it’s already dead) -- it was always fighting to the minimal amount to chase the attacking Digimon away or get them off their back. And, in File Island, that was possible -- but starting from the Server Continent and after, the hostile Digimon were actively out to kill them instead of just being territorial wild Digimon, forcing the Chosen Children to up the ante in order to survive.

The issue of “whether fighting in itself is the right thing to do” is brought back in the Dark Masters arc, and this is also where we start getting a discussion about the disparity between “the right thing to do” and “whether one is capable of doing said right thing to do”. Mimi, the most emotionally sensitive of the group, starts having an emotional breakdown over whether they should keep fighting and potentially drag in more casualties -- especially because the Digimon that had died had all done it for their sake in order to continue the fight, and therefore the Chosen Children are indirectly responsible for their deaths. Yamato thus explains the difficulty of the situation: he himself agrees that Taichi’s evaluation of the need to push forward and continue the fight is the right thing to do, but it’s inhumane to not consider the stress and and emotional toll this is causing and force everyone to continue in spite of that.

In addition, Taichi’s reasoning for why they should continue is “revenge” -- a very negative, spiteful reason very tied to “fighting for the sake of it”. It’s understandable for Taichi to have these feelings, but he’s going at it from the wrong direction, and he’s overall being very insensitive in this scene. Later, in Adventure episode 45, he says that he’s doing it for the sake of honoring the Digimon who died for them. In other words, a lot of the reason Taichi’s methodology isn’t working is that he’s hung up on “the principle of things”, and not the more pragmatic reasons one should fight.

In Adventure episode 45, the kids finally meet the entity who chose them in the first place, who self-identifies as “the one who wishes for stability” -- the novels name them “Homeostasis”. Note the name -- it refers to the maintenance of internal balance within a living system, and Homeostasis themself starts their long infodump with their motive: it’s not that they want to eliminate all darkness from the world entirely, but that the powers of evil are upsetting the balance so badly that everything will be consumed if something isn’t done. It’s not like they’re insistent on violence either -- it’s just that they have a world to protect. The novels give us a particular amount of extra information on this entity, namely that it is not an omnipotent god by any shake of the imagination (in fact, there’s even an implication that there are higher powers that they themself don’t understand), and rather just a mere security system that observed that things were going south and used its rather limited methods of communication (via the Agents) to help make preparations.

Regardless, back to the episode -- we learn that the reason this entity recruited human children into all of this was because of the Hikarigaoka incident in 1995, which displayed to them and the Agents that a bond between children and Digimon could allow Digimon to evolve spontaneously, something that’s not possible with Digimon in the Digital World alone. Oh, and also, that they’ve been wanting to talk to them since File Island, and this entire thing about being cryptic with information was because they literally had no body and there was a massive amount of information loss after the Dark Masters blew up the Agents’ base and killed everyone except Gennai. In other words, just like with all of the actions the Chosen Children had been taking up until this point, everything Homeostasis and the Agents did was out of desperation because they were running out of other options to save their world, and during their brief time of being able to speak with the children, Homeostasis dumps pretty much everything they need to know and speaks to them using the extremely deferential sonkeigo form, meaning that they consider everything the kids are doing to be a massive favor to them. (Contrary to common belief, their possession of Hikari’s body does not seem to be non-consensual, given that they spend multiple episodes trying to contact her, and are clearly depicted having a proper conversation with her before temporarily borrowing her body.)

Most importantly, at the end of their speech, Taichi asks them what to do next, and the response is effectively: “We don’t know, but we trust you to make the best decision.” So, again: fighting as a Chosen Child is not an obligation, but something done because they want to do it and can. They were handed the tools to get this done by Homeostasis and the Agents, who believed in their potential to create miracles and be virtuous people and do something to save their world beyond what the native Digimon could do alone out of desperation and a lack of other options, and they are not hovering over the Chosen Children to see if they’ve “succeeded” or “failed” (note that they seem to have no sense of grudge or disappointment over Taichi’s SkullGreymon stunt in Adventure episode 16, explaining it very neutrally as an example of a risk), but more “we believe you were the best people who were able to do it and we trust your ability to help us.” (This is especially because, while it’s made clear they’d been wanting to contact them for a while, their most direct intervention comes right after Yamato had questioned why they were chosen in the first place -- presumably, they felt that the kids deserved an answer.)

At the end of Adventure episode 45, Mimi, considering the fighting they’re doing to be responsible for all of the fallouts and the sacrifices, decides that she won’t participate anymore, and Jou decides to stay with her in order to convince her to come back (although the novel also reveals that he himself is having doubts, too). Very importantly: nobody begrudges Mimi for being emotionally overwhelmed and sitting out, and nobody even begrudges Jou for choosing to stay with her. This is smack in the middle of the Dark Masters arc when everyone needs all the support they can get -- but after everything that had just happened, it’s inhumane to force either of them forward in this condition.

Despite his doubts, however, Jou himself is already coming to understand the limits of “pacifism” at a time like this:

What he wanted to tell her was this: that he didn’t see any likelihood of co-existing with the Dark Masters, and that they had no other choice but to fight them. Even a neutral country like Switzerland had a military. They would be invaded by enemy countries without one. It would be nice and ideal if they used the nonviolent resistance approach as Ghandi did. But that didn’t mean it was okay to just be killed without lifting a finger… But not even he could find a good answer.

Again: Adventure and 02 are an idealistic series, but they are not naive. It would be nice if the fighting could all stop and everyone would be happy, but there are malicious bad actors who will take advantage of you sitting there and doing nothing.

And so, Leomon dies in Adventure episode 47, and Mimi and Jou learn the hard way: if they do nothing, people will still die. Mimi had witnessed all of the Digimon sacrificing themselves for the Chosen Children’s sake, and thus had followed the logic that their friends would stop dying for them if they stopped fighting, but now that they’ve stopped fighting, said malicious forces (in this case, MetalEtemon) went ahead and killed their friends anyway -- and they’ve gone and destroyed the Village of Beginnings to boot, preventing any of them from being reborn. So in other words, if the intent is to “prevent casualties”, as it turns out, inaction didn’t actually prevent casualties.

Nevertheless, Mimi does not like fighting. In fact, Jou doesn’t like fighting either. Both of them now understand that it’s the best thing to do in this situation, but is it really the best thing to do to force them into embracing violence because of this? Instead, Jou determines in Adventure episode 50 that the overall fight doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone has to jump in and get violent -- the likeable and friendly Mimi has started to cultivate a skill in getting other people to rally behind her, and Jou is starting to consider that he may have a future in treating the wounded and supporting people before they become casualties. Those are still valuable ways they can contribute without forcing them into doing things they can’t bring themselves to do -- and, indeed, Mimi’s rallied army ends up saving everyone’s rears in Adventure episode 52.

While Taichi is not there to personally witness this discussion, Adventure episode 50 has him make a slightly less reckless tactical plan, and he explains (directly citing what happened with Yamato, Mimi, and Jou as his rationale) that he’s learned that he needs to take into account the potential for there being collateral damage. Recall that, earlier, his motive for doing things had been on a sheer principle level, with a lot of negative emotions of spite and revenge. But now, he’s come to understand that the most important thing he needs to do is to “prevent sacrifices”, and that’s the reason they still need to fight. Hence, why Taichi makes a proper plan for doing it instead of just doing the first and most aggressive thing that comes to mind, since he’s a soccer captain and has the potential for being a bird’s eye tactician, after all -- this time, he just needs to channel it in a way that prioritizes the lives of people around them.

And in Adventure episode 51, when reaching out to Sora (who’s cracking under all of her self-imposed expectations and sense of duty to others), Yamato and Jou take what they learned from Homeostasis six episodes prior and apply it -- Sora is working under the mentality that they have an “obligation” to get this done and that they are impending “failures” if they don’t (and, to be fair, if they don’t make it, the world is going to end, which is pretty unambiguously terrible). But what Yamato and Jou do is reframe it to fall more closely under the philosophy of what Adventure is saying here -- the fact they can do something about it is already absolutely incredible. (I mean, not to sugarcoat the fact that the world is still going to end if they pull it off, but the stress, self-hatred, and self-blame of “we’re failures for not pulling it off” is definitely not going to help.) They are doing everything they can right now, within their reasonable abilities. If they end up not being able to do it, that’s not something that should be considered a sin or a failure on their part; they are here because they can and want to and are doing it and are here to make the best possible use of that.

It’s one of the many times Adventure and 02 will make this statement, indirectly or directly: despite the title of “Chosen Child”, the Chosen Children do everything they do because of their own choices, and because they want to, not because they have to.

We finally meet Apocalymon in Adventure episode 53, and we learn that he(?)’s a combined spirit made up of all of the Digimon that were “eliminated” and failed during the evolution process, and is deciding to take out its anger and spite at the world out on everyone else by “denying evolution” (this is clarified in the novel to also be the reason it subtly influenced the prior enemies to destroy everything and especially the Village of Beginnings, because it functionally would put an end to the Digital World’s evolution by reducing it to nothing). So, in the end, we have a contrast between Apocalymon, who’s fighting for the sake of self-centered spite (including wanting to take down everything with it in Adventure episode 54 even when its demise is already clear), and the Chosen Children, who are fighting to protect their loved ones.

Incidentally, we also learn in Adventure episode 53 that there were Chosen Children who put an incomplete seal on Apocalymon prior to the ones in 1999. (Kizuna also introduces Menoa Bellucci, who became a Chosen Child in 1997, and assuming you’re following Adventure’s background doubling-every-year lore, at the time of 1999, there were a whole eight other Chosen Children besides Taichi’s group in existence.) The novels make it clear that the time dilation and distortion was going all the way up until the defeat of Apocalymon, long enough that the partners of those older Chosen were able to evolve to the Holy Beasts (and possibly enough for said older Chosen to get really faded through Digital World history to the point even Gennai doesn’t know about them). So the point here is that in the grand scope of the entirety of Digital World history, Taichi and his friends are not particularly singular existences -- there are people who saved the world before them, and 02 will introduce people all over the world who are going on their own adventures (including the main 02 kids in Tokyo), and, of course, by the time of the 02 epilogue, everyone’s going to have a Digimon partner. Koushirou later observes in Two-and-a-Half Break that there’s nothing special about having a partner in itself.

Does that make Taichi and his friends’ adventure of self-growth and saving a whole two worlds somehow insignificant, just because it’s not particularly unique? No. Because, again, they did this all not because of whether Homeostasis chose them or not, but because all of it was operated by their own will and strength and desire to protect others, all within the restraints of what they could feasibly do and handle, and they are amazing people for pulling that off.

02 and the importance of mutual understanding (and, also, more about the morality of fighting)

Before we proceed onto the 02 analysis, I think it’s important to establish a bit of important context about how 02′s lead protagonist, Daisuke, approaches things, and how it relates to the recurring debates on the morality of fighting throughout the series. In 02 episode 14, we learn that Daisuke was captured at Big Sight during the Odaiba Fog incident, and therefore witnessed, firsthand, the threat of Vamdemon’s lackeys attacking innocent civilians (something that Miyako, who witnessed the self-contained Omegamon vs. Diablomon battle on the Internet, and Iori, who only happened to be on a grounded plane after the Vamdemon fight had already ended, did not quite have anything on the par of). Spring 2003 and the Adventure novels elucidate what was going on in his head at the time: he was frustrated at his inability to protect his loved ones, and wished to have the power to fight the “bad guys” who were threatening everyone.

Remember this for later.

Moving onto 02 itself. 02 is a series about relationships, but, more significantly, it’s a series about the sheer amount of work it takes to maintain relationships, and especially the principle that “maintaining a relationship to another person requires being properly aware and understanding of the other person’s feelings.” One thing that often frustrates me about a lot of media (both kids’ shows and non-kids’ shows) and, well, to be honest, a lot of people in general, is the preaching of supposedly “positive” platitudes that actually go straight into what’s called “toxic positivity” for good reason -- because while it’s ostensibly “positive”, it also denies other people’s feelings, waving away everything negative and going “yeah, well, positivity!” and “optimism!” and “power of friendship!” and all sorts of stuff that are actually dismissive because they’re not showing any real effort to properly understand the other party and acknowledge why they feel this way. Like, sure, you may be telling someone to cheer up, but it also carries an (accidental or otherwise) implication of “you’re irrational and stupid for being upset and you should be smiling all of the time because ~positivity~.”

There is a lot of conflict in 02 -- especially because the theme of the morality of fighting is even more relevant, particularly in the case of the added question of “when the enemy in question is not an unambiguously evil sadist but a former friend in trouble”, and later the question of how someone who’s done horrible things in the past but is clearly making an active effort to make up for it should be treated. Daisuke, 02′s lead protagonist and carrier of a lot of its main themes, is ostensibly a simple-minded idealist, but even his theory of “positivity” and “always moving forward” has a lot of nuance beyond what you would usually see in this kind of anime lingo.

Context is also very important here. Adventure and 02′s stance being about “doing the best you reasonably can in a given situation”, it also means that what might be the best thing to do will change depending on context. 02′s starting circumstances are very different from Adventure’s, because it starts off without the threat necessarily being immediately world-threatening -- certainly, they need to stop the Kaiser, but this is in the form of a long-term territory war with an enemy who (at the time) doesn’t appear at night, and it’s unclear just how long it’ll take. This means that when the threat is not immediately world-ending, none of the kids are ever given grief for prioritizing their own personal obligations in lieu of fighting.

Iori and Jou do choose to ditch their kendo lesson and prep school exam (respectively), but they make it clear that they did this out of personal choice, and in fact this conversation opens with Armadimon apologizing to Iori for giving him grief for not coming, because he thinks Iori is perfectly within his rights to have stuck with the lesson! Perhaps, if the world were to end in a few hours, it would certainly be pretty idiotic to insist on sticking with a kendo lesson or prep school, because those things aren’t going to exist anymore if the world ends, but this is a very long and drawn-out territory war with no known end, and it’s understandable that these kids need to maintain their life necessities while straddling the balance between the war and their lives as a whole.

Again, they’re doing the best they can, and being a Chosen Child is about doing things because they want to, not because they have to.

This is especially because the Kaiser himself attempts to exploit the meaning of a Chosen Child in 02 episode 3 -- again, being a “Chosen Child” means being trusted to do the right thing with what you’re given, but the Kaiser basically betrayed that trust, and nobody was able to stop him from exploiting it and attempting a takeover with it. And Ken takes that title of “Chosen Child” and interprets it to mean he’s entitled to all of this -- but the other kids are Chosen Children just like him, and (at this point) all of them are simply choosing to do whatever they want with that.

And on the flip side, you have the Adventure seniors, who are a little nerfed by the Dark Towers, but as far as the way the younger 02 kids see them goes, there is no doubt that the 02 kids respect them deeply and are practically reliant on their support and advice, and their experience and maturity in comparison to themselves. The episode that establishes most how in awe the 02 kids are of their seniors is 02 episode 17, where they learn the details of the adventure in 1999, and so it’s not about how much combat power they’re displaying right now but rather how much experience they have in doing such amazing things. Likewise, their seniors are frustrated at their inability to help -- not because they see it as some obligated duty, but because they see their juniors trying their best to deal with an ongoing crisis and want to help, resulting in them providing support roles such as covering for them with a camp trip in 02 episode 18 and allowing them to do a long-term Digital World stakeout. For this, the younger 02 kids adore them and give them all of their respect.

02 episodes 10-11 are significant in juxtaposing the themes of “conflict” and “understanding each other’s feelings” -- at the end of 02 episode 10, we see Yamato punch Taichi, but he holds his hand to him right after, indicating that Yamato punched him not out of anger or condescension or scorn over Taichi’s hesitation to fight Agumon, but rather simply to snap him out of it for his own sake, knowing he wouldn’t take it offensively, so in other words, what looked like a “conflict” on its face was actually communication between the two, with neither of them treating each other with scorn.

The conflict at the end of the episode is over whether they should run the risk of killing Agumon in the process of fighting him to get him back from the Kaiser’s Evil Spiral-induced brainwashing (note that this is about the risk, since it’s not necessarily guaranteed they’ll have to kill him, and they still of course need to make a conscientious effort to prevent that outcome). Yamato, however, frames it in terms of very practical matters, and even takes Agumon’s own feelings into it while he’s at it: if they pull back purely for the sake of not running that risk, Agumon will end up being the Kaiser’s slave and killing machine and nothing will be resolved, whereas if they run the risk, the best outcome is that Agumon is saved (which is, fortunately, what happens!), and the worst outcome is that he’s killed, which is still a preferable outcome to him having to remain the Kaiser’s brainwashed slave used to kill other things en masse.

02 episode 11 further explores the theme of conflict in the face of “understanding each other’s feelings”, as it starts off with a fight between Daisuke and Takeru on the grounds of whether it’s okay to risk killing Agumon. Takeru’s stance is to side with Taichi’s decision, even if he doesn’t like it (again: just because some of these kids are able to make these decisions doesn’t mean they like it, and they’re doing it not because they’re callous but because they’ve thought hard about it and have decided it’s the best option they have!). Daisuke, being a bleeding heart, is appalled that Takeru could so easily endorse killing Taichi’s partner, and the two fight.

Note that the series does not “both-sides” this issue -- Taichi and Takeru’s stance is basically treated as the optimal course of action here -- but it also doesn’t invalidate Daisuke’s feelings of understandably being very shocked and appalled by this! Taichi and Yamato, in what initially seems like a violation of common sense, encourage them to be allowed to continue fighting, saying that it was essential to their friendship, and that confuses everyone present at the time -- but the meaning becomes clear by the end of the episode, when Takeru’s own Patamon is momentarily taken by the Kaiser and put at risk of himself becoming an Evil Spiral slave. Takeru blows up at Daisuke for hesitating (remember, this is one of his triggers), and eventually runs the exact same risk he’d advocated for Agumon with his own partner.

Remember what I said about “toxic positivity”? If everyone had just forced Takeru and Daisuke to shut up for the sake of “not fighting”, both of them might have remained angry at each other and stewing in silence, but because of the conflict, Daisuke himself personally witnessed Takeru run that risk for his own partner, presumably for the same reason (as much as the potential of Patamon being killed hurts him, the idea of Patamon being used as a killing machine is even more panic-inducing for him). With that, he understands that Taichi and Takeru made the decision to go ahead with this not out of callousness or cruelty, but because they sincerely felt they had to, no matter how much it pained them. Daisuke rails on himself for not understanding Takeru’s feelings better, and considering that he and Takeru never get in this vicious of a fight again, the point is: it wasn’t about whether they should form a friendship by fighting or not fighting in itself, it was about the fact that the two of them were able to get their feelings on the table, and that Daisuke was able to understand why Takeru endorsed what he did. (And this, too, is what it means for why Taichi and Yamato are friends now because they fought so much in the past -- back in Adventure, those fights ended up having them bare some very raw feelings to each other.)

While in the series itself, they’re successfully able to save Agumon anyway, Hurricane Touchdown presents a more unfortunate outcome of the “friendly fire” debate, in which Daisuke learns that the hostile Digimon kidnapping their seniors (and, later, a lot of other people) is Wallace’s own partner. Daisuke is so emotionally overwhelmed by this that he breaks down crying at the possibility of having to kill someone’s partner, knowing that he’d never be able to do something like this if it were V-mon, and Wallace gets him on board with an attempt to appeal to Chocomon without fighting.

This stance is not unreasonable, Wallace and Daisuke cannot be blamed for being hopeful, and, in the end, it’s admirable that they did make a conscientious effort to solve this with pacifism (again, this kind of attempt should be made, and it’s not good to beeline to the most violent solution for no reason). But unfortunately, once they meet Chocomon in the flower field, it turns out that not only is Chocomon beyond reason, he himself is also clearly out of his right mind and suffering through all of this, and Wallace finally relents and asks Daisuke to assist him in the fight (after having stayed in denial for half a movie about wanting to avoid this). Daisuke, witnessing all of this himself, agrees without hesitation, and eventually, it turns out that this decision for the best when Chocomon himself begs Gumimon and Magnamon to put him out of his misery, and them obliging (albeit hesitantly) allows him to have peace in death instead of suffering in life.

Hurricane Touchdown’s sequel drama CD, The Door to Summer, presents Daisuke with yet another dilemma with Nat-chan, who is also clearly suffering in quite a similar vein (the parallel is directly drawn). In the end, the same conclusion is reached -- Nat-chan is unfortunately killed, but is able to find release.

02 episode 16 presents an argument about the limits of ethical principles instead of approaching things practically, when Iori considers himself a horrible person for having told a lie to get Jou out of an important exam. This is mainly just about a lie, but in terms of Iori’s character arc and its relevance to 02′s themes as a whole, the point here is that there is a certain point where being too stuck on “the moral principle” of things instead of thinking practically is actually selfish in some sense. If Iori hadn’t lied, he’d get maybe one more point of moral integrity, and then everyone would have suffocated to death -- compared to lying and therefore everyone for the most part benefiting (Jou’s very happy to help his juniors and save them from, well, literally suffocating, after all). This topic becomes very important later when it turns out to be generally applicable to the wider morality of fighting that the kids later face in the series’s final cour.

The disparity between “moral principles” and “what actually happens in practice” also shows up in 02 episode 19, when Takeru loses his composure and starts punching out the Kaiser. Is the Kaiser a horrible person (at this point) who totally deserves this? Absolutely! Are we as the audience getting a lot of catharsis seeing his face punched out? Probably! But at the same time, railing at the Kaiser with unbridled anger is also...not actually accomplishing anything! Instead, Takeru’s just getting a few moments to stew in some really unhealthy emotions and uselessly punching out the Kaiser while nothing productive is getting done, and it’s also contributing heavily to his emotional isolation from Iori (and the rest of the group) because he’s not coping with it in a healthy way at all. Takeru’s feelings are certainly understandable (again: the episode is absolutely framing this in such a way that you’re inclined to take his side), but at the same time, being malicious about this is not actually practically making any headway.

One of the major reasons I’m covering all of these seemingly unrelated topics in one post is that all of them end up having a massive combined amount of relevance to the narrative behind Ken discarding the Kaiser persona, and how he comes to integrate himself with the group. On the surface, the storyline seems to be simply that Ken learned the error of his ways and tried to stop drowning in regrets, and Daisuke’s idealistic personality reached out to him and helped him heal. That said, there’s quite a bit more going on than just that.

A theme going on behind Ken’s character arc for the second half of 02 is one that probably seems a bit unusual for an idealistic kids’ show, but the point that ends up being made quite often is that whether Ken should be “forgiven” for his actions is a rather immaterial question. 02 episode 23 has a bunch of Baby Digimon rail on him, and remind him that he will never be able to take that back. There is nothing in either world that will erase those actions or make them retroactively justified or pushed under the bridge. The only thing he can do is accept the fact that it happened, whether he likes it or not, and determine what to do from here in terms of taking responsibility and making things right.

And this ends up having an influence in how Daisuke advocates for him, and how the rest of the group reaches out to him...

First of all, Daisuke being the most open-minded about Ken was not blind optimism. There’s no evidence that he was actually all that emotionally receptive to Ken or interested in being his friend before 02 episode 25. However, Daisuke also does not advocate for “punishing” Ken or kicking him while he’s down -- because that won’t accomplish anything, and Ken is clearly not in a state to be wreaking more havoc right now. Daisuke remembers the footage of Ken’s parents crying on screen, and determines what would be the first course of action to fix this situation -- and thus, he tells Ken to “go home”, because whatever Ken did in the past and no matter how much the team resents him right now, they are in this situation, with a boy who’s clearly not going to cause any more trouble right now and a family that’s hurting by his absence, and the very least he can do is do something productive from here on out.

Hence, at the end of 02 episode 24, when it turns out that Ken’s back and saved them from Thunderballmon, Daisuke decides to be optimistic about him and start the process of emotionally reaching out, but, again, it’s not blind optimism -- he sees what Ken did and takes this to mean “okay, clearly he’s not going to do bad things anymore, so regardless of whatever he did in the past, he’s helping out now, so we should check in with how he’s doing and let him help out.”

This is, of course, enhanced by the fact that Daisuke had communicated with the Crest of Kindness in 02 episode 20, but there’s also another layer to this: the major point of dispute between him and Miyako in 02 episode 25 (with both of them generally being rather open-minded about Ken otherwise) is in regards to the fact Ken and Stingmon were responsible for killing Thunderballmon in the prior episode. Come the climax of 02 episode 25, it is made clear that if Golemon successfully destroys the dam, the results will be absolutely disastrous, and there will probably be an incredible amount of casualties. Here, Daisuke himself is the first person to realize that killing Golemon may become a requirement (Ken is not actually a part of his initial comment) -- that is to say, most likely, the reason he’s willing to give Ken the benefit of the doubt about Thunderballmon is that he himself is understanding of that potential mindset (especially since 02 episode 43 does indeed establish Daisuke as being the first to accept it).

Recall that, between Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori, Daisuke was personally involved three years prior in a large incident with an unambiguously malicious Digimon that was about to claim a ton of victims -- he’s a bleeding heart, sure, but he’s also a bleeding heart for the potential victims, and the one thing that ate at him during the time of the Vamdemon incident was that he couldn’t do anything to protect everyone. Therefore, he’s the most receptive to this potential conclusion because he doesn’t want to see victims like that again. Not only that, Takeru and Hikari (having witnessed similar conclusions back in Adventure) are also very quick to point out that this might be an inevitability -- it’s just Miyako (who, in her emotional passion, is desperate to find a way out and clinging onto the hope that they won’t have to) and Iori (who considers doing such an act “no better than him” -- again, see the fixation on “moral principle” and “being above him”) who are so vehemently against it.

In the end, it turns out that Golemon is a Dark Tower Digimon (and therefore not sentient), and everyone’s left off the hook for now, but the reason this is still important is that through this, Miyako learns that Ken -- someone whom everyone was side-eyeing for potentially lapsing back into his cold, callous ways after supposedly having given up the Kaiser mantle -- was not out to kill (and, indeed, when the first kill inevitably happens in 02 episode 43, Ken is just as shaken about it as Miyako and Iori). The important part is that Miyako, and later the other kids, accepted Ken not out of some principle of optimism or forgiveness, but because they came to understand his position and feelings. All of the kids accepted Ken on their own terms after understanding his feelings and position better via interacting with him and hearing his own testimony -- they came to understand his mindset, what he’s been through and what he’s planning to do from here on out, and, most importantly, that he needs support really, really badly right now.

Which extends not just to Ken, but also everyone’s relationships here in general. Daisuke broke through to Ken and kicked off their first Jogress in 02 episode 26 because he proactively listened to everything Ken was saying and what he wanted to do, and correctly identified that Ken very desperately wants to take responsibility, so he talks him out of a reckless suicide mission by pointing out that all of his attempts to not make his family sad and to make up for everything he’s done are going to amount to nothing if he just throws his life away like this. In 02 episode 31, Miyako listens to Hikari’s troubles and her compulsion to not speak out for herself and reaches out to her successfully via promising to be there for her so she doesn’t have to slink into passive resignation. And in 02 episodes 34-36, Iori makes an active effort to understand Takeru’s mentality and why he has the drastic personality shifts he does, and communicates to Takeru that he wants to understand him better. So the point is: the 02 kids were able to successfully connect with each other and become deeper friends because they made an active attempt to listen to each other’s troubles and address the core of what they needed. They were only able to become “supportive” once they understood everything.

(02 episode 36 also has a moment where Iori’s about to rail off at everyone for not taking the fight seriously, before Armadimon reminds him that he’s starving -- again, it is very inhumane to ignore other needs and force everyone to keep fighting endlessly just because they theoretically can.)

We do meet the representative who claims credit for choosing Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori as Chosen Children in 02 episode 37 (Qinglongmon, representative of the Holy Beasts), and he explains the process of why they sent the kids what they did in order to retrieve Ken from the deep end. Notably, Qinglongmon admits that even the Holy Beasts were blindsided by a few things and adapted the situation as they saw fit (they didn’t originally expect the kids to be able to use multiple Digimentals at first). More importantly, this was, again, all a bit of a desperation move, because this was about as much as the Holy Beasts could manage, being sealed and drained of power and all.

Also, while retrieving Ken from the deep end was on the list of things the Holy Beasts set out to do, “everyone becoming Ken’s friend” was not necessarily on that agenda. Again: that was something that these kids chose to do on their own, by observing Ken’s actions and feelings and choosing to connect with him.

The episode ends with BlackWarGreymon going off on a journey of angst, and: note that the kids decide to drop the issue for the time being. Again, they’re operating not on a philosophy of grudge or whether one should get retribution for their actions, but what the likelihood of bad things continuing to happen is from here on out, and at this point in time, it doesn’t seem very likely, so there’s no point in pushing the issue or pursuing him.

Nevertheless, the morality debate over killing still remains looming over everyone’s heads, with Iori also realizing in 02 episode 29 that there are such things as Digimon that just want wanton destruction and cannot be negotiated with. The fact that the Adventure kids were put in world-threatening situations three years prior and are already far past this question is directly acknowledged in 02 episode 43, with Taichi advising Hikari that this harsh truth is going to hit the other four sooner or later, before it does eventually happen at the end of the episode. (Hikari visibly winces during her conversation with Taichi; again, none of the Adventure kids ever liked this.) And, in the end, predictably, Iori, Miyako, and Ken take it hard -- but Daisuke is the first to point out what would have happened if they didn’t do it. Namely, that the victims would have far outnumbered the Digimon they just killed.

It is, of course, good to be conscientious and not beeline for the most violent solution, and, again, context is important here -- in the situation provided, SkullSatamon was holding up a bus and split seconds away from murdering everyone in it. Had everyone refrained for the sake of morality, just like how Iori refraining from lying back in 02 episode 16 would have actually been selfish in a sense, here, the only claim you get to say after refraining is “well, I wasn’t the one who caused the harm.” Inaction would have caused the deaths of all of the young children in the bus; there would have been casualties either way.

Miyako and Iori are forced to face this truth again in 02 episode 44, with both of them being emotionally compromised by the reality of what they just did. In both cases, Hikari and Takeru step in to remind them what they’re doing this for, by pointing out the victims that would have been killed had they done nothing. Miyako and Iori are not at fault for being emotionally compromised or doing their best to prevent it -- it’s just that there’s only so much they can blame themselves for when they’re now directly faced with the potential victims in front of them.

Iori had already been grappling with this potential for several episodes now, so while he still takes it hard, more attention is given to Miyako’s reaction -- especially since she herself was the victim who was about to be murdered by LadyDevimon had Silphymon not done the kill. The voice acting and lack of Tailmon’s presence in Silphymon’s apology to Miyako implies very heavily that it was the Aquilamon side who took over and did it in a last-ditch effort to save Miyako’s life -- and he’s emotionally destroyed by it himself too, because he did it out of love for Miyako, and yet betrayed her request to not go for the kill. In the end, Miyako is forced to confront the fact that this was done out of love and a desire to protect, not a callous and malicious intent to murder, and comes to terms with it.

However, again: the series continues to reiterate that people who are not emotionally up for it should not be obligated to force themselves to do it. The beginning of 02 episode 45 has Takeru directly advise Iori that he shouldn’t do this out of obligation if he isn’t up for it -- remember that Takeru will only be able to fight with Shakkoumon if Iori is present, meaning that he’s perfectly willing to give up his ability to fight effectively because it’s not fair to force Iori to do it. This is not a series that advertises that everyone embrace the spirit of killing things and numb themselves to it. This entire situation sucks.

However, Iori makes it clear: he understands everything, and has decided to do it himself, because he understands the stakes and what it’s going to take to actually protect people.

Which is also reiterated in 02 episode 48 -- after witnessing the deaths of Archnemon and Mummymon at the hands of BelialVamdemon, everyone is shaken to the core. It should be established that the kids didn’t have much reason to sympathize with or like the two of them at this point, because everything we learned about them was from the audience’s point of view -- as far as the kids knew them, they were just two really rude and cruel Digimon who wanted wanton destruction. Yet even they are emotionally pained to see them die in such a cruel manner, and it causes everyone to hesitate -- even Daisuke, who does push forward because he knows what’s at stake, but still has to take a moment to collect himself.

Seeing what Daisuke’s about to do, Ken tries to force himself to join Daisuke so that Daisuke will at least not be alone (note that he actually says upfront that he’ll join!) -- but Daisuke notices that Ken’s heart isn’t in it, and actively advises him to sit out. Is the world in immediate crisis? Absolutely! But there is no scorn to be had for people who are emotionally falling apart right now and unable to get themselves to do it -- Daisuke even says himself that they won’t be able to fight effectively with Ken like this.

We close this analysis on a return to the concept of forgiveness and moving forward, and we learn in 02 episode 48 that Ken has two parts to his internal wishes: he wants the Kaiser (himself) to be “punished”, and he wants “forgiveness” from his deceased brother Osamu. Both of those things will certainly make him feel a little better emotionally, but they also won’t accomplish anything -- the “Kaiser” doesn’t exist anymore, so what good will that “punishment” do besides a little catharsis for the victims? And he can continue chasing after this standard of “whether he’s suffered enough” like it’s some numerical tally, but that’s not going to get him anywhere either, and it’s why Wormmon has to chase out even that ostensibly happy image of Osamu. Osamu is long gone, and is not going to return, and the question of whether Ken should be “forgiven” is rather immaterial. It’s not about whatever happened or didn’t happen back then; it’s about what Ken is going to do now.

Actually, what is “forgiveness” anyway? At no point do the 02 kids ever actually say they “forgive” Ken for his actions. In Spring 2003, Iori also says he doesn’t forgive Oikawa for what he’s done, either. There’s nothing that will ever erase what they did or suddenly make those actions retroactively justifiable, and there’s no arbitrary payment that Ken or Oikawa could do to meet some kind of quota of forgiveness. But what the kids do recognize in Ken is that, regardless of whatever he did in the past, at current he is a young boy in intense emotional distress who has gone through a lot, is working very hard to make up for his mistakes, and needs all the emotional support he can get, and there’s no reason to hold a grudge against someone like that instead of continuing to support him and loving him for who he is now. Given that, does it matter whether they “forgive” him or not?

And even if Iori will never forgive Oikawa, he can still lament everything that happened to him and drove him to do everything, and appreciate the meaning of what he did for the Digital World in the end, and use this as a further lesson on what it means to understand people instead of stewing angrily in a grudge that’ll only hurt himself.

Ultimately, that is the theory behind Adventure and 02. The world is messy, imperfect, and doesn’t fit under neat rules of morality and “right” or “not right” that you can cram everything under. Despite that, there’s something to be appreciated in not throwing in the towel and continuing to do the best you reasonably can in every situation. It would be ideal if all of the fighting could stop, or if it were possible to make the “optimal” decision of fighting or not fighting in every situation regardless of human exhaustion or emotional compromise, but that’s just not something that’s possible, and there’s no reason to call oneself a “failure” for not holding yourself to that standard. And in the end, the answer is this: instead of fixating on all of those arbitrary things that don’t actually serve any practical purpose, the way to live your best life is simply to look at where you are now, think about what you can do from here on out (regardless of what happened in the past), and do your best to protect and be kind to yourself and those around you.

Of course, you must be kind to others. But you have to be kind to others by understanding what it takes and everything around it -- and then choose to be kind anyway.

[deonideatta]

@vinchenzoquassano Here’s my analysis on the juxtaposition of Han Seok and Vincenzo as brother figures to Han Seo! It got a bit long, so I’m putting it under a cut.

So we all know that Vincenzo and Han Seok are meant to contrast each other a lot, whether it’s fire imagery vs ice imagery, caring about family vs seeing family as a tool, or having everything under control vs being reckless and impulsive. And I think one of the things that really highlights the difference between Vincenzo and Han Seok in ways of thinking/treating others is the way they relate to Han Seo.

From the first interaction between the Jang brothers, we see that their relationship is based on threats, violence, and fear. It is not a sibling relationship, the only thing that connects them as siblings is the fact that they share the same dad. There are none of the usual characteristics of a healthy relationship between siblings, none of the fun, none of the support, no familial love, no empathy, concern, or worry. And their relationship most likely never resembled a proper siblinghood, as we know that Han Seok tormented Han Seo from a young age. Additionally, to begin with Han Seo is just ‘Han Seok’s brother, the puppet chairman’, the shadow of his brother even though ironically it’s Han Seok who remains in the shadows in the beginning. We only see him begin to shine as his own character when he starts to actively plan against Han Seok with the help of Mr Han, and this is only amplified when he starts to look up to Vincenzo.

This is why what Han Seo gets from Vincenzo is so important to him, even to the point of not betraying Vincenzo once Han Seok is out of the picture. It’s all there in that scene where they’re drinking together in episode 18. It’s poignant because the things Han Seo lists that he feels comfortable about with Vincenzo are all things that he’d had bad experiences with when they were with Han Seok. Both duos have scenes involving hockey, but in the SeokSeo scene Han Seo is very much in a lower position of power as he stands unprotected in a suit in contrast to Han Seok’s full hockey gear, getting hit by hockey pucks (we see this contrast again when Han Seo is the one wearing the hockey gear and hitting pucks at executives in suits, more on that later). It’s their first scene together, and it’s a pretty good image of their relationship. Han Seok has always had the high ground, and Han Seo has always felt vulnerable and unprotected from his volatile nature. 

In contrast, in the VincenSeo hockey scene both of them are wearing hockey gear, albeit without the helmets. This already shows that at the fundamental level this is a very different relationship, despite there still being a power imbalance. And the absence of the protection of a helmet also implies a level of trust, again in contrast to the way Han Seok had one, both to hide his identity but also to symbolize further distance. We see that Han Seo is at ease to the point where he feels comfortable enough to tease Vincenzo about Cha Young, and make quips/casual comments. Vincenzo is only mildly annoyed, and the atmosphere is far less charged than in the SeokSeo hockey scene. Most notably, even though Vincenzo does hit a puck at Han Seo, does trip him up, and does get annoyed at him, none of it carries the venom it does when Han Seok does it. It’s almost playful, it feels like something real siblings would do together (speaking from experience here), and Vincenzo is never hostile towards Han Seo. When Han Seok does things like that it doesn’t feel like sibling bickering, it feels like abuse. There is real malice in the way Han Seok treats Han Seo in general, and the hockey scene is no exception. So for Han Seo to be able to be in a space which he has always associated with pain/punishment and find himself at ease, not feeling threatened or worried, it must have meant a lot (which we see in the way he cant stop smiling after the hockey scene), and further serves to illustrate the difference in Han Seok and Vincenzo’s behaviour, right down to Vincenzo catching Han Seo when he falls, and Han Seo’s heartfelt thanks to him for helping him see how stupid he’d been.

It’s the same with all the other things he mentioned in the drinking scene. Eating scenes always say something about relationships in this drama (and in kdramas in general actually, but especially so here), and whenever we see Han Seo and Han Seok eating together, it always feels like Han Seo has to walk on eggshells, he can never relax or let his guard down, because he has to worry about Han Seok’s potential outbursts. Like in the scene where Han Seok flips the table and forces Han Seo to hold a knife to his neck, or the scene where they drink together after paying respects to their father. That scene was notable because it’s the scene where we find out that Han Seok killed their father. Han Seo asks Han Seok outright if he’d kill him off too if he got in his way. It’s one of the few times early on that he lets his perceptiveness show in front of Han Seok. Han Seok’s response is not reassuring at all, and he even goes as far as to belittle Han Seo's intelligence, stating that if he was just a little smarter he would have been nicer to him. This is again contrasted by Vincenzo encouraging Han Seo to learn more, and telling him that the mind is one's greatest weapon.

Han Seok's response also makes Vincenzo finally replying that he won’t kill Han Seo because he believes he’s changing for the better all the more impactful. With Han Seok it was always he won’t kill me so long as I am of use, because he needs me to take the fall for him, but with Vincenzo it’s now he won’t kill me because he sees value in me as a person and not a tool. We see this in how Vincenzo gives Han Seo advice, and complements him, albeit in a very roundabout way. I think despite his generally neutral face during their interactions, Han Seo is definitely growing on him. It’s even to the point that he allowed Han Seo to call him hyung, and even beyond that, to see him as a brother. I definitely think both of them need more time to grow as people and learn to relate to each other before this can actually be a proper brotherhood, but you have to start somewhere.

For the first time Han Seo is in an environment where he can let his guard down and confide in someone who is both a role model and a friend to him, even if that person is Vincenzo ‘i can’t ever show my emotional investment’ Cassano (though he has really come a long way since the beginning of the drama). Vincenzo represents all the things Han Seok never did for Han Seo as a brother, whether it’s giving him advice or letting him treat him with familiarity. Which is also an important contrast, that Han Seo calls Vincenzo Vin-hyung from the get go, while he mostly calls Han Seok hyungnim. The fact that Han Seo felt comfortable enough to ask Vincenzo if he could call him like a brother, sulk about it when he said no (”Ok Vincenzo Cassano nim” lol, no one can convince me that Han Seo isn’t a sass master), and then go directly to abbreviating Vincenzo’s name (Vin hyung) really tells us a lot about how much more comfortable he is with Vincenzo. 

It is also worth noting that even though Vincenzo is often snarky with Han Seo, their interactions still carry some level of comfort that is completely absent in Han Seok and Han Seo’s scenes, despite the fact that when Han Seok is not being violent he actually treats Han Seo normally (well as ‘normal’ as it can get for them), like when he gives him the watch, when Han Seo is watching him get his hair cut, or when they go hunting. But despite the veneer of that normalcy, their interactions always carry an undercurrent of danger, as we and Han Seo all know that anything could cause Han Seok to explode, like he did in the scene where they were eating together, quite suddenly and very aggressively. That underlying tension is always there, even when Han Seo is seemingly smiling and reacting well to Han Seok, because we know that Han Seok is only tolerating Han Seo because he is of use to him, and will not hesitate to hurt him if he annoys him, or get rid off him should he cross him or cease to be of use. Whereas with Vincenzo, Han Seo is at ease. There is no hidden danger, no fear of an outburst. Vincenzo is someone Han Seo looks up to and feels he can trust enough to go behind Babel team’s backs to collude with. This also highlights once again the way that even Vincenzo's emotionally limited treatment of others contrasts Han Seok's complete disregard for them. He never yells at Han Seo or belittles him in a cruel way, and increasingly their interactions are more casual. Though he's still a bit closed off, Vincenzo also listens to what Han Seo has to say, unlike with Han Seok, where Han Seo can never say what he really thinks.

Lastly, there’s the influence that both Han Seok and Vincenzo have on the way Han Seo behaves. We see that whether he realized it or not, Han Seo imitated and was influenced by some of Han Seok’s behaviour, from hitting hockey pucks at executives (and bullying the executives in general, most likely to feel more powerful), to throwing tantrums/having fits of anger and yelling, ordering a hit on Vincenzo and Cha Young and finding the Babel victims’ information. Likewise, we see that once he decides he’s jumping off that train and siding with Vincenzo, we gradually begin to see his behaviour change. He’s always had a playful/bratty streak, seen in how he was so happy about dodging the thing Han Seok threw at him that one time, in many of his interactions with Mr Han, and in the scene when he comes to Jipuragi in 80s clothes to show off his battle scar. That side of him still manages to appear even around Han Seok, so when he’s around Vincenzo and he doesn’t have to focus on avoiding Han Seok’s outbursts it comes out fully, and we get things like him distracting Vincenzo by calling out Cha Young’s name to score a goal, grinning like a little kid when Vincenzo chased him, and his joy at getting to call Vincenzo Vin hyung.

Additionally, we see that the more closely Han Seo works with Vincenzo, the more brazen he gets around Han Seok. He gets more flippant, and he almost openly praises Vincenzo, he becomes less obedient to Han Seok. All this culminates in the scene where he confronts Han Seok about the Elizabeth Holmes thing and tightens his handcuffs. By finding a role model in Vincenzo, as well as knowing he has the support of someone more powerful than Han Seok, Han Seo was able to finally cut off the puppet strings. We even see that he consulted with and listened to the board/company executives, contrasted to how he’d forced them to eat spicy food and hit hockey pucks at them before. He’s unlearning the volatile and violent behaviour he picked up from Han Seok and applying the advice that Vincenzo gave him, namely that your brain is your greatest weapon. Han Seok always seemed like a dangerous villain because of his violent tendencies and his position of power and influence, but we’ve seen how Vincenzo manages to corner him again and again, and how his irrational actions (coughcoughkillingmrsohcoughcough) are no match for Vincenzo’s strategic thinking. Han Seo sees this as well, and he begins to emulate Vincenzo’s behaviour.

Vincenzo is right that Han Seo is changing for the better, and he is most likely the catalyst for it. We see that from the get go Han Seo is determined to break free, and in the end what gets him there while making sure he doesn’t simply become an ineffective chairman or Han Seok II (with arguably less murder lol) is the appearance of Vincenzo as a reliable brother figure. Now whether or not Vincenzo is actually a good brother figure is a different debate, and I do think he also needs to develop in the area of relating to others before he can truly fulfill the role. Still, so far his influence on Han Seo has been largely positive, and I think given time Han Seo will probably also have a positive effect on him.

In conclusion, if they kill off Han Seo in the end it will be my villain origin story. Thanks for reading! Do share any thoughts/additions!

[hellacioushag]

tw: abuse/sexual assault

the hypocrisy of people using faux outrage about others drawing parallels between tamlin and azriel’s stories when they didn’t bat an eye about someone drawing similarities between a rapist and a sexual assault survivor to justify their shipping needs is astounding. if you read the post no one was saying tamlin and azriel are the same. i’m gonna detail my own thoughts on why these two mirror each others narrative, but with key differences. 

abusive childhoods:

i feel like people forget that both tamlin and azriel were victims of an abusive household. the key difference is azriel’s history has made him want to defend those who cannot defend themselves/punish those who are the perpetrators of violence while tamlin gave into his anger and violence at the world. it’s a classic tale of being an abuse victim. you either grow up to separate yourself from your past and do better than your parents or you become just like them. 

tamlin’s brothers would have murdered him as a babe in his bassinet if they suspected he had potential or desire for the high lord position. we also know tamlin’s father held slaves and was aligned with others who shared his view of the world in the war. pair these bits together and we can assume tamlin’s father was a more aggressive and violent father than even beron is. tamlin grew up in a home where he did not feel safe. and when his father tasked tamlin with finding out his enemy’s secrets tamlin obliged. 

he was present and possibly participated in the butcher and murder of rhys’ family. this was a significant moment for tamlin’s turn into becoming an abuser like his father. he could have lied, he could have denied knowing the information about rhys’ mother and sister, but instead he gave that information over to his father knowing he was signing a death warrant. some could argue that he may have done this because of his own father’s abusive tendencies toward him, but this was the moment imo that tamlin went from a victim to a predator. 

as for azriel we all know the abuse he suffered by his family. how his brothers tortured him and tried to have him killed. how he was denied any affection or love growing up and was taught that his existence was a stain on his family’s reputation. azriel could have easily turned into an abuser himself the way tamlin did, but being dumped into the illyrian camps and finding cassian and rhys saved him from that fate. his brotherhood with them was the turning point for azriel to no longer be a victim, but a survivor. 

anger issues:

you can’t deny that both tamlin and azriel suffer with anger and control issues. it’s clear in the text they both have a barely contained, deep-seated anger that could be deathly when let loose. the key difference is tamlin has no one to reign him in, no one of his equal to calm that rage. azriel has this support system and has been shown to have utilized it when needed. i’m not going to go into a full analysis on all the examples, but I will point out the main ones I think we all know.

tamlin’s explosive anger was shown when he blew apart the library when feyre and he disagreed about her safety measures in acomaf. he could have easily hurt her had she not had magic to protect her (as seen when this same moment was repeated in acowar). tamlin let his rage and helplessness consume his every thought about protecting the person he loved and instead became the very threat he sought to protect her from. he let his paranoia about her being in danger prevent him from listening to her needs and locked her in a cage. this in itself was abusive, there’s no arguing this point. the part to note is that he as a high lord had no one of equal measure to talk him down, to help him see reason. when lucien tried to step in he was dismissed and abused himself. when feyre tried to speak up on her own behalf tamlin refused to listen and as high lord his word/wants/needs were law in his lands. he had no one who could provide a healthy perspective and so left unchecked he continued his abusive behavior.

azriel’s cold, lethal anger was shown when he exploded at the meeting with the high lords in acowar and attacked eris for a slight against mor. he was inches from letting the rage take hold of him and ending eris’s life. feyre, his high lady and friend, was able to calm him down and make him see reason. azriel is a trained spy and torture master, he’s supposed to be able to keep a cool head in high stressed situations, to act unemotionally to get his job done. however reliving the trauma of seeing a broken mor and imagining eris leaving her there consumed him with rage he could no longer contain. i’m not here to justify his actions. mor’s own trauma of seeing azriel fly off the deep end is enough for me to condemn his behavior. i am however pointing out that i think his reaction was not just about mor, but about reliving his own helplessness and loss of control and letting it consume him into a lethal rage. 

the key difference with tamlin and azriel’s moments of all consuming rage is that azriel had someone to talk him down and let him see reason. tamlin refused the help of his own support system (lucien/feyre) and instead gave into his abusive and volatile tendencies. azriel could have easily done that same, but because of his brotherhood and friendships he has people to pull him back from the edge. 

desire for love and acceptance:

both tamlin and azriel (and all characters in this series tbh) have a strong desire to love and be loved in return. the problem is when that desire for love becomes an obsession and entitlement. it becomes harmful when you think you’re owed something. 

tamlin let his desire for feyre become obsessive. he had his soldiers hunt her down to drag her back to his home. he refused to accept that she was happy and healing away from him because he was in despair without her. he couldn’t fathom that she could be finding peace when he was being torn apart. he allied himself with monsters because he convinced himself that his love for feyre was the stuff of legend and that he was acting in a heroic manner. and even when he found out that she had a mate, something that is considered a sacred bond above all things to their people, he refused to accept that the cauldron/the mother/fate could be so cruel to deny him his happily ever after. feyre was his and he would reclaim her no matter what. he would defy the mother herself for his love. the problem with this is that he did not take into account feyre’s needs. when you love someone you put their needs above your own. he didn’t care that feyre was mated, that she loved rhys, because his obsession for her and belief that she belonged to him outweighed all reason. his love for her turned toxic if you can even call it love to begin with. 

azriel is a bit different, but the parallels are there. he’s not at the obsessive point yet (masturbating to pain killers notwithstanding) and he may never get there. one could argue he spent 500+ years being obsessed with mor, but his support system held him in check. that when he saw mor flirting and sleeping with others he leaned on his brothers, on cassian, to distract him and help him through the pain of knowing the person he loved didn’t love him back. and regarding elain i think whatever is between them is entirely too new to relate it to his feelings for mor, but it’s also looking to be just as unhealthy. he didn’t bat an eye about fighting lucien in a blood duel and seemed to welcome the challenge. he knows that if lucien were to die that pain could destroy elain. even if she doesn’t love lucien, has not accepted the mating bond, she and he are soulbound. if he were to die it could shatter her, but he didn’t seem to think of that consequence at all. 

when he questioned the wisdom of making them mates in the first place, when he claimed “what if the cauldron was wrong?” and then rationalized his thoughts by saying 3 sisters for 3 brothers.... this is a callback to tamlin refusing to believe the cauldron would deny him love by mating feyre to rhys. questioning why he doesn’t have a mate of his own isn’t inherently bad, but implying that because his brothers found mates with 2 of 3 sisters so lucien doesn’t deserve the 3rd is. when he doesn’t talk to his brother about why he desires elain and instead talks about why fate has robbed him of a sister it stands to reason why rhys would take exception to this way of thinking. it’s bordering on toxic and i’m glad rhys was there to pull rank on azriel. 

are tamlin and azriel the same?

no, didn’t you listen to anything said? they are not the same and the key difference as to why is because azriel has a support system of brothers and friends that he can rely on to keep him in check. tamlin has pushed away any form of support and has embraced his beastly abusive behavior. saying that their story parallels is not saying azriel is an abuser like tamlin. it’s pointing out why tamlin’s story is a cautionary tale for azriel’s future journey. it’s outlining that while they may share similar aspects of an abusive past, anger issues, and longing for love and affection they are not the same people at their core because of the way they deal with their trauma. 

[purpleshadow-star]

(Warning: this starts off seeming like a structured argument but it kind if goes off the rails... it's everywhere)

Listen, people are going to hate me for this, but people need to accept that Billy Hargrove was abusive.

(Pls read the whole post before coming to attack me, I promise I don't just attack Billy the whole time)

(This became a rant that gets wildly out of control, just fyi)

I don't hate Billy, but it's kind of scary to see people defending him and some of his actions.

Was Billy abused? Yes. (His father)

Was Billy abusive? Yes. (To Max)

And that's it. Period. It only takes abusing one person to be an abuser. Billy emotionally abused Max using fear and threats against her and people she knew. That happened. That's a fact.

But just because he was abusive towards Max doesn't mean he wanted to hurt everyone he could. I know from personal experience that abusers can seem like normal, even nice, calm people. Just because Billy fought against the Mind Flayer and tried to keep it from killing/hurting people doesn't mean he wasn't abusive.

The fact of the matter is, Billy was still basically a kid. He did what he grew up watching. His dad abused him and had control over him, so Billy found someone he could have control over (it's more complicated than that but that's the simple way of putting it). That's a common cycle with abuse. We even see it start to show a little in Max when she told Billy to leave her and her friends alone in season 2, but she never let herself fall off the deep end. Max had a support system with her friends who helped keep her out of the house and happy, while we never see evidence of Billy having the same thing.

Billy being abused, and therefore abusing someone else, is an explanation, not an excuse. There is no excuse for what he did in season 2. He was wrong for what he did to Max and for targeting Lucas. Those actions were his own and no one else's.

In season 3, we see more of Billy outside of his negative relationship with Max. He has a job, he seems to be on good terms with his coworkers, and he's no longer actively abusing Max. We see him fight to make sure he doesn't hurt Karen and Heather when he's possessed by the Mind Flayer (even if it doesn't really work with Heather, he still tried). We see him cry and apologize for the people he's hurt while possessed. We see young Billy, happy with his mother before she left. Clearly Billy isn't just some violent monster who likes to hurt everyone in sight.

My point is, Billy isn't just a violent monster like some people might think, but he's not a blameless victim of circumstance like others might think. The fact of the matter is, Billy was a 17/18 year old boy who was abused his whole life, whose mother left him when he was a child, who abused his step sister, (who seemed to be racist based on his immediate judgment of Lucas after only a glance), and, for the most part, got along relatively well with people who weren't his family. He had room to grow. Once he was no longer in that abusive cycle with Max, he had plenty of room to change and for character development.

Is it unfortunate that he died? Sure. He had a lot of potential, but we didn't really see a change in him before he died. We didn't really see the beginning of his potential character development, so it's not like they teased us with a redemption arc, only to rip it away and kill him instead. And any good deeds he does in season 3 do not completely redeem him or erase what he did in the years before that.

"He fought back so he wouldn't hurt Heather and Karen." But he never went around hurting women, or random people, before. He never looked for excuses to start a physical fight. He made threats and became physical when he didn't get what he wanted, but we never saw him physically lash out in an otherwise calm environment.

"He sacrificed himself and saved El, Max and the others." It was a very selfless thing to do for sure, but he's never shown an interest in letting kids die before. This could very well be a step towards character development, but it still doesn't erase his actions in the years before this moment. He does a very brave, selfless thing here, but it doesn't make him a perfect person.

Max's explanation of her feelings towards Billy in Season 4, in my opinion, was amazing and perfectly logical. She held onto hope that they could be like regular siblings one day, despite their past, but she also held resentment towards him. It is natural for an abuse victim to simultaneously want to be rid of their abuser and to want to have an actual good relationship with them.

Max wanted Billy gone while he was hurting her. That makes sense! He was awful to her. After that, she saw him in a new light. He wasn't hurting her anymore. Maybe they could fix their broken relationship! She wanted that too. Max's feelings towards Billy prove that he was a complex character. He wasn't just a monster and he wasn't just a victim.

All in all, people need to accept that Billy was abusive. He was. There is no way around that. It's a fact. But he was also more than that. Abusers, once they are forced to stop abusing, can change. Again, I know from personal experience. Billy was abusive, but he was getting better. Billy wasn't perfect, but there was hope for him.

Yes, he died in an awful way, but then again, so did a lot of the characters on Stranger Things. This is what we signed up for when we continued to watch the show.

Billy was a complex character with plenty of room to grow, but in the end, it just wasn't in the cards for him, however unfortunate it may be.

[softcallofdutyimagines]

Day 3: 13th Floor | Prompt list

Vampire!Hudson x reader

This is the strangest smexy scene I've ever written. Enjoy.

Another day, another death in the Paramore hotel.

At first, it all seemed like horrible coincidences. Unlucky floor 13 and all that. But then... they realized all the patrons have been dying similar deaths.

Before long, the whole level was shut down with talk of closing the hotel too. The guests have all been moved and investigators called in.

You are one such soul.

The murdered victims all share bizarre bite marks on their necks or wrists, although these sites of bloodletting aren't necessarily always the cause of death. Most seem to have been killed first and dried out after.

As previously stated: bizzare.

There's been a few jokes that you and your team are hunting a vampire, but you roll your eyes everytime. People have been killed and there's a potential serial killer on the loose. This is no time for bull.

Forensics sweep and sweep again and again, whatever they can get their hands on.

The victims, their rooms, their windows, their doors...

Not a single print. Not a trace on the hallway security cameras. No witnesses.

No criminal can be that perfect.

Your colleagues begin to fear their out if their element. There's talk of calling in the FBI if you can't turn anything up soon.

You roll your eyes. Who has time for a headache like that? You do your best to resist, surely you and your team can take care of this alone.

And then... Members of the team start disappearing too. When you find their bodies, they're in much the same shape of the patrons from before.

People are abandoning the case now. You want this solved. Not just to avoid the extra hassle, but... You must admit, you're curiosity needs to be sated personally.

Tonight, you set a trap in secret. You've set up some surveillance, and only caught brief flickers of movement. Whoever this is, whatever it is, is either onto you and your spyware placement, or they're impossibly fast.

The first night is a bust. And the next and the next. Time is of the essence and you can't help but feel that you're wasting it.

But if there's any luck to be had up here, it would seem it belongs to you.

It's far past midnight when it happens. A strange bump in the night and noises like you're not alone.

You pick up your gun and move to action. Carefully you sweep the halls, creeping closer and closer to origin of the disturbance. The path takes you to an old maintenance room. Judging from how run down and rusted the metalwork is, it seems safe eto assume it doesn't get much use anymore.

With a deep breath, you try the knob. A jolt of something like excitement goes through you to find that it's unlocked.

The door leads to a service hallway. It's nothing but bare cement walls and flooring. Your team had investigated here heavily, but nothing drew any attention to the place until now.

A shadow moves at the end of the hall. It freezes then flees around the corner.

"Hey!", You shout and tear off after the suspect.

Given how fast this guy is on the cameras, your only hope is to corner him. You're not so sure, but you have to try.

You blast down the corridor and somewhere around the corner a door slams open, leading to one of the hotel rooms. The door has been left open, easily indicating to you where to turn. Without a moment's hesitation, you swing around into the room.

It's empty at first glance, so you don't slow down. You make it to the room door on the other side, perhaps the culprit escaped back to the main floor. It's locked.

No sooner do you make this discovery then the service door slams shut behind you.

A low, inhuman growl sparks the air behind you.

"Freeze!"

You turn, pistol raised and pointed. You can hardly get a glance at your opponent before he's on you. Your gun is wrenched out of your hand, your wrist turned so violently it must be broken.

Another roar, like a lion, and your thrown into the fancy hotel bed. The wood supporting it breaks instantly at the force with which you've been tossed. Everything's happened so fast... If you could just get one second to reorient yourself...

You blink, trying to dissolve the blurry, double vision around you.

The other man, now that you can see him for sure, closes the distance slowly this time. For all intents and purposes, he looks just as human as anyone else. Upon closer inspection, he's anything but.

His skin is fair, but impossibly pale. Really it's closer to grey then anything. His face is distorted with the only true marking factor a long scar going through his eye. Otherwise, his face possesses exaggeratedly shallow cheeks, deep set eyes, and sharp cheekbones. His lips curl back in a snarl, revealing sharp, pointed fangs.

If you weren't already so on edge with adrenaline, you'd feel your heart about to burst with the speed it's beating at.

He advances continually, tossing aside any stray furniture as though it weighs nothing at all. He says nothing all the while, his eyes constantly fixated on you. No threats, no demands, not even a taunt.

You struggle to get up, scrambling for the nearest weapon. And that's when you see that impossible speed.

He tackles you back down, pinning you to the mattress with a hand planted on your chest and a knee decisively between your legs. You try to scream, but all that earns you is his calloused hand clamped over you mouth. His eyes are yellow like amber with only a pupil inside them.

You've never seen such eyes...

Wild. Captivating. Terrifying.

He sniffs your neck, all the way up to your hair where he lingers a neck. His breath is cold, tickling the tiny hairs on your skin till they stand up straight.

For a moment, nothing happens. The growl he makes almost sounds like a pur, until the while scene shifts. He goes for your neck, puncturing it with what by now you know to be his teeth.

Your back arches and your legs twitch at the sensation. It hurts, but... It's not all bad.

But you can't let this go on, he'll kill you.

You go back to scrambling for something, anything to fight back with. Your hand is pricked by a splinter, and you strain to pick up the chipped off board from the bed frame.

Your finger must have bled, as the vampire stops sucking and lifts his head to smell the air.

That's when you strike.

The manage to stab into him with the small length of wood. He shrieks and unearthly sound, more of fear then pain, and is off you in an instant. You don't know much about vampires, but you figure you must have missed the heart since he's still standing.

He rips out the stake and throws it away as though it were on fire.

For a moment, you're worried he's going to finish you off. Instead... He looks at you, breathing heard and covering the wound.

Those glowing eyes shine like little lights in the darkness, the only source in the dark, boarded up room. He narrows his eyes at you, taking one last look.

Then just like that...

He's gone.