#are teenage girls no one deserves a villain act more than them
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So a lot of people have talked about the weird sexual punishment and embarrassment utilized against team green and I wanted to weigh in because I think it’s the perfect example of the hypocrisy of this show’s messaging.
Because on the surface, HOTD takes a very sex positive stance. They champion Rhaenyra for being very open with her sexuality and for being sexually liberated in a very conservative society. They act as if she is an impressive beacon of feminism for this. And that would be great…if it weren’t for the fact that this sex positive outlook lives and dies with Rhaenyra’s and team black’s sexual experiences only.
Outside of Rhaenyra’s perspective, sex scenes are often degrading, predatory, abusive, and meant to embarrass the character to others in universe and/or the audience.
Criston is seen saying no and trying to leave when being coerced into sex with Rhaenyra which she promptly ignores by kissing him and blocking the door. Then that sex he consistently has with Rhaenyra is used as a joke for how pathetic he is for not accepting her offer to be nothing more than a personal “whore”. And his consensual sex with Alicent is seen as hypocrisy but also interrupted by Helaena after blood and cheese so that he can be blamed for this atrocity because of his “immorality”.
Aemond is seen cuddling in the lap like a young child of the woman who raped him when he was young, then being served milk, and then walking out of the brothel naked. With the whole scene being painted uncomfortable and rather degenerate.
Aegon has a scene of him being a rapist to ensure he is known as a bad and evil man. And then he has a scene where he explicitly states how his genitalia have been damaged. As if his disability from his attack is embarrassing and disgusting.
Larys one of the few disabled characters in the show, has a fetish that surrounds his disability that he uses to degrade Alicent. Thereby making him seem disgusting and pathetic.
And of course. Alicent. Her first sexual encounter we see her have is her looking dead inside while being raped by her pedophilic husband, a scene that seems to have the connotation of deserved assault because “she asked for this” by “seducing” Viserys. She is fetishized for information and thus makes her seem degraded and gross. Her sex with Criston is interrupted by Helaena after blood and cheese so that she, too, is blamed for the atrocity of the murder of her grandchild because she was “immoral” for…having consensual sex with someone after her rapist husband finally dies.
Every scene that any team green character experiences is painted in a way that portrays them as disgusting, perverted, and immoral; or is painted in a way that is meant to humiliate these characters to others in and out of universe.
How is this sexually positive? How is this an appropriate way to portray your “villains”, by painting them negatively and embarrassing them through their sexual encounters?
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The worst part is that they’ve used these sexually degrading scenes specifically to “humble” a rape victim and child bride. Humbling her because they believe that she is power hungry and desperate for the throne and so she uses and betrays Viserys and Rhaenyra. And aside from that being a major mischaracterization (Alicent didn’t want the throne as a teenage girl forced to marry the king, and she doesn’t betray Viserys and Rhaenyra out of personal ambition but protection for her family), you know who that description fits? DAEMON TARGARYEN.
Daemon wanted the throne more than anything. Groomed his teenage niece to have a chance to marry her to get closer to the title of king. Betrayed, humiliated, and hurt his brother and niece wife to make himself a better candidate as heir. Choked his niece wife when she didn’t listen to him. And consistently asserted himself as king, a position to be viewed as higher than his wife the queen.
And similar to Alicent, he was “humbled” this season. But how was he humbled? By having private visions that are unknown to (almost) everyone. And these visions are mostly just him being shown the people he hurt in the process of seeking his power. Except for the one with his mother, which is sexually inclined, but not presented in the same depraved and humiliating way that the scenes with Alicent or any of team green are.
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This whole show just has such a gross way of depicting the people they see as villains. And it shows how hypocritical their messaging is. HOTD is not a feminist, sex positive show. It’s far too obsessed with sexual violence and humiliation against people they dislike to be one. This show believes that sexual positivity and liberty is good. But only for those who deserve it. That it’s not a right but rather a privilege. And anyone they deem as immoral, evil, bad, or “unfeminist” doesn’t deserve it. They deserve to be ridiculed, humiliated, and humbled by their failures as people. And I can’t stand it.
This show isn’t sex positive and feminist. It’s Rhaenyra positive. That’s it.
#this show is gross for its outlook#and the fact that they punish their characters sexually#house of the dragon#game of thrones#team green#anti team black#anti rhaenyra#anti rhaenyra targaryen#anti daemon#anti daemon targaryen#alicent hightower#pro alicent hightower#aegon ii targaryen#pro aegon ii targaryen#criston cole#pro criston cole#aemond targaryen#pro aemond targaryen#larys strong
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Reo Mikage is Actually Great BPD Representation- Some Thoughts
So I had the extremely unfortunate experience of being exposed to Blue Lock (unfortunate because it's all my tiny pea brain can think about now), and while it is absolutely full of silly guys whose brains I want to pick, this little bugger really stood out to me. The second he came onto the screen, I KNEW I smelled the borderline on him. As I watched the series and read the manga, I noticed he is actually an incredibly well-written depiction of someone struggling with BPD. Reo is a super layered character and my favorite hobby is picking apart those layers and yapping incessantly about them, so here we are. I want to write this analysis for a few reasons:
1.) Too many people misunderstand Reo and categorize him as dramatic or childish without any elaboration and he deserves a proper character deep-dive. I think him being borderline explains a LOT of his reactions/choices throughout the story.
2.) Borderline representation is extremely important to me. I'm diagnosed borderline and have struggled with this disorder for around ten years now, so I get really excited when I spy BPD-coded characters (especially if they're likable people and not just ghoulish irredeemable villains or manic pixie dream girl characters). This disorder can be so isolating, especially when the majority of people will never even bother to research or understand it. I know that some people like to chalk Reo's emotional reactions up to him being a moody 17-year-old, but I think I have enough evidence to prove that this is undiagnosed BPD that's festering in his noggin. Not to mention, literally nobody else acts like this in the series. Reo is incredibly unique and distinct in the way he behaves through this narrative and I think it's way past the point of normal teenage angst. Regardless, believe what you want. He'll always be my borderline princess tho <3
3.) I have a master's degree in English and what good is that if I don't write long, painful, pointless essays on anime guys? Not that this is exceptionally well written, I just like to laugh at myself for getting a whole M.A and then this is the shit I publish online lmao
By the end of this, I hope I can shed some light on wtf is going on inside of Reo's silly little head. (I'm also obviously not a psychologist, don't use any of this to diagnose yourself pls I don't need the scandal)
If you want to read, buckle up, because this is gonna be a long one!
First, let me define BPD- It's a personality disorder characterized by a long-standing pattern of instability in mood, interpersonal relationships, and self-image. At its core, it is a disorder categorized by emotional dysregulation (the inability to regulate one's emotional responses) People with BPD feel everything EXTREMELY hard. That's important to keep in mind IMO, because while their reactions may seem dramatic or extreme, what they're feeling IS dramatic and extreme. Everything they're feeling is amplified, so their reactions are amplified. Obviously from the outside, people assume it's an overreaction since they can't see what's going on inside the borderline's head. When you sit down and dissect the thought process of someone like Reo, it becomes a lot easier to understand why they react the way that they do to certain situations.
(Also, I'm not going to reiterate more than once that an explanation is not an excuse to treat people poorly. I cannot read ANYTHING on BPD without hearing every 2 minutes how the disorder isn't an excuse to hurt other people. We get it!! I'm explaining it, not excusing it. This enter essay is an analysis of why someone acts the way they do, not whether or not it's excusable)
So then, what behaviors/signs does somebody need to exhibit to receive a borderline diagnosis? The 9 diagnostic criteria for BPD are as follows:
1. Fear of abandonment
2. Unstable or changing relationships
3. Unstable self-image; struggles with identity or sense of self
4. Impulsive or self-damaging behaviors
5. Suicidal behavior or self-injury
6. Varied or random mood swings
7. Constant feelings of worthlessness or sadness
8. Problems with anger, including frequent loss of temper or physical fights
9. Stress-related paranoia or loss of contact with reality
Someone would only need 5 of these to receive a proper diagnosis. Just with the main story and the spin-off manga that is currently released, I think I have enough evidence to argue that Reo has 8 out of 9 criteria for a BPD diagnosis. For the sake of organization, I’m gonna group some of those together though, indicated by a + symbol. I also want to define a few important terms before I start yapping, so that y'all without BPD can understand wtf I'm even talking about.
Favorite Person (fp) - This is someone who holds massive significance in a borderline's life. They emotionally depend on this person a lot and to a certain extent, their worldview almost revolves around them.
Splitting- the change in perception of someone or something caused by black-or-white thinking or dichotomous thinking. It is the devaluation of someone who was once idealized and vice versa.
Mirroring (aka: the chameleon effect)- the constant, unconscious change in one's identity or sense of self by imitating another person’s behaviors, characteristics, or traits. It is common in people who have a vacant or distorted self-image which is a general symptom of BPD.
Now, time for me to break down the most prominent moments where Reo showcases borderline behavior. As I mentioned, I'm going to try and organize this under each criteria point (with some being grouped together)
Unstable self-image; struggles with identity or sense of self:
Before I delve into Reo's relationships, I want to start with his baseline sense of identity. It’s established early on that Reo is a very bored, empty, unsatisfied person. Nothing excites him, nothing motivates him, and everything is handed to him. He’s frustrated because his parents notoriously try and buy his affection even though he doesn't want anything. For most of his life up until the narrative starts, he's wandering through life empty and frustrated. That is, until he finally sets his sights on soccer and decides to dedicate his life to winning the World Cup:
The wording, 'proves my existence' is interesting here. I think this is the first instance Reo has felt alive. So far, the only notable thing about him has been his family and his money. He hasn't achieved anything exceptional for himself, but now he has that opportunity. With this goal, he can really build something up from nothing and make it his own. It's almost like he's clinging to this dream to prove that he has some purpose in his life other than being the family heir.
Now, this dream changes when he meets Nagi, of course. I'm not gonna focus too much on their relationship in this section, but I will mention that meeting Nagi shifted Reo's entire dream, and not for the better. Through the narrative, his dream went from:
Winning the World Cup
Winning the World Cup with Nagi
Proving to Nagi that leaving him behind was a mistake
Improving himself and becoming a good striker on his own
Being a tool for Nagi to become the best striker
Had Nagi not come in and ask for Reo to come back to him, I think Reo could have done a great job at establishing his own sense of identity without Nagi. But no matter how much he works on himself, with Nagi in the picture, he's never going to value himself more than Nagi. Reo lets Nagi cloud his identity to the point where Isagi calls him out and asks what he's even doing at Blue Lock in the first place, since he clearly can't survive on his own, he needs Nagi with him.
After dealing with the turmoil of being abandoned by Nagi, Reo goes through a few stages. He starts with wanting to become somebody worthy of being beside Nagi, somebody that Nagi would want to choose. Devoting himself to becoming stronger and more versatile, his end goal is to have Nagi realize he made a mistake by leaving him behind. After a few more matches, Reo starts to realize that he needs to grow and change and become a stronger, better version of himself for himself and not for other people.
He decides that the fight was all his fault to begin with, that he should have never forced Nagi to play soccer and now he is going to get back to what his dream was originally, combined with his new desire to be a stand-alone player (and person, for that matter). Reo accepts the mistakes that he made, admits that he shouldn't have forced his ideals onto Nagi, and resolves to become a better person for HIMSELF. That's excellent!
Of course, Reo can't be happy for TOO long. Nagi comes out of the woodwork saying that he can't beat Isagi on his own and asks for Reo's help. Reo does stand up for himself a bit, saying that Nagi is being inconsiderate of his feelings and mentioning how long it took for him to recover from Nagi leaving. Now, the BPD trait here is how Reo not only forgives Nagi and is jumping on him and hugging him THE NEXT PAGE, but he also just disregards everything he said in this sequence. In a matter of two minutes, he no longer wants to be a player that can fight on his own or improve for himself, he wants to improve for Nagi. He starts ruminating again about how hurt he was when Nagi left, but now he's saying all of it wasn't so that he could get stronger individually, it was so that he could be reunited with Nagi again. Nagi asking for his help and saying that now they can play together again motivate Reo more than anything we've seen so far. (Nagi notoriously throws Reo little affection crumbs like this that Reo eats up, but I'm not trying focus on that) Now, Reo's alright with being a tool for Nagi's success again. Everything that happened was supposed to make him stronger so he could be a better partner to Nagi, right? Reo also says as the chapter ends, to please let him be a part of Nagi's dream until Nagi becomes the world's best striker. That's literally so sad!
He's also immediately back to the 'our' 'we' 'us' talk as well. If he can master his chameleon style in order to keep Nagi above the rest of the players, he wont get left behind again. If he devotes his time and energy into being a solo striker like the rest of these guys, Reo knows that he wont be able to keep up. This was always supposed to be his role, right? Building Nagi up to his full potential! :*)
I also like the detail that Reo is back to hugging Nagi and holding him, but Nagi never really touches him back. I think Reo's love language is touch for sure, not that it's incredibly relevant, but I do think it shows that Reo is back to being 100% comfortable around Nagi as if their fight never happened. I hear a lot of fans asking how Reo could have forgiven Nagi so easily, and I say this with my entire chest, it's the BPD. The black-and-white thinking combined with Nagi being Reo's fp and the excruciating pain of being abandoned by him in the first place ?? Of course he's going to take him back. Also, I've seen people blame Reo for not saying no to Nagi when he asks for help and I have to say that is an absolutely insane take. How are we gonna look at a panel where Nagi asks for help and then blame Reo for helping him?? I'm not going to focus on it too much in this post but in my opinion, it is crazy how little accountability both the narrative + fans give Nagi. Reo is pegged as responsible for both of their downfalls and it's nuts tbh.
Currently in the story, I think Reo's identity is still centered around Nagi. It's really easy for borderlines to structure their entire lives and personalities around their favorite person, but I can only hope that these two keep having open and honest discussions with one another. Hopefully, Reo will eventually learn that he can exist without Nagi and that he's more than just 'his arms and legs'.
Unstable or Changing Relationships:
The most notable relationship in Reo's life is Nagi. They're both each other's first real friends, which already sets up a less-than-ideal dynamic. Nagi has no idea how to communicate and he has pretty weak emotional intelligence. On the other hand, Reo is great at communicating, but he isn't used to regulating his emotions. For a lot of borderlines, they can go a very long time without experiencing any symptoms when they don't have a favorite person. When you think about it, the bulk of the disorder is shown through those interactions with other people. If Reo has never had a real friend in his life, I don't think he'd be used to the emotional turmoil that comes with having a fp.
The minute Reo meets Nagi, he's attached. All his classmates notice it, too. They question why Reo is suddenly so obsessed with this random kid who has no interest in him. Reo is ignoring everybody that isnt Nagi.
Very quickly, Reo boils down his view of the world to being him and Nagi versus everybody else, and he makes that very clear. It also depicts something that I think is incredibly crucial to Reo’s character that a lot of people overlook; as Nagi develops to be Reo’s favorite person, Reo’s dream isnt ‘playing soccer’ anymore. It’s Nagi. It’s being with Nagi, playing soccer with Nagi, being useful to Nagi, taking care of Nagi, and being somebody important to Nagi. He doesnt teach Nagi the rules or how to actually play, he teaches Nagi how to play with him. He literally re-writes and re-structures the game so that it can center around him and Nagi. Nagi calls him out on this in the spin-off manga:
Reo doesnt care about the structure of the game, he cares about Nagi. The other people on the field don't matter. The other team doesn't matter. He also starts to unknowingly put Nagi up on a pedestal, which is another borderline trait. He starts reiterating that Nagi is special, he's different from everybody else, he's destined to achieve great things. The more he raises Nagi up, the more he isolates the two of them in his mind, reiterating the idea that it's them against everybody else. His language reflects this too: Reo exclusively talks with 'us' 'we' 'our', insinuating that they're going to do everything together.
When Ego says that there can't be two winners, Reo says that he'll make Nagi the best striker. His 'ego' will be making Nagi successful. Along with putting Nagi on this pedestal, Reo also very early on establishes the fact that he'd pick Nagi over himself any day of the week. He's the only person in Blue Lock who really couldn't care less about becoming a striker himself: his dream is to be a tool in Nagi's success. Or, in simpler terms, he wants to be useful and make Nagi happy.
These two were in trouble from the very beginning. Nagi is lazy as all hell, has 0 motivation to do anything, and his dream is to live a life of luxury and never have to work. Reo, being the borderline baddie that he is, is more than happy to do EVERYTHING for Nagi. Borderlines love extremely hard! It's one of our best traits and I think it's important to showcase that Reo is a massive sweetheart at his core. He clearly loves Nagi a lot and goes to extreme lengths to make sure he feels taken care of. To someone with BPD, NOTHING is too big of an ask for a person they love, especially if that person is their fp. I also disagree with the argument that Reo 'made' Nagi codependent. Nagi likes being taken care of, he says it all the time. If you ask me, I would actually argue that Nagi takes advantage of Reo a little bit because he knows that Reo will do anything for him. But regardless, I think that Reo starts to develop an unspoken expectation with Nagi that he'll provide him with everything he needs, and in turn, Nagi will stick around. I don't think he's doing this intentionally, nor do I think it's being done in a manipulative way. I just think that Reo has a dormant fear of being abandoned that he doesn't totally know he has yet.
It isn't just Nagi that Reo showcases having unstable relationships with, though. Zantetsu is another good example. Reo starts out disliking Zantetsu, he snaps at him a couple times, and calls him a moron more than once. He starts to warm up to him because Nagi tells him to. The favorite person has MASSIVE sway in the borderline's life. If Nagi likes someone, Reo likes them too. (This is, of course, on the condition that they aren't a threat, looking at you Isagi).
In the immediate next chapter, Reo is acting like they're all best friends. He's climbing on top of them in their big bed, saying that the three of them are gonna win their matches, being a little pookie. He goes from not liking this guy at all to considering him one of his close friends super fast. Also on the topic of Isagi, when they're making up the teams for the second selection, Nagi doesn't initially want to tell Reo that he wants Isagi on their team bc he's worried Reo will be upset. But, when he does finally say it, Reo is literally fine with it because like I said, who Nagi likes, Reo likes! On the condition that they don't replace Reo, which clearly happened soon after.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, Reo also shows how he can go from loving someone to despising him very quickly. After Chigiri and Kunigami tell him to get back up in the game post-Nagi's abandonment, we can literally see the switch flip in Reo's head:
Suddenly, he hates Nagi. Nagi's a jerk who abandoned him; he never cared about him, and he threw him away. Dude literally says "Let's kill the bastards that betrayed us". This act of unintentional devaluing is called splitting. What Reo's essentially doing is going from one extreme to the other: if Nagi isn't his perfect treasure, he's the devil that broke his heart. There's no room for a grey area. The reasoning behind borderline's developing this black-and-white mindset is rooted in self-defense. If Reo devalues Nagi into being nothing more than a traitor, then he's stripping away the power that Nagi has to hurt him. If he looks at him like a rival or a villain, it's protecting him from being hurt by Nagi again.
That doesn't mean that he genuinely believes any of this, more so, he's trying to convince himself that it's true. We see that at his core, the reason he's acting like this is because he's hurt. I'll go more into it later on, but he's constantly thinking, what does Isagi have that I don't? What do I have to do in order to win Nagi back? This black-and-white thinking is an automatic self-defense mechanism that I think he's doing subconsciously. Regardless, the shifting he's doing here can cause a little whiplash, which brings me to:
Varied or random mood swings + Problems with anger, including frequent loss of temper or physical fights:
I can’t think of a better way to describe Reo's temperament than the wiki, so let me quote it: "Generally, he seems to feel every emotion with full force and is extremely aware of his own faults and shortcomings, which is evident in several instances of painful breakdowns shown in the spin-off manga. Due to his high emotionality, he can even get violent when he loses his temper."
Reo is characterized as being emotionally unstable. When he's happy, he's elated! When he's sad, he's miserable. There are a ton of scenes between the manga and spin-off manga that show how fast his emotions can flip, but this one was one of my personal favorites:
In this scene, Reo has developed a little scheme in the dining hall where the guys are trading their side dishes. At face value, a throwaway moment. But, I think it's worth looking at because not only does this show Reo's emotional response being triggered in an opposite, semi-extreme direction, but the root cause for the reaction was that he felt rejected by Zantetsu. In his own weird way, he's asking Zantetsu to come over and hang out with him. He's not being exceptionally clear with that message, but I can still pick up on it. "You wanna join in, don't you?" He's extending the invite, making himself vulnerable, and Zantetsu shoots him down by saying nah, I'm fine with my noodles. Reo JUMPS on him like YOU KNOW WHAT? I TOOK THAT PERSONALLY! lol. Jokes aside, I think this moment is a great one to argue Reo's BPD tendencies because it's such a seemingly mundane interaction. Even Zantetsu is surprised by Reo's random outburst. This also sets up the fact that one of Reo's most obvious triggers is being rejected/abandoned/betrayed, an extremely common one between those of us with BPD.
Other instances of Reo having a bad temper are a lot more obvious. In the match against teams V and Z, Reo straight up elbows Raichi in the throat, and then tries to go throw hands with Kuon for hurting Nagi. He only stops because if he gets into any more fights, he’ll get thrown out of the game and won't be able to play with Nagi anymore. He’s visibly pissed though and calls Team Z a joke. Hell, even Reo himself can recognize on a certain level that he can't control his emotions: they control him. They cloud his judgment and make him react in ways that he wish he didn't.
He is constantly plagued by these extreme emotional reactions that are out of his control. Not to say that people with BPD are unable to ever control their emotions, because we can! It takes time and therapy and practice though, which Reo hasn't had. His lack of regulation is also why he has such a dramatic and extreme meltdown when Nagi abandons him.
Fear of Abandonment:
Reo's biggest trigger and the cause of his inner turmoil throughout Blue Lock is his fear of abandonment. I mentioned before that I think he's had this fear dormant inside of him for a while as so many borderlines do, since he hasn't had the chance to experience it before. He alludes to it early on when they first arrive at Blue Lock:
The thought of leaving Nagi for somebody else? Reo considers that heartless. They came together, after all. They're going to win the world cup together. Nagi could break both of his legs and Reo wouldn't leave him, because again, Reo isn't there to team up with the best player and become the best striker in the world: he's there to play with Nagi!! And, like I said, in Reo's mind it's him and Nagi vs everyone else-
Reo exhibits a lot of signs early on of being jealous while they're playing in Blue Lock. I mean, as we discussed, everything should be focused around him and Nagi. When Nagi passes to Zantetsu in the team V and Y match, Reo pulls up like 'hey, why didn't you pass it to me?? ):' There are a lot of little moments like that, but Reo's jealousy is a lot more relevant to my argument after he gets abandoned by Nagi.
Let's talk about that word: abandoned. It seems dramatic, right? Reo uses that term constantly and exclusively. Every time he brings that moment up, he uses the word 'abandoned', or he'll say 'betrayed' or 'chose'. These are very definitive words. He’s not saying Nagi ditched him or flaked on him or blew him off, no; he has abandoned him. That word choice may seem disproportionate to the situation, but that's Reo's reality. This was the ultimate betrayal to him. The constant use of that vocabulary reiterates that in Reo's mind, there is no grey area. Either Nagi chooses him, or he chooses someone else. In choosing someone else, he abandons Reo. Reo is paranoid that Nagi isn't ever going to come back to him and it's because of something that Reo is lacking. How can Nagi like Isagi more than him, anyway?
Now, I do fault Nagi a bit for not communicating better at that moment. I understand that he's bad at communication, but I don't think Reo could have been more obviously upset if he tried. The dude was in TEARS. Nagi saw him devastated and then expected everything to be fine when he met him in the bathhouse? Idk. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he didn't realize it would upset Reo to such an extreme: maybe he thought that they would miss each other, but Reo wouldn't take it personally. I'm doing my best not to harp on Nagi since this is about Reo.
Abandonment is detrimental to people with BPD. It causes extreme inner turmoil that we see with Reo as the story progresses because it is the only thing he can think about. If he isn't trying to cover up his hurt feelings with this idea of revenge, he's self-destructing over being abandoned. He becomes obsessed with wondering why Nagi chose Isagi over him. Was there something wrong with him? Isagi isn't that impressive, why would Nagi rather be with him? These thoughts torture him endlessly and fuel his desire to 'steal' Nagi back. He literally says to Isagi, that he's going to steal Nagi back. Much to his dismay though, Reo starts to notice that Isagi is bringing out some positive traits in Nagi. Nagi's entire vibe is different with Isagi. Nagi is having fun playing soccer without Reo. In fact, he's having more fun. He's making plays he's never made before. His face is visibly different; he's more excited than before.
This is heartbreaking for Reo. Not only was he right that Isagi did have something to offer Nagi that he couldn't, but Reo is having a massive self-hate spiral during this point as well, so he's internalizing all of his flaws and mistakes while the thought is sitting in the back of his head: did Nagi actually have a good reason for abandoning me? Was I not enough to satisfy him? Did I only drag him down? This gets significantly worse the longer he watches Nagi and Isagi play:
Everything is falling apart. Nagi is doing completely fine without Reo, and Reo is an absolute mess. We're circling back to Reo's lack of identity here as well. He's watching firsthand that he's losing Nagi to Isagi: what does he do? What happens to him if he loses Nagi, who is he without Nagi? He's overwhelmed during this match and at one point Reo literally screams that he's going to tear apart their connection. Jealousy is consuming him, but it's also those feelings of inferiority and wondering if he really did deserve to be abandoned. If Nagi is so happy without him, maybe he really did have a reason. These are the thoughts that are circling around in Reo's head. Not to mention, he is constantly tortured by the flashbacks of Nagi leaving him, which I think is a great detail. Some readers might say it's just pointless recapping but I disagree, I think it's depicting how traumatic that was for Reo. As a borderline, being abandoned by your fp IS traumatic. Reo relives that moment so many times because so many things trigger it for him throughout Blue Lock. He can't even look at Chigiri and Kunigami without thinking about him and Nagi. It's a really devastating experience that quickly deteriorates him emotionally.
Constant feelings of worthlessness or sadness + Suicidal behavior or self-injury:
One of my favorite things about Reo is the fact that he is self-aware that he's behaving somewhat irrationally, but he doesn't know how to stop. When we look at one of the several times that Reo is curled up crying over Nagi, he mentions how he really did want to tell Nagi to go and have fun, but he didn't. He couldn't. The visuals shift for this too:
Reo doesnt want to be acting this way, but he can't help it, and that's frustrating to him. It makes him start feeling ashamed of himself. His inner thoughts start to spiral and he feels weak and alone. He's reflecting here on what his true feelings really were at that moment, and how scared and lonely and weak he felt as a result of Nagi leaving him behind.
These feelings quickly evolve into Reo feeling worthless and falling into bouts of self-hatred. He's so ashamed of the way he's feeling and behaving but it feels so out of his control. He says, "maybe if I hadn't gone to Blue Lock in the first place, I wouldn't have to experience this feeling." As I said before, borderline's feel things EXTREMELY intensely; the disorder is described as living with third-degree burns all over your body. Everything hurts. His feelings are so intense and all-consuming right now, it's all he can think about:
I saw some posts in the fandom reddit asking why Reo is acting like this. One in particular reads: "I get that he is betrayed and stuff but he is acting like it’s the end of the world, is it explained later why he acts like this? Is it because he doesn’t think he can win without Nagi?" Not to call this person out, I just want to answer the question in this post-
It has nothing to do with winning; it was never about winning. It was always about Nagi.
If we're looking at Reo through the borderline lens, it IS the end of the world for him. Nagi was his world. What's worse, he's fully aware that he's not acting rationally and he doesn't know why, which is making him feel ashamed and weak and embarrassed. Now I know why he's acting like this, but there are no Blue Lock psychiatrists sitting around to wack him with the mood stabilizers or the DBT handbook, so he's gonna stay feeling like a monster.
He lets these thoughts, along with the resentment and anger from being abandoned in the first place, fuel him for the second selection match. As he's watching the game play out, as Nagi is about to score the winning goal, Reo's mind starts racing with intrusive, negative thoughts.
He's praying that Nagi fails, that he gives up, that he stops trying, anything to stop that solidifying moment where he scores the winning goal and proves once and for all that not only was Reo not strong enough to stop him, but Nagi doesn't need him anymore. He catches himself really quickly, because he realizes he's sounding just like his parents. Everything is spinning out of control so bad, Reo wants Nagi to end up in a vulnerable position so that he isn't the only one falling apart. As he catches himself thinking this, he's disgusted with himself. He calls himself 'utter trash', and as he watches Nagi score the winning goal, he falls to his knees, wishing he was dead.
As he sits there decomposing in emotional turmoil and suicidal ideation, Nagi's team chooses Chigiri to join them, and it's the nail in the coffin. This is probably Reo's lowest point in the entire story IMO. Nagi comes up to compliment him on his plays and Reo shows us another classic borderline move: he's anticipating how bad it's going to hurt to be abandoned by Nagi again, so he's trying to push him away before it can happen. We see the dichotomy of his spoken words and inner thoughts here, where he's talking big game to Nagi, saying things like 'you clearly don't care about me anymore, you're throwing me away, if you're going to abandon me just do it properly', while internally he's thinking 'I'm the worst, I wish I was dead, please take this bait and break my heart so that I can self destruct in peace'.
i LOVE the visuals during this moment. This is what Reo thinks is his last line of defense, the last thing he can do to preserve any part of his dignity is to make Nagi hate him so that he'll stop throwing these crumbs of affection at him. It's also really telling that despite his switch in behavior and the devaluing of Nagi, the root of all of that is STILL that he was so hurt by the abandonment.
I don't think I need to analyze the suicidal ideation because he just straight up says he wants to die like three times in this scene but, aside from that, the visual of his inner thoughts vs what he's actually saying is so powerful. Not to mention the chameleon imagery which i'll geek out about in a second, this is another example of his black and white thinking along with the reiteration that being abandoned was literally traumatic for Reo: he says they can never go back to what they were before. Speaking as a borderline, this is painfully true. When people break my trust even in a small way, I can never view them the same as I used to. I can forgive them and let it go, but I'll never be as open with them as I once was. In Reo's shoes, he had Nagi up on this pedestal that he was perfect and would never do anything to hurt him, but he did hurt him (in the worst way possible).
After Nagi tells him he's a pain in the ass and that he doesn't care anymore, Reo thanks him for 'finishing him off'. In his mind, they're done now and he can suffer in peace and quiet without dragging Nagi down anymore.
Bonus Point: The Chameleon Effect
I LOVE THE FACT THAT HIS THING IS CHAMELEONS AHHHH
The chameleon imagery with Reo makes me INSANE dude. As I mentioned towards the beginning of this post, a part of borderline that is seldom talked about is the tendency to take on 'the chameleon effect', or mirror the people around them. REO'S ENTIRE THING IS CHAMELEONS LIKE BFFR ?? That image where he was trying to get Nagi to hate him, was before he even started using his chameleon style, it was just something the authors thought was necessary to include during Reo's mental breakdown. Aside from the cool imagery, his chameleon style is a reflection of his relationship with Nagi. He gets called a jack of all trades and a master of none early on in reference to how when he’s without Nagi, hes not really exceptional at anything. He never really took the time to master one specific thing because he was always so concerned with helping Nagi. This rings my BPD bell for a couple reasons: first of all, when you have no sense of identity and you’re worried it means you have no real personality ?? Steal one!! Take the closest person to you and copy that one. That’s something us baddies know VERY well. Also, think there’s something about you that your fp doesn’t like? Change it! You can morph into anything they want as long as it means they won’t leave you !! :*) Before he makes up with Nagi, he copies moves in hopes that it'll make him stronger and appear more desirable to Nagi. After they make up, he copies whoever he has to so that he can get Nagi to that goal and make himself useful, make himself somebody that Nagi wants to have around. It is a literal direct metaphor for him changing anything and everything about himself for Nagi and graaaahhhh it’s so cool
Reonagi ?? Some thoughts-
I want to close this yap session with my thoughts on Reonagi as a ship. I do think that they can work and I want to make that clear. I'm not on board with the 'borderlines arent capable of having loving and fulfilling relationships' crap. That being said, they both have to put in a bit of effort. Reo has already recognized a lot of his own issues. He admits that he was wrong for pushing his ideals onto Nagi, that he needs to let Nagi grow and be his own person, etc. Nagi really hasn't accepted any fault. I stand by the fact that Nagi needs to be more sensitive with Reo. Way too often when a relationship like this fails, all the blame is put on the one with borderline. I'm gonna be the outlier here and say that if Nagi cares about Reo, he needs to learn about Reo's triggers and be mindful of them. I'm not saying that since Reo is sensitive to abandonment that Nagi should just isolate himself from everybody else, but what I am saying is that when he's going to do something that doesn't involve Reo, he needs to learn how to communicate that he still loves and values Reo. "I'm gonna go play soccer with this person right now, but I haven't forgotten about our promise. When I come back, we can play together. I still love you and I'm not going to leave you for whoever tf I'm playing with rn." (sneaking that 'i love you' in bc like..they're literally canon at this point asdfghjkll) But, I do think that Nagi loves Reo and cares about him in his own way. The two of them just have to keep working on their communication skills. Nagi has the potential to have a hot rich husband who will literally bend over backward for him and buy him all the robux he could ever want, he's gotta put in a shred of effort!
I also like to think that Nagi didn’t totally get the fact that Reo doesn’t gaf about just playing soccer. Nagi thinks soccer is what they do together, it’s what makes reo happy, right? He’s always pushing him to train harder and take the game more seriously because he likes the sport, RIGHT? It would make perfect sense to go play with isagi so that he can get better at soccer and come back to reo a more improved player. Maybe that’s why he was surprised when Reo was so mad in the bathhouse, bc he wasn’t making the connection that Reo cares more about him than soccer. That Reo puts all that energy into him playing soccer because he thinks it’s something that they can have as their own, and once Nagi notices how good he is, he’ll start enjoying it and the two of them can hold hands and run around the soccer pitch!! I think Nagi missed that part tbh, and I don’t think he know that even now in the story. Maybe Reo doesn’t even notice it.
Anyway, a shameless plug to my reonagi playlist if that's your thing (i cooked with this one, i fear) https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5CsvSqmuI4cxOl1nTaV4GJ?si=737a0f21e0bd482a
Closing Thoughts:
Reo is a bpd baddie and I love him very much. I think he's a sensitive guy with a lot of feelings who would benefit from taking time to work through his trauma and his emotions. I hope that he eventually is able to build an identity for himself that doesn't involve Nagi, but baby steps, I suppose. I think Reo is a great balance of positive and negative borderline traits and he reads as a really believable and sympathetic character. He is, however, definitely that friend that you have to slap to stop them from running back to their ex.
Jokes aside though, BPD can be extremely hard to live with, even more so when it's undiagnosed and untreated. If someone you love has BPD, take the time to read up on it and do your best to understand them. I promise you, it will mean the world to them.
If you managed to get this far, thank you for reading! This was a messy stream of consciousness and I appreciate your support by listening.
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It’s the middle of the week, have some dancing turtles
Spoilers below as I gush about my Mutant Mayhem Monday experience 🤗 please feel free to gush with me I wanna hear other people’s thoughts too!
First off… When Seth wanted to put the teenager in TMNT he meant it. Like, all the versions act like teenagers, but like Nickelodeon PG stereotypical teens. MM turtles were the realest PG-13 outta pocket 21st century teenagers I’ve ever seen and I love that shit because it’s the first time I actually felt like I was around the kids in middle school and high school again with the way they talk. Kinda appreciate Superfly cussing too? Like idk it’s Ice Cube and this villain goes hard tryna kill some teenage turtles he formally saw as his lil cousins, let the grown mutant cuss
Also uh, was not expecting to be sad so early in the movie? Like I could tell from the trailers it was gon be an emotional rollercoaster but shit like ten minutes in and these turtles are fuckin depressed. And to see it really hit me because in every other version (except for Bayverse) the turtles literally never let not being part of the human world get to them. In the shows especially they’re so well adjusted and never bothered by sticking to the shadows. Then there’s Rise where they pretty much go out whenever they want and indulge in most of the human world stuff they want to. For these guys to be so stunted and desperate to have more freedom was so heart wrenching. Especially when Splinter grounds them for a whole month and the reality sinks in of how much they know the life they want isn’t an option for them
Wasn’t expecting any kind of ship or romance but that crush Leo has on April hit me like truck because…… holy crap the Leo-April pair has never been a thing? On top of that this is only the second on screen black April we’ve seen and I’ve been a Leo kinnie across the board since day one so to see this combo of my favorite character liking a black girl is making me lose my mind 🥲 and like it got me thinking of several of my favorite shows and the single characters I kin in those and if they’ve ever had black love interests and it’s just still not a common normalized thing honestly.
I’m sure a lot of people aren’t excited for the prospect of ships coming back (especially after 2012 scarred us) but as a Leo lover and black girl it got me so excited to see something like this. I’m just hopeful and optimistic they won’t mess it up like a lot of shows do. The “this is just as friends line” already makes me a little worried bc that trope never has a good history but I have faith they’ll handle things tastefully and not make it toxic or messy
MURDER THE SHREKS!
“I assume you’d wanna be on camera. ‘Cause you have, like a very camera ready look…�� OKAY SMOOOOOTH LEONARDOOOOOO 👏🏽
Could not stop laughing while he was shooting his shot my face was literally donnie’s restraining myself from bursting out laughing
Just a couple of my favorite questions that April wrote down for them:
“Do you carry salmonella?” Look I still don’t know wtf salmonella is but it’s the second time a TMNT iteration has joked about it so I’m starting to think it has something specifically to do with turtles 👀
“Have you caught covid?” Oml covid exists in this world
“Are you the source of covid?” OUT OF LINE 💀
“How many people has the red bandana turtle stabbed? Does he need therapy?” Yes.
“Does sunlight cause you to burst into flames?” They’re- they’re not vampires? 😂
Leon Ardo deserves the world and whatever he wants in it give him everything 😭
I will never understand what made Donnie laugh so hard at the name Nardo other than it being because it’s his sibling and that it bothers Leo lmao
All imma say about the puke scene is that I’m glad I heard an “out of context” spoiler about it bc I knew exactly when to look away and I’m glad I did bc the scene lasted for so long??? 😀❓But hey at least I had Unwritten to listen too while I was sparing my eyes 😂
The sequence of them going around and shaking down those gangs and Superfly’s connections. BAD. ASS. And each of them got their own moments to shine? Loved it. Like they each even got to take point and have their moments where they got to kick in the door lol. And the fight scenes were just, muah. Chef’s kiss, they all looked amazing taking grown ass adults down together
Okay Splinter definitely gets the best dad award for putting together that little surprise party, with all the celebrity Chris’s and pretending to wait on them 🥺 so pure. It did make me sad the guys immediately left and you can just see such a sad dejected look on Splinter’s face, knowing he can’t provide what his kids really want or make them happy enough without it 🥲 At the very least they say thanks and that they appreciate but I would’ve at least stayed for a lil bit and gone along with it, Splinter just looked so excited about it and it was so sweet 😭
And he doesn’t even get upset though he knows they’re hiding something, he just says he’ll help them if they’ve gotten into trouble, which is something I’m sure almost every kid has wanted instead of having the kind of relationship where they’re more scared of telling their parents they messed up instead of handling it on their own
I love how musical Superfly’s family is 😂 Ray Filet just starts sing-introducing his name and Mondo and the other couple mutants when they drive with in the car trying to find music they could all sing to together 🥹 not to mention the musical references Superfly makes later that I’ll get to. “Kinda don’t wanna murder everyone on Earth, I just kinda wanna sing” Me too bruh.
Raph immediately going “goochi goochi goo” and playing peekaboo with Genghis frog is so underrated that boy has such a soft side he’s not even that afraid of showing at times, and maybe it’s continuing the trope of Raph having a soft spot for pets/animals? Who knows 😌
Yo I was kinda shook when that government guy knocked Leo out and he just fell unconscious on the ground 😶 Like we’re used to seeing the authorities be brutal especially in movies like this but that’s a whole teenager? You just assaulted a minor? 🙂 Crazy
Also I know it’s sad they got captured and drained painfully but Mikey in that scene was hilarious 😂 like even the way he was dramatically crying and Leo was just started to cry with him like “iM sO sOrRy mIkEeEeEy! 😭” gold. When one of his children is hurting Leo hurts too. One of my favorite moments 🤣
They literally started singing BTS while being tortured they’re so unserious but like in a serious way to them and I love it. Also the fact that they did it just to make Donnie feel better? So pure. Like Raph of all turtles offered to sing while being drained of blood (bc I refuse to use the m word 💀)
The way Splinter snuck in and soloed literal government soldiers single handedly? Badass. Never loved seeing a Splinter save his sons so much 🥹
“But it’s the only way we’ll be accepted.”
“No! We accept you!”
“You can come live with us! We accept you!”
“WE VIBE!”
Oml they’re so puuuuure 😭 I really thought this was gonna be a moment where the guys invite them all to come live with them and Splinter was gonna be like ‘aha 😬 whoa slow down there’ but damn nah he was just as enthusiastic as them inviting all those mutants to come live in their home forever “The more the merrier!” Like ugh he just loves finding family like Baxter Stockman and we see where the guys got their loving nature from 🥹
The amount of his soul Mikey put into that BROSEEEPH was so real like I’ve never heard the name broseph be said in any other way, I’m so glad they put that moment in there
“New York, New York!” “I’m the king of New York!”
Oml superfly’s a Broadway baby 🤗 he’s a big bad villain marching through time square and talking about King Kong but he’s fill gonna nerd out and make his musical theatre references 😂
“For once in your life you didn’t sound lame. You actually started to sound like a leader”
“That was really heartfelt Raph”
I love the Leo Raph dynamic in this movie. Like they don’t always agree or understand each other but they will show love towards one another and show mutual appreciation
Something about any of the turtles shells cracking always gets to me for some reason like those are some serious permanent injuries so I want to see if they do anything special with that in the sequel or show maybe 🤔 And I couldn’t tell if all of theirs cracked or just one, and if so which turtle it was. I think Leo or Raph. I feel like it was Leo but Raph’s are also starting to have a trend of getting cracks in their shells so 🤷🏽♀️
Also I do not want to judge what other people like to wear but why are Raph and Donnie the only normal dressed ones 😭 like Mikey looks like he’s going on vacation and Leo looks like he’s going to clock in at Best Buy 😂 tell me it’s because they have limited resources for clothes lmao. HE’S LITERALLY WEARING A LANYARD
Them taking off the masks was crazy honestly… like them deciding not to wear them made my brain pause until I realize they’re kids going to school now and not being ninjas all the time… they don’t need them anymore. I’m just so pleased with the fact that this movie was willing to do what all other iterations weren’t. I see why they’re getting a sequel and show already, these guys and the plot development deserve so much more exploration
Maybe I missed something in the beginning but I’m wondering where Stockman went. Like is he still in custody? Did he die? Because not seeing him again that’s what I assumed but we only saw him get arrested or whatever, so if anything I don’t get why Superfly and the others wouldn’t try to break him out 🤔 I was surprised they didn’t make him a villain though, but I’m pretty happy about him getting to be a more optimistic kind character tho
SHREDDER HAD ME SHOOK LIKE THE ARMOR ALREADY LOOKED SO COOL AND I WAS NOT EXPECTING THEM TO GET THE BIG BAD INVOLVED AHHHH I’M SO READY TO SEE THEM REACT TO THIS ANGRY GIANT TIN CAN
Although I do wonder if Shredder’s gonna have some personal gripe with them since they have a different backstory he doesn’t seem to be a part of. And shit now that they’re public and in school it’s gonna be so much easier for him to go after them 😅 pluses and minuses…
The soundtrack: golden. Cultured. Nothing but range. Goes from a 90’s rap song to Natasha Bedingfield’s soulful 2000’s song. Most movies only ever have all pop mainstream songs or only rap songs because they think they can’t mix but MM does it effortlessly. The turtles are so versatile not just with music genres but they make old and new references ‘cause they’re well rounded kings 💪🏽 Between rizz, Adele, broski, Hey Arnold, K-Pop, Ferris Bueller, etc… I mean Donnie’s literally doing the sprinkler and the funky chicken in that gif up top 😂 they’re born in 2008 I doubt any kids today know about those dances anymore
Clearly I have all the thoughts and feelings about these boys and the movie, but I think this is probably my favorite TMNT movie? I’ve loved all of them but I think this one definitely brings me the most comfort fr
#mutant mayhem spoilers#tmnt#mutant mayhem#tmnt 2023#tmnt mutant mayhem#tmnt mm#tmntmm#mutant mayhem tmnt#tmntmm donnie#tmntmm leo#tmntmm mikey#tmntmm raph#tmnt mm splinter#superfly#tmnt superfly
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About Evil teenagers antagonists in Miraculous
I currently wonder how can some fans still want a redemption for somoene like Chloé who willingly hurt people just because that's was her definition of "fun".
Why not accept Chloé as somoene evil ? Just because she's 14 years old ? Just because Gabriel was worst than her doesn't take away the fact that Chloé is a truly bad person who has the potential to become as evil, if not worse than Gabriel while growing up.
Even in real life, adults are not the only ones who are capable of cruelty and crimes. If only adults were capable of monstrosity, I wouldn't have 14-year-olds killing each other with callache nikoffs in the drug trafficking districts of my city. we wouldn't have young people beating up little ones and pushing others to suicide and absolutely not regretting their actions. And we wouldn't have stories to raise eyebrows about kids capable of committing murder and acts of torture without necessarily having been abused in their lives.
To me, anyone who loves to make others suffer for their own sick pleasure (and their victims are people who objectively don't deserve such cruelty) has serious mental issues and can be a danger to others.
Both Chloé and Lila love to make others people suffer or don't care about hurting innocents, and they certainly don't feel any empathy for anyone, or in Chloé's case, no longer feel any empathy (she may have felt sympathy and empathy for Adrien at some point, like during the episode Felix in season 3, but that's definitly no longer the case as soon as Adrien asked her to stop being a biatch). Maybe Lila may feel a form of attachment toward her mothers, yet that doesn't stop her from manipulating them and fooling them in a way that's pretty cruel if you dig deeper in Lila's scale of truancy and imposterization.
I know that technically when a 14 year old kid behaves like Lila and Chloé we could say to ourselves that it is unfair to give them no chance and to condemn them when they are only 14-15 years old and could change for the better if they could be guided on the right path.
But Miraculouse is a show in which the superheroes with the fate of the world in their hands are 14 year old kids. And as such in this fictitious reality, other 14 year olds are perfectly likely to become real cruel and threatening villains i without any scruples, especialy if they are influenced by the wickedness of an adult supervillain.
And I believe that Gabriel's evilness only made Chloé's and Lila's wickedness worse.
He put those two girls in positions of power where they could hurt others and act according to their darkest and Manichean impulses. And Lila and Chloé would only want more taste of that power to crush others. And you know how power easilly corrupt the most greedy hearts.
On several occasions, Gabriel even approved of Lila and Chloe's horrible plans and actions. He has encouraged Lila on numerous occasions to "get rid of" Marinette, thus giving the impression that he supports Lila's jealousy, and during collusion he will have the nerve to say that Chloé's ideas, which consist literally ruining the academic future of your classmates and putting your pregnant teacher in jail for no good reason are good ideas. Having a rich adult in a position to approve of their actions in this way will only have given Lila and Chloe the feeling that their acts of cruelty and malice are justified, and thus reinforced their evil nature.
On several occasions we have seen Chloe and Lila voluntarily let themselves be akumatized, and worse than that, we have seen them plan to be akumatized (Chloe in Penalteam, and Lila in Revelation) and not for understandable reasons like that of a desperate Jalil brainwashed by lies on social media. Because Lila and Chloe have only ever been motivated by their narcicism, their ego, and their desire to get revenge on people they hate for the most pettiest, vain and selfish reasons possible.
Lila and Chloé may be kids, but they are evil teenagers, because they would gladly become supervillain if that means getting what they want. And what they want is anything but noble. For their selfish goals, Lila and Chloé were willing to endanger the city they live in and all its inhabitants. I don't even know if I can still call Lila and Chloé kids or teenagers, with how far they're willing to go and hurt people for the sake of their ambitions.
Although there's still the possibility that Lila may be an adult with a youngfull appearance or a hormonal abnormality making her look like a teenager when she could be an adult. But that would risk making her a pedophile so I don't think the show will go that far ^^ At most they could give her the same as Théo Barbot
But an antagonist adult would be needed then to balance an antagonist teenager supervillain.
Good thing we still have Tomoe Tsurugi then
It's tragic that Chloé and Lila wickedness and evilness could be due to serious mental issues or Chloé's bad upbringing, and the show may have decided that it's more important to protect others from the harm Chloé and Lila can cause rather than to prioritize "helping" them with their issues. Both Marinette and Adrien proposed another path for Chloé to chose, one that could have helped her heal from the emotional and mental wounds her mother's abandonment and neglect. Chloé instead chose Hawkmoth's/Monarch
Ladybug offered Lila her friendship, and Adrien also offered Lila to be there for her as long as she didn't hurt those he loved. Yet both Lila and Chloe voluntarily chose to continue committing bad deeds and hurting others, regardless of the fact that someone reached out to them and offered them another path to get love, acknowledgement and recognition from people. Adrien and Marinette don't have to sacrifice their mental health for people who wish them harm, so I understand very well that it wasn't and won't be their priority to help Chloé and Lila find potential redemption. And especially when Lila and Chloe seem determined to refuse to change and continue to cling to their wickedness.
It should be the adults responsabilities to deal with Chloé and Lila issues, and unfortunatelly the adults in Miraculous are pretty lousy and incompetents. It's very tragic when we don't know that one kid is a psychopath, and if another has always gotten away with his narcissistic behavior disorder and nothing had ever been done to help them deal with that issue, that only leaves the opportunity for the seed of evil in these kids to germinate and flourish, and then reach the level of nastiness that is more often found in adults.
#miraculous ladybug#miraculous thoughs#chloé bourgeois#lila rossi#gabriel agreste#tomoe tsurugi#This show seems to like evil teenagers antagonists in Miraculous#and the fact that the influence of an evil adult antagonist only facilitates their premature fall towards the path of evil#We had Garbage Agreste giving Chloé and Lila opportunities to be villains and supervillains who would antagonize and oppose the heroes#then in season 6 we may have Tomoe Tsurugi becoming one of chrysalis's ally#That sure would be better than the whole miraculous team having a lot of trouble against just one villain teenager
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Everybody Hates Lila (And Why It’s Concerning Sometimes)
Lila Rossi is not a stranger in the Miraculous fandom. In fact I’d argue she’s more infamous than Gabriel in some cases. She’s despised by nearly everyone and while some reasons are more justifiable than others, she’s all around not a good person and a mid at best character.
But here’s my deal with it. The fandom hates this girl to I’d like to say an….unhealthy degree. Like the amount of salt this character gets is unmatched. And I feel like the causation of all of this salt doesn’t really live up to the response.
Lila is a liar who causes characters to act out of character very often. And not only that but she also is Marinette’s main rival now and is a jerk to her. She’s underutilized and her lies aren’t that convincing and yet the story wants to convince us she’s more important than she really is pre butterfly miraculous.
This is Lila’s character summed up. At the most I’d expect is frustration mixed in with mild dislike. Reasonable but not over the top. Instead though, I see SEVERAL people make so many salt fics and talk so much shit about her that I just have to sit down and say….y’all need to chill. You all seriously need to chill.
The fandom talks about this character like she’s the spawn of Satan, something we’ve been criticizing Astruc for doing with Chloe, all because she doesn’t have as many redeeming traits as her. Did we forget that they’re BOTH kids? Both of them still have room to improve on themselves.
And I’ll admit it, I was one of those people who kept on saying “Why demonize Chloe when we have Lila” but thinking on it now, neither of them deserves to have that fate. If we REALLY need a character to do the whole “people don’t change” thing, why not Gabriel?
It’s so much better to have this lesson taught to adults to not be like Gabriel, to accept change and loss and to be better. To teach how heavy the impact of a lost love can be and how old age isn’t an excuse to be “stuck in your ways”.
Plus the lesson works better for someone who’s older than for teenagers who’s literally at the stage of their lives where change is everything. And I’m not saying Lila needs to be redeemed or she isn’t allowed to be a villain. What I’m saying is that the over salting on her character, a character that can be easily fixed and patched up, is kinda dumb and kinda annoying to see…especially when some people do like Lila.
SPEAKING OF WHICH, don’t think I’ve forgotten what happened years ago with that one fan that claimed that they loved Lila. That’s what happens when you take salting on a character WAY too far. And I can say that it’s only gotten a little better.
I just don’t understand why people can’t spend their energy talking about how to make a character better instead of salting on them 24/7 and this goes for all of the characters in ML.
I’m gonna be in the minority when I say this but Lila doesn’t deserve to be salted in as much as she does. She deserves reevaluation and a true villain arc. The constant bashing and insulting her at any chance ain’t it.
But you wanna know the thing that frustrates me the most about the Lila salt? How she started getting salted on in the first place. Aka, her being another barrier to Adrienette.
If y’all don’t know already, I don’t like the lovesquare and even back then I didn’t like it. And when I started seeing people hate Lila for this reason, I got very annoyed. It’s the same reason as to why people hated Kagami and it’s a stupid reason (imo). At least the other reasons why she’s hated had some foundation and sense.
TLDR: Lila is a mess but she’s not a mess that’s beyond repair but the constant salting on her and her character isn’t going to do anything. (If you really wanna salt on someone, salt on the writers for making her writing so subpar)
#miraculous#miraculous opinions#miraculous tales of ladybug and chat noir#lila rossi#Lila sugar(?)#ml fandom critical#fandom salt#slight ml writers salt
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This Rotten Work Has Been Published!
Do you like Carry On or NBC's Community? Do you like messy lesbians in an enemies-to-lovers dynamic? Do you want to know what happens to Chosen Ones after they defeat their villain? Do you wish for a version of Harry Potter that isn't transphobic, homophobic, antisemitic, and racist? (Did you enjoy the seventy million fics I wrote about the mentors coping with the aftermath of the Hunger Games?) Do you like messy background poly bisexuals?
Well, here it is, y'all: all of the edits are done and my book baby has been published! Rachel and Daiyu are finally here for y'all to meet! I'm ordering my own copies now (and will definitely update y'all with photos when they arrive, especially now that I can get a photo with BOTH of my books), but for now, I just wanted to give y'all the link so you can check it out. I'm going to put the blurb below to those who are confused as to what this might be!
Amazon.com: This Rotten Work: 9798879537734: Jenkins, Kenna: Books
The moment Chosen One Rachel Barsky finally kills her magical high school’s evil Headmaster, she’s out. No pressure, no politics, and certainly no more death tournaments for her. She ditches the Magical Realm for a far more chill Normie community college with her two best friends, determined to finally get some blessed peace and quiet—maybe even a good nap. It’s what she deserves after giving up her teenage years to a prophecy that nearly killed her more times than she can count.
But of course Rachel can’t catch a break. Her first day of classes, tragedy arrives on campus in the form of Daiyu Nightbane, Rachel’s archrival and the annoyingly attractive daughter of the now-dead Headmaster. Daiyu’s acting suspiciously normal, Rachel is pissed, and her friends are preaching forgiveness and peace. What gives?
Rachel expects to have to grit her teeth and soldier through the annoyance of her rival haunting her early retirement, but she quickly learns that expectations are never made to last. After an explosive duel that ends up with one of them knocked off of their feet, Rachel is forced to see a kinder side of Daiyu than she ever glimpsed during high school.
Over a school year filled with Shakespeare, lightning magic, and quite a lot of kosher BBQ, Rachel finds herself toppling head-over-heels into an unlikely romance with her rival while she struggles with nightmares, grief, and lingering questions from her high school years. Is it possible to finally make a life for herself? Can the Chosen One really have a happy ending with the golden girl that ruled the school?
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And to all those who have been following this saga (or liked my fics with similar premises/themes), I think I've managed to gather all of your usernames here for the official publishing!
#MY BABY IS HERE Y'ALL#kenna jenkins#this rotten work#rachel barsky#marcel oathkeeper#daiyu nightbane#aaliyah khan#michael goseyun#lefstebany acosta#self publishing#my writing#writing update#nightbarsky#rachel x daiyu#enemies to lovers#sapphic#dark academia#shakespeare#carry on#nbc community#listen this definitely carries a lot of the same themes as my mentor-hunger-games ficsl#recovery healing from the aftermath of a shitton of trauma#figuring out who you are after your world has ended#same goes for community#who are you after you have failed everyone's expectations#except you also have magic!#hunger games
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Hey! I'm a writer who's super inspired by your excellent writing in Debaser!
Do you have any tips for writing a pair of demented protagonists people want to root for?
Aww hey thank you so much!
I think it varies by pairing but to me the formula for Billy and Stu has two ingredients.
1. They need to actually be terrible
I see a lot of people (not just fanfic writers) writing villains in a way that makes it clear they don't want them to be problematic. This doesn't really work because on the one hand it doesn't feel like genuine villainy, and on the other hand it often ends up justifying really bad shit. Their actions shouldn't be justifiable, they definitely aren't justifiable in canon.
This can be really fun to write honestly, I love writing them as hypocrites, acting like Billy's a martyr for continuing to "deal with" Sid's mourning after her mom dies. Stu being pissed off with Casey leaving him for Steve is another example of this, because he's at the very least been emotionally cheating on every one of his girlfriends with Billy. Their actions shouldn't be rational, they should be petty, selfish, and vindictive. They should have emotional reasons for their actions obviously, Billy sees the loss of his own mom as more serious than Sids and Stu's ego is hurt, but their reactions are still way out of proportion to the situation.
It helps to write your other characters in a way that makes it clear they don't deserve the way they're treated- Sid's reaction to her mom's passing is completely understandable, and in her death Casey is just a scared teenage girl.
So that's part one, they need to actually suck.
2. Their humanity comes out in their relationship with each other
They treat everyone else like crap, they might even treat each other like crap sometimes, but Stu is the only person who really knows Billy and Billy is the only person who knows Stu. They show genuine care for each other, even if it isn't typical care. It's stuff like Stu noticing when Billy's overstimulated and doing little things to help or get him out of the situation. It's Billy's vengeful protectiveness when Casey leaves Stu, or when other people talk shit about him. Billy is the only one who gets to talk shit about him.
I really like leaning in to classic romance tropes, stuff like sneaking in through a window to see each other, having these secret quiet moments with each other that are softer than they have any right to be. It still needs to be them, even a soft Billy is full of insults but he's not pushing Stu away. A soft Stu can get away with a lot, mf is cheesy as hell but he also knows Billy, so a good half of his cheesiness only happens in his head until their relationship is more established.
So it's classic romance with their spin on it. They buy each other knives and fucked up movies, they have secret hookups at parties gloating to each other about everything they're getting away with, and even if they don't get to be each others new year's kiss they still watch the sun rise together.
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So that's it, that's my main advice. The way they love each other isn't expressed the way it is for most people. A lot of it is completely unspoken but we see it in their inner monologue, in their fears and the actions they take when there's no one else watching. But also? They're fucking assholes.
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𝑺𝑻𝑨𝑹𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝑪𝑨𝑳𝑳 !
here to say that i want even more sapphic stuff so i want to get some thing going with the muses under the cut ! if you are interested in a starter from any of them then please like this post ! ♡
𝑴𝑼𝑺𝑬𝑺 .
DAWN MENKEN LIAW / director / bi / she + they / chase sui wonders
born in amsterdam and ( mostly ) raised in new york and has the weird accent to prove it, brought up by the world’s grumpiest old man and it shows, mother owns one of europe’s most successful talent agencies, guitarist in all girl punk band called atomic boob as a side gig, painfully pessimistic, a tortured artist trying to make it in the film industry, has an attitude problem tbh, janis ian coded .
HAVEN MAURY LIANG / weather girl / queer / she + they / havana rose liu
local weird girl who will flirtatiously read your palm at a party, has big dreams of joining cirque du soleil as a trapeze artist and is simply forecasting the weather until then, in love with love and everything to do with it while simultaneously being a commitment-phobe, victim of the perfect little rich girl to quietly disowned pipeline, the vibe of a drunk girl in a club bathroom, a lil ty lee inspired .
ROMINA ESCOBAR / reality tv star / lesbian / she + her / camila mendes
a part of a family reality show inspired by the kardashians, deeply codependent and therefore painfully loyal to those she deems deserving, more than kind of bratty, vain, and self absorbed, hates men and is loud about it, is probably the last one to figure out her sexuality because doesn't every gal just want to makeout with her bffs sometimes ? mildly inspired by jennifer check .
RUTH RANSOM / actress / bi / she + her / kristine froseth
daughter of a washed up rockstar and his groupie, mommy and daddy issues ( double homicide ), ran away from home at seventeen, energiser bunny adjacent girlie who never shuts up, the world's biggest flirt with the world's biggest commitment issues, stumbled into the world of acting half hungover and still in last night's glittery makeup, manic pixie dream just a girl inspired by penny lane.
SLATER KATZ / rockstar / lesbian / she + they / ruby cruz
born and raised in australia, replacement child to an incredibly well off couple who wanted to save their marriage , has had a prodigious talent with music from childhood, has daddy issues, mommy issues, and anger issues, painfully obtuse with feelings, does not know how to talk to people, tends to hit first and ask questions later, never has an empty bed, billy dunn and daisy jones coded .
𝑻𝑬𝑺𝑻 𝑴𝑼𝑺𝑬𝑺 .
ELM MOSSBACH / museum tour guide / queer / she + they / taylor russell
works for a small museum in a small town in the middle of nowhere, generally the kind of place that people stop by for gas on their way to somewhere better, very much suburban gothic inspired in terms of environment . does she work at an oddities museum ? maybe so . longs for adventure but feels stuck, wants to get out of this town .
FELICIA 'FLICK' RELF / actress / bi / she + her / madelyn cline + meghann fahy
was in a mystery inc crew when she was a teenager and is the star of a limited series inspired by their exploits, is seen as a sellout by the other members of that crew but does it really matter if she's famous ? grew up in a motel as the daughter of the deadbeat parents who owned it, swears all the supernatural stuff in their stories is all fake, but was it really ? semi inspired by scooby doo and the x files .
KINSLEY 'KIDNEY' BEAN / petty thief / bi / she + her / abigail cowen
raised by two parents who had too many kids to truly give a fuck about all of them, the only girl in a hoard full of brothers, has the accent of a southern belle and the charm to match, will use that charm to walk away with your wallet, has never been single for more than a few weeks in her life, responsible for more than a few gas station hold ups, inspired by villains ( 2019 ) and bandits in general .
LORENA FONTBONA / grad student / queer / she + they / jenna ortega
drenched in dark academia vibes but exclusively the weird ones, family owns a successful board game company that a lot of them are convinced they made a deal with the devil for but ren has their doubts, a legacy in a secret society, game theory student who reluctantly plans to take over the family business, a natural cynic, april ludgate coded and semi inspired by ready or not .
OCTOBER 'TOBI' CRAFT / f1 racer / lesbian / she + they / margaret qualley
white trash golden retriever, grew up in a trailer park without a lot of prospects so even she's surprised that she got this far, raised by a father that specifically always wanted one of one of his sons to race ( surprise, dad !), got discovered by chance while street racing ( allegedly ) and hasn't looked back since, can't go to a gay bar without running into at least five girls that she's slept with .
RAVEN ZHAO / gas station attendant / bi / she + they / courtney eaton
final girl of death valley, nevada and no one will let her forget it, born as the child of a obsessive occultist and his lovesick wife and was abandoned by both respectively, spent most of her adolescence living in an abandoned 'cursed' church and ergo was the town's very own social pariah ( and the first scapegoat ) for it, refuses to go to therapy even if the killer ended up being her own mother .
WREN 'OZ' OSWIN / athlete / lesbian / they + them / brigette lundy paine
raised by a couple of zoologists who named all of their children after animals and dragged them around the world for their work, one of seven kids, grew up homeschooled and therefore chronically online in search of community and it shows, a goober who just happens to be tall and surprisingly athletic, the world's biggest romantic but they try to keep that on the low, in the wnba .
WYATT KILMER / student / lesbian / she + they / sophie thatcher
was the favourite child of the worst father in the world which sucked but happens to come in very handy in the zombie apocalypse, was taught to hunt under the guise of bonding, lost almost their entire family at the start of the apocalypse but is searching for their little brother, was the first person in their family to go to university but does that matter now ? deeply ( and reluctantly ) protective .
ZIAZAN 'ZI' DERIAN / mortician / lesbian / she + her / angela sarafyan
grew up working in her family's funeral home and always knew she would inherit it, has a passion for her work that was also inherited, deeply romantic in an only mildly creepy way ( most of the time ), almost always finds herself going for the crazy ones, writes gothic literature under a pseudonym, vaguely inspired by morticia addams and lisa frankenstein .
#indie rp#indie lesbian rp#indie bi rp#starters will be based off something in your wanted plots unless otherwise specified#also if you want your starter from a specific muse feel free to reply < 33 if not i'll do it at random !
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The Tearsmith (2024)
While I didn't enjoy this film, that doesn't mean you won't. No matter what I say, the people involved in this project did it: they actually made a movie. That's something to be applauded. With that established...
The more time passes, the more I realize I was too harsh on the Twilight series - particularly the first film. The Tearsmith is the latest version of the good girl, dangerous boy doomed romance YA novel adaptation genre. The leads have great chemistry, which means it will definitely appeal to its target audience. Older viewers will roll their eyes at the melodrama, meaning they might enjoy it too - if they like chuckling at bad films.
Orphaned when her parents die in a car crash, eight-year-old Nica is sent to the oppressive Sunnycreek Orphanage, overseen by the cruel Margaret Stoker (Sabrina Paravicini). Nicknamed “The Grave”, the orphanage is a dreadful place where children are physically and emotionally abused when they misbehave. Years later, a teenage Nica is adopted by Anna and Norman Milligan (Roberta Rovelli and Orlando Cinque). As she’s about to leave with her new parents, the brooding and acidic Rigel (Simone Baldasseroni) catches the Milligans’ attention. They decide to adopt him as well. Despite her best efforts, Nica has always been attracted to Rigel. Now, she’ll be free to act upon her feelings - for better or worse.
You're wondering what this film has in common with the 2008 high schooler-vampire romance. That's because you haven't seen Simon Baldasseroni's Rigel. With his chiseled abs, dark hair, pale complexion and push-me-pull-me attitude towards Nica, he’s almost a carbon copy of Edward Cullen. There’s even a scene where he saves her from walking into oncoming traffic. Every time he and Nica interact, their conversation is capped by a disgruntled remark about how she should stay away. If only she could. In her defense, his efforts to distance himself seem halfhearted. He gets obsessively and dangerously jealous of the classmate who asks her out, Lionel (Alessandro Bedetti). But Rigel and Nica could never be an item because "she deserves a fairytale ending and he’s a wolf" (Werewolf? I wish). Everyone knows wolves are the villains in all fairytales, so you should stay away from them (despite what Nica’s mother said before she passed). In summary, he’s too broken and dangerous to be loved! Oh, and they're "brother & sister".
You can tell The Tearsmith is based on a novel from the subplots and secondary characters. There’s Asia (Juju Di Domenico), the girl who dated the Milligan’s now-dead son and still mourns him, Nica's one friend from the orphanage, Adeline (Eco Andriolo), and her new best friends at school: Billie (Nicky Passarella) and Miki (Sveva Romana Candelletta). You could've cut them all out without affecting the main plot. Once you understand that, everything becomes a cliché. Every year, someone anonymously sends Billie flowers and a love letter. You should be able to deduce the identity of the secret admirer without problem. Remember that the book was written in 2021 and that all the subplots are essentially self-contained and ultimately, superfluous.
In a way, the villainous Margaret Stoker is also unnecessary because there’s so much going on in this movie. Nica survived a traumatic car crash and spent years in an orphanage. She didn’t also need to be messed up by a Jonathan Crane-like headmistress. Her possible romance with Rigel would’ve already been taboo/strained because they’re adoptive siblings. We didn’t need an enemy making things more difficult for them. Gloomy Rigel is already doing plenty on his own.
The Tearsmith (a title that's explained at the beginning but doesn’t quite make sense to me) often generates awkward laughs. More than once, the plot moves at break-neck speed, making you wonder if these people’s emotions are always taking them for a roller-coaster ride, or if we’re just skipping through weeks - if not months - worth of events. Criminal acts, including attempted murder, are never reported to the police. Then, there’s the not-really, but sorta incestuous romance between Rigel and Nica, which will have you screaming “Nooooo!” Over and over.
All that said, I can understand why this film has proven so popular on Netflix. Simone Baldasseroni and Caterina Ferioli have terrific chemistry. There are many scenes where you wonder if this is going to be their first kiss, or if Rigel’s dark side is going to pop up again, which makes the film exciting. The two are not related, which makes the scenario sort of appealing for teens who won't realize how demented a romance this is. One thing’s for sure, you love to hate the villains (yes, there's more than one). Does that mean I recommend it for teenagers? Not quite. There are too many romantic double standards and the backward attitude about how you should comfort someone who's been attacked kills a lot of its romance - but it’s close. I will also note that the film is rated R for nudity (don’t worry, everyone at the time it takes place is eighteen years old), so, you know, there’s that.
The Tearsmith is entertaining - sometimes the way it intends to be. Generally, however, it’s a bizarre mashup of Dickensian orphanage drama and Stephenie Meyer-brand romance. My least favorite thing about the film is that unlike 50 Shades of Grey, 365 Days, After and so many other Twilight clones, The Tearsmith does not end in a to-be-continued. Instead, it abruptly tells us the fate of the most important characters and ignores everyone else. At least you can’t accuse it of overstaying its welcome. (Original Italian with English subtitles, April 24, 2023)
#The Tearsmith#movies#films#movie reviews#film reviews#Alessandro Genovesi#Eleonora Fiorini#Simone Baldasseroni#Caterina Ferioli#Sabrina Paravicini#Alessandro Bedetti#Roberta Rovelli#Orlando Cinque#2024 movies#2024 films
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How about 2, 7 and 9 for the descendants ask game? :)
Once again sorry for answering this late!
2. Favorite movie?
I will go with the only movie not featuring my favourite character because Descendants 2 is THAT good. i really love both movies 1 and 3 but I just feel like Descendants 2 knew exactly what it was doing and I just feel like every scene was cool. it was also a movie where I could like Mal more because she lived things I could relate too. Plus it's definitly linked to Uma who's an amazing character giving amazing scenes to the franchise.
Favorite Villain Kid?
You may have seen this coming but it's Uma. She's an amazing character, well developed both in the books and the movies who has every single right to be angry at this world and who deserves to be respected, treated as the queen she is and most importantly listened.
Favorite Auradon Kid?
My favourite character in the whole Descendants franchise is Audrey Beauty. I know she may seem pretty basic in the first movie, being the mean girl in teen movies but she's already more than that. She only started acting really mean when she saw how she was being replaced by Mal in Ben's heart but also by everyone. She saw everything she had, every people she cared about starting to only think about one thing "the VKs". She had no interest in them, she didn't like them so why was everyone so easily attracted by them? She was mean but she was a teenager pressured by her family to be perfect, she was a girl who was ditched by her boyfriend in front of everyone for another girl and she's the girl who never got an apology for this. So she's a girl who felt anger and the third movie showed it well even if it never said what the books said and some people still think Audrey wanted to do everything she did with the scepter (spoiler alert: she could not.). She immediately begged for forgiveness and finally got her apology. She's a girl who's been done wrong by everyone starting by her own grandmother and she is just my precious cinnamon roll.
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Toxic Yuri: Or, How I Learned to Start Worrying and Love The Bomb
I am going to go ahead and start throwing punches in my opening paragraph because it's been a while since I wrote a real post of any kind (remember Let's Talk Trans?) and I wanna get my views out there for the parasocial sycophants. I have pretty much always considered myself anti-ship, anti-map, anti-whatever the fuck. It's not necessarily from a position of puritanism, as I often see the opposition argue- I like John Waters movies, for god's sake- but more to do with the state of media literacy on the modern internet in general. It pains me to say something this cruel on a public platform but, frankly, a lot of the people involved in this debate are morons (anime bloggist crawfordpro has written a more eloquent post about this whole issue here, if you want to hear from someone a lot less confrontational than me). As much as I think the argument is just teenagers feeling out how to shape their social identities online, I also want to keep a lid on things and have it put straight out what my beliefs are and what forms the basis of them. Frankly, I am disgusted by grown adults sitting around on the internet that whine about how Mommy and Daddy aren't letting them play with their toys the way they want to. That is how it sounds to me when I see the proship people brag about how the haters will never succeed in taking away their underage incest smut.
Anyway. It's Yuri Day. I will probably also post a Yuri List for Yuri Day. As one does. But I am once again forced to confront the paradox of my values, or what some might call hypocrisy. It might be a sitewide hypocrisy, honestly. I see lots and lots and lots of posts about toxic yuri. About evil women. About bitches. Emotionally fraught codependency and dying like dogs and eating pomegranates. Perhaps it's some dark cynicism in me, a cruelheartedness I need to kill in myself, but a lot of the time I scroll by these posts and think "wow, OP would not survive Revolutionary Girl Utena". To evoke the infamous old post where someone went to see Hereditary in theatre because of Tumblr and then was extremely upset it was scary, I think there's a problem with left-leaning/feminist spaces online in general where everyone loves emotionally complicated women (evil bitches) until they actually read a story with an emotionally complicated woman in it. Everyone, it seems, loves freakin' at the freaker's ball until it starts contradicting their worldviews. Then they run back to their bastions of consumerist slop until it's safe for them to stop seriously thinking about their beliefs again.
And what of the memestatus of Toxic Yuri? The edges get sanded off. The moral complication is simplified down into who deserves to be hurt by the evil bitch and if the bitch is justified enough to do the hurting. Someone always has to be the heroine and someone always has to be the villain. Women can't be unpleasant because it's misogynist and women can't be too nice because it's misogynist, and if a man shows up he either has to be evil enough to justify killing him or weak enough to justify cucking him, sometimes both. There is no escaping everyone getting put into neat little boxes and slapped with a book of social rules detailing exactly how they should be punished for acting out of turn.
Even in more fannish communities where fujoshis rightly create genderbend yuri of their toxic yaoi, this shit happens. The Yuri Zine has an entire essay dedicated to talking about this, in particular highlighting how SQQ/LBH (from Scum Villain Self-Saving System) is softened and made comfy by the yuri girls and their feminization lasers. Why is it that it's fine to fuck a guy in the ass until he nearly dies when you're yaoi but when the story becomes two women there's only a smidge of gentle fingering? Is it wicked and foul of me to want more aggression and toxicity in my yuri? Is everyone reading this slowly coming to the conclusion that I'm American Psycho?
I mean, where are all the violent outpourings of female rage and hopelessness? Isn't that a thing we're supposed to have by now? Am I just looking in the wrong places? Because it's looking to me like even in a culture laying parallel to a largely uncensored, anonymous internet, people just don't want to write about women being aggressive and toxic. Lesbian stories are always about the redemptive power of love and full of gentleness and uncertainty. To put it meanly, a great deal of them are written under the stifling fear that someone somewhere might misconstrue either of the heroines as being predatory if they act outside their box. You can be gay, the yuri plot says, but you still have to act like a woman. The only allowable deviation is the actual lesbophobic stereotypes of hypersexual predators from male-oriented hentai shit. Which, frankly, I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. These caricatures ring just as false as their pillow-soft bambi lesbian counterparts.
An absence of cruelty is not kindness. An absence of hatred is not love. I hate how accusatory and mean I sound through all of this, but I just keep coming back to toxic yuri. How what's accepted in m/m fiction, what's accepted in heterosexual fiction, is completely taboo for f/f. I honestly quit reading yuri for a long time because I was so frustrated with this. It's not as though I actively want all women to be heartless sociopaths; I have repeatedly bounced off of girlboss media; movies like The Invisible Man remake and books like Burn The Negative. But there is like the full spectrum of human emotion that women, even in fiction, are seemingly never allowed to experience; and if they do, it has to be by a man's terms.
I know this is getting long. That's why I'm making it its own separate post from my yuri highlight list for the day. Most people probably don't want to be subject to my pathological desire to criticize everything and tear the world up with my teeth.
But like, don't you get tired of it? Don't you ever just get tired of it?
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For the OC ask meme: 1, 4 & 6?
OC Number Asks!
Your Oldest OC
Technically it's a group that expanded from my RP days when I was a teenager. (This piece in particular is from 2005 so apologizes as it is quite old).
I used to self-insert a lot in RPs and stories at the time and at some point, my self-insert (featured here leaning(?) forward with her long sleeves and tiny boots on the left) needed family members (since I refused to recreate my own rl family in my fictional sandbox, thank you very much). The two tall figures in the background are my self-insert's parents, mom Arianna on the left and dad Takashi on the right with the cape. In front of Takashi is my cis-swapped self that I liked so much, I just kept him around and he just became my twin brother. His name is Telenor (called Tele for short). In the middle of everyone is my self-insert's little brother Tobias, because I felt she needed another brother at some point, idk.
Arianna and Takashi have gone on to have their own story (forever in WIP hell, naturally) but they have been around ever since my teenage years a million eons ago, but they are my oldest OCs, technically speaking.
4) Any Villain OCs?
Last time I got these asks, I talked about Takashi's half-brother, Haiiro, also stating that he's more of antagonist than an actual villain.
This is a trend with me.
Meet Jagger, another antagonist of mine.
Along with Takashi and Arianna's story, I also had another original work I was working on at the same time called Bullet Train, which was technically a high school romance with a B Plot involving magic being basically illegal and Jagger being a person that hunts down individuals that practice magic and punishes/kills them. He's also the cousin of the MC's love interest bc Drama™. Also had a big theme of Magic vs Science, so that was fun.
Overall, Jagger, while an antagonist to my MC bc her family practices magic and is harboring magical creatures (her uncle (a wizard) is in a polycule with a vampire and a humanoid dragon), but he learns the errors of his ways, eventually, and comes to MC's aid (more so for the Love Interest bc he cares about the kid, baka), but still an antagonist nonetheless.
Will talk about this more in the next section, but he was also one of the first characters where I tried to figure out how tattoos work, first with the Axel von Kingdom Hearts style face tattoos to getting snakes up and down both arms. Still need to work on anatomy so I can get Jagger's arms where I want them to be, so I can give him the full sleeves he deserves.
6) Describe Your Character Creation Process
"See a need, fill a need."
No, really. That's all it really it takes for me to get an idea for an OC. My self-insert needed parents? Takashi and Arianna.
Need antagonists? Haiiro for Takashi and Arianna, and Jagger for Bullet Train.
I'm also a big fan of 'hey, this would be a neat idea."
My self-insert needs a horse? She gets a horse, and he's blue and he talks and he gets a pink unicorn girlfriend.
Cis-swapping spell gone on too long? We split apart and he's his own person now.
Need more lady managers for my favorite Haikyuu teams that don't have one? Meet Nanami and Sawako, the mom friend of Aoba Johsai and the socially awkward teeny girl that acts like a cat sometimes in Nekoma, respectively.
Wanna learn how to draw tattoos? Jagger has tattoos now.
How about piercings outside of the ears? Lizzy's got you covered.
Hey, this indie game that you liked is stuck in development hell and the MCs you created in the demo are still pretty solid, let's bring them to another game: Houki and Ophelia.
IkeVamp needs more historical dress: Thea
Black Army boys keep making fun of Sirius for being 30 and I don't like that: Maddie, who is also 30 and a magical girl.
Hey, this dress up avatar looks neat, I should make a character from this: Maddie, Abby, and Clara
So, anyway, that's how I come up with characters. Seemingly random but they moreso fulfill an itch at their beginnings and then just develop from there.
Thanks for the ask!
#krys's babies#ask me things#meme thingys#the number of times I wanted to redraw that piece from the meme above#with Lizzy staring infatuated at Jagger while Arianna is mad at losing at poker#so much potential with how I draw now#it's like at least 10 years old now#I can do better now#another mental note that I should draw my original ocs more as I haven't done so in a long time#maybe even make character sheets for them#lol
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Corey and Oats in…
The Case of the Imposter Social Worker.
Everyone's favorite microbe and equine duo is always on the case to solve whatever cases they get assigned to do, no villain is too scary or too dangerous for them to handle, and now that the OG run of the Daloli-verse's anti-Drmusic2 arc was fully replaced with something much nicer it was time for another mission. The duo were in the computer room doing a research project when they got a call from Officer W.Blood Cell. 'Corey, Oats. Congratulations on the mission to correct the daloli-verse's storyline on Mariana into being a much nicer one, I have a new assignment for you both.' 'Really? What kind?' 'The person that stalked Mariana in that timeline needs to be removed, if he is removed, defeated…that will be the only part of the sotryline to fix.' 'We can do that.'
"Yeah…we can do it."
"That's what I like to hear…observe the viewing screen."
A viewing screen materialized on the wall and played out the scene, that scene depicted Mariana being confronted by a man pretending to be a social worker. 'I am afraid that because you are a danger to your family and others because you're autistic and some people are right about autistic people being abominations, I am going to have to take you away. Trust me, it's for your own good.' 'Trust YOU? Just because this is a daloi-verse show episode i'm stuck in doesn't mean i'm dumb, you only portray me as delusional and dumb to make yourself seem saintly by comparison. I mean you're pretending to be a woman by taking on the form of one, you're a male demon with a yandere personality.' 'Mariana, quit denying yourself.' 'Oh really? It seems like you're in denial, acting like you're not crazy, that I was well behaved as a teenager bullshit. This isn't going to play out like you think it is, you don't own me, you never will.'
"Look at that man, he's horrible."
"Yeah…I bet he's not even a social worker."
"I bet he's some kind of monster that killed the real social worker and assumed his form."
Corey and Oats jumped into the viewing screen, going through a portal and arriving at the scene of where Mariana was. 'Corey, Oatsie! Thank goodness you're here.' 'We saw what was going on screen, this man clearly isn't even a real social worker and he wants to take you away. Good thing we're here.' Mariana sensed that the 'social worker' wasn't even human too…she wasn't as dumb as the Daloli-verse made her out to be. 'I know what's going on here.'
"Mariana, are you talking to your dolly friend Andria and acting like she's real again?"
The covid microbe looked over at the fake social worker and snarled…'Hey, you..it's not nice to threaten someone like that and to mock them. What did Mariana ever do to you, huh? Nothing, you just thought that she was a delusional nutcase who caused trouble for her parents and got them banned from more than 20 stores, you think she deserves to belong in a group hope with no internet access and to be institutionalized, you are a MONSTER. I bet you're not even a real social worker.' Corey's eyes gave off a supernatural glow as he hissed at the phony social worker.
The phony social worker attempted to send his friends after Corey but Corey responded…'You're the only one of the original Daloliverse anti-Drmusic2 brigade that is left and at this point judging by the fact you obviously faded off the universe ages ago, i'd say it's time to fix what you have done.'
Oats whinnied which alterted Andria and woke her…'Andria, your beloved owner and ours needs us.' 'Let's do it.' Andria jumped out of the bed she was and jumped on Oat's back, as they galloped down the hallway. A swarm of living beanie babies also awoke as Andria commanded them to attack the 'social worker'.
"Do you think your army of plushophile bait is going to stop me?"
"Oh yes, there's only one of you lot now and that's you…get em, guys!"
Mel the koala-girl materialized with her friend Eucalyptus, Mel used her super-strength to pick up the phony social worker's desk and break it into pieces before throwing papers at him and then performing martial arts moves on him. Eucalyptus summoned some plants to attack him and made it so he couldn't get up. 'You will never stop me from getting Mariana. I want her, all of her, I want to drive her so insane she never goes online again.' 'Yeah yeah…typical villain speech, everyone knows that…bla bla bla.'
"Don't bla bla bla bla me."
"I just did…"
'It's not like you guys can do anything about this anyway. Because i've made it so she'll be mine forever with this…' The phony social worker jeered, holding up a fake marriage certicate. 'Yeah i'm sorry but I don't think Mariana would date someone like you, yet alone considering marrying you. Also…a pool the size of a ring you put on your ding-aling? Must be a pretty small one.' Mel quipped as she grabbed the phony certificate and ripped it up with her claws.
"But…"
"Sorry, wedding is off."
Mel looked over at the phony social worker and teased him before attacking him, causing his form to glitch and flip back and forth between this disguised form and his demon form. 'Ah ha, Marrick. I knew it was you. Mr Budos Olah himself.' Corey instantly recognized Marrick and hissed at him, latching out at him.
Marrick had thought that his disguised form would be a fool-proof plan for sure, if it wasn't for the fact his form was actually just Mr Meany from Ursula Hitler's Head with hair and younger, it wouldn't have been difficult for him to blend in, but due to how he was given a slew of dangerous drug-like substances which very much turned him into a raging psychopath, although these were no ordinary drugs, these are a rare breed known as Psychoticium, basically humans in the daloliverse that were given said drug had dramatic increases in rage factor and insanity factor, making them vengeful insane lunatics who only want offers to suffer for their amusement. Yes, he did claim he was well behaved in his teens, but that was a cover since he was a villainous murderous demon who was known for taking on the form of female characters to take advantage of people for his own sick gain.
He snarled at them as he lost control of his Mr Meany-esqued disguised form, and his skin turned a dark ashen grey color as his eyes turned blood red, his features contorting to to become demonic. 'See? What did I tell you? He's a demon.'
"Me? A demon? Now don't be delusional, Mariana…you know i'm your friend Andria."
Marrick tried to sway Mariana into not believing Corey and Oats by turning into Andria..'You may look and sound like my red-haired little angel but you're not her, the real Andria is nothing like you, you are a deceiver.' Corey then looked over at him. 'Hey, Marrick. Have you ever seen a talking virus microbe before? No? Well you're looking at one. And guess what, I can do a lot of damage.'
"I am not afraid of a talking microbe.."
"But you will be."
Corey began to grow bigger as his eyes gave off a supernatural glow, he then floated over to a few people and began to condition them as he did so, transfering mini-versions of himself into their bodies and turning them into undead beings. 'I've got this ability that I can use to put an end to you and this whole episode once and for all.' The undead group moved towards Marrick, snarling and groaning as they all moaned in unisen…'it's your fault, it's your fault.'
"No it's not, it's Mariana's fault."
"Oh sure, blame Mariana, like you always do."
Marrick tried to fight them off but he was being drained of his energy by Eucalytpus's plants, and he collapsedo n the floor. An Audrey II plant looked down at him and licked his lips…'Mmm, he'll be delicious.' 'Now now Archie, you know that we don't allow vore.' 'I know, I know..can I play with him though?'
Archie tossed Marrick around like a ragdoll, knowing Eukie had taught him not to eat people since she didn't allow it except on some ocassions, he toyed with him before tossing him over to Corey. 'Even demons can get sick…' Corey teased as he looked over at him, that's when he went over to Marrick and pricked him with one of his spikes…which caused him to feel a little bit sick as mini versions of Corey entered his body.
The mini-versions of Corey took over his body and began to warp it, causing him to develop a series of rash-like bumps all over before he began to cough up black liquid, and collapsed into pieces on the ground, the pieces of him shattered into tinier pieces before being swept away and he got sent to the place all villains in the Monster World go, the Nightmare Realm where he was banished from every entertaining their world again. Corey and Oats hugged Mariana and Andria before rescuing the real social worker, and also Andria set up a special thank you party for them in which they had treats.
They had all sorts of treats and played games at the party as the final piece of the OG run of the Daloli-verse's anti Drmusic2 saga was finally broken, breaking away into smaller pieces before shattering completely, the anti Drmusic2 saga's OG run had officially come to a complete end after that.
"Would you like to stay with us?"
"We would but we've got to go home."
"Our friends need us."
And thus with that Corey and Oats jumped back out through the portal, the portal took them back home to their house in Nile Road and into the computer room where Mel was waiting with Eucalyptus, and as for what happened later they had some fun online with their friends and played Webkinz.
No villain is too dangerous or too scary for these two to handle, these two are ever vigilant, remember, call Corey and Oats if you ever need someone to help you. They will be on the case in no time flat.
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I am sorry for my earlier question regarding Nicasia… It was not meant for discourse baiting… but she is a very unsympathetic character in my view…. But I did not mean to discourse bait. I am genuinely curious why you find sympathy for Nicasia….
first, i'll give you the general disclaimer: i'm not really in the business of defending villains because 1) they don't need saving (that's the great thing about them), 2) it's not my job to make you like them, and 3) there are so many villains in TFOTA, if i spent my time trying to defend every single one to you, i'd be going through almost the entire cast of characters (and probably sound like a broken record by the end of it).
nobody wants that.
so, if you're here with an open mind, i'll give you some points that are more specific to Nicasia's character and why i've grown to like her. if you're not interested in hearing a defence for her character, keep scrolling, this is not the post for you.
a. i'll be the first to admit that i didn't truly like Nicasia until i came up with Nicaryn.
so i'm aware part of my sympathy for her is purely self-indulgent. which is fine. i'm allowed to like a character "just because".
i want to believe there is a world where her and Taryn could end up together, and i know that would never happen if Nicasia continued on her trajectory of being a massive dick to everyone.
but obviously Nicaryn isn't for everyone, and they certainly aren't canon (even if it just makes sense), so i won't use the ship as a main talking point.
1. i sympathise with Nicasia precisely because she is so young and so flawed. these are the qualities we can relate to.
think about it. everything else about Nicasia is entirely unrelatable. ethereal beauty, immortality, royalty. hell, the girl can grow a fish tail and breath underwater. but an ethereally beautiful, immortal mermaid princess who is still subject to making erroneous decisions, behaving erratically, and having selfish motives?
somehow, that makes her character less far fetched. somehow, that is relatable.
the most we know about her is that she comes from a cold harsh place with a cold harsh mother who would use her daughter as a political pawn for her own agenda. but Nicasia is also a teenager who has recently had her heart broken. what is more relatable than young love lost?
and if it wasn't truly love that broke her heart, it was probably the feeling that she has failed her mother and her kingdom by ruining her chances with Cardan that broke it. either way, if you've never had your heart broken before, let me tell you how it goes:
it makes you go insane. and not in a sexy way.
when we're young, and full of a riot of emotions and hormones, we make mistakes. we act in horrid awful ways that make us cringe. being young and full of hormones doesn't excuse us from the mistakes we make. but it doesn't make us any less deserving of love or any less capable of change/growth, either.
if you can't sympathise with being young and overwrought and fucking up, then i have to conclude you've either never done anything wrong (and are lying to yourself if you think that's true), or you haven't yet viewed your 17-20 year old self through the rear-view mirror of life. in which case, you either have to take my word for it, or wait a couple years for Nicasia to truly make sense to you.
2. more importantly, i don't care much about what Nicasia did to Jude in the Undersea or at school.
i care more about Jude and how those things made her feel and how she overcame the things Nicasia did to her.
were Nicasia's actions fucked up? absolutely. but if you haven't noticed, this entire series is about fucked up things happening to fucked up people in a fucked up little world.
just because we have one (fictional) character's very biased (fictional) perspective, doesn't mean other (fictional) things aren't happening to the other (fictional) characters at the same time. there are many sides to this (fictional) story we haven't seen.
do you get where i'm going with this? it's fiction. these people/places/events, as much as we might wish them to be real, are not real. so morals should have nothing to do with appreciating a character.
reading fiction, liking fiction, or liking fictional characters does not equate to condoning their actions irl. my enjoyment of a character does not say anything about who i am as a person. just because your fictional friends jump off a bridge doesn't mean you're going to do it irl, right? realising this is a fundamental part of critical reading.
it is very dangerous rhetoric to presume that a person's fictional preferences reflect anything of their real life ones.
3. to wrap this up, cos i'm honestly getting a little bored hearing myself speak on this topic, one of the very big reasons i like Nicasia is her potential for growth.
like so many of the characters in TFOTA, Nicasia is flawed. so, so flawed. which makes her interesting. if you like perfect characters in perfect worlds where everything aligns to your personal morals and is "for the greater good", i'm sorry to say this probably isn't the series for you.
instead of judging Nicasia et. al. for doing the things they do, i ask myself "why do they do this?", and i am happy to report that thinking of the text through a curious lens, rather than a judgemental one, has never failed to increase the enjoyability of my reading experience by at least ten-fold.
the imperfect state of Nicasia's character lends itself very well to the potential for change and the makings of another story.
we even see towards the end of QON, when Jude asks Nicasia for help, Nicasia does not scorn her. she gets down on her knees and begs Jude to save Cardan. the princess of the Undersea. begs. she tells Jude how much Cardan loves her. Nicasia. who was once jealous and heartbroken enough over Cardan so as to shoot one of his alleged dalliances. she willingly attests to his love for another person—for Jude, whom she hated.
now, i don't think anyone would say we should be worshipping at Nicasia's feet for being humble for 2.5 seconds. and we can certainly still be wary of her in the future. but i think it points to a fact of growth that people don't like to see, much less commend. growth is slow, it is clumsy, it is not all at once. it's concerning how people only want to see the final product, instead of all the messy steps in between.
besides, just think– if every character were polished smooth by moral superiority at the end of every story, there would be no more stories left to tell.
–Em 🖤🗡
more theories & analysis
#gorgeous gorgeous girls read and understand Oscar Wilde's Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray 😌#asked and answered#fantasyfox10123#tfota#jurdan#nicasia#the folk of the air#jurdannet#the cruel prince#the wicked king#the queen of nothing#holly black#my analysis
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okay hi sorry i'm a little awkward but i wanted to say that i'm just so relieved to have found your blog as someone who absolutely adores scott and just... cannot bear Stiles anymore 😭
it's so refreshing to see someone actively appreciating scott and putting words on what bothered me with Stiles from day 1 of watching teen wolf
Thank you, those are very kind words.
I want to point out that I don’t hate Stiles Stilinski at all. In fact, there’s a lot of great things about the character that I believe everyone should have the chance to appreciate. For me, though, the problem is that I am so very, very tired of Stiles Stilinski, and I’ve been tired of him since the start of the 1990s.
I’m not making a reference to the 80s movie; I’m talking about a trope I first noticed when I started to think critically about media: the Privileged Manchild. Or, in Stiles’s case, it would be the teenage larval version, the Shitty Entitled White Boy. This is a character who has flaws like any other character, but those flaws are treated not as something to overcome, but as part of his charm. They are used as a source of empathy and sympathy, without regard for their effects on the plot or on the other characters. You’ve seen these characters – and they are always white men – who get into mishaps because they are insecure, incompetent, damaged, or completely selfish but who have loyal friends or love interests (almost always conventionally attractive) whose defining character trait seems to be an inability to prioritize anything else over this toxic human being. The Privileged Manchild appears everywhere from cut-rate comedies (almost every Adam Sandler film ever made) to Emmy-winning dramas (I am also not a fan of Walter White).
How does this apply to Stiles Stilinski? There are many ways that I could answer this, mostly by examining his relationships with other characters, but today I’ll go with a single unifying theme: Stiles Stilinski never has any serious expectations put on him by the narrative. He’s not the only character who is consistently given an emotional free pass on their behavior (looking at you, the Entire Hale Family), but he is the one whose story is most strongly tied to the lead protagonist, Scott McCall, who, in turn, has nothing but expectations put on him. Now, elsewhere I’ve described Stiles as acting as Scott’s foil, and he is, but this essay is about why I dislike the character, not about the function Stiles fulfills within the narrative.
Before I continue, I want to make it perfectly clear that I’m talking about Canon Stiles, not the creation I call Fanon Stiles. I could write forever on the abomination that is Fanon Stiles, and I desire nothing more than to see it burned out of the Internet like The Vision did to Ultron in Avengers 2, but that is a topic for another day.
Canon Stiles is actually quite a brilliant creation. His motivations and decisions portray a wonderfully complex yet consistent psychological landscape, revealed by Dylan O’Brien’s exquisite acting and many insightful well-written scenes. In the end, it’s not his actions that are my problem; it’s the reaction to them. Stiles hurts other people, both emotionally and physically, but the writing insists that other characters simply accept this behavior, and if they react negatively to it, they are making a mistake. Nothing exemplifies this more to me than the scene in The Girl Who Knew Too Much (3x09), when Stiles, after spending 32 episodes lying to his father, demands that he be believed with no proof. When Noah refuses, Stiles weaponizes the memory of Claudia against him. The way that scene is shot, the Sheriff is clearly portrayed as not only wrong to become frustrated with Stiles’ behavior but actually deserving of the memories of his dead wife being used against him, because Noah learns his lesson and starts thinking the way Stiles wants.
In the end, the show put expectations of growth and change on every character with the exception of villains (which makes them villains) and Stiles. Stiles’s flaws, whether presented as humorous or not, are well addressed, but he’s never expected to grow out of them. In fact, he is given tacit permission by the narrative to continue to indulge in them, presenting his refusal to respect boundaries as a strength, his penchant for violence as a sign of devotion, and his preference for lying to everyone, including the people he cares about, as something that the other characters just have to put up with if they want to be his friends. Not that they have any choice about that.
I don’t believe in making general statements without supporting citations, and in this case I have an embarrassment of riches. Below the jump I’ll give you some examples from multiple seasons, where expectations are placed on one character as a result of their behavior while Stiles is exempted, but know this is simply not an exhaustive list. It couldn't be.
IN SEASON ONE: Am I going to talk about Heart Monitor(1x06)? Of course I’m going to talk about Heart Monitor! In the previous episode, Scott took Allison on an impromptu date to the Preserve in celebration of her birthday, but at the end a mountain lion shows up in the parking lot at the parent-teachers conference. In the confusion, the Sheriff gets tapped by a car. We could argue about Scott’s and Stiles’s extraordinary conclusion that this is somehow Scott’s fault. We could argue about the sheer privileged cruelty and mendacity Stiles displays by concealing physical punishment as ‘helping’ Scott. Scott is written as not only having to accept this, acknowledging that he ‘can’t have my best friend mad at me,’ but he also gets to sit there while Stiles – fresh from risking those upperclassman’s lives out of petty vengeance – gives Scott his hero’s charge: “Where you want it or not, you can do things that no one else can do. So that means you don’t have a choice anymore. It means you have to do something.”
That, my friend, is an expectation.
However in Lunatic(1x08), Stiles completely ignores what he said two episodes ago and pushes an obviously moon-influenced Scott into sniffing Lydia to find out if she’s sexually attracted to Stiles. This is a pretty harmless infraction, just like taking your girlfriend to the Preserve on a date. Scott and Lydia end up making out in the coach’s office, which is bad but not world shattering, very much like the Sheriff suffering an injury so minor that he doesn’t even wear a cast for a full episode. Later that night, Stiles decides to provoke Scott with a vulgar dog-bowl prank and screaming at a werewolf in the grip of the moon, like an idiot. Stiles was scared by the results, but I sat there waiting for the expectation to be placed on Stiles, for him to at least recognize that he has to stop treating Scott’s lycanthropy as a super-power at his disposal.
It never comes. Not in that episode or any episode that season or any episode in any season. Stiles never stops feeling that he has the right to tell Scott (or anyone else) how to use their abilities. He’s still doing it in Season 6, when he treats Lydia like a supernatural metal detector.
IN SEASON TWO: In this season, both Scott and Stiles hurt their parents inadvertently. Scott horrifies his mother with the revelation in Fury (2x10) about his lycanthropy. Stiles gets his father fired by stealing a police van to contain Kanima Jackson. The difference is in how the parents react to it. Melissa is shown as panicked and repulsed, with Scott expected to offer reassurance and comfort (while not forgetting his duty to stop the bad guys), until Melissa changes her mind. When she does, she stops Scott on the lacrosse field and says: “If you can do something to help, then you do it. You have to.” That my friends, is an expectation and a particularly callous and unreasonable one. Yes, son, I know I’ve treated you like a monster for a week, and I know there’s a ruthless psycho with a pet killer lizard threatening people, but go risk your life for others! The Sheriff, on the other hand, is the one that comforts Stiles, reassuring him that they’ll be all right, and absolving him of any and all attempts to make up for it. “You don’t have to solve this for me.” Notice the difference?
Scott’s story is one of expectations, and that’s fine! He’s the lead protagonist! But the narrative makes it clear that Stiles, who could be argued approaches the role of deuteragonist, has no obligation to do … much of anything really. He wants to, and that’s great, but it’s clear that the narrative wouldn’t condemn him if he chose not to, especially when he decides to lie on his bed wallowing in self-pity, only to be given a you’re-a-hero speech while Scott is placed in unwinnable situations and then scolded for them.
IN SEASON FOUR: Strangely enough, this is the season where I have the least amount of complaints about Stiles, but it is one where they have a pretty obvious example of no expectations. Stiles lies to Malia about her parentage, though he’s not the only one, and when she finds out, she’s furious and doesn’t want to have anything to do with him. They do reconcile, but when they do, it’s done in an immensely frustrating way. Stiles can’t bring himself to say “I was wrong to lie” to Malia. He hides behind word play, but that’s Stiles's normal approach. The problem is that the writing ends the scene not focusing on Stiles’s behavior, but on Malia’s unwillingness to deal with it, and how that’s really the problem.
Malia: I don't have much practice in things like forgiveness. Some things I'm picking up fast. But other things are like...
Stiles: Like math?
Malia: I hate math.
Stiles: You hate me?
Malia: I like you, Stiles. I like you a lot.
Stiles: I can work with that.
See what they did there? Suddenly the problem isn’t Stiles concealing information and lying to Malia because he knows what’s better for her than she does. Suddenly the problem has become that Malia has trouble with things like forgiving people. You know what’s missing from the scene? Any expectation placed on Stiles that he wouldn’t lie to Malia again about something important.
IN SEASON FIVE: Because he will lie to her again. In this season, Stiles lies not only to Scott, but to Malia, Lydia, his father, everyone. He lies, he betrays, he lashes out both physically and emotionally. When the dust settles, Stiles is somehow made the absolute victim in all of this. There is not a single scene, not a single indication by the end of the season that if the same situation happened in the same way, Stiles wouldn’t act in the exact same way, nor would it be expected that he not act that way.
Where’s the scene where Stiles admits he was wrong? There isn’t one. Scott is forced to beg for forgiveness and endure a chest wound for six episodes and have his murder treated as fodder for jokes and Liam’s quest for self-esteem, to the point where Liam tells Hayden that Scott’s murder is a good thing because it made him a better leader. Lydia is forced to not only endure Eichen House but to train while being imprisoned in that hellhole. Malia is forced to give up her quest for revenge against her mother for destroying her adopted family and Stiles is forced to … well … nothing. It’s suggested that he might be happier with himself if he saves someone’s life, so he decides to save the girl he’s been in love with since the third grade – quite a sacrifice – and then gets all the credit. Oh, and he gets a new girlfriend, one that he lied to and manipulated not ten episodes before, after he dumps the old one, plus the promise of a law-enforcement career after he broke half-a-dozen laws covering up a self-defense killing.
And that’s my problem with Canon Stiles Stilinski. He’s still a great character, but he’s not expected to grow. He can keep on doing the same things for the same reason and hurting the same people in the same ways, and he’s super popular for exactly that reason. It’s a power fantasy, just like all Privileged Manchildren and Shitty Entitled White Boys are power fantasies, but it’s one I find particularly distasteful.
#anti stiles stilinski#teen wolf meta#privileged manchildren#cultural critique#scott mccall defense squad
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The main problem with the whole mal vs the darkling thing in regards to being possessive (or really when it comes to any of their traits) is the fact that throughout, the darkling is clearly framed as the villain and his actions reflect that, whereas Mal as supposed to be the good guy and best romantic partner for Alina, and yet he has all these awful character traits and tendencies. So its less about how awful the Bad Guy is (since he's supposed to be), and more about how awful the person that we're supposed to believe is the best option for Alina is. I don't ship either, just my two cents.
Okay well... two things. First, your comment about "its less about how awful the bad guy is, since he's supposed to be", takes every comment I've made about Darkles out of context, which seems fitting since everything Darklina's spout about Mal is out of context. Him being the Bad Guy is fine, and if you like him AS A VILLAIN, and acknowledge all the bad shit he does, then my posts aren't for you. I think he's a very interesting villain, and a lot of the terrible shit he does that I have to keep making posts about make him a good villain, the problem is when the terrible shit the "Bad Guy" does is romanticized and viewed as the reasons why Alina SHOULD have picked him. So, don't assume everyone gets that "hes supposed to be awful". The point my post was making is that Darklina's love to call Mal possessive, but then turn around and act like Darkles literally enslaving her in somehow sexy and romantic. It's fucking not, and it's transparent as hell that y'all romanticize and sexualize the actually possessive character, and then project false character traits onto Mal. It's so transparent, it's almost funny.
But, more importantly, to your second, very wrong point, I wonder how much of the narrative about Mal having "awful character traits and tendencies" is actually a commentary on Mal as a character, or is it just Darklina's lying about things Mal has done and everyone accepting that misinterpretation as canon. Because, if were making a list...
Fuck boy - False! Mal was not a fuck boy! He was an attractive teenager who hooked up with consenting girls his age when he could, and he was not in a relationship during that time. Alina had never told him how she felt, so he is not beholden to her. (Also, nobody seems to have an issue with the fact that Darkles hooked up with Zoya in the show, that doesn't make HIM a fuckboy... interesting) (also also, nobody seems to discuss Darkles literally sexually assaulting Alina, and lying and manipulating her to get her to be physically intimate with him so he can use her... double interesting).
Slut Shames Alina - FALSE! The ever favourite callout line from Darklina's "He's all over you" isn't him slut shaming her. First, he has no idea what their relationship is like at that point, but more importantly, he is making an observation of her status in the little palace and how she has become his tool. He has dressed her up in his colors, made her put on a show for his benefit, and has created a situation where Alina appears to be his. Mal is noting that after months of searching for her, believing she was being hurt, tortured, or worse, when he arrives to save her, she looks like the Darkling's pet. (and, even if he WAS angry because he perceived them to be romantically involved, boy just spent months fighting for his life, lost multiple friends, and almost died to find her, all while coming to the realisation that he was in love with her, and then he shows up, after not hearing from her for months... I'd be pissed as hell too.) Important Note: He even acknowledges that what he said was wrong and tries to apologise, before Alina tells him that he was right. (Shadow and Bone, pg. 286). He also then apologizes, completely unprompted, for what he said. (Shadow and Bone, pg. 297).
Fat Shames Alina - False! This one is particularly laughable to me, because its one of the Darklina arguments that falls apart the second you actually read the scene. They are running for their lives in the forest, and Mal has to hunt and gather to feed them. He is noting that Alina's appetite has increased since he last saw her, and he makes a joke (ya know, how you do with friends) about how it would be easier to keep her fed if she still had her more meager appetite from before. He makes no comment on her weight, or her size, and he is not actually commenting on her appetite in a negative way, he is just acknowledging that it's a lot more work for him now that she eats more. Right before he says the line, the quote even proves that he isn't shaming her or thinking badly of her: "With a bemused expression, he watched as I gobbled down my portion and then sighed, still hungry". He is noting a change in her, and complaining that its made more work for him. If you think thats the same as fat shaming, well... thats a you problem.
Hates Alina's Powers - FALSE!!!! How to begin... do we talk about it was Mal's idea to hunt the stag in S&B, because he knew she needed it to be more powerful so she could stop the darkling? Do we talk about how he vowed to find the firebird for her, even though he was terrified of what all that power would do to her? Do we talk about how he literally died so she could achieve the power she needed to save the world? Or maybe we could talk about how he believed in her power more than anyone else, like when everyone was making bets about her abilities with the Cut and he knew she'd go further and better than anyone else expected her too, or when he tells her that he was never afraid of her powers, only what seeking all that power would do to her (which is literally the theme of the books, that power corrupts and seeking unmatched power can destroy you)? Mal being afraid of what is going to happen to Alina, being protective of her and worrying over her, is not the same as him hating her powers. He exists to help remind Alina of the themes of the story, and to guide her into maintaining her humanity.
Abusive - ... Do I even need to explain this one? Must I deign an explanation as to why this favourite Darklina lie is so fucking stupid, and also totally hypocrisy? No? Because we all know Darkles is actually the abusive one and they're trying to project their own shit onto Mal to further their abuse apologist agenda? Cool. Moving on.
Possessive of Alina - False! Throughout the entire series, Mal is quite literally the opposite of possessive, but yall just cant read. Not only does he quite literally step out of the way and allow Nikolai to court Alina without argument, which is the most direct example of him not being possessive, he also spends two full books believing, and repeatedly saying over and over and over, that they can't be together because he is not good enough for her. Mal believes, fully, that Alina deserves more than him, better than him, because he's just a tracker and a soldier, just a regular man with nothing to offer her but his love and his protection, and she is a Saint and should be a Queen. Possessiveness is the wish to own and control someone, it is literally the opposite of Mal believing that he's not good enough and doing everything he can to ensure that Alina achieves everything and gets everything he believes she is owed. A possessive character would not tell her to tell him to leave because he has nothing he can offer her, no title or land or country or crown. A possessive character would not promise to be the blade in her hand, because he believed he had nothing but the blood he could spill to offer her.
Angry - True! Yeah, omg, you caught us, Mal is ANGRY! Heaven forbid a teenager who is traumatized beyond belief and has to give up everything in his life, his position in the military (he deserted for her), his friends and the job he loved (Mikhail and Dubrov died for him, and he can't be a tracker in the army... because he deserted... for Alina), and, most importantly, he has to give up Alina (she should be Queen, he believes, and he has to give up the future he imagined with the girl he loves, who he was pretty sure loved him back, because she's a saint and queen and he's just a man), and more, is ANGRY. He has to be the one to find the amplifiers that he knows will end up hurting her, because thats what she needs to save the world. He has to sit by while Nikolai treats him like the dirt on his shoe and tries to woo Alina for his own personal gain (because Nikoalai did not love Alina. Maybe he came to care for her, but he proposed and spent all of S&S trying to get her to marry him when it was obvious they were not in love. He straight up says its so that the next King of Ravka can be married to the Sun Summoner. It's a power grab.) and he can't do anything about it. So yeah, Mal is angry. And yeah, sometimes he's even angry at Alina, just like sometimes she's angry at him. But they always find their way back, always apologize and try to be better for each other, and if you think anger is a toxic trait, and not simply a natural human emotion, might I suggest touching some fucking grass?
Idk why you thought I'd stand for Mal slander on my blog, cuz I will not. So, I'm gonna stop there, because I have shit to do today, but I really do wonder how much of Mal's 'toxic' or 'terrible' traits, that make him such a 'bad' love interest for Alina, really comes from Darklina's who refuse to actually read the text critically at all, and instead take everything he does and says out of context to further their agenda that Alina should have ended up as the Darkling's fucking slave forever, because thats the "girl power feminist" ending somehow. Mal supports her, loves her, sacrifices for her at every turn, and does everything he can do, to the point of literally dying for her, to ensure that she can defeat Darkles and save the world. He protects her, and when they end up happy and safe together on the orphange that they've rebuilt to help the children that were victims of Darkles war and genocide, he spends his days bringing her tea and cakes and flowers, kissing her silly under the stairs in the view of all the teachers, and calling her names like beauty, beloved, cherished, my heart for the rest of their ordinary life together, if love can ever be called that.
#Malina#anti darklina#malyen oretsev#mal oretsev#shadow and bone#if yall could just learn to fucking read... i am begging you
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