#but humans are so fucking nuanced that like. i DO want to see a character who does have a vibe of 'i like food!!' but have OTHER traits

[musashi]

I very much appreciate your valiant Carol Holiday Defense

Because while I do dislike Carol, due to how Noelle is. Not Doing Great and how Carol is at least in part responsible for that, I also- even more than I dislike Carol- dislike how a lot of people are going about disliking her, so you are actively sparing me from the phenomenon of having to Defend The Thing You Don't Like

Like, I want to discuss how the way that Carol has responded to Dess' disappearance/possible assumed death (because it's not really clear if anyone other than Noelle believes that she's alive which is Cool but also Angst) has affected Noelle and Kris and their ability to heal from that loss, but that's hard when people's perspective on Carol is just "Abusive mother" and not "Grieving mother whose methods of coping with her older daughter's absence and husband's terminal illness is having negative effects on her daughter (And also the close family friend of Kris who may have been in some way involved in the Dess Thing)"

Thank you for helping correct the misunderstandings around her character, because there's so much that could be analyzed that just. Isn't, and can't be, because people refuse to actually engage with her character

fandom's lack of nuance has been hell on earth to exist in proximity to for the past like, half a decade when all the covid normies joined in. what kills me is how often you see this in fandom where the characters and themes of the story encourage deep thinking about that nuance. without fail, every time, it goes right over everyone's heads.

carol holiday's biggest crime is that she is so lost within herself that she cannot see how pushing her daughter is not helping her. she clearly cares about noelle and wants her to succeed and come into herself, but her methods of trying to draw that strength out of noelle are only making her recede into herself more. none of that is because carol is an abusive mother who is cruel to her daughter, all of that is because carol is 1. a grieving victim who probably does not have a good handle on herself, and 2. simply a person who is imperfect, just like anyone else.

will this affect noelle in the long-term? yes! does noelle likely have complicated feelings about her mother? abso-fucking-lutely! but we literally do not know enough about carol to be making such a severe call on who she is as a person like. its driving me crazy. all we know about her is incredibly sympathetic, as well!

paranoid: her daughter is dead/missing

controlling: her daughter is dead/missing

cold and cruel to susie: you mean the strange girl in her house, with the reputation for being a dangerous bully, who is PLAYING HER DEAD DAUGHTER'S GUITAR?

has a favourable opinion on the dreemurrs: uh, yeah, duh.

tends to throw herself into her work at the expense of her relationships: SHE IS GRIEVING. THIS IS A FORM OF COPING. THIS IS LITERALLY WHAT I DO. IT DOESN'T MEAN I DON'T CARE ABOUT MY LOVED ONES AND IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT FOR CAROL EITHER.

she is hurting her daughter. but she can do that without being abusive. people hurt people they love and want to protect/nurture all the time. that's a part of existing. literally an unavoidable part of the human experience. a grieving mother with no social support who is desperately trying to keep her shit together and run a town, who comes home every night to two empty fucking rooms belonging to her dead daughter and sick husband, IS PROBABLY GOING TO FUCK UP A BIT AND MAKE SOME SERIOUS MISTAKES. if she was Normal about any of this she wouldn't be realistic or interesting.

carol holiday resembles my shitty abusive mom in every way shape and form. she looks like her, talks like her, acts like her, saves face like her. but judging the content of her character based on something as fucking stupid as "she acts like my mom i hate" is the most mind-numbingly stupid fucking take on a character i think i could ever have, and i'm 30 years old and pay taxes and my shitty dead mom really doesn't factor into how i engage with Story.

the people saying the end of the weird route "proves" she's the knight is the dumbest shit in the world too. because she called kris. and has a completely unique speech bubble from the mysterious voice that's been calling kris previously. somehow this proves something. don't fucking ask me what.

i am so tired.

[sha-brytols]

someone: do you think anders is a good person

the part of my brain that engages in genuine critical media analysis: i think it's disingenuous to label him through the lens of a binary good/evil paradigm because what makes him such an interesting and engaging character is his status inbetween a human with complex emotions and desires and flaws that will never fully align with each other, and the singleminded focus and purpose of a supernatural entity that is literally justice incarnate and has no capacity for nuance and whose very nature is fundamentally incompatible with humanity but the two of them are so deeply connected that they make up a single identity that's constantly at odds with itself and this struggle causes him to act in ways that aren't always clean and often land him and those around him in impossible positions. i think he was morally justified in doing what he did to the chantry but i also believe he understood the magnitude of what he was doing which is why i inherently disagree with the notion that characters like varric or sebastian were wrong in their reactions because that's the very nature of violent revolution—people get caught in the crossfire and are harmed despite their innocence and regardless of the righteousness of the action at large. if someone killed your mom to protect a hundred orphans you probably wouldn't come out of the experience full of love and admiration for the person who killed your mother because regardless of the outcome they still fucking killed your mother. anders destroyed people's homes and lives and there's a conversation to be had about how he gaslit and exploited hawke, his own potential lover, into being an unwitting accomplice even though we know through meta knowledge that he was perfectly capable of doing it on his own and very likely only wanted hawke's involvement because he needed a powerful figure to become the rallying symbol for his cause. the reality is his very nature would have never allowed him to choose hawke and his friends over his goal because to do so would have been fundamentally selfish and antithetical to his newfound identity as one who champions the needs of the many at the expense of the individual. it's a beautifully tragic story about the lengths a person would have to go to in order to enact any sort of meaningful change while constrained in a system that benefits from their powerlessness, and how that process cannot exist without suffering and pain on both the individual and collective level. i also feel like if anders was written by a person with a degree of compassion and awareness for not only the character they were writing but just what living as a vulnerable and targeted minority is like then the narrative and message would have been vastly different than what ended up on screen because, ultimately, the game wants you to look at the stark injustice of a child being ripped away from their family to spend a life locked away in cold isolation where they're at constant risk of exploitation, abuse, death, and even a complete removal of their personhood, and think that there's room for compromise. it's a narrative that perpetuates the myth that passivity and tolerance in the face of oppression is more virtuous than burdening the masses with the discomfort of seeing their own culpability in sustaining it. a better game would have challenged varric and sebastian while also affirming their anger instead of just the latter. a better game would have explored hawke's reaction in a deeper manner that examined their relationship with the system, their own internal biases, and how anders affected their worldview.

the part of my brain that was on tumblr in 2014 and is still extremely petty and spiteful: he should have blown up the conclave while he was at it

[jemmo]

I don’t think I’m gonna be able to put it into the right words, but I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to watch that final episode of miseinen. bc it is one thing to mention marriage in a show about two men in a country where that’s not legal; it’s one thing to mention it as an inevitable, as just a waiting game, and leave it there, just as it’s one thing to mention it as a fantasy, or as something a couple doesn’t need to prove or certify their feelings. it’s another thing to show, even for just a short 30 minute episode, what that waiting actually feels like, and the kind of feelings being in that no man’s land of wanting but not being able to have can bring up. bc i can’t think when ive ever seen a bl touch on it so explicitly, at least not off the top of my head, or at least not to the extent of dedicating a whole episode to that feeling. bc you really feel how complex and indescribable that feeling is for jin in that episode, and while it’s mixed with that still lingering fear of haruki leaving and one day suddenly not being there, you feel that it’s not just for that certainty that he wants to be married. he wants the whole package of it, because he truly loves haruki. he sees his friends have relationships and talk about marriage, he feels the pressure from his mom and the rest of the people around him to think about marriage. and that’s exactly the thing of it. it’s not just that he can’t get married, it’s the fact that he has to hide the fact he wants it, and hide his relationship altogether. it’s not simply just marriage, it fits into a wider thing of him initially accepting his queerness and now not knowing if or how he wants to share that with other people. it’s just like- i really don’t want to gush but holy fuck it’s just so excellently done. bc you feel how different it is from haruki too, and it goes back to their differences in upbringing, bc haruki, after the difficulties he’s gone through, now finds it easier to accept and share these things bc he’s never exactly had anyone that would be impacted by this, but not only does jin have people to tell, he’s also been raised to follow a very traditional path in life, the one with least resistance, which very much means marrying a woman and having children and all of that. and it’s not that he can’t accept that he won’t do that, bc we’ve seen throughout the show how he has always faced what he’s been told is right with the open mindedness to question whether it is right, or right to him. but we’ve also seen through the show that the people around him do not have that same openmindedness, it’s why he never shared his friendship with haruki with anyone and now doesn’t want to share his relationship. but what i want to stress most is that the show perfectly shows that it’s not black and white. he is not choosing not to say anything, but he’s also not forced to stay silent. you see the greyness not just bc the situation is nuanced, but also bc at the end of the day it’s a human making this decision, and a human does not simply take in inputs and output the right decision and stick by that. you see him want to say something, you see him pull back, you see him be resentful of the way things are but also learn to accept that that’s how they are at the moment. you just… you see him live through having that in his head and what it feels like on any particular day and it’s just so incredibly amazing and important to see that in a character. it feels so fucking human. and i didn’t expect to get so emotional over a special ep about marriage, esp bc ive never much cared for marriage, ive never found it necessary, but when you take the time to show that it’s what 2 characters want, dedicate a whole ep to showing it, instead of just using it as a default happy ending, well… it’s just the cherry on top to a show that’s been absolutely fucking phenomenal. i will stan this show till i die thank you very much.

[applestorms]

There's something really fundamental to me about the fact that we never actually see Sebastian's True Form as any kind of full humanoid body. Instead, we're cut down to the basics: eyes, teeth, legs, maybe the occasional clawed hand, all floating around in some loose black mist. The animal heads that we see in the memory arc flashbacks are interesting too-- a dog and a raven (or crow?), naturally, but also an octopus, a snake, a fly. Clawing and watching and grinning at all times, predatory and hungry but also, crucially, amalgamate.

This really emphasizes two fundamental aspects of Sebastian and his role in the story to me, those being:

Sebastian is an unquestionably powerful being in the universe of KURO, a point further emphasized by the fact that we can never truly know him-- not his backstory, not his fully body, not the deeper extent of his motivations or feelings or desires.

Sebastian being so undeniably inhuman is core to his relationship with Ciel, and the ways in which he both does and does not reflect/parallel both Ciel's abusers and most beloved family members.

I think you can kind of read the more indistinct aspects of Sebastian's True Form as being a kind of side effect or representation of the ways in which Ciel views him, especially early on. Again, think about the details of Sebastian that we do see at this point: eyes, mouth, shoes, hands. During his time in the cult, Ciel is objectified and sexualized, used to being watched and surveyed at all times. He is, to Sebastian, a meal, something to be preyed upon and eaten-- but also spoken to, lured in, laughed at and ridiculed and complimented. He is a child locked in a cage, trapped near the ground and thus forced to see the world from below, only ever looking up at the people surrounding him, watching their shoes as they walk around him, over him. He is held and moved, puppetted, manipulated in a very literal, physical sense. The Little Red Riding Hood comparison is very apt here, actually-- eyes to see you, hands to hold you, mouth to eat you.

Yet it is also this fundamental inhumanity that kind of makes their dynamic work at all. As this post so wonderfully puts it, Sebastian's human form is an interface, an emulation, one more body to mix up in the amalgamation of Things He Can Be so that he may better serve his new master. He doesn't really have human desires, or at least not straightforwardly. We know that he likes LARPing as a butler full time, that he is prideful and gets off on being praised (see: the circus), but he clearly isn't really attached to the specifics of that in any human way. He isn't prideful of status, or his looks, or anything that could be connected to a typical human life, because this form is just another one of many, something that can and will change in the future, and has in the past.

We know that Sebastian wants one thing: Ciel. But it is the nuances within how exactly this desire manifests itself that forms the axis that a significant chunk of their dynamic revolves around.

A really interesting aspect of KURO to me that I struggle a bit to put into words is the ways in which both Ciel and Sebastian parallel the antagonists of the series and their friends/loved ones simultaneously. I don't think I've ever read or watched a series where the line between who is a "hero" and who is a "villain" is any less clear. This is not to say that the series has no ethical values, or that there aren't Some People clearly doing worse shit than others (Baron Kelvin when I get you), but most of the main characters that we see all have some kind of fucked up or complex dynamic happening between their personal values, their relationships with others, and larger social norms.

Take Grelle in the very first true arc of the series, for example. There's a fascinating parallel that I don't think I've ever really seen anyone talk about between Grelle's immediate murder of Anne the second she fails to live up to her expectations, and the eventual consumption of Ciel at the hands of Sebastian that has been teased since the very beginning. Not only is this moment a fantastic tone-establishing moment for the rest of the series, showing firsthand the brutality that it is willing to commit against even its central characters, it's also one of the first times we get this blurring-of-the-lines moment between protagonist and antagonist. It's an ongoing theme of the series, honestly, particularly with some of the more intense enemies that they go up against-- everybody's a hypocrite, but only one side is going to win. The Circus kids were powerless and pitiful and latched onto the first kind hand that was offered to them, regardless of how they were forced to corrupt their morals in response. Maurice Cole uses and manipulates others, using his prettiness to get what he wants, after being scammed out of a future by being the second to be born. We can only solve this murder if we let these people die.

This is one of the reasons why I view Sebastian and Ciel's relationship as being so fundamentally codependent. There's been a couple posts going around talking about this, but to say it again: Sebastian is everything to Ciel, in a very literal sense. He is the predator and monster lurking in the shadows, he is the doting butler lovingly brewing his tea and picking his clothes and tucking him into bed, he is the dog biting anyone who gets near him, the demon laughing at his pain, the wife picking the best furniture for the lounge. He saved him to kill him. He's got his father's face. They're no different from anybody else, but they can't be without each other either.

Maybe it's enough that they picked each other, and continue to pick one another, doubling down as they grow nearer and nearer to the decimation. Sebastian is grooming Ciel, growing and cultivating him, but in a dynamic under which he has little to no control. Ciel is a victim, a traumatized and abused child, using every scrap of power and knowledge he can get his hands on to order his pet monster who to kill. He never changes his goals, quite literally never grows up, but he gains strength and confidence and loyalty.

They are nothing, and everything. It makes sense, doesn't it?

[gayraltofrivia]

literally begging you people to stop calling curly evil because he didn't just take the gun and shoot jimmy after finding out that he got anya pregnant. note the language i use: we know he assaulted anya, we don't know if curly knows that. all he knows is that his buddy, who seems very on edge, nihilistic, disillusioned, got anya pregnant and then was not receptive to hearing about it. he even resolved to talk to jimmy about it.

i firmly believe that curly had no idea how fucked up jimmy actually was. case in point: he seemed genuinely surprised/upset when jimmy used his words against him, as if he was totally unaware that jimmy took them to mean something completely twisted.

regardless; this post isn't only about defending a fictional character, because on a large scale that literally doesn't matter. this post is about the fact that so many people online nowadays refuse to view any character, any story, with any speck of nuance or varied understanding. you are doing yourselves and everyone else a disservice by pretending that the world is black and white. games like this, media like this, only exists because humans exist at a vast and varying intersection of thoughts and feelings and choices, some of them morally good, some of them morally bad, most of them in a grey area somewhere between the two. therefore, you all need to stop viewing every piece of media as if it is a disney movie where the hero never does anything wrong, and the villain has no redeeming qualities. stop pretending like you have never given someone the benefit of the doubt, or missed something obvious, or looked past something because you wanted to see the good in someone or just not rock the boat. fandom is not and has never been some sort of fucked-up morality contest where we're all competing to like the least problematic, most morally good characters.

[danielsarmand]

the only other time i've felt this represented by a character was with owen from ‘i saw the tv glow’, so this is very special to me.

i've thought, and probably said, these very words in my life. i know they're selfish, but it's not all they are.

i've struggled for years with my inability to form romantic connections with people for whatever reason. i still don't know if it's because i am avoidant or simply because i am arospec, all i know for certain is it's not easy for me to navigate the world as is. romantic relationships are the very center of most people's lives. humans crave connection and exchange, we are social animals, we need to share our experiences with others in order to feel like we exist meaningfully, and this mostly translates in us reaching for romance. except sometimes, for people like me at least, it doesn't work. you can stretch yourself as thin as you like, try and fit somewhere you don't so as to not end up alone, but it doesn't work, and then it hurts. yourself and those around you. you do love, so much, just not the way you should. and when most people love in a certain way, and want to be loved in that same way, and naturally look to be loved like that—it's very easy to be left out, or at least to feel like it, and to fuck up the way bua has.

the experience of suddenly having a core relationship you were relying onto ripped away from you and thinking it's all your fault for not being able to reciprocate romantic feelings is uniquely devastating. it's a specific kind of heartache that's not easy to explain for me. trying desperately to force those feelings, to regain what you've lost/are in the process of losing, is such a pathetic and miserable endeavour for everyone, and it really leads nowhere in the end. most times, there's simply no way to win—and if there is, it takes a while.

so i'm thankful to boss kuno for understanding and portraying this, along with so many other nuanced experiences, exactly for what it is. something raw, difficult to digest and own up to, a little ugly, and completely human. it's comforting to see yourself in a character and witness how compassionate and loving you can be to them, how understanding. it helps you redirect. if i can look at bua and think ‘oh baby, you're so young, you'll figure it out. you'll be okay’, i wonder what i could tell myself if i found it in me to let go of all the self-hatred i've accumulated over something i could never really control.

[professional-rat-eater]

I need people in the IWTV fanbase to realise that you can appreciate a character in all their complexities and enjoy their precense in a story and still wish they had a slow, painful death scene. For non-book readers, I hope to be able to clarify a few things about why a certain character is so hated.

Keep reading for more nuanced Marius de Romanus slander:

I feel like I post at least once a day something about hitting Marius with a car or something and I do it mainly because it’s funny but it’s also because there is a very valid reason he is where a lot of people draw the line, despite the scale of morality in gothic literature being utterly different from that of pretty much any other literature, and drastically different from real life.

I love him for what he brings to the story. He is fascinating and I am excited to see him in season 3. He’s a brilliant character and I want to put him under a microscope and study him like a bug. He is still absolutely vile even for Anne Rice, something she even hints at here and there in her work.

I could go on and on for days about him, but to keep it short (edit: I lied), he met Pandora when she was ten years old and he was twenty five. What makes him particularly sick is nothing to do with vampiric morality, which we’ve seen is completely different, within the world of the books and show, from human morality. We get onboard with Lestat because we get to know him as a human and then watch how he changes as he gets used to being a vampire. Lestat was not a monster when he was human. Marius was.

If you disagree with that, you can think so if you wish as I do not currently possess the ability to control other people’s thoughts (but as soon as I do, I’m coming for you!) but please do not try and make excuses for him on that topic. Most people will not be open to that sort of debate. I know I’m not. Pandora was a baby. He should not have felt anything towards her other than a desire to protect her as a parent might. Yes, yes, gothic morality. But you need to understand that that is just too much for most people.

And you know who else was a baby, especially in comparison to Marius? Armand. Armand, who grew up to do awful things because of how he was treated. He was already being taken advantage of (to put it lightly) before he met Marius. If Marius had cared selflessly for Armand, he would have taken him from that brothel and tried to help him heal from the trauma. That is what real love would have been. You should not look at broken children and think to make them your lovers. All he was was yet another grown adult taking advantage of a boy whose spirit had been utterly shattered by what he’d endured.

(I’m not suggesting that should have happened or it would have been better, but I dislike the insinuation that Marius’s love for Armand was anything other than exploitative. It can be sincere, and still exploitative. I believe he meant it. I also believe he fucked Armand up more than he already had been.)

Murder in a fictional setting can be justified and overlooked, but as soon as anything involves children, you have to accept that you will lose a lot of people, even in gothic literature. That sort of relationship may have been more normalised thousands of years ago, but there were always people who objected to the concept. Even within the narrative of Anne Rice’s books, Marius’s actions are called out here and there (usually subtly) so even there, they are questioned. Compare him to someone like Lestat (I only mention him because for whatever reason, people like to group them together as irredeemable characters???).

Lestat’s actions are deeply toxic but people still like him because we understand why his behaviour is the way it is. As dreadful as what he does is, we are endeared to him because of his suffering and follow his journey as a vampire. He is twisted, but he is behaving according to what his trauma has turned him into. Armand is another example of this. Vile behaviour that is a believable response to trauma. There comes in the gothic morality again. We love them and know they are awful at the same time.

It is not that you cannot like Marius or characters like him. I do like him very much as a character, but you have to get on board with the idea that most people never will. The lines he crosses are unlike many of the others crossed by different characters. No one looks at Madeleine and Claudia and thinks it’s weird because Claudia is not actually a child. Armand was. Pandora was.

I could honestly make a separate post about book!Louis too and why I think the changes from the book were necessary to make people actually care about him, but it is similar. Harming/exploiting children and anything to do with slavery is a hard line a lot of people draw. Marius is still a multifaceted, interesting, complex, humanised character, as all Anne Rice vampires are, but he is deeply disliked for a very good reason. People cannot switch off how they feel about what he did, even if they are invested in the story.

(But also let’s be thoughtful about this type of discourse. Do not look at anyone whose favourite character is Marius and assume they are a bad person. He is a great character, he is just not to many people’s tastes. They likely just find him deeply interesting which he is.)

Anyway, after he gets his screen time and we reach the end of the show and he has gotten his chance to chance screen time, I vote we tie him up and treat him like a piñata.

[nyxi-pixie]

'omg dazai treating akutagawa like he did literally makes no sense he just did it because he sucks and i hate him for it'

can we. have a conversation about this without being fucking stupid please. yes dazai fucks him up and its really awful and sucks so bad. yes it isnt necessary for akutagawa's improvement. but like everything with bsd, theres nuance to it that you are ignoring.

the initial meeting between dazai and aku is aku wanting a reason to live and dazai wanting to give him one. a repeat of what mori wanted to give him. (this does not mean those two relationships are the exact same. please guys. please things are different sometimes). Now. dazai assumes the way to give aku a desire to live is to give him purpose. he ISNT training aku to be a mindless killer - thats literally the Opposite of what hes doing. he wants aku to be More than a sword without a sheath. hes teaching aku to be efficient. not just killing people, being smart about it. being what the mafia wants. giving him a purpose through making him useful.

it also probably comes back to the fact that dazai is WRONG about what made him want (barely) to live. he believes it comes from being surrounded by death, thus making the mafia the perfect place for him. booo hes stupid boo hes wrong!! bc it doesnt. hes bored by it and he says that directly in dark era. that he thought being around death would content him with life and it HASNT. bc he was wrong in fifteen. he didnt suddenly become interested in life bc he was doing violence and masterminding for the mafia. it was bc Someone intrigued him.

dazais whole problem stems from apathy, he wants to die because hes Bored with life. nothing interests him. Except people. so he meets chuuya in fifteen and is Interested by him. and that happens to coincide with his first mission for the mafia so he thinks its the death aspect. but it isnt. and we see this repeated with the other people he cares about (oda and ango most obviously). dazais motivations for his plans arent fucking around w death for his own personal entertainment. its looking after his friends. thats the same no matter what canon material ur looking at. and that same reason is why hes alive.

his misinterpretation of that leads him to be wrong abt aku too. aku needs people, he needs a gentle hand to develop best (beast). dazai says himself that aku needs to find someone to be his sheath and that dazai cant be that person (he doesnt know how to be). ofc, the sheath is eventually atsushi and now that we see aku gain strength both with his ability, with strategic thinking, and just emotionally in general its bc of the development hes gone under w atsushi. but guess what? this is more to the thing of bsd being based on human connection. dazais alive bc of the people he cares for. aku does better around people he cares for.

this isnt to say dazais actions are at all justified, and thats not the point of this. bsd is full of grey characters. but i do wish that u guys at least understood the dynamic u want to complain about.

[reblogandlikes]

I'm convinced I'm not the target audience for the acotar series because I just saw someone say that they're rereading it and somehow love Rhysand more...? The first time I can understand the lack of introspection and caught up in the hype, but the second time? Seriously? Do people honestly think as Feyre and the IC does about him and are unable to see past the false persona of "amazingness" when he's a terrible leader and throws his power around to those who rightfully challenge him as a form of intimidation?

Maybe because they know where they story ends, they're now reading everything from a 20/20 romantic lense because they "understand him", but even with this understanding, to me, makes his entire personality even more underwhelming, forced and unnecessary. Oh so powerful, yet barely does anything substantial with it. Then what's the fucking point of you other than to fill a "morally ambitious", super powerful, dark haired quota trying to convey feminism, but not actually?

And then, when I'm critical, I have to check myself and ask if I'm being bloody pompous, but no. No, I'm not. The love for Rhysand is baffling for the genre he is in, and i think that's one of my main gripes. Dark romance, sure. But not in a series that has the audacity to hammers down "abusive" behaviour on one character but not the other in the books and by fans in online spaces. It's so weird. If you have fae's, let them be viciously so, because they are not human. Their behaviours and customs should be the differences highlighted. That should be the appeal, or am I wrong? Not for the faeness to used to be OK in one moment, but not in the next because it doesn't suit the convience of the plot or may paint your beloved in a bad light. You've then just convoluted your own world, sjm, and takes away character depth.

I'm tempted to say that I've aged out of sjm's storytelling style, but i've witnessed fully grown adults eat this shit up. But age has nothing to do with this, and I'm just honestly at a loss. I feel like an outlier. Like, I'm just not getting the appeal to these favourable characters and get frustrated when things are clearly unjust or misrepresented, yet others swear ones actions and behaviours are perfectly fine yet hate to see it in others. You can't just pick and choose when shit is ok or not, especially when the characters have very similar reasoning behind their actions. Maybe I like shit to be nuanced too much, which would explain why it irks me of being told what to believe in contrary to evidence.

It's ok to like whatever book you want, but just dont lie about the content within or delude tourselfninto believing characterisations that are false because even authors fall victim to their own character bias. *Sigh* So I'mma chill and go tackle the books on my tbr.

[herrmit]

an ode to middle managers

This show truly knows how to juggle the duality of victim and perpetrator with the kind of finesse I haven't seen in a while. Woe's Hollow had me screaming at Milchick when he was (essentially) killing Irving... but then the very next episode they're doing performance reviews, talking about the "kindness reforms" he's instituted and its like. Well, shit. All those tactics have been underhanded and manipulative as fuck but it was also more than Cobel ever tried to do (no, Harmony, psychologically tormenting Mark S. with repressed memories of his "dead" wife does not count as employee recreation). Crazy that he's stuck in this middle managerial position and its clear that- as awful as he is- he is the one higher up we've seen that views the innies as something approximating Human. Especially contrasted with Ms Huang, Helena, and Drummond's comments that same episode. (And it goes without saying that Tramell Tillman's performance has been fantastic.)

Even with people far higher up, like Helena, we see exploitation! I was fr feeling murderous over her violation of both Mark and Helly's autonomy, of depriving me of my girl for four episodes and driving a wedge between the team- but the way Drummond and Natalie were so quick to cast her aside, "shut up, be a good girl, and put the noose around your neck" like damn they really don't care about anyone!! Not even Jeff Bezos herself!!!

Not to mention how Sydney Cole Alexander's performance as Natalie adds so much nuance to her character- even without telling us anything outright. The fear, shame, repression, complacency flitting across her face- truly a Get Out/ Being John Malkovich moment. She speaks for the board but her voice is never her own. She only has power when she's being exploited.

And now, with the most recent Cobel loredrop, I am hoping and praying and hoping and praying that we'll get to see at least one of these Lumon insiders have their "lets burn this place to the ground" moment. I think Cobel is closest to that now, and I see Milchick possibly following along. At the very least I hope we get some Reghabi backstory, because we know she used to work at Lumon (putting the chip in Mark's head herself!) and maybe she was always a spy but maybe she too was able to break from the system. Please Mr. Stiller, more Reghabi.

The contradiction at the core of capitalism is that it relies on everyone's complacency- yet values no one. Cobel, Milchick, Natalie, Helena: they can give and sacrifice all they want, but it will never change the fact that they are all replaceable. They are both victim and the perpetrator, and to go against the system would be to face their own complicity, rejecting whatever sunken-cost fallacy they've built up in their head. It's hard- but it's not impossible.

Here's to hoping.

[morphean42]

Falsettos unpopular opinions because two people asked for this and honestly I don’t give a fuck anymore. I want to state this isn’t in response to anyone in particular, though, and if you get offended by any of these think about why. For a good reason? Please tell me and I’d love to debate it, truly. For a petty reason? You’re simply part of the problem.

1. They are Jewish. End of story. If I see anything related to Christianity or Christmas or whatever the fuck with them… shut up. Yes Whizzer is half-Jewish, yes in the revival Cordelia isn’t Jewish (WHICH BRINGS ME TO ANOTHER POINT ILL GET INTO LATER), yes they are most likely secular as evidenced by Mendel’s “religions just a trap” and ‘Days Like This’, no this does not give you the right to ignore their ETHNICITY AND CULTURE.

2. It’s okay to like the revival more. It’s not okay to ignore the original just because you get blinded by conventionally attractive men. Going to my Cordelia point, she’s Jewish in the original, her line ‘Shiksa caterer’ is ‘Kosher caterer’. Again it’s fine if your headcanons and fanfics and fanarts are based on the revival, I love it too, but stop acting like it’s the only version.

3. Whizzer’s entire personality does not revolve around being gay. He’s not a sassy twink. He’s a full grown man with issues that need to be addressed. Again, I reiterate, he is not a twink. Stop. Drawing. Him. Skinny. And. Hairless. I don’t care if ‘ oh but but that’s just my art style!’ Shut up.

4. Correlated to the above point, here are things Whizzer is not: a prostitute, a drug addict, relying on Marvin for everything, a twink (saying that again to get it through peoples fucking skulls), innocent. I’m 100% positive if the people who had these headcanons watched the OBC version of the show they’d never continue to advocate for them… once more I’m begging you guys to look past Andy Randy’s beautiful face and actually use critical thinking skills when it comes to Whizzer.

5. Short but (not) sweet: don’t claim to understand Marvin if you haven’t watched In Trousers. Just don’t.

6. If you flat out hate any character in the show, you’re wrong. Yes I’m still mad about the Mendel thing; if you think any one character is worse than the rest and isn’t just a fully human person with flaws and nuance, you don’t understand the musical as well as you claim.

7. It’s not the ‘gay’ musical. If you like falsettos for Whizzvin and nothing else, please, just… I don’t even know. There’s so much more to it than ‘ooo boys kissing.’ Please grow up, this leads into a whole other point but fetishisation is never okay, no matter who does it.

8. So many people treat Trina as either a perfect angel or just the side character in the way of the gay people. She’s an entire person, an entire character with flaws and hardship and terrible actions done by her and to her. Treat my homophobic queen with the respect she deserves, and acknowledge her faults too. It’s more misogynistic to treat her as perfect when she has issues too than just saying ‘she’s never done anything wrong’.

9. Stop making AIDS jokes.

10. This next one is probably the most iffy on the list. I will never be one to police fandom and creation, you can engage with material in any fucking way you like it literally doesn’t matter to me… but I dislike AUs. Now, I’ll always enjoy a little fun, adding in a twist like lesbian Whizzvin, or enjoying a feel good college AU. But. Especially for Falsettos the canon events are so fucking important and cannot be disregarded as casually as some do. AIDS is an extremely important part of the story, as well as the fact that both Marvin and Whizzer are men. I’m trans myself, but I dislike making them so simply because everything about their characters, all the characters, are so highly specific and important to take these aspects away is to disrespect the message of the musical.

11. It’s very important Mendel is straight. I see some people headcanon him as bisexual or trans or so on, and this just feels so wrong to me. Trina and Mendel are straight and that’s why their acceptance and love for the others in the Tight Knit Family is so important, especially Trina struggles with moving away from the idea that these ‘homosexual tendencies’ are wrong. They are straight but they love Whizzvin and the lesbians just as much as anyone else.

12. This one is so petty and I accept that, but… HIS NAME IS NOT MARVIN GARDENS. GARDEN IS A JOKE CHRISTIAN BORLE MADE BASED ON MONOPOLY. Jesus guys please just stop it it’s so stupid, William Finn didn’t have a last name for Marvin on purpose, and though I can’t do more than theorise what that purpose was, Gardens is so stupid. It’s not even funny. Same goes for Cohen, which just is odd. The only name I could begin to accept is Falsetto, and even then… just work around the last name in your fics.

12 1/2. SIDE TANGENT Jason would never take Weisenbachfeld as his last name. As a child of divorce… no. He’ll never view Mendel as a true father over his own dad, especially after Falsettoland, and he wouldn’t take that name. Hell, I’d known my ex step-father since I was two and I’d never have taken his last name. So, please, I never want to see Jason Weisenbachfeld again. That’s just not how it works.

At the end of the day this is just me alone in my room bitching… I just hope these points resonate with others.

[liesineyes]

The amount of people I see saying Charlie has no right to be angry or upset at Babe because apparently, he also lied to Babe in the past, faked his death - while completely forgetting the different contexts of both the situations.

It is one thing to side with one character or to not understand nuance but the other to villainize one character while forgetting canon completely.

The amount of people who treat Charlie's lies and faking his death as simply unwanted, completely ignoring what would have happened to Babe if not for Charlie there, is simply - I don't know what to say.

It is like I watched a different show than them where they even like Way more than Charlie.

The fact that people refuse to understand something so simple - that you don't have to choose right or wrong. You can find both people wrong, or both people right at the same time as well is so weird to me.

Holding Babe accountable for his plan is not equal to hating him or accusing him for the sexual assault? Where did this idea come from just because in the past Charlie lied to him, faked his death, Babe can do whatever he wants and Charlie is just supposed to suck it up? I can't be the only one who thinks this take is problematic and biased as hell.

Would you not be angry if your boyfriend hid things from you, went after a guy who had repeatedly crossed boundaries (I want to emphasize how Babe knew Willy was romantically interested in him and kept harassing him and still went with his plan), removed his couple ring and presented himself as available? I think a normal person would be angry, and even a not normal, traumatised person will be angry too.

Regarding traumas, Babe has trauma, there's no doubt but do people forget Charlie is the product of the same house, lived under the same adoptive father? Tony may have different uses of them, but in the end, they were all there for something or the other thing. Not to forget, do people forget Charlie is getting experimented on regularly and we all know this drug is what causes his memory loss, so do you not think it also affects his emotions or whatever it is?

Tbh, I get angry too when people say things like 'Babe doesn't deserve Charlie' or 'Charlie deserves better' but again, people love to take sides rather than understand the nuance. Babe was wrong for making that plan without including Charlie and no matter how many lies Charlie fed him in season one, it doesn't erase the consequences of Babe's actions.

I find it rather funny that it is the first time Charlie got angry with Babe and everyone pulls up the 'hypocrite, you lied too, faked your death too, how dare you get angry at Babe' which is just.. lol.

Trauma is very valid, it can be the reason behind someone's actions, it can to some degree give the traumatic person a leverage because the other person is supposed to take their trauma in account but trauma, in no way can excuse or justify someone's actions.

If a traumatic person punches someone when triggered, it can be said they didn't mean it, they didn't want to punch, they just didn't realise it happened and the other person can say it is fine, I know you didn't mean it but does it erase the consequences of the punch? Does it heal the bruising the punch left? Or does it make the pain felt by that punch disappear?

But in the end, this is just my opinion. I would love to hear more, if anyone has any different opinion but I do want to make it clear, I don't hate either Babe or Charlie. For me they are both traumatic people and their relationship is far from being healthy. It has been toxic from day one (can you all forget Charlie was Babe's stalker and Babe let him fuck him? The X Hunter team made bets on Charlie's face for how many days he will last as Babe's fuck boy? All this is not normal.) and it is still toxic but what else do you expect in an Omegaverse racing bl with a breeding plot and human trafficking. It is to be expected I guess... 🤷🏼‍♀️

[starryeyedstray]

my thoughts on dbh as someone entering the fandom in 2024

so just got into the dbh fandom like in aug 2024. i have watched too much gameplay, read the wiki extensively, read an obscene amount of fanfics on ao3, and am in the process of writing my own. here are some of my thoughts (that no one has asked for):

every fanfic writer who started in 2018 and is still updating their works in 2024 are literal saints and some of the best damn writers i ever did saw and the dedication is fucking unreal. one fic had almost 2 million words??????? like BRUH. some are still ongoing and updated this year?? the dbh fandom in ao3 is not thriving as much as it was in 2018 (i say this purely as someone who's looking at the hits/kudos/comment ratios on older v. new works) but they are still alive!!!!

i am puzzled with the obsession with gavin reed. there are like a million fics that feature him and rk900. i am confused bc he did not seem like a redeeming character at all in my opinion and idk, i think he's just an asshole. i like the redemption arcs some ppl write for him but i just can't with him. i mean you ship who you wanna ship but i am not a reed fan and i am confused how he became so popular when all he did was bully our poor boi connor.

i personally don't ship hank x connor bc they give strong father-son vibes in the canon. however, i am obsessed with how jolli_bean writes the pairing on ao3 since its usually a canon divergence or an AU so the pair meet later in life. there are some fics that follow the canon and do a pretty good job with the pairing, but i just tend to keep it familial between them in my head. (but like i said, ship who you want to ship)

i am glad there's a vague consensus that we all wished alice stayed a human bc i feel like that lends itself to a more interesting narrative post-game. tho i guess her being an android is fine bc now kara, luthor, and alice can live as one happy family in canada forvever lol

i am literally obsessed with bryan dechart's acting as connor. like if you haven't seen him play connor in real life for the interactive #detroit2038 premiere event, then you gotta watch some of the live stream. like he doesn't break character the whole time and his physicality just screams connor and i just really appreciate how much effort he put in as an actor to really embody the character. just so impressive and i wish there was more bts of him acting as connor bc its just so nuanced and ugh *chef's kiss* if they ever made a live action dbh it would be impossible for anyone else to play connor

i love the 28 stab wounds meme. when i watched that scene for the first time it was so jarring lmao

i also love how everyone is like yes, we all know connor likes dogs but he also likes fish bc of that one fish you can save in the very first minute of gameplay hahahah. (his name is dewey and it is vitally important you save him). i also appreciate how the "i like dogs" line will undoubtedly find it's way into every fic possible lol

i think the love for simon is very good and well and amazing but i think josh deserves more love in fics too

it bothers me that when north tells markus "i love you" at the church, MARKUS DOESN'T SAY IT BACK??? LIKE BITCH SAY YOU LOVE HER BACK DAMMIT DON'T JUST WALK AWAY

i love how the fandom just latched onto rk900 and rk800-60 and fleshed out their personalities and i love reading ppl's interpretation of these characters and how they incorporate them into their stories. it's funny they only show up like one time and ppl just ran with it and it's so fun and creative and i love it.

i love the hc that chloe deviated when connor chose not to shoot her. that's the best hc. like it's canon in my heart idc

bless all the fic writers who have mastered the art of explaining how androids mind and bodies work bc there are so many gaps and possibilities left open in the lore and it's incredible to see what ppl come up with or interpret based off the canon. (i still feel 50/50 about when they make deviants feel pain cause like androids not feeling pain is such a big part of the canon and yeah i'll give it a pass if the fic does it for the whumps and the angst but i prefer when a fic finds a canon-compliant reason for deviants to feel pain, even if its just like they got a chip or software installed that makes them feel pain or something)

every pairing that i find in this fandom, i tend to be like... "yeah i can see that." (with the exception of hank x connor for reasons i stated in #3). i'm still like ehhh on reed900 or even gavin x connor bc i just don't think it makes sense in the canon but if it's written well i just shrug and say yeah i guess i could see that. some rarepairs i ended up absolutely adoring were chloe x north and rk900 x north (i realize they're both north but she has such good potential for character dynamics)

idk if it's just me bc i specifically look for fics centered around connor, but i feel like there's not a lot of love for kara at least fic-wise. ig it's cause she kinda just leaves so it's easy to not include her. tbh, i am quite well-versed in markus' and connor's stories but i haven't really explored a lot of kara's. i plan on playing dbh with my partner when i see them again in a couple months and i wanted us to take turn playing different characters and i wanted to play kara's storyline so i've been avoiding it for the most part so i can be surprised with my options. plus, in my wip fic, kara is in canada so she's not really relevant to my story which is why i have in depth knowledge about markus and connor and less on kara.

the music in this game fucking SLAPS. 10/10 kara's theme makes me wanna cry.

okay, there is a common trope in the dbh fanfics where connor loses his memory and that shit gets me everytime. i'm always bawling and anxiously waiting for him to fucking REMEMBER and i hate and love it and eat it up every. single. time. usually, the memory loss happens early in the fic and it's pretty expected but sometimes i get blindsided and i'm like FUCK not this shit again but i can't stop reading it and the angst is so palpable.

i think it's so interesting how ra9 is just like this mystery in the lore that never gets entirely explained in the game. it's like something you can totally kinda ignore but it does have interesting lore implications if you decide to really think about it.

i adore all the characters in dbh equally except for connor who is the certified best boi and my absolute favorite (no one is shocked by this declaration). and the characters on my shit list are zlatko, todd, and sometimes reed.

this is an obnoxiously long post and i apologies. i haven't been on tumblr in years and i just had so many thoughts about dbh and i have no friends to talk to so i decided to dump it all here. i still have more thoughts but those are the ones that come to the forefront of my mind.

tldr: i love dbh and its fandom and i have many specific thoughts about it and you should just really read my post if you care about any of it

[ohnoitsz1m]

The G-Man conversation lacks nuance, and I feel. I think some of you guys are a little too defensive.

TLDR at the bottom

So for starters. Let's just get this out of the way, there's no objective morality, you can call a character evil all you like but that's just your metric of what is evil. An interdinensional weirdguy from space probably doesn't consider himself evil or even care about how you may view him. Because he's operating on a completely separate sense of morality. For this reason I feel it's stupid to act like G-Man can only be either benevolent or malevolent.

You guys are judging G-Man based on incomplete data with a sense of morality he doesn't operate by. You don't know what his end goal is, you don't know that he cares for the characters, you don't know what the extent of his power is, and you don't know who he serves.

The G-Man is not here fighting for the little guy (humanity). He played an active role in instigating the Resonance Cascade. He threatens his "employees" with death and manipulates them by threatening their loved one's lives and he clearly doesn't mind letting someone die if they're not useful to him, especially if they're actively impeding his goals.

G-Man uses cruel methods to keep his employees under his control, and can be outwardly malicious when he wants to be.

I don't think G-Man smiling during his talk with Alyx was out of any warmth, it looked more like amusement or condescension when you put it in context. He used Eli's death as a way to trick and kidnap Alyx. He was never going to give her a Combine-free Earth, he's serving a larger goal that you can't see. The Combine are a small part, when the Combine are gone it's likely G-Man will still be fucking with people on Earth because that's not the end of his job.

It's perfectly fine to assume G-Man feels something for humans. But likely only certain ones. And not humanity as a whole. G-Man feels some kind of kinship with Adrian Shephard and likely Gordon Freeman as well in their shared ability to survive against all odds, and G-Man state that he saw some promise in Alyx Vance when she was younger, but that doesn't mean he cares for them in the way a lot of people are saying. They're not his kids, they're tools, they're bargaining chips and contingency plans that he pulls out when he needs them. G-Man's goal, even if it is to the benefit of humans is fairly impersonal. I think he does get personally invested in his employees to be fair, but like. It's like betting on horseracing or fantasy football brackets. It's about the end goal, not so much the in between.

G-Man is an antagonist, because he is an active threat to the protagonists and plays a crucial part in the story's inciting incident. G-Man may not be outwardly evil or doing shit just to fuck with people but he is still hurting people.

G-Man helping humanity is likely not even about humanity, ultimately. It's about his job and the goals of his employers. Any benefit humans derrive from it is incidental. G-Man does not go out of his way to actually help anyone. He saves Gordon because he still needs him, and he saves Alyx because he still needs her. This is not kindness, it's transactional. If Gordon refuses to assist the G-Man, he's threatened and punished for it.

TLDR

Because we are playing on the side of humanity, he's an antagonist, sorry. That's how antagonists work. It's not about morality, it's about how characters interact with eachother and the world. You guys are doing some Sisyphus shit trying to pin him down as good or evil.

[dunmeshistash]

do you have any thoughts about Kabru kissing Rin as a way to make her notice they're in a illusion? why would he go with that lmao, at first I was like "oh they're a couple! she recognized her bf's kiss and understood the situation, how cute!" but they're not a couple, Rin has a crush on him ofc but he sees her kinda like a sister canonically. why Kabru with all his understanding of humans and all that would make the poor girl think she was being kissed by a fucking giant fish at first 😭

maybe in the anime it's more clear? I finished the manga already but I'm a little behind on the episodes

It's exactly because he understands that he did that!

That was the first time we saw how powerful Kabru can be, because his great understanding of his teammates allowed him to recognize them thru the Illusion.

He did this because he knows her, he says himself it's "the best non violent way to stop a mage from casting a spell" like, he could knock her out or use force to cover her mouth but he wanted to shock her into stopping so she wouldn't get hurt.

He thinks of her a sister but she isn't actually his sister and he for sure knows she's in love with him.

He even teases her after while apologizing. She also knows Kabru tho so she doesn't take the kiss seriously either, she probably knows he didn't mean anything by it. (I think it's kinda sweet she still likes him even tho she has seen past his charms. His whole party kinda understand him past the surface charm and know how he acts and still stick with him I love them.)

Kabru understands people but he also uses people, so it's not so strange he did something that was uncomfortable for Rinsha because it was what he deemed the best way to deal with the situation if you ask me. He loves people but he's also a nuanced character like the others that does questionable things, in the grand scheme of things making Rin kiss a fish wasn't so bad tho.

[palmettoshenanigans]

Usually I want to avoid discourse at all costs but like,,, if I don't say this once I'll explode

Riko is the prime example of the "I was treated this way so I'm going to treat others this way" abused to abuser pipeline.

Andrew is the prime example of the "I was treated this way so I refuse to treat others this way" abused to not abuser pipeline.

(And even those two above statements are dis-including nuance that I don't have time to dissect)

Every other character seems to lie somewhere on the spectrum of this idea. Neil lies closer to where Andrew lies. Grayson lies closer to where Riko lies. Etc etc. And their positions on that spectrum are not fixed points but rather dynamic positions based on their choices made every day of their lives. Choice and agency and yadda yadda

All this back and forth about whether or not acknowledging the truth that Riko was abused erases the truth that Riko was an abuser is just missing the fundamental truth that I honestly think is Andrew's whole main Principle Of Life:

Everyone, no matter how kind they seem, is capable of the greatest atrocities. It just depends on what might push them to that point and how much they resist the temptation when brought to it. And everyone, no matter how fucked up they seem, could fall or have fallen prey to the greatest atrocities of others. Because "the shit people did to me" and "the shit I do to others" is not a fucking linear graph with a one to one ratio in any fucking configuration. People get what they get and it's not about "deserving". And people do what they do and whether they're held accountable follows the same logic as above. The universe is apathetic about human morals and humans are biased and fallible and easily manipulated when we try to uphold and enforce our morals in its stead - and humans don't even universally agree on morals in the first place so it's a fucking mess from the start.

And honestly, sometimes those people who don't grasp this idea are like Jeremy "But they're your parents, they're supposed to love you" Knox. That's a sentiment of morality, not an observation of how reality actually plays out. I see the best you are capable of and I see the worst you are capable of but I expect nothing because I don't have perfect foresight, I don't have perfect information, nor can I read minds.

Riko was a victim of abuse. Riko was a perpetrator of abuse. These two truths exist in harmony and cannot be separated. Whatever you feel or think about him after that is your fucking business and exists as separate from those two truths because it is born from you and not from Riko or any truths regarding him.

"Hurt people hurt people" is TRUE and "You'll never know the violence it took to be this gentle" is TRUE but not all truths manifest in all people but that doesn't make them less true!!! It just makes humans the canvas of infinite possibilities each born from the same finite palette of colors!

But at that point we're talking about nuance and discourse doesn't like nuance and also these characters aren't real people in the first place so imma shut up now I guess