#but it is so much more extensive than it should be-

[standingbyawishingwell]

While I can’t speak for everyone who disliked the movie (as I am not one of them) I think I can represent a small section of people who felt dissatisfaction with the way Spinel was handled and how her arc concluded. Both her and Steven.

Also, I’m here to say Hi! You didn’t think someone from 2025’s Summer would still think about this post, did you?

Anyways, I will yap.

If your argument is that Steven should do the things that traumatized him repeatedly in the past because he’s always done it before, repeatedly hurting himself in the service of fixing Pink’s mistakes, you are ignoring the main point I made.

Which parts of “befriending someone who hurt you” is traumatic to Steven?

By extension of your argument, do you think Steven befriending Peridot, Lapis, seeking out Jasper, and Bismuth, was all done because he believed he was responsible for his mother’s actions?

While he had traumatic experiences and conflicts with them, (and it is established how much he suffered because of that in Future), he never explicitly states he regrets befriending them or that it’s a current weight on what their foundation for friendship is built on.

Steven deserves to develop healthy coping mechanisms and conflict resolution skills that do NOT require him to sacrifice himself over and over again.

I agree. Also, he never actually developed those skills. You said so yourself:

Steven risked his actual life while he didn’t have powers so he could go talk to Spinel, and he wouldn’t fight her when she wanted to fight. He STILL put himself in the line of fire far more than a less compassionate person would.

While I understand Steven was just trying to save his planet, there are ways this could be solved without putting himself in self-sacrifice mode again. For one, he could have obviously asked Lapis to fly him up to the injector and guard him while he was still not powerful instead of climbing up himself knowing he could fall any minute.

He could have asked Connie for help. She has his badass Lion that can teleport and a badass sword they could fight with. He still chose to solve things on his own when it came to him and Spinel.

I won’t ruminate too much on the crystal gems because they were too busy saving citizens, but even so, one of them could have said they watch over Steven while the other two fused, rescuing humans.

The ending of the movie, with Spinel going off with the Diamonds, might seem a little disturbing with all the codepencency floating around there, but if you want to talk about compassion, I think this is a good place for Spinel to start. 

I agree that it’s disturbing. Not because of the codependency, but because of the history of abuse the Diamonds had with Pink.

Steven experienced it firsthand. It’s not like he didn't know. He called Blue out when she made him cry. Yellow threw Stevonnie into a dark prison, essentially starving Pink (we know gems need sunlight in order to function properly, but this goes into meta territory.) White isn’t explored in much detail as Pink doesn’t mention her once, but she’s shown to be callous enough towards the perceived Pink in Change Your Mind.

And yet, despite knowing all of it very well, Steven was the one to introduce Spinel to the diamonds, and the diamonds to Spinel, and leave them with her unsupervised. Spinel actually hid when the diamonds showed up. Until Steven said: Come out.

And then he back-pedalled and said “They’re not exactly easy to get along with”, in which he didn’t even remotely reference the abuse, only saying that because they annoyed him/were too clingy.

I think Spinel at least deserved a proper warning.

One counterpoint is how Spinel was also toxic. We know what she did wrong. But what separates Spinel’s incident from the Diamonds is that she does not share a history of this behaviour, unlike them.

Like you said yourself:

This was a trauma reaction, yes, and she isn’t entirely to blame for being upset because she was worried she was just being used and none of her actions were logically thought through.

A lot of people don’t realise this but up until Homeworld Bound, we never actually saw Spinel when she wasn’t reacting to her trauma. Yes, it was a wrong way to react to trauma. But it was still a reaction.

Then there's the fact how the Diamonds changed for the better.

Except the diamonds didn’t abuse Pink out of a flight or fight response. They knew exactly what they were doing, like how abusers often do. Abuse is a cycle. Spinel’s anger, while nonetheless harmful, is short-lived by comparison.

Unlearning all they did, no matter how much they want to, takes practice. Narrative-wise, throwing an abuse victim like Spinel into the mix is not something that would realistically end well, as she’d become the outlet for their further missteps.

It’s an irresponsible decision, made by an irresponsible person. And I’m not blaming Steven for doing this. Apparently, he doesn’t know better. But this decision shouldn’t have been final.

His huge crime here is not wanting to be someone’s friend?

It’s not a crime per se, but it does reflect on his preferences.

Let me get this straight: I do think Steven was compassionate. I don’t think the “I want to help you” from Steven is missing. It’s the “I want you” that’s absent.

And because why? Since when was it established that he doesn’t want someone in his life when so far he’s been the “mom and sister collector”?

I think the problem isn’t that Spinel demands attention and care from Steven - because she does get it. Steven treats her kindly. The problem is that Spinel’s own emotional trauma lies in “I do not matter to people, they will all eventually leave”.

All Spinel ever wanted was a reliable person. Someone who stays. And the thing she wants most and the thing that she needs most, are unfortunately the same.

The truth is, as much as people like Spinel need to learn to not put their worth in someone else’s eyes but their own, everyone needs *someone*. The problem is Spinel had no one. And when you think of someone - anyone - who would face through hardship and pain just to befriend someone, first person who comes to mind is Steven.

Did Steven befriend Lapis, or Peridot, or anyone out of presumed obligation? I don’t think so. He only did because he wanted to. There’s no logic behind it. The argument that it’s because Steven has realised he owes nothing to no one doesn’t make sense. Didn’t he always know that?

Furthermore, doesn’t Future backpedal on this? That Steven feels obligated to fix everything and everyone even when no one needs it? His character arc “Steven who shouldn’t need to fix everyone” he has in the movie is ultimately erased.

I think what we can all agree on is: It has no logic. Nobody behind the ink and pen thought about *why* Steven would chose one person over another. He just does. And that’s the beauty of it, but also the cruelty.

There’s no logic to it other than Steven’s own preference like how you don’t choose who you want as friend, you either want them or you don’t. And that’s fine. But this is crucial to know for a writer - namely, why would this character want to befriend x and y, but not z? If you do not have it figured out, that’s completely fine in most cases where the story isn’t about love and friendship. But in a world where this is a cruical point you are trying to establish, it does. Steven’s preferences are these people, and he doesn’t want to befriend Spinel because this and that. So what is “this and that”?

Now what i find interesting is this: The reason most assume Steven doesn’t want Spinel is because Steven is tired. But I ask: Hasn’t he always been?

Wasn’t he tired when Jasper attacked him even though he tried to heal her out of corruption?

Wasn’t he tired when Lapis grabbed him by the neck and tried to drown him? He looked particularly distressed when Connie was drowning.

Wasn’t he tired when Homeworld came and wanted to abduct all his human friends he had mentioned to Peridot?

Because people who think Spinel was treated worse than others don’t say “Steven was unfair to not chose Spinel” we say “it’s unfair that someone like Spinel is the only person not chosen”

Again, this could have served the story’s themes quite well… If Spinel’s wants and needs weren’t the same.

The point is that Steven Universe has written itself into a corner. And then it stepped away from that corner, making it worse. Steven would have realistically been the one person to care for Spinel, knowing everything established about him. And then he wasn’t.

Steven’s only possible logic could be when someone doesn’t ask for it, he wants to, and when someone genuinely wants to be friends, needs friends, he doesn’t. And that may sound like criticism but it is the truth. It is what we’ve seen.

It’s not about anything being Steven’s fault, it’s that arguably, his choice feels unlike himself based on everything we came to know about him.

Or as @bowtothetangerinequeen put it:

That’s the sort of treatment Spinel, not only needed but deserved, and there’s no reason for him not to, given his history.

Also, I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned anywhere in your post:

Why would the crew put a line so raw as “You liked me, didn’t you?” in the movie, only to pull a “No, I don’t.” from Steven?

It’s not like that line is a form of spinel misunderstanding his intentions, precisely because it’s said at the end. She started out as “mistook help for devotion”, so she should go from not understanding to understanding. By the end, she should have ended up in a place where she gets how steven feels about her, and accepts that. That’s her arc.

Let’s say this line is Spinel coming to the conclusion that he *would have liked her* If she didn’t hurt him. That inherently implies these two would have gotten along if it wasn’t for spinel trying to kill him, right? But that doesn’t make sense either. She didn’t say “You would have liked me” she said “liked me”. Simple Past Tense.

But like, babygirl Spinel, where?

The crew most likely intended that line to draw home the point of “if you want people to stay, maybe don’t lash out when they don’t” But does that mean… Steven wanted her? At some point? At any point? Even once? Because no.

That line wasn’t a misunderstanding. Yet it isn’t true either.

While I’m personally on the “Steven should have befriended Spinel” route, I think Steven not wanting Spinel makes sense, for multiple reasons I won’t name.

Steven can also choose to like some parts of her, while not fully wanting her, not fully wanting her presence. Because that’s what this is - he doesn’t like her as she is. My problem is the narrative acts like he does. All the while Steven keeps running away from her.

Because what doesn’t that imply about Steven? Whatever the answer is, it isn’t addressed.

I may be overreacting, but in an auditory-visual experience, dialouge is supposed to convey the thematic message. Every line counts. And if that’s your message, it’s confusing what it is you wanted to achieve.

TLDR; Steven comes across as reasonably unfair not because he isn't compassionate, but because Spinel required a different type of compassion. A devoted one. Something which Steven has been able to provide to everyone else so far, except her, because the writers said "Let's make sure he doesn't".

-

If you read it this far, thank you for being able to withstand my blethering. I don't know what I wanted with this by the way. I guess I'm just interested in your take? I would not have taken the time to write this if I wasn't.

When someone toxic needs a friend

I just wanna add a little personal reflection to the discussion of Spinel’s treatment in Steven Universe: The Movie.

A few signposts so you know where I’m starting with this:

A criticism I’ve seen: 

Steven was not particularly warm to Spinel. He did not hug her. He did not offer to be her friend. He spoke carelessly and triggered her toward becoming murderous again. He only cared about what she could do for him.

A perspective I’ve seen: 

LOTS of people with borderline personality disorder or strong feelings about abandonment personally relate to Spinel and are critical of Steven from this perspective.

Rebecca Sugar’s commentary on Spinel:

The thing about Spinel is that she’s a really toxic person. 

She’s so toxic that she’s literally trying to poison people. 

In my interactions with friends who have had a history difficult enough to make it hard for them to trust other people and sometimes even actively want to hurt others, it’s just a very difficult situation to navigate. In the case of Spinel and all of these characters, that’s extremely exaggerated because cartoons have the ability to be extreme exaggerations. I wanted to explore what it’s like when you’re trying to help someone who really doesn’t want to help themselves, who wants to embody the negative feelings that they have about themselves. I think that’s something really real. I hadn’t seen that in a cartoon before. 

Spinel, unlike many other characters, actually has the goal of hurting people, which is new territory for the show. She really wants to hurt Steven, and there’s a reason that she does—because she’s in so much pain. I just wanted to explore all the dimensions of that.

I also think Steven has his way of trying to handle and dissolve conflict. It’s not necessarily a good way for him to handle this situation. It really leaves him in a difficult state, and I think what I wanted to show in the way that they interact is that at a certain point, when you can’t help someone, you have to be able to protect yourself. 

Ultimately, he can’t really convince her to change. It’s something she’ll have to want for herself. But what he can do is protect himself from her, making it impossible for her to hurt him. 

It’s sort of up to you if you would like to love her. If you watch this movie and she, you know, frustrates you, that is totally fair. I want that to be a big part of who she is.

[From the AV Club interview]

So here are a few things I want to shed light on.

It’s very interesting that Rebecca intended Spinel to be read as “a toxic person” because so many fans fell in love with her, said they’d be her friend, hated intensely on Pink Diamond because of what she did to abandon the poor Gem, and sympathized with her directly. But Rebecca was looking at Spinel from Steven’s perspective. And that’s also what I did.

I’ve been Steven. I have VERY much been Steven.

When you meet someone who was done dirty, when you recognize the horror they’ve been through, when you see how much pain they are in and agree they have the right to be angry, it’s natural for empathetic people to offer themselves as comfort.

But when you’re Steven, you also know it isn’t YOUR fault either. Before you have the ability and experience to set boundaries, you can get sucked into other people’s stormy waters and think you’re helping if you drown in solidarity with them. What’s really important to preserving yourself is learning that you can stand on the boat and toss a life preserver. That it doesn’t ACTUALLY HELP to jump in the water and sink with them.

Some folks are angry that Steven didn’t jump right into sacrifice himself on the altar of friendship in the service of an intense, literally murderous stranger who tried to poison him and his planet and lash out at his friends, robbing them of their rich pasts and their relationships because all of it hurt HER so much. It is SO easy to understand WHY SPINEL WAS ANGRY. But nothing she was doing to Steven, his friends, or the Earth was going to fix her problems, and furthermore, she FULLY UNDERSTOOD that it was NOT THE FAULT of any of the people she took her anger out on. It was irrational, yes, and that is part of her dysfunction. But also, in these situations, what helps explain it still does not excuse it.

Some have railed at Steven saying he somehow forgave genocidal tyrants like the Diamonds but couldn’t be friends with a damaged Gem like Spinel who just wanted friendship. The big difference there is that Steven got involved with the Diamonds when both parties believed he was a different person. The Diamonds believed he was the lost Pink Diamond, and Steven has also spent much of his superhero life believing he WAS his mother and was therefore obligated to accept punishment for her crimes or to clean up the messes she made. Now that he knows he is not her and that she did some pretty horrible stuff, he also wants the right to stop feeling responsible for every person Pink hurt in the entire region of space.

Steven gave Spinel basically compassionate treatment. He did not abuse her. He did not insult her. He occasionally coddled her when it seemed important (and though some said he was too businesslike while he pursued his mission, he was literally looking at the world ending within two days if he didn’t solve the problem). And most importantly … .

He let her leave the garden.

Spinel stayed in the garden all those millennia because Pink Diamond told her they were playing a game. All that time, she had visions of Pink returning so she could see her smile, hear her laughter. We see a sequence where she tried to follow Pink out of the garden and Pink manipulated her into staying willingly. We watch those feet leaving and one pair of feet staying behind. We see Pink disappear.

When Steven goes to leave the garden, Spinel follows in the same manner. Some have criticized him for letting go of her hands.

But he invited her out of the garden. He didn’t say stay. He said come with me.

As he sang about her deserving someone better, he was sincere. But he did not say the person to make her feel found should be him. He did not want to take on another person with thousands of years of baggage who would require a specific brand of attention and so much tenderness to avoid snapping. He did not allow her to be held by the hand and led out. He recognized that she needed encouragement to leave this place because of what was done to her, but he wanted her to take the steps.

Compassionate people are crushed all the time under the weight of needy people who make it hurt to love. People like Steven can acknowledge that Spinel deserves love and deserves to be happy without accepting that it’s heartless to stop short of personally doing it. Especially when you literally have to take physical, mental, and emotional damage as a general consequence of offering support and counseling. It is sometimes just beyond what you can do.

I made the mistake several times of getting very close to someone who treated me poorly while taking comfort in my presence. I cared that they were hurt and I didn’t know how to say “You deserve love” without stepping in and loving them. In EVERY case I was involved with, the person went from initially grateful to “why don’t you help me more?” shockingly quickly, and two of them deliberately tried to create situations where I would be trapped with them and isolated from others. 

I could get very personal here but I don’t think I need to. Those of us who relate all too well to Steven wanting to help others will have been in this situation. Your heart hurts for people who live with pain that has never touched you, but when they’ve made it clear with one of their first actions that they feel satisfied at the idea of ruining your life, trusting them could mean the end of you. Especially if they demand that you risk life and limb to fix and save them before you’d dare to call it love, and especially if they want to be fixed without feeling responsible for initiating any of it. Some people mistake suffering for working hard toward a goal. Both can hurt but only one is constructive. If I’m expected to spend extensive resources on someone, I need some partnership in the goal, and I can’t accomplish that with someone whose wish for companionship manifests as “I want you to feel as bad as I do, and will take steps to hurt you so I have someone to cry with.”

Steven risked his actual life while he didn’t have powers so he could go talk to Spinel, and he wouldn’t fight her when she wanted to fight. He protected himself while she spent her anger. He STILL put himself in the line of fire far more than a less compassionate person would. He took time and tenderness to listen to her story and sympathize with her, tell her she deserved better, bear witness to what she’d become after being treated like a discarded plaything, and bring her hope with promises of a new future and a way to feel found.

Sadly, Spinel flipped back to being murderous at the first sign that Steven might be about to prioritize someone other than her, reframing his reasonable needs as if he was planning to abandon her, isolate her, discard her. This was a trauma reaction, yes, and she isn’t entirely to blame for being upset because she was worried she was just being used and none of her actions were logically thought through. 

But does someone ever “deserve” the friendship of a specific person who can’t feel warm toward them because of their OWN bad experiences? 

No! 

Steven has a big heart but he has his very own huge storehouse of trauma, and being physically attacked with his family and planet put in danger over the actions of his mother is at the top of the list. Instead of assuming that the person who has trauma the loudest is the most hurt, can’t we just acknowledge that Spinel’s and Steven’s respective traumas make them NOT the best match for friendship?

The ending of the movie, with Spinel going off with the Diamonds, might seem a little disturbing with all the codepencency floating around there, but if you want to talk about compassion, I think this is a good place for Spinel to start. 

She just wanted to make Pink Diamond laugh and enjoy her life. She longed to do that for so long and then it all ended when she found out she would NEVER GET TO DO IT. I think bonding with the other Diamonds and having a familiar, safe place to experience the kind of love she’s used to will be a good FOUNDATION for building herself into a person beyond that. For now, she needs comfort. I hope they treat her well.

[bennetsbonnet]

I think it's really important to keep in mind, in order to grasp the magnitude of Mr Darcy's rudeness when he came to Hertfordshire, that he was not some country bumpkin with absolutely no idea of how to behave. This man would have been educated at some of the most exclusive schools and (presumably) attended university, even if he did not earn a degree. He would have regularly attended parties and balls in London. He was a twenty eight year old man who had moved in society for years, not some naïve child.

Why is it important? Well, all of this adds an extra layer of callousness to his behaviour, especially towards Elizabeth at the Meryton assembly. This was not a man coming into a society on an equal footing with those that he chose to insult. Darcy had seen so much more of the world and had many more experiences than the people of Meryton, who would naturally be curious and excited about his presence. And yes that would have been a little irritating, especially if you were introverted (not that there is a great deal of evidence for that in Mr Darcy's case). But a man of his station would still be expected to be polite and smile, to maybe make some small talk and be introduced to a few ladies to dance with... even if he never wanted to see any of them again. To oblige that would have been real bare minimum stuff.

Instead, Mr Darcy did not behave in the way that somebody with all those advantages of his birth should have behaved. He was rude to everyone and especially to Elizabeth. If she had been insulted by someone of a similar background to herself, i.e. a country man from a similarly small, close-knit town who was perhaps a big fish in a small pond (like the Bennets) and who felt frustrated by his nose being pushed out rather in new surroundings, so he lashed out to make himself feel better... it still would have been awful and inexcusable! But when you consider the access Darcy had to the world, thanks to his education and having spent extensive time in London... those factors make his already abysmal behaviour so much worse.

The most privileged person in the Meryton assembly rooms was also by far the rudest.

[herald-divine-hell]

It is a bit amusing that the orientalism and Islamophobic depiction of the Qun and the Qunari is only know being brought up in the context of DATV, despite the very foundations of the Qun, and many other Qunari characters in the game are bult on orientalism, Islamphobia, and oversexualization.

It should not be ignored that particularly only the Qun display an extensive totalitarian police-state, where dissension is snubbed out, and dissenters quickly "re-educated" back into what the Qun considers obligatory. This was elements introduced way before Veilguard, and spoken with little condemnation over the Qun's relationship as the historical inspiration of Islam with Europe, but, in a sense and in my own view, instead an offering for the, primarily, white Westerner, to proudly denounce the "Other" of Thedas, and display how effectively superior Thedasian culture is over the Qun.

So, yes. Does Veilguard no doubt have problems with orientalism and Islamphobia? Yes. But I'll argue the older games were far, far more worse in their depiction and utilization of racist tropes, caricatures, and historical interactions with the MENA region, the Islamic faith, its history, and the greater Asian world as a whole. Since the very beginning, the Qun was meant to be the great "Other".

Honestly, if BioWare did the most barebones reading of the Quran as they did with the Bible, it may have been better than whatever the hell the Qunari are meant to be (at the same time, the theological depicition of Andrastanism makes ill-sense to me, though I do think certain lines such as a "learned child is a blessing onto his parents and onto the Maker."). Afterall, the Quran is clear that coercion or compulsion of faith is forbidden; that the Believers [the historically accurate term to Muhammad's direct followers, the mu'minun] are forbidden from being hostile to polytheistic groups that did not attack, discriminate, or oppress them for their faith.

"There is no coercion in religion. Sound judgment has become clear from error. So whosoever disavows false deities and believes in God has grasped the most unfailing handhold, which never breaks. And God is Hearing, Knowing." [The Cow, 2:256]. "Believers, when you fight in the way of God, be discriminating. Do not say to one who greets you with “Peace!” “You are not a believer!” You aspire to the goods of this world, but with God are many riches. You were like them in the past, but God conferred his favor on you. So scrutinize carefully. God is aware of what you do. [The Pilgrimage, 22:17] He endorsed those who fought because they had been wronged, and in truth God is able to aid them—those who were expelled from their homes unjustly, solely for saying our lord is God. Had God not checked one people with another, then monasteries, churches, oratories and places of worship wherein God is much mentioned would have been razed to the ground. God aids those who aid him. God is powerful, mighty. [The Pilgrimage 22:39-40] Perhaps God will create love between you and those among whom were your enemies. God does not forbid you, with regard to those who have not fought you over religion nor expelled you from your homes, from being righteous and just toward them, for God loves those who are just. [The Woman Tested, 60:7-8] Fight in the path of God those who enter into combat against you, but do not commit aggression. God does not love aggressors. [The Cow, 2:190]

Whose discourse is more beautiful than one who summons others to God, and performs good deeds, and proclaims, “I am a monotheist”? Good and evil are not equal. Repel the latter with the highest good, and behold, your enemy will become a devoted patron. [Distinguished, 41:33-34]

The ultimate problem is as I said before--the Qun are simply meant to be the great Other, the barbarian enemy of the majority of people in Thedas, without the real ability to actively engaged with its philosophical intentions and ideas in an understanding manner. No matter what, the Qunari's viewpoint of the world is black-and-white. Sure, you can argue the Quran's own viewing of the world has a shade of that, too - typically within its soteriology, where the Quran is inclusive of monotheists, limited in doctrinal beliefs, and exclusive to polytheism - but even then, the Quran understands complexity. It ordains to its listeners that the ultimate judge is not humanity, but God. It reminds Muhammad that he is only just a messenger, that he only brings forth the message, and it is to God who will judge, not him. He cannot force anyone to believe, and he should not burden himself with that reality. (Though, even there is complexity as he had a role of political leadership as well, but on matters on belief and disbelief, the Quran reminds Muhammad constantly that such judgement is God’s alone.) The Qun is not given that complexity, does not have it within its doctrinal foundation for pluralism that is adored in the Quran as one of the signs of God. This brutal viewpoint reeks of post-Umayyad and Abbasid scholarly interpretation regarding Islam, as well as European Christian views of Islam as the oppressive faith of slavers and conquerors. This is the foundation of the Qun, established well before Veilguard or even Inquisition. Yet when this is discussed, so much of the fandom hand-waved it away, made excuses, try to say that I’m overthinking it, or worse even indulged it (the oversexualization of the Qunari by the fandom at large).

[radioactive-earthshine]

I haven't read any flash comics yet so all my information about Bart comes from YJ98 and I a have question. My friends claim you are the flash family expert so I think you can answer it lol.

If it wouldn't bother you could you please explain why Barry Iris and Wally couldn't take Bart in? Ig I do not understand why his own family wouldn't prefer to raise him instead of putting him with someone they didn't know if that's how I understood it? Like I mean it is great that we have a story about foster care but ig I'd still want to know why he was in foster care at all.

Sorry if I am bothering you and this question is like basic knowledge but it's bothering me.

Hello new Flashfam fan,

There are pretty basic explanations for why none of those characters listed could, would, or should take Bart Allen in when he was evacuated to the 20th century.

Barry

He was DEAD.

Barry Allen died in Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1986, and he remained dead and out of the main continuity barring cameos and random moments for more than 20 years.

When Bart was born, he was dead, when he came back to the past, he was dead.

Deceased.

I know in a lot of Core Four fanfic many authors choose to depict him as alive and well, but in the comics he is as dead as Jason Todd.

Iris

She had studied the past extensively while she lived in the future, and thus obtained knowledge of what was going to happen to her loved ones in the past. She knew their histories.

Terrified of changing said history, and altering the future she understood, she withdrew herself from everyone as much as possible, including Wally. She essentially became a hermit.

She knew if she spent too much time with her family, she would likely give them warnings about tragedies to come. Iris was operating under an understanding that altering history is a big big big big no no. Because of her knowledge, she knew that Max took Bart in and declared it his destiny to do so, not Wally and not her, and they had no choice but to do it.

Agree with it or not, and whether it makes sense or not, and regardless of the more sinister implications of this plot detail, that is the comic explanation.

Wally

He literally could not handle Bart at this time in his life. He was not mentally prepared to deal with someone like Bart and this was actually a mutual decision between him and Bart.

Bart didn't want to live with Wally, they were not getting along, and Wally wasn't going to challenge that.

The Wally West at this time was not the current Wally which is a father to three, a husband, and someone VERY well adjusted - but rather, he was a mentally ill young adult dealing with cptsd, likely imposter syndrome, and prevailing jealousy of his proximity to Barry and infernal feelings of inadequacy. All of those together and how Wally dealt with them made him a pretty big jerk, which is what made him interesting, and what also made him not the best choice at all to take in someone as feral as Bart. It would have been a disaster.

Should Iris and Wally have just tried their best to take Bart in? That's up for debate and personal opinion, but in my opinion, both really did make the best decision they could have. I also stand firmly by the belief that no one should be forced to raise a child. Period.

There is also one final reason why Iris and Wally didn't take Bart in and it's really the most important one ...

That's not the story Mark Waid wanted to tell. Mark wanted to tell a story about aloof, cold, secretive Max Mercury taking in wild Bart and their adventures as they slowly bonded.

I hope this answers your question!

Note 1: I would not call myself an "expert" on the Flashfam, I just have read a lot of comics about them, well over 1000 single issues, but even with this, there are still huge gaps of knowledge that exist.

Note 2: this is for the comics and the comics alone, no other form of media or adaptation.

[sheneedstostartagarden]

a communist vanguard party should also aim to establish parallel people's governments whenever the opportunity reveals itself, the means by which the party can concretely demonstrate it's nature as a pro-people pro workers party, and that the state that they will form will utilize all it's resources and efforts to imrpove the quality of life for the working masses of the country, not to fatten their banks. the party must work towards actively raising the revolutionary conscious of the people, and everything, from the parallel states, to aid and mutual aid, it's fair and pro people justice systems, to teaching self reliance, developing a revolutionary culture, fighting oppressive and exploitative state, buissnesses and burocrats with their police, working towards developing backwards porductive means to agriculture.

concretely, I'm thinking of the example of the indian party's janatana sarkars, i.e, the people's governments in India, who transformed the prior existing means of productions of adivasi (indegenous) people, which included burning forests and shifting from one place to another to settled agriculture, worked on breakubg oppressve patriarchal beliefs in the adivasi communities (thus gained the trust of the women), worked extensively and waged struggle against exploitative almost slave like buissnesses who used to make adivasi people labour for hours collecting tendu leaves and mahua flowers and paid them next to nothing, thus gaining the trust and respect of the working masses, all the while propgating revolutionary culture and organizing the people.

and in doing so, they prooved to the most oppressed in india, who had been negled and abused since the era of British colonialism and who's exploitation continued in a new and more intense form under the indian neocolonial state, that the party is much more trustworthy than any liberal organization or state organization could ever be.

One of the key tasks of any Communist Party is to prove itself a force capable of seeing to the needs of the people, that it is a group from the people and of the people that recognises the problems faced on the ground and can be relied upon to address them more than any liberal organisation.

Ho Chi Minh distributed rice, the Black Panthers ran breakfast programmes & literacy groups, meanwhile every communist group in this country just spends its time going on marches and (not) selling newspapers when if any of them were worth the red dye of their banners they'd be actually trying to help any of the myriad struggles faced by the proletariat today. This is just a brief thought, not a formulated plan, but frankly I think if a Communist group put up flyers offering a free (or at least at-cost) cleaning service to help people with mold issues they'd do infinitely more good than any number of recruitment flyers & protest placards.

[heliianth]

on Killua, projection, and spectrophobia

This post is sort of a sequel to this answer I gave an asker, wherein I said that an overarching theme in Killua's ability to situate himself and understand the world around him is constant social categorization. It's also a very direct extension of this post about how he sees Nanika in relation to his own self-perception and the way in which he treats her as a result of projection.

Originally that second post was actually meant to be the ultimate conclusion to this one (i've been sitting on this draft for close to a year atp). So it's a little embarrassing to post this without it as a closer—this feels unfinished as a result—but I'll link it in the relevant section where it should've been read anyway, and you can take it or leave it. If you do read it and see parts I paraphrased or directly copy-pasted from very early points in this meta, that's why lol. I'm lazy and didn't want to rewrite thoughts I had already articulated in my notes app, nor did I want to leave the anon hanging for however long it would take to polish this up.

Eli, this is long as fuck. Why do you care this much?

Well, why does anyone care about anything? I like yapping. This is the yapping website. Take this as your warning that this is going to be LENGTHY, btw

But the main reason I started thinking about this and writing it down so long ago is the pervasive perception within the fandom that Killua is very logical, and that this demeanor of his is a deliberate contrast to Gon’s impulsivity, reliance on instinct, and tendency to operate based on emotion. This makes the audience trust his word even when everything surrounding him is working to tell you he’s an unreliable source of narration, including the aloof overpowered rival-deuteragonist archetype he’s subverting, which people seem to recognize in every other way but this for some reason. His family directly spells out to the audience that he’s way too emotional and volatile to be considered perfect, despite the golden child gambit—

—and while the Zoldycks are all stinky fucking liars as far as whether the audience should trust them or not, I do think they know what they’re talking about in terms of suitability to be an assassin. And Zeno is ostensibly supposed to be the "sane one," regardless of how you feel about that.

Even so, I think that it’s a really easily digestible and also not unpopular view here on tumblr to acknowledge that not only is Killua very often illogical, he’s also not less emotional than Gon just because he tends to analyze more information before making a decision. It’s not a hot take to say that Killua POV Syndrome is the source of a lot of mischaracterization for both of them and their relationship. Still, I rarely see anyone talk about the specific ways in which he’s illogical, identify an underlying pattern between each instance, and connect it to his arc and the very unsubtle metaphors that punctuate it as a whole. So that’s kind of what I’m aiming for here, just to present my ideas in one place so I don’t have to keep chunking them into different responses to asks.

So. 5 topics.

Projection (clarification)

Killua's Reflection

The Outlier: Gon

The In-group

The Mirror: Alluka and Nanika

1. Projection

Projection is a term I think people are well acquainted with, but I still feel the need to define it so we’re all on the same page. It’s been in the periphery of the therapy speak epidemic that’s been happening for a while now, and I want it to be clear what we’re actually talking about.

In it’s most simple form, projection is the process of attributing one’s own traits or emotions to another. This is the most common way I’m going to be using the word, but there are other relevant intricacies:

Originally, it was conceived as a way of ego defense and emotional suppression or denial. For example, the first formally documented case of projection was in a 1895 letter in which Sigmund Freud described a woman who was avoiding confronting feelings of shame by insisting that neighbors were gossiping unjustly behind her back. This form wherein the person projecting recognizes an emotion or action as condemnable in themself but is unwilling to reflect on it, and then attributes that same trait to someone else so it is “safe” to judge, remains the more popular conception of projection. Freud is a whole can of worms and me referencing him is supposed to be more of a history lesson than a concession of legitimacy. And in terms of talking about projection, I do think the type he describes exists and I do think it’s useful for the purposes of this post to use his name in reference to it.

Contemporarily, projection is understood more benignly as being a part of theory of mind (the ability to parse the intentions and mental states of other people separately from one’s own). This type has many different forms which manifest healthily during stages of psychological development or interaction, such as a child learning to perform empathy by recognizing and interpreting familiar experiences or expressions in others. That specific process, however, is more often referred to as mentalization, wherein “…there is little distortion of the other person’s mind because there is no automatic equation of it with the mind of the observer..." though it is still considered a form of projection because it requires using your own experiences to determine that of another.

All of these definitions are relevant because Killua does all three. He imposes his own traits onto other people even if it’s not necessarily warranted, projects the judgement of his shameful aspects onto those around him to avoid confronting them (Freudian), and uses his own experiences to mentalize with targets chosen based on his own self-perception.

2. Killua’s Reflection

I’m sure everyone interested enough in Hunter x Hunter to be reading metas on it already knows about Killua’s shit self-esteem and where it comes from. It’s something that doesn’t really need to be restated. Nonetheless, I feel an aspect of it is necessary for what I want to say.

A lot of Killua’s emotional conflicts within the story stem from a desperate need to disprove what Illumi said to him in the exchange that disqualified him from the first arc's exam.

At this point Killua has actually seen and experienced things that contradict what Illumi is saying. But in this case, even with all of these new experiences and people on his side, Killua finds he can’t disagree with his big brother. After all, it’s backed up by some pretty irrefutable proof—more than Killua has.

For example, Killua’s reaction to Gon being completely unbothered in this conversation…

Alternate translation from the 2011 anime is: "That's weird... People only like me because they can't ever tell whether I'm serious." (Viz is my worst enemy for early HxH and should be yours too)

…corroborates 2 things:

Killua has approached people (outside of the Zoldyck estate) in the past, whether to be friends or to cure boredom

Upon being told about his family, these people either reacted poorly or with disbelief. Then he was ostracized or became disinterested

Killua doesn’t seem too bothered by this all things considered, and that’s because it reinforces his family’s emotional isolation, so it’s expected and he has no reason to think it's abnormal or worry over it. Killua is told he’s incapable of friendship because of who he is and how he was raised, and then every relationship he has ends before it can begin precisely because of those reasons. From his perspective, his family are objectively correct. Every time Killua talks to anyone, he may as well be proving that gravity eventually makes things fall down. He just kept trying because he was that desperate for friends who liked HIM, not his cute kid routine.

What his family have done is effectively created a rigid in-group that defines Killua and his capacity for interaction outside of that group. This has overlap with the typical notion of “out-group bias” which, when you google it, specifically brings up the mechanisms of bigotry. I’m referring to it in the more neutral tone associated with social identity theory, which has to do with socially assigned and defined traits valued via comparison (often moral comparison), and the desire to belong to an identity group that is valued positively by the majority.

The funny thing about the Zoldycks is that they do seem to teach their kids to some extent that murder is wrong and will be perceived as wrong by the out-group. But at the same time, a caveat is created: the reason why the in-group (their family) can and should engage in it is because it is in their nature. Asking Zoldycks not to murder is like asking a cat not to meow; they can do it simultaneously because of the family’s value-specific superiority and their moral inferiority—that they're good at what they do and inherently bad at what everyone else does. “We are the only ones who could ever love or understand you, you don’t need Them.” Not only is it isolating, it’s dehumanizing, and something like this is a classic tactic used to trap people.

Doesn’t work on Killua though! He swings in a counterintuitive direction by wanting acceptance from the out-group instead of withdrawing back to his safe, rejection-free in-group. I think that has to do with the fact that he’s also othered from that in-group in some manner.

Killua is part of the family, yet he’s the golden child. As of present, the entire operation revolves around him. He’s shown blatant favoritism: Illumi and Kikyo are obsessed with him, Zeno justifies preferential treatment when called on it, Silva is very lenient with him, and the butlers we’ve seen seem to all have some preference as well. The rest of his siblings may as well be invisible while he’s around. He’s not just a Zoldyck, he’s the heir. And with the amount of control exerted over him because of it, there’s an easy connection to make that being the family’s pet prodigy had a big hand in crafting Killua’s oppositional personality.

So funnily enough, by singling him out, the Zoldycks kind of guaranteed that Killua would start to suspect that he’s not actually a part of their in-group—fueling his desire to be normal (read: actually belong somewhere) and turn his search outward. Their tradition got too big and began cannibalizing itself. Put a pin in this because we’re returning to it later.

Going back to what Illumi actually said to Killua, during the fourth phase Killua both compares himself with Gon:

…and is absolutely baffled by the fight’s turn:

…which are things Illumi addresses—that one day, Killua will start evaluating Gon as an opponent, and that Gon confuses him. Though he’s using these to gaslight him into doubting his own emotions and desires, what Illumi says is all true to Killua.

Gon does confuse him because, unlike every other social interaction he’s ever had, Gon doesn’t reinforce what his family has said to him. Gon is not considered “the out-group” by Killua; he does not behave in the way Killua has seen and was taught the out-group behaves, so he must not have their same values. Most importantly, he likes Killua for who he is as an individual, not his proficiency at the things valued by his in-group, which makes him feel like an actual person and like he could potentially belong somewhere. Gon is dismantling the mechanisms of Killua’s abuse by… basically just being a silly little guy. And though obviously Killua isn’t aware of that specifically, he does feel it’s effects.

So when Illumi pops up and basically goes “Yeah, all that is a fluke. An outlier. I know how you think, this is what you were just doing, and you’re deluding yourself,” Killua has no argument because Gon is an outlier; the one person that’s not part of the out-group or the in-group.

And then Illumi goes and puts the final nail in the coffin by forcing him to surrender, thereby allowing Gon to die and "proving" him right in that he's incapable of connection. So he does what’s expected of a murderer then goes home.

Of course, Gon storms the castle anyway, but this exchange still haunts Killua. He believes Illumi is still right. There is still the in-group, the outgroup, and Gon.

This is the kind of thinking that Killua brings into every relationship he has and, despite wanting so badly to prove Illumi wrong, he uses these preconceptions in order to side step actually confronting it. Killua doesn’t like thinking about the possibility of Illumi being correct. He doesn’t want to; he gets genuinely upset, sometimes angry, when reminded of it (think his outburst with Nobunaga in Yorknew), and it’s hard for him to engage with the idea when it comes up. But proving Illumi wrong in any substantial manner would mean thinking about it.

Similarly to Gon assigning Killua the role of “the cool-headed one who keeps me in check,” Killua takes Illumi’s evaluations of their relationship and twists them into something he can operate off of. In his head, he’s assigned Gon the role of “the outlier" which Illumi described, but views Gon’s uniqueness optimistically instead of misanthropically. As a result, Killua ends up pouring his self-worth into being useful to Gon. He doesn’t really know how else to get people to want him around, and as long as Gon is around, Illumi is wrong.

Though Killua is doing this in order to prove so, he’s not actually fully rejecting Illumi—it’s very psychologically shallow because the foundation of it still relies on Illumi’s assessments. Doing this lets Killua avoid having to do overwhelming hard work in either self-evaluation or examination of his upbringing—ironically reinforcing what Illumi wants, which is to constantly run away from problems he can’t handle.

When I say Killua is avoiding having to do hard work on reflection, I don’t mean that in a negative way. Actually deconstructing all this would take years of grueling emotional labor to do, and Killua is a child. So instead, he applies this faulty worldview in ways that make him happy, and that’s better than nothing. There’s genuinely no other option for him at this point in the story and it would obviously be silly to condemn him for it.

This is the basis of his projection; a habitual avoidance of confronting difficult emotions or ideas and an application of traits onto people regardless of fitness to reinforce it—loosely Freudian. It’s because of this that the the reoccurring motif of often literal fight or flight is so important to Killua’s character and is so deeply entrenched in his development, beyond the physical prowess to defeat strong opponents or even just growing out of being an assassin. It's a metaphor for him learning to start actually unpacking his abuse.

3. The Outlier: Gon

Because the way he perceives himself has been molded by alienation, Killua has some difficulty mentalizing with people he sees as belonging to an out-group—instead relying on analysis and pattern recognition to mimic that function and compensate. This usually works out for him because he’s a smart kid, but not always, especially when there’s no pre-established pattern (such as that time he thinks himself into a hole during the Greed Island player selection process).

There are a few examples of Killua’s difficulty to mentalize with people he’s already decided are unlike him, but a lot of them can be simultaneously attributed to apathy or practicality, so I don’t want to say anything definitive. In that same vein, Killua also seems to have a rough time getting along with peers and certain authority figures in general, which is a result of many intersecting things, some having to do with projection—for example, I’m reasonably certain his difficulties with older women come from family misogyny and his own disdain for his mother—and some not.

Despite these varying reasons, I feel confident in saying mentalizing with assigned out-groups is something Killua struggles with because Gon, the person he spends most of the series glued at the hip with, is the single biggest example and indication of it.

As mentioned, Gon confuses the hell out of Killua at first. This subsides as the series goes on—he begins to understand Gon very well behaviorally, enough to accurately predict and describe him—but it returns in the Chimera Ant Arc when Gon’s previously reliable patterns start to shift and Killua has no idea how to deal with it. This gulf of dark and light he’s invented between them causes Killua to simultaneously project heavily onto Gon and understand him as someone so alien that he often completely misses Gon’s greater motivations (and cannot actually internalize his affections, though that’s not unique to the ant arc).

His perception of Gon is so wrapped in his perception of himself that arguably one of Killua’s most dramatic and iconic little internal monologues (“you are light”) occurs right after an emotional low point where he’s obviously feeling guilty and wondering whether he’s capable of performing his assigned role in their friendship, then is urged to no longer think about it (avoidance).

To make matters more obvious, Killua’s vocabulary in the “you are light” declaration is even ripped directly out of Illumi’s mouth (眩しすぎて, translated by Viz as “radiant” from Illumi then again as “too bright” during this scene). Killua idolizes Gon as being this brilliant outlier and relies on him as a key part of his psychological avoidance—not at all even considering whether this fundamental idea, which is borrowed from and agrees with Illumi, is wrong on its own.

In the CAA, Killua is constantly having these beliefs he’s trying to dodge nailed in not only by the adults around him but also his own actions. And, when Bisky confronts him with (what he hears as) the possibility that Gon’s mere presence isn’t enough to prove Illumi wrong and Killua will end up essentially killing him regardless, he becomes resigned to the idea that he is unfixable up until he rips that needle out of his brain.

Removing Illumi’s needle results in a high point for his esteem primarily because it forced Killua to actually linger and, again, think about Illumi and his abuse. It was a huge confrontation both physically and mentally, he did it by himself without any of his psychological crutches, and coming out on top built his confidence to the point where his mood/behavior changed enough for Gon to notice. But it didn’t erase his unease about their relationship.

As Killua begins to feel less stable in his self-appointed roles, Gon also starts to break down and starts prioritizing revenge on Pitou. Alone. And this makes Killua also feel less stable in Gon’s role as the outlier. Similarly to the woman who invents gossiping neighbors to avoid addressing shame, Killua invents judgement from his best friend to internally avoid addressing his internalized alienation. He ends up worrying that Gon will ostracize him and assuming the worst, when previously he thought he'd be the only one who wouldn't do that. He becomes hyper-observant of any possible rejection.

And he’s not worried about moral rejection like he used to be! Because when Palm is introduced, it becomes evident that the rejection Killua is worried about is revealed to be his emotional value to Gon. Whether Killua is as important to Gon as Gon is important to Killua—whether his feelings, romantic or otherwise, are reciprocated.

Then with Palm, these insecurities take the form of pretty stereotypical projection in the form of jealousy and cattiness, even after the whole dating thing is finished…

…and leads to his meltdown right in front of her, during which the narrative acknowledges and makes him finally voice these insecurities.

Like, when Gon says “Let’s go,” Killua immediately spirals into worrying what Gon means by it in terms of his value. Whether they are “just teammates” or something more.

And when Gon tells Killua “This has nothing to do with you,” he can verbally acknowledge that Gon is not being deliberately nasty, but it still hits him like a truck anyway. His true understanding of the situation, regardless of what he thinks logically, is that he is being ejected from their friendship—that Killua, who defines his personhood according to the roles assigned by both himself and Gon, is no longer wanted and no longer belongs anywhere.

A sign of disordered or delayed ability to mentalize in a child—appropriately, due to abuse or atypical attachment—is not being able to separate their own reaction from the intentions of their caregiver during a reprimand or some similar interaction. This is relevant in that Killua has placed Gon into a position with an inordinate (and frankly unfair) amount of emotional authority upon which he’s reliant for comfort and affirmation. Killua’s theory of mind is impaired in relation to Gon not only as is normal due to strong emotions, but also his projecting onto what Gon thinks, which is a result of othering himself from him.

4. The In-group

I think the above is… fairly obvious, and also a super unoriginal observation. But it’s made rhetorically useful by it’s converse: the fact that Killua has a really easy time mentalizing with people that are inhuman, whether morally or literally. I’ll rapid-fire a few examples because they’re pretty self-explanatory…

Killua recognizes Hisoka’s intentions because “[he’s] like him”.

More Hisoka parallels, this time including Gon

(I’m convinced a lot of these are with Hisoka because Togashi still wanted us to hang onto the abundance of “Killua will turn heel” red herrings in the early story. Small tangent, but during the exam Togashi loved to separate Killua from Gon, Kurapika, and Leorio in various ways, often physically, in part to encourage the audience to other him so that these red herrings would be extremely prominent even during Heaven’s Arena. But I think a Watsonian analysis is also fitting)

This one is shakier because it’s primarily an ethical debate which Gon and Bisky chime in on as well, but I thought it was good to include as part of a broader pattern since he specifically brings up moral values and how they define in-groups.

Killua empathizes with Ikalgo right after being willing to murder him lmfao. It's notable the way in which he starts checking around this time if the ants/people he's fighting are douchebags or not (do they have the right social identity or not?), which seemingly justifies killing them.

(I think it’s really interesting that the upper page centers Killua’s hands during the setup for a realization about Meruem hurting himself for the sake of a “special someone." It's like Killua's equivalent to Gon's "[You'd hurt yourself] when... you can't forgive yourself.")

The reason why this occurs has to do with the defined social identities created by his family and the immediate biases/prejudices associated with them. Because of how Killua has dehumanized himself in accordance with these traits, he is pre-disposed to extending understanding—whether that be actual compassion or simple insight—toward characters who are othered as monstrous in-universe (and by the audience, where it’s used as a narrative tool by Togashi) because these experiences of being alienated from the vast majority are most familiar and sensical to him.

This becomes pretty obvious to me when you take into account that Killua’s only friends other than Gon, Leorio, and Kurapika—or at least the only other people he actually calls his friends—are chimera ants (and, in the case of Palm, she was very much ostracized even when she was a human including by Killua himself). Characters like these are relatable and make someone part of an in-group, whether he likes it or not.

On that last point, I want to bring up this observation and comment made by him…

…because while this observation from Killua comes about naturally due to Pitou’s behavior during this confrontation, the comment about protecting not being in their nature sticks out to me as somewhat uncharacteristic. It feels distinctly very emotionally charged in the midst of a scene where Killua is deliberately trying to remain calm and impartial for the sake of Gon (exercizing the role Gon gave to him).

Part of this is definitely because Pitou has been symbolized to these kids for what they did to Kite, but Pitou also has a LOT of parallels with Killua as a result of them both being intrinsically intertwined with the questions of nature Togashi brings up in Hunter x Hunter. Killua is “by nature a murderer,” Pitou is “by nature incapable [of this action]”; I believe they are very deliberate foils, so it’s interesting to hear Killua think things about Pitou that Illumi once said to him.

It’s also worthwhile to note that the role Pitou was born into and the role Killua gives himself are essentially the same, Guard, and that Meruem and Gon mean similar things to them (of course, there is the “light that illuminates all”/“you are light” comparison, but more abstractly, both Meruem and Gon represent the Ants’/Killua’s potential for expansion/evolution—in the food chain and in life/purpose respectively—and are protected as such). They also abide by this role with almost the exact same amount of devotion; we see this in the way Pitou crying over being trusted with something so important to Meruem (healing Komugi) is a parallel to how Killua was so impacted by being relied upon for an important task to Gon (holding the dodgeball).

Killua definitely doesn’t consider any similarities consciously the way he does with Hisoka, Ikalgo, or through mentalization with Meruem, but when he is thinking this of Pitou, he’s looking at a narrative foil, which I find telling. I think it’s a very classic case of Freudian projection.

5. The Mirror: Alluka and Nanika

All this brings me to what I want to talk at length about, which I suppose you can already guess because I gave it away in the section heading.

Killua’s relationship with his sisters has always been fascinating to me because they’re probably the only people in the world he would genuinely consider as sharing his precise in-group. Not just the Zoldyck family in-group, but the Killua in-group. And it really effects the way he thinks during the Election Arc.

I’ve tried my best to neatly separate Alluka and Nanika into their own sections, but it’s still going to be sorta all over the place (moreso than this analysis already is) mostly because right now Killua still hasn’t totally figured out that Alluka and Nanika are basically two whole different people. He’s certainly much closer to that than the rest of his family considering he actually makes a distinction between them, but he’s still not treating Nanika like an individual at this point in the story. And that’s super important to the way he projects onto them, so it’s going to be a little messy. Sorry in advance

Alluka

Remember that pin I told you to save for later? Now is later.

Alluka and Nanika sit at the table with Killua in being othered not only by the defined out-group (due to just being a Zoldyck), but by the people who were supposed to be The In-group™ in the first place: his family. Of course, Alluka’s situation is very different and accelerated faster than a racecar the second Nanika stopped being a secret, but evidently she was kept secret for a reason. Killua was already extremely astute even at the age when these events were happening, and probably assessed (accurately) that there would be huge drama if Nanika were ever discovered; he even went so far as to keep hiding things about how her powers worked long after the gig was up. It would be kind of stating the obvious to say someone who does all that isn’t someone who considers his sister(s) normal according to in-group standards. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been a secret at all.

The reason why Killua got along with his sister(s) so well pre-lockup and pre-needle was most likely because he was already being socially separated from his siblings as the family heir. He then took comfort from Alluka in knowing he wasn’t the only “weird” one, even if no one but him knew that yet, and projected onto her (making decisions about Nanika for her that reflect his own wishes—to keep her secret so that no one would treat her differently)

It’s partially this same projection (i say partially because it’s also, like, basic compassion) that makes Killua so mad when Alluka is outright excluded—not just symbolically, but legitimately—from the family.

He himself strives desperately to be “normal”/belong somewhere, and that ‘somewhere’ includes his own family, though at this point he obviously has more complicated emotions about it. He wants to be understood and accepted by them without being smothered—even Illumi, when he tests Killua to make a wish that would kill him, is included in this desire. In Killua’s ideal world, the Zoldycks would be on good terms with each other and act “normal”; a fantasy from a childhood whose corpse he still drags around because he doesn’t recognize that he’s been abused beyond being helicoptered and needled. Alluka herself shares this:

It’s one more thing they have in common. And, like he does when Illumi spoke in his head during Yorknew or when he said he didn’t actually want anything during the Exam, Killua gets angry when this fantasy is denied. He becomes confrontational in a way he usually wouldn’t otherwise.

I feel it’s notable that Killua does not contradict Alluka’s idea that if she were gone, everyone would get along more. Not because I think he believes it, but because I think he also doesn’t know the answer. So instead, he pivots into comforting her another way. And crucially, it’s by using something he can understand: that there is a special outlier who loves her even if she doesn’t belong anywhere, and as long as they’re together she doesn’t have to worry about it.

Cool. All that’s pretty easy to get. But it gets more complicated, because it always does.

When Killua returns for Alluka, he returns because he needs to save Gon. And with Gon comes all the baggage associated with him.

Despite the deconstruction of the dark/light dichotomy with him during the CAA, Killua remains identified with a ‘nonhuman’-aligned in-group only he belongs to, and continues judging himself accordingly. It’s a position that still puts a wall of glass between him and the majority out-group, and leaves him uncomfortably othered in the Zoldyck in-group. Gon was the all-important, miraculous outlier that made him be able to live with it, the one person that made him feel like he belonged somewhere even if it wasn’t on the basis of being in the same moral in-group. The exception to the rule of ostracization. But he knows better now. And while that’s really good progress because it begins to demystify Gon (who deserves to be understood), it leaves him in a very fragile state when confronting his family because that role was a lynchpin for upholding the psychological anti-Illumi safety net he built after the Hunter Exam.

Ultimately, this leaves Killua in a situation where his sisters can uniquely reaffirm this unhealthy superego because he can project onto them in ways he can’t with anyone else.

By saddling himself with the lone responsibility to heal Gon as a way to atone for failing to perform his role—an insecurity magnified by “this has nothing to do with you”—Killua is paralleling Gon’s guilt complex to a degree (as he does throughout the entire story, but it feels especially prominent here). Where they differ is that Gon’s apology and the validation of his emotions Killua will get from that is the relief from guilt he seeks, not the self-destruction Gon does.

In Killua’s head, they both failed their roles in their friendship—Killua didn’t end up being of any use to Gon in the end, and Gon ended up ostracizing Killua—so Killua vows to do his part again as long as Gon does so as well.

In a way, this is him acknowledging both his emotional understanding and his logical understanding of that exchange in the palace—that Gon didn’t mean what he said and did (thereby expecting him to apologize), but it still hurt him (he wants an apology anyway). This apology isn’t about blaming Gon for what he did or even really holding him responsible—which is why he can tease him lightheartedly about it later—it’s more about Killua’s own emotions. He’s standing up for himself! Which is an indication of a maturing theory of mind.

Some people read this panel with an undercurrent of Killua meaning this will be the last time he helps Gon in this way—and I understand where that comes from due to the fact that they separate afterward, and don’t really have an objective counterargument. So take this next part with a grain of salt, but I really don’t think that’s true. Killua isn’t the type to do that… I don’t even think it’s in his brain to separate from Gon right now. This is just Killua deciding that he needs to start laying down boundaries and paying attention to what he really wants in their relationship outside of being useful. It’s an out-loud admission of how deeply he cares, to the point where he can no longer wholly process or justify it as a transaction, as he does with most forms of love for self-evident reasons. It’s the beginnings of him learning about unconditionality. This is a huge step.

So…. where does it sour?

Well, Killua is faced with a similar sort of guilt brought on by role-failure (the role being “big brother”) when he comes to retrieve Alluka…

Whether you believe “Was it because Illumi was manipulating me?” is Togashi giving the audience a hint or this line being pure in-universe speculation, it doesn’t quite matter, because Killua feels the same about it at the end of the day: guilt and shame.

Though he apologizes to Alluka for this and she readily accepts it, it’s obvious these feelings continue to gnaw at him throughout the entire arc. It retroactively chips down the work he did back at the hospital, since they are the same emotion with similar catalysts.

I say this because I feel like you can infer that his guilt over these two separate but similar things bleeds together by the way Killua, when talking to himself, tends to refer to the two ‘savings’ in conjunction. You could totally say I’m onto nothing because one is a result of the other so no shit they’re related, but I think it’s significant to this discussion.

Specifically the last exchange also serves as a way for Killua to verbally reassure Alluka of her importance to him. The fact that he thinks this is necessary also shows to me that, again, he’s still feeling guilty for it, even though Alluka never indicates that she holds it against him. These panels further reaffirm this belief of mine:

…because Killua is planning to permanently put Nanika to sleep so that Alluka can “spend more time with him” (in the words she herself uses when complaining about it), which indicates that, again, it is something he feels horrible for—and that he sees Nanika in a very particular way which assigns fault to her that doesn’t quite exist, but we’ll get to it soon.

What I’m trying to say here is that because saving Alluka is inseparable from saving Gon, so too becomes the magnified things he feels over not being able to do either of these things beforehand. So successfully defending Alluka becomes way for him to relieve this now-compounded guilt and reassure himself that he’s still capable of fulfilling his self-assigned roles. If he can do that, he can still belong somewhere. He’ll still be worthy of love.

To summarize, Killua not only related to Alluka when she was young—making her very easy to project onto—but also the situation calls for Killua to see her as an extension of his best friend, which only rubs salt into the wound and serves to make him more irrational about it since Killua is still seeking redemption and reparation for the breakdown in the CAA.

Considering all the progress Killua has made, this is a relatively hard relapse. It makes sense, though; just look at what’s happening! Illumi has been the main catalyst for all this agonizing, the person whose assessments he’s developed a pathological need to simultaneously prove wrong and also avoid thinking about altogether. Now he’s got to stare that person in the face with everything on the line and tell him to fuck off.

This is the needle yank prelude on steroids for Killua—a magnification of that time when he was constantly teetering on the edge of ditching and clinging to Gon based on how useful he saw himself. Back then, when Bisky pointed out that he was putting Gon in danger, he decided that he had to leave. So, when his brother uses Nanika to put Alluka in danger, Killua decides Nanika has to leave. For a little while, Illumi becomes unconquerable again, and Killua regresses back into running away.

Nanika

This is where I leave you with this post to read as the conclusion. The readmore is actually pretty relevant, whereas it wasn't when I was answering the anon. Underwhelming, I know. Whatever man.

I really am sorry for how long it is. Tumblr yelled at me 5 times about the image limit, I had to improvise. Being super succinct without leaving out everything I want to say is a skill I do not have. Regardless, thanks for reading and hopefully this was at least a little interesting!

[kumkaniudaku]

It seems like Senior has accepted that his son is who he is and I feel like it’s due to him being a wild boy back in the day. Even though he won’t tell his son about it (at least for now lol). I feel like his life pre-church gives him a bit more understanding that mama may not have.

With that being said, does mama ever come to terms?

Does her husband help her with that?

I know she’s working with a version of him that never existed and she wants what she wants for him due to her own upbringing. I’m just wondering if her parents let her do her own thing sometimes or was it church 3-4x a week and sometimes twice on Sundays? Cause if it was all church and no play, I see why she’s struggling. Indoctrination can be hard to depart from. Especially if that’s all you know.

It’s like when parents find out their child is anything but cis and straight and they struggle to accept it because all their lives they’ve been told that it’s wrong and an abomination (with no real evidence to back it up mind you). So they love their child and pretend that that part of them doesn’t exist. Hoping it’s a phase.

I feel like his mom is doing the same thing…kinda…or am I way off base? Lol.

That’s a lot of Senior’s thought process for sure he knows what it’s like to be a young man finding your way through the world. The other part of it comes from him not wanting to lose his son. Really either of his kids, but Kelvin in particular because he’s been mentally and physically very far away and Senior doesn’t want that to happen again.

His mother does eventually, mostly come to terms. Her parents did not leave much room for anything outside of Jesus. They were very strict, religious people who believed in the ceremony and tradition of church damn near more than they believed in the fullness of Christ. So, that thinking is rooted DEEP! She may never let it all go.

She absolutely believed (and partially still believes) Kelvin is just being rebellious. She constantly asks if everything is alright hoping he’ll spill some dark secret and help her unlock the reason he’s been acting out. She doesn’t understand why he put down music to pursue art. She doesn’t get why he won’t come home. He complete aversion to ministry is concerning to her. And to her, he’s not being himself. To Kelvin, she’s fundamentally rejecting who he is a person. Asia is, to his mom, an extension of some sort of temporary straying while, to Kelvin and everyone else, Asia is exactly the type of woman he wants and needs.

It takes Kelvin being radically honest with his mama to get her mostly on board. It was difficult. He felt like he was chastising her and she felt like she’d been fed a lie, but they got through it. But Kelvin knows that’s there’s still a part of her, deeeeeeep down, that prays he’ll change course. Which, again, is less about Asia and more about who she thinks he should be based on what she considers a vision from God. Letting go of that feels like disobedience to God in her eyes. Really, that vision was just something conjured up based on her own programming.

[itsgrimeytime]

I don't know if y'all know how extensive my GIF searches are for my fanfics.

I will comb through different phrases for hours-

(I've found 'rick grimes beard' and 'rick grimes grin' have some QUALITY works. For my fellow rick girlies.)

[dykedvonte]

@gecko-in-a-can THIS ABSOLUTELY

Resentment is such a big part of Benny’s motives towards House, feeling he’s underserving to rule and shouldn’t have the right to keep the title of Vegas just because he claimed it first long ago. Say what you will, Benny puts the effort in, through honest and dishonest work albeit, but he puts in the effort. Not saying House didn’t but House had the luxury of having a lot of that effort done before the war and subordinates to do so after. House is untouchable, something everyone wants in the Mojave, if not for the power, but because of the security. House takes that for granted seeing how easy he thinks it is to buy people. Benny, a Mojave native, has to be irate about that seeing how he has seen the heights and slums of both lives.

Also with the AIs it’s so telling because in a lot of ways, Yes Man has more autonomy than House’s major personality securitrons. Yeah, Yes Man has to be helpful but he’s aware and able to be snarky and coy. Benny has an issue with not being listened to but that’s the only perimeter Yes Man needs to act on. He can’t condescend but lord you can tell when he wants to. House’s AIs serves specific and highly detailed functions but are confined to act in accordance. They are subservient to a T and are extensions of House while Yes Man really is a creation that adapts further, hence his desire for the assertive upgrade. Benny made something, or at least was okay with a helper, that can progress for itself. House made things that replicate or facilitate an era of the past and don’t hold the power to contest it.

[adore-gregor]

Ooof

Looking at old posts, sometimes you just ask yourself what was I thinking 😅

[thingsmethinks]

Talking to [leftist/socialist/progressive/whatever] white people as a brown girl is always an experience

[roobylavender]

(Really long ask ahead i’m sorry!) I think your thoughts on dick and his similarities vs differences to bruce are so interesting! Personally i’m wondering how much of NTT played an influence on this kind of characterization bc i’ve never fully finished ntt but i read like nearly all the pre-80s batman 1940 issues lol and dick very much was portrayed as more idealistic than bruce in some ways while more no-nonsense (? For lack of better word) in other ways, like when it comes to batman easing up a little on selina for romance reasons LOL. Though ofc dick totally turns into - well, a dick - in team books, as i grow older i find myself far more compelled by a potential story of an 18 yr old who seemed to have the whole weight of the world on his shoulders (by his own perception) and breaking under his own impractically strong sense of duty and sky-high expectations for others, then realizing as he grows older that it doesn’t have to be that way esp after seeing the perspectives of characters like kory, wally, joey, roy, etc. Like personally as someone who never really had a huge interest in NTT anyway, i’m surprised at how desperately people want to hold on to the characterization of dick when he was 18-19 and never letting him grow past that, like it’s so difficult for me to believe that at age 25 he would be the same uptight controlling kid that he was at 19. Maybe i’m biased though bc i was like one of those insufferable INTJ internet stereotypes as a teenager, and while that worldview did bring me achievements i’m proud of like the fact that i’m in med school rn studying what i love, i still know that at age 22 i have changed SO much from when i was 18 and i can’t imagine any reasonably mature or normally-functioning person (let alone someone high-functioning like dick) not doing the same lol. Especially since dick is the kind of person who would literally die if he’s not constantly growing and evolving past his faults bc of his insufferable perfectionism, idk how he’d be willfully blind to the negative effects of his worldview in early NTT and refuse to grow from there. He even has a quote that’s like “i’ve spent years as a student of my own behavior” which i always found highly encouraging bc i know he really does want to improve himself even at his worst. It reminds me of that Marcus Aurelius quote: “if someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, i shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone; the harm is to persist in one’s own self-deception and ignorance.” But what are your thoughts? (Thank you for reading all this 🥹)

oh i absolutely agree! i cannot tell you how many times i think about the person i was a couple years ago and who i am now like i cringe so much omg.. maturity is an ever persistent process even if we don't recognize its effects immediately and it absolutely is crazy to think that anyone would remain in such a static state of mind for several years on end. esp when like you said dick is someone who wants to be better! so despite his several hypocrisies it is nonetheless in his best interests to look internally and analyze and evolve. and i feel like that very much could have happened had there been any actual segue between dick's breakup with kory and his re-entry into the batfam. i don't think there was much of a connection between these two sets of writers at all and so what you got is what felt like two very distinct parts of dick's life that didn't necessarily reveal a bridge point. so it's not entirely unrealistic that dick may grow to be the person (at least to some extent) that bat canon portrayed him to be in the years that followed but i certainly think as it stands it felt unearned and like all of his issues explored in ntt were conveniently swept to the side without any semblance of closure (albeit i do think some of these issues are addressed in outsiders '03 but in that dickheaded way that winick explores things generally. so i'm not sure it's the kind of closure people actually want). it's very sad and ig that's what people cling to more than anything. it's not that they're opposed to him growing to be a better person but that they're opposed to a version of dick who feels like he sprung out of nothing

[coyoxxtl]

“THE ZODIAC HAS CHANGEd” babygirl no it didn’t i beg u to look up the difference between tropical and vedic astrology

[tardis--dreams]

I was crying out of gratitude because i thought this gave me one (1) additional day so i could get some sleep today and finish it by tonight before i realized there was no 31st September- he gave me an Entire additional Month???!!?

[teenagefeeling]

my paper is done! now i just need to write another by friday!

[flippedorbit]

you know, i think my mom should sometimes watch what she says to and around me