#crash analysis

[sh1nsoukoku]

realizing that reaffirming each other with words has always been shin soukoku’s thing

but even more than that Akutagawa’s famous repetition of this line is no longer a one off…

but a thing they both do now…

cause what better way to hammer a message into your stubborn idiot partners brain than using his own words against him…. and saying it over and over again???

[rockwgooglyeyes]

One of the things that's so compelling to me about Eternal Sugar and Hollyberry's storyline, besides the fact that it is wlw, the juxtaposition of happiness and passion is super fascinating. It's easy to compare Eternal Sugar and Hollyberry's dynamic to Shadow Milk and Pure Vanilla because like Shadow Milk, Eternal Sugar is not trying to kill her other half, as she "only wants Hollyberry to be happy." Yet, with Shadow Milk and Pure Vanilla, Shadow Milk wished to corrupt Pure Vanilla in the same way he had been corrupted, and gain someone who fully understood him, as well as to get indirect revenge on Pure Vanilla for being chosen by the Witches instead of him. Shadow Milk did have harmful intentions when he met Pure Vanilla, whereas with Eternal Sugar and Hollyberry, Eternal Sugar has no ill intent.

It could be argued that Eternal Sugar does have ill intent, with her temper and her desire for control, the way she manipulates the people around her so that they remain within her grasp as well as subservient to her, but at the same time, she truly does view her actions as benevolent. She believes that, even if she is hurting people currently, that the ends justify the means, because as long as they stay in her Garden, they can remain happy and healthy forever. If by staying in her Garden, she continues her control over them, well that's just a happy accident!

One of her Arena Loading screen quotes is literally "Your passions will only lead to suffering..." which was such a game changer for me personally, because of the way it frames her motivation. By trapping people in her saccharine web, she is depriving them of their ability to make their own choices and ultimately get hurt, in the name of keeping them safe. Hollyberry's soul jam being passion as a variation on happiness makes a lot of sense, through that lens, because pursuing our passions makes us happy but at the very same time, passion can fizzle out suddenly, or our passions can lead us to ruin. Eternal Sugar tries to subdue the passions of her followers in order to keep them content and complacent, whereas Hollyberry is in direct opposition to that, saying that people should be allowed to go wherever the wind takes them, and her own actions embody that.

Nevertheless, the ways in which both of their soul jams are twisted by their own personal flaws is what makes it so intriguing to me. Hollyberry's "flights of passion" from her kingdom were her responding to her own restlessness, stress, and fear of stagnation, and it led her to abandoning her son and letting him grow up alone. Eternal Sugar, on the other hand, has many cookies that she cares about and yet she condescends to them and exerts control over them against their will in an effort to maintain their happiness. Eternal Sugar is very much an "ends justify the means" sort of person whereas Hollyberry lives in the moment and impulsively flits from place to place in order to keep running from her past. They both have complicated, kind of fucked up relationships with their sons, they both have devotees who follow them while remaining blind to the true flaws of the person they follow, and they both have their vices.

Hollyberry is constantly running and Eternal Sugar never moves. Hollyberry changes easily to fit whichever role is necessary for the situation while Eternal Sugar is unwilling and unable to change. It's almost like unstoppable force meet immovable object, and their polarity is what's so striking to me. Even as Hollyberry runs away from her problems, she does not allow herself to want things or get close to people, for fear of getting hurt. She may be passionate but she has, as Pavlova Cookie says, a cold and empty heart. That's why what Eternal Sugar says to her is groundbreaking because no one has given Hollyberry permission before, but here, she's can take time and it's not about everyone else, it's about her. Yet, the fact that Eternal Sugar is worried about everyone but herself is a great example of the similarities between them, as they both prioritize others above themselves and ignore their own emotions for the sake of other people. They are inherently so different and so similar, literally different shades of the same color, Hollyberry with her warm undertones and Eternal Sugar with her cool ones.

With Dark Cacao and Mystic Flour, they clash because of the fact that they are both unwilling to compromise on their ideals and willing to do whatever it takes to maintain their position. With Shadow Milk and Pure Vanilla, they clash because of Pure Vanilla's unwillingness to entertain Shadow Milk's tricks at a certain point, instead seeing through them and cutting through the bullshit to confront the person behind the mask, something that Shadow Milk is extremely uncomfortable with. Burning Spice and Golden Cheese clash because of Burning Spice's lack of care for his own people and Golden Cheese's possessiveness over her hoard, her kingdom, and her unwillingness to sacrifice that. Burning Spice is too free of burdens, to the point that he has no attachments, and Golden Cheese has so many attachments that they both empower her and bog her down.

The diversity through which the juxtaposition between the Beasts and their Heroes is shown truly is impressive because of both the overlap between different duos and the fact that each duo has something unique to just them. Every duo has shared traits between the two members, and every one has similarities between the Beast and the Hero but the ways in which the level of similarity compared to the level of difference changes throughout the depictions is very cool to me because of the way that it shows how people who are similar can clash over the littlest things, and how people who are so different can come together and unite under one banner.

[theunholyvirginemilyprentiss]

The BAU on a commercial flight:

EMILY: Stopped and searched at the security checkpoint because she forgot she was wearing an ankle holstered gun. Is the person who kicks your seat and hogs the armrest because gay people do not know how to sit on a chair properly.

JJ: Is the one having her armrest hogged by Emily. Opens a packet of peanuts and gives someone an allergic reaction. Should have stuck with Cheetos…

TARA: “It’s okay, I’m a doctor! Not a doctor of medicine, but I’m sure I can figure it out!”

PENELOPE: Watches movies on her tablet and eats M&M’s like the little iPad kid she is, eventually falling asleep on Morgan’s shoulder during ‘Legally Blonde’.

MORGAN: Shamelessly flirting with the flight attendants and trying to hide the fact that he is watching ‘Legally Blonde’ over Penelope’s shoulder—and loving it.

HOTCH: Reading FBI case files in his sunglasses, not noticing the kid who has been staring at him the whole time thinking ‘damn, James Bond be on this flight.’

SPENCER: Talking to that same kid and his mother, explaining aerodynamics and discussing plane crash statistics. The kid’s mother requests a seat change.

ELLE: Lets Spencer explain aerodynamics to her instead. She swaps her red jello for his orange jello from the airplane meal because red is his favourite.

Check out my Masterlist for more BAU scenarios

[melit0n]

"I'm gay" "I'm straight" Okay? I've got solar flares for your dead Gods?? Space dust for your fuel rods???

[orie-jai]

So if Katniss and Peeta are Penelope and Odysseus

And Haymitch and Lenore Dove are Orpheus and Eyuridice

Then that makes Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Jason and Medea

So i did end up writing that essay but I also wanna point out the amazing analysis included here and here 💛

[kkoct-ik]

milgram analysis: 'john' (orekoto, オレ) did not form to vent mikoto's stress through murder, and he is not the alter that 'did it'

(mainly me musing on how DID functions, as well as analysing the text. enjoy)

will be referring both to wiki and milgram-en's (Neoplasm, interrogation) translations. mainly wiki for gesturing, and milgram-en for textual analysis. thank you so much!

note on names: for the purposes of this post:

09 refers to the person/system, all parts included

mikoto refers to 09 with the exception of orekoto/'john' (ie. all his 'normative' / in denial / confused / playful demeanours). this is the alter who is 'on trial' for the purposes of Milgram, so I will also use this name when talking about voting

'john' refers to the 09 (オレ, ore) who claims in Neoplasm to be the alter who commit murder. I will also make the assumption that he is the same alter as 09 (俺, ore) in John Doe that attacks es, since he expresses familiarity with 俺's actions in John Doe

i'm working with translations and 09 is a complicated character, so please forgive any slip ups!

thank you for reading.

introduction: widely accepted fanon

i frequently see that mikoto's case is controversial on the axis of 'system responsibility'.

on the side of guilty voters, mikoto is guilty because he and john are part of the same system, and unfortunately, that means they share culpability. i often hear rhetoric implying that 09's DID means mikoto was functionally possessed, and that he had no say in the murders, but regardless, him being guilty is just an unfortunate logistical situation. it's just how it is.

this rhetoric also makes it easy to argue for his innocence, and counter with how unfair this expectation is. if DID means he was functionally possessed, couldn't control his actions, and his alter just went out and killed people, regardless of 'john' having any noble intentions, that's tragic and unfair.

aside from being a fucking horrific way to see someone with DID (implying alters' actions are burdens, foreign intrusions that you just have to deal with. no recognition or self compassion whatsoever. die), this discourse also rides on the assumption that between 'normative' mikoto and his alter dubbed 'john', mikoto had nothing to do with his crime. that 'john' formed as a result of overwhelming stress mikoto had bottled up, and, pitying him deeply, 'john' decided to find mikoto an outlet through murder, something mikoto did not consent to.

i don't blame anyone for coming to this conclusion or approaching 09's crime in this way. it is very very deeply what milgram leads you towards, and what 'john' wants you to believe is going on.

through the VDs and MVs, 'john' consistently paints the picture that it was his choice to murder and his alone, that he did it without mikoto's consciousness and anthetically to mikoto's character.

so. what's the problem? he's told us very straightforwardly across the board that what you've just described is what's going on. can we not believe the words of the prisoner themselves?

no. because 09, like all prisoners, has reason to lie to us to secure his survival. and 'john' in particular has every reason to convince us of a reality where he and he alone is the guilty party.

i very very strongly believe that 'john' is manipulating the audience to create the impression he does out of an ego-protective obligation. so i'm writing this post. and i hope i can convince you too.

main body 1: the purpose of alters (no, we are not functionally possessed):

let's start at the beginning. why did 'john' form? why would an alter with his characteristics form at all? this will help us understand why he does things, and what his role is within 09's life.

alters in DID typically form in response to new life roles and traumas, with the key note being that these aforementioned roles or traumas could not be handled by / identified with the alters that already exist. thus, a new dissociated state emerges to isolate that event or carry out that role. memory gaps may occur when the mere existence of that role / event is intolerable, or dissociation is otherwise high.

i have already written a long document on writing DID. check it out if you are unfamiliar with the basics.

we are aware of a few facts about mikoto's life, which can clue us in to what those roles and traumas may have led new alters to form.

first, he works an overwhelming job and never gets a days rest. it's implied he does not take good care of himself because of how all-consuming his job is, and that it takes him to a breaking point.

second, he commit mass murder.

third, he was suddenly brought to milgram, put under 24/7 surveillance, and told he was a killer, despite not remembering doing anything of the sort.

i frequently see people come to the conclusion that 'john' formed as a result of his stressful job, and functions to let mikoto 'blow off steam'. there's a few reasons i don't think this is the case.

an alter who forms as a result of a stressful job is more likely to handle and isolate the source of stress itself. for example, an automatic alter to handle work and nothing else, isolating that stress from the rest of their personality.

i really dont think an alter can form to 'blow off steam'. by definition, 'john' is a dissociative identity, disconnected from mikoto. whatever he does in terms of emotional processing is by design not going to impact mikoto.

in John Doe, 'john's' demeanour appears majorly aligned with fictionalised stereotypes of violent split personalities, appearing sadistic and animalistic. this alter presentation doesn't just 'happen' without reason, and i can't find a reason for 'john' to present himself like this if he truly formed to put himself first and 'blow off steam'.

so why did 'john' form?

main body 2: the purpose of 'john'

it's my opinion he formed as a result of (ie. after) the murders, as a way to contain and identify with those actions, because mikoto could not. i believe 'john' protects mikoto from 09's identity as a murderer and that intolerable experience in general, by allowing him to dissociate from it and forget it.

(note: it's not in my interest to pin the crime on any one alter, and i think it's weird to do so. you will notice i refer to 09's (as a whole) identity as a murderer, rather than blaming any one part, since it's an objective fact that 09, as a person, killed people. i'm opposed to holding any single alter responsible, but i am absolutely certain that if you are to argue that one is, it would not be 'john'.)

i believe that through distinguishing himself from mikoto through his accent, personality presentation, and sense of self, 'john' becomes the archetypal 'monster', which serves to reassure mikoto that 'john' is 'not him', and thus disassociates mikoto from the things 'john' takes ownership of: namely, 09's murderous actions and 09's identity as someone who has killed.

i also believe that following the transition into Milgram, 'john', as a protective alter is forced to develop beyond just psychologically protecting mikoto from the reality that 09 are a murderer. due to the voting system, it becomes important for 09's physical survival and wellbeing that 'john' can convince the audience that he is distinct from mikoto. he takes advantage of the fact that mikoto is the only alter on trial, and begins to spin sympathy for mikoto as a helpless victim, and negotiate on the terms of mikoto's innocence, by reiterating that it was 'john', and only 'john', who did it.

let's break down some 'john' truths:

he has a rough demeanour in contrast to mikoto's soft-spoken, and in John Doe, appears violent and sadistic

he distinguishes himself from and contrasts himself to mikoto by making a point to alternate personal pronouns

he claims to be the alter that commit the murders

he insists that this means mikoto should be found innocent, and that mikoto had nothing to do with it

when he realises that es may not agree with that view, he begins to plead, and then attempts to negotiate with es, being willing to sacrifice his existence as 'john' by promising to 'disappear'

he, well. this:

I'll take it all - bear it all (...) and I'll be rid of it. I (ore) ... was born in order to protect me. I (ore) would do whatever it takes to protect me (boku).

i find these last words 'john' says to es are the most telling, and really give us an insight into his motivations and what he considers his role and responsibility.

note that it's not to help mikoto vent stress. it's to take on the burden of everything that causes 09 distress. that being, for the most part, his guilt. he expresses a desire to isolate that trauma into himself as 'john' and vanish it, and maybe it's the DID in me, but all i'm hearing is the sound of a self-sacrificing protective alter who is desperately trying to keep his normal parts from having their illusion of a normal, trauma-free life shattered.

main body 3: where we can infer 'john' may be misleading us

ok, so i have this crazy theory i've convinced myself of that can strictly speaking be considered in line with the text using some mental gymnastics. but is there anything in the text that directly suggests that 'john' didn't do it?

yeah.

for starters, and perhaps a moot point, but mikoto is the alter on trial within Milgram. not only that, but 'john' is specifically not.

to be honest, this is what first got me theorising along this train of thought. if Milgram really 'doesn't make mistakes', and were presumably aware of 'john's' existence (in the sense that 'john' is considered unique, and not a prisoner), what makes mikoto the identity on trial?

like i said earlier, while i disagree with assigning culpability to individual alters, i do believe that if you were to assign culpability and only persecute and associate one alter for/with 09's crimes, it would not be 'john', because he did not exist as an alter at the time 09 commit those crimes. therefore, i believe Milgram is suggesting that of the alters, mikoto is the guilty party.

moreover, when you dissect 'john's' confession to es, there are certain patterns he displays that imply he is misleading us.

1. he is incredibly vague and emotionally disconnected when describing the event, lol.

his account of the murders appears fragmented and vague, and it's notable that he doesn't elaborate very much, or seem to feel much at all towards the event. contrast this to mikoto, who, when pressed on the topic of murder, starts to panic, scratch at his head, whimper and groan, and dissociate.

'john' either has a composure of steel, and truly does not feel remorse for his murder whatsoever, or, more likely, is that he only has a surface level connection to those memories, because his role only really extends towards identifying those memories and actions as 'his'.

it may be possible that mikoto is the alter with a unique repressed connection to the emotions and distress associated with the events, hence his violent reaction to es' pressing. it's also possible that the murders are blurry and hard to connect with for 09 in general, because trauma and dissociation can do that. but in both cases, i feel that 'john's' account of the murder don't really convince me that it was him that was conscious for the act, much less in a nonchalant and uncaring way, as he seems to put across.

2. he is first and foremost preoccupied with what his confession means for mikoto's guilt and protection

he gives up confessing and spinning his story after he's successfully convinced es that what he has said is the truth. he then immediately checks with the consequences of his actions.

this doesn't read as a confession to me, rather it looks like a blatant strategy. it's not about what 'john' did, it's about what 'john' can tell es to turn the tides in mikoto's favour.

when it becomes clear es may not be willing to see things his way, 'john' immediately loses his nonchalant composure. clearly, distinguishing himself as a uniquely guilty alter isn't working to secure his goals of mikoto's innocence, so he doubles down and makes emotional pleas.

again, note that it's not about 'john'. 'john' is content vilifying himself, and makes no attempt to humanise himself, or give explanation for 'his' actions. instead, he emphasises mikoto's innocence, and tries to evoke sympathy for him.

and in the end, 'john' strikes a deal with es; on the condition of mikoto's innocence, 'john' will 'disappear' himself. he cements his role as an alter that serves to carry 09's guilt so mikoto never has to face who he is and what he's done. the apparent subtext of 'proving one's use' reinforces this reading, i think. 'john' being able to 'disappear' himself and secure mikoto's guilt-free survival, is, honestly, the ideal situation as far as 09 believes.

the logistics of 'john' 'disappearing' himself and the fact that this, practically, would not make 09 guilt-free are a can of worms — this ... might not go how they expect ... — but 09's intentions are clear. 09 wants what 'john' isolates, carries, and represents (his guilt & identity as a killer) to vanish. whether or not he practically can 'vanish' anything (and what the consequences of his 'disappearing' are) remain to be seen (although, based on the voice clips, it seems that without 'john' around to contain 09's identity as a killer ... mikoto is not having a good time, psychologically).

in my opinion, 'john's' confession and the subsequent deterioration of the conversation are absolutely seeping in 'john's' ulterior motives to take all distress and discomfort from mikoto and protect him.

I'll take it all - bear it all (...) and I'll be rid of it. I (ore) ... was born in order to protect me. I (ore) would do whatever it takes to protect me (boku).

therefore, i would not take anything he claims about being autonomous, monstrous, and uniquely guilty at face value. 'john' has a goal, he has a purpose, and he will do anything to attain it.

main body 4: but maybe he's not... intentionally lying

all this said, i don't want the takeaway to be that 'john' is a manipulative liar. i also strongly believe that on a lot of levels, he, and 09 as a whole, believe what he is saying, because he has to.

like i said at the start, alters in DID encapsulate roles and traumas that could not be identified by the alters that already exist. if 'john' exists to isolate 09's identity as a killer, that means that 09 as a whole cannot tolerate the idea that mikoto could do such a thing.

i find 'john's' musing on the 'kind of person' that mikoto is very telling.

09 has a very firm idea of what a kind of gentle, sensitive, victimised person mikoto is, which makes the fact that he broke under the pressure and murdered people an even more intolerable reality. however, it's crucial for 09's health that they continue to believe in their goodness and maintain the illusion of a normal life for their everyday parts.

therefore, it's safest for 09's ego and psychological stability for 'john' to truly believe he is guilty and mikoto innocent. he also, after all, expresses incredibly high distress at the suggestion that mikoto may be punished or considered 'guilty', yet displays no such distress at his own condemnation. this reality where mikoto is innocent is clearly a source of stability for 09 across the board. so i do believe all of 09 believe this is the case, at least emotionally, and collectively work to sustain this reality for their psychological welfare.

i also believe 'john' isn't necessarily lying about believing in his role and personal guilt just because of how much self-hatred he betrays.

the aforementioned utter lack of self-respect (never standing up for himself) and subservience to mikoto's wellbeing (being willing to 'disappear' for mikoto's sake, claiming his all-encompassing purpose is to protect 09) implies a low self esteem. the end of Double as well as just how fucking miserable he sounds at towards end of Neoplasm betrays that he does feel immense guilt for 'his' actions, but only in relation to how the intolerable identity/experience he holds causes harm to mikoto.

'john', ultimately, is a character who represents a lot of self-hatred. he hates what he represents, he hates what he 'brings' to 09's identity, and he hates himself for existing and serving as a constant reminder of their identity as a killer that distresses mikoto and threatens their guilt-free manufactured reality so much.

(timeline translation document)

mikoto also targets 'john' to blame him for 'causing problems', to add layers to the self-hatred. 'john' counters emotionally, evoking his subservience and desire to protect, and defending his existence on the basis that he tried to help.

practically, i believe 'john' does help, by protecting mikoto from the reality that 'he' (09) killed people. but in 09's eyes, 'john's' 'helping' is 09's unexplainable and fragmented violent outburst, and thus 'john' has done a crap job at helping anything. this leads 'john' to not understand his value as an alter and hate himself, being ready to throw himself under the bus for mikoto's sake to 'save him' from the consequences of 09's guilt, and leads mikoto to lash out at 'john'.

i'll just say, from experience, throwing blame between alters that are associated with traumatic experiences is an unfortunate and common experience with DID. i even talk about it in my DID representation doc, as to illustrate why self-compassion and tolerance is vital to healing.

It’s very easy for us DID folk to simply wish that all of it would go away - to wish all of them would go away - because they must be the root of all our problems. They’re too needy, they’re too sad, they’re too angry, they hurt me, and I don’t understand them. I wish they would leave. I just want peace, we think. (...) Regardless of how alien and aggressive we feel, people with DID aren’t possessed, and our hurting and self-harming and destructive parts aren’t demons. They’re traumatised facets of a traumatised person. And no part of a traumatised person deserves to be repressed and vilified and shunned. (...) To me, a hopeful narrative and resolution is anything that can bring the parts together cohesively while loving their differences. (...) Navigating the decades of internal conflict and self-hatred and transforming it into tolerance and love. — Me, The Subjective Comprehensive Guide to [DID] Representation

... great job with the tolerance and love, guys.

conclusion / tl;dr:

i don't think 'john' as an alter appeared one day and decided to kill people to help mikoto cope with work stress.

i think 'john' is a very complicated part of mikoto, that identifies with the act and identity of killing, to keep it from mikoto and protect him. he presents himself as the 'kind of person' that would kill, and who is different to mikoto, because to 09, mikoto is not that 'kind of person'.

i think 09 use DID and the distinctions between alters to protect themselves psychologically, because that's why the disorder exists.

i also think it gives them an advantage in Milgram: by leaning into their DID and maladaptive self-ostracisation, they can attempt to convince the audience that 09's guilt is split between two alters: an innocent and a guilty.

using this, 'john', who hates himself as it is, promises to the audience that he will vanish himself on the condition mikoto is voted innocent, making himself useful one last time and finally 'saving' mikoto in the way he feels he has failed to thus far.

epilogue / reflection

so! i hope i make sense, and i really hope i haven't forgotten to cover anything glaring.

this is an all-encompassing way of reading 09 to me, and if it is canon like i believe, 09 may be a shockingly sensitive and accurate portrayal of DID. but to unearth this interpretation you need to dive into a lot of subtext and dodge a lot of intentional misdirection than leans into stigma and negative stereotypes of DID, so i sort of understand why a lot of people fall short, end up taking things at face value, or otherwise feel unqualified to dissect what's being written and claimed.

i hope my analysis and commentary helps, and please know that i am also always open to yap about these guys or DID representation in general if anyone would like. this is a very strong interest of mine, and i love picking fiction and DID representation apart, as well as demystifying the condition for people!

thank you for getting to the end of this, i know it's an essay and a half.

if you read this all the way through, even ignoring the text in images, this post comes out at over 3.5k words. this is longer than any college essay i've ever written. good grief. but it's over. thank you for sticking with me.

[crashdavis]

he gets it

[flowercrowngods]

who did this to you. part 3

🤍🌷 read part 1 here | read part 2 here pre-s4, steve whump, protective (but scared) eddie. now with robin!

The number rings in his head, echoing off the inside of his skull and sinking lower and lower until his heart strings join the symphony that leaves him shaking as the memory of Harrington’s slurred voice is drowned out by the dial tone that feels harrowingly like a flatline right now. 

Said I’ll go blind. Or deaf. Or just… die.

Eddie doesn’t really feel like his body belongs to him anymore, or like there’s anything left inside him other than panic and fear and that stupid, stupid shaking that he can’t suppress even as he bites his knuckles. Hard. 

The pain helps a little not to startle too much when the dial tone stops and a female voice begins speaking to him. Still he almost drops the phone, cursing under his breath as he pulls his hair to collect himself and get his voice to work. 

“H— Hi, hello, Mrs Buckley? This is, uh. I. I’m. A friend of Robin’s, could you, uh—“ 

“Oh, of course, dear,” the woman says, and Eddie feels his eyes beginning to prick with how nice she sounds even through the phone. 

Does she know Steve, too? Would she worry if she knew? Would she curse Eddie for not taking him to the hospital right away? Would she blame him if anything happened? 

“I’m sorry? What did you say your name was?” she asks, repeating herself by the sound of it. 

He blanks, for a whole five seconds, before he spots a note stuck to the fridge saying Don’t forget to eat, Eddie :-)

“Eddie,” he croaks. “Uh, Eddie Munson.”

“Alright, Eddie Munson, I’ll see if I can grab Robin for you. You have a good day, dear, yes?” 

No. “Thanks.” 

The hand clenched in his hair pulls tighter and tighter until the tears fall and he can pretend it’s from pain and not from— whatever the fuck is happening. 

He waits, phone pressed to his ear with a kind of desperation he’s never really felt, and never wants to feel again. He doesn’t even know what to tell Robin; what to say. It’s not like they ever hang out or have anything to say to each other, so why would she— 

“Munson?” Robin’s voice appears on the other end, a little too loud for Eddie’s certain state, and he does drop the phone this time, scrambling to catch it and only making the situation worse as it dangles by his knees. 

He drops to the floor, pulling his knees to his chest and reaching for the phone again. 

“Hi.” 

“What do you want? How’d you even get this number? I swear, if you—“ 

“It’s Blue. I mean, Steve. Harrington.” 

That shuts her right up, and Eddie clenches his eyes shut for a moment, hoping to keep the tremor out of his voice if only he takes a moment to breathe. 

The moment stretches. And Robin’s voice is wary and quiet when she speaks again. 

“What about Steve.” 

Eddie rubs his face, leaving more dirt and grime to fill the tear tracks, and clenches his fist before his mouth. 

“Eddie,” Robin demands, dangerous now. Nothing left of the rambling, bubbling mess he knows her to be on the school hallways. “What. About. Steve.” 

“He… He’s hurt.” 

There’s a bit of a commotion on the other end, before Robin declares, “I’m coming over. You tell me everything.” 

“You— I mean, he’s in the hospital with my uncle, so—“ 

“I am. Coming. Over,” she says, enunciating every word as though she were making a threat. Maybe she is. But the certainty in her voice helps a little, anchors him the same way that Wayne’s calmness did. “And you tell me everything.” 

Eddie finds himself nodding along, knowing intuitively that there is nothing that could stop her now. Knowing that he doesn’t want to stop her. 

“‘Kay.” It’s a pathetic little sound, all choked up and tiny. She doesn’t comment on it. 

One second he hears her determined exhale, the next she’s hung up on him and Eddie is greeted by the flatline again. He lets out a shuddering breath and leans his head back against the wall. 

Breathing is hard again, but it’s all he has to do now, all that’s left to do, so he focuses. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Hold. His lungs are burning and there’s something wrong about the way he pulls in air and keeps it there, desperately latching onto it until the very last second, his exhales more of a gasping cough than calm and controlled. 

It takes a while. Longer than it should. But with Harrington’s blood still on his hands, with his heartbeat in his ears so loud he can’t even hear the words Wayne used to say about breathing in through the mouth or the nose or… or something, he— 

He’s fine. He’s home. Wayne’s got Blue, and Buckley is on her way, and… He’s fine. 

People don’t just die. 

They don’t. 

He’s fine. 

Eventually, Eddie manages to breathe steadily, the air no longer shuddering and his hands no longer shaking. It’s stupid, really, being so worked up over someone he doesn’t even really know. Sure, everyone knows Steve fucking Harrington, and everyone sees Steve fucking Harrington — whether they want it or not. He has a way of drawing eyes toward him even if all he does is walk the halls with his dorky smile and that stupidly charming swagger he’s got going on. Always matching his shoes to his outfit.

Eddie can relate.

Always reaching out to touch the person he’s talking to; clapping their back or shoulder, lightly shoving them in jest, ruffling their hair or chasing them through the halls, moving and holding himself like teenage angst can’t reach him. Like he belongs wherever he goes. Like he’s so, so comfortable in his own skin. Like the clothes he wears aren’t armour but just a part of him; a means of self-expression. 

Again, Eddie can relate. He can relate to all of this. 

It’s almost like the two of them aren’t so different after all. Just going about it differently. 

And now he’s… Bleeding. Slurring his speech. Wheezing his breath. And Eddie feels protective. Eddie feels responsible. Like he should be there, like he should get to know more about him. About Steve. About Blue. 

But he can’t. And he won’t. So he gets up with a groan that expresses his frustration and the need to make a sound, to fight the oppressive silence that only encourages his thoughts to run in obsessive little circles, and he hangs up the phone that’s been dangling beside him all this time. 

He needs a smoke. 

He needs a smoke and a blunt and a drink and for this day to be over and for time to revert and to leave him out of whatever business he stumbled into by opening the door to the boathouse and, apparently, Steve Harrington’s life. 

But unfortunately, the universe doesn’t seem to care about what he needs, because just as he steps outside and goes to light his cig, he catches sight of a harried looking Robin Buckley, standing on the pedals of her bike as she kicks them, her hair blowing in the wind to reveal a frown between her brows. A wave of unease overcomes Eddie, an unease he can’t really place. Maybe it’s the set of her jaw, or the tension in her shoulders, or maybe it’s the worry and anger she exudes. 

It never occurred to him before that Robin Buckley might not be a person you’d want to set off. And not because of her uncontrollable rambles. 

“Munson!” she calls over, carelessly dropping her bike in the driveway and stalking toward him. 

Almost as if summoning a shield, Eddie does light the cigarette. Pretends like the smoke can protect him. 

She doesn’t stop at the foot of the steps, though, climbs them in two leaps and gets all up in his space with that unwavering look of determination — so unwavering, in fact, that it almost looks like wrath. Cold. Eddie wants to shrink away from it, not at all daring to wonder what could make her look like that upon hearing that Steve’s hurt. 

I don’t wanna die, Munson. I never… I didn’t. With the monsters or the torture.

But those are the words of a semi-conscious teenage boy beat to a pulp, they can’t— There’s no way. Eddie misheard him, or Steve was talking about some kind of inside joke, using the wrong terminology with the wrong guy. It happens. It happens when you’re out of it, really! The shit he’s said when he was shot up, canned up, all strung out and high as a kite… He’d be talking of monsters, too, and mean some benign shit. 

But the way Harrington looked, none of that was benign. The bruising all over his face, the blood still dripping from the wound by his temple or his nose, the way he held himself, breath rattling in his lungs, or— 

“Hey!” Buckley demands his attention, giving him a light shove; just enough to catch his attention, really, and just what he needed to snap out of it. Still the smoke hits his lungs wrong and he coughs up a lung, further cementing his role of the pathetic little guy today. 

“Hey,” he says lamely, his voice still croaking as he crushes the half-smoked cigarette under his boot. “Sorry.” He doesn’t know for what. But it feels appropriate. 

She shakes her head, rolling her eyes at him as she crosses her arms in front of her chest. 

“Tell me,” she says at last, and even though there is a tremor in her voice, she sounds nothing short of demanding. “I want the whole story, and I want it now.” 

And so he does. He tells her everything, bidding her inside because he needs the relative safety of the trailer even though the air in here is stuffy and still faintly smells blue. He pours them both some coffee and some tea, because asking what she wants doesn’t feel right in the middle of telling her how he found her supposed best friend beat to shit in the boathouse he went to to forget about the world for a while. 

She stills as she listens to him, staring ahead into the middle distance somewhere beneath the floor and the walls, her hands wrapped around the steaming mug of coffee. Eddie stumbles over his words a lot, unsettled by her stillness, her lack of reaction. She doesn’t even react to his fuck-ups. People usually do.

He wants to ask. Where are you right now? What have you seen? What’s on your mind? What the fuck is happening?

But he doesn’t ask, instead he tells her more about Steve. About how he seemed to forget where he was. About the pain he was in. About the smiles nonetheless. The way he reassured Eddie. 

That one finally gets a choked little huff from her, somewhere between a sob and a laugh. 

“Yeah, that sounds like him alright. He’s such a dingus.” 

There is so much affection in her voice as she says it that Eddie can’t help but smile into his mug. 

“Dingus?” he asks, hoping for some lightness, hoping to keep it. 

But the light fades, and her eyes get distant again. Eddie wants to kick himself. 

“Just a stupid little nickname. An insult, really.”

“Oh.” He doesn’t know what to do with that. If he should ask more or if he should say that he has a feeling Steve might appreciate stupid little nicknames. Especially if they’re unique. Especially if they’re for him. But what right does he have to say that now? What knowledge does he have about Steve Harrington that Robin doesn’t? 

So he bites his tongue and drinks his coffee, cursing the silence that falls over them as Robin mirrors him, albeit slow and stilted, like she doesn’t know what to do either. Or where to put her limbs. 

“Wayne’s got him now. I took him here, after the boathouse, because I didn’t know what to do. He said he didn’t want the hospital, said there’s…” He trails off. 

Robin looks at him, her eyes wary but alert. “Said there’s what?” 

It’s stupid. Don’t say it. 

“Eddie?” 

With a sigh, he puts his mug on the counter and stuffs his hands into his pockets. “He said there’s monsters. In the hospital, I mean. He said that.”

Instead of scoffing or at least frowning, Robin clenches her jaw and nods imperceptibly, her eyes going distant again. Eddie blinks, the urge to just fucking ask overcoming him again, but with every passing second he realises that he doesn’t actually want to ask. He doesn’t want to know, let alone find out. 

He just… He just wants to go to bed. Forget any of this ever happened. But he can’t do that, so he continues. 

“Brought him here and Wayne took one look at him and convinced him he needed a doctor. And, Jesus H Christ, he was right. I’ve never… I mean, those things don’t happen,” he urges, balling his hands into fists even in the confined space of his pockets. “Right? I mean… Shit, man.” He bumps his shoe into the kitchen counter; gently, so as not to startle Buckley out of her fugue like state. 

“You’d be surprised,” she rasps, staring into the middle distance again and slowly sinking to the floor. There is a tremor in her shoulders now, barely noticeable, but Eddie knows where to look. Without really thinking about it, he grabs two of his hoodies he’d haphazardly thrown over the kitchen chairs this morning while deciding on his outfit and realising that it was altogether too warm for long sleeves today. But now, right here in this kitchen, the air tinged with blue, they’re both freezing. 

Because fear and worry will take all the warmth right from inside of you and leave you freezing even on the hottest day of the year. 

She barely looks at him when he holds out his all-black Iron Maiden hoodie to her, freshly washed and all that, but she takes it nonetheless, immediately pulling it on. It’s way too large on her, her hands not showing through the sleeves, her balled fists safe and warm inside the fabric. It would make him smile if only it didn’t highlight her stillness, her faraway stare, and the years he has on her. She’s, what, two years younger than him? Three? 

It seems surreal. Everything, everything does. 

Robin Buckley in his home, sitting on his kitchen floor, swallowed by a hoodie that is a size too large even for him, but it was the last one they had in the store and he doesn’t mind oversized clothes, can just cut them shorter when the need arises or layer them or declare them comfort sweaters for when he wants to just have his hands not slip through the sleeves on some days. And now Robin is wearing his comfort hoodie because her best friend was bleeding in his car earlier and then on his couch and now in his uncle’s car, and they never even talk, but he knows that Robin’s favourite colour is blue, but not morning hour blue because that makes her sad; only deep, dark blues. 

Her favourite colour. Her favourite person. 

It’s so fucking surreal. 

He drops down beside her, leaving enough space between them so neither of them feels caged, and mirrors her position: knees to his chest, chin on his forearms. Staring ahead. 

And silence reigns. 

“Your uncle,” she says at last, finally breaking the silence that’s been grating on Eddie’s nerves and looking at him, really looking as she rests her cheek on her forearms crossed over her knees. “Tell me about him.” 

There is a gentleness to her voice now despite how hoarse it is. Maybe she’s just tired, too. And scared. At least the shivering has stopped. 

Still Eddie frowns, confused as to why she should be breaking the silence to ask about Wayne when everything today has been about Harrington. About Steve. About deep and dark blues. 

“Uncle Wayne?” he asks. “Why?”

“Because,” she begins, and sighs deeply, works to get the air back in her lungs. Eddie wants to reach out, but instead he just clenches his fingers a little deeper into the fabric of his hoodie. “My best friend is hurt very badly and the only person with him is your uncle, and I need to know that he’s in good hands. Or I swear to whatever god you may or may not believe in, and granted, it’s probably the latter, but still I swear I’ll give into my arsonist tendencies and burn down this city, starting with your trailer if you don’t tell me that your uncle is a good man who will do anything in his power to make sure that boy gets the help and care he needs. And deserves.” 

Her jaw is set and her bottom lip trembles, but it doesn’t take away from the absolute sincerity in her threat. 

“So, please,” she continues, her voice breaking just a little bit. “Tell me. Tell me about your uncle.” 

Tell me about your favourite person. 

Eddie swallows, and mirrors her position once more, so she can see his eyes and know he’s sincere. Because he’s learned something about eyes today, about how much in the world can change if only you have a pair of eyes to look into. 

And he nods, looking for somewhere to start. “He’s the best man I know. He’s the best man you’ll ever meet.”

She clings to his eyes. Searches them for the truth, beseeching them not to lie. He lets her. 

“Took me in when I was ten, because my dad’s a fuck-up and my mom’s a goner. Took me in again when I was twelve after I ran away. Makes me breakfast and I pretends the dinner I make him is more than edible.” He smiles a little, because how could he not? “He’s my uncle, but still he’s the best parent anyone could wish for. Writes those little notes that he sticks to the fridge, y’know, the one with the smiley face? Tells me to eat, because I forget sometimes. I tell him to drink water, because he forgets. First few years, he’d read to me. And the man’s a shit reader, has some kind of disability I think, and at some point I learned that he wasn’t reading at all. He was telling me stories all the time, conning me into thinking that the books were magic, and that every time I’d try to read the book for myself, the story would change.” 

There’s a lump in his throat now, and his eyes sting again. But Robin doesn’t seem to fare any better than him if her wavering smile is any indication. 

“There’s no one,” Eddie continues, “who will make you believe in magic quite like uncle Wayne. Or in good things. And d’you wanna know what he told Blue when he said he was scared of going to the hospital?” 

Sniffling, Robin shakes her head. 

“He said, Okay. Then we do it scared. And all of that after he just… with that patience he has, told him everything that was gonna happen. And that he’d be there with him through it all. That he knew the doc and wouldn’t let anyone else near him, and that there’s no need to be scared at all.” 

He sighs, breathes, stills. Swallows, before looking back at Robin. 

“So, if there’s one person who’ll make sure that boy gets the help and care he needs and deserves…” 

“It’s uncle Wayne,” Robin finishes his sentence, her voice still hoarse, but Eddie likes to think it’s for a different reason now. 

“It’s uncle Wayne,” Eddie says, nodding along as he does. 

There is something like understanding in Robin’s eyes now, and Eddie hopes it’s enough. Enough to calm the spiking of her nerves, enough to settle the coil of freezing nausea that must reside in the pit of her stomach, enough to let the next breath she takes feel a little more like it’s supposed to be there. 

He wants to say something more, wants to reach out and reassure her that everything will be okay, but he can’t know that. He doesn’t feel like it’s entirely true, let alone appropriate right now. 

There’s something in Robin’s eyes, in the way she holds herself, like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like she accepts his words at face value but doesn’t really believe them. Like she’ll only rest when she’s got her best friend back in her arms and hears the story — the whole story — from him. 

And Eddie doesn’t fault her, because the thing is, he doesn’t know what happened. Steve said that Hagan came at him, but that’s really all he got out of him before he started talking about death and shit, and Eddie really didn’t want to ask any more questions then. 

So they sit there for a while, the silence oppressive and unwelcome, clumsy and awkward; Robin’s mouth opening and closing a lot, like she wants to ask questions but doesn’t dare to ask them — and Eddie doesn’t know if he’s glad about it or not. Doesn’t know if he wants to hear the kind of questions asked with that kind of stare. 

It is only after a long while, when Robin’s shoulders start shaking again and she buries deeper into the hoodie and her own spiralling thoughts, that Eddie breaks the silence again, replaying in his head the last moment between him and Steve. 

“He’s not gonna break,” he tells her, aiming for gentle and reassuring. 

What he doesn’t expect is the minute flinch, the jolt shooting through her body and the pained expression it leaves her with. What he doesn’t expect is what she says next. 

“You know,” she begins, her voice as far away as her eyes, and it’s like she doesn’t even know she’s speaking. “Sometimes I wish he would.” 

What?

Eddie blinks, swallowing hard.

“Just for, just for a break. Just so he can rest. Let the rest take over for a while.” 

That… He doesn’t— What the hell does that even mean? 

“Like maybe then the world would… snap back.” She snaps her fingers, just once. This time it’s Eddie who flinches. “And everything bad would disappear. But it won’t. And he won’t.” She swallows. Then quietly, almost inaudible, “He won’t break.” 

And the way she says it… It was reassuring before. And now it feels like a burden. A curse. 

Who the fuck are you, Steve Harrington? And you, Robin Buckley. 

Eddie shudders, knowing he doesn’t want the answer to that anymore. He doesn’t want the questions either. So he buries his face in his hands, closes his eyes, and breathes. The adrenaline has worn off by now, the repeated panicking that added fuse to the fire has ceased now, leaving him worn out and strung out, tired and exhausted. He pulls up the hood, burrowing into the warmth. 

And then he stills. His usually twitching, fumbling, fiddling body falling entirely still beside Buckley. 

It’s like time stops for a while there, even though Eddie knows that it’s dragging ever on and on. He’s inclined to let it, though. He’s too tired, too exhausted to really care about what time may or may not be doing. 

“Why’d you call me?” 

It takes a while for Eddie to realise that Robin’s spoken again, asked him a question out loud, the cadence of it different to the endless circles of questions Eddie’s got stuck in his head since the early afternoon tinged in blue against crimson. 

He lifts his head, tucking his hands underneath his chin, and looks over at Buckley. Her hair is dishevelled now, her mascara smudged and crusty. Her lipstick is almost all gone, with the way he sees her biting and chewing on her lips. 

“I… It seemed like the right thing to do, y’know? He kept repeating your number. In the car, it was like… Sounds dramatic, but it was like his lifeline, almost. Repeated it so often it kinda got stuck.” He shrugs. “Seemed important, too.”

Robin frowns; a careful little thing. “How’d you know it was me?”

“Well, he just talked about you. Y’know. Tell me about your favourite person, I told him, because that’s the thing you gotta do to keep people, like, talking to you. Not shit about what day it is, or what. Just, y’know. Let them talk about things they like. Things they’ll wanna tell you about. ’N’ he talked about you.” 

She’s quiet for a while, letting his words sink in. And Eddie wonders if she knew. That she’s his favourite person. If he ever told her. If maybe he took that from him now. It’s a stupid thing to worry about, really; the boy was bloodied and bruised on his couch just an hour ago, there are worse things at hand for Eddie to worry about. But now he wonders if he just spilled some sort of secret. Some sort of love confession. 

“Did you, I mean… Are you guys, like, dating? Did I just steal his moment?” 

Robin huffs, but it’s more like a smile that needs a little more space in the room, a little more air to really bloom. It’s fond. She shakes her head, her eyes far away again, but closer somehow. 

“Nah,” she says, and the smile is in her voice, too. Eddie kind of likes her voice like that. “We’re platonic. Which is something I’d never thought I’d say. Not about Steve Harrington, y’know?” 

And the way she drags out his name… Eddie can relate. Like it means something, but like what it means is nowhere close to reality. Nowhere close to what it really means. Nowhere close to Blue. 

Robin sighs, the sound more gentle than it should be, and leans her head against the cabinet behind her. “We worked together over summer break. Scoops Ahoy.” Her voice does a funny thing, and her eyes glaze over as she pauses. Eddie waits, his lips tipped up into a little smile, too; to match hers. 

“What, the ice cream parlour?” 

Robin hums, her smile widening at what Eddie guesses must be memories of chaos and ridiculousness. “I wanted to hate him,” she continues. “But try as I might, he wouldn’t let me. Or, he did. He did let me. Just, it turns out, there’s no use hating Steve Harrington, not when he’s so… So endlessly genuine. There’s nothing to hate, y’know? And then he…” 

She stops, her mouth clicking shut as her eyes tear up a little. The Starcourt fire. Eddie remembers the news, remembers the self-satisfied smirk when he’d heard about it, remembers sticking it to the Man and to capitalism and to the idea of malls over supporting your friendly neighbourhood businesses. 

Guilt and shame overcome him as he realises that they must have been in there when it happened. 

“He saved your life?” 

Robin’s eyes snap toward him, wide and caught, and Eddie raises his hands in placation. 

“In the fire? Were you there?” 

“Y—yeah.” She swallows hard, avoiding his eyes. “The fire. He saved me. Yeah.” 

Eddie nods, deciding to drop that topic right there; to lay it on the ground as gently as he can and cover it with bright red colours so he never steps on it ever again. 

“He must be your favourite person, too, then, hm?” he steers the conversation back away into safer waters. 

“He is,” she says, sure and genuine and true. “It’s just. I don’t think I’ve ever been anyone’s favourite. He has a lot of people who care about him, you know? A lot of people he cares about. Even more numbers memorised in that stupidly smart head of his.” She huffs again, burrowing deeper into Eddie’s hoodie, pulling the sleeves over her hands some more. “It’s stupid, to be so hung up on this. Is it stupid?” 

“I don’t think it is,” Eddie says, scooting a little closer to Robin. “Like, I don’t even know that boy, right? But even I know that he’s got some ways to shift your focus or something. Give you a silver lining, or something to take the pain away even when he’s the one who… I don’t know, that’s probably stupid, too.” 

“Nah,” Robin says, scooting closer to him, too, until their sides are pressed together and she can lay her head on his shoulder. “It’s not stupid. You’re right; that’s Steve for you. ’S just who he is.” 

It is, isn’t it? 

You’re so blue, Stevie. 

She’ll say something corny when, when you ask her, jus’ to fuck with you. Sunset gold or rose, jus’ to mess with… But is blue.

Blue. ‘S nice. 

Yeah. Yeah, he is. 

Eddie lets his thoughts roam the endless possibilities and realities that is Steve Harrington, the depths he hides — or won’t hide, maybe, if you know how to ask. Where to look. 

Maybe he’ll find out, one of these days. Not about the terrible things that leave him scared of the hospital, not about the horrible things that have him speaking of death and dying like he’s accepted them as a possibility a long time ago. 

He swallows hard and shakes off these thoughts, because things like that just. They don’t happen. They don’t happen to blue-smiled boys who trust you to be kind even when they’re beaten straight to hell. And they sure as hell don’t happen when uncle Wayne’s around. 

Nothing bad has ever happened when uncle Wayne was around. 

And he wants to tell Robin, wants to make that promise. But part of him can’t bear the thought of being wrong. So he keeps his mouth shut and just sits with her, their heads as heavy as their hearts as they wait. 

The sun is long gone when the phone above him rings again, spooking and startling them out of their timeless existence. 

“Yeah?” he answers, his heart hammering in his chest. “Wayne?” 

“Hey, Ed,” Wayne’s voice comes through the phone like a melody. Calm and steady. Robin is scooting closer, and Eddie shifts the phone to accommodate her so they can both listen. Somehow, they ended up holding hands — and holding on hard. “We’re coming home now.” 

🤍🌷 tagging:

@theshippirate22 @mentallyundone @ledleaf @imfinereallyy @itsall-taken @simply-shin @romanticdestruction @temptingfatetakingnames @stevesbipanic @steddie-island @estrellami-1 @jackiemonroe5512 @emofratboy @writing-kiki @steviesummer @devondespresso @swimmingbirdrunningrock @dodger-chan @tellatoast @inkjette @weirdandabsurd42 @annabanannabeth @deany-baby @mc-i-r @mugloversonly @viridianphtalo @nightmareglitter @jamieweasley13 @copingmechanizm @marklee-blackmore @sirsnacksalot @justrandomfandomstm @hairdryerducks @silenzioperso @newtstabber @fantrash @zaddipax @cometsandstardust @rowanshadow26 @limpingpenguin @finntheehumaneater @extra-transitional (sorry if i missed anyone! lmk if you don't wanna be tagged for part 4 🫶)

[princessofghosts-posts]

Nico's Powers and Rick way of writing them.

Honestly,I've been wainting to write this.

We all know Nico powers:

Can manipulate the shadows and travel in them (Umbra-kinesis);

Can sense someone's death and soul;

Can summon ghosts and talk to them;

Can summon skeletons that obey to his orders and fight for him;

Can use dreams to send messages;

Can unconsciously split the ground and create cracks or Underworld's openings;

Can turn someone into a ghost and make them forgot their life and ability to speak;

Can turn someone into a skeleton;

Has influence on the dead and can evade them when he has to;

Can create earthquakes (not major ones like Percy);

Technically has Geo-kinesis powers too (like Hazel);

Can summon zombies to serve him;

Can conditionate the CJ's lares speaking ability by forcing them to shut up;

Can influence the dead ones with his mood;

Death-touch;

(If I missed some feel free to add)

Other than this,you need to remember that his title as Ghost King give him some more leverage,and his sword is an uniqueness in the world that give him the ability to suck someone's soul in it.

By only this list you can tell that Nico is extremely powerful,and he is still younger than Percy,with a weak physical body (depression and ED do some wonders to you-) and wasn't never "officially trained" like him since he wasn't around camp much. But he still pulled insane acts even without being 100% ok most of the time.

Nico powers,differently from Percy and Thalia,are extremely versatile. While those two can use whatever source or form of water/lightning to fight,they can't do much outside of their fathers's domains. And then you have Nico. Nico that can use his powers to travel around the world and sending messages with a mental link,other than use them to fight. People always talks about Percy controll over all types of liquid (even poison or the Underworld's rivers),but there is still water in them,so it's normal for him to do so. Thalia can use lightnings because it's normal for her to do so since those are Zeus's main sources of power. But Nico's powers are more than just controlling the dead,he can manipulate dreams (something that only the Hypnos cabin can do if I remember correctly) and can use geo-kinesis too,even tho not as much good or frequent as Hazel (before she started to work with her mist affinity). He can do it all.

I'm not trying to pull the "Nico is more powerful than Percy" argument here,but more focusing on Nico's versatility usage of his powers. And Rick made a mistake here with him,that he realized later and tried to minimize.

You see,when you have a powerscaling system,you usually take the main character as the "default": it's from them that you start to build it so other people can understand where others characters stand,compared to the MC,on the scale. Most of the time,people want their MC to grow stronger after every fight,starting from the bottom,untill they are the most powerful character in the story. It's a format done everywhere (anime,movie,comics,fanfic,books,ecc...) and Rick Riordan also used it with Percy. And when you have as MC the "most powerful character ever" (in this case the most powerful demigod since Heracles times),you need to be careful with your side characters,especially when the author doesn't want them to outshine the MC. For this reason,most of the time,they are either weaker than them or have extremely excessive drowbacks. A good example of this is Jason: Rick introduced him to us as the roman counterpart for Percy,but made us understand that he wasn't never at Percy level of power. And when you have a "side" character as Nico,adding to the fact that he's most of the time the wild card for their victories and always know everything,you have a big problem.

Riordan made it clear that no one (for now) can surpass Percy in term of abilities. But he still went out of his way making Nico's powers more versatile than the others. Logically,he should have been stronger than Percy,especially because death cannot be stoped and it's part of everyone life,but canonically it wasn't going to happen since the MC is Percy. Riordan realized in a second moment that his powers were too much and decided to make sure Nico was always held back by something from going full out (like Jason).

Nico is the only child of the big 3 that,if he use so much of his powers,has extremely horrible drowbacks even when he shouldn't. I could understand during MoA-BoO events in HoO,he was either dying or disappearing into the shadows because of his kidnapping and Tartarus,and still had an extremely draining task to finish. But from HoO to ToA there is a big timeskip (I think 6 months or more but I'm not so sure) where he should had all the time in the world to heal and having back full controll over his powers. But he doesn't. Nico still faint after shadow-travelling,even tho after his trip with the statue he should have been stronger and not having problems for a normal trip. Which sucks,especially when Rick most of the time make him pull some jaw-dropping power-play that give you the full picture on how strong he really is.

I don't think Percy had so many downgrades with his powers,I never saw him almost fainting from controlling the waters. He get tired,yes,but that's it. Thalia has more restrictions because of her fear,but I also never saw her having so many problems after using her powers (after she went with the Hunters we never see her in general anymore). Neither did Hazel with her geo-kinesis powers (before Rick decided to make her learn mist manipulation). Jason is a whole mess because he faint every day when he gets hit by a brick,even when he isn't fighting or using his powers (Rick didn't do him justice either). It's only Nico that has so many negative effects.

And the fandom can explain it,in a canon logic,with: "He's s still young,he will have time to grow stronger." (I agree) ;"He wasn't never in a good physical condition so it's normal that he has this many negative effects." (Even dying he was still able to curse someone to literally becoming a ghost) ; "He was malnourished and depressed,since he didn't take care of himself before he still have problems,wait for him to be healthy." (Again,even in those conditions he still pulled insane stunts). But,outside of the narrative,Riordan totally nerfed him because he realized that he wrote his powers too powerful and useful compared to Percy's,and since he couldn't have his MC outshined,he made sure to slow Nico in any way possible.

In BotL and TLO there are 2 scenes that,for a long time,I thought I was the only one to ever have read them since no one talked about them.

In the end of BotL when Percy get out of the Labyrinth and went with Rachel to see the coffin,Nico created an earth barrier (or something closer to it) to help them escape form Kronos's attack. He never did that after it,and I never saw people acknowledge that scene so I legitimately thought that I was imaginating it. Which was strange since it came right after the famous "Did you just throw a blue brush in the eye of the Titan Lord?" scene,but no. It really happened and Nico did use the earth at his liking. After that Riordan decided to never bought it up and Nico never manipulated the earth in that way (he still split the ground a couple of times) again.

In TLO after Nico went to free Percy from the dungeons,they escaped the palace and went to the Styx. During their escaping Nico glared at the guards,while growing weaker and weaker with each one,and they ignored them. Again,since I never saw someone talk about it I genuinely thought I was remembering things wrong. Especially because it was part of the whole "Betrayal" plot that everyone know. But again,it wasn't the case,Rick just decided to never bring it up again. It was the only time Nico did something like that. Someone can say "Well,those are the royal guards and their boss is his dad they would never go against him." but the guards were against Nico,if he didn't do whatever the fuck he did,they were going to tell Hades about their escape. So,again,Rick realized he gave him a powerful trick and then hoped that one one would remember it after he used it one time.

All of this shows that,even if he is good at writing certain things,when it comes to others topics (like power-scaling,Tartarus's trauma and many more) he just can't write well and try to put patches on the holes,without having success. But that's for another post that I will do.

Rick lack of continuation in his work,and he needs to decide what the hell he is going to do with Nico,because the guy himself is a contradiction that needs to be solved. And if I see someone else say that he is weak because he continue to faint,I'm gonna crash out very very very bad since it's Rick's fault. Nico has grown enough in his power to stand tall and use them without having majors problems (if he abuse them,then of course he is in big troubles). He isn't anymore the 13 years old kid that was dying during a world-ending trip after days of being captive by the enemy,and Riordan needs to acknowledge it and move on from that.

[sylvieserene]

On the recent update, I noticed a lot on yt and a lot of places on the internet that people fully believe that eternal sugar changed for the better at the end of episode ten of beast yeast. In an objective standpoint I thought she didn't and was wondering on your take on if she changed or not objectively and maybe the reasoning for why people think so. And also if it's not too much, what's your opinions on people pushing (not those who say they think or have it as a HC) that Eternalholly is cannon and not one sided?

I think the entire point of the ending was that she didn't change.

And she directly confirms so by this dialogue alone:

Eternal Sugar Cookie is in deep denial with reality.

This dynamic is central to her and HB's relationship.

ES has always been avoiding reality like a plague, to the point even the mere thought of it scares her.

You can see this especially during her final conversation with Hollyberry Cookie, moments like:

These moments highlight perfectly just how much she hates reality.

She repeatedly associates it with pain. Not just any pain, a pain so overwhelming that it feels like you're being torn apart.

This is basically what their dynamic comes down to.

Acceptance and denial of reality.

Eternal Sugar believes that happiness can be created wherever reality doesn't reach, for that can only bring pain and sorrow. She truly believes that confining cookies here in the garden, a place where she has artificially bred happiness would keep them the most well and happy, for what truly can make you more happy if you remain confined in a space detached from reality? What can make you happier if you live in your own delusions without accepting the cold hard truth? Forever on the run from it and denying it?

Eternal Sugar Cookie embodies that. She has found herself happiness in her delusions, in her twisted sense of "reality" and doesn't want to step beyond it.

That doesn't mean she has ill intentions in mind though. She really is sincere in what she wants.

Happiness for all cookies.

She really wants that. She really does everything she feels is right to cultivate that.

But that doesn't make her methods or approach correct though.

Trapping and not allowing the subjects of her garden to go outside is wrong.

Intoxicating them with such an aroma that they forget all their worries and let themselves indulge in the luxuries her place offers (basically making them high and stripping their will) is wrong.

Scaring them and indirectly threatening them to not leave is wrong as well.

The very methods through which she tries to deliver happiness at the end denies all her subjects their true happiness. It even denies her true happiness.

Hollyberry Cookie understands that.

For just like ES, she has had a phase where she just wanted to run away from the cold hard reality because it hurts. The sad truth is, ES in a way is very much correct.

When you experience something painful or traumatic, the first response is to run away from it.

This is something HB is highly aware of.

From drinking away her problems to neglecting her son to running away from her kingdom after a mental crisis and war, HB has always found some way to avoid reality.

ES's garden was truly a paradise for her in the truest sense. Because just like her, she just wanted to forever run from reality than facing it. She didn't want to face her past, her mistakes, her everything because of the pain that accompanies it.

This is why ES took even more interest in her because she wanted exactly what she offered, denial.

But this is the very thing which also seperates them.

Unlike ES, HB doesn't forever want to live in a delusional world. She has always been the one to face danger and pain head on.

She has her moments of confusion but at the end, HB would rather accept the cold whiplash of truth than forever live in the sweet embrace of a lie like ES.

Unlike ES, HB isn't the one to lie to herself nor is she someone who cowers from pain.

And this, all of this? HB knows and understands this.

Which is exactly why she acknowledges it directly, she tries to gently nudge ES in the right direction, the reality.

That is why, she essentially at first literally says "There's plenty of fishes in the sea!" to ES here when she asks why she's leaving lol

But when that obviously doesn't work judging by her reaction...

She tries to give her a gentle reminder towards the truth.

The most important thing to takeaway from here is HB acknowledges her good intentions but she also tries to push her towards realising the truth.

That there is a world beyond her garden and while it may hurt to incorporate with it at first for reality often is cruel and pain is inevitable but it is only after pain that one can gain happiness. True happiness.

However....as you can see, even the mere mention of reality scares her. So much so, that she asks HB to stop.

She hates reality.

She is scared of reality.

She fears reality.

Which is why, HB tries to console her gently again.

While also pushing her towards the right decision.

By also calling out her flaws.

And offering hope.

Ultimately leading her to atleast think about it, even if for a second.

Which is a huge step up.

HB put a connection with herself and reality to get ES to consider it after seeing that she won't even listen about it on its own.

Her words came from a place of understanding.

What HB said here didn't come from a romantic perspective especially when you look at their dynamic as a whole.

Hollyberry Cookie is a person who wants something real in life. She craves for reality, she doesn't like falsehoods and would rather take the pain accompanying truths than seek comfort in lies. She'd rather accept the cold hard reality and the pain that accompanies it rather than live in delusions.

Eternal Sugar Cookie is a person who doesn't want the reality in life. She'd rather indulge herself in falsehoods and the sweet veil of lies rather than face pain while facing the cold hard truth. She finds her comfort in the artificial world she has weaved together in her delusions.

This is what really seperates the two and puts them on two different paths.

HB is willing to face the truth and step away from the twisted world crafted by ES while ES isn't willing to step away from it but she doesn't want to let go of HB either.

This... is exactly why ES says this:

Because she understands this conflict.

She knows that what HB is saying is correct and if HB goes outside and gets the true happiness she seeks, it would prove that she has been wrong.

That she has been denying herself happiness and what she has artificially bred in her garden is wrong.

That is why she asks HB to not do this, to not do this to her.

Because while ES is close to admitting her fault, she still is in heavy denial.

Let's revisit the most famous bit that is often interpreted as Eternalberry being "canon" and HB returning ES's feelings:

I think what most ppl fail to understand is that HB's words, with all the previous context in mind, comes from a place of understanding rather than romance.

HB directly admits that while she feels ES is sincere in her actions, her methods are wrong for she is detached from reality and is lying to herself about it.

HB tries to gently nudge ES towards the truth but ES was unwilling to even listen the word reality and literally asks HB to stop which leads her to gently nudge her again because HB recognises ES is not a malicious person. She's just in deep denial and trapped in her own delusional thoughts.

That's exactly why she puts a connection with herself and the truth to get ES to atleast listen because she knows ES won't be listening otherwise.

She quite directly says that the day ES stops lying to herself and gets better, that's the day they can complete eachother cuz as of rn, they don't.

HB and ES are supposed to be eachother's other halves. The ones completing eachother's very soul but they don't.

ES is deep seated in denial while HB craves reality.

How can they complete eachother's soul when their paths diverge instead of converging?

When one runs away from truth while the other runs towards it?

What HB says here is trying to show her the pros of leaving the delusion.

She's basically saying to ES that if she accepts reality then both of them can consider being eachother's other half.

She isn't showing romantic interest towards ES, just showing her that if she changes for the better then she can consider being her other half (Key words: perhaps then).

This just goes to show HB doesn't have the same interest as ES towards her. She is interested in ES but just not in the romantic way.

That's exactly why she tries to console ES by trying to tempt her with something ES actually wants.

A connection with herself.

And the brilliant part is, she gets ES to think about it. The same person who refused hear even the word "reality" suddenly thinks about it at the prospect of joining HB but ultimately, choses her delusions.

That is exactly why when HB doesn't comply to her begging requests, she opts to trap them all in her garden for life and when that didn't work out, she tries to destroy her garden and kill herself along with the damage.

She quite literally goes insane when HB rejects her and tells her that she has to leave.

To the point, she tries to self inflict harm upon herself.

HB, even though she doesn't love her romantically, still cares about ES which includes her life.

So when ES almost dies by getting crushed by her own garden collapsing-

HB swoops in.

In a very stereotypically prince in armor style saving the damsel in distress (ES) fashion lol

However this romantic angle is from ES's pov.

From HB's perspective, she makes it clear that she is not doing this cuz she wants to stay with ES/live in her delusions of because she has a romantic interest in her.

She literally says to ES to snap out of it and wake up 😭

Cuz she wants ES to see that she doesn't feel the way ES thinks she feels lol

HB quite literally calls out her delusion.

But not before nudging her to think about what she says because at the end, HB wants ES to change for the better.

And ES, over the moon, agrees to think about it because of the moment

I think what's important to note here is that HB cares about ES and her life but just not in the way ES does for her.

For HB, it really comes off from a platonic perspective because she doesn't want ES to end herself just because she rejected her/her delusional world because at the end, she cares about her and her life and doesn't want her to kill herself just because of this, despite knowing PV's warnings about Beasts.

Because Beast or not, HB sees the good in ES that's why she keeps asking her to consider what she says to her.

Irl, when someone proposes to someone and they get rejected and take it badly, the person who rejected sometimes just consoles the other person that they can't be with them for (x) reason and until they do (x), they can't be but if they do (x) then they can consider it. They may or may not actually mean it but the point is, this happens quite a lot and isn't too uncommon.

What HB is doing here is basically that. She basically tried to console ES in a similar way and asked her to help herself by stop denying herself reality and maybe then ES can get a chance to be truly be her other half but until then, nope. And when ES takes this rejection incredibly badly and tries to end her very life, HB intervenes because her intention isn't to finish off ES but rather guide her towards healing because she genuinely thinks she's a good person at heart and sincere in her philanthropic joyful wishes towards others but it's just that she's in deep denial about the flaws in her ways that's doing harm to both her and everyone around her.

HB's response to all ES's advances is at its core just this:

She doesnt want ES the way, ES craves her.

This is further evidenced here as ES basically confirms the parallel between how they see their relationship:

She'd forever wait for HB even when HB won't.

She'd forever offer HB her love even when she rejects that a thousand times.

This directly shows their core dynamic.

ES loves HB romantically but HB? She doesn't.

[Quick Note: This is in this canon continuity where she didn't accept her offer to stay by her side, if she did then welcome to their costume story which is a whole another AU and interpretation of her character lmao (there HB can be read as having mutual feelings for ES) ]

And it is due to that, ES is more focused on HB saving her than heeding her words.

The main reason? She chose her delusions at the end.

She said she'll think about what HB says and she does.....just not what HB told her to think about lol

At the end, she really just understood that HB thinks the outside world is better but takes it as some sort of phase of hers that she'll outgrow once she understands how much the outside sucks and will return to her again one day. (Pure copium and delusion lol)

She didn't think about what HB said, it's doubtful she even understood what she tried to say. She's far more focused on her and ironically, her own web of misconceptions than face the possibility of reality.

ES at the end remained unchanged. She chose her own artificially manufactured world of happiness over the real one.

She didnt accept HB's rejection and still awaits her, inevitably setting history to repeat itself because HB will forever reject her false world created by her own denial and self-lying and ES will forever remain self-destructive because of it.

Just as HB said, unless ES "wakes up", she'll forever be stuck in this eternal cycle of pain, false happiness and denial not allowing her to ultimately achieve her dream to bring happiness to everyone or even be her other half.

So yeah, Eternalberry is very much one sided.

Those dialogues by HB truly mean nothing on their own and can only come off as romantic if you take it out of context. If you take in the context, HB's tone is very clear.

HB doesn't love ES the way ES loves her nor does she need her the way ES does.

At the end, they can't be anything, let alone soul mates/eachother's halves unless and until ES changes. It is only then that HB may consider it.

The entire conversation, if anything, just proves so.

So in conclusion, no. Eternalberry isn't canon but rather one sided just like all the Beast x Ancient ships (and this is coming from a person who ships Eternalberry and desperately wants it to be thing in the future lol).

[dontevenpmodarlin]

Montresor analysis post.

I am going to talk a lot about episode 87 and then a bit about other episodes.

I watched a guy talk funny on YouTube and here is it roughly translated;

“Ego produces most of our thoughts. We think that when we interact with the world, talk to people, that those things generate thoughts inside us. But no. What enters us are raw materials, materials from which the ego composes thoughts. But what thoughts it creates depends on what you have experienced, what traumas you have, how you were raised. What you have understood to what extent and how certain things, what conclusions you have drawn based on a certain understanding you had. What decisions based on these conclusions you have started to make and what patterns have been created based on making certain decisions. What you have seen, smelled, experienced.”

So the stuff that are being said here are very impressive to me and I adore it.

And it reminded me of Montresor.

Montresor is raised in a very religious community. In it, for reasons unknown to us yet, he is seen from birth as a sinner.

“You’ve had the devil inside you since the day you were born” - Monty’s mom.

If it’s by his mother, or by the whole community, we don’t know. We know that at the end he seems to be the scapegoat of them all, (if the robed figures do indeed symbolize his old community, idk they may symbolize just other people over all.) but let’s assume that ig? Going by that thinking Montresor is raised in a place where everyone blames him for stuff.

Let’s quickly go over the facts we get from the flashback:

We’re in a church.

There’s dirties cloaked figures, faceless, that are wearing white robes. The robes themselves are dirtied, suggesting that those people are themselves not ‘clean’ ‘pure’ or free of ‘sin’

Montresor asks them who they are and what do they want.

A figure reaches out from under the cloak- let’s also point out that everyone in this flashback is cloaked. As if the robe itself is a protection from the dirt? Perchance? (You can’t just say perchance☝️🤓)

The robes can suggest that they’re hiding themselves under the pretense of something pure/righteous and do not let the dirt stain them.

They may hide who they really are or their intentions.

The person who touches him on the chest -Duke and Annabel railing scene style- stays quiet for a moment “…” before saying that “You’re wicked.”

And THAT burns. That handprint burns.

The cloaked figures hand itself turns black, and the DIRT from the cloaked figures robe, atoms dissolves itself and burns Montresor leaving a mark.

Here’s the visual for the first time it happens and later on we get a whole panel of how the line infront of him is dirtied and the whole line after passing by him is cleansed.

Okay so we pretty clearly get the meaning of this, but let’s go over this panel by panel.

Montresor bends over holding onto his chest and making the ouch-sounds, and bro doesn’t get a break because the next hand is already reaching out for him, as the now cleaned ‘Mr.Yee Wicked’ goes away.

Montresors notices and says ‘WH- hold on’

But the next figure already is saying “You are selfish.”

And it’s dirt leaves its robe, creating a burn on Montresor’s back.

The figures keep coming with comments like “Gluttonous.” “Stupid.” “Depraved.” to which all Montresor objects, getting more and more agitated.

As I said, the whole line infront of him is dirtied, waiting for their turn to get rid of their dirt-sins-wrong doings, by blaming it on him, or projecting or whatever.

I’ve wanted to write down list over where which blame is placed but it doesn’t show past these three’s, and I don’t want to assume too that it was meant symbolically, but it would’ve been cool if it was.

Heart? - Wicked.

Upper back - Selfish.

Left Shoulder - Depraved? Or Wretched?

Either way the Wretched comment is where he breaks with a “Please.”

Now for everyone that is as English as me, id like to just quickly summarize that the word Wretched means being in a miserable, unfortunate, or deserving of pity state.

(If I’m wrong, do so correct me.)

Either way it suggest in religious context being removed from the God. Which well, is the source of life and everything overall.

Also let’s quickly say that the handprints leaving burns means them having a lasting effect on Montresor. They burn him. The accusations and judgments, handprints symbolizing different vices, condemning him, have long lasting effects on him.

Montresor is in the next panel curled up nearly, he hugs himself with his long hair covering his face, (in shame?) and his right eye being visible in emotion of like I’d say conflict? He is hurt by so many people here, he asks them to “Just leave me be.” I think that panel describes a lot of his childhood. He doesn’t understand what’s happening or why they’re doing this to him.

Him hugging himself with his hands holding his shoulders tightly amidst the burning handprints dooo create a visual. Are his hands atp holding him together or are they part of the blame, but now self inflicted? Does he believe all of that? Maybe he knows it’s not real but still it does force the thoughts and bad beliefs.

He must feel it to be wrong, OR he believes it, but he must’ve noticed as he grew up that others weren’t holier than him.

When a hand reaches to his forehead to say “You are worthless.” He SNAPS.

He does NOT let that touch him. He fights against it all then, with

“So what if I am.” He replies looking up. (Idk if the way the sentence is multiplied and lowered on opacity suggests it being said before, or a ringing effect.)

It continues with:

“Does it make you feel holy?!” “Like yer better than me!?” “Like y’all ain’t sinners yerselves?!”

Which hi? Okay so he may accept all those things, and believe them deep inside? Negative stuff being repeated to us as we grow up DO fuck up our brain, and worm inside it. They create beliefs because even IF we are so lucky to understand on an intellectual level that something may not be completely true, the wound itself was created on a deep emotional level.

If you’re told as a child that you’re an pathetic little crusty Cheeto thief-goblin then that may trigger an insane emotional reaction. You trust adults, if the ones that are your guardians say shit, you believe them ofc. They are keeping you alive, you need their love and approval to survive and grow.

So words like pathetic, Cheeto, and thief fx can leave marks on us, make us feel ashamed so insane degrees. And fear and shame are two main sources of a lot of feelings, that may be masking them.

So even understanding that you’re not a Cheeto might’ve left such an emotional scar on you that until you feel those feelings that were stopped back then and turned into a trauma, you won’t be left free of it and will be haunted. And for the emotions to flow, you also need a new logical understanding of what happened and why you’re not a Cheeto or why being a Cheeto is not wrong. You need to see on both levels that it’s a misunderstanding or not a wrong doing.

Anyway that Worthless comment ENRAGES Montresor. All the other comments lead him to feel anger, shame? Sadness? But that one triggers him more that the T-word (🚂)

“Worthless, y’say?” “Worthless!?” Monty screams looking around, he is circled by the purified freaks, “YOU.” “NEED.” “ME.”

Which fuck yeah, okay so he understands that everyone around him is a ‘sinner’ as well, and that they’re using him as a scapegoat to feel better about themselves. This is and understandable source of insane anger.

Now the fuck ass bitch of the mf year comes in, aka his Mother who I’ll call Samantha because I don’t want to type Monty’s mom 24/7.

Samantha- I’m kidding, his mother shushes him, calms him down as she reaches for him, and holds him- or rather has him in her clutches! As she doesn’t HUG him ladies and gentlemen, she holds her hands clasped around him.

Let’s add to this that his mother’s robe is colored RED. And her right hand has a golden cross ring.

Which HI OKAY. Okay. Funny thing, this might be a reach BUT, overall wearing a cross necklace is supposed to mean bearing your own cross, as in bearing your own hardships and suffering and pain etc, not rejecting it.

In literature such as Dostoyevsky the cross necklace is used often in ways as to show one taking the consequences of their actions and bearing them. Or as in exchanging them to show brotherhood.

Either way, I may be looking too much into stuff yk? But she’s wearing it on her middle finger which lol, but she’s wearing it on her hand, not around her neck, and she puts her hands around in a pseudo hug which is actually a cage next to the other burns on his body.

Is it meant to symbolize her trapping him by using religion? Or Samantha putting her own wrongs and blames on him as well? Her burdens? We’ll get back to that later.

Monty is huffing and puffing bcus he just had a rage attack, and his mother asks him “Are you picking fights again, my treasure?”

I’m shitting myself full live ultra HD because this implies that him trying to fight for himself and rejecting himself being worthless is declined.

He is not allowed to do so.

Why doesn’t his mother allow it? Because feelings as shame and guilt can be used to trap people. That’s what narcissists does usually taking facts mixing up words and phrases to make the other person seem guilty and in blame.

Holy Samantha is calling this ‘picking a fight.’ And the ‘again’ suggest that she’s been bending perceptions to her like and presenting the reality in her fancy.

And her fancy is keeping control over Montresor.

“My treasure.”

So this is a whole thing, which I suspect most of us already know of but let’s go over it for the sake of clarity.

His mother calling him ‘Montresor’ which can be directly translates to ‘My treasure’, and now it’s cute when it’s in the style of ‘My pumpkin’ pie’ but it’s rather giving ‘MY PRECIOUS.’ As in Gollum.

He belongs to HER. His autonomy is hers. He is not to misbehave- but actually he IS to misbehave, because that’s what keeps him trapped! If he sins, he needs HER to atone. How else is he to be forgiven? (Samantha is flashing us her Colgate smile my loves, she is NOT against this situation.)

His mother traps him in a cycle where he will always misbehave, and everything he does will be shown in that light, he’s either hopeless or selfish, and she DOES want him in that cycle, for him to endlessly try to not misbehave and always fail, and always have to depend on her for atoning for failing.

The next scenes will explain this better,

Montresor looks down at the arms wrapped around him and says “Mother.” In shock on his face. But not ‘Mother?’ But as in a statement.

Also back up, she is wearing a red robe. It’s not stained. She does not feel at fault or blame. And maybe it’s because her son is her main outlet. The white can symbolize righteousness, or devotion. Red may symbolize power or sin? Probably power, since she’s in power of him.

Anyhoo, she says

“Holler all you want. They’ll never hear you.”

Aka you’re helpless, no matter what to do they will never hear you = understand you = accept what you say. This can be a shaping belief to have, it’s no use to defend yourself because the crowd is deaf.

This is critically damaging because it’s partly truth in this situation. The cloaked figures won’t listen to what he has to say, he’s the worst of them all, all he says is bound to be bad.

This also dismisses the idea of trying for change or reaching for justice by peaceful means. They won’t listen anyways. You have to act in other ways.

“How don’t you understand yet?”

She’s insinuating he’s behind on something and it’s he who doesn’t understand, it’s all an illusion in his head. She’s planting doubt atp in his head too. Like darling? Why tf are you so behind, throwing a fit in a public server. Be ashamed- if you want ig.

“You are not one of us.”

Isollllation. Isolation is DEATHLY. Detaching him from all of them again would force him to think that she is like nearly a god for being there for him or loving him.

Making him dependent on her. He is to feel worse by overall, and it all comes at the end of the day of if she’ll be pitiful enough- or god forbid ah if she is forced to love him because he’s her child and it’s not even her choice to pity him! It’s forced! - and will grant him ‘acceptance’ or a form of it.

She won’t leave him. And her abandoning him should scare him. (Maybe this is a reach, I’d like to say that I’m theorizing real hard rn) but Samantha not wanting Montresor to leave her could indeed be swapped around into a way in which he feels her fear instead, so she gains more control. Typical narcissist behavior ig.

I feel ashamed? Nahhh, it’s all you G. I am angry? No it’s YOU who is raising your voice at ME. I’m the poor victim. LMAO IG?

I don’t want to be left alone? (Again?) (or to bear all the shame alone?)

Well, let’s switch it around and make YOU scared of me leaving so that I’ll be ensured you won’t leave me.

Ok next is just Monty looking at the big ass cross on the wall hit up by light and shit, as his mother holds him and keeps talking.

Btw id like to point out the effect of the windows. They have those diamond bars patterns. They’re ALL over Samantha’s smexy red H&M robe. They’re like prison bars, and it can ofc suggest her trapping him, or them both being trapped. I mean she herself is trapped in her own emotions and who she is, and she’s doing it to him too bcus that’s what she is doing to herself, unconsciously or not. The patters seem to do that to us.

“We walk with the lord, always.”

“Never question his plans.”

The statement of him not being one of them and then these being said suggest that he doesn’t walk with the lord and that he questions his plans- by questioning stuff? By questioning how he is treated? Very extreme show of how religion can be corrupted and bent for one’s own use. You could take overall a lot of wisdoms or Facebook quotes and do tf u want with them, and Montresor’s mother is quite a person.

“And He smiles upon us for our devotion.”

“But when He tests you, you get angry. You think you know better.”

Well what a way to spin and tamper with his emotions. His anger is not rightful. What he feels is wrong. People around him judging or abusing him is right or a test or whatever, and if Monty was devoted he wouldn’t feel like this.

Which is insane for as many reasons as you can think of. Anger to unjust is the right emotion, lmao it’s even mentioned in Bible, so she’s bending the words to her will.

Then, she reaches out for his hair in this very motherly manner of tucking it behind his ear, saying “You are faithless, my son.” “You have earned your misery.”

Okay so also to say, her tucking his hair behind his ear like this is crazy brainwashing. The physical touch and motion shows love and affection. While the words she speaks are of the opposite. We can see her mouth through most panels and she is show smiling, she is calm, she is content saying all of this.

Also the fact that she uh like takes the hair away for his ear to be out in the clear like dawgs on the beach, maybe in a way so he listens.

Montresor objects again.

“I’m not. I didn’t.”

Woah gender reveal ahh colors. He objects to being faithless, which may mean that he believes in god but thinks himself too wicked, and that’s why God does nothing for him? I’m unsure, as in episode 81 we get this golden stuff:

“Say, love Will? D’you wanna know a secret?”

“God’s never saved anybody. ‘Specially not the faithful.”

We could assume he means himself. I at first thought he meant himself when he was a believer but then if he went being non believer he wouldn’t say that God doesn’t save ppl because God wouldn’t exist I guess. So God chills but he’s mean in Monty’s opinion?

“Even in the good book, they always end up worse off. At the end of the day, all you can rely on is yourself. So maybe try growin’ a backbone, yeah?”

Okay so crazy good, because we can see where his belief of only relying on yourself comes from. It’s from the fact that he probably had to save himself from the situation he was in when he was younger. No magic hocus pocus apparated him out of the church, no Voldemort giving him a gun in the forest. He was all on his own, and he probably strongly believes he always will be.

Also in Wills gray ass shattered like pieces of glass flashbacks (William you’re so incredibly talented in being mentally unwell I feel better abt myself) we can see Monty’s comments to Will.

“Stop them you useless piece a shit!”

“Well? What’ll it be pal? Hightail it like a wimp, or die standing up?”

“Yer a damned fool, Will.”

“What a bootlicker” - “s’pose you’d know.”

“Hell, Will! S’the matter with you!?”

“I love you so much we should move out and live on a farm and see who kills who first.”

And by all those comments we get yet another glimpse into Montresor’s world.

William in Monty’s eyes is someone weak and helpless. Who has read FP ifykyk, I would love to write abt that, it’s another important part to Montresor’s character but idk if I should do so here, as idk how tf to spoiler anything.

Okay, and what is his reaction to weakness or helplessness? It’s a reaction of protection!

As in, rejecting portraying weakness or feeling helplessness or any act of it, and defying it, is a form of saving himself from the pain that those things brought him, as he associated being that with being trapped, used, manipulated. He can’t afford himself to have such weak spots, he has to be the opposite.

There’s a delicious other side to this but ig if I’ll get bored in a month or so I’ll write abt the current fp.

Next panel after Montresor objecting is his Mother smiling and telling him “The prove it.”

“Pray.”

And she pushes him down to kneel, looming over him. Also to mention, her brighter blonde hair is insane because he has dirty blonde hair. Hi?

His hands shake as she forms them into the praying hands, and he tells her “B-But I can’t.”

“And why not?”

“I’ve forgotten the words. Could you remind me how it starts? I need your help, Mother.”

(Also is she leading the church or what? Why is she ‘Mother’ and not ‘mother.’ So she has a superior lore in the church as a nun or smth idk?)

Montresor here is ready to pray and ask for forgiveness, but he doesn’t know the words any longer, and he is vulnerable in asking for help, he literally says out loud the ‘I need your help, Mother.” Which is crazy work for a guy like him. Sadly it’s the wrong person to ask for such, but it’s the only person perhaps he believes he can ask for that. She didn’t seem to leave him even if he’s born as this massive sinner from the beginning.

Then she lifts his chin up and tells him that

“I know.” “But there’s no helping you, my treasure.”

And her face seems ‘solemn’ now. As if she’s telling him the sad truth. This is her just further trapping him up in the cycle of being in control of him. There’s no helping him really, but he should be always asking for it. It’s using the stuff from Bible about people being born in sin and never being able to really get rid of it, but yet still are encouraged to ask for it.

As well, without the overall corruption it just means to accept one’s flaws and how stuff like generational trauma already passes upon us, and that such complicated stuff are impossible to fully fix. Since under one illusion lies another and so on, and you’d really need to be a God to fully just heal and be pure of all the ‘sin’ but asking for forgiveness even if you do stuff wrong bcus u don’t have control over every mean thing you do, I’d just admitting that you aren’t strong enough but want to change, and you keep that intention.

You don’t really have to believe in God or be religious to see that intentions are like really powerful stuff too, and they make our brain orient us on the goals we set for ourselves, and if the intention is indeed, Im sorry for doing this thing that I know is not good, and id like to ask for help and change, - Is literally gonna lead u good places either way.

Samantha is taking that away from Montresor. The belief that he can change, can ask for help, and then adds at the end that he is her treasure.

He is stuck with her. Who else will love him than her in this pov she’s forcing onto him? She takes away the possibility of being free by that, locking him in the delusional beliefs she keeps feeding him.

He has worth only when he’s with her. He snaps at being judged to be worthless, and his mother is the only one around to see him in any worth.

He’s literally her treasure.

Like no wonder bro compensates so bad, look at the cellar arc again in how he had a broken leg but stand up. Lenore comments:

“Their loyalty might be more fragile than it looks. Maybe he’s worried if he shows weakness, he’d lose control over them.”

Be weak = lose control over ppl or himself or over anything over all.

Back to Montresor and Samsung.

Samantha says “You’ve had the devil inside you since the day you were born.” Right after the there no helping you my treasure.

And yeah you can’t be helped fr bro, you was born with the devil inside you, no much to do with you other than keep under control for the rest of your life.

He gets angry then again and his eyes change to demon like.

Then he pukes the demon out- or well it leaves him?

The fuck ass hellish goat is birthed and stands on the symbol of Belial - Belial in Hebrew Bible originally meant “Worthlessness” or “Lawlessness” or “Wickedness.” The word itself means Without Worth, or usefulness.

So this demon in Montresor is created because of all of this. Before he even pukes it out and is forced to look up at his mother we can see the symbol itself being on the floor, not lightened up. As it can either mean it already being prepared by her or just the view that when you stand before God (since it’s where the cross was up on the wall) you put yourself in the state of being worthless.

Which woah again is insane, as the message in the Bible over all is the opposite in every way overall. But that’s then again the corruption.

The circle symbol thing lightens up in red, and Montresor is shaking on the floor. This a beautiful visual of what stuff like these can do to us, as we in fact do have something that can be described as a ‘demon’ in us. Aka the wounds and the ways we try to save ourselves and protect ourselves.

Also that doesn’t excuse our actions and doesn’t make Montresor not a villain in any way, it just explain him. This is NOT and apologist thing, I’ll jump before I’ll become that. But then when someone doesn’t hate on something bad every three seconds they must dislike waffles since they are taking about pancakes or smth.

“God have mercy.” Above the goat thing, is said by the figures we can guess from the font of the text.

The candles form around the circle and idk if that means shit since they’ve been floating around before or if it’s just decorative.

Then we get the visual of the figures praying out loud and saying the words Montresor has forgotten, as the demon attacks them.

Montresor gets blood on his face and looks up shocked and laughs at it. Because they’ve gotten what they deserved in his mind now.

Now idk what to say abt this panel, im totally missing out on the probably double meaning of it but it’s 3 am.

Then we switch pov to what’s actually happening and it’s Montresor choking his best friend on the floor. Parallel to the demon choking a cloaked figure shadow.

Lenore then says all kind of stuff to him, mocking him as “you, the devil you are.” “Ain’t scared of nutthin’ and no-body.” And he just agrees. And then she clocks him in with the “You’re always scared. Aren’t you?”

And he totally is.

Annabel then saying that if he wants help he’ll have to ask them for it is insane too, because we just saw what his beliefs/experiences are on asking for help.

Not to mention his overall power status going down if he does so.

“All he needs to do is ask for our help. But if his pride is more important to him than his life, who am I to argue?”

And that’s funny because for Montresor it’s not just pride, it ends up being it of course, but him thinking that he is worse than everyone around him is making him compensate in acting as if he’s better than everyone ig or trying/believing that he actually is and trying to reject how he was treated, and both thinking you’re better than everyone around you as well as thinking you’re the worst of the worst is being prideful, since in both you let yourself believe that you know better.

Which is tricky. Bro is defo stuck. His mother may not be around but he carries the cross on his neck. Idk what that symbolizes for him, if it’s a sign of his fate, of his mother still holding power over him, or something entirely else, or all at once.

Montresor’s first words after fairing and being awakened to be “I’m not,” and “I didn’t!” Are creepy as heck and sad.

And the fact that after saying those same words he has to ask for help again. A stranger. And Annabel replying the same way his mother did? “I’m quite certain you’re beyond help, Montresor.”

Montresor 💀 My treasure. Bye.

Also now I’m conflicted if him asking her why she hates him sm is like him getting a chance to ask his mother why she hated him sm?

Idk maybe it’s a reach. But we see that Montresor respects Annabel and that makes sense.

Then in episode 115 we see that when Eulalie ignores Montresor, which can make him feel un important or unworthy of attention, instantly maddens him.

Then he pretty much just shifts the words around like a professional and manipulates Will’s understanding of the situation into what he wants him to see/what he sees.

Then in the latest free chapter we see that Montresor did NOT in fact leave Will alone. Which says a LOT. It gives him a whole new side making him even more humane in his actions. Not to mention the fact that he SHIELDS Will with his own Body. And compliments him in the minimum way.

He treats Will the way his mother treated him in many ways, but there’s the MAIN big difference.

Okay but now we can finally get a conclusion to this thing.

Those two pages from a book I was reading are giving Monty I think. (hi Willspero nation)

We don’t know why Montresor is deemed to be born with the devil inside of him. Is it because of who his father might be? Or because he was meowed under no wedding circumstance? Did his father leave?

The shame of that would be left on his mother I guess? His mother is referred to as Mother rather than just mother, so she might be a nun or smth of high status and those usually make vows of not holding hands with guys.

Samantha could’ve lied or done something who knows, either way the father seems not to be around I think, and him leaving her would be a ‘good cause’ for her manipulating Montresor to never leave her.

We don’t know her story but if she got some abandonment issues or some shit she is definitely taking it out on him in the most malicious way possible. She might’ve been shamed for having a child and put that shame on Montresor too.

She mocks him for his anger, the way in earlier post I’ve talked about how Annabel mocks Ada for throwing a tantrum. Annabel does it to get out of a situation where she is held captive, Monty’s mother does it to keep someone captive. Ig?

“You’re either born a gambler or yer not.” You’re born this way or that way. Therems no change in life, you’re either this or that. He can’t change, he is born worthless is what is his core belief, and its in war against the new extreme of being better than anyone else. I think?

He has earned his misery, he deserves it, that’s his core belief that his mother gave him, and now he built a sub personality to contradict that, because he hates how it makes him feel, be seen, and treated.

He can’t accept healthy shame and tries to be more than a human. He strongly identifies with being strong, he disowns the trait of being weak, and “every disowned part has an opposite energy with which your protector/controller is identified with.”

So you don’t have to be religious to have healthy fundamentals, but she ruins the idea of any healthy principles for him by using the one that are shown in Christian religion and using them to control, so now no matter where he’d find good basic morals, he’d connect them to this, and reject them.

The devil that crawls out of him is part of his biggest fear of what she saying being the truth, that he’s at fault and not strong and powerful, but then he finds reassurance in it, he -I think- finds some peace in accepting that lie of being wrong, because it stops the war inside of him, but also contradicts itself by letting him feel strong as the cursed one. That they all fear him.

At last panel in the flashback chapter he just holds himself and laughs because I think we all can imagine how weird of a relief it must be to accept the lies but find strength in them and making them your own, even if they still are the ones that control you, you find some place of power and less helplessness in them. If u cant escape, at least u can do that.

Annabel manipulating Ada’s self worth - ‘lose him = loosing her self worth’ - Monty beliefs that people only will care for him when he is strong are being affirmed and reinforced

So going back to the orange text I started with, I’d like to show how everything that happens around Monty is just happening, but how he understands the world and which traumas he has had and what conclusion he has drawn, based on the certain understandings he has had at whatever age it happened all to him or kept happening, and then the decision he made on those flawed conclusions, and what patterns were created upon making those decisions.

Every character does that, so far I think? Ada has understood something to a specific extent about and concluded that true love is the priority in life. She started making decisions on this understanding and it created those patterns of swiping right on the wrong guys.

We don’t know what created that understanding, but we know that her self worth is connected to external forces.

Either way, Montresor accepting the fact that he’s the devil in a way, is a way of him taking control back in a deluded way. He turns around the judgements placed upon him and they grant him the illusion of power and strength.

And just for insurance I guess, he is the villain, this is not excusing him, he goes around acting all bleh and ew and he will deserve the consequences for that and he deserves the ones he gets now. He is not a good guy, and he doesn’t need to be.

He is not changing/wanting to change, because that would go against his whole thing. Does that mean I wouldn’t like to see him change? No. I would love to. But people like that hardly does ig since they’re so trapped. Montresor was trapped for how long we don’t know by his mother and even when he’s left and lives his life we see how deeply that wounded him.

He is still trapped, but maybe for him, being like this was what let him escape his community and his mother. Idk life is complex and his character story is too.

His spectre does have golden chains around him and his power is making deals and such. Would make sense.

[pianokantzart]

I think one of the many elements that makes Bowser's army so much more of a threat in the movie vs the games is that everyone physically capable of carrying a weapon is actually armed.

Every one of these guys is willing, able, and equipped to stab (or bludgeon if that's their area of expertise.)

[poisonmushroomfan]

I was rewatching TPOT 15 and I just noticed something. Pencil had her breakdown AFTER encountering Four in the past. Let me explain.

So in TPOT 15 when Cloudyay had to get Disky back from BFB 22 they were blamed for stealing Donuts Diary and were put on trial, they obviously don’t wanna be there so they throw Pencil and Golfball at Four and break out. Hijinks insue, yada yada. But I wanna talk about what moments in this sequence interests me and why I think that Pencil breakdown was caused by seeing Four again. 

When they’re trying to run after Disky, Four pops up infront of them and tells them that they’re on trial. Pencils face here is what interests me, because this is her first time seeing him in months. The last time she saw him was in..TPOT 13? I believe? Idk, however she doesn’t looked too shocked here. Compare that with the other times he’s shown up spooking her. 

Ok, yeah it’s almost exactly the same- but my point still stands. He caught her off guard, he spooked her. And that ripped the bandaid off, she’s still not safe from Four even when she’s doing challenges. That was the thing that was holding her inside of them for YEARS and that kicked off her fear of elimination. Just the sight of seeing him again made her brain go haywire.

Next two I’ll be covering together as they’re literally back to back. Firstly we have her face while Pillow is throwing her. She wants to hit Four, she wants to hurt Four in that moment. But when she actually hits him she’s shocked, probably because she didn’t do the damage she wanted. She didn’t hurt Four enough. We see this while Cloudyay’s exiting the courthouse. Her face is angry, and her arms are crossed, either ticked off after her lack of damage from earlier or from seeing Four.

And lastly before the big moment we have her snapping at Golfball to just leave already.

She doesn’t want to be here anymore. She doesn’t want to be captured by Four again. She doesn’t want to go near Four again. And Golfball suggesting they fix the place which means going back to Four and possibly getting captured in the process, that’s a big no no. Pencil doesn’t want to risk being captured by Four again just to revive some contestants of another show. Especially a show she has bad memories from. 

Because of going back to BFB 22 and interacting with Four, her (suspected) main trigger of her PTSD. She acts irrational, she blows up at Golfball and is the reason her team got sent back in time to BFDI 25. This one encounter she has with Four is what starts her spiral in TPOT 16-17 (she also gets constantly triggered by Four in BOTH episodes. She gets chased by them in TPOT 16 and is riding a variant of them in TPOT 17..and also the entirety of the elimination in that episode…and the fact that Four made Yellow Face’s and Pillow’s eliminations especially brutal, as a treat ^^) 

Video for proof that I didn’t take this out of context

[triglycercule]

murder time trio in an alternate multiverse where it wasn't murder time but they were still a trio (impossible.......they don't hate each other?!)

ok so like this was based off someone else's art but i seriously cannot find it (i tried DESPERATELY) so just know this idea is not mine and i cant find the original artist to credit so i feel bad but here's the og art (dont have a good quality version)

[quibbs126]

I’m thinking about it, and I think Optimus banishing Megatron from Iacon with the High Guard was probably one of the worst decisions he could have made to deal with this situation

Because Optimus pretty much left him alone, outside of his home and I’m fairly certain the only remaining city on Cybertron, so to live out in the wilds of the surface, with a bunch of complete strangers whom they literally call nut-jobs and have a strong belief of “strength of one bot over another”, and are also much older and more experienced than him

And in leaving him with the High Guard, he’s likely isolated Megatron even more than if he was banished alone. Because while Optimus and the others have friends they can be vulnerable with and be comfortable talk about their feelings, Megatron does not know these people, and they don’t know him. But he’s now their leader in a group that values strength above all else, and emotions are usually considered a weakness in these sorts of settings. So not only does he have no one to talk to, he has to bottle up his very strong and raw emotions to appear stronger and worthy of his position, thus making them far worse and probably leading to unhealthy coping mechanisms

This could end up not being the case, and the High Guard are very considerate of his emotions. But it’s also very possible the case that they aren’t, or Megatron believes he can’t be vulnerable around them. They (the quartet I mean) don’t know these people, and they’ve really only seen them be violent and aggressive, and Megatron knows he’s an outsider to them. It’s a more likely scenario that they’ll be harmful to Megatron’s mental state rather than helpful

And again, they’re a lot older than him too, and they probably all know this, at least on some level. And thus, he’s far more likely to be influenced by the High Guard’s mentality and beliefs, which we already know aren’t great (even if it’s somewhat justified why they’re the way they are by this point). And assuming they’re pissed at Optimus as well, they could very well try to have Megatron distance himself from his old friends, and it be more successful than if he was alone

But moving away from the High Guard, there’s the fact that Optimus banished him from his home and left him to fend for himself, which Megatron would absolutely take personally just on its own. He was clearly not in a mentally stable place at that point and I think he thinks what he’s doing is right, he’s the one not being like Sentinel while Optimus is. It definitely isn’t right, but he thinks he is. And the banishment to him could not only be Optimus/Orion standing against him, but essentially him saying he’s given up on Megatron, making him leave his home. And I mean, Sentinel did kind of do this to the High Guard 50 cycles ago, so yet another parallel to be made between Optimus and Sentinel

But note that when I say all this, I don’t mean it as a criticism of the movie, that this is a flaw of the plot. I’m fairly certain this was 100% intentional by the writers. It wasn’t just Megatron that created Megatron and led to the war, it was Optimus too, even if he didn’t intend to

Optimus probably thought at the time that this was the best solution in dealing with him. He doesn’t agree with Megatron’s actions but he understands where it all comes from, and he was someone very important to him. So he probably doesn’t want to arrest him, punishing him for what he thought was right and making himself more like Sentinel, oppressing those who were supposed to be on his side. But he still has to be punished for his actions. So by banishment, he is punished while still being allowed to essentially be free, just not in Iacon, and maybe in turn he’ll see his wrongdoings and come back better. And even if the High Guard aren’t ideal, they did help Optimus and Elita rescue their friends, and maybe he thought at least with them he wouldn’t be alone in his thoughts. Also they agreed with Megatron’s ideals and probably shouldn’t be allowed to just roam free in Iacon, especially in this politically fragile state it is right now

But in doing so, Optimus essentially threw Megatron to the wolves and created the perfect environment for his anger and pain to fester and cause him to become more like the Megatron we know in the future

I’m not sure what the actual best solution would have been to this issue though. Maybe it would have been just jailing Megatron? Granted in the short term, it’d probably sting even worse for Megatron, that his own friend would lock him up, and it’d probably make him even more resentful. But at least there, he’d still be in Iacon, with his friends and people who want to help him, and with Optimus and Elita at the helm, they can probably see that he gets treated well and has access to people that can really help him work through it all and see what he did was wrong

But that’s not what happened

[agaricus-bitorquis]

PVP CIVILIZATION SPOILERS

Tabi ended her story at rock bottom. I feel like it was really glossed over, but we really have seen her just going lower and lower into this pit and the finale shows her, finally, at her worst.

Sure, no one was really left in a good position, but all Tabi wanted was Good for her people. Was she doing something right? No, not at all. I don't agree with her approach. However that approach is all she's known and she had Clown on her side constantly pushing her towards this brutal and cut-throat way of living and getting revenge for the Axes. She sort of knew what she was doing was wrong, and that she didn't agree with it, but did it because it meant that her civilization and the clearly LARGE amount of people unecessarily lost during it would be avenged.

But then, by the finale, she lost her civilization. She can never go back to the one place she's ever known as home, and not just that she has been permenatly exiled from her home by the very people she was trying to Save basically. Everything she did was for no reason because in the end she's now not just disgraced from her Family, Friends and Civilization for something that was never ever true, but is actively a Kill on Sight now. She has to participate in a fight that she should never have to fight in.

That's just the first point. There's then the reason why she's in that situation, Clown. Clown clearly played a very crucial part in her support system for a long time, that's how he was able to get inside her head and get her to help 'him'. She probably would have jumped off a cliff if he asked her to, and he exploited her desperation - and now she has to come to terms with all that, and more, while he runs away from her and kills himself. She gets no closure, she can't scream or shout at him, she can't even kill him if she wanted.

She's forced to never be able to actually confront him, live with the guilt of seeing not one but two people in their last moments, but also live the rest of her life thinking that Clown never actually cared about her and used her for what seems to be a large majority of her life.

(Which, I do think he did care, however he didn't care enough. I think maybe he was just a bit dissolusioned with the fact that he was using Tabi after a certain amount of time. Clown is very complicated and could be his whole own post.)

'But she has Evbo!' Sure, she kinda does, but is that enough? He isn't exactly around enough to provide enough support for her and he also hasn't had the best time this season. Is it getting better? Yeah. But there's a lot going on still. I also hate to point it out but being with Evbo means living in the sword civilization with people who will never fully trust her and may never truly accept her, and people who she will never fully trust and actually may never trust in general. She is very lonely, and probably scared if I had to guess for a lot of reasons.

Tabi is lonely. She barely has Evbo and no one else knows her or trusts her. She really doesn't have much left for her. She never 'wins', and each time she's close to a win it's ripped from her hands and we are shown this time and time again.

I'm not saying Evbo didn't suffer, I'm saying that Tabi is still suffering while Evbo gets to find some kind of peace.