#everyone else has the serious and thoughtful character meta covered

[dailyhiveswapkids]

the real reason i dont post more about these kids myself is because i only have steam for the worst possible ideas. behold!

[anghraine]

Long, rambling, general post (with some detours into Austen + SW):

I find the academic obsession with novelty (at least in my field) rather irritating and in some ways actively harmful. But I've been thinking about it as I work on my dissertation, and there is an underlying concept I do find important.

Over here, I'm pretty content to scream my opinions at no one in particular, and have fun if people end up (courteously) answering back. But while there are commonalities between fandom meta practices and academia, a major difference (again, at least in my field) is that in academia, you essentially have to familiarize yourself with the wider community and discourse, and engage with it.

In literature, at least, it's important that you're not just reaching interpretations in a functional vacuum—interpretations that may well have been reached and argued thoroughly and well before. If you've got something fresh to contribute to the overall conversation, okay—maybe you basically agree with another interpretation but feel it could be expanded upon or there are some nuances that got missed. But the conversation doesn't particularly benefit from people just echoing the exact some interpretations over and over without adding or modifying them at all.

To put it another way, not everyone needs to (or should) cover every interpretation they agree with. This is not exactly literary criticism's reputation, but it's fundamentally social. Not everyone needs to do everything. Different people can and should cover different ground, and the general discussion benefits from this.

But this post isn't really about academia.

I think there's some real value in this idea that not everyone needs to be seen to repeat every correct take, or every take they agree with. Sometimes you're not really equipped to add anything. Sometimes you're not the best judge of a particular issue because it's not in your ballpark. Sometimes the ground has been so thoroughly covered in wider social discourse that you don't really need to add to it.

And I think this is especially important when it comes to the Internet firehose. People essentially repeating the same thing over and over and over without adding anything significant is a major way that ideas—including mistaken ideas—spread so quickly. Sometimes it's fairly inane jokes that become inescapable for an OP or within a fandom or whatever (book Isildur fans unite!). Sometimes it's mistaken or irrelevant corrections that someone/some people get bombarded with because no one bothers to check if the corrections have been made already. Sometimes it's the same reply ad nauseam, which quickly becomes intensely irritating while adding nothing. Sometimes it's worse than that—wrongheaded or exaggerated attacks on someone's character that get launched at the person incessantly, or active disinformation.

But basically, I think it's worth considering the shape of the overall discussion when you're considering what you specifically are going to contribute to it, if anything. Sometimes this is very serious. Sometimes it's a minimal consideration for others and for your impact on the general atmosphere in a fandom or some other social context.

For instance: back in 2005, when the Keira Knightley/Matthew Macfadyen Pride and Prejudice came out, my part of Austen fandom was having absolute conniptions over it. Some of this was over literally any adaptation of P&P ever being made after the 1995 mini-series (especially anyone else ever playing Darcy). Some of this was over claims that the 2005 P&P was generally more Brontë than Austen. Some of it had to do with particular contractions, or certain depictions of characters, jokes, aesthetics, dialogue, etc. I remember very serious articles about how it was a flash in the pan that would soon disappear from cultural consciousness (lol).

I actually share a number of the criticisms, as it happens! But I thought (and still think) that the collective outrage was ... excessive, at best. So I mostly didn't talk about my personal gripes because they already seemed to disproportionately dominate the conversation (to me, etc), and I didn't want to add to it. But it interests me that people have sometimes assumed that not personally adding to the griping about it means that I love it (and often, that I need to be corrected from doing so!). The same thing happens with particular ships or dynamics I don't like but don't want to add to discourse about.

I've definitely erred in the other direction. I used to talk quite a bit more about my criticisms of the Star Wars prequels, for instance, which I later regretted despite still having those criticisms. The fandom rage was just so over the top and everything covered so exhaustively and excessively by others that it (very belatedly) started to feel like adding to it was kind of like kicking a dog.

On the flipside, sometimes the firehose is pointed the opposite way from my personal opinion, and even if that opinion is just a mousy little cheep amidst the roar of approval/disapproval, voicing it seems more appropriate to me than joining a stampede of disproportionate hatred. Or sometimes the general discourse is pretty mixed and you just have to exercise judgment about your role in it (I've definitely gone for "I see a lot of debate on this point and hell with it, I get a place in the ring, too").

But in any case, I think that the pressure to be seen to have a take all the time and the assumptions made about people if they don't individually weigh in on ... basically everything is really misguided. We're social creatures! Sometimes ground has already been thoroughly covered. Sometimes it's been covered far too much. And I think stopping to think of what we're really adding, even when we're not plodding through reviews of the literature in academia, can be worth attempting.

[voidcommascreamintothe]

Cassian is not going to die in the next acotar book, what are y’all on?

I’m talking about acotar again. I gotta. The thoughts must be let out!

Come, walk with me here.

I’ve seen a couple of tiktoks saying that Cassian is likely to die, or that he is fated to die. But I am convinced that media literacy is much lower than the experts thought, because some of the arguments are just… inaccurate interpretations of canon?

My arguments are as follows:

1. Elain saying it wouldn’t take much to kill him, was only in the context of the battle with Hybern. And i know this because acotar was supposed to be a trilogy!!! You dont even need to read between the lines here, you just have to read. It was supposed to end with Wings and Ruin. It was planned out and plotted as a trilogy; altho i am partly convinced that Maas never intended the books to continue past the first one (more on that another time). Elain either saw that Cassian dies and intervened because she saw that his death leads to Nesta’s death, or she warned him, to let him know that he is not infallible. His death means Nesta will probably die too, as is established when Nesta refuses to leave Cassian and covers his body with hers, so Elain warned him to not do anything stupid. Altho the fae people have long lives, they are not Deathless. They can still die. So that warning of Elain’s, only served as a reminder to Cassian.

2. We have canonical resurrections. Rhysand died and came back. All three Archeron sisters died and came back.

2.1. We also get a cop-out. Near the end of acosf, when Bryarlin is controling him, he turns the knife on himself and pretends to fall to his death, so that Nesta can unleash her power to its fullest. This fake “Cass dying” scenario happens like two or three times over the course of the books. It would be poor cheap writing on Mass’s part if it happens AGAIN. And poor and cheap writer she is not.

3. What would be the point?

No, i am serious here. Narratively, what purpose would a Major Character Death serve at this point in the story? When has an important character died, and stayed dead in these books?

I truly believe that Amren’s death would’ve served a narrative purpose. If she sacrificed herself - and stayed dead- for the sake of everyone else, it would’ve been definitive proof that she was more fae than cold blooded monster. She was not one for sentiments and warm hugs. This act would have been her showing just how much she changed, how much the love she received from her friends changed her for the better. But no, she gets scooped up from the magic cookware and becomes yet another powerful female character that looses her powers.

Side eye. Major side eye to Maas for that one.

And thats for Amren, a secondary character. I do not for one second believe that permadeath is in the cards for any of the acotar characters.

4. Maas got her start in writing Sailor Moon fanfics. Do you think that someone who writes Sailor Moon fanfics would NOT write a HEA?

Ok this is more of a meta-textual reading of the text, looking at the bigger picture and incorporating details from real life into the contextual interpretation of the text, but it is important still.

Maas’s stories are high fantasy with a hard magic system and also a focus on love and loving relationships between people. Throne of Glass specifically, but the Maasverse generally, follow this kind of pattern and genre. A Court of Thorns and Roses is much more of a Romantic Fantasy. Romantic not as in smut, but as in Princess Bride. Romantic as in the Romantic movement in literature. It is idealistic. It shows a world through pink lenses in the shape of love hearts. It is much more of a 80s or 90s fantasy movie than anything else.

Game of Thrones these books are not. GRRM, Sara is not. The tonal shift that would come with a Major Character Death would be jarring. It would be off putting to a lot of the core audiences, and if Maas doesn’t see this, then Bloomsberry does. Or someone on her team does. If they cut a threesome scene, citing messiness and over complicating character relationships, then they most likely advise to stick with the status quo: HEA.

Love and loving connections is a huge part of the plot in Sailor Moon. The meaning of love, life, bonds with other people, all of this warm fuzzy way of telling a story is the point of the immaculate conception of Maas’s world building. She will bot go against it. It is not within her style nor her pattern of storytelling.

4.1. My loves, Aelin made it out of the box. Aelin got her happy ending with Rowan by her side and a crown on her head. Her Majesty the Queen of Therassen, got out of the box and got her happy ending- without her powers (side eye) but that is for another post. We were worried for a second there, but it was a HEA at the end wasn’t it?

When Maas said that we should be worried for Hunt, (or Rhun really, both are in a bit of a pickle at the point the story left them), I am confident she meant we should worry for them in the same way we were worried for Aelin. Who went through hell, but came back. To her HEA. Do you see what in putting down?

4.2. I also don’t really have a way of saying this, but smutty romantasy books do not kill off their breeding pairs. The style/subgenre of smutty romantasy does not come with main girl/boy death. Side characters, maybe; parrents or siblings (often off-screen) definitely.

But not your breeding pair. Cmon. We’ve read enough of those books to see the established pattern right girls?

I am by no means an athority on ACoTaR lore. Im just a girl in the world, reading smut. But I do have reading comprehension skills. Well developed ones, in thanks to all that classic literature i read as assigned reading in school. If I can analyze the motivations and traits of Raskolnikov and the original Lady Marmalade, as well as accurately surmise the plot of War and Peace, a book that gave me no peace and gives me war flashbacks, then a book about hot people having hot skysex is not an issue babez, truly it is not.

Bonsoir.

[letsduneit]

okay here are some of my more specific thoughts:

paul saying he'll stay behind to cover the retreat doesn't mean that there is a need for someone to actually do this, though - remember, he just doesn't want to go south and at this point is kind of desperately trying to grasp at excuses to stay North.

shishakli being called a spy is actually what first made me realize the parallel! because it means she was hiding. she didn't pull a duncan idaho and valiantly face down the incoming enemies and go out in a blaze of glory- she laid in wait, secretly. we also don't know for sure that she was caught, or whether she ambushed them- that's speculation.

also, i really do think paul is calling the shots at this point. stilgar is such a yes man by this point in the film, as are the almost all of the others, save chani. paul says as much to gurney- that the fedaykin are all his followers now, not friends and equals. the fact that everyone else refuses to leave if paul doesn't is proof of this- regardless of who their leader technically is, they're following paul above anyone else, even into death.

and now more general points about why and how i arrived at my initial conclusion:

when writing meta, it's important to always analyze through the framework of the messages the film is trying to make with these characters. these kinds of media are tightly edited so that every shot contributes to overarching development. we're all just kind of inferring about what meaning things might have, but these motifs and themes are kind of the only benchmarks we have, so we should always use them to identify which interpretations are more likely than others. none of this brings us to an objective answer, of course- that's what makes it meta!

for example, there are two repeating motifs throughout the movie that my analysis of the scene would support and contribute to. the first is the theme that the atreides and the harkonnens are two sides of the same coin, particularly when it comes to paul as he leans more and more into harkonnen behaviors and mentalities. this is one of the biggest arcs in the film because it's so closely tied to paul's own character development, so you'll find hints of it in tons of scenes all throughout.

the second is the repeating theme of skeptics becoming followers. denis villeneuve does a great job of showing how paul converts increasingly skeptical groups of people into following him. we start with the fremen who believe in him from the moment of his arrival on arrakis; we have shadout mapes who believes in him after jessica identifies the crysknife; we have stilgar who initially seems very serious and reserved but becomes quite fanatical by the end. this is a deliberate pattern of progression. shishakli is the singular most vocal skeptic of paul and the prophecy aside from perhaps chani. for her to finally embrace the prophecy and paul completes the pattern that has been set up since the first movie.

we also have to consider where we are within the story at this point in time. paul has just made the decision to go south, knowing what it entails. a lot of people treat the water of life scene as the point of no return, but i think this decision to meet his destiny instead of avoiding it is the turning point for paul. this is the moment where everything starts to shift, where he finally embraces the idea of becoming the fremen's lisan al-gaib. it makes sense, then, that this turning point is where we see paul first make a harkonnen-like decision, and that this is where we see paul's biggest skeptic finally converted.

i think about it like this: which is more likely- that this scene is only meant to tell us that a fedaykin can take down 9 harkonnens? or that in addition to this, the scene echoes two massive repeating themes that underly the entire movie and underscore its central turning point- that of paul's harkonnen heritage and that of paul's increasing sway over even the most skeptical of fremen?

to be completely honest- i personally think it's more likely that paul allowed shishakli to stay behind instead of directly ordering it. but considering the sway paul has over the fremen, including shishakli, even in allowing it he has made a decision- one that his grandfather would approve of.

don't mind me i'm just thinking about the little ways in which the movies set us up to think of the baron and paul as inherently similar even before his heritage is revealed.

in dune part one, we see the baron's response to being forced into a retreat by the emperor: he has a harkonnen barricaded into the walls of arrakeen as a trap for the atreides when they arrive.

in dune part two, we see paul's response to being forced into a retreat south by feyd-rautha: he has shishakli, one of the fedaykin (also chani's best friend rip paul really took everything from her) stay behind in sietch tabr to ambush the harkonnen soldiers when they arrive.

both the baron and paul are cunning enough to find an advantage even in a seeming defeat, and both have a powerful enough sway over their followers that their followers will agree to walk into certain death for them.

what is most notable about this similarity is that it arises before paul reaches the south and before he drinks the water of life. the paul who makes this decision (or allows it) does not know he is related to the baron, and has not decided to consciously lean into his harkonnen heritage. this is just paul. and this is what he is already gravitating towards, long before he has a name to describe it.

[opbackgrounds]

I've been letting this thought stew all day and maybe I should let it stew into a fully formed meta, but I kinda have an issue with people saying Usopp acted 'terribly' this arc. And yeah, he did - but so did Robin. And while one of the differences is that Robin was much more forcefully manipulated by external pressures, another is that the crew recognizes her actions as a cry for help.

So, while Usopp is primarily responsible for his actions in the way everyone is, he's also suffering a serious mental health crisis that's been germinating unchecked since childhood. One Piece doesn't really address mental health in explicit terms, but the difference between Usopp (allowed to run away, then left out in the cold) vs Robin (chased down, affirmed, and told she'll always have a place in the crew, no matter how much she [in appearance] betrays them) is staggering.

And I think the reason, really, is the chauvinism of One Piece. It's a "man's romance." And that means women get saved and men save themselves. (Obviously there are huge exceptions to this rule. Partially, at least.) But in this case, it means that the solution for Robin's mental health troubles is someone else following, absolving, and supporting her, and the solution to Usopp's is him getting over it and proving that he is a cool fighter guy. Even though the story sort of indicates Usopp would have done way, way better if someone actually talked to him and helped him unpack all that shit.

Only no one does, and eventually when Nami and Chopper want to try, they're told (by the Real Men of the crew) that it would only hurt Usopp more. In the short term, maybe. In the long term? That'd be a different series.

While I agree that Robin made some pretty terrible mistakes during this arc, she thought she was saving the lives of the only people to show her any kindness and was actively suicidal. I don't think it can really be compared to Usopp's situation.

And you're forgetting that after the big argument Chopper tried to go after Usopp to at the very least treat his wounds, only for Usopp tell Chopper to go away. Luffy was perfectly okay with Robin quitting the crew if that's what she wanted--he's not going to hold anyone hostage--but he's not going to accept a resignation given under duress. He says as much during the tower scene on Enies Lobby, if she wants to die she can do it with them. There was no one pointing a gun to Usopp's head when he decided to quit. He was the one who brought the subject up, and he's the one who walked away.

I've mentioned a couple of different times where Usopp has tried to be emotionally vulnerable with the crew only for it to not really go anywhere, but Usopp does not get a free pass in the communication department.

I was going to bring it up later anyway, but in our very first scene with Usopp we learn that he's a very proud person. He uses bluff and bluster to cover up his feelings of insecurity to the point where the crew doesn't necessarily realize the turmoil within. He wants so badly to be the main character, a warrior in the same way he sees his father, but he's just not. He's not like Luffy, he's not fearless and monstrously strong. He knows this deep down, and is ashamed of it, and compensates for his shame by lying to everyone. Including himself.

Luffy tried to apologize during the argument, and Usopp didn't let him. Usopp had every opportunity to tell the crew that he met the spirit of the Going Merry but he didn't. HIs shame doesn't let him go after Robin without wearing a mask, and his pride almost keeps him from rejoining the crew. There are many, many times that people offer to help Usopp or get him to listen to common sense, only to refuse. In the end, it was Usopp who demanded to duel with Luffy, not the other way around.

There's only so much help you can offer someone who's refusing to be helped. There was no CP9 holding Usopp hostage. He made his choice entirely of his own free will.

Now, One Piece does have a view of masculinity that I don't necessarily always agree with, but this sort of pride that refuses to ask for help has absolutely no place in it. That's seen as early as Arlong Park when Luffy says that he's nothing without his crew. And it's this sort of pride that Enies Lobby (and a little into Thriller Bark) that Usopp breaks, and it's that breakthrough that lets him to become the brave warrior of the sea he always pretended to be.

[pla-teau]

WANDAVISION EPISODE 6 THOUGHTS

SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!

GOOD GOD I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS

GIF NOT MINE

pietro maximoff as ‘himself’ | in the opening credits, pietro is introduced as playing himself? this just made me more suspicious about him and who he really is. it’s like wanda (since she’s the one broadcasting her show) trying to convince us, and herself, that this is her dead brother.

billy talking to us | i know tommy talks to the camera at the beginning for a brief minute but it’s mainly billy talking. i think this was a hint at his incoming powers. plus, in promo trailers for the ‘modern family’ episode, wanda’s the one talking to the camera. i bet we’ll see the kids talk to the camera in that episode but i just find it interesting that billy’s the one leading us through the beginning of the episode. plus, in rewatching the episode, pietro seems to be aware of billy talking to us and reacts to when billy talks about vision and wanda’s relationship going through a rough patch.

haydick hayward’s an ass | there’s no denying that hayward has something up his suspicious ass. first with showing the footage of wanda stealing vision’s body. then, putting in a missile and planning on killing wanda. yea, the five years were hard for everyone - no one’s denying it but there’s just something that isn’t right. we clearly see that he’s hiding something when darcy finds a file of sorts that only hayward can see and that he’s been able to track vision without telling the team. either he’s got a personal vendetta or he’s covering for something more sinister. personally, i think he’s just pissed that wanda, one of the most powerful beings in the universe, took away vision’s body when he needed it to create more weapons and whatever else he was planning. i wanted monica to punch him in the throat when he told her it was better that she wasn’t around when her mom died. bless monica for keeping her cool.

wanda’s interaction with herb | their brief interaction makes me believe that herb is just as aware as agnes (if she happens to be a victim in all this and not agatha harkness) about what’s happening. we got a hint about it in episode 3 when he tried to tell vision what geraldine’s purpose in westview was. we see him mimic agnes from the previous episode when he asks wanda if there’s anything she wants changed. he looks to her the same way agnes did when she was thrown off script. both these times involve vision throwing everything off. vision’s the one that’s been off script from the beginning of the episode this time around instead of after a weird event.

residents being in a loop or immobile | as vision gets farther from wanda and explores westview, it’s evident that there’s something off about the people. we get that shot of the woman and presumably her husband stuck in a time loop of hanging decorations and putting a pumpkin on the front steps. the woman not only sheds a tear but her hands look purplish presumably because of the cold or being stuck doing the same task for god knows how long. clearly, the woman’s in pain and is aware that she can’t break free. as vision gets closer to the loop, residents are completely immobile and stuck wherever they stand. it’s eerie and further proves that this may be wanda’s doing and wherever she is, it’s easy for the residents to be active or for her to control those near her. it could also mean that the closer you are to the hex’s border, that you become immobile as you’re farther removed from the fantasy life wanda has created.

yo-magic commercial | by far the creepiest and most disturbing commercial in the series. i’ve seen people theorize that this commercial is referring to wanda’s detainment on the raft in civil war. it would make sense since the yogurt could represent wanda’s powers and opening the lid should be simple and easy, just like using your powers. on the raft, wanda was detained with a straitjacket and a collar on her neck so she couldn’t use her magic. the island could represent the raft since it was in the ocean. ‘yo-magic, the snack for survivors’ could represent wanda being a survivor in many instances: strücker’s experiments, the battle of sokovia and the lagos incident.

pietro’s ‘part’ | when wanda questions pietro, he gets defensive about how he’s just trying to do his part: come unexpectedly, create tension with vision, stir up trouble with the twins, and ultimately give wanda grief. grief holding a double meaning. obviously, pietro did bring wanda grief when he died in 2015 but it also means to cause trouble which he has done since his arrival to westview. whenever wanda questions him about their childhood or tries to trip him up, pietro retorts with a question or makes rather meta remarks about westview.

the details are fuzzy | the comment pietro makes after a moment of silence between them. he claims he got shot in the middle of the street and next thing he knew wanda was calling her. i think when ‘pietro’ was brought into the westview reality, his memories mixed with those of wanda’s pietro or skewed them at least - it’s probably why things seem hazy to him and can see that wanda doesn’t believe him to be the pietro she remembers. pietro knows he looks different to wanda and it’s like a comment to us because even though pietro only appeared in one movie with wanda - we the audience know he’s not the same actor. this could also be mephisto really mind tripping wanda because she would remember what her brother looked like but the memories are remembered differently. enough to keep her on edge with him and make her suspect but not want to because he also says “i knew you needed me” no stranger would say that right? of course, siblings and family can tell when another member needs them. this episode really makes you laugh at pietro’s antics but go down a rabbit hole with every line he says.

the hex’s effects on people | when darcy explains to monica that her cells have been greatly affected by her entrance and departure from the hex, it doesn’t seem like monica is surprised. maybe this is hinting that monica already has her powers or simply mean that she’s putting on a poker face to hide her fear (or astonishment) at wanda’s level of power. it’s interesting to see if wanda’s gonna be responsible for birthing some mutants or at least awakening the x gene if it hasn’t already. does it mean that anyone can simply leave or that if you leave, you’ll come out with serious side effects that are possibly life threatening? monica states at the end that she’s seen cells in remission which makes me believe that this is hinting at the x gene. we’ve seen what the hex does once you go in, but what happens if an ordinary westview resident leaves?

agnes and vision | we see agnes in her car supposedly leaving town or as she claims, she got ‘lost’. when vision takes her out of her trance, agnes seems shaken and even questions if she’s dead. she also seems to confirm that wanda is the one controlling everyone because she doesn’t even let them think about leaving westview. we see more of where vision’s memory stands because he doesn’t remember (or know) that he was an avenger and that he died (twice). when she says that all is lost, she quickly starts laughing maniacally like a witch. this again makes me think that agnes knows more than anyone what’s going on. assessing what she got from vision, she’s probably laughing because it’s amazing to her that wanda’s gotten so powerful and maybe everything is going according to plan - she just possibly couldn’t overcome wanda’s control and only has a heightened awareness of the situation. there’s no mention of ralph this episode and you would think she’d bring along her husband to leave and go to her desired destination in town. i don’t know, i still think she’s got an ulterior motive and plays a bigger part in all of this.

the twins’ conversation | after sharing a sweet moment, pietro quickly calls out the obvious - the kids. only in episode 3 did children finally come into the show through billy and tommy. now, for halloween, all the kids are out and enjoying halloween. pietro, like rapid fire, remarks that wanda probably kept them peacefully asleep in their beds and didn’t wake them until now for the “occasional holiday episode cameo” so as not to traumatize them even more since she’s always been the “empathetic twin”. he seems to know that this is all in a television reality which gives him even more awareness than any other supporting character we’ve met so far. he even goes into assessing (and somewhat praising?) wanda’s handling of this whole westview reality as ethically possible. he knows that wanda wouldn’t rewrite everything: couples and families stay together and personalities aren’t far off from what they are. with this, it heavily hints that this isn’t the pietro we’ve known in the mcu or the peter from the x-men universe. to me, this furthers the point that this ‘pietro’ is just a puppet for whoever is behind all this (or just a multiverse version of piet) since he seems more impressed than anything by wanda’s powers. also, he’s been the only one to ask what we’ve all been thinking since the first episode: how the hell did wanda do this? once again, wanda doesn’t remember how all of it started which still makes me thinks she was probably taken advantage of by someone and earlier in the episode when recounting a childhood memory, pietro comments that she’s probably suppressed the trauma hence why she doesn’t remember it the same way. at the end, this could all be wanda’s doing due to her feeling so alone and grieving that she may have suppressed that memory of how this all started.

pietro’s corpse | again, us the audience and wanda are reminded that this universe’s pietro is dead. it’s another person closest to wanda that isn’t alive - harking back to her comment about feeling so alone and endless nothingness. this may just be that when wanda lets her guard down and is possibly at peace with a situation, this one being of her accepting that this is the pietro that’s going to be her brother that sticks with her moving forward, she’s reminded of the truth - none of it is real and she can’t bring them back.

vision’s breakout from the hex | as we’ve seen in promos, vision is able to break through the hex. what we were hit with was vision nearly getting killed...again. it seems that he can’t live beyond the hex either due to him just being parts when wanda recovered him or because wanda won’t let him go. either way, vision can’t live outside of westview. it physically seems like wanda can’t let him go because as he steps out of the hex and is being torn apart, the hex looks like it’s trying to pull him back into it. i know the hex was wanda’s doing but this physically makes it seem as if wanda can’t let him go and is holding him back. it’s kind of true because since vision became more aware, he’s been breaking away from wanda and she’s been trying to keep him in place and on script so that they can be happy together. in their fight in the previous episode, she says that all of this is for them as to say that everything she’s doing is for their happiness. it’s a twisted way of showing how vision can’t live without wanda since it seems that she’s the one keeping him alive.

wanda expanding the hex | wanda’s clearly gotten more powerful over the years and this episode really shows us how fucking powerful she is on her own. it’s hysterical that the base and the most of the agents are turned into circus acts such as clowns. i’ll admit i’m upset darcy got sucked in and not hayward. i’m very interested to see who monica’s guy on the outside is. with wanda expanding the hex, it’s becoming more evident that wanda may be the ‘villain’ of the show or if there is someone else behind all of this, we may not see them until multiverse of madness. still, i believe wanda is victim in some capacity - even if it means she’s fallen victim to her trauma and grief.

[shihalyfie]

A guide to the 02 kids’ personalities and overall demeanors

I’ve already covered the deeper details of each 02 kid’s character arc and development throughout the series, but I figured I might dedicate a more specific post about the complexities of their outer personalities, and their behavior patterns on a day-to-day basis. 02 is the kind of series that doesn’t really spell out what the characters tend to do or don’t tend to do, or what boundaries they will and won’t cross, which means it can be a bit of a challenging task to track their behavior over fifty episodes and figure out the patterns. Fortunately, these characters are written remarkably consistently over said episodes, so we have a lot to work with!

Disclaimer before we continue: In general, all of my 02-based meta is specifically written for the Japanese version in mind, but this especially applies to this one, because the majority of the nuances of the demeanor and personality traits described below were not retained in the American English dub at all (please see this post for more detail). As a result, please understand that if you’re working from the perspective of having only seen that dub, and the contents of the below post sound completely different, that would be why.

Daisuke and V-mon

Believe it or not, I would say that Daisuke is actually the most difficult to nail the nuances of out of this entire cast. This is probably a really weird thing to hear when the usual fandom mantra is that he’s “flat” or “lacking in development”, but I think the deceptive part is that while he’s simple-minded and himself doesn’t think in complex terms, analyzing his behavior as a whole and how he approaches things actually involves a lot of very delicate balances, and getting that exactly right can be very easy to mess up. Daisuke’s not a rude jerk who looks down on anyone, not in the slightest -- but he’s also not a saint who can do no wrong, either!

I think the easiest analogy (which I’ve brought up several times on this blog already) is that Daisuke is like a puppy, but not just any puppy -- a tiny puppy that barks very loudly at anything it perceives as threatening (regardless of whether it’s actually threatening), makes its feelings very clear with obvious likes and dislikes, and can do some phenomenally stupid things in a bid to please others, but in the end means no malice and only wants you to be happy.

This is to the point where I’m just going to have to bullet-point this, because there’s so much going on at once:

Excessively emotional: One of Daisuke’s earliest profiles refers to him as having “an excessively large range of human emotions”, and really, a lot of the humor surrounding him has to do with the fact he has incredibly dramatic, overblown reactions to nearly everything around him. So if he gets a little annoyed or suspicious of people making fun of him, he tends to get really dramatic about being upset, and when he experiences only a minor setback, he acts like it’s the end of the world, and when he’s emotionally hurt, he sometimes even gets set on the verge of crying (you can especially hear this in Kiuchi Reiko’s delivery). Even Daisuke himself doesn’t tend to get caught up in it for too long and gets over things surprisingly quickly, so you can take it as him just constantly being too wrapped up in the mood -- but when it really is a serious situation, he gets truly emotionally invested in it, too.

Too easy to read: Because Daisuke wears his heart on his sleeve and is dramatic about everything, he’s awful at hiding anything. Any attempt at trickery or trying to disguise his intentions quickly blows up in his face because he’s too simple-minded and too transparent.

Not malicious: Daisuke only ever lashes out or gets angry at others when he thinks others are doing something he disapproves of, or when he thinks he’s being attacked; he’s very warm and kind to everyone otherwise (even in the earliest parts of the series, when he’s at his roughest, you might notice he’s very soft around Chibimon, as if understanding that his partner is now in a very small and delicate form and needs to be treated accordingly). In other words, Daisuke is very quick to get defensive, but he has no malice or reason to be condescending towards anyone otherwise, and he’s perfectly friendly with people even when they’d provoked him earlier (because he doesn’t really hold grudges). He doesn’t attack people without reason; even when he voices dissent against what someone is doing, he very rarely, if ever, insults a person or their character directly. Even when he’s trying to state his opinions (such as when he bids for the others to accept Ken), he never forces them down others’ throats and accepts that they disagree with him, even if he’s clearly not happy with their disagreement.

Easily critical and suspicious: Daisuke is a very bluntly straightforward and honest person, and he seems to get most set off by people who act suspicious; note how his early-series outbursts towards Takeru tend to be when Takeru’s acting evasive, and in Hurricane Touchdown, he catches onto Wallace’s shady behavior even before he starts flirting with Miyako (Daisuke’s own method of trying to seem attractive to others involves just “doing something cool and hoping it’ll impress others”, so he seems to dislike the concept of flirting as a whole). Because of that, he catches easily onto “things looking off”, so he tends to call it out (even if sometimes he’s overdoing it and there isn’t actually anything significant to be upset about).

Supportive and adoring of others: Other than the moments when he gets set off, fundamentally speaking, Daisuke likes other people, is perfectly willing to acknowledge them or heap praise on them when they do something awesome, and generally cares for their well-being. He’s easily defers to others when he understands they’re better than him at something, and he even has a decently realistic scope of his limits (see how he’s perfectly aware he’s likely to lose the soccer game in 02 episode 8, and figures he might as well enjoy the experience). This is even taken to its logical conclusion in the Kizuna drama CD when he “credits” his friends for giving him amazing and insightful advice when all of it was actually pretty ordinary stuff they’d done offhandedly. It also means that, given his penchant for getting emotionally invested in everything, he has a huge emotional stake in making sure his friends are doing okay, and supports them accordingly.

Deferential to seniors/elders: Tying into the above, you may notice that Daisuke takes a properly respectful and soft tone towards his elders and seniors in nearly all occasions, even to the point of occasionally using proper polite-form language around them. All things considered, Daisuke is a pretty well-behaved kid.

Constantly getting strung around: As much as Daisuke looks like he’s aggressive, in actuality, it’s very easy to get him to back down if you argue against him strongly enough, and since he has such a “the heck is that?!” attitude all of the time, you can see him constantly getting strung around and at the mercy of things happening around him. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have enough will to put his foot down when it becomes a really important subject (especially in the second half of the series), but it’s very often when he’ll be talked down by others around him and shrink with an “oh...okay...” In fact, this is why a lot of his actions aren’t nearly as reckless as they might be otherwise; as much as he’s a bit hot-headed and likes to lead the attack, he also has a sense of self-preservation and intimidation when things look a bit too dangerous, and will only push forward in such a case when there’s something he really believes in at the other side of it.

Lacking in self-awareness and insecure as a result: While Daisuke doesn’t have any signs of persistent self-hatred (on the contrary, there are times he arguably comes off as overconfident), it also seems that he has practically zero awareness of how he himself is doing -- which means that he ends up rolling over like an idiot trying to get others’ approval and trying to impress them, even when it’d be clear to anyone else that he already has that approval. This also likely ties into the fact that he’s perfectly capable of acknowledging others’ accomplishments and skills (see above), so you might even think that the problem isn’t so much that he thinks he’s bad as much as he keeps comparing himself to people he perceives as being that much more awesome. (Perhaps symbolic of this, he apparently has a complex over being shorter than Takeru and Ken, despite the fact that he seems to be of perfectly average height for a kid his age.) It seems that his only bar for how he’s doing is dependent on everyone’s reactions around him, hence why his ridiculous antics are significantly less pronounced when he has proper emotional support and friends to keep him in check. It’s also important to consider that this applies to his apparent crush on Hikari as well; his crush mainly manifests in wanting her approval very badly, and it’s mostly visible in terms of him losing a ton of brain cells in her presence and bending over backwards to please her or impress her. He never actually says in words that he’s interested in her, nor does he ever show signs of intending to seriously ask her out, so it’s something that’s only apparent because of this behavior, and it’s very likely he hasn’t even seriously thought through what would happen if she actually accepted him in return. You can basically see this as an extreme version of the way Daisuke tries to get approval from everyone else, and this trait of his noticeably dies down whenever there’s more important things at hand, or when he seems to be in the midst of getting proper validation from those around him.

Simple-minded and pragmatic: What’s usually referred to as Daisuke being an “idiot” comes from the fact he doesn’t play well with complex thinking, tends to settle for very simple explanations or answers, and more thoughtful types like Ken or Iori will often have to fill that part in for him. However, because Daisuke is so simple-minded, he’s sometimes the most pragmatic person in the group, because he doesn’t overthink things or get principles of theory caught up into everything. So if Ken is clearly not showing any indication of doing bad things anymore and is actively working to help, Daisuke believes he should be allowed to help regardless of what he’d done in the past, and if they’re dealing with the situation of potentially having to kill a living enemy, Daisuke points out that hesitation would have resulted in even more casualties. In essence, in a situation where everyone’s running mental loop-de-loops, Daisuke will usually be the first one to snap them all out of it and go “uh? Guys?” Moreover, this trait of his makes him very good at spotting glaring threads or asking questions about the elephant in the room, because since he works best with things that are right in front of him, he can’t not notice it.

Enjoys the little things: Because Daisuke is so simple-minded, it’s very easy to please him (this is why his chosen career path is something as simple as ramen making). Daisuke likes his friends, and appreciates even simple things around him, so he’s happy with even simple pieces of happiness -- hence, why he’s fine with potentially losing the soccer game in 02 episode 8, because he’s ready to simply just savor the experience of getting to play against a respectable and formidable opponent.

Note that the main reason Daisuke never seems to bring up any of these issues with himself within the series proper is simply that he doesn’t seem to be aware of them -- he’s too simple-minded to understand what’s going on with his own behavior in depth, and hence, this is how he can say he’s not worried about too much by the time of 02′s finale, especially since by that point he has a proper support group that’s already helping him deal with most of his issues anyway.

Daisuke also has the roughest speech pattern out of any of the 02 group (similar to Taichi and Yamato in Adventure); he has a tendency to shorten words a lot and use “rough” variants of words (for example “-nee” instead of “-nai”).

Mischievous, friendly, and playful, V-mon is pointed out even by official sources to be much like his partner (far more so than usual), and it’s likely a byproduct of the fact that Daisuke himself is very honest and straightforward about his emotions and thoughts, and so since he has nothing to hide, V-mon is pretty much exactly like him -- with the major difference being that he’s a little more outwardly friendly and less likely to lash out angrily. So he’s effectively Daisuke without that very thin abrasive exterior, and because both of them are so like-minded and friendly, they get along extremely well (albeit with quite a bit of comfortable bantering on the way there).

Ken and Wormmon

Ken is the more intellectual type that Daisuke isn’t, and even after his stint as the Kaiser, it’s clear that he’s still quite studious and naturally interested in studying things. Looking closely at his style of dress and way of carrying himself (note how he lays down his chopsticks in 02 episode 36) indicates he’s also a rather tidy person in general. Being someone who’s capable of thinking things thoroughly, this makes him able to have a lot of deep insight into both intellectual and emotional issues, but because he takes things too seriously sometimes, he can sometimes come off as a bit overly stickler or insistent (note Daisuke and Ken’s Shopping Carol, where he subjects Daisuke to a long-winded lecture about the history of Christmas, because, really, he’s a nerd), or lead himself down the wrong direction when he’s having a hard time being straightforward (such as when he comes up with some very flimsy theories about why Jogress might be dangerous in 02 episode 28).

In fact, Ken’s disposition could be considered to be the opposite of Daisuke’s in many ways; while Ken is much softer and more conciliatory on the surface, he’s actually much more assertive and strong-willed by default, and it’s made clear that, even after his reformation from the Kaiser persona, he could still be vicious if he wanted to, he just doesn’t enjoy it because he doesn’t like it and it goes against his belief system (note that he even offered to "dirty his own hands" in lieu of the other kids if push came to shove and Archnemon had to be killed in 02 episode 29, even though he clearly wasn't enthusiastic about the idea). In fact, he has a very strong sense of responsibility and believes heavily in making up for what he’s done -- recall that 02 episodes 26 and 49 involved snapping him out of it by reminding him that there were things that needed to be done, and that he himself still had many things he wanted to do that wouldn’t be addressed if he’d stayed fixated on his past. Thus, Ken doesn’t deny nor avoid anything he’d done, and he isn’t even all that prone to self-pity -- it’s just that his tendency to put too much responsibility on himself means that he also takes a while to accept everyone’s support, too, because he doesn’t like the idea of putting burdens on others.

Because Ken is actually one of the more straightforward people in this group and a fairly honest person (at least, as long as he’s not lying to himself), he might hold himself back a little bit in order to not be rude, but he doesn’t do it nearly to the same degree Takeru or Hikari would and is much more willing to speak his mind when he has an opinion he wants to voice or needs to sort out his thoughts on something. Conversely, he’s not nearly as cold as Iori can get when criticizing things (he’ll certainly be firm, but not as incisive). Most post-02 materials also indicate that he’s not above being a tease or even a little mischievous (see Armor Evolution to the Unknown, Diablomon Strikes Back, Daisuke and Ken’s Shopping Carol).

Ken uses a speech pattern that’s slightly more casual than Takeru’s, but not nearly as rough as Daisuke’s. While anime will often have speech patterns substantially change between different personas of a character, other than Park Romi’s delivery of a more condescending tone for the Kaiser and a significantly softer one for Ken, nothing about his speech pattern is substantially different between the two personas (not even the first-person pronoun), indicating that, in the end, they’re really the same person after all, just manifesting the same personality traits in different ways.

Wormmon is affectionate and clingy, unfailingly loyal to Ken, and his biggest advocate during a time when Ken is trying to relearn how to love and accept himself -- meaning that he ends up very important to providing Ken the initial support he needed before Ken allowed other friends into his life. Wormmon isn’t all nothing but clinginess, though -- he has some insight about the weight of his experiences when prompted (02 episode 46), and in fact is more than capable of calling out Ken’s behavior when he’s being unreasonable or throwing himself into denial (see 02 episodes 27, 30, and 49).

Miyako and Hawkmon

Miyako approaches everything she likes with an attitude that makes her come off as constantly having bubbles and hearts around her. When she likes something, she says so. When she doesn’t like something, she says so (and she will go off when she’s on a roll; see 02 episode 14). In fact, part of the reason she so infamously voices her opinion on people being cute is, quite simply, that it’s her honest opinion. (Note that she never actually tries to ask them out or anything -- she just wants to make it very clear that they’re attractive.)

For the most part, she adores the people around her, and, like the others in the 02 group, she’s perfectly respectful towards elders.  She also loves poking her nose in others’ business and trying to be as helpful as possible, which is good in that she ends up being a huge help to others, but also not good in that sometimes she overdoes it a bit (when Hikari calls her out for being a “handful” in 02 episode 31, the word she uses is one that literally means "a little too overly involved in others' business").

Miyako is the one who gets everyone up in high spirits by being cheerful, and whose cheer rubs off on everyone else around her (see her cheerfully leading the charge into the Digital World with her “Digital Gate, open! Chosen Children, let’s roll!” catchphrase). This is something the rest of the group catches onto very quickly, asking her to supply the “usual cheer”, and the later episodes of the series especially drive home the fact that her presence and antics bring happiness to those around her.

Miyako has a similar “chaotic, sloppy, and straightforward” demeanor to Daisuke, but there are some key differences. Unlike Daisuke, who’s bluntly honest about his opinions mainly because he doesn’t really hide things in general, Miyako’s opinions will be out of her mouth before she can control it. In other words, she has a nasty case of foot-in-mouth syndrome. In addition, while Daisuke tends to have a very thin skin and lashes out defensively out of instinct, Miyako takes things much more at face value and doesn’t blow a fuse nearly as easily, but because she’s significantly more assertive and aggressive, she’s much more prone to doing what she wants on her own whims instead of backing down to anyone. In fact, Miyako is significantly more emotionally sensitive in the long run, so while Daisuke tends to blow a fuse more easily, he’s also able to shrug it off and move on more quickly, whereas Miyako has a thicker skin, but when she does take emotional pain, she takes it much more deeply and harshly. She also tends to get overwhelmed easily by stress and panic, which makes her one of the more prone to running around in circles and doing frantic things in the midst of it.

One thing you might notice about Miyako is that she’s actually more critical of herself than anyone else in the group is; most of the time they act with mild exasperation at her antics but don’t tend to criticize her directly, whereas Miyako is very aware of her own shortcomings and is constantly either criticizing herself or comparing herself negatively to others (see: 02 episodes 10, 14, 18, and 31 especially). If she slips up and does something that stepped on someone else’s toes, it doesn’t take her long to realize that she’s messed up and want to do better. So while she generally tends to act the most in-your-face and aggressive, she also doesn’t necessarily want to be this way, and suffers from self-confidence issues and a poor opinion of herself.

Miyako uses a feminine speech pattern that’s a bit more casual than Hikari’s (she noticeably is willing to use the word anta for “you”, which has a bit of a connotation of being abrupt and in-your-face, especially with Daisuke). She’s also the most likely to physically manhandle things, both in the affectionate (hugging people) and aggressive (grabbing things and jumping on them in order to attack) senses.

Hawkmon is repeatedly referred to as being like Miyako’s “knight”, since he has absolute loyalty to her (in spite of her ridiculous antics often meaning he gets strung around by her) and is effectively in charge of minding her so she doesn’t get too out of control. While his overly polite and gentlemanly demeanor initially seems like a sharp contrast to Miyako’s aggressive and messy personality, you might also notice that, at their cores, the two aren’t all that different -- both are unfailingly loyal to others, and both also have a penchant for dramatic theatrics and being a bit overly proud of themselves.

Iori and Armadimon

The key thing to know about Iori is that he’s not stoic because he’s not feeling fervent emotions, but rather because he’s constantly holding them back (this is especially apparent if you look carefully at his facial expressions and Urawa Megumi’s delivery, where you can tell his facade is often “slipping” even when his words would indicate otherwise). Since Iori is trying to live by the ideal of being a model citizen, especially under the very formal environment he was raised in, he comes off as mature for his age, but it’s very important to not forget that, underneath all that, he’s still an impressionable nine-year-old child with the wide range of emotions and immaturity of one, and when he does emotionally fall apart, everything tends to burst out (see 02 episodes 16, 44, 47, 50). In addition, Iori is never condescending about the fact he usually acts more mature than the others; the impression is that he’s much more strict with himself than he is with others, and in fact still does look up to his elders in the 02 group even when they’re obviously a lot messier than he is.

The “need to be a model citizen” is something looming over Iori’s head at almost every moment, and it’s the easiest way to understand the way he acts in a nutshell. Iori is focused on the idea of “becoming a proper adult”, which means that he’s adhering to all of these principles because he feels they’re necessary to live a proper and honest life as per the formal manners that his family background trained him into. But like a young child who insists “you have to do this because those are the rules!” all of the time, Iori is over-applying all of this, and even his own grandfather advises him that he really needs to chill (02 episodes 5, 24). In short, he struggles with thinking flexibly and understanding that life isn’t all that clear-cut, because he’s a young child. Since he also tends to bring out these things in relation to “what my father would do/say”, it’s implied that he’s basing all of this off of having only hearsay to work off of in regards to what his father was actually like, to the point of aspiring to an impossible, saintlike version of him he’d created in his head.

Note that Iori’s “rules” have less to do with institutional rules (that would be more of a Jou thing) and more to do with self-imposed personal rules; for instance, he doesn’t mind sneaking into school during a holiday when it’s obviously not hurting anyone (02 episode 6), but he struggles with things like wasting food (02 episode 3) or not formally introducing himself to an elder (02 episode 5). So in other words, his adherence to principles has heavily to do with “the right and proper way to live” more than anything, and what he believes is the right thing to do in a given situation.

Iori’s journey in 02 is largely fueled by the fact that, as an inheritor of sorts of the Crest of Knowledge, he has a sense of “I want to know and understand more” whenever he sees something that makes him curious, but unlike Koushirou’s desire to learn more about the world around him in terms of its technical workings, Iori mainly wants to know more about people. The reason he begins to let go of his inflexible mindset is that he has the humility to understand that he still has a lot more to learn and understand, and when he sees behavior from others that doesn’t make sense, he does his best to learn more about it -- hence how his aggressive probing into learning more about Takeru allows them to reach an understanding and eventual Jogress, and how he’s able to eventually reassess his own view of human morality and emotions.

Iori sticks out in that he almost always uses the formal variant of Japanese in most situations (nobody else in the 02 group does this). However, formal in this situation doesn’t necessarily mean polite; Iori doesn’t believe in flattery and will bluntly state his opinion in said formal tone, and will be very cold towards something he sufficiently disapproves of or doesn’t have any respect for, which can make him even come off as passive-aggressive at times. (Noticeably, while he still asserts his own opinion, he does refrain from criticizing the others in the 02 group too much, presumably because he respects and looks up to them a lot as his elders, regardless of how chaotic they can sometimes get.) In addition, because a lot of his demeanor comes from him restraining himself, when his emotions are sufficiently pushed over the edge, he loses grip on the polite form and starts “lapsing” back into the casual one.

Because Iori was so young during 02, and because the events of its story ended up really upending his view of the world, the huge eight-year gap between 02 and Kizuna makes it difficult to predict certain things about his demeanor at the time of Kizuna (especially since his own voice actor commented on the difficulty of conveying the nuances of Iori’s character, thanks to only being able to work with the limited time frame of a movie that doesn’t put him in the kinds of emotionally drastic situations that push him to his limit). That said, everything we’ve seen of him in the movie itself and the drama CD makes reasonable sense; now that he’s much older, he comes off as having much better restraint on his emotions and coming off as genuinely calm, but he’s still not one for flattery, and you can still see very minor slips in his facade every so often.

Armadimon also initially seems like a sharp contrast to Iori in terms of demeanor, in that he’s much more casual and laid-back, and he’s indeed a huge factor in reminding Iori to chill once in a while -- but, much like Iori, he prods and asks questions about anything he’s curious about. This initially seems to be out of simple-mindedness because, being a Digimon, he doesn’t understand human society that well, but his very basic questions often end up snapping Iori back to reality in realizing that he’s getting hung up on things that don’t actually make practical sense. Urawa also felt that Armadimon fills in some of the void that Iori’s late father left behind, in that he provides Iori with unconditional love and helps guide him.

Takeru and Patamon

Takeru is the kind of person who seems to dislike major disruptions to the status quo, so he doesn’t say anything inflammatory that’ll rock the boat. It’s very difficult to get him to talk about serious topics related to his deeper personal feelings (02 episode 17, 35, Spring 2003), and even when it’s clear he might have more misgivings on the situation, unless it’s an urgent situation where it needs to be brought up, he won’t voice his misgivings too clearly for the sake of not causing trouble (hence why Daisuke is so unsure what to make of him in the early episodes of the series, because Takeru constantly fails to clarify his own position in favor of a “good for you” or “sure, you keep believing that if you want” attitude). This also makes him the most likely to awkwardly change the subject or try to distract with small talk, and it means that, even when he’s saying cheerful, pleasant things, it’s very likely there’s pain or uncertainty under that initial facade. (Note that while his suspicions of Ken during 02 episodes 25 and 27 aren't nearly as vicious as Iori's turn out to be, we learn that he's still willing to quietly accuse Ken of working for his own self-satisfaction in the latter episode, but he never brings this up to anyone but himself.)

Because Takeru isn’t  necessarily doing this to be consciously dishonest, it does mean that he also has positive applications of this tendency to take everything in stride and keep the peace, because he ends up keeping the more extreme personalities in the rest of the group in line and acts as an effective mediator. You could say that he has a pretty high amount of tolerance and a capacity for taking everyone’s points of view in mind. However, since it’s also very difficult to tell what he himself is thinking, his use of this as a poor coping mechanism for his personal trauma leads to a tendency for him to suddenly explode in a mess of emotions whenever something gets too personal, leading to sudden conflict, and with others at a loss in terms of how to deal with him (the most extreme example being 02 episode 19, but also present in 13, 11, and 34). This “two-sidedness” is why it ends up having to be the more consciously methodical Iori who steps up to try and understand him better as his Jogress partner.

Fortunately, Takeru shows signs of becoming more straightforward in the aftermath, although you can see that he still has a penchant for mild flattery and “trying to hold back for the sake of not being rude” all the way up to Kizuna (but, again, this can’t be said to necessarily be a bad thing when it means he has a valuable skill as a mediator).

Takeru has a fairly neutral speech pattern that comes off as casual but not too aggressive or assertive (not as absurdly polite as Iori’s, but slightly less assertive than Ken’s).

Patamon initially still seems to be “immature” in the same way he was in Adventure, which initially seems to widen the gap in personality between him and Takeru, but looking closer reveals that the differences aren’t as big as they seem; Patamon seems to have gained a capability for slyness and active trolling behind his playfulness (see 02 episode 7), not entirely like Takeru starting to use his evasiveness in a teasing-like manner. Moreover, Patamon does actually seem to have gained a bit of proper maturity in the meantime; see how he instructs the Baby Digimon on convenience store food in 02 episode 3, and in general seems much more willing to take independent action in ways he didn’t always in Adventure. Noticeably, Takeru’s difficulty with his own convoluted feelings means that he can’t even have a proper heart-to-heart with him about it on the situation (most glaring in 02 episode 34, where it’s implied that Takeru would rather leave Patamon to be happy right now instead of bothering him about it), especially because he’s clearly having difficulty even working it out with himself. However, despite their ostensible differences in mentality, Takeru and Patamon have no difficulty getting along at all in 02, and, other than Takeru pampering Patamon a bit, there isn’t all that strong of an impression of them being so mismatched -- perhaps because, in the end, they really aren’t all that different.

Hikari and Tailmon

Taichi stated in Adventure episode 48 that Hikari has a problem where she's so selfless and thinking of others that she'll never speak up about her own problems. Hikari states in 02 episode 31 that she compulsively cannot speak out about her own feelings even if she wanted to, to the point she’s jealous of Miyako for being able to be more open (even if it means being overkill at times). As a result: if Hikari’s talking about “the right thing to do”, or something for everyone’s sake, or something that’s relevant to other people and what’s best for them, she will be extremely vocal and quick to act, and she’s not above even chipping in with criticisms (see: 02 episodes 19, 32, 44). In fact, she’s fully capable of being playful or toying with others if she really wants to (see how she casually manipulates Daisuke into calling a lunch break for everyone in 02 episode 6).

The moment the issue at hand is about herself, though -- her own feelings or pain, or something that might hurt others’ feelings (hence the presumable reason she dodges Daisuke’s affections rather than proactively doing anything about it), or something that would put a burden on others for her own sake -- she completely clams up and refuses to do or say anything, and when bad things start happening to her, she resigns herself to her own fate and concludes she can’t do anything about it. Hence, why she takes such a defeatist attitude towards the Dark Ocean swallowing her up in 02 episodes 13 and 31, and why it’s such a big deal if she even so much as asks for help. 02 episode 31 indicates that Miyako reaching out to her is an important step in breaking her out of her shell, and the Kizuna drama CD -- which has Hikari assertively declare something she personally wants -- heavily implies further that Miyako was instrumental to this becoming possible.

Hikari is compassionate for others to the very end, expresses pity for BlackWarGreymon as early as 02 episode 31, and catches on quickly to Ken’s feelings on himself in 02 episode 37 (and even back when she’d been more skeptical about him in 02 episode 25, she never seemed to have real personal distaste against him as much as she still wanted to make sure he was trustworthy first). But although she’s one of the most compassionate in the group, she’s also one of the most assertive in the group. This leads to something that initially seems like a paradox: she’s actually more fervent about the need to fight than the more aggressive Miyako is. Miyako is, ultimately, emotionally caught up in everything and briefly falls apart at having killed LadyDevimon in 02 episode 44 (even despite knowing how horrible of a person she’d been), but Hikari is the one who points out that there would have been more victims if they hadn’t. 02 episodes 25 and 43 had made it abundantly clear that Hikari didn’t like it at all, but she states in 02 episode 37 repeatedly that they need to prevent there from being victims -- meaning that she values the importance of protecting all lives, including those who would be hurt in the process, and thus has some of the more resilient guts when it comes to the prospect of fighting to save others. Again, her hesitation only comes into play at its worst when it has to do with herself; working to save others is a no-brainer.

Hikari uses a casual feminine speech pattern that’s less in-your-face than Miyako’s, but she’s still a bit more casual than she was in Adventure, when she used the more polite watashi instead of atashi. Interestingly, Tailmon herself seems to have mirrored this as well, presumably because now that she’s had more time to recover from her miserable life under Vamdemon, she’s able to enjoy her life a bit more freely. This means that, while Tailmon is still the most mature and put-together of the Digimon partners in the 02 group, she sometimes acts a little more casual and playful in a similar way to Hikari, and while she has a certain degree of stuffy personal pride (see how she wasn’t very amused at how frivolously the other Digimon were playing around in 02 episode 3), she’s still open to enjoying herself a little more freely. Hikari, for her part, becomes surprisingly like-minded with her during those times -- see them in 02 episode 12 -- and, as stated earlier, it’s not like Hikari isn’t up for making tough decisions when they’re needed, either.

[thejudgingtrash]

Annabeth is a good person,but not a nice or pleasant one,IMO.

YES.

That’s it. That’s the post. Pack it up everybody, we just cracked the case and cleared up one of the most compelling fights in the PJO fandom since forever. Good job everybody, clap it out and there’s the door! Don’t forget ordering the drinks at Starbucks, Mitch! They’re on me!

Okay, but on a more serious note: YES. YES EXACTLY.

And before some of you roll your eyes or grab your pitchforks – put your biases aside and hear me out for once. I like Annabeth. She’s my in my top three characters only second to Percy himself. I love Percabeth. It’s my favorite ship in the entire series and to be frank, the only ship that I care about PJO wise. Hell, I spend my time creating my own headcanons or writing my own fanfics with Percabeth being the star in them.

But that is not to say that I’m unable to see how certain things have developed over the years or where they stand now in regard to Annabeth. I’m not here to ignore things that have been said and/or done due to or in the name of Annabeth and I’m not here to vilify anyone that doesn’t like her. And I’m here to admit that I’m guilty of some of the things that may be addressed in this meta essay that you will read in just a second. However, I try my best to assure you, that I’m for once able to recognize my own bias.

Warning: a monster essay lies right upon you.

This should count as a paper of its own.

Back to the statement on top: I would go out even further to reframe your claim, anon:

Annabeth Chase is a good character but not a nice or pleasant person.

Annabeth is a wonderful character but she isn’t a nice one. Or at least not nice to everyone. She is (construction wise if I dare say) the best character out of the series. She has her positive traits (she’s caring, she’s emotional, she’s encouraged and volunteers, she fights for what she believes in, she forgives (even if doing so begrudgingly)) but she also has her negative traits (she’s stubborn, she’s brash, changing her mind takes forever, she is prejudiced, she baits others). That balances things out. She is branded as the intelligent kid but does irrational things (like I’ve just said a) she’s a kid and b) she’s not a robot). She should probably know better, but we all make mistakes and hopefully grow and learn from them. The clouds in the sky do blur and cover our visions sometimes.

Annabeth had clashes with other characters or was about to have fights due to her stubbornness or jealousy (Rachel, Reyna, etc.) and has of course her problems with the mortal world and her family but she also found new friends, some things cleared up throughout the narration and she was/is quite popular in Camp Half-Blood.

The thing is: she doesn’t have to be nice or pleasant (as a character). Or at least not all the time. Her character is humanized. That is what or who she is. Human. She does stand out as a character, not just because she’s the (future) love interest. She feels like someone you could meet in real life and either adore from the top to the bottom or declare as your biggest enemy. And that’s totally okay if you lean either way – liking or disliking her. Or even feeling indifferent about her. Also great!

To say that she has been the best character that Riordan has crafted is easy to say, because she has been sculpted after Riordan’s wife. He had a model he could rub some of real-life events or traits on. That’s not the problem. The problem truly doesn’t lie on Riordan’s side for the most part for once.

The problem is inherently on the fandom’s side. What the fandom does, how it acts and how it treats Annabeth as a character is the problem. The problems vary but it’s mostly the mischaracterization of Annabeth, starting fights and fan/ship wars, internalized misogyny (in some cases) and how some of the Annabeth stans lash out (ha, got firsthand experience in that field among many of my friends and mutuals!). There is a reason why many people are wary of people that have Annabeth or Percabeth related URLs.

The fact that we see Annabeth mostly through Percy’s lens and (until the Heroes of Olympus saga hits) we never really see her in chill everyday situations is essentially Riordan leaving the back door of the house open, ready for all of you asshats to rob his mansion in Boston. Because a frame on a character means that we don’t get to see the character in its entirety (unlike we do with Percy in PJO for the most part). That means a bunch of stuff is left open for interpretation which is the reason why Annabeth gets so many polarized headcanon and opinions tossed around. I think that is one of the true appeals of Annabeth. You can add on stuff and it necessarily doesn’t have to contradict itself.

We have people calling her abusive due to a (n admittedly stupid and unnecessary) judo flip and we have people that act like she’s never done anything wrong. People sorta use this excuse to form and shape Annabeth however they want and distort her characterization.

People in the fandom act like Annabeth is some weird prized possession. We perceive Annabeth mostly through the eyes of others (Percy, Apollo, etc.) and when we had some sort of insight in her ways (MOA, HOH) it felt… weird? Somewhat? Like Riordan left two bullet points of her characterization and told the ghostwriter: aight, fuck it up, gringo, see you on Tuesday and greet Fred the next time you see him for me. 

There have been many posts lately (by Tharini, Simi, Sawasawako, Jewishpercy and Annie I believe?) that HOO Percabeth felt weird. That they felt weirdly constructed, that there was no conflict, no growth. It felt stagnating, like we’re turning back. We had five books prior where we had Annabeth and Percy slowly shifting from disliking to liking and crushing each other. True development. And when we finally got the cake it felt… dissatisfying. Like the cheap box stuff and not the delicious exquisite taste that we were promised.

I said it previously in my Percabeth ship roast, but let me repeat myself: many Percabeth related things are straight up fanon. Some of it is very old fanon so that’s been unable to distinguish unless you’ve read the books recently and subtract nearly 99,9% of things you see on Tumblr (and occasionally the other shitty parts of the fandom like Reddit, IG, Twitter. Although they mostly steal and recycle tumblr stuff oh well. But back to the topic).

The way people treat Annabeth is so strange. She’s either an innocent fluffy smush baby that’s never harmed a fly and all that she wants for Christmas is being Percy’s lapdog or she’s the devil incarnate, broke into your house, killed your parents Batman style, kicked your puppy and didn’t flush the toilet on the way out. I think this is what mostly makes people hate her or the ship Percabeth. And both extremes are wrong and right at the same time? She is multifaceted so both stereotypes are true and untrue and sorta cancel each other out in the same way.

The true reason why people dislike Annabeth is because the stans are doing the most. (The haters as well, don’t get me wrong, but oh boy. Piss of a stan and you’ll know what I mean). That isn’t inherently new. Are you guys old enough to remember the ship wars that have happened cross platform? Perachel vs. Percabeth? Oh boy, oh boy. I saw some kids on tumblr a few months ago trying to infiltrate both tags and start shit (and also fail). The fact that Rachel still gets used as the bitchy (ex) girlfriend in fanfics? It’s 2020 guys. I know this apocalyptic year is far from perfect and over but I think we can let this trope die, right? Right? I thought we’ve established that Rachel is a pretty chill charcter by now… right?

If you posted your stuff on FFN back in 2010-2013 and it wasn’t the typical cutesy Percabeth story (Goode High, the gods read TLT, punk/prep Percabeth, college AU, etc.) people would’ve come for your fucking throat. Not because the story or the narration was shit. But because the pairing wasn’t Annabeth and Percy (in the sense that Annabeth had to be paired with Percy. I mean Percy gets shipped with everyone and their mother but for Annabeth it was strictly Percy. As annoying as this whole Connabeth thing is – the people behind it actually had a point. She never had a different love interest unless it’s a Percy centered story and he goes off dating Athena, Artemis and Zoe at the same time for some odd reason. Yeah, FFN Percy ships are something). Or it wasn’t the action filled canon compliant story or it wasn’t an AU that was popular.

People were really stubborn, snobbish and wanted their stuff in the four five boxes that were the most popular ones and that’s it. People have been bullied off the site in many fandoms, so it’s not a PJO-only thing but it’s still sad that it happened. (Off-note: most of these FFN tropes are still alive and well and thriving on AO3. Don’t be so snobbish and pretend that every piece you’d find there is a holy grail. There’s a lot of trash you have to waddle through. Same with Wattpad, Tumblr or anywhere else where fanfics get posted. Also had this discussion with Annabeth stans. Sigh).

And Tumblr back then? Forget it, wasn’t much better.

That view has sorta changed (at least for people that have been in the fandom for several years or have managed to find a way to navigate through it) but some of the negative sentiment from back in the day has survived. Be it by new fans coming in or from old fans that never let their stance die. The aggression feels differently and somewhat not. (I don’t know if the anon function had been abused that much back in the day. I was an observer not a participant in the fandom).

Crack a joke at Annabeth’s expense (Kal’s famous “Annabeth is a Republican” post or Dee Dee’s and many others “Annabeth has the education of a second grader, chill with the college plans, girlie” stance) and you have people insulting you, making callout posts, unfollowing and blocking you (based on only that? Okay, honey), making aggressive counter-posts, etc. in a minute. If you respond with “It’s a joke, it’s not real” you have a 50/50 chance of either getting blown off or embarrassing them so that they apologize for once.

This isn’t just about jokes. You can make a headcanon that’s not the cozy cute convenient mainstream saga and people would react the same way. Or art piece (no, not including the whole Tannabeth Blackchase shtick done by Viria and others) or fanfics.

People project so much onto the unfinished canvas that is Annabeth Chase that any form of negative sentiment as little as someone not liking her to straight up criticism, regardless of how tiny it may be, seems like an affront. Like an invitation to a fight. Like an insult to them, their character, everything they believe in. Let me state something:

You are NOT Annabeth Chase. Annabeth Chase IS NOT you. Annabeth Chase is NOT real. Her feeling cannot be hurt. Someone criticizing, disliking, joking about her or even insulting her will not bother her. Someone making a statement about her is not an insult to YOU.

Let me repeat that:

Annabeth Chase isn’t real. Annabeth Chase isn’t you.

So think a little before you act? I get it when you’re a kid and new to fandoms or haven’t been up with fan cultures in the past and are back in the scene. But if you’re in your late teens or even older as an adult and you’re unable to understand that you aren’t what you like – you aren’t the extension of a fictional character – I feel incredibly sorry for you. Because that’s just incredibly sad. Someone disliking something you like isn’t an attack of your character. It shows you that you are you and the other person is a human just like you. That they just have different taste. Disliking something you like isn’t a crime, you know? But me feeling sorry for the way some of y’all act won’t mean that that’s even remotely okay. Especially if you’re no longer in the intended audience for PJO age wise and should know better.

This isn’t a “white stans” only thing. I’ve seen and witnessed firsthand how people of color, mainly women of color, act the same or not even worse when it comes to her character. People have projected their problems and real-life occurring events into her character (I’m sure that she isn’t the only character nor that this is the only fandom where this is happening) and in some cases like I’ve said cannot separate their own personality from the fictional world. Fights with woc happened because of Annabeth fucking Chase. So many things have happened in the fandom the past few months, mostly due to people being forced staying at home because of the quarantine but I’d say it’s 10% on quarantine and 90% on people for acting up like this.

So here’s a little story: There was the act of Riordan blowing the fandom up because of his own stupidity and being unable to apologize for his mischaracterization and lack of research (the whole Piper fiasco) back in June (?) and admits the upset fandom, people on Twitter, Tumblr and Discord legit thought that none of that mattered and that the outcry was destroying Annabeth Chase’s birthday. That’s right. People thought that Annabeth Chase’s non-existing birthday because she’s a fictional character had a higher priority than the rupture and prevalent racism in the fandom. Okay. This isn’t a great look, Annabeth stans. And this of course pissed a lot of people off. I made a post about it and someone not only berated three other people on said post but no, we had a mighty argument which had disrupted many friendships in our circle which haven’t recovered until this very day. We both had our parts in it and no one is innocent. But the cause of this still remains Annabeth Chase or how people prioritize her non-existing well-being. Anyway. I’m getting agitated just thinking about it.

Let’s go back to the characterization thing with Annabeth. Let me remind you:

Annabeth Chase is an asshole. There I’ve said it in a post ages ago (too lazy to look it up, sorry) and I’ll say it again. And that’s not me insulting her. That’s me actually loving that about her. Annabeth is one of the very few unapologetic female characters that really showed all young readers across the world that you can be a girl, a badass, smart, strong, standing up for yourself and what you believe in. You don’t have to be nice. You don’t have to hide your feelings. You don’t need a man in all cases but it’s also okay to accept help and defeat.

A large reason why I think she’s an incredibly important character in children’s literature/YA because many other novels (mostly (sadly)) have the “Oh, I’m a white skinny dark-haired girl that likes unconventional things like READING. I’m not like the other girls, that take care of themselves and pamper themselves by enjoying shopping and wearing make-up. No, I’d rather be one of the boys but a sweet cute little boy and not the jock fuck that drank vodka shots out of a filthy shoe once. Despite me calling myself hideous every man in a 10-kilometer radius falls in love with me and tells me I’m oh so sexy and by the way I’m only 16 years old” shit going on for no goddamn reason.

Yes, I do blame Twilight for this mostly in recent years, but this trope isn’t by any means knew. Pretty sure that you could even use classics as Pride and Prejudice and dissect them in the same manner (Bold statement: Lizzy Bennet is the OG Bella Swan. There. Go fight somewhere in the corner, people). The new wave of YA focuses on girls belittling themselves and only starting to believe in themselves because someone else (mostly the male love interest) tells them they’re worth it. And these books hit the mainstream because they’re incredibly bland and picture perfect white.

With Annabeth it’s different. She shows up for the job and is done with it. (Brie Larson would probably be the perfect in real life version of her. You either like or dislike her. Or you really don’t care). That is what is so refreshing about her. Her unapologetic nature. Can it be off-putting? Yes. Is it annoying? Yes! Hell, every time I read The Lightning Thief, I want to rip her goddamn head off. And it’s just so well written. Her shift from mistrusting Percy but secretly still believing in him to her opening up. Wow, Riordan did something right there.

Annabeth Chase isn’t a young character. She has existed along with PJO for 15 years. She’s on her way to the second decade. I’m pretty sure that with the success of Percy Jackson (and Harry Potter) many lives have been warped and shaped.

But when I say the problem lies mostly in the fandom, it doesn’t mean that Riordan’s completely innocent. The only problem that I have with Annabeth lies not truly with her but the fact that Riordan is only able to produce three variations of female characters:

The sweetheart (Hazel, Silena, Calypso, Hestia)

The strong feminist (Annabeth, Piper, Thalia, Reyna, Artemis)

The bitch (Drew, nearly every female goddess in the goddamn Riordanverse next to every female monster)

And these female characters only know three endings:

End up married with a mortgage, three kids, two dogs and a cat somewhere in Connecticut by the age of twelve

Get dumped into the hunt

Chill on Mount Olympus and only come down to be a nuisance and/or give a cryptic message before going back and doing a godly rave party or something

We know Annabeth as the badass strong female first (or the bitchy character we’re supposed to actually like. Choose your approach), the blueprint so to speak, so some of the other characters feel almost pale in comparison and almost not needed? Doesn’t mean that other characters can’t behave similarly, but it feels kind of redundant especially if their character arcs end in a rather anticlimactic way (Thalia, Reyna). The new additions are the much needed woc as the main story with PJO was inherently white (anyway stan black!Percy and Grover, folks). So it’s not to bash on the new characters, it’s more Riordan’s fault more than anything.

Since Riordan only knows three female character arcs it feels like he tried to copy the formula several ways with different nuances. Some more or less successful. This is where fandom actually comes in handy and helps create more distinguished and fleshed out characters in form of headcanons or fanfiction.

But even in these cases people still make it about Annabeth when it’s time for characters of colors to shine. Remember that whole spiel and discussion that broke out when people (Kal, diver-up, Caitlyn, Bee, reynaisalesbian, etc.) joked about or criticized that Annabeth thinks that she’s having it harder because she’s a blonde? In front of Hazel and Piper? If she would’ve been a real person that’s an invitation for getting decked. And then all hell broke loose because Annabeth stans couldn’t accept the fact that in the real world and/or in fictional worlds the woc/coc have it harder? That the white woman wasn’t the victim that needed the coddling? Yeah, that was mad pathetic.

I hope you people get my point?

Well fuck. I wrote so many things and have the feeling I’ve said nothing. Anyway, I hope I made sense. This is way too long.

TLDR: Chill about Annabeth please. She’s an important character but that doesn’t mean that everyone has to like her, regardless of being a character in the books or a reader/fan of PJO in real life. She isn’t nice or a sweetheart all the time. She also isn’t the monstrous asshole that some try to make out of her.

Peace out.

[k-s-morgan]

The Evolution of Will Graham’s Darkness

This meta is mostly written for new viewers who find themselves confused by Will as a character. I’ll incorporate some bits of analysis I’ve written before into it. Let’s start with a thesis of a sort: Will is a dark character who had this darkness from the very start, even before his encounter with Hannibal: he was terrified and disgusted with it, but after meeting Hannibal, slowly, he began to embrace himself, getting bolder and bolder in his violence.

**Before the show**  

Will initially tried to get into the FBI but he didn’t pass the tests. It’s revealed in E1 of S1 when he’s ambushed by Beverly.

Beverly: Never been an F.B.I. Agent?

Will: Strict screening procedures.

Beverly: Detects instability. You’re unstable?

At the same time, Will became a police officer, working in the Homicide department. These decisions show that he's been stubbornly and rather hopelessly drawn to darkness, seeking ways to interact with it while remaining on the side of law. However, he had to leave the police, too, because he was incapable of pulling the trigger even when his life depended on it. He preferred to allow himself to get stabbed rather than to fight back and kill someone, which points to him having very serious issues with his violence. He knew that once the door in him opens, it might not close again, that if he kills or harms another person, he might be unable to stop (this is proven when he shoots Hobbs and then immediately tries to kill Stammets).

And still, Will chooses to stay close to darkness, only in safer ways. He becomes a teacher in the FBI Academy, letting himself delve into the ugliest cases from a theoretical perspective. This constant pull and struggle leave Will lonely and hostile to everyone. He avoids eye contact with people; Jack’s first impression of him was that he’s rude and arrogant (when they clashed about the name of the museum). Will is rude and haughty with his students, too – but more about it later. Alana refuses to stay alone in the room with him, thinking his instability is too fascinating and she might want to dissect it. Will has no friends; he lives in isolation with his dogs, someone who would never judge him. There are a lot of rumors about him going around, and most people don’t like him (based on Price’s and Zeller’s initial reactions as well as their later conversations on this topic). Will is lonely and pretty miserable.

S1

The first real words we hear from Will are:

Will: Everyone has thought about killing someone.

It is very demonstrative of his personality. We also get evidence right here that Will is drawn to darkness primarily, not to the idea of saving lives (although the latter helps him feel better about his urges). He delves into the minds of killers even when he isn’t involved in the investigation. He had no other reason to explore the Marlows’ murder like he did at the start of the episode, when he was simply teaching students. It’s proof that he willingly craves contact with violent and disturbed minds — it’s not like he actually tries to solve this case for real, he just imagined himself there.

Will’s first conversation with Hannibal speaks volumes about who he is — because Hannibal senses it seconds after meeting him.

Hannibal: Do you have trouble with taste?

Will: My thoughts are often not tasty.

Hannibal: Nor mine. No effective barriers.

Will: I make forts.

This exchange has Will confess that his thoughts are often dark and that he dislikes it. To hold this darkness at bay, he literally builds forts around it, not letting it spread to other parts of his mind.

Hannibal: Your values and decency are present yet shocked at your associations, appalled at your dreams. No forts in the bone arena of your skull for things you love.

Hannibal almost directly calls Will out on his struggle with his inner darkness. He’s saying that he sees it, that he knows it’s there, in Will, in his mind, and Will is very disturbed by this — because Hannibal is right. The script even explicitly backs it up:

Hannibal has just described Will Graham to a letter.

Will is immediately wary and hostile, and he ends the conversation with snappy,

Will: Please don’t psychoanalyze me. You won’t like me when I’m psychoanalyzed.

What does it mean? It’s simple: Will assumes that Hannibal is a typical psychiatrist who wants to dissect him, so he says that once it happens, Hannibal won’t like what he finds (darkness and ugliness Will carries inside).

His hostility to Hannibal lasts up until the moment when Hannibal acknowledges him as a predator and shows approval of it. This is how it happens: Hannibal tries to subtly tell him that it’s all right to be who he is, hinting that they are the same.

Hannibal: You and I are just alike. Problem free. Nothing about us to feel horrible about.

He’s obviously talking about their darkness, but Will doesn’t react, so Hannibal continues. He tells him that Jack views him as a fragile tea cup, and Will genuinely laughs, amused by this (which is also very telling). Then Hannibal says:

Hannibal: [I see you as the] mongoose I want under the house when the snakes slither by.

Will grows quiet after this, and then his interactions with Hannibal become much more relaxed. Will takes him to search the property and even bothers to explain how they reached their conclusions and what they are about to do. Him grumbling, “What are you smiling at?” shows a much higher level of familiarity they now share. Something in Hannibal’s words made Will open up a bit, and everything indicates that it’s the acknowledgement of his predatory nature that played its part in it.

Will kills Hobbs by shooting him 10 times. This is his first kill, one he’s been trying to avoid for so long, ever since his police work. It’s not surprising that Hobbs haunts him later because his death became a breaking point for Will. A door did open in him, and he was unable to close it again.

In E2, Will is distraught. But first, we get a glimpse into how rude and insensitive he generally is. Look at how he treats his students. He tersely thanks them for clapping and then snaps for them to stop. He devises a little malicious test for them.

Will: It’s [Hobbs’] resignation letter. Anybody see the clue?

A few hands go into the air. Will ignores them.

Will: There isn’t one.

He looks so long-suffering with them, as if they are idiots. The fact that he asks a question, waits for people to think and raise their hands, and only then he tells them there is actually no answer is petty at best. He also admits to Jack that he doesn’t consider lessons socialization because he doesn’t have to actually talk to students, he talks at them. Not good for a teacher or even for a person who works with other people like this.

But Will has more serious problems. He keeps imagining Hobbs, and after his messy kill, Jack becomes worried about him. He makes Will go visit Hannibal for one-time evaluation. Will is naturally not fond of the idea, but he and Hannibal have a pretty personal talk. Hannibal ends it with an even more explicit hint at Will’s own darkness:

Hannibal: And Will… the mirrors in your mind can reflect the best of yourself, not the worst of someone else.

Hannibal is talking about Will’s personal brand of violence again. He’s trying to tell him that it’s fine to be a murderer in every way he can, that Will’s darkness might be the best part of him. He also gives him a fake official approval to work in the field, showing that Will can trust him. But their obligatory session ends and Will leaves — only to return after he tries to kill Stammets and misses (their talk about it was cut from the episode but is echoed in the conversation below).

Hannibal: [You are here to] prove that sprig of zest you feel is from saving Abigail, not killing her dad.

Will: I didn't feel a sprig of zest when I shot Eldon Stammets.

Hannibal: You didn't kill Eldon Stammets.

Will: I thought about it. I'm still not entirely sure that wasn't my intention when pulling the trigger.

This is a huge evidence of Will struggling with his violence. It proves that he had it before becoming actively involved with Hannibal — all Hannibal did was recognize it and coax it to come to the surface. Will has always been like this, and after finally killing a person, he found himself unable to stop because he liked the feeling too much.

Hannibal: It wasn't the act of killing Hobbs that got you down, was it? Did you really feel so bad because killing him felt so good?*

Will: I liked killing Hobbs.

Hannibal is pleased to receive the confirmation of what he sensed in Will. Seeing that Will is terrified about his own confession, he comforts him.

Hannibal: Killing must feel good to God, too. He does it all the time, and are we not created in his image?

Let’s be honest, every sane person would have run for the hills after hearing this. Hannibal literally justifies the fact that Will liked murder by drawing a parallel with God. That’s such a narcissistic, serial killer thing to do, and yet Will welcomes it with open arms. He’s happy to find someone who doesn’t think he’s a monster — he’s relieved to be able to finally discuss his darkest impulses freely. This is the reason why Will started coming back to see Hannibal on a constant basis, to Jack’s surprise.

The next huge proof of Will’s ever-present darkness is found in E5 (actually, every episode has some bits, but I’ll cover only the major ones). The Angel Maker, a killer-of-the-week, has a unique gift of being able to see if a person is good or evil. First, Hannibal tries to tell Will that he doesn’t have to self-destruct because of his darkness like he’s been doing.

Hannibal: Angel Maker will be destroyed by what’s happening inside his head. You don’t have to be.

When Angel Maker dies, Will suddenly sees himself through his eyes. And he sees a demon. He sees himself as evil. It proves that Will’s darkness is inherent since he hasn’t done anything really bad at this point. It also proves that he’s perfectly aware of who he is and the darkness he has. He has the following conversation with the imagined Angel Maker.

Angel Maker: I see what you are.

Will: What do you see?

Angel Maker: Inside. I can bring it out of you.

Will: Not all the way out.

So, Will acknowledges that his darkness is rooted so deeply inside him, it can’t even be extracted fully. It’s an inseparable part of him.

Will is shown admiring the Ripper’s murders, calling them elegant and referring to them as art. Meanwhile, he’s trying to half-heartedly flirt with Alana, but they don’t have a meaningful connection because Will can’t be happy with a person who doesn’t know him. He wants to be normal but he just isn’t. If you’re interested in my opinion about their relationship, it’s here.

Will’s next morally gray action happens when he agrees to cover murder for Hannibal and Abigail in E9. He agrees quickly and then he’s shown being fiercely devoted to it. He doesn’t seem to care that Abigail killed someone much — in fact, he basically threatens Freddie, another person who sees him for who he is, to make her write a book favorable toward Abigail.

In E13, Hannibal says what he wants from Will directly.

Hannibal: If you followed the urges you kept down for so long, cultivated them as the inspirations they are, you’d become someone other than yourself.

Will remembers this phrase (he later throws it back into Hannibal’s face), but for now, he’s too angry and bitter to listen.

S2

Will is healthy again and he struggles with realization that Hannibal betrayed him. He starts a dark game of his own: he pretends he’s vulnerable, moving Alana to tears in the process, and asks Hannibal for help. He’s still drawn to him, but he also wants to take him down — for himself and for Abigail.

In E1, Hannibal tells Will the purpose of all their past meetings, how they were aimed at helping Will Become.

Hannibal: Our conversations, Will, were only ever about you opening your eyes to the truth of who you are.

Alana tries to hypnotize Will to help him remember what happened.

Alana: Imagine yourself in a safe and relaxing place... safe and secure here, safe to relax completely...

What does Will imagine? He sees Hannibal’s room and them sitting at the murder table together. He’s freaked out by it, but it proves how twisted his perception is: regardless of the betrayal, a part of him understands that Hannibal is the only person who’s ready to accept him, and he feels safe with him. @bloodsmile wrote a great meta about it here.

Will coldly manipulates Beverly, refusing to help her save lives unless she helps him as well. In E5, he engages in yet another manipulation. He gets Matthew Brown to try to kill Hannibal. This is the first premeditated murder attempt Will is responsible for. That is why we see him growing horns, that is why he sees a sink full of blood — his darkness starts progressing in noticeable ways. By E7, Will has figured out that Hannibal really did everything to open his eyes to the truth of who he is and that he wants to be his friend, but as he still wants revenge, he decides to honey-trap him with Jack.

In E8, Will is dealing with his complex feelings for Hannibal and explores his darkness further. He admits that Hannibal made him feel less alone and that he doesn’t hate him, no matter what; that he has no idea what he feels for him. Then Will tries to kill Ingram in cold blood as revenge for Peter. He asks him to pick up the hammer, indicating that he plans for the murder to look like self-defense. Hannibal tries to talk him out of it, but Will still pulls the trigger. It’s by a miraculous accident that Hannibal manages to stop him. This is the second conscious murder attempt by Will.

In E9, Will has a dream about Hannibal, love, and darkness.

Dream Hannibal: Must I denounce myself as a monster while you still refuse to see the one growing inside you?

Meaning: Will is fully aware of both the presence of this monster inside him and his attempts to ignore it since this is his dream.

Dream Hannibal: No one can be fully aware of another human being unless we love them. By that love we see potential in our beloved. Through that love we allow our beloved to see their potential. Expressing that love, our beloved's potential comes true.

So, a part of Will realizes that Hannibal loves him, and that he really wants him to Become, to realize all his potential.

Will is shown as feeling bitter at Hannibal for not letting him kill Ingram.

Will: I regret what I did in the stables.

Hannibal (thinking Will means murder attempt): Then you were lucky I was there.

Will: Being lucky isn't the same as making a mistake. Mistake was allowing you to stop me.

Hannibal: So it’s not pulling the trigger that you regret. It’s not pulling it effectively.

Will: That would be more accurate.

Hannibal: I want you to close your eyes, Will, and imagine a version of events you wouldn't have regretted.

Will obeys, and he sees himself murdering Ingram. It proves that every word he says to Hannibal is true — he really does regret not killing him. But there is an even creepier dialogue ahead.

Hannibal: What did you see?

Will: A missed opportunity… to feel like I felt when I killed Garret Jacob Hobbs. To feel like I felt when I thought I killed you … a quiet sense of power.

This is disturbing. It proves once again that Will isn’t just a righteous killer, he enjoys the act of murder itself, and like many serial killers, he craves the feeling of power that comes with it.

He and Hannibal talk about the intimacy of murder, how Will was hiding behind a gun when he tried to kill Hannibal back in E5. Will takes note of it. Hannibal, remembering Will’s complaint about a missed opportunity, sends Randall to him as a gift. When Randall breaks into Will’s house, Will is shown thinking and then deliberately throwing the gun away. He doesn’t want to hide this time — he attacks Randall with his bare hands. This isn’t about self-defense or justice, this is about Will trying to experience a more intimate kind of murder. He beats Randall up until he’s incapacitated and then he snaps his neck, even though there was no reason to do it. He could easily call Jack and have Randall arrested at this point (since he was barely conscious and not fighting back). This could help him in his plan to catch Hannibal. But Will isn’t particularly concerned about it, he’s more interested in realizing his darkness.

He takes the body to Hannibal. This moment got deleted, but Will actually had to stick a note to it:

A piece of paper is pinned to his chest. On it is written: "Return to Sender."

Which excellently shows Will’s dark humor. He laughs with Hannibal a little as they talk about murder right above the corpse. Then Hannibal is treating his hands, and he says:

Hannibal: Stay with me.

Will: Where else would I go?

Nowhere — because Will understands that Hannibal is the only person who can understand his darkness and accept him for who he is.

Will: I've never felt more alive than when I was killing him.

This is, once again, huge. Will is a murderer who can get dangerously high on the act. The moment when he felt most alive is the moment when he took a life from another person — and he was vicious about it. Will is very, very dark in these scenes — and it’s going to get worse.

Will mutilates the body and places it in the museum. He keeps Randall’s suit in his house as a trophy, and he keeps his butchered parts of meat in his fridge. In the following discussion, Will confirms that he enjoyed doing all that. When Hannibal suggests that Randall’s killer felt disdain for him in front of Jack, Will disagrees.

Will: He isn't mocking him. This isn't disdain. He's commemorating him.

Hannibal: This killer has no fear for the consequences of what he's done.

Will: No guilt.

Then Will retreats into his mind to talk to Randall’s corpse.

Will: Hello again.

Randall: Come closer … Can you see you?

Will: Clearer and clearer.

This proves Will’s honesty in all his discussions with Hannibal. He really is exploring his violence, not just pretending to do it, coming to the realization of what kind of monster he is.

Will: You forced me to kill you.

Randall: I didn't force you to enjoy it.

This takes place in Will’s head, so every word is genuine.

Will: I gave you what you want. This is who you are. What you feel finally matches the reality of what I see.

Randall: This is my becoming. And yours.

Will shakes his head, this is not his becoming.

Will: This is my design.

So, what do we have here? Will calls murder, mutilation, and storage of Randall’s meat his design. It’s not his Becoming, not yet, Will isn’t ready to fully embrace himself, but this is a start. He understands his design now.

In the same E10, Will attacks Freddie when she discovered his trophies. We know he didn’t kill her, but would he have done it if she hadn’t called Jack? We can only guess. Will sure took his chance to be creepy and physically violent with her. At the end of the episode, he brought Randall’s meat to Hannibal and they cooked as well as ate it together. This was not about getting Hannibal to trust him. Hannibal already did, especially after thinking Will killed Freddie, so there was simply no need for it. Bryan Fuller confirmed Jack had no idea this happened, so Will was acting on his own, out of his genuine curiosity. This is where he willingly became a cannibal.

In E11, Will dreams of burning fake Freddie and hears himself screaming. It’s easy to interpret this dream: he feels guilty for betraying Hannibal. Alana comes by and Will is being deliberately creepy again. He gives her a gun for protection, but later, it almost becomes her undoing. Will is equally creepy during the funeral. He enjoys being dark, and he feels free to act like this because technically, he has an excuse.

In E12, Will is freshly angry at Hannibal. He fantasizes about murdering Hannibal in the most violent way possible. Then he makes three deals. The first one is with Mason: they agree to kill Hannibal together. The second one is with Hannibal: they tentatively agree to target Mason together. The third one is with Jack: they agree that when Hannibal tries to kill Mason, Will is going to arrest him. Will goes with his and Mason’s plan at first. Hannibal is kidnapped and presented in front of Will just like in his fantasy. But instead of acting on it, Will chooses Hannibal and frees him, getting all Mason’s people killed in the process. Later, he watches Hannibal mutilate Mason, approach him to kill him, and snap his neck. He does nothing: he ignores his deal with Jack completely and covers for Hannibal. Yet another proof that Will is siding with Hannibal more and more, and that his initial honey-trapping plan is almost a formality at this point. At the end of the episode, Will offers Hannibal to kill Jack.

In E13, Hannibal and Will are getting ready to kill Jack while Will and Jack are getting ready to arrest Hannibal. Will doesn’t seem to know on whose side he is until the end. At the same time, he lies to Jack about where the attack is supposed to take place. He helps Hannibal burn all evidence, even though he could have easily preserved some of it to use it later. He burns the evidence related to himself as well. Will doesn’t take Hannibal’s chance to run away before dinner, but he does hesitate and wonder about it. When the final moment comes, he calls Hannibal to warn him — he chooses him above everyone. Justice for Abigail, justice for himself, the desire to save other people — none of it matters to Will now. He made his choice, he chose his side, but he did it too late. When he goes to Hannibal’s house, Alana tells him that Jack is still inside, and Will takes out his gun. He doesn’t even try to point it at Hannibal. When Hannibal accuses him of lying, Will implies that he’s wrong.

Hannibal: I gave you a rare gift… But you didn't want it.

Will isn't so definitive.

Will: Didn't I?

Because yes, Will wanted it. He was ready to accept it. But he did so too late.

S3

Will’s thoughts are only about Hannibal and Abigail. He breaks into Hannibal’s empty house and sits there in silence. When Alana comes to find him and tries to talk to him, he coldly sends her away. He’s repairing a boat to go after Hannibal. When Jack comes to him to ask about his motivations, Will is very open — he doesn’t care about hiding any more.

Jack: Do you remember when you decided to call Hannibal?

Will: I wasn't decided when I called him. I just called him. I deliberated while the phone rang. I decided when I heard his voice.

Jack: You told him we knew.

Will: I told him to leave. Because I wanted him to run.

Jack: Why?

Will: Because he was my friend. And because I wanted to run away with him.

In Italy, Will is full of regret over his actions. He blames himself for what happened, admonishes himself for lying to Hannibal. E2 shows his state of mind perfectly – Hannibal is his everything and he admits he wants to be with him. He doesn’t care about justice at all.

Will: I do feel closer to Hannibal here. God only knows where I would be without him … He left [me] his broken heart. He misses [me]. [I] still want to go to him? Yes.

He admires the corpse twisted into a heart, touching it and then lying at the place where it was located. He intimidates Pazzi who tries to talk sense into him and indicates that he’s not here to catch Hannibal.

Will: You couldn't catch him when he was just a kid, what makes you think you're going to catch him now?

Pazzi: You.

A small, polite scoff from Will, unable to take his eyes off the small stairwell to the catacombs.

Will: What makes you think I want to catch him?

Later:

Will: You shouldn't be down here alone.

Pazzi: I’m not alone. I'm with you.

Will: You don’t know whose side I’m on.

Pazzi stares at Will, cautious.

Pazzi: What are you going to do when you find him? Your Il Mostro?

Will: I'm curious about that myself.

Pazzi: You're already dead, aren't you?

Other people realize how dark Will is, too.

Then we move toward Will’s trip to Lithuania in E3. His reverent attitude to Hannibal begins to change once he meets Chiyoh, but he admits the following:

Will: I’ve never known myself as well as I know myself when I’m with him.

Will learns that Chiyoh has been staying here for all these years because she doesn’t want to kill another person. He notes that they can’t be sure whether her prisoner really killed Mischa because Hannibal is the only person who knows the truth. Despite all this, Will sets Chiyoh up to kill or be killed, releasing her prisoner secretly. Chiyoh rightfully accuses him of it:

Chiyoh: You said Hannibal was curious if I would kill. You were curious, too.

He was, if he is honest with himself.

What Will did was cruel and violent. Hannibal just left Chiyoh be, he openly and boldly risked her life, not caring about her safety or about whether her tortured prisoner deserves this. Will stays behind to make the body into art in Hannibal’s style, in accordance with his own design from when he killed Randall. This Will is dark and confident, and very in touch with his dark side. He dreams of killing Chiyoh and keeps asking her whether she saw what a monster she was, unable to accept the idea that only he has real darkness while Chiyoh doesn’t and that murder didn’t make her feel good. He repeats to Jack that a part of him will always want to be with Hannibal. Sadly, he then sees Bedelia as his replacement, grows even bitterer, and tries to attack Hannibal with the knife.

In E7, Will bites into Cordell’s cheek and tears a piece of meat out of it. Then he looks at Hannibal to see his reaction, waiting for his pride. He shows zero reaction to the news that Jack is alive — he doesn’t care about it. He rebukes Alana and shows that he still sees himself and Hannibal as a team, referring to them as “we”.

Will: You helped Mason Verger find us.

Alana: I helped Mason find Hannibal. We followed Bâtard-Montrachet when we should have just followed you.

Will: Almost as ugly as what Mason wants to do to us is the fact that he can do it with the tacit agreement of people sworn to uphold the law.

Alana: I was trying to get to Hannibal before you. I knew you couldn't stop yourself. So I had to try.

Will: By facilitating torture and death.

Alana: I can abide the thought of Hannibal tortured, not necessarily to death. I'd say he has it coming, wouldn't you? Or maybe you wouldn't.

Alana can no longer deny Will’s twisted morals. Will tries to push Alana to a darker side, manipulating her into releasing Hannibal, by telling her almost exactly what he and Hannibal were discussing in S2.

Will: Then you have to evolve, Alana. You have to spill blood. By your own hand or someone else's.

After the escape, Hannibal says the words that define Will perfectly:

Hannibal: You delight in wickedness and then berate yourself for the delight.

This is exactly what Will does — he acts on his darkness again and again, but then he gets scared and makes two steps back. He’s not ready to fully let go of the idea of a normal life yet.

Will sends Hannibal away. When Jack arrives, Will doesn’t even bother to pretend he tried to arrest him — he just says that Hannibal is gone. Jack clearly has zero trust in him at this point since he sends people to break into Will’s house without asking his permission. Will has completely discredited himself, proving himself as someone dark and twisted.

But Hannibal gives himself up and 3 years pass. After the epic Europe failure and his new insecurities, Will tries to retreat again. He decides to try being normal one more time, despite his previous failures at suppressing his darkness and his feelings for Hannibal. So he marries Molly, and it goes as well as expected. Their relationship is shown as weak from the start. The first time we see them, they are apart: Molly and Walter have gone fishing, which is what Will loves and dreamed of sharing with Abigail, yet he stays behind. He didn't let go of the past. He subtly manipulates Jack into talking Molly into urging him to come join the investigation — he deliberately leaves them alone under a weak excuse, knowing very well what Jack is about to do. Will is bored with his normal life and he misses Hannibal, even if he isn’t ready to fully admit it yet.

His treatment of Molly deserves a separate mention: this is the woman he lies to through his teeth, the woman whose “I love you” he doesn’t bother to return and who he doesn’t want to interact with the second she raises the topic he finds personally uncomfortable, someone he leaves her at the first opportunity. He never told her the truth about himself. The way Molly tries to joke about him having a criminal mind proves that she knows nothing of Will's dark struggles, and the way Will immediately shuts down demonstrates their incompatibility and his unwillingness to be honest and open with her.

On the very first day, Will demands to see Hannibal, lying about having to restore his mindset. We know it’s a lie because we’ve just seen him reconstruct Francis’ murder perfectly. He just wanted to see him because he missed him, and both Hannibal and later Bedelia call him out on it.

E9:

Hannibal: You just came here to look at me. Came to get the old scent again. Why don't you just smell yourself?

E10:

Bedelia: Have you been to see him?

Will: Yes.

Bedelia: Haven't learned anything, have you? Or did you just miss him that much?

This is what Hannibal says about Will’s marriage — and another reference to his darkness:

Hannibal: How did you choose yours? Readymade wife and child to serve your needs. A stepson or daughter – (off his look) – a stepson absolves you of any biological blame. You know better than to breed. Can’t pass on those terrible traits you fear the most.

This is very accurate and Will doesn’t bother to deny it. He’s more concerned about stalking Bedelia and asking her about her relationship with Hannibal than anything else. He makes zero efforts to preserve his family, which shows how irrelevant they are to him. This makes him a very cold and cruel person. Also, the way he acts with Bedelia is very different from how he acts with others. With her, he can be himself. He’s dark, relatively confident, and dangerous — which is likely why he keeps coming back to her. With others, he still puts on a rather meek mask.

There is quite a solid idea that a part of Will knew Hannibal might target Molly and Walter and send Francis after them (it’s up to interpretation, though). Hannibal gives Will very clear hints.

Will: Tell me who [the killer] is.

Hannibal: I don’t know who he is. When you close your eyes, Will... is that your family you see?

[Will scoffs at this.]

Will: Do you know who they are?

Hannibal: Yes. 

Will: And you're willing to let them die.

Hannibal: They're not my family, Will. And I'm not letting them die. You are.

These are huge hints, and since Will is supposed to be an excellent profiler — more than that, a profiler who understands Hannibal intimately, it’s strange that he didn’t even suspect anything. Maybe a part of him subconsciously wanted proof that Hannibal is in love with him — since he goes to Bedelia with his question right after the attack. Maybe he wanted reassurance that the passion is still there. Maybe he even wanted an excuse to abandon Molly and Walter (and he does it very easily an episode later).

Ultimately, Will seems genuinely infuriated by the attack, but it’s possible that “the enemy inside him” secretly hoped for such outcome. He spends about a minute being truly angry at Hannibal — then he becomes concerned that he’s competing with Francis for Hannibal’s attention, which underlines the irrelevance of his family to him once more. When talking to Walter, Will doesn’t try to hug him or actually comfort him. They are like strangers, and Will shows resentment about having to explain some facts about himself to Walter later.

Will: He read about me in a Freddie Lounds article. I had to justify myself to an eleven year old.

Not “to my son”, but an indifferent and impersonal “11 year old”. Another reminder that Will is a cold person.

This attack made Will realize Hannibal is in love with him, and it finally started the process of his Becoming. Will is shown as full of resentment toward Jack and Alana. He callously sets up Chilton, an innocent person, for torture and death in E12. He explicitly says that he did it deliberately and doesn’t regret it.

Will: Damn if I'll feel … The divine punishment of the sinner mirrors the sin being punished. Chilton languished unrecognized until Hannibal the Cannibal. He wanted the world to know his face.

Bedelia: Now he doesn't have one.

At first, Will makes a half-hearted attempt at denial.

Will: I put my hand on his shoulder for authenticity.

Bedelia: To establish he really told you those insults about the Dragon? Or had you wanted to put Dr. Chilton at risk? Just a little?

Will: I wonder.

Bedelia: Do you really have to wonder?

Will: No.

Bedelia: You were curious what would happen, that's apparent. Is this what you expected?

Will sounds very ironic.

Will: I can't say I'm surprised.

Bedelia: Then you may as well have struck the match. That's participation. Hannibal Lecter does indeed have agency in the world. He has you.

Considering the timing, Chilton looks like Will’s courtship gift to Hannibal. This is the second time Will harms an innocent person, which makes him far darker than a righteous killer should be. And why? Just because. His darkness is really evolving.

When Will visits Chilton with Jack, he openly lies to him (Jack) and tells him Hannibal is responsible for what happened.

In E13, Will stages another deadly game. He plots with Francis to break Hannibal free — the immediacy of his plan makes it look like Will has already been thinking about it before. He lies to Jack and Alana. He hides the fact that Francis is alive from them, and when they discover it by themselves, he offers a plan: to use Hannibal as a bait and stage his escape. Jack begins to plan everything. If Will had actually followed this plan, it would have gotten Hannibal and Francis killed. But Will doesn’t care about justice — he wants Hannibal free and he doesn’t give a damn about the consequences. He shares his true intentions with Bedelia and threatens her.

Will: I don't intend Hannibal to be caught a second time.

Bedelia studies Will. Sensing where he might be going. Hoping she is wrong. A flicker of alarm plays in her eyes.

Bedelia: Can't live with him. Can't live without him. Is that what this is?

Will: I guess… this is my Becoming . I'd pack my bags if I were you, Bedelia. Meat's back on the menu … Ready or not… here he comes.

This is a crucial moment because while in S2, Will called Randall’s murder his design, now he’s finally Becoming. It’s the climax of everything. He leaks info about Hannibal’s transfer to Francis (who, if you recall, has attacked Will’s wife and her son). He gets many officers murdered by proxy; he sets up Jack and destroys him professionally again; he endangers Alana and her family as well as Molly and Walter. Without showing even an ounce of regret toward the dead officers, Will climbs out of the car. We don’t get to see it, but this is what he does according to the script:

Will takes the gun off the dead cop.

Still with no care, he watches how Hannibal throws another body out of the car and offers Will to take a seat. Will looks long-suffering and fond, even though he has just gotten about 5 people killed. He goes with Hannibal.

In the cliff house, he admits he’s not sure if he can “save” himself by killing Hannibal.

Will: I don't know if I can save myself. And maybe that's just fine. 

He intends to try, though, but when Francis attacks, Will naturally chooses Hannibal because he can’t see him killed. He reaches for his gun and the fight begins. Seeing Francis strangling Hannibal, Will pulls out the knife from his body and rushes to protect him. He and Hannibal kill Francis together, and Will plunges the knife into him with obvious relish. Then he admires the way the blood looks on his hand.

Will: It really does look black in the moonlight.

This is proof of how Will remembers everything Hannibal has ever said to him. He reaches out to embrace Hannibal, finally allowing himself this weakness, finally accepting that this is who he is and that there is no way back.

Hannibal: See? This is all I ever wanted for you, Will. For both of us.

Will: It’s beautiful.

These words have a tremendous worth. Hannibal’s dream for them, the one he has been hoping for since early S1, has just become realized, and Will found it beautiful. The script confirms it additionally:

A moment as Will considers the brutal pack hunting he shared with Hannibal Lecter. He genuinely feels it is beautiful.

Upon this realization, Will gives the fate the last chance to stop himself and Hannibal, knowing that if they live, they’ll unleash their mutual darkness on the world. He pushes them off the cliff that has been confirmed to have no rocks by Hannibal, giving them a chance to survive. And they do — and they stay together and hunt. Will threatened Bedelia with being eaten and he kept his promise. The deleted epilogue to the series shows him and Hannibal in perfect harmony with each other.

Note that this is far from the only moments and details of Will’s long Becoming. There are many more, but if I addressed them, this meta would be even longer. However, here’s a quick analysis of Will’s softer sides — because they also aren’t as simple as it might seem at first. Will seems to sympathize only with people he can relate to personally, who remind him of himself in some way, and most often, they are murderers. He’s bitter about not being able to save killer-children in E4 because like them, he struggles with understanding what family means; he feels close to Georgia because he also thinks he’s losing his mind and no one can understand him; he’s gentle with Peter because he sees him as his fragile mirror; he’s soft with Reba because like Bryan said, they are both people in love with serial killers. With everyone else, Will is indifferent or cold. These traits were less visible in S1, but after he started to Become, they began to come to the surface. His softer sides still have a degree of selfishness to them.

So, Will has always had darkness in him. He has always been a rather cold person despite his genuine struggles, confusion, and the desire to be normal. Hannibal changed his life, helping him embrace himself and find unconditional love and acceptance. Will’s journey was very long, it had many setbacks, but in the end, he made it. They both did, and now they are free to enjoy their new life together.

Tagging some old fans who might be interested! @typicalher @hannibalized @bloodsmile @victorineb @he-s-dead-jim

[dreaming-of-assclass]

Omg Reaper 2.0's misogyny? I'm intrigued LOL especially since I don't remember a lot of details about him. So if you'd be willing to spill the tea... 👀

Ok everyone buckle up, it’s tea spilling time 😌🍵

Meta: 2.0’s Misogyny and Views on Gender Roles/Sociology

⚠️ TW: child abuse, domestic abuse ⚠️

So the specific instance I think of is during the Reaper arc, when the kids are breaking in to save Irina. And they first come face to face with him, and have to engage in combat. He takes them down effortlessly, we all know.

But...there’s a moment in which he purposely hits Kayano especially hard with his knee, and believes he has broken her ribs. He callously remarks, “Females are so fragile.”

Let’s break this down:

A. Kayano is literally the smallest girl/student. She is very petite, and everyone knows this. It's obvious even when she's wearing their uniform.

B. He knocked down everyone so easily, but seemed to take a particular joy in brutalizing her. A petite girl.

C. Given that he's been watching the class, he must've known that she was actually stronger than she seemed. But again, I question this particular violence and the comment afterwards.

For a while, I thought maybe he had just said that to be cruel for no reason. To rile them up and be an asshole. I mean, it would be fitting, right?

No. I came to the eventual conclusion that this man is a misogynist, for sure. And there are indicators that Koro, his only role model, might bear some resentment towards women himself.

There's also proof in the way that he treated Irina, even when they were "allies." He seemed to really disrespect her and look at her like a joke, despite her accomplishments as an assassin. And whatever worth he did believe her to have, he only thought it came from her sexuality.

Like...why else was Irina dressed down to only lingerie in the arc? Because it was part of his plan, and he looked down on her and her profession.

Expanding the context a bit, it really also does prove how he looked down on women. He had Irina appear half-dressed, upset, and completely weak before she tricked everyone. The embodiment of female fragility, and how sexuality is tied into that. I hope this is making sense omg

Now, moving onto his past~

I really recommend you read this awesome meta by @akamayumura (sorry for the tag!!) They delved into his childhood and psychological state very well, in my opinion.

We can infer that 2.0 grew up in a terrible household, and that is an equal contribute to his behavior, as well as the possibility of him having an anti-social disorder. I mean, he was so happy to see his father get killed in front of him...

Not only that, but he literally romanticized the killer. In that moment, he didn't experience grief, but gained a rose-tinted view of death. He literally begged Koro to go with him and grow into someone like that.

Clearly, there was some psychological reason for this. But that isn't unordinary for abused children to feel, having such a disconnect. He didn't view it as his father being murdered, but rather: a person he hated finally leaving his life.

And then he gained loyalty for the person who was responsible -> The Reaper.

I cannot find it for the life of me, but there is apparently a moment in canon where 2.0 describes his father as "tyrannical."

And you know what?

Usually in a household with an abusive tyrannical father, there is a weak, complacent mother.

This is so interesting that we're on this topic now, because I just read a book detailed all about this. It's called "Men Who Hate Women, and the Women Who Love Them" by Susan Forward. Please read it omg, it's so good and informative on how misogyny is engrained in childhood, relationships, etc.

But yeah!

This exact dynamic is a formula for men who grow up to be misogynistic because their first example of a woman in their lives is their mother, who is the victim in an abusive dynamic.

Here are some pictures from the book to help explain.

^ 2.0’s hatred towards his father

^THIS.

Either 2.0 grew up having to provide emotional labor for his mother, or there was none at all between them. Overall though, there is a sense of resentment and abandonment given that the father was so dominating, and his mother was a victim too.

Men who lived in households like this, often grow up into believing that women are to be controlled, because this is the example they had to go by for so long.

On top of that, there's a layer of resentment and distrust towards women because his own mother didn't stand up for herself and protect him. Why would another woman do so?

But to sum it up:

2.0 believes women are weak, fragile, easily controlled, and cannot be trusted at all.

There's evidence in his attack on Kayano, and the way he treated Irina.

Ahem, also notice how he seemed to act more professional around Karasuma, and took him much more seriously. Like yeah, Karasuma is more serious, but why on Earth would one of the best assassins in the world regard a government agent over another top-notch assassin?

If Irina were a male assassin, I definitely think the treatment and attitude would be different honestly.

ALSO.

2.0 loves flowers, we know! But there's another reason why he possibly used a flower shop guy as his cover.

To easily manipulate women, the target customers of flowers.

Hmmmmmm.

Anyways, yeah, we can deduce that his misogyny was born from his childhood of having an abusive father and seeing his mother as a victim.

Not to mention, that he spent most of his life with Koro, who definitely didn't treat him to respect women lmao.

I actually feel like Koro has his own personal resentment towards women/femininity...but before I make a post about that, I'll have to do more research.

Anyways, we all knew 2.0 had dad issues, but there are a lot of mommy issues on top of that.

This isn't me trying to cancel him or anything btw! He's still one of my favorite characters, I love him. I just find this characteristic of his to be pretty interesting and worth diving into. (Although I will admit, that Kayano rib scene upsets me a bit.)

So yeah! Hope you enjoyed this meta! And I hope this tea is hot enough 🍵🍵🍵

[gurayura]

I love Rokkaku. I LOVE ROKKAKU!!!

Something that I appreciate about Cherry Magic is that Adachi’s first impressions of other people couldn’t be more wrong, but... so were mine as a viewer! For instance, when I first saw Rokkaku I expected him to be the kind of earnest newbie that follows Kurosawa around like a puppy and that would be a bit of a jerk to Adachi because he’s jelly of all the attention he gets from Kurosawa. Needless to say, I couldn’t be more wrong. And I’m glad I was!

(This isn’t really a serious meta post. It’s just me yelling about Rokkaku)

Rokkaku is an earnest newbie. But as Adachi found out in episode 3, he’s also a very considerate person. That alone made me like him a lot, but what made me go from “aww, Rokkaku is cute” to “I love Rokkaku!!!!” was episode 5. We already knew that Rokkaku, just like everyone else, looks up to Kurosawa because he’s cool and the ace of his department. But in this episode he acknowledges Adachi and claims he’s his master in the art of being kind and thoughtful. In short, Rokkaku admires Adachi for his heart of gold and wants to learn from him - Rokkaku wants to grow as a person, too. Adachi realized that he, too, can inspire people. This is an important step in Adachi’s personal character arc!

Not incredibly relevant, but I found it cute when it was raining and Rokkaku went straight to cover Adachi with his umbrella and basically goes  “I CAN’T LET MY BELOVED SENPAI CATCH A COLD”. This kid is so caring and sweet.

He’s so friendly and likes Adachi and Kurosawa so much that he invites himself to Adachi’s place in episode 6 (much to Kurosawa’s chagrin). He, yet again, shows his sweet and caring side by feeding Adachi (again, much to Kurosawa’s chagrin). He’s quite observant, as he notices Adachi’s love for stationery. But here comes yet another important part of Rokkaku’s character: he gave up on his dream to become a dancer, and he feels lame for telling his coworkers about his failed dreams. This alone serves several purposes:

1) We get to know more about Rokkaku. He has a life outside of the office, and we get to see a more serious side of him. Rokkaku has his own struggles, too. 

2) The pics he shows confirm that he knows Minato. Rokkaku is no longer just linked to Adachi and -to a lesser extent- Kurosawa, but also to the secondary couple!

3) Adachi gets to shine by giving Rokkaku a pep talk and cheering him up. Adachi always sees the best in other people, but...

4) ...thinks lowly of himself, which is something Kurosawa bitterly notices.

This is imho a very good example of how Cherry Magic gets to give us a lot of information about the characters and the relationships they have with one another in a simple yet effective way. It flows so naturally that it doesn’t feel like the show is aggressively cramming lots of info down of our throats. Anyway, this is about Rokkaku, okay?

We see Rokkaku in episode 8 with his pals, including Minato. He doesn’t do much other than confirm my suspicions about him showing up everywhere Kurosawa and Adachi are. BUT we see him interact for the first time with Tsuge and Minato. Also, he cockblocks Tsuge. What a legend.

Now, my friends, is when we get to arguably the most important episode for us Rokkaku lovers. Episode 9! Rokkaku interrupts kurodachi’s not-so-subtle flirting and suggests hanging out together with Minato and Tsuge (presumably because he wants his pal Minato to spend more time with his new crush! Again, he’s a very supportive friend). Kurosawa turns him down and Rokkaku gets a phone call from Minato - apparently, Tsuge is avoiding him after he saw Keita kissing Minato. Conclusion? Tsuge is a raging homophobe. Rokkaku, who’s always been so sweet to Adachi, demands him to contact Tsuge and snaps at him. After 9 episodes, we hear the word “gay” for the first time and it’s pronounced by our hero, Rokkaku, who is ready to punch any homophobe that dares to hurt his friend’s feelings. Again, this showcases how deeply caring and loyal Rokkaku is!

(Not gonna write a lot about it, but I loved the fact that this show isn’t allergic to the word “gay” or even to discussing homophobia)

There’s... no real conclusion to this post other than the fact that I really appreciate that Rokkaku, despite being a secondary character who doesn’t even have a love interest, is so fleshed out and well-written. His relationships to the other characters are adorable (I need more Rokkaku+Minato!!) and he serves a purpose, narratively and thematically speaking. Thanks to him we get to see Adachi shine, we see Kurosawa’s jealous side, we see Minato’s vulnerable self. Also, he’s incredibly fun. I love every single scene he’s in.

Other stuff I love about him:

He snores loudly

He noticed one of his pals had bookmarked porn

The first conclusion he jumps to when he sees Kurosawa with a mysterious woman is “SHE’S HIS EX” dnjfnjegbrejgrg

His fashion sense

The scene where he finds out Tsuge doesn’t even know Minato’s name yet

He ate the cake that one grumpy client didn’t want

He freaks out because Kurosawa and Adachi are eating rice balls together

He drinks ice coffee aggressively before confronting Tsuge

I hope we’ll get lots good Rokkaku moments in the few episode we have left!

(and more Fujisaki too, please!)

[hallothere]

I broke down and wrote the essay. No, I did not and will not proofread it. I don’t waaaannaaaa

There’s Only One Winner For Isengard

In a perfect world, in a world with no meta requirements that could bend to the will of the player, we would roll up to Isengard level-capped, no debuffs, with one quest-marker on hand: Ruin Saruman’s day. But this is a pre-written sequence of events in which we are only along for the ride. We, the player, and a Ranger are shipped off to Isengard with only one conceivable goal: survive. On a meta level we know what Saruman is capable of. At level 70 or 80-something at best, even we are aware that we are no match for a wizard with a canon fate. Not to mention our Ranger companion! The Grey Company has been through enough (though we don’t know the half of it yet) and we are reasonably distraught at the possibilities.

This is why we, the player character, will lose the game of Isengard.

Beyond the meta rules of the game, where quest objectives are whatever the devs wanted them to be (looking at you, Mordrambor) the player character can not defeat Saruman in any way that’s meaningful. And (again on a meta level) in order for us to get to experience the action at Helm’s Deep and Rohan at large, we have to get out of Isengard. We’d get bored of waiting for Theoden and Co. We’d hurl insults or slap fish at Saruman and realistically incur wrath. Honestly, with the set of circumstances presented to us, who could survive imprisonment in Nan Curunir?

Only one of the Company ever could: Lothrandir of Suri Kyla. 

To begin with, none of the Rangers we have any real information on could have done it. Anyone who’s spent time in Angmar is at a disadvantage due to the prevailing dread (game mechanic or otherwise) that can be manipulated by Saruman. Any Ranger that has a major traumatic past is at a disadvantage (sorry Mincham) because if nothing else, Saruman has proven to be a master of illusion. Even Halbarad for all his leadership ability has a pretty exploitable weakness: eventually Saruman can crack the code with a vision of Aragorn’s demise, the one end Halbarad must fear above all others. Or what bond could more easily be exploited than that of a leader and his men? Lheu Brenin’s in the gang now after all. All Saruman would have to do was send for a few more incentives. 

But Lothrandir comes built with a few key advantages that make him the only Grey Company Ranger qualified to come out of this battle of wills on top. His specific strengths, mindset, and personality traits combined with the circumstances that the game sets up going into Isengard make him the clear choice of Rangers- if a Ranger you must have- to stay behind in Nan Curunir. 

Lothrandir wins because he changes the game. From ‘go’ our co-prisoner does something that either puzzles the player character or sends them into an anxious fit. Lothrandir declares himself fearless and sprints recklessly into the ring. Any way you figure it, this seems like a poorly calculated move. He doesn’t stop to survey the enemy. He doesn’t gather intel. Heck, he doesn’t even bide his time to see if he’ll be killed before he even reaches the dungeons. Lothrandir sprints right in without so much as a thought or a plan. Saruman doesn’t know it yet, but from that moment on Lothrandir has him on the back foot. 

Consider for a moment Saruman’s MO. He’s a wizard, and he uses a great deal of magic, sure, but time and time again we are reminded of the power of his voice and his words. He calls down a storm on Caradhras (in the movies for darn sure), he via-Wormtongue whispers poison into the ears of King Theoden. He doesn’t lead with any kind of grandiose display when trying to sway Gandalf. No, he leads with a persuasive argument. Later on, he nearly talks Theoden back around, after failing to wipe out all of Rohan. After killing the man’s son for goodness sakes. He nearly talks himself out of that one!

But Lothrandir has already changed this from a game of wits to a game of wills. There will be no vying for favor, or biding time, or compliance, or even giving Saruman a chance to ‘talk it over friendly’ first. He’s already spitting on the shoes of everyone he sees. The accomplishment in this is twofold, and it makes a major impact on the rest of his time in Nan Curunir. 

Firstly, by establishing a new game, Lothrandir sets Saruman up for a whole lot of assumptions. He does not display any signs of diplomatic ability, wisdom, or even common sense. He very intentionally projects an attitude of reckless disobedience. In the player’s own eyes, it seems as if he ‘doesn’t know any better’. This gives Saruman a clear path to take regarding Lothrandir. He assumes you can’t reason the typical way with someone who has shown zero inclination for listening. The player character demonstrates that the Grey Company (or least their associates) are capable of compliance. For all intents and purposes, this Lothrandir doesn’t appear to be. He’s contrary, fool-hardy, and evidently dumb enough to dive in headfirst and get himself killed. You beat that kind of guy into submission… don’t you?

But Lothrandir has changed the rules of the game. Saruman is no longer fighting with his best weapon, but with a tool to be found in any old villain’s arsenal. When he took the approach of reasoning with the player character and disregarding Lothrandir, he set the victor’s foundation on our snow-pilgrim’s greatest strength. 

Secondly, by establishing a new game, Lothrandir makes this a battle of physical endurance. Unbeknownst to Saruman, this is the one thing that makes him stand out from the rest of the Grey Company. He has walked through the frozen north lands and the fiery south lands and come out unscathed. He has mastered the unarmed combat style of the Lossoth by joining in mid-winter wrestling matches in a place that took down many Elves, Angmarim, and notably one King of Arthedain! Lothrandir has conceivably spent his entire life training for this matchup. Any endurance he has built up, any fighting he can do without access to a weapon, all are assets to the kind of game he just made Saruman play. Lothrandir is uniquely built to survive any physical torment Isengard can throw at him, or at least, better equipped than any of the others. 

To say Lothrandir is the best choice, we also have to rule out the others. Corunir was thwarted by the Rammas Deluon and for all he learned from that, it’s a weak spot in his proverbial armor. Golodir too, resisted a fair degree of torture (palantiri based, even!) in Carn Dum, but it won’t be hard for Saruman to suss that one out and make our old man’s life a living nightmare. Even Radanir, serious and seemingly unattached to any social bonds now that his good pal Elweleth has gone sailing, would be a poor choice. He is too serious, (for lack of a better term) too genre-savvy, and even if he is spitting blood and delivering a witty one-liner, that’s Saruman’s foot in the door! ‘I’ll never betray my friends and kin, you kaleidoscope hack’? You’ve just told him your weakness, Radanir! No, he can’t keep his mouth shut to save his (or Saerdan’s) life. Radanir is the wrong choice too.

We don’t know a significant amount about the others (except Ranger death would move Calenglad to tears, we can’t put him through this) in order to pinpoint their fatal flaws in the Isengard encounter. But, the game puts us in the incredible position of having seen Lothrandir’s Achilles’ heel and letting us take that disadvantage away. 

Lothrandir of Suri Kyla is uniquely equipped to survive any physical encounter that Saruman throws his way. Now, who’s to say the wizard won’t change his tune and go back to his old tricks? In an incredible twist of fate, we are. The game sets us, the player, up to play Saruman’s game from the get-go. We keep our pixelated head down, try and fly below the radar, and express just enough concern over the fate of our fool-hardy pal to get Saruman to cement his estimation of Lothrandir as a pawn in the game in stone. By making ourselves the better target for the words of a wily wizard, Saruman decides that the best way to deal with the spare prisoner is by playing right into his hands. As we all know, the player character escapes. While that might seem bad for someone who Saruman has earmarked for corporal punishment only, it covers Lothrandir’s one weakness. 

Aside from being the only significant unarmed fighter, Lothrandir is also never painted as a loner. He spends his time in Suri Kyla, hanging out with the Lossoth and sharing their campfires. In the new questline in Forochel, he jumps at the chance to make a new Dunedain friend and takes to King Arvedui like a duck to water. They’re instant best pals. It’s minutes before Lothrandir is telling him Aragorn’s life story and pledging to go with him on a buddy adventure to seek peace for a regretful shade. And if that’s not enough canon for you, Lothrandir bears the brunt of the Falcon clan aggression on the way to Isengard. He does it for you, his friend and companion in suffering. It’s a bit meta, but we have to assume in the internal universe he knows you a little. You’ve run your merry adventures to a degree where, were this not a video game, Lothrandir would at least consider you an ally if not a friend outright. 

He exposes his weakness unwittingly to the Falcon clan, but he leaves it at the gates of Isengard in an extremely well-timed move. By sprinting through the gates without a care as to what’s going on with you or anyone else, Lothrandir establishes an emotional distance between you both in the eyes of any onlookers. Whatever affection you have for him, it doesn’t seem reciprocated. This isn’t a major weakness for Saruman to exploit, then. You’re not one of his kinsmen. If he did want to pursue that line, he could always send to Tur Morva for one, right?

This is where the game comes back in to shift the tide in Lothrandir’s favor. We escape. We play the game, we nearly lose the game, and had we not been given an out the power scaling makes it difficult to conceive of an outcome where we the player can win Isengard. Sure, we’ve been released from prisons before (Delossad to name one) but this is the climax of Dunland. We make a daring escape, and move south towards the Gap of Rohan and all sorts of bad times. 

Back in Nan Curunir, Lothrandir is getting the daylights beat out of him, and taking a victory lap. He’s cemented his position as ‘the prisoner we’ll break with violence’. The uruks have seen him insubordinate and disorderly. In the Lothrandir interlude, there’s not only the canon (stated outright!) reality of past and present torture. There’s also zero hesitation in Lothrandir taking that one on the chin. There are no other objectives on his mind than making the next few minutes as miserable as possible for everyone around. He has no other goals. And he doesn’t need them. Nobody is surprised that Lothrandir is signing his death warrant within nanoseconds of being presented an offer to comply. He spits on the offer. He tips over the slop bucket. He beats bloody any orc (and gameplay purposes aside there are very few that dare come forward) that actually tries to kill him for it outright. 

He’s built up a non-rapport with Gun Ain. She talks about killing him and he doesn’t say anything. They’re all playing his game and he’s winning. In the conversation with Saruman, we’re not given the opportunity to watch Lothrandir ‘resist’ in the same fashion the player character did. We don’t need to. Saruman has bigger and better things to worry about- killing a prince, wiping out a nation- than one Ranger who he’s just going to order well-flayed again. By setting himself up as the punching bag, Lothrandir has managed to fly beneath Saruman’s priority threshold. He’s been relegated to the responsibility of Gun Ain, and still with somewhat protected status because they haven’t wormed anything useful out of him yet.

All of these moves have culminated to an impasse. Saruman is not winning points in the game like he expected. One ‘meathead Ranger’ has managed to resist all the torments of Isengard, and he’s gained nothing from this. The other prisoner escaped, word had doubtless reached him that the Tur Morva Thirty-Odd are free and raring to be a thorn in his side again. He has no external leverage to apply on Lothrandir and it’s become increasingly obvious that our Ranger friend is not engaging like the player did. But still, Saruman has his pride. It’s his downfall in the end, and it’s his downfall in his fight against the one Ranger who’s already beating him. Lothrandir can’t be killed outright because Saruman hasn’t won yet. And with that guarantee of protection, Lothrandir can coast all the way to the conquest of Isengard. 

He can keep playing the game and stalling for time. It’s morbid, but what better way to waste someone’s time and energy than convincing them slow, drawn-out torture is the way to go? A little extreme, Lothrandir, but it’s still his game to lose. He wastes Saruman’s time. If he is eventually rescued, total victory. If he’s killed in the end, he definitely didn’t give the wizard the satisfaction, so a less resounding victory but one in the win column nonetheless. 

With a little help from our usually Ranger-cidal devs, Lothrandir reprograms Saruman’s game of chess to a boxing match. He takes out all his disadvantages, gets Isengard to attack from a point of... if not weakness then at least neutral ability, and then devotes his every waking breath to violent disobedience.

Sure, you could have taken any of the Grey Company with you to Isengard. Lheu Brenin could have swapped out for Braigar or Amlan or Mithrendan or Culang- but only one of these guys has the brute strength, commitment, and sheer audacity to pull it off. 

You take Lothrandir to Orthanc. There’s a different prisoner of Nan Curunir when he leaves.

[life-rewritten]

1000 Stars Ep 1-6; Tian and the Consequences of past mistakes.

This has been long coming. I’ve just been very weirdly conflicted with writing about this show because I tend to find speaking about it for hours more appropriate. But because I didn’t have time to create a video focused on this topic, I decided to write it out the way I know how. First of all this has been just an insane experience, this show is... well how  can I describe it?  It’s incredible, and not like the oh this is really good incredible, I mean like it’s mind blowing how outstanding this show is, the fact that this show is the first Thai bl show of 2021 that was original is blowing my freaking mind, it’s put a standard to everything else, it’s standard is excellence, there is no mistake, no errors, no issues with this show unless you’re someone who loves to find something wrong about something. This  show is so inspirational, representative, deep, and important in this genre. First of all it’s a unique type of storyline, it has meta everywhere, it’s incredibly filled with dimensional characters that are so human and real and make mistakes but learn and grow, and it has an incredible realistic love story brewing. Like what else can you say about this show? The cinematography? Excellent. The directing. Even more great. The acting; So incredible. Everyone who has joined to make this show mean something, mean something to me. Because this show is now my hiding place, an escape from the realities of the world, and the grim aspects of life, a show that makes me learn about the value of life, the importance of love, and just the inspiration of finding meaning to who you are and why you should be here. This show is so incredibly written and planned with so much effort, direction and energy. If GMMTV can keep on with this energy with all their other BLS this year is going to the biggest, greatest breakthrough for this genre. This show makes my Fridays. And I wanted to first start with that because it’s hard to write thoughts about this show, because there’s so much to flesh out and explain, every scene, every dialogue, every thing means something to the overall story brewing, to the subtext hidden, to the themes and messages the show is trying to teach. Everything can be explained. And I think that’s so incredible.

 So what do we have in this essay then, we have a focus on Tian, and his actions from Ep 1-6, it’s incredible how our little sunshine is finally going through self discovery and finding who he’s meant to be, also it’s just amazing to see him find his soulmate through all of this; who just means so much to him and influences all of his greatest things in life. However this show toes between the line of a really sweet love story, with some humour, some laughter, some cheesiness and flirts but also a darker, sadder and realistic portrayal of some issues in the world, and also some parts of the human psyche that represents or relates to us in some way. Whether this show is about how easily depression can make us fall into this well of self hate, and self destruction, or make us forget the value of the people around us and the value of even our selves, or this show is a message and warning to consequences of recklessness, corruption and selfishness, this show has so much to say and show whilst still presenting it in a format that’s a BL; that’s still hopeful and beautiful and sweet. And how Backaof has gone and done this is incredible to me. This essay is going to be breaking down each of the hints and clues that point to the serious aspects of the show, what are we to expect? Why is this a repeated theme in the show, what does it mean for our characters, what does it mean for us? So Let’s break down the foreshadowings and clues to  the plot twists in the show that’s upcoming and how Backaof has laid a very meta plan for each of these clues to take place.

 Tian and The Consequences of The Past

Mostly episode 5 really is the episode where these clues are hidden in subtext. So much is troubling immediately we begin the episode. We start of with a realisation that we’re being bamboozled, the show is hiding information from us, it’s twisting our perspectives on certain storylines and there’s still truths that we need to unveil to piece together. The most important connection of this story is the demise and removal of Torfun. In fact her accident is the catalyst that causes this story to begin, she’s a guide to Tian to lead him to this new renewal of life, and purpose but also she’s the family and friend to many people who have been touched by her presence, she’s also the person connected to our love interest. In so many ways her demise means a lot to the plot of the story. And it’s shocking to think that there could be more to it. It’s not just this plot that is a convenience to the story, it means more, it’s connected to every single thread of the plot, connected to the love story brewing, because it’s her heart that’s being confused at first with Tian’s feelings, it’s her presence that’s being emphasised on with Tian’s guilt of replacing her, it’s her words that’s being valued by Tian to want to be better and do more for himself, but it’s her mystery that keeps us all on edge including Tian who is slowly unveiling memories that he doesn’t want to accept. It seems like deep down Tian knows something is of about Torfun’s accident, it’s like he can’t rest, he can’t help shake when he questions his flashbacks, his memories, there’s this desperate need for him to attempt to make it up to her, to ensure she’s happy and rested with her wishes coming through, it’s such a desperate need it drives him to self sacrificial methods, he completely leaves his own needs and care for her goal to be realised. 

And it is sweet but Tian is also someone who is incredibly hurt, and destructive, he’s been so pushed into this mindset of thinking he’s not worth it, his life is not worth it, his presence is not worth it. For so long he has been shackled by the idea of deth (wrong spelling on purpose) following him all around, one day he was meant to leave the world, unexpectedly, no hopes, no dreams, no freedom from this and so he became numb to this premise of life, of value, of self care. Tian is incredibly reckless and self destructive because he lost the meaning of why he should be self protective and self loving. And it breaks my heart everytime we have to relive or even remember his state of mind in the past episodes from 1-4. Now this begins to change once he settles and realises he has meaning, and he’s needed and he’s worthy. It starts to change when he realises he wants to be protected by the man he loves, it starts to change when he’s found something to protect, his new family, friends and lover. It starts to change when he also wants to make a difference and be of importance. So Tian is finally going through this self discovery of Purpose, Love and Happiness, which are all connected to this meaning of life, that he wanted to uncover when he read Torfun’s diary at first. But as much as he is on this path, he still has remnants of his mistakes and his past mindsets that prevent him from moving forward, it eats him up with guilt, it paralyses him with fear that one day he could lose it all, but also it makes him run into the claws of danger and deth time and time again. So Episode 5 really is a map of all the dangers that Tian has to get through, connected to his own faults, flaws and development needed to be unpacked to get to his destiny/fate with Pupha. These worries and foreshadowings show a grueling yet important journey to overcome, he needs to overcome his self doubt, his self hate, his numbness to life and his guilt and shame of the past. So Let’s analyse and break down these clues.

Consequences of Recklessness

Episode 5 starts with immediately a shift, it’s a plot twist to see that Tian didn’t faint. It’s odd for me to be watching this scene in the beginning and screaming Faint please faint, why isn’t he fainting. Immediately he stands up assures Tul he’ll be okay and then proceeds to discuss about his car as his baby and pride, you know it’s a problem. The emphasis of Tul feeling uneasy brings up this worry that Tian is about to attract trouble through his lack of care for himself, and his lack of value for others and things connected to him. This is the moment we’re hit with the wave of realisation that Tian may have to deal with the consequences of his recklessness, and that means that this event is connected to the source of everything the one thing we still have questions about; Torfun and her accident. And it’s a terrifying lesson don’t get me wrong, but it’s like Tian to be reckless, he’s reckless about everything, his life, his heart, his self, he’s just constantly putting himself at risk. 

Immediately he opens his mouth and pushes for an illegal car race, we know there’s going to be consequences, this is connected to how powerful he is, (they can close the road and cover up the truth), this is connected to how corrupted his background is as we’ve seen in episode 1, how little they value others for themselves, it’s connected to the ease and way he can be privileged and thrive of chaos and get unscathed whilst people like Torfun end up victims used and forgotten. Now I’m not saying Tian is the actual person who took Torfun’s life, although he does end up in possession of her heart, he doesn’t drive and I do believe he wasn’t the one in the car, maybe in the passenger seat next to the driver, or maybe hitting another car from behind that ran into her, or Tul managing to get him out of that situation before he could be the one who caused it. But it’s still his words, his actions that lead to this accident, and that’s a terrifying fact both he and the audience has to deal with.  And this is connected of the value of life and people and how this can be lost with recklessness, and corruption  and selfishness. 

Consequences of Evasion of the Truth

Tian literally had to evade and run away from this world to go to the village to find the real meaning but it doesn’t erase his past, he has to deal with that, and I do think he will think he’s the one who is the person at fault mostly because he’s starting to get flashbacks of that event, he knows he’s hiding a secret and It’s more than just the fact that Torfun gave him his heart, it’s because deep down he’s scared he was involved in that in a different way. And this leads to Pupha and his secrets, the way he was actively trying to conceal the truth in episode 5, because of his fear of losing it all, and hurting the person he loves. The fact he’s hiding secrets means that those secrets will come to light and we do see an example of this a bit less painful when Longtae stumbles on Torfun’s diary, this is still going to be happening because Pupha still needs to know the truth and the way Tian has covered up the secrets and truth for so long means there’s consequences to hiding the truth. 

This is also another theme of the show, connected to the fact that Torfun’s accident is being covered up as just that, connected to the fact that maybe Tian’s father and mother tried so hard to evade the truth and move on and pretend nothing happened, by selling the car and forcing Tian to not think about looking for her. That’s why it’s worrying because the parents are obstacles and in my opinion are also one of the hints episode 5 leaves for us the audience to notice. Already it’s uncommon to hear that Tian’s mum isn’t as worried about him in the village, when her love for him in episode 1 is suffocating and protective, she won’t be okay with his choice to be reckless, to push his heart, to come to a place with distance, and so it’s a red flag.

Consequences of Corruption and Power

It’s a warning, his parents are connected to a plot twist, they’re going to be an obstacle because they represent right now Corruption and Power. And the consequences of corruption and power removing the value of life is also shown in episode 6 when we see our villain Sakda. In fact it’s because Tian tries to evade Corruption that we see the value of all the villagers earnings, work, life, burn so cruelly at the end. Sakda’s cruelty has no bounds, he doesn’t take the people seriously; he sees them as liabilities, obstacles, unimportant, he doesn’t value them just like Torfun was also unvalued by her aunt because of money/recklessness and also probably by Tian’s family because of corruption and power. It’s all about the darkness of privilege; the very lesson Tian is learning about and also growing away from. Episode 1 shows the stain of corruption in Tian’s life, how it suffocates him and makes him feel unsafe and unhappy in his own home, how it shrouds him in the dark compared to Torfun who found light in Pu Phan Dao. And that wine stain on his chest that carves the same length and shape as his scar is a reminder that he’s been stained and affected by that Corruption. And that’s why he tries to escape and start anew. But there are consequences and lessons of forgiveness he needs to learn, a way to relearn about his own meaning and value but also a way forgive himself and Torfun to find peace with the truth unfolded. Okay so a bit dark but this is a theme, the way corruption and the rich and power don’t care about the value of life, even in Pu Phan dao, Phupha is tagged with protecting the home, the trees, the forest because they have value, but the rich come and poach and cut down the source for the people, they misuse and scam the people because they don’t know or treat what they do as valuable. That’s why Tian as he learns about value finds a way to help the villagers regain the value of their tea leaves and more, he adds innovation and a creativity to everything to make the villagers be strong enough to know their worth and yet the rich and the corrupt manage to burn it all down in episode 6. The theme is recurring; the question is how do we come out of it with forgiveness, peace and understanding.

 Consequences of Carelessness

I can talk about this theme and the value of life linked to this show for ever. But there’s more shown in episode 6 that hints at the worrying obstacles we still have to face. There’s Social media mentioned, Tian repeatedly warns Tul to not take a photo of him, he lies to Nam about his facebook and he finds Torfun through facebook in episode 1. He’s so desperate to hide his past and his truth that maybe that’s how some of the truth will be unveiled. Social media can be easily tracked if a person has it out for him, but also Tul takes a picture with him that holds such a warning to it, it just seems important to notice as well. Because it could be Sakda who unveils it but he’s also connected to so much more. 

His power also puts Phupha at risk, because Phupha is the one tasked with preventing these type of influences hurting the village. Phupha’s job requires his life to be at risk for the value of others, the people he deems family, and the place he deems home so his job is going to also lead to him being at odds with Sakda and his minions. Especially since we have seen how violent they can get, and in episode 1 we are shown a bunch of people who are currently a danger to the forest with one escaping and boss connected to them. That’s Sakda. So if Phupha has to stop Sakda his life may be in danger as he risks it for the village but also mostly Tian who is the target of them now. 

Again that’s the consequences of Tian’s recklessness because even though it was good for him to defend the village and do what’s right, he was warned repeatedly what it could bring. And it brings Phupha’s life in danger. Especially the foreshadowing with him running in episode 6 to bring out a symbol of Phupha’s presence in his life. His actions have unfortunately led to the endangerment of the one person he wants to protect more than himself. The one person who truly shows him the value of life. That’s why episode 5 jokinly repeats also warningly that Tian is a trouble magnet, it’s a joke because it seems him being reckless and attracted to trouble is not important because with his status and privilege he can come out unscathed, however it can lead to catalysts of drama and more pain in the future. Hence again the consequence of recklessness. Tian acts before he thinks, it’s a good and bad quality, first it leads to him being brave, being determined, being creative with how he tackles solutions, it comes to him immediately at the same time packed with his self destructive mindset, at times it leads to him causing trouble and harm. This is why I say another theme to his self acceptance journey is forgiveness this is not just him learning about the best things in life, it’s also about him embracing the mistakes of his past. Because it’s only if he learns, will he become his best self, the one that loves everything about himself, and the one that can move forward and heal past scars. Also because I’m sure people are like what about Torfun our victim essentially, I think Torfun is definitely making Tian also feel this uneasiness and determination to unfold the truth for peace, she gives him permission in the episode 1 for him to take over her heart, to take care of Pupha but probably also to take care of the village. I think she’s at peace but you know we’ll see if the show mentions her again in a different manner.

Consequences of Insecurity

But this brings us to the next obstacle mentioned in Episode 5: Torfun vs Tian. Head vs Heart. Especially also connected to Phupha. From episode 3-6, Pupha and Tian have given their hearts to each other, in subtext it’s really obvious they both know how they feel however it’s always distracted by insecurities, logic, and questions in their minds. There’s a lot in their heads they have to deal with that makes it hard for them to confess. Although Tian is basically still willing to fight over those thoughts and choose him and show him he’s open. This is why I don’t think Tian fully thinks it’s him behind Torfun’s incident, mostly because if he truly thought he was behind the car he won’t let Phupha near him. He won’t forgive himself to even let love in. So I think he has inklings something is not right but he pushes down and isn’t fully aware of what happened that night. But apart from those worries, there’s more things he and Pupha deal with that is hinted in episode 5 and we see is preventing both of them  just coming out and saying what they feel.

The things in Pupha’s head vs heart

The first worry which he kind of removes in episode 6 is distance. Phupha says it in episode 5, he doesn’t want to be the reason for why Tian stays in the village and not return back for his degree in college. He doesn’t want to hold Tian back though he’s worried that him returning means he won’t come back to the village. Infact Tian returning home has been Pupha’s biggest fear since he first met him, it’s why he teased him harshly each time he saw him pre ep 3, because he didn’t want him to leave so he always angered him and tested to see how determined he wanted to stay. Because of this looming distance/long distance relationship that could occur in the future, Pupha shies away with his other insecurities and prevents himself from confessing rather keeping their relationship in this unknown stage than facing the reality of what they are. He doesn’t want to get in the way of Tian’s potential, it’s obvious Tian is finding Purpose in the village as a teacher and helper but for Pupha where people of the village dream of going to the city to get their dreams, and live a better comfortable life it’s better for Tian who’s frail, and smart to go back and unveil his potential by staying in college for however long he has to.

 But also Pupha notices Tian is secretive. This is why although it seems Tian is open to him and obviously flirting and hinting at a way to elevate their status, Pupha shies away because he has insecurities, one he still doesn’t trust how Tian sees him, there’s this idea of him being different to Tian because of age, personality, and maybe even sexuality, and he worries about all of that, what if Tian is more matched with others his age, and finds more happiness and comfort with people who speak like him and act like him, what if Tian hates strict and moody people, what if Tian isn’t queer? These are the insecurities he battles with in his head even though his heart thinks Tian may reciprocate.

The things in Tian’s head vs heart

And we know the big one for Tian is Torfun. She’s Pupha’s prized, valuable connection, someone who really meant the world to him, someone he and the village is struggling to let go of. Tian feels like an impostor holding her heart, it fills him with guilt, shame, worry about him not being worthy enough to replace her, but also to help them deal with her demise. And For Pupha especially who doesn’t have a lot of family members; who cherishes every single thing as like the most important valuable thing, he doesn’t want him to be hurt with that realisation. He doesn’t want him to compare Tian with Torfun, he doesn’t want to always see the hurt in his eyes when he looks at Tian and misses her.  

It’s also the fact he’s been lying for so long, and so that worries him even more as days go by, because he lied (as his subconscious of Pupha told him in the dream In episode 4) it makes it worse, he should have just told them immediately to take away the betrayal and the hurt. So this is all also in his head. Before he accepted his sexuality he also questioned if it was her who loved Pupha not him. Because sometimes people say things to him that makes him feel again like she’s there controlling him, or changing him to become like her etc. It’s hard for him to not think there might be a chance he likes Pupha because it’s her not him. However the most important one is the guilt of holding her heart, of basically stealing her life, he basically took the guy she loves, the job she loves, the place she loves and replaced her. So he’s not really particularly comfortable with that truth; in fact this is the reason why he’s desperate to make her wish her come through to give her some sort of validation and make her still have meaning. To also ask for her forgiveness for being the one who took her heart. That’s why I think if he’s any way close to her demise as in the accident the guilt and determination to run to the cliff and just beg her for forgiveness is even more desperate and intense. That’s what I’m dreading. Because the journey to the cliff isn’t an easy one, and if Tian desperate and reckless runs away to go make it happen what happens to his already overworked heart?

Consequences of Deth

And that’s the last thing we really have to overcome in the show, the closeness and link to deth both our characters have, like it’s insane, Phupha’s life is constantly in danger, and episode 5 reminds us of the violence of people like Sakda he has to face. Meanwhile Tian is just close to it because of a chance of his rejection, luckily episode 6 reintroduces his medicine and now Nam knows the truth, his heart may finally be taken care of well, but there’s still a chance that he’s pushed it too far, there’s still a connection to his numbness of life, and his self destructive way he sees himself when he’s filled with guilt and pain. So there’s still this tangle with this, which is worrying as we saw in episode 5, his heart is pushed so many times over the limit and in episode 6 even more when he runs into the fire forgoing his own safety yet again. So that is important to note. However I think this is just probably going to be more of a warning for Pupha though Tian’s life is also endangered by Sakda since he’s a target so it’s both, they’re both again in danger of sacrificing themselves to help the other. This doesn’t mean a sad ending I don’t even worry about that, but it’s an obstacle, it’s a consequence of the themes of the show, and another lesson for Tian to learn and grow from.

The themes of Identity, Self love, Purpose and Renewal of the meaning of life all are lessons that Mr Tian needs to learn as he discovers himself through the show. However Tian’s past doesn’t just disappear as we see mechanisms and mindsets constructed from his past environment, situations and hurts can show up as consequences, but this doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world for our couple, in fact it’s opposite, it’s a healing message of embracing your past and healing your scars, and becoming a better person knowing you’re still worth everything good despite your mistakes if you’re willing to grow and change. Knowing actions have consequences but you have a chance to learn from them and grow. It’s a self acceptance and self-forgiving journey, to embracing your fate and finding the meaning of life again. So yes in this show there’s a reason for why the characters act the way they do, there’s a reason why Tian constantly puts himself in harms way, a reason for why Pupha is the opposite and is strict and filled with order to prevent recklessness, to protect the value of people, life and more. Both Tian and Pupha come into each other’s lives to offer perspective, to help each other grow, with making Pupha embrace vulnerability and weakness of himself, and to make Tian embrace meaning of life and purpose and love; all the things he thought he had lost. So yeh Episode 5 was a rollercoaster, I kept on smiling but then worrying each time below the surface another clue popped up showing we still have a lot of obstacles to deal with. But if we don’t have these obstacles then these real life messages and call outs won’t matter, we need to see the price of privilege, we need to see the consequence of recklessness, the selfishness of corruption and how it can bring  harm to others, we need to know why it’s important to value your self, and know your truth, and fall in love, So we’ll be fine, this show is incredible already and it deals with everything well. No matter what theories we have Backaof has a full map for how everything ties together in his head, how Tian deals with his guilt, how he confronts his parents, how he chooses Pupha overall, we’ll see it all unfold. It’d be a journey, sometimes painful but we’ll come out smiling. Anyway here’s the analysis of the consequences and dangers in the show. Let’s discuss? What are your theories? How do you feel about the show? Let me know. Ciao.

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Fault”

Hello, everyone! We’re not even bothering with an introduction today, let’s just get straight to the only thing that matters.

HERE HE IS, THE MVP OF THIS EPISODE, OF THE WHOLE VOLUME, THE SERIES, THE ONLY ONE I CARE ABOUT RIGHT NOW

I’m joking… but only a little. In all seriousness we will get to Ren, but you all want to hear a funny story first? I somehow got it into my head that there was no RWBY episode this week—the holiday and all—so I poured all my meta time and energy into a ridiculous Ironwood analysis as a placeholder, only to wake up this morning and find the strongest (and most complicated!) episode this year waiting for a recap. Like some sort of grimm nosing into my inbox. 

Okay, so it’s not a funny story, but if RT would just do a better job with their website my life would be a whole lot easier.

So here we are, taking a look at the episode “Fault.” Quick question, is every episode this volume going to have a one-word title? It’s not a criticism, I’ve got nothing against a punchy name, I’m just curious since RWBY has never done that before. If anything, they’ve gone more for symbolically significant phrases like “A Brawl in the Family,” “Players and Pieces,” and “The Lady in the Shoe.” I wonder what sparked the change.

Anyway, we open on Robyn laughing about some story she’s told, something about Joanna losing a fair fight for the first time, presumably to her. This is what we’ve learned about Robyn since this volume started: she refuses to acknowledge that she had a hand in Clover’s death; she was asked by Blake and Yang to keep the Amity secret but, according to May, couldn’t keep her mouth shut about it; and she tries to cheer Qrow up by bragging about her own skill.

Alrighty then.

Obviously, this little story fails to land. “Tough crowd tonight.” Robyn looks to Jacques as well as Qrow when she says this and since she clearly doesn’t care about cheering him up, she must want to get a rise out of him. Create something, as she says at the end of the scene, that’s exciting. Robyn just really loves to start fights. Against Ironwood, Clover, bickering matches with Jacques—stories told about winning them! If she’s not fighting someone she’s not interested.

Qrow does eventually give the smallest smile though and Robyn cheers. “Did I win?” They both quickly grow serious again though and Robyn says she’s “sorry for what happened. It wasn’t your fault.” Her apology would mean more if she was apologizing for her actions, not providing a generic ‘Sorry for your loss’ like she had no hand in this.

Qrow then insists it was his fault… but, of course, not for the reasons why he’s actually responsible (also, didn’t we do this two weeks ago?). For starters, Qrow blames his semblance for everything that went down, despite the fact that his semblance is not responsible for him breaking Clover’s aura, or Tyrian stabbing him. The most we’ve seen his semblance do is cause minor mischief, which in and of itself is absurd considering we’re meant to believe that it has kept him from his family most of his life, and informs choices like whether he’ll travel with the group in Volume 4. Still, it’s not unexpected that he would blame his semblance and think that having friends is a “childish dream”—depression is one hell of a liar—but rather, it’s frustrating that no one is helping Qrow see the truth of the situation, both the good and the bad. He certainly doesn’t need Robyn providing generic platitudes that absolve them both of their choices.

You know what the worst part is? The two kind, level-headed adults with enough distance to help Qrow acknowledge his mistakes while also correcting him about his misconceptions… are Ozpin and Clover. The former is still ignored by the cast, the latter barely got to be a character before he was killed.  

Qrow goes on to say that he “made a deal with the darkness and [Clover] paid the price.” I’m sorry, what does that mean?? Outside of referencing his team-up with Tyrian, that’s the most dramatic, nonsensical thing he could have said. Qrow doesn’t admit to the team-up though, rather he starts blaming Clover for his own death.

Precisely like a good chunk of the fandom has done 🙃

He says that Clover just “wouldn’t let up” (translation: he wouldn’t agree to let me go when I was under arrest) and that they could have “worked together against Tyrian if Clover had just—”

There’s a lot to cover this episode, so I’m not going to dive into another explanation of all the justified reasons why Clover didn’t trust Qrow in that moment and why Qrow was the one who “wouldn’t let up.” If you’re interested in that rundown, head here.

Side note: can RWBY please stop with the weird mouth closeups? I’m begging the animators. Especially when so much else in this episode is gorgeous.

Yes: 

No: 

Robyn’s response is to make it all about her. I say, as a hypocrite, because my instinctual response in comforting someone is to also bring up a way that I might, sort of, know what they’re going through. It’s something to work on and, as always, I’d be more receptive to Robyn’s attempts if she weren’t failing so spectacularly in every other aspect of her characterization. Case in point: she says that having a truth semblance tends to make people push her away, but we’ve never once seen that. We’re introduced to Robyn as she’s adored by Fiona. The people celebrate her. Yang and Blake trust her immediately, for no reason, and comment on how useful her semblance is—they’re not concerned with it. Ironwood likewise works with her and allows her to use her semblance on him in public, at least for a time. May spoke fondly of Robyn last episode. She just finished a story about Joanna… where is this pushing away you speak of, Robyn? I really wish RWBY would consider things ahead of time and actually show them to us, rather than just having characters announce that they’re (supposedly) there.

Nice symbolism though with Robyn touching the electric bars and pulling her hand back. You reach out, you get hurt, curl in on yourself, blah, blah, blah. Too bad it’s not a moment attached to an actual struggle of hers.

Qrow buys it though, saying he’s never thought about it that way before. 

You know, I get why a lot of people in the fandom hate Clover. I can’t even claim I’m much interested in him as an individual. I’m sick of straight, white, able-bodied men getting the spotlight, which is one of the things that drew me to RWBY in the first place… so theoretically Robyn should be the better choice for Qrow’s BFF, right? Especially in a world where FairGame only existed in RT’s social media queerbaiting. Give us the badass gender-bent Robin Hood instead of the boring military man!

On paper it sounds great… which is why it’s astounding that RT bungled that so badly.  

Qrow never finishes his thought about Clover because the Ace Ops come in to return Watts to his cell. Interesting. The writing has definitely made Ironwood stupid, but perhaps not as stupid as he could have been? If he got Watts to hack Penny (we don’t yet know what’s going on with her during all this) and then promptly shut him away again, that’s just about the best way you can follow up on your worst decision.

Harriet spots Clover’s pin and tells Qrow “You don’t get to keep that,” but then doesn’t take it from him. See, that right there is a better motivation for potentially opening the cell. Qrow says he didn’t kill Clover, Harriet shoots back that his blood was on Qrow’s blade (again, focusing on the wrong way that he’s guilty), Robyn challenges her to get the truth via her semblance… and Harriet considers it? Why? She’s not the one struggling with her loyalty here, that’s Marrow, yet he’s the one who has to pull Harriet back with “What are you doing?” when she looks at the keypad. Have Marrow almost be swayed by Robyn’s taunting, or have Harriet almost open the door because she’s furious and desperate to get Clover’s pin back. Either one of those would make more sense than this.

Also, no one checked Qrow during his arrest/before he was thrown into his cell?

Also, note that Marrow uses a nickname here—“Hare”—so I’m continually unpersuaded by the ‘They’re not friends’ claim. Yes, Harriet hits his shoulder on her way out… and Ren will later scream at Jaune about cheating. Harriet being in a bad mood because their leader was just murdered isn’t evidence that they’re not close, no more than Ren responding to Everything Traumatic Ever is evidence that he doesn’t care for his friends.

Also (x3), Robyn calls Harriet “mohawk”?? Can’t this woman come up with a single good insult?

As the Ace Ops leave Robyn lays back down on her bunk, exactly as she was before, and says, “Well, that was almost exciting.” Kind of like this scene! Luckily, the episode is about to get a whole lot better.

The music immediately picks up as we segue to Ren, Jaune, and Yang chasing after Oscar. On the whole I really enjoyed this scene, largely because it shows the group doing their best—in a way that feels persuasive. I’ll admit that others have a point about them just standing around while the Hound changes form—yet still failing because, you know, our villain is actually powerful! However, there are, as always, some nitpicks.

One of the first bits of dialogue we get is Ren noticing that the bikes can’t stand being in the cold for very long. It bugs me that bikes suffer more from the cold than the civilians do. To say nothing of the fact that it once again doesn’t amount to anything. Their bikes carry them through the whole battle and Jaune looses his because of a grimm. Then Yang manages to fix the totaled bike with a single part, despite the continued cold. Why bother introducing this as a problem when it’s meaningless each and every time?

The three do demonstrate some great teamwork though. When Yang yells that she wishes one of them could fly, Jaune uses his shield to launch Ren at the Hound… so that he can get dragged through the air, hitting rocks. This poor guy. I like that though because no, these teens shouldn’t be perfect, strategic masterminds and yes, they’re in the kind of situation where they just have to try something and see if it works. Jaune can’t think ahead to what Ren will do once he grabs the Hound, they just have to get him to that point and go from there. Which they do. Ren snags a boulder to slow them down further (that’s smart) and Yang goes higher to fire at the Hound’s face (don’t hit Oscar he doesn’t have aura!!). They’re at a crazy disadvantage here and still trying their best to get our boy back.

The overall tone is… fine? Again, love supportive Yang—that high five with Jaune was wholesome—but it continually feels weird to get that when Oscar is in the literal jaws of death here. On the whole though the scene keeps to the action and seriousness of the situation, which I appreciate. We’ll talk more about tone during the outpost scene.

It's looking like they might be making some sort of headway when the Hound lets out a roar that, as Yang puts it, calls for backup. 1. Yay giving this grimm even more power to mess with the cast, 2. Holy shit there are so many grimm around. See, scenes like this is why I’m side-eyeing the anti-army rhetoric in the show (a stance I’d otherwise agree with 100%). Because do you see how many there are? That’s not Salem’s army, that’s just the normal grimm hanging out around Atlas. The cast is screwed if anyone were to, say, order them to attack the kingdom…

Kudos to RT for bringing back the centipede grimm though. I honestly thought they’d just be a one-off action sequence in Volume 7.

While everything is falling apart Ren catches a glimpse of Oscar, complete with rosy cheeks to make him look super young, and the sight fills him with 

He starts climbing towards the Hound and we cut away. 

Meanwhile, Jaune’s bike is hit with some of the centinel’s acid (again, not the cold causing problems) and he takes a tumble, managing to keep his feet before Yang snags him. Moments like that really do show how far he’s come and I’m glad we got to see such a moment in an episode where his cheating was brought up. Jaune then uses his shield to fly over one of the dragon-y grim, but... wait. The shield is flexible?

Literally what is the point of that? As a shield, I mean (it clearly works fine as  a ramp). If you can just tip it over like that then so can the grimm or another fighter. Forget how tiny the shield is, all a monster would have to do is boop it and it would fall over. In fact, it probably should have with the grimm scratching at it before. Seems rather useless, unless you’ve got writers crafting convenient situations. Also, does Jaune have multiples of this thing? He picked it up before, but there’s no way he found that one again. Idk, I’m really not feeling this addition to Jaune’s arsenal. Better to give him a range option so he’s more versatile.

Still, they fly over the grimm and the two let out a sigh in synch. Whatever else we might have to say about this volume, RT is definitely giving us different interactions and team-ups. Well done there. Why, Jaune and Yang have managed to survive all that together!

Oh wait, never mind. They’ve gone off a cliff.

Honestly, I’m shocked they actually went over. I thought Yang would stop in time, or we’d have a classic moment of them tumbling off the bike and ending an inch from the edge, maybe going off slow with time for one to hang on. But nope, they plummet and it was done with such confidence by the camera that for a split second (the illogic of killing them both off aside) I thought that was it. They’re done for. Lucky for them, Ren catches them at the last second, managing to snag Jaune’s sword and them and immediately use his semblance so the grimm doesn’t eat them. That’s skill, baby!!

But you can see why he’s pissed, beyond just the fact that his semblance is holding this group together. It’s not Jaune and Yang’s fault that there was suddenly a cliff, but last we saw Ren he was heading towards Oscar. He had a plan. Granted, not one that was likely to lead anywhere given the Hound’s power (and the plot needing Oscar to reach Salem), but that’s not the point. He was pulling himself towards their kidnapped friend and then at the last second had to cut himself loose to save two others. This moment wasn’t anyone’s fault, but it would take someone with no emotions at all not to be frustrated by it. 

So we leave the trio literally hanging out and return to Ruby’s group who is threatening kids! 

Seriously though WTF, Weiss? Look, I haven’t always been kind to Whitley. In fact, I think there’s a Volume 7 recap where I really laid into him for his attitude and for supporting Jacques. But then—with the help of some friends and other anon perspectives—I thought about it for a hot second and considered how little power this child has. I was wrong to blame him for so much given the various circumstances here. It took, like… five minutes of thinking, and that’s for a fictional character, not a real life brother. Weiss clearly hasn’t given her brother five seconds of thought. He’s in the same abusive household that she was. He wasn’t blessed with combat abilities and a semblance to easily escape. He didn’t have Weiss there to guide him like Winter guided her. He had to watch BOTH his sisters abandon him to Jacques… so when exactly was he supposed to learn to be better? Why would he be inclined to? Weiss was an entitled racist when she got to school and needed new friends to show her a new path. She admitted as much last volume! Yet the fact that Whitley is completely alone in this house while their mom locks herself in her room to drink doesn’t register at all? This woman, an adult out to save the world as we’re frequently told, never once considered what it took to get her here and realize that Whitley has had none of the resources she did? 

I want to emphasize that Weiss threatens him with her weapon. It’s not just that she’s dismissive of him and his plight, she’s also happy to use violence if Whitley doesn’t do exactly as he’s told. Violence… against her brother… who is a child… without any training. Again: WTF, Weiss? You know how I was praising RWBY last episode for not having the group beat up the Atlas personnel? Yeah, we get this instead.

Then she tells him to go to his room??

Speculation is that Whitley is about 2-3 years younger than Weiss. Or, to put it another way, roughly the same age as Weiss’ leader, Ruby. She’ll follow Ruby unquestioningly into world-changing decisions, but sends her brother to his room like a toddler? Which is it, RWBY? Are 17 year-olds leaders you should listen to, or babies who must leave the room while the grownups talk? He certainly can’t be any younger than Oscar, so again, she’ll fight beside him, but treat Whitley like this? Whitley isn’t exactly going to offer help in a respectful, eager manner, but that “Fine. What do you expect me to do?” was incredibly open given his situation. He was willing to help and that was the perfect opportunity to have him, you know, do something. Something small and innocuous that wouldn’t threaten the team if he betrayed them, but kept him around so he could talk to someone. But nope. Weiss just sends him to his room after criticizing him for not understanding that they’re “busy trying to save Atlas.” Weiss, what does Whitley know about all that? He’s locked up in this manor after your father was arrested and the one news clip we’ve seen said that no one knows why Ironwood recalled his forces, or what’s up with those grimm overhead. She’s acting like he should have any idea what’s happening right now.

Also, all of this is coming on the heels of Willow begging Weiss not to forget her brother, so that’s just great. RWBY has the rest of their time in the manor to fix this, because if Weiss comes out of that scene having only been handed the means of arresting Jacques… that’s just bad all around.

Finally, should we talk about how strange this choice is? Last episode we saw the group flying away and I assumed it was them leaving Atlas to go back to Mantle. It certainly looked that way, but now they’ve decided to stay until Nora is awake. Why? Isn’t it more dangerous here? I mean, they didn’t know the staff was gone and there are still arrest warrants out. Was Weiss just going to threaten anyone who dared report her? Where are these shields Ironwood spoke of? Have they gotten through them somehow, or are they currently trapped in Atlas?

This is “Oscar is in the slums, leaves the slums, learns they’re going to the crater, but the slums are actually the crater, so we’re heading back now” all over again. 

The one good thing about this scene is that Blake and Ruby talk! …for about two seconds lol. Eh, better than nothing. Blake says that if Ruby is worried about Yang she could try calling her. Ruby has, and Yang isn’t picking up.

Does Ruby think she’s in danger or ignoring her? Unclear. We, however, know that Yang is now lost in the middle of nowhere with no reception and no transportation back to Mantle. The three of them start trudging towards an outpost Ren spotted, needing to find shelter “before this weather drops our aura levels completely.” So what about everyone without aura?? I wish that I could check off the bingo space again because this is ridiculous.

Ren, once again, isn’t in the mood to talk, but unlike Jaune, Yang can’t leave something alone. So she coaxes him to tell him what’s wrong and you know what? She does a real good job at first. She’s encouraging, but her voice is level and she doesn’t come across as accusing. Well done, Yang.

Things quickly fall apart though as Ren says EVERYTHING I’VE EVER WANTED TO SAY TO THIS GROUP. Holy shit, everyone, let’s count ‘em up:

Nothing is going smoothly so let’s stop pretending it’s all fine

Oscar has been horrifically kidnapped that’s #bad

This is not a normal part of being a huntsmen

We don’t know the first thing about being huntsmen!

Every time we’ve had to make real decisions we got them all wrong, yay us

We’re trapping a city here for Salem to destroy whenever she feels like it, yay us x2

Our leader is barely more than a kid and one of us cheated our way here

People are going to die because of us

“I’m just saying what nobody else wants to”

Yang’s response? Incredibly weak imo. Just as weak as the fandom’s has been since this conflict started in Volume 7. Her argument against letting Atlas go is that Salem won’t just let it fly away with her whale… but no one knows that. She’s certainly just letting it sit right now! Assuming that something won’t work because you expect the worst is not a compelling reason not to try.

Her argument against their ineptitude? They saved Haven, took down a leviathan, and got the lamp to Atlas. Let’s break that down a little more.

Did they fight well at Haven? Yes… overlooking that Weiss would have died if not for a timely semblance reveal. But the real point here is that they “saved” the school by getting the Relic. Problem is, they never won the relic, it was handed to them. Literally. They retrieved it not because they were capable of overpowering Salem’s forces and a Maiden, but because Raven decided she’d rather her daughter be a target than her. That doesn’t tell us anything about the group’s skill, only about Raven’s flaws.

They took down a leviathan… after drawing it to Argus in the first place. That’s kind of an important detail when Ren is trying to make the point that their decisions suck. Also, how did they take it down? Using Ruby’s silver eyes, which only worked because Jinn randomly decided to let her stop time. Oh, and also using the rest of Cordovin’s mech that they hadn’t yet destroyed. Again, nothing about that fight demonstrates their skill, only others’ abilities, resources, and the strange favoritism they benefit from.

Getting the lamp to Atlas. Well, you drove Ozpin away who was your ticket across the border. Then Maria told Ruby how to save you all from the Apathy (and Ruby herself was the only one able to resist long enough to demand you get the Relic back in the first place). You started that leviathan fight and ended it surrounded by Cordovin’s fleet. So how did you get to Atlas? Because she let you cross. How did you reach Ironwood? Because he dropped your arrest. Yang stopped Adam, yes, but that was its own, separate fight. Regarding the “getting to Atlas” point they botched that up completely. 

Basically, this resume of victories is unpersuasive, to say the least. Yang highlights the end goal rather than acknowledging Ren’s point: have we, as individuals, actually made things better lately?

They absolutely have not. 

Note how, in contrast, Ren includes himself in this criticism. He doesn’t just lay responsibility at Ruby and Jaune’s feet, he’s second on the list for being underprepared. For messing up. He’s just an “orphan from nowhere” and this tells us that, unlike Qrow, Ren is actually concerned with this problem and his own place in it. He’s not just blowing off steam and running from his responsibility. Rather, he’s making important points here yet, as he says, no one else wants to listen.

And that’s why the scene ultimately sucks. “But, Clyde! It’s a speech straight out of your metas!” Yes it was and it was beautiful to witness, but the problem is that Ren’s supposed to be wrong. Jaune glares at him before leaving. Yang clenches her fists and asks if he just wants to push everyone away. He’s left hanging his head. Then later they talk about how “broody” he is and provide advice about how to stop doing that. The takeaway here is not, ‘Holy shit, Ren is right and we should rethink our choices,’ but rather that Ren is wrong and needs to come over to their ‘correct’ perspective.

I love that this was laid out. I love that the group is actually fighting for once (way better than Ruby and Yang’s ‘fight’). I also love that we finally see what’s bothering Ren… but we all know this isn’t leading anywhere. The scene ends with Jaune dismissing everything by stating that if Ren doesn’t want to be a huntsmen, fine, but he has a job to do. Ren is supposed to feel guilty here for… telling the truth? Jaune is supposed to look like the hero for soldiering on with his responsibility while moody Ren drags behind. The scene is great, but the purpose of the scene sucks.

Actually, I’d like to talk about a portion of the outpost scene real quick. Skipping ahead, because we really see here how little RT believes the words that they’ve put in Ren’s mouth. Jaune admits that he’s right about cheating into Beacon… but nothing else. Indeed, that “mistake” is swept away because he’s earned his right to be here now. You shouldn’t care about that anymore! Ignoring the point Ren was making about how much they’re in over their heads. Yang apologizes to Jaune on Ren’s behalf, making it clear that she cares more about his potentially hurt feelings than any of the points Ren made. Remind you of anything? Like oh, say, that time Yang cared more about Jaune’s feelings than whether he’d hurt Oscar after slamming him against a wall? All of this despite the fact that Yang JUST accused Ruby of the horrible situation they’re in. Now Ren acknowledges that they’re in a horrible situation and Yang… doesn’t care?? Again, RT is good at giving us the pieces we want, the surface level stuff, but is rarely able to combine it into something fulfilling. If anyone actually takes Ren’s stance seriously, changing their ways rather than talking him out of it, I’ll be shocked.

Especially since the real nail in the coffin of this scene is Jaune telling him that “The more you hide from what you’re feeling, the more alone you’re going to feel.”

Jaune………..buddy……….pal…………were you asleep during that scene? Ren DID tell you what he was feeling. For the first time he did come clean about everything he was experiencing and you both rejected him for it! He’s not pulling away because he’s hiding from what he’s feeling, he’s pulling away because he did show it and both his friends reduced it to “pushing [them] away.” Which is it, Jaune? Should Ren be more open, or should he stop saying things you don’t want to hear? It’s a more complicated version of telling your parents about your interests, them mocking those interests, and then they’re surprised when you don’t share things with them again. I mean, the gall of Jaune to reject everything Ren said in the moment, ignore it after he’s calmed down, and then lecture him about being hiding his emotions.

Jaune and Yang (and the story) don’t want Ren to say what he really thinks, they want him to say what they think. Ren should speak up, but only if he’s going to agree with them.

So Ren sits out in the snow because potentially dying from cold is better than staying in a room with Yang and Jaune. I can’t really blame him lol.

One last thing about the fight scene. Remember how May was put in her place last episode for not using Penny’s name? Well, Yang doesn’t either. Granted, “the Maiden” isn’t as overtly insulting as “tin can” (or whatever it is May said), but it amounts to the same thing: both are replacing Penny’s individual identity with her status as a tool they can use. May sees Penny as the cool tech girl who can get them into the military base. Yang sees Penny as the cool magic girl who is the answer to all their ‘How do we win this?’ problems. Everyone is using Penny. Ruby to launch Amity, Ironwood to open the vault, but you know RWBY will never have a scene where Penny corrects Yang about her name and Ruby looks on, smug. Because the group can continually make the same mistakes as the adults/antagonists around them, but aren’t called out on it in the same way. Ren calls them out and he’s told he’s wrong. 

Anyway, the tl;dr of this scene is that Ren is the best. Too bad the story doesn’t realize that.

We then move to my poor Oscar who wakes up looking at his own feet, Ozpin’s voice is as reassuring as it can be under the circumstances. “Oscar? Don’t panic. We’re going to be okay.” I mentioned two weeks back that I hoped the show would explain why we didn’t see Ozpin try to take control during the Hound fight and we still don’t have an explanation, so that’s disappointing. This line is all we get from Ozpin because that’s the norm now. We moved from him being written out of the story entirely to having one or two lines an episode (excluding a speech meant more for the audience than the characters). So, improvement? But a lackluster one, I think. Especially given that he is the focal point of this entire situation with Salem. 

I’m avoiding the elephant in the room though. Oscar’s torture is horrifying. In the sense that it should be horrifying. Salem might still inexplicably not be attacking Atlas—and what she’s after at any given time might be getting more and more muddled—but she’s absolutely terrifying here, which is what we needed. The mix of assault with that nurturing tone is just skin crawling. “My long lost Ozma. Found at last” while she (I think?) shows images of their daughters. Honestly, I only heard that from friends, didn’t catch it myself, but then my eyes are shit to begin with. I couldn’t see a thing in this shadowed shot.

(It’s like watching Game of Thrones all over again.)

Oscar tries to pretend to be Ozpin and he does a damn good job with “I’m sorry the reunion isn’t living up to your expectations.” It’s not enough to fool Salem though. She says he’s “not him” yet and I’m again reminded that the show continually references this merge without showing us any change. They’re apparently closer to one person now, but they still speak as individuals. Oscar has Ozpin’s magic, but hasn’t used it, even when his life was on the line. The closest we get to evidence that the merge is underway is that Oscar attempts to lie about knowing Jinn’s name… but what the hell else is he supposed to do here? I suppose he could go the action hero route and shout that she’ll never get the answer out of him, but trying to lie is by far the safer option. That doesn’t tell us that he’s becoming like Ozpin, or even that they’re truly “like-minded souls” as Salem claims. It just tells us that Oscar has two braincells to rub together and can say a short sentence without totally giving himself away. Maybe the kid played a few rounds of Remnant’s Among Us.

This moment highlights another justification for Ozpin’s secrets though. He lives an existence where he is not in control of his own (“own”) body. At any point the host he’s with could falter, fail, turn on him, and in doing so give crucial, world ending information to the enemy. It’s already happened on a small scale, with Oscar successfully taking control, stealing the Jinn information, and giving it to the group. Now here he’s being tortured. How long can he last? Will Oscar give up Jinn’s name? If Ozpin didn’t have the location of the Relic locked up tight in his own consciousness, would that information be lost too? I’m not looking to blame Oscar for anything here—I don’t want to imply that this situation is karma for him taking Jinn’s name, or some such nonsense—I just want to acknowledge that this is the sort of stuff Ozpin has to worry about. If he shares these secrets then that’s more fallible people who are capable of giving that information to Salem. If he keeps them…well, he’s the only one who has to keep his mouth shut during a torture session. His host might want information about the Relics, there’s an argument to be made that they’re entitled to them, but if I were Ozpin I wouldn’t want to take that risk either. The question has essentially become, “Would I trust a 14 year old to keep quiet while tortured by a witch?” Maybe Oscar will! He’s enough of a BAMF to manage it… but that’s still not something I’d want to bet on. Better that Oscar simply doesn’t have that information to give Salem, period. 

So obviously this “working relationship” that Salem wants isn’t going well. When Oscar lies she jumps straight to torturing him.

This was legitimately hard to watch and I’m torn about that. On the one hand it’s what I wanted: a scary, powerful Salem who uses the tools at her disposal to get what she’s after. That’s great! Yet I’m still reminded of how far this show has gone to literally beat up the child of the group. Oscar is the one punched into a tree, attacked by a friend, shot by an ally, the star of the show’s most horrifying kidnapping, now the first to be outright tortured by Salem. I don’t really have a point here, I’m not looking to level any specific accusations at RT, I’m just commenting on the pattern and acknowledging that it makes me uncomfortable. There are parts of a story where you’re supposed to be uncomfortable—like the villain torturing a hero—and then there are parts where you’re uncomfortable because the writers seem overly focused on showing images of a specific kid suffering and that’s… weird.

I’m not sure what to make of that just yet. 

Anyway, Salem’s magic here is surprisingly pretty. Pretty and painful, but I expected more red and blacks, perhaps some spikey imagery, so the rainbow was an interesting surprise. Given the amount of pain Oscar is in, I suspect too much of that would kill him, so Salem calls in Hazel to continue the interrogation. The first few hits he deals are for Haven, the others for his sister.

See, this is why RWBY needs to actually embrace its “life isn’t a fairy tale” theme. You cannot show me child torture in one week and then move to Ruby “We’ll win because we’re the good guys ^_^” Rose the next. The whole reason why Ironwood (and Ren now) was right is because this is the shit reality they’re dealing with. You didn’t run when you had the chance and now Oscar (and Ozpin) is being tortured. You keep talking about saving Mantle, but the only reason why they’re not already dead is because the writing randomly turns the cold danger on and off. This mix of horrific, real world danger and unjustified confidence doesn’t work.

…also, I officially don’t want any redemption arc for Hazel. This guy is beating on a child because he’s convinced that he’s Ozpin, blaming Ozpin for his sister’s decision, all while forwarding a genocidal maniac’s plans. Hazel and his ridiculous shirts can just get on out of here, thanks.

Finally, I just want to say... this is the woman a lot of the fandom defended. This is the woman you wanted raising those girls and blamed Ozpin for trying to escape with them.

This is how Salem treats children.

Oh, and all of this is without his aura because it just broke. So Oscar is in serious, non-fantasy trouble here. 

Someone please rescue him soon 😭

We finish up with some frankly boring stuff with the rest of the villain cast. We learn that the Hound is an “experiment” and a new one given that Cinder has never seen it before. Salem’s dialogue is admittedly great—“Do you hear that, my pet? She thinks. She wants.”—but Cinder just rehashes everything we’ve heard from her before. She wants the Winter Maiden power. She has trouble remembering that she’s playing at Salem’s slave. She even rehashes the exact same line, “Without you, I am nothing.” Why are we wasting time on this when we had that tantalizing backstory before? 

Bleh. 

Salem tells her in no uncertain terms to stay put.

So Cinder immediately leaves LOL.

She just wants to “check on” Amity tower because she “knows those kids” in ways Salem doesn’t. I’m admittedly slightly confused as to how Cinder knows to go there? Did she believe Ironwood’s lie that it was finished even though it apparently IS finished now? Has she overheard something? I’m not sure. Frankly, keeping track of that stuff in RWBY is headache inducing, so let’s just roll with it.

Neo, the only one with a brain around here, makes it clear she thinks Cinder is an idiot for going. Emerald, always the Cinder fan, offers to go in her stead. She’s been working on her semblance, so I expect we’ll see something cool with that soon. They head off, apparently not worried about what Salem will do to them when they get back.

Which is when we move to the outpost for our final scene, most of which I’ve covered. I only have two more things I want to bring up here.

The first is the tone. As said earlier, the tone of the Hound chase wasn’t horrible, but I find myself disappointed in the overall attitude of Jaune and Yang. Yang is making jokes about how they can’t fly, high-fiving Jaune, and they’re both shrugging off Ren’s concerns. Jaune says he won’t be able to sleep due to worrying about Oscar, but neither of them act particularly worried. Which isn’t to say they need to be sobbing the whole time or whatever, just that Ren is the only one who feels real here. They may not agree with his stance about everything else, but they’ve all experienced the same event: watching a grimm that can morph, talk, and think horrifically kidnap a teammate. Shouldn’t there be more emotion attached to that? Things have gotten better with Oscar than they’ve been in the past, largely due to details like Nora’s hug at the beginning of the volume, but let’s be real, they’re still not perfect. Do we think Jaune and Yang would be this nonchalant if Ruby were kidnapped that way? Say all you want about Ruby being her sister, or others being teammates for longer, but the fact remains that Oscar has been taken to Salem herself and the only one reacting to that in any meaningful way is Ren. 

Who they say will “brood himself to death.” That right there. The one guy freaking out about your kidnapped friend should not be described as “brooding.”

All of which segues into my second point, namely that Yang doesn’t seem to care about Ruby anymore either! She asks Jaune, “Do you think she thinks less of me?” for not going to Amity and when Jaune reassures her that Ruby will always love her, Yang’s response is, “Yeah… Ruby.”

She was thinking about Blake.

The kicker? I thought she was talking about Ruby too. Because Ruby is her sister. Because she and Ruby had the fight (“fight”). Because Ruby was trying to call her to check in. Because Blake and Yang didn’t even acknowledge that they went on different missions here. I thought Blake was like Jaune, not really taking a side and just heading with Ruby because the team is splitting down the middle. Where did this worry come from?

And I want to praise RT here (I really do) because I can see the effort. I said Blake and Yang needed to spend time apart, they have. I said they needed to work through their co-dependent identities, now Blake is reminding Nora (and theoretically herself too) that someone you love is just a part of you. I said that the group couldn’t be a hive-mind, now there’s disagreement. I said the show needs to make Blake/Yang canon at some point and you can’t do that if they don’t talk about and to each other. So I fully admit that this is everything I asked for… so why does it feel so badly done? No matter how many boxes it checks off, it’s still a moment where we thought Yang was finally worrying about her sister again—like she used—and then it’s ‘Sike! It was really just about Blake! Again. Yang is worried about a problem that was never even introduced.’

I suppose that’s why it doesn’t work for me. Yang and Ruby had the falling out, but Yang and Blake, somehow, become the focus. Is it really so hard to write Yang as a sister and a potential love interest? Yang apparently can’t care for Ruby and Blake, Weiss can’t care for her team and her brother, Ruby can’t care for Mantle and Ironwood… it’s like each character gets one (1) thing to put their emotional energy towards at any given time and that’s it. That’s all they get.

On the flip side, this is why Ren feels like a person this episode. He cares about Mantle, and the future fight, and their past mistakes, and his place here, and the problems within the team, and Nora… He feels like a well-rounded person! vs. Yang and Jaune who don’t even consider his perspective, vs. Yang having a fight with her sister but only cares about Blake. They’re one-dimensional in comparison.

It is, as always, disappointing. 

As the group “broods” then the camera shows us a piece of the ice nearby, slowly cracking as Jaune says that “Things always seem to get worse before they get better.” Well, that’s unexpected. I didn’t think our opening would be literal. I’ve been worried about Atlas falling on everyone, not everyone falling… to whatever is underneath the kingdom as a whole. Is the kingdom falling apart? Or is something waking up and moving towards the surface? If RWBY can reproduce the characterization we got with the Hound, I wouldn’t be opposed to another leviathan grimm rising from the snowy deep to assist Salem…

Though how the fuck group will survive everything and that, who knows lol.

And that’s our episode! Issues aside—most of which have been ongoing issues. We knew they were there—I think this was our strongest episode so far this volume. Well done! There are still problems, no doubt, but at least I was only bored for a small portion of that 20 minutes. Let’s just keep heading in that direction.  

Exciting Saturday, huh?

Regarding bingo updates:

RWBY actually re-used a grimm I thought they’d abandoned, so well done there.

No civilians around for the giant grimm army to attack, so that was fine. Kind of strange though that they completely disappeared after the Hound left.

The timeline is starting to get wonky. For example, what kind of stakes am I supposed to expect when Cinder decides to head to Amity? Is it currently empty? Is Pietro there? Has Penny made it yet? I said weeks ago that RWBY would need to follow multiple groups to fill out fourteen episodes in just two days—and they’re definitely doing that—but that means we don’t have a clear sense of what events are happening simultaneously and what are meant to be linear.

No Winter or Ironwood this episode.

Watts is back with Jacques! Potential for team-up 2.0? That will admittedly be hard with Qrow and Robyn there, unless those two escape.

(Oh yeah, I thought Qrow and the others would be held in the military base and Ruby would find him during her heist… but she doesn’t even care that Qrow is in jail.)

Maria is still a ghost. If we hit the halfway mark with her not doing anything I’m calling the space.

I definitely wouldn’t call this cliffhanger needless. That’s actually a cool way to end things, even if Jaune’s line was pretty on the nose.

Neo may be getting closer to backstabbing Cinder if those expressions are anything to go by. 

Still waiting to see if Amity works.

And finally, drumroll please! …

“More obvious Blake/Yang implications without confirming a relationship.” Yup, I’m marking that this week. After Blake’s ‘just a part of you’ comment and now Yang only being worried about her reaction? Definitely calling it. If RWBY confirms a relationship this volume I’ll eat my words—and some celebratory cake — but until then salt prevails. Especially after the fiasco that was Supernatural.

Still no bingo. Ah well, maybe next week lol.

Until then! 💜

[Ko-fi]

[thewingedwolf]

Not Telling: A Study in How Much We are Actually Told About The Characters, Part One of Two

AKA that meta I started writing/promised to post fully a year ago and then never finished or posted bc I’m a mess. It’s being posted in two parts because it got a bit long.

So we all have our own idea of what the characters look like although many people believe the characters look roughly the same, with some minor differences from headcanon to headcanon. But what does the text itself tell us? The answer is...both more than I expected but also in keeping with Not Telling, not a whole lot at all.

I want to start this with a caveat that I kept very good notes on TT, ACoK, and TaT, mediocre notes on KoA and passable ones for QoA lol. however, it does give us a decent picture of what everyone looks likes. This is like 70% quotes and 30% extrapolation, but I try to explain my thought process on some of my conclusions.

Eugenides:

There’s a few instances that I remember reading (mostly in The Thief) that I forgot to mark but I know all of those dealt with his height and hair - that his hair is long, that it’s dark, and that he’s smaller than Pol and the Magus. So here we go:

“..the man wearing it was tall. Taller than I was, of course, but taller than the magus as well.” - Note that he’s talking about the one of the gods here, which indicates that

eugenides is very short at this point

the magus when compared to other people is probably pretty tall

“Scabs that were black against my prison-fair skin.” - Indicates that his skin has lightened noticeably since he was in prison although that’s the only indicator we get about what he looks like until literally the very ending with...

“He mentioned an Eddisian mother to explain his dark coloring.” - Which is exactly what I mean in Not Telling - we are told enough to have a clear blue print of him, but we are left to fill in the details of how he looks.

About his wound: “it’s taken a divot out of your face...it might heal clean.” and “I was quite certain I’d have a feather-shaped white scar.” - Note that Eugenides thinks this is a sign of approval from the Eugenides the god.

We get just as little in The Queen of Attolia, although note that this is the first time we are getting Gen from someone else’s point of view, instead of him describing himself:

“...his dark hair covering his face...He’d grown...he was not quite her height, but with his hair cropped short under his helmet, she hadn’t looked twice at him when she had seen him.” - that’s the only real description we get of him in the beginning of QoA before It Happens, and it’s from Irene’s point of view. There’s also several references to him looking “young” “naive” and “guilless” - young pops up about half a dozen times, and she remarks often on him being “a boy” and “half-grown.” Obviously part of that is guilt, but I did want to note that when we’re in Gen’s mind, he doesn’t focus on how short or young he looks, but when we’re in someone else’s mind, they immediately zero in on how young and small Gen is.

There’s a lot of descriptions of him after The Thing but it’s all involved in how sick he looks ie bruises showing against his yellowed skin, being so pale that his scar looked dark against his skin, that he’s lost a lot weight, stuff like that. It gives us the sense that he is very sick but no real indication of how he looks when he’s not suffering from fever and blood loss.

“His dark hair blended into the darkness behind him…” - first physical description in KoA

“The Queen was several inches taller than Eugenides…” in KoA during the dance scene

“His usually dark skin was so pale the scar on his cheek showed against the lighter skin around it.” - during the assassination attempt

“Costis was sufficiently taller than the king…” - I think this is our first reference to Costis being very tall, but of course nowhere near our first reference to Gen being short.

“His face was pale, his normally dark skin yellowed.” - My note has nothing to do with his look, but the fact that his skin is usually dark but is now both pale AND visibly yellow makes me think his liver was damaged by the assassin and that’s why it took so long to heal.

“He chose Mede coats with the long bell sleeves because no fighting man who’d seen the muscles in the king’s wrist would have underestimated him the way the Attolians had. His other wrist with no hand at the end of it appeared oddly narrow and delicate. Costis tried not to stare and found himself looking instead at the king’s scars. The long line across his belly was an angry red, but there were other marks: ragged tears around his knees and elbows, and lighter shining bands around his ankles that could only be the mark of fetters, as well as the various lines left by edged blows on his chest and arms, and one long one on his thigh. There were also a number of bruises, some newly purple and black and some fading almost to nothing. Costis wondered where they could have come from.” - WHEW long description for the first time and its all about Gen’s scars.

“...skinny and prison pale, incongruous with the clean clothes the Magus had picked out for him.” - Sophos’ PoV from AcoK. This seems to imply that Gen is usually darker than he is in the Thief - which we’ve been told before, that he’s darker skinned but stints in prison and a number of serious injuries seem to frequently make him look sickly and pale - but also that he’s usually heavier - whether that means, like Sophos believes, that Gen is normally not as skinny or that he’s gained weight since becoming Attolis is anyone’s guess.

“I kept going until I could see his face, see every detail—the quirk of his eyebrow, the twist at the corner of his mouth, the mark on his cheek, where he’d said the Attolian guards had once shot him when he was running away…” - Kamet’s description of him.

“I remembered him as a boy, small for his age. I found him taller, broader in the shoulder, much older than the intervening years would explain, with a hook where his hand had been—wholly changed, in fact, but for the scar on his face and that smile.” - Gen is finally like a normal height lmao, but also he’s gotten bigger in general, which seems to imply IMO that re: Sophos’ assessment earlier, most of the weight (and likely muscle as Costis points outback in KoA) is the result of his time in Attolia and not weight he lost in jail. But whether THAT is due to him like, eating more potentially or having a different fighting style/routine that is bulking him up, or just a natural consequence of getting older or a combination of the two is again, your guess.

Helen:

“By far the least attractive of the women stood up.”

“She had black hair, like Attolia, and her gown was red velvet...tended to stand like a soldier. The ruffles on her shoulders made her arms seem long enough to reach to her knees. Her nose had been broken and reknitted crooked, her hair was cut short like a man’s and curled so much over her simple silver crown that crown itself was nearly invisible.” - all Gen’s point of view.

“She was short and too broad to be called petite. Her father had been broad shouldered, Attolia remembered, and not over-tall. Eddis had a serious expression.” - From QoA, in Irene’s pov. It seems the shortness of Gen is something that runs in the family.

“She’s ugly...she’s short, she’s broad-shouldered, and hawk-faced with a broken nose. I would say no, she is not ideal...I’ve seen men fall on their knees and get to walk across hot coals for her after one of those smiles.” - Gen talking about her with the Magus. I feel like it’s relevant that Gen calls her “the least attractive” when he’s with her, but only “ugly” when talking about her with other people.

“You look a little vulpine yourself.” - probably more a personality quirk than anything, but I still wanted to include it.

“Eddis reached to touch her own crooked nose. ‘If I laughed,’ she said, ‘it is only at the idea that we make a matched pair now, you and I.’” - for both her and Sophos here. Love flirting in the form of pointing out your irregularities, girl’s got game.

“The queen of Eddis is as beautiful as the day and as brilliant as the sun in the sky..he chuckled and quoted Praximeles about beauty being in the heart and not the eye..” - obviously Sophos’ opinion is colored by his love for her, but STILL, he does offer a description that she’s beautiful, is immediately contradicted by Akretenesh, and then basically thinks “it’s not my fault you’re stupid as fuck.”

Irene:

“Her hair was black and held away from her face by an imitation of the woven gold band of Hephestia. Her robe was draped like a peplos, made from embroidered red velvet. She was as tall as the magus, and she was more beautiful than any woman I had ever seen.” - Gen’s PoV in the Thief. We have a hint of his feelings for her in the way he describes her, and also there’s her Hephestia cosplay as well.

“Her hair was held away from her face by the ruby and gold headband that crossed her forehead just above her dark brows. Her skin was flawless and so fair as to be translucent. She dressed as always in an imitation of Hephestia.” - Gen calling out her Hephestia cosplay lmao. I also notice that she’s specifically not just “fair skinned” like Sophos or other Attolians, she’s described as almost weirdly pale.

Sophos:

I KNOW I forgot to mark a scene where Eugenides describes Sophos in TT as like...fair or pink-cheeked or something like that but I’ll be damned if I can find it.

“They were both obviously well bred...I wondered if they were brothers...the older one had darker hair and was better looking.” - obviously the older is Ambiades.

“One member of the crowd, a young man with a broken nose, a lip twisted by scar tissue, and dirty clothes that combined to suggest a person of violent and criminal habits…” - good description that also tells us that Useless the Younger looks significantly different since we saw him four books (and several years) ago. It’s not just that he’s older, or scarred, it’s that he *looks* dangerous now.

“I was taller than Malatesta by inches.” and “I wasn’t heavier than [Hyacinth] but I was taller and bore him to the ground.” - both give us an approximation of his height, weight, and strength.

“I felt my upper lip and rubbed my thumb against the scar tissue. I could feel it distorting my mouth. My nose had a new bump in the middle of it as well.” - scar healing badly

“Measuring myself against [The Magus], I realized we now saw eye to eye.” - considering several references to how tall The Magus is (which we’ll get to), this means Sophos is incredibly tall.

“...my hair all cut away and ragged.” and then they mention they dyed it. Once they get to Attolia however, “A barber came in to trim and shave us, taking off the last of my darker hair and leaving it tidy, if short.” So it’s gone back to his natural color, but this implies he usually wears his hair long.

There’s also a mention of him eating a lot, which isn’t a physical description, but does, IMO, imply something to his size - like how many sheer calories a lot of Olympic athletes have to eat a day.

“I smiled until I felt the scar tissue tighten...I had never let him see what I looked like when I smiled: my uncle.” - ICONIC.

ALSO - Sophos is frequently compared to animals. These animals include a lamb, lion, rabbit, bunny, puppy, and then back to lion.

Costis Ormentiedes:

I couldn’t find any description of him beyond a few references to him being tall in KoA which either means that I just missed it bc I got to emotional over KoA (which is likely) OR we don’t get a real description of Costis until TaT which is an interesting choice. ONWARDS:

“He was a very large Attolian…” - Kamet’s first impression of Costis, yet again reminding us how big Costis is

“He was a typical Attolian: sandy-brown hair, a broad face, light-colored eyes. Altogether he had a simple, straightforward look to him, and he seemed perfectly serious.” - gives us a general idea of what Attolians as a people look like.

“He was large, as I already knew, and a soldier. He had the scars on his hands and forearms and the unmistakable muscles from swinging a sword day in and day out. I had no doubt he was good at what he did - he rather reminded me of an ox, very strong, not terribly quick - but I thought killing was his work, not his pleasure….he moved easily, so he was no veteran crippled’s in his country’s service, but he was too young to have done his twenty years - my own age, or perhaps younger.” - Lots of information here from Kamet. The ones that stick out to me are: moves easily, which means Costis has likely not even been minorly injured before, but he has scars, which of course means he’s had a lot of flesh wounds. The other thing is that Kamet instinctively knows that Costis doesn’t like killing - I don’t know if that means Kamet is a good judge of character or if there’s something about Costis, whether it be the way he carries himself, or something physically like his expressions, his youth, his eyes, that tells Kamet this, but it *could* be something physical.

Kamet makes several references to Costis being hot lmao. He uses the word “attractive” several times in several different chapters and others agree with this assessment.

“She sent him to the potter to see if he could use a young man with a strong back.” - more comments about how ripped Costis is.

Kamet

Couldn’t find any description of Kamet in QoA, and he doesn’t really describe himself in TaT. I’m worried I missed something, but this is what I found:

“Normally as warm-toned as myself…” - Kamet comparing his own skin tone (undertone?) to Laela’s.

He also describes himself as small and skinny compared to Costis several times - once saying his face is roughly at level with Costis’ chest - and mentions flogging scars on his back.

EDIT: THANK YOU FOR COMMENTS, we get this like in QoA about Kamet: “The slave’s almond shaped eyes and red-brown complexion set him apart from the Attolians.”

—————

Not sure how to end this but anyway that’s what we’re given for the main PoVs. Surprisingly, we get more description for Helen than we do for Irene, and barely any for Kamet. There were some things that I had misremembered - I thought Gen was described as “brown skinned” but instead it’s “dark skinned” or “dark coloring” and I thought he described Helen as ugly more than once, but it’s just to the Magus, when they’re discussing Sounis’ potential marriage, which is....interesting to me, and sounds a lot more like Gen trying to downplay his cousin so the Magus will fuck off, especially when he offers Agape as an alternative that is, notably, prettier and also holds significantly less power. I also thought Costis was described as “blonde” or “fair haired” like Sophos but instead he’s “sandy brown” and I think the idea of him being Blonde was a fandom thing that I just misremembered.

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Italy brings the rock’n’roll youth of tomorrow to Rotterdam 2021

It’s the final day of doing my yet again botched attempt at a review series and I’ve been dying to post my gigantic write-up for my newly beloved Italy, at the top of the bookies, darling of all hearts, ready to rock Eurovision, and even more! Vai vai~

ARTIST & ENTRY INFO

Representing them this year is Måneskin, a band made up of four - singer and possibly the hottest motherfucker to grace the planet Earth Damiano, guitarist Thomas, drummer Ethan, and the cherry on top - bassist Victoria, whose half-Danish heritage is the reason Måneskin is called Måneskin (= Moonshine). They thought of this name at a “battle of the bands” that they won, thinking they might as well change it to something different, but in the end... say it with me now

They have known each other since highschool, made a band in 2016, won the “battle of the bands”, started out making a living as buskers in the streets of Rome, from which they gradually grew through playing small gigs, and later tried out for X Factor Italia season 11, on which they came 2nd.

They went on to release an EP titled after their debut single of the name of the song above, including some of their X Factor covers, and later on got to get big through releasing an album, getting it certified all kinds of goodnesses, having singles from that album be popular, even releasing a documentary of themselves... they’ve done so much in life and they’re only 20-22 years old... aw man, the life is just ahead of them, for them to be so young and win Sanremo on their first try. (And I’ve always wanted them for Eurovision ever since I was aware of their existence, because their music is very nice, and they just feel like charming human beings. So imagine my joy seeing them announced for Sanremo 2021? And them WINNING months later??? man what kind of luck do I have even if just for a year lmao <333)

“Zitti e buoni”, the last song title alphabetically this year, is purely of the band’s making, and the lyrics are talking about not abiding the rules in general, how they’re out of their minds but they’re not like “them”, and how people talk but don’t know what they’re talking at all.

REVIEW

IT’S A PRETTY CRAZY GOOD ROCK SONG AMEN HALLELUJAH OPRAH WOOOOOOO

wbk I love it. Yeah sure it might be composited of something that sounds like standard rock riffs and what not, but it’s the ENERGY that goes into it that gets me more excited for this than for Finland, a fellow rock song of this year’s final.

Damiano’s vocals have the specific kind of rockstar tinge to them, and they’re very complimenting to the song. The way he says everything is beautiful, the “e buonasera signore e signori” line in particular is just a moment that shows the beginning of power somehow, I don’t know. The chorus is great, eventhough it’s just one line repeated but it changes the pronoun each time (going from “I’m out of my mind” to “you’re out of your mind” to “we’re out of my mind”) - MAGICAL.

And the bridge. YES, the bridge. Along with the outro it’s the best part of the song. The chord progression. The lines repeated on that bridge. The emotions going on. The delivery of the lines of the emotion. It’s a convincing little bridge, to the point that it sounds just as great with violins! Wish they brought one, because according to Love Love Peace Peace, nothing screams winner quite like a violin.

God damn to the Måneskinsters pump this song up to the maximum. It was originally a ballad song, and I think that’s for the better for them to present it as a rock song, because a Sanremo ballad in a pool of Sanremo ballads... unless it stands out according to demoscopic & press juries, and there seems to be a no better option at hand that could make them stand out other than just sending a classy ballad, it just fizzles out in a spectacularly lame fashion. Måneskin’s one real shot through was with a song that would make them stand out, and they did it, and they’re here.

Everyone has put in their work, their passion, their skills into this, and it shows off in spades. Måneskin themselves are fantastic and chill human beings, who too, just like Flo Rida, get to enjoy how crazy amazing Eurovision experience is. And for that I salute them with my whole heart. Whatever they do tonight on Eurovision, they’ll leave a lasting mark in it. And for a good reason.

Also an Italian Eurovision edit that doesn’t suck, once again, yay! (In their defense, they didn’t have a whole lot to work with, so they released theirs early - just a few trimmings here and there, and a lyric change so that they skate by EBU easier with their anti-swearing policies. Gahddamn swearing~)

Approval factor: FUCK YES Follow-up factor: The funny thing about this is that last year their entry is about making noise but the song was a love ballad, this year it’s a song titled “shut up and behave” while dressed in a loudest motherfucking musical setting lol. Fuck the rules! It was solely on the Sanremo’s last year’s winner Diodato not to send an entry he thought that would fit for Sanremo, and that’s good on him - he can return next year replenished as all hell, and maybe aim for the trophy again? wishful thinking? aaaa. Anyway on a personal scale “Zitti e buoni” is a marvelous follow-up from “Fai rumore”, even if skipping 2020 entirely, especially after “Soldi”, which was already a fab follow-up after “Non mi avete fatto niente”, and even from “Occidentali’s Karma” on. And so it is subjectively a good follow-up. Italy SLAYS. AQ factor: As I write this, the odds are very much in their favour, if not a little bit too persuaded over the fact that Måneskin gave a good rock performance and knew what they would be doing, or it’s just that the Italians like overbetting for their acts way too damn much. But nevertheless, I just wanna hope for them to break the expectations people set on rock songs in Eurovision and SMASH themselves a victory. Or a top 2. Or a top 5-10. Anything will do, goddamn.

NF CORNER

Well, I promised that I will talk about Sanremo in a NF corner, because this is the first year I actually cared to watch it myself, unlike when I would’ve sided with someone whose reviewing style I love in not caring to watch it, and usually just check all the songs on the last day lol.

One thing about Sanremo that I sorely underestimate is that a handful of artists on there can come across as very versatile, and the one song you loved of one genre they presented several years ago, can be completely different and leave you baffled for days if you’re not very familiarized with their discography and the Italian music scene in general. Which now I’m going to pay an extreme amount of attention towards following Sanremo 2022 on out because hot damn did I never see gems like Willie Peyote coming!

Did I call him a gem over his entry? Yes, somehow. Am I even sure if I’m being serious?

I think I can somewhat agree when I say that for the international fam watching Sanremo at least, “Mai dire mai (La locura)” was a major expectation destroyer, at least for the crowd whose main lookouts in a lineup like this years were Ermal Meta, Annalisa, Arisa, etc. You know they’re gonna bring a ballad, and their ballads are usually decent, but what about the unexpected? That’s where a handful of acts, including Willie, comes in for me. The bass hooks in the second the song starts. The beat is minimalistic but strong enough to slap. The steady rap flow is mesmerizing, paired with that somewhat specifically Italian(?) vocal timbre. The chorus is greatly catchy, and it is a sung chorus, with this song still being largely a rap song. The electric-esque guitar soundwaves interspersed throughout the song are magnificent and magical, and on the chorus they even make a constant melody riff that repeats and may get annoying on multiple listens, but I still adore them. I really love the bridge as well and all that goes into it. A fantastic surprise of the season for me personally.

Now I figure that the lyrics may hinder the enjoyment for some, especially the points raised in some lines that may seem questionable and shady (if this went to Eurovision and got a “twerking” comment on Youtube, I will not be surprised if the description of choice is “patriarchic twerking”), but am I supposed to be fully offended at some points of it if I’m not its target audience, although I see some of what I do nowadays in those lines? “Mai dire mai” is probably dedicated to the Italian media and the Italian trends and what not. I’m not even disappointed it didn’t win, because if it went to Eurovision, it would’ve likely been met like a lesser “Occidentali’s Karma” - catchy song with lyrics that fly over listener’s heads which might as well be very accidentally mocking how we live our lives.

“Mai dire mai” has just less of a memorability-in-history value and no memorable gimmicks (Francesco had a gorilla, what is it visually going for on Willie’s performance?), besides, it would’ve suffered even WORSE post-Eurovision-edit than OK has - a lot of the bits and bobs that pass me by but when I notice them they make a really great entry, but other than the (presumably copyrighted) removal of a sample from a TV series (spoken by a fish character, nonetheless), what else is there to remove???? With Eurovision’s rules specifying that brands (Spotify, TikTok) and swearwords (lots of the good old Italian ones that Italian radios would digitally scratch out to emphasize that there were a LOT in the second verse) can’t be sung live, the song loses some of its lyrical charm. And you can’t just go around the song like Francesco Gabbani chopping off entire verses full of content full of witty lyrics and a reference to Chanel in order to present the more lyrically singable-along-to lines and not let go of the long chorus to whom his gorilla can dance to. “Mai dire mai” is RIFE with lyrics, that’s what a rap song is. It would have absolutely fallen apart.

Also no one paged it as a potential Eurovision winner during Sanremo, at least seriously, and it doesn’t have much that would have clicked with the future Eurovision generation and contestants when they would be asked to name their favourite Eurovision song of all times. In a world where from Italy they really like “Grande amore” and “Soldi” and even sometimes could name “Occidentali’s Karma”, is there really a place for “Mai dire mai (La locura)” over “Zitti e buoni”? Who would be naming that song as their favourite of all time? If you raised a hand, you lie to yourself, because that would’ve been me.

Now I don’t know how many of the Tumblr fam would draw ire at me putting out paragraphs worth of me being ultra positive towards this song, because as I’ve learned, there’s an ironic and unironic audience for Mr. Peyote on Tumblr especially, but for me I guess it was pretty worthy, also a thing I was finally able to yell off my chest since, and now I finally said it, I will continue streaming “Mai dire mai (La locura)” in peace.

He might’ve not won Sanremo, but his song won the equally important Mia Martini Critics Award, and also, my heart. Rest in broken shards of the Boris aquarium, my sweet cynical prince~

Måneskin were my 2nd after him so I’m equally happy they won. But what about my other favourites?

• Extraliscio ft. Davide Toffolo - Bianca luce nera A diluted version of the liscio genre, still makes for a very fascinatingly catchy and swaying song with lots of great instruments that are violins and a clarinet. What I figure is kinda a love song. Their performances were also great, with lots of dancers on stage and a genuinely great fun to be had, and you may remember them more after their performance in cover night, which was titled “Rosamunda”. They were the ones with their main singer’s guitar spinning for whatever reason that was there to make their song catchy, I guess.

• Lo Stato Sociale - Combat Pop A little bit of a far cry from their glory heydays with 2nd place in Sanremo 2018, but they returned with an equally banging song and an amazing set of performance chaos they brought in each and every time - dedicating their first night’s one to making a performance to not forget (and being the ones of two to reference the great Bugo&Morgan incident from last year, the other being Willie Peyote), the second competitive one was for referencing politics, and so on.

• Colapesce & Dimartino - Musica leggerissima Sweet melancholic song with the shades of Sebastien Tellier kinda sound, this song may seem jolly at first, but the especially melancholic undertones denote that there’s something else going on. It’s actually about depression, as that’s what the term “musica leggerissima” (very light music) means. But it still found a heart in Italian listeners and the Italian world finally woke up to how great Antonio Di Martino and Lorenzo “Colapesce” Urciullo are, and a handful of viewers were slightly heartbroken to see it not place in the superfinal top 3. Who knows if they would’ve actually won over Måneskin. I just know that their rollerskater girlie is so damn fine~

Bugo has also returned but I think his redemption arc started off the wrong foot, as his return entry, “E invece si”, was a bloated showtune ballad and got obnoxious to listen to at part. I declared to myself that night when I first heard the new entry that regarding on what made “Sincero” great, I side with Morgan.

And a special shout out to Ghemon, whose 2019 song was more than just a “purple rose” unlike I noted on a last proper Italian entry review. I don’t know what expectations I had for him, but I certainly wanted to love “Momento perfetto” more at the first listen, which was also somewhat of a show-tuney piece, but with a bit more funk and pizzazz, also Ghemon was VERY much vibing with his song, and that made me feel great for the few other performances of it that I saw the following days. It’s definitely a grower song, and around 2 months after Sanremo I fell into a bit of a rabbit-hole of his earlier music discovering, and I may be a bit exaggerating but, give Ghemon a bit more of acknowledgement and a stellar enough song, and with a little bit of magic touch, I can maybe see him lifting the Golden Lion trophy one day. Don’t ask why. (also lovely music video for his 2021 entry, which replaces continuous spinning in an aesthetic area to everybody moving their body in a diner (hopefully with everyone in the MV tested and been negative for long enough for the MV to actually happen).)

NF CORNER (NON-COMPETITIVE)

There’s so much needed to be discussed about there. So I’ll restrict myself to the moments that I remember and cherish:

• Rosario Fiorello. Just. Him.

• And the gentleman next to him, Achille Lauro.

tw // body piercing

Belarus 2018 could never

Fiorello and Lauro are perfect matches to each other’s worlds of imagination, and I was more than ever glad to see so much creativity coming from each one of them, a host and a nightly interval act respectively.

• Once again, “Rosamunda Medley” by Extraliscio, I didn’t watch the cover night in its entirety but I think it’s good enough of a medley if it got a 3rd place from the cover night from the orchestra!

• Sanremo Newcomers section of this year. I liked or vibed to almost every song out of the 8, and I’m decently happy with the winner, but if there’s one big shoutout I really want to make, is to “Regina” by Davide Shorty, for it’s such a cozy funky little love song that always makes me happy when I hear it. My personal winner preference, but I don’t mind Davide getting 2nd! For as long as he gets to place 1st in a future main Sanremo event hihihihihi

• Diodato proving himself to be a dance king at the beginning of his “Che vita meravigliosa” performance, my good Twitter friend made a bunch of videos where he dances to a lot of songs, as per request, check them out and you won’t forget it.

• Since Sanremo 2021 got rid of the audience as per COVID regulations and much to Amadeus’s dread, there ended up quite a handful of audience related memes. Such as the penis balloon et al.

• Remember when Sanremo 2021 audience was supposed to be whisked away in a cruise ship for safety measures? Pepperidge Farm remembers

• SESSO IBUPROFENEEEEEEEE

The guy that sang this song actually has the same birthday as me, so in my eyes, I feel like he has some charm to it. I’m biased lol sorry

There’s way too many more but I am afraid of flooding my post beyond your readability interest. Let’s hope that, in an event of Italy’s victory or non, we’ll get to see an even more iconic event of Sanremo emerge come the future. <3

ANY LAST WORDS?

Måneskin’s big goal was to rock Eurovision, and I think they’ve greatly accomplished that by just... doing what they do best, and that is, rocking. They leave energy lasting for days.

In bocca al lupo, fam. You’ll nail it, and even if you don’t win, Italy shouldn’t not hail you as national heroes after it’s all over.