#everyone's characterisation of him is different tbh and yet all are very valid

[alexhatessupermarketcola]

AR fic writers trying to get inside Yassen's head when his two canon motivations are that Alex Rider should:

a) go home

and

b) join Scorpia

[normal-thoughts-official]

T for the fandom ask thing?

send me fandom asks!!

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending, about anything at all (gender identity, sexual or romantic orientation, extended family, sexual preferences like top/bottom/switch, relationship with poetry, seriously anything)

i mean….. so many, mostly related to magnus and alec’s characterisation in this fandom, but since that’s been talked about to death and is pretty much uninteresting at this point….

i think my hugest hill to die on that is actually a headcanon instead of just like, fandom discourse shit, is that magnus’ mom didn’t kill herself because of him. as always, i will elaborate in length, because i have no self control

it just makes no sense!!!!!! magnus says “i was 9 years old when my mom figured out what my cat eyes meant”. what they meant, not that they existed. this implies that she already knew about the cat eyes, probably for a long time. idk if in book canon this is explored or what so again let me just make it clear one more time that i completely disconsider book canon for my show headcanons because it’s!!! a completely!! different!!! plot and characterisation!!! so whatever. but anyway magic is said to be a part of warlocks so it would make no sense for it to only manifest when they’re older. ALSO when alec was at Iris’ (is that her name? anyway you know who i’m talking about, madzie’s granny) house he saw a woman with a baby who was still in like the breastfeeding stage and the baby had a warlock mark!!!! so everything points in the direction of magnus always having had his warlock mark, including the way he phrases the story. 

so i’m sorry, but this woman just saw his otherwise-human son had actual literal fucking CAT EYES, which were GOLDEN, and that he knew MAGIC (otherwise he wouldn’t be able to glamour them and we’ve seen that his eyes are glamoured in his memories) and just, what, never connected the dots? was all like “this is normal actually, definitely not at all related to that literal demon i fucked once”? like i guess asmodeus could have lied to her that he was human but STILL. and then one day she was just chilling at home, reading a book or something, and then she was like “wait…. my son’s a warlock. killing myself time!” like dude what the fuck kind of explanation is that

and historically speaking, the idea that magnus being a warlock would be so horrible to her makes no sense. first of all, let me remind everyone that the whole “demons r bad” thing is a very christian thing; not to mention that the javanese believed in magic, like most people, including europeans, did. so it’s not like the idea of him being a warlock would be completely crazy or something. even if magic was generally not looked up on by javanese people, that is mostly because magic was perceived to bring unbalance to the natural world, which was supposed to be always in harmony, and it was mainly perceived as the society’s job to keep this harmony (same source). even then, they would have sorcerers, people who were kind of the links between the natural and the supernatural world (same source). so using magic to fuck up the harmony was seen as bad and it was generally believed that humans and supernatural entities were part of separate worlds, but even then, there were people who were in the “in-between” of both worlds and they were very well respected, usually healers. meaning; magic could have bad consequences but it was mostly a matter of how you used it, and the importance of having harmony and balance in mind while dealing with the supernatural, which was just a part of the world and everyday life to the javanese. even considering the muslim tradition (which synchretized deeply with indigenous javanese religions) that was already well-established in javanese ports by the 17th century, the worst-case scenario would be that she would be worried and think that it would be best if he learnt how to use his magic properly, to bring harmony instead of unbalance, and to keep him from becoming too ambitious. so she would educate him on that, possibly ask a dukun (medicewoman or man) to help him with his magic. education, not violence or denial or horror. that’s the WORST case scenario considering all i’ve seen about javanese culture and sorcery. it’s also the most likely one.

her killing herself because of it???? is quite frankly not even in the picture for me. it doesn’t click with her worldviews, culture, religion (no matter which of them she followed), societal organization. it fits a christian worldview. at worst, it could be something his stepfather convinced her of - demons are bad, magic is bad, ur culture is bad, ur demonic, blah blah blah, all that colonizer horseshit. and in that case, i think it can’t really be said that the fact that he was a warlock was the reason, it’s way more likely that the fact that she was bound to a colonizer asshole who constantly belittled her, her culture and lifestyle, and her son, and who was probably abusive. like for you to convince somebody that the culture they’ve been living by for their entire lives (remember, she was already an adult) is demonic and inherently bad, you need to do some pretty heavy brainwashing - and i would know, because my grandfather is native and he went through that shit. and in his case he was taken from his land and family. in magnus’ mom’s case, she was still living in a place where her people were the majority!! and in the beginning of javanese colonization the dutch didn’t really have enough political power to influence javanese political relations and religious beliefs. so the idea that he would have succeeded in convincing her that she was a horrible sinner or whatever because of magnus is just, uh, unlikely. and listen, i know firsthand what abuse does to you, it fucks you up, it can have u stray so far from what you believe, i know all of that. but still. its possible he could convince her, but i think its unlikely that that happened, or at least that she started to believe that so strongly she would kill herself just because of magnus and nothing else.

the idea that she killed herself because she was in a highly abusive environment at home? and her husband was just a horrible person who was basically in a constant war with her entire being, trying to completely change her and probably using violence (physical or emotional, doesn’t matter) to do that? now that makes sense to me, finally some fucking sanity. we can’t forget that, canonically, magnus thinks he’s the reason she killed herself because his stepfather immediately blamed him for her death, like a child abuser would. he just started yelling at him that it was his fault and that she killed herself because she couldn’t stand him or whatever the fuck he was even saying, in dutch no less (most mixed families spoke malay at home during that time. i know it’s likely that the reason he speaks dutch is because the writers’ research was absolute shit, but if we’re only considering the in-canon universe, well, the fact that he spoke dutch is very telling). everything just points in the direction of his stepfather just saying what he had always thought, and probably said many times before if we are being honest, so like, call this a hot take, but i don’t think we should just take whatever he said as truth. and we know magnus was only a child who was confused as shit and who then had to endure yet more abuse when he met asmodeus, and who constantly blames himself for everything and thinks he should be responsible for everyone’s wellbeing, so i don’t think we should take his version of the facts as truth. his stepfather just immediately lashed out at magnus because that’s what he had always done, and honestly killing him was so valid.

so yeah i’m 100% sure magnus’ mom didn’t kill herself because of magnus, and like 90% sure her stepfather was the actual reason, if she killed herself at all, which i also question because i mean, watch that scene. first of all, who the fuck kills themself by stabbing their own heart? that’s such a hard way to commit suicide, not to mention a painful and long death. second of all, there’s not a single drop of blood in the mattress or the sheets. not a single fucking one. only her, uh, shirt? is covered in blood. are you telling me she stabbed her own heart and the blood just didn’t spill at all? there are arteries there, it’s one of the places with the highest blood pressure. and what, did she stab her own heart, carefully position herself so the sheets wouldn’t be dirtied, and then covered herself with a sheet so magnus could walk in and dramatically uncover her body? WHY IS SHE COVERED IN A SHEET. it makes no sense for a suicide!! and then the stepfather wasn’t even fazed by the fact that she was dead, like, at all, he just immediately started screaming at magnus, didn’t even look shocked or upset by being feet away from a literal corpse. what the fuck? this suicide is so weird and makes no sense. it looks to me like her body was moved to the bed and then hastily covered in the sheets to hide her in a really dumb way while the culprit figure out what to do next, and then magnus ended up finding her before that, and the stepfather panicked, and i’m not saying he did it, but like he did it tbh. this is not a hill i will die on or anything, like maybe she stabbed her own heart because ?????? and then they moved the body while they figured out what to do and that’s why it’s location and the stepfather’s reaction were so, uh, odd. or you can argue that memories are never completely reliable and this is just a dramatic recreation of how it felt. but i still think it’s at the very least questionable and that his version of the facts just doesn’t add up and we should definitely not be taking it as truth without question. and even if it was a suicide, magnus wasn’t the reason and his stepfather sucks, thank you for coming to my TED talk

[bellamygateoldblog]

the 100 ofc!

— this gets a little rant-y and may or may not be coherent- currently pulling an all-nighter and it’s literally 5am- that’s it. That’s my excuse.

all time favourite character

IDK man IDK…I wanna say Jasper, maybe Raven

a character I didn’t used to like but do now

I’ll stick Octavia in this one. I actually did like her at first, then i didn’t then i did then i didn’t then i

a character i used to like but now don’t

[ insert every single character here ] Clarke and Bellamy. Clarke lost me very early season 3 and Bellamy is dead to me as of season 6. I’m throwing Miller in here- when he was that delinquent that wears the beanie I could go for that, but now i’m just straight up annoyed by his presence and want him to go away forever. My reluctant liking of Abby turned sour pretty fast, too. Arming a group of children and sending them out into a warzone to find your daughter, then abandoning them once she’s back is really SOMETHING. And hitting Raven while she’s acting Chancellor…i should beat your ass, Abby

a character i’m indifferent about

Wells: poor treatment of MoC and very valid anger aside, truely I don’t see the facination and borderline obsession fandom has with the character himself- he barely existed. Are you all in love with the idea of him, rather? Or the guy from the book? He was literally in this thing for three episodes, we never actually knew him, nor was he even given the chance to develop or have any sort of story. I see so so much hate about Echo and her lack of development and yet in the same breath y’all are talking about missing Wells and oh what a wonderful character he was. Spare me. He was a character full to the brim with potential and unfortunately that’s all he’ll ever be.

Anya and Lexa, too. I don’t really have opinions formed on either of them, nor do I really care to

a character who deserved better

I mean with that minor Wells rant aside and half a step into my hypocrisy boots…Wells did. Lol. I think he absolutely deserved better than to be killed off in order to push a white woman’s story forwards. I think he deserved better than to have been all about Clarke, his entire character about serving her character, even in death. This show has a history of criminally underusing/sideling/killing their most compelling characters, i think Wells would’ve been such a fun addition to the main band, i wonder how his personality would’ve expanded, what could his arcs have looked like? i think about how his dynamics would form and fair, what might he think of Clarke now?

Jasper deserved better than to have become a nihilist’s wet dream. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing, i really do. The creators, some of the fans even, chat about how it’s a gritty reality, sometimes it’s just Like That, and in some ways that’s absolutely right, but in a show of such loss to have this bleak ending for a character like this is just…a bit of an overkill? What’s wrong with hopeful endings? I mean we literally already had a similar scenario occur with Luna a mere episode(s) before. A woman who strives for nothing more than peace loses her faith in humanity and so fights for death. Why they felt the need to kick a dead horse by doing the same thing with Jasper is beyond me.

Listen many character have demonstrated suicidal tendancies at some point or another: Clarke, Murphy, Bellamy, Octavia, Harper and so on, but Jasper is the only one that gets the actual suicide? The character who’s canon mental illness has been more on the explicit and expressed side, the first victim of the ground, the very character who we’ve watched struggle his way through four seasons with an inconsistent or otherwise absent support system, his story ended with suicide. It’s devastating and, frankly, disrespectful. As if he was too far gone to find his way back into the light.

We saw clearly Monty’s reactions to Jasper’s death, but we didn’t see him grieve- he was busy rushing to survive the end of the world. This show loves sidestepping the consiquences of big events they write- there’s always a new threat to face which means everyone gets to move on abnormally quickly. Nobody asked about Jasper in Becca’s lab, we never actually saw anyone except for Clarke find out about this, nobody in the bunker either, not Octavia, and no mentions of Jasper in season five besides Monty begging him to be wrong about humanity. This show isn’t great with handling their deceased either. They want to focus on a fresh plot and not be stuck dragging around that dead weight. Finn isn’t mentioned in relation to Raven despite his importance to her story and of the fact this specific death shook the whole show. Wells’ has been removed from memory despite Clarke being the protagonist who we should know most intimately. I feel most detached from her, honestly. We’ve had a fair amount of Lincoln, though, and a consistantly aggressive reaffirmal of Lexa’s existence. But Jasper just isn’t here. He isn’t talked about. Jasper suffered, and Monty was right there in front of him trying to hand him that peaceful life he always dreamed of, ready to lift him (literally) out of that pain, and he died. Harper got to change her mind last minute, so did Raven, but not Jasper, no, his body went up in flames with the rest of it. The way they filmed the scene was gut-wrenching because of the hopelessness and coldness of it all. And i think he deserved to be spacekru, to heal somewhat up there, and oh what fun would he have been in season five. What would he be like now? What would he think of what became of everyone else? Of Clarke and of Octavia? Again, such wasted potential.

Jasper was one of The 100 on a show named after them, his death brought that to 4, and i can’t emphasise to you enough how big a mistake it was to craft a show around a certain group of people and then abandon that idea entirely. Your show is named something that it isn’t even about!!

Lexa deserved a more respectful death.

Bellamy deserved better than to be murdered brutally by the writers during season 6.

a ship i’ve never been able to get into

Bellarke. Braven. Murven. Clexa. Wicken/Ravick(?). Octabriel. Kabby

a ship i’ve never been able to get over

Becho. Memori. Jasper and Octavia were very sweet

a cute, low-key ship

Linctavia. It was always more of a background ‘ship’ for me. And Marper!

an unpopular ship but i still enjoyed it

Becho and Murphamy

a ship that was totally wrong and never should’ve happened

Flarke

my favourite storyline/moment

favourite storyline(s): delinquents finding a way to live on the ground and mount weather!

Favourite moment: i don’t think i have one TBH

my first thoughts on the show

It was exactly what i was looking for; a post-apoc teen drama, a little corny, a little gritty. I enjoyed season 1, and then 2, but with the constantly rising stakes to absolutely obscene levels eventually, my interest dwindled. By season 4 there was an almost desolate feeling and all the potential this had was dead and buried. They could’ve gone so many ways, done so much more, but for reasons unknown they chose possibly the weirdest and least interesting route available. I really thought they’d exhausted all their story by the end of 4 and i was, of course, absolutely correct since s5 was…more of the same…a literal recycled storyline that had been done not once but twice before it. In season 1 and then again in season 2. Since joining tumblr and fandom and seeing things from a various new angles, reading of social implications and meta on how sections of the writing are flawed, i’ve crafted a more informed and complex opinion than i had as a casual viewer and now see most aspects of the show in a completely different light.

my thoughts now

I’m over it. I think it could be safe to say i hate what it became. Most of my opinions of it now are negative, or at the very least have a critical component to them. I haven’t genuienly enjoyed it since season four and it hasn’t been actually decent since season two. It has a lot of deeper issues engrained into it’s writing, and there was a before when you could criticise those choices and obvious flaws and still be able to enjoy the show as it’s own entity because it existed as one at that time. But now it feels like an empty shell void of all life. With how broken and goofy the writing has become i just can’t take it seriously anymore. Characterisation and consistency have been thrown out in favour of serving the plot many many times before, but season 6 brought this to a whole new low. Dialogue was clumsy and there was a LOT of information dumping, it focused much too heavily on new characters nobody cared about, things were swinging from one extreme to another in terms of character arcs (see: Octavia’s full redemption and transformation basically overnight, and Bellamy switching from set to commit genocide in Clarke’s honour and ‘[we let these people die because] it’s not my fault their delusional’ to ‘let’s do better for Monty i am suddenly King of morality’) and in relationships (see: Bellamy instantly forgiving Clarke and then abandoning everyone and everything to save her, meanwhile he’s demonising Octavia like he’s getting paid for it). The characters just aren’t people anymore, they’re wheels that move the plot forward (in any way that’s required regardless of whether or not it’s actually in line with canon), and let’s not even talk about the science that pushes the envelope too far and Clarke’s insane plot armour. I’ve beaten this rant to death at this point so I won’t get any more into it. But just know: what was once a genuine fondness of this show has turned poisonous since.

[hcpefulmarshmallow]

Misconception: he seems to dislike "normal people" (without talents), but I think deep inside he wants to be normal too.....

Sore Wa Chigau Yo!

Strap in, kids, because this one’s kind of a doozy. I’m about to tell you two entirely opposing accounts of what goes on inside Nagito’s head, and rest assured, they’re both mutually exclusive, and one as valid as the other. 

 Let’s start with the side of him that absolutely, definitely puts Ultimate Talent above all else, just because it’s the side we see more. I’m going to be quite short about this because I think about every other user, as well as the game itself, has covered this more concisely than my drivel machine of a brain.

 Obviously, Nagito absolutely values hope above all else. (What is hope in his eyes? We’ll come back to that later.)

 He would die to bring about a little more hope in the world. 

 He would also let others make the choice to die for hope. 

 In almost every scenario, he would put the wants of an Ultimate above the needs of someone who is talentless, as he sees Ultimates as being in a class of their own, far above everyone else. He has a deep, devoted, platonic love for such people. 

 He wants to see “hope and despair collide”; and for a stronger, more shining hope to come out on top. 

 He believes that strong hope will overcome weak hope and despair.

 He believes that anyone who is talentless should be honoured to do anything for an Ultimate, as that’s assisting hope by proxy, in a sense. 

 He’s no hypocrite, and upholds these tough standards for himself. 

 Nagito considers his luck to be the only special thing about him; and even that, he doesn’t consider a talent. 

 At absolutely no point to I want to minimise the importance of this particular part of his characterisation, so please keep all this in mind as I bring up some lesser-acknowledged stuff. 

 We start with his character music. As much as Nagito claims talent is all that matters, Megumi Ogata, his Japanese VA, is out here spilling all his tea and I love it. She refers to the song Zettai Kibou Birthday as how he feels on the “outside”, and Zanzakura -Zanka- as how he feels on the “inside”. 

 ZKB is about meeting a mysterious someone on campus who he was “born to meet”, and the situation gets quite sexual from there. However, the entire song is metaphoric (remember how I referred to him as a great, big virgin?) It nods to his deep love of hope, and desire to be close to another person, seeing the two as one and the same - it doesn’t necessarily mean he has a literal hope fetish. You have to look pretty close, however, to see anything besides that. 

 Zanka is a much sadder and simpler song. He compares himself to cherry blossoms, which are, in Japan, symbolic of mortality and the ephemeral nature of life. The flowers themselves only bloom for about a week, sometimes less depending on the conditions around them; but cherry blossoms are seen as being at their most beautiful, not in full bloom, but as they begin to wither and die. He also sings the line, 

“ To live an ordinary life, and die together with you / Oh, if that could come true ”

 Call me crazy, but that doesn’t sound like someone who is desperate to die, even for hope, at any given minute.

 There’s also the matter of the OVA to consider. This disaster of canon may be more intentional than we first considered. In case you missed it, here’s the full episode. Otherwise, I could harp all day on various things people have acknowledged before, so I’ll narrow it down to two key points:

 1 - This doesn’t have much to do with the question at hand, but it’s good to note. In a world where he’s supposed to be “untalented”, Nagito retains a somewhat warped version of his luck, where he experiences bad luck so that others can experience good. My takeaway from this is that this points back to him feeling like his luck is the only thing that makes him special; but also that he still carries a lot of guilt for the hardships his luck has caused others, and if he had a say in the matter, he’d be the only one getting hurt, and would find a way to harness it to help others. I could do a whole other thousand word essay on this, to be honest. 

 2 - Due to the traumatic nature of his death in the Neo World Program, Nagito’s mind creates a world where he can feel safe and comfortable. You’d think that, for someone who supposedly was willing to kill to become Ultimate Hope, he might make a world where that dream can come true. But what does this incredibly intelligent, creative young man do with a whole world at his fingertips? He goes to high school. 

 He. Goes. To. High. School.

 And it’s not even some super special high school on the moon or whatever. All the faces we see are familiar to him. He gets to be with the people he’s already come to know, except this time around, they like him. These people he felt he could only look up to before have become his friends. He even expresses a desire to live in a world without talent, presenting it as some kind of barrier between people; as something that, without, no one would be better than the other, and there’d be fewer roadblocks to happiness. 

 After that world is destroyed, Nagito expresses a little bit of worry that perhaps somebody saw it, and when put at ease, says something to the effect of, “That’s just not who I am.” If that’s the case, however, then why did that world exist in the first place; of all the things his mind could have made? Granted, not everything in it is necessarily literal. He implies in-game that part of the reason he was drawn to Hajime was because he feels as if they’re alike. It’s later revealed that Hajime didn’t have a talent originally. To Nagito, he had found someone he could be on the same level with; someone with actual potential to understand him. That seems like perhaps one of the most likely meanings behind the world his mind created. 

 Now, look, if you’ve been on this blog for more than two minutes, you know exactly where this is going next. Nagito’s finally confided in someone that he’s dying, and what does he say to Hajime about it? Insert screenshot I bring up at every given opportunity because it breaks my heart and I like to suffer, I guess.

 There’s nothing in this world to bring out a person’s priorities like the Grim Reaper himself. When you don’t have much time left, you want to spend it on what truly matters. While Nagito has made it very clear that he wants his actual death to be meaningful and contribute to a greater good; he also makes it clear in his own, roundabout way just what he wanted to fill the space between now and then with.

 You’ve probably noticed a bit of a disconnect happening here. The docile doormat who would suck hope’s dick for a kick in the face, the Laugh™ with dreams of becoming Ultimate Hope, and the smol cinnamon roll who’d live in a library if he could and would sell his soul for a hug. What is truth? What is acting? What is fanservice? Is Mun reading way too into things? How can so many different things exist inside one character?

 Answers: all of it; none of it; some of it tbh; probably; the same way anyone else is capable of feeling extremes. Nagito is a very cleverly put-together, very complex character. It isn’t right or fair to say that one side of him matters more than the other. It seems as if there’s nothing to tie together his many personas, and I’ve spent a long time thinking about how a someone could want both life and death, and I don’t think my answer will shock you. 

 Hope. 

 Before you roll your eyes at me, just listen. Ask about anyone what hope means, and they’ll probably say, “a positive outlook for the future” or “a feeling of excitement and expectation” or they’ll start crying and that’s how you spot a DR fan. Nagito, however, has a very specific yet very vague definition of the word, and that’s the key to how I play his character. 

“ Hope is a positive force… Everything created by it is an absolute good! ”

 I couldn’t find my screenshot of this bit oops. An absolute good. In my mind, the only way to make sense of everything he says, is to break down a few barriers here. Hope is good, but you know what else is good? Love. Honesty. Companionship. Joy. Laughter. As soon as I started looking at them as different forms of hope, I started to really find my way with this character. Remember how I mentioned that, in Zettai Kibou Birthday, he feels absolute hope from getting intimate with the certain “someone”?

 Does he want to see hope and despair collide in a magnificent show of fireworks? Yes. Does he also want the pedestrian pleasure of just holding someone’s hand and watching fireworks? Also yes. He wants the splendid and the simple; and while certain circumstances may bring out one side over the other, who honestly couldn’t say the same? That they’d react extremely to an extreme series of events, and calmly to a calm one?

 Remember, Nagito is deeply traumatised, was raised without proper guidance or parenting, suffers from more than one illness that messes up the body and mind, is facing down the end of his life, and has no family, friends or support system. Yes, he dislikes talentless people. Yes, he kind of wants to be one. Yes, he’d rather die than be one. Nothing he feels is going to be straightforward. He has a painful past, a messy present and a future he’ll never have all going on in that mind of his. Of course he wants it all. 

TL;DR: It’s not enough to say absolutely one way or the other. Nagito is a very complex character with opposing views and strong core values he clings to in order to make sense of a senseless world.