#he is one of the most horrible. cynical and hypocritical characters of all | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ruby-whistler · 3 years

Text

The "redemption questionnaire" - the survey results.

Hello! Welcome back to the results of this survey, which is now closed - I really didn’t expect this amount of interest and am thankful for the ability to collect this much data on the subject.

Now, the reason I made this survey in the first place was this post crossing my dash. It talks about people wanting to see characters or people who they dislike suffer, even if healing is completely possible or even the better option - it’s about people denying that there is such a thing as bad people “deserving” things that we humans need to function, such as being loved.

This post talks about fictional characters, but despite that fact, it made me lose my faith in humanity just a bit. I am a pretty cynical person, but I also consider myself quite empathetic to existing and fictional people alike.

So, I got curious, and wondered - in the Dream SMP fandom specifically, is there a way to get input as to what people actually think about the issue of redemption?

[ tw for brief mentions of torture and abuse ]

So, the goal of the survey was get information to answer certain questions;

Do people think that some characters shouldn’t be redeemed or are irredeemable because of their actions, however don’t hold this true for others?

Are there people, who despite disliking certain characters, still believe that they deserve healing?

Would people want characters to suffer or even die for their actions rather than heal and be happy?

Do people think certain characters in the story don’t deserve to be happy?

Now, I did get some responses that were asking to include or exclude certain characters from the main three (Quackity, Dream and Wilbur - all names are talking about the characters only), however there was a very specific reason I chose these people.

Quackity and Dream have both done actions that have similar weight, while Wilbur serves as an outlier; someone who hurt people in more indirect, but still impactful ways. All three of them have been hurt - Wilbur mostly by Eret’s betrayal, Quackity by Schlatt and others, and Dream by Sam and Quackity. All three have contributed to a toxic and harmful environment, which in turn hurt them back even more and drove them deeper into becoming destructive.

Such a comparison between them would test the fandom’s ability to separate their feelings from in-story morality, as well as bring double standards to light.

Let’s see the demographic part of the survey first, as to see what we are working with;

Of the 390 people partaking in the survey, 44.9% like the direction the Dream SMP plot is heading at the moment, 3% do not and 52.1% are not sure.

Of the characters whose redemption arcs are most anticipated, 71% of participants are expecting a BadBoyHalo or Eggpire redemption arc, Niki/Jack and Wilbur coming close in second and third with 59.2% and 51.8% respectively. As for the main trio of this survey, Quackity lands with 28.2%, Dream with 43.3% and Wilbur with 51.8% of participants thinking a redemption arc for them is likely in the near future.

I would like to express right now that the characters included in the “possible redemption” section do not in any way, shape or form reflect on what I personally think about the characters. I don’t think certain characters need a redemption arc, however I left in the option in order to let people pick it if they wish to do so.

As for the healing arc question, quite understandably, Tommy and Tubbo are the characters most expected to get a healing arc in the upcoming storylines, sitting at 76.2% of participants. Niki and/or Jack come in second with 62.1%, and Quackity, Wilbur and Dream land at 25.4%, 45.9% and 42.8% respectively.

For the aforementioned questions, 3.6% or participants thought none of the Dream SMP characters would get a redemption arc, and 5.4% thought none of them would heal - and with the track record the story has so far, I honestly cannot blame them.

Now we move more towards the main trio;

48.7% of participants have positive feelings towards Quackity’s character, and 23.1% have negative ones. The majority of the participants (66.2%) think that his actions are intentional and hurtful, but interestingly enough, only 25.4% say they find them inexcusable and awful.

For c!Dream, 51.5% feel positively towards him and 35.7% do negatively. Luckily, 53.8% find his actions inexcusable and awful, while 40.3% find them intentional and hurtful.

c!Wilbur breaks the trend with 58.7% of people feeling positively towards the character and only 17.2% feeling negatively, however such a discrepancy can be expected when we compare his actions (found 65.1% of the time to be intentional and hurtful).

I want to preface this next section by saying that I have nothing against people who find redemption arcs unappealing, or wouldn’t find them narratively appealing in the specific story. These answers will be counted as merely neutral ground in the upcoming questions; you are completely valid if you think certain character arcs would not fit the themes or style of storytelling, or if you want bad people to stay bad for the sake of conflict.

However, 79.5% of people find well-done redemption and healing very appealing within the story, and 19% like it for certain stories and characters, so this shouldn’t impact the results on a large scale.

1. Do people think that some characters shouldn’t be redeemed or are irredeemable because of their actions, however don’t hold this true for others?

People’s reasoning for not wanting characters to heal varies, however the contrast between c!Quackity and c!Dream in this scenario is very intriguing.

Despite the two having done comparably disgusting things, one with more and one with less selfish reasons but neither excusable, both classifying under abuse, the people who think c!Dream shouldn’t get a redemption arc (9.7%) because of his actions greatly overshadow the people who think c!Quackity doesn’t deserve a redemption arc (1%) because of his actions. Hell, even c!Wilbur’s percentage is higher, sitting at 2.1%.

This is extremely surprising considering the demographic - and seems to hint at the fact that people who think positively of c!Dream are far more likely to think that c!Q and c!Wil deserve redemption and healing (despite the common argument that both have hurt him greatly) than it is the other way around.

Even sending a bad message is a lot higher with c!Dream (30.5%), despite the fact that c!Quackity’s actions and him as a character could be similarly triggering, and he himself sits at 2.6% of participants. Of course, this question could be partially taken as what he went through in prison making him better, which would definitely be a bad message to send, but considering the percentage (42.1%) of people who don’t want Dream to be redeemed, that’s still insanely high.

Overall, people from a very balanced demographic of people who are positive and negative towards the three characters, only 52.6% want Dream redeemed as opposed to the 83.8% with Quackity and 86.7% with Wilbur - and the reasons given seem to be largely based on bias and double standard, or even hypocritical in context.

For the fandom, this question’s answer seems to be yes, although from the people who are c!Dream positive, this sort of thinking seems to be of a much lesser extent and amount towards characters they dislike.

2. Are there people, who despite disliking certain characters, still believe that they deserve healing?

Let’s look at some of the comments given to this answer;

“On the one hand I do want Dream to recognize that his actions have hurt people, but I really don’t want torture to have ‘made him better’ or for the people he hurt to have to forgive him.”

“as much as I hate c!quackity and dislike c!wilbur, I believe that evil is not something you are, its what you do and as such I think every person deserves to heal and grow.”

“Quackity is the closest - he's spiraled far, but we got to see some of what he could be as a more moral man. Dream's arc would be....incredibly difficult to pull off, and while everyone deserves a chance to change, not everyone who does is ever owed forgiveness. And Wilbur....I dont know what would make him want to get better, but I want him to.”

“I wouldn’t like some of these characters to get redeemed(c!Quackity), but I know everyone deserves a chance at redemption because no one is mentally stable and not traumatized.”

“bastard men. on a serious note ive noticed a lot of evil in dsmp come from the perpetuation of the cycle of revenge and punitive punishment and i think excluding someone from them would. just not be a good message. and yeah c!dreams motives and methods being seen in separate characters is just proof of this - nothing that made any of these men villains are unique to them, and they are all shit-infested holes other characters can fall in.”

“i think every character on the smp has done horrible things and is morally grey, but i think everyone deserves the chance and the ability to heal and try to be better.”

“listen, i love big q, and i know he doesn't mean it, Wilbur also deserves better (far from tommy tho, they're not good for each other rn) and dream can go f**k himself, the only "healing " Arc that would ever make sense is if he escapes the prison and f**ks off to the middle of nowhere (wich is unlikely)”

“Even if I don't like some of the characters they deserve a chance at healing and moving on”

“Controversial opinion but Wilbur has been pretty shady from the start, so a redemption/healing arc just wouldn't make sense to me. He antagonized Dream to sell drugs.”

“i would like to qualify all my answers towards redemption as that they are /all/ allowed to get better, just not necessarily near those they've hurt. those they've hurt are under no obligation to forgive them or be involved in that.”

“REDEMPTION IS POG F**K IT EVERYONE GETS REDEEMED THE ONLY BIG BAD THAT EXISTS IS SYSTEMIC”

“Clarifying about my wilbur answers. A character can only get a redemption if he wants to change. Wilbur doesn’t want to change. I still think he deserves to heal but not to be redeemed. Those are two very seperate things”

“PLEASE JUST LET THEM GET HELP. ALL OF THEM.”

“i'm at sort of an impasse with c!quackity & c!wilbur. i don't like c!quackity in the slightest. i think he has great potential for a redemption arc, but i probably wouldn't be interested in watching it. on the other hand, with c!wilbur, i actually would watch his redemption arc, but i don't see it happening any time soon.”

“I answered " he deserves to heal and get better despite the actions he's commited; everyone deserves to heal and get better " for c!Wilbur but I partially Disagree with the "Everyone deserves to heal and get better" part. simply because some characters are irredeamable eg : c!dream”

“If c!Wilbur gets a redemption arc (I hope he does) I really hope it comes with learning that ethnostates and nationalism are not poggers. I'd be worried about the message it would send if he didn't learn that & it only focused on interpersonal stuff instead.”

“maybe a bit weird that i want c!dream to have a redemption arc but not c!q or c!wilbur, but hear me out. c!dream is being tortured in pandoras vault and we all know (no matter what the c!dream antis say) no one deserves torture. we have something to sympathize with with c!dream. with c!q and c!wilbur, i cant think of anything to sympathize with …. im not trying to say that c!dream is better than them, or that he didnt do bad things, but i sympathize with him much more than i do with c!q and c!wilbur because q and wilbur caused their own problems while a lot of dreams problems come from other people”

“We have both seen Wilbur and Quackity be relatively good people, or at the very least morally Gray people who had genuine love and care to those close to them. While with Dream we have never seen that, as he has always been focused on chaos, fun, and power.”

“I just want everyone to be happy and get along. C!Wilbur to get his problems fixed. C!Quackity to be happy and not have to worry about being the next c!Schlatt. C!Dream to finally tell us his side of the story and potentially join the syndicate?”

“Redemption isnt something any one can say is deserved or not”

“For me the main difference is thay wilbur and quackity (although having done bad things) did them out of grief or bc they felt like it was the only thing they could do for a sense of security (both after they lost something important to them). Dream on the other hand went out of his way and hurt others maliciously when he DIDNT have to or there were other less horrible/long-lasting actions he could done”

“The message that some people dont deserve to learn and grow from their past mistakes is harmful”

“listen.. i really hate c!quackity and c!wilbur right now so.. erm..in emotionally, i don't want them to have redemption arc because i hate them..BUT by using my brain i know that is a stupid excuse, everyone deserve redemption so..yeah sorry if it confusing you but honestly..the reason i hate them so much is probably because of the arc they on so..give them time and i think i will say i welcome their redemption arc with an open arm”

“i answered twice for dream because i have mixed feelings, while i think he is an atrocious person, i believe personally that forgoing forgiveness from others, he deserves to be happy and healthy and heal. hes clearly got issues of his own, and while it doesnt excuse his actions he also deserves the basic right to heal”

“I personally regard redemption as the act of simply becoming a better person, seperate from whether or not they are accepted or forgiven by their victims. With that definition, I think there is no being "deserving" of a redemption arc, it's something that everyone is entitled to if they chose to. Therefore, everyone, and I mean everyone, in as something as morally gray as the Dream SMP is capable of becoming a better person. It doesn't mean they get rewarded or forgiven for it, it just means they are capable of change and are able to fulfil character potential beyond being a villain.”

It seems to me like there definitely are a lot of people in each side of the spectrum, so this test seems to have come back positive; however, there are more questions that we have yet to answer.

3. Would people want characters to suffer or even die for their actions rather than heal and be happy?

Here is probably a good place to mention this questionnaire was more of a psychological experiment than a survey. Most of the answers were specifically designed and in such an order that would get your mind thinking about certain things before shoving your psyche into a difficult question.

Well, here comes the moment of truth; what sort of redemption arc do people prefer? Would they rather the character get better and reap the “rewards” (which are actually simply things every human being needs and deserves; love and happiness), atone for their actions but not get to be happy, or would they like them to suffer or be punished instead? Do people really treat basic human needs as “rewards” for being a good person; or are they only reserved for characters that were never bad people in the first place? Remember; all of these characters have inarguably gone through pain during their life. Just how much do people enjoy punitive justice, and should I literally just stick to my corner of the fandom for my own good?

The answer probably won’t surprise you!

Starting off, 82.8% want a happy or neutral ending for Quackity, 59.4% of which think he should experience good things in the end. 54.4% of participants want a happy or neutral ending for Dream, 62.7% of which think it should lead to him being happy and loved. 89.2% of people want a happy or neutral ending for Wilbur, 49.4% of which lean towards happiness over closure.

17.2% of participants would prefer Quackity to experience pain as part of his redemption arc. 8.5% want him to be mentally tormented by the weight of his own actions, and 5.6% think he should be punished before being allowed to get better.

For Dream, these percentages are way higher- and here is the funny thing, I thought that pretty much no one would say he should suffer before healing, because he’s already suffering for his actions indirectly by being abused by people who hate him for them. However, 7.2% of people think he has yet to be punished enough for his crimes in order to deserve being redeemed. 21.5% want him to suffer under the weight of his own actions, and 6.9% would want him to die instead of getting a happy ending. Overall, 45.6% would prefer a redemption arc for Dream in which he is subjected to pain or punishment.

10.8% of participants would want Wilbur to have a more difficult character arc, with the percentages pretty evenly divided between the options.

4. Do people think certain characters in the story don’t deserve to be happy?

“Deserving” basic human needs, or not deserving them for being bad people/being bad people in the past, is something I don’t personally agree with, however this is tumblr, not thought police, so let’s just look at the survey results.

While 68.5% of participants believe all of the characters in the story deserve to be loved and happy, only 66.2% think Wilbur does, 61.5% think Quackity does, and 38.5% think Dream does.

Let’s look at some closing thoughts on the subject as a closing note;

“I want everyone to have a sort of personal redemption. Where they realize they have hurt people. But I think it’s difficult. I mean Dream abused a child. Quackity tortured Dream relentlessly. I think the redemption arc that is the easiest is one for Wilbur because of cc!wilburs acting and emphasis on his characters mental health. But I think Wilburs also done so much f**ked up shit too. I think it’s difficult. I just think the redemption arcs are really really difficult.”

“i genuinely can't help myself, i want everyone to have the chance to be better.”

“i think that wilbur, quackity and sam should be redeemed because we as an audience know that they all believe they're doing the right thing and regret/didn't enjoy hurting people with their actions. but with c!dream, there's a lot more evidence that he knew what he was doing wrong and actively enjoyed doing it.”

“everybody deserves to heal. if someone wants to be better and strives to be better, who is anyone to deprive them of that?”

“I don’t like some of these characters and their actions, but everyone deserves a chance to heal. To work through their trauma.”

“dream doesn’t deserve shit, quackitys probably gonna keep riding the las nevadas train until it crashes and burns and wilbur should move on from being “the villain” and stop seeing everything as black and white”

“No one is beyond deserving help. That's not how the world works and that's not what the story should show in my opinion.”

“narratively, i want redemption and happy endings for all characters but morally, i really despise some of them and i'm also really conflicted about some of them as well”

“I want my faves to be better and I think it's the best possible option for everyone involved, even the characters they've hurt.”

“c!wilbur and c!quackity go to therapy. c!dream get hit by another train /hj”

“Hurt people hurt people. If given a chance to distance yourself from your victims and abusers, if given a safe environment with a support network of people you haven't formerly harmed, you can then heal and let the others heal. Live and let live, but living is harder for everyone when we don't give others the chances they need to grow and change themselves.”

“all of them deserve to find growth and happiness but under no circumstances are those who have been hurt by them obligated to be involved in any aspect of that arc. most obvious example- c!dream is allowed to grow and realize that what he's done is awful, but c!tommy is not obligated to forgive him or even be near him.”

“They can all improve and get better and be better people …. They all deserve a chance to be better and be happy. However. Wilbur and dream should get their "redemption" arcs away from esp. Tommy and all the other people they hurt. Big Q. should get his redemption arc away from Dream and stuff. If the prison was less focused on detainment and more focused on rehabilitation and then Dream had no contact with Tommy for example that's a scenario that I'd like.”

“is quackity actually considered a villain in this story? What has he done wrong lol Create a casino? be emotionally manipulated? have rejection sensitive dysphoria? I don't think he's a good person based on his current actions but i don't think hes a villain. I think he's trying hard to become something hes not. … I hate c!dream and I don't think he can ever get better. hes a manipulator gaslight gatekeep girlboss and i think he deserves to stay in prison and rot. watching the tommy exile arc would make me so angry that i had to stop watching.”

“i'm so CONFLICTED about this! i want the angst, but god the angst has been going on for a LONG time. honestly, i think the conclusion i would be happiest with would be for c!dream, c!quackity, c!sam, c!tommy, and c!wilbur to calm down, get some therapy, and stay VERY FAR AWAY FROM EACH OTHER. god damn, it's like they WANT to get more traumatized,,”

“the loathing i feel directed at c!dream specifically is so goddamn strong. my god i hate that guy. uhhh regarding quackity no i dont feel like he shouldnt feel ANY pain or anything hes done some f**ked up stuff but i mean..? with the exception of the torture hes the most redeemable guy up there for me which is probably because we have seen his entire downward spiral.”

“I have to admit that although I strongly believe no one on the Dream SMP deserves to be tormented and deprived of their healing and happiness, I feel really icky about c!Quackity. I really hope that the ccs find a way to make his redemption logical and satisfying to watch. If that is not the case, I will still welcome it with open arms, but secretly I will be a little bit salty about it.”

“For the last question bit there i wanted to check more then once because i want them all to feel guilty and tormented for what they have done.”

“Yknow.... basic human rights... to be happy and loved isn't something that should be deserved it should be something that everyone is allowed to obtain for themselves and it shouldn't be allowed it should just be…”

“While i think that all of the characters should the chance to get redemption and healing, I’d probably be less likely to watch redemption arcs from c!Quackity and c!Wilbur than c!Dream, just because I dislike them. Not to say that they shouldn’t get them, because I hope they do, I’m just more like to be going “Good for them” in the distance.”

“I JUST WANT THEM ALL TO BE HAPPY PLEASEEEEEEEE -dr3”

“for the final question it doesnt provide a none of the above option or a some of the characters but not all option. since I dont think c!Dream deserves to be happy and loved but I do the other two (to some degree) but answering "all of the characters .. " I feel Includes c!dream who I ultimately just really hate and want to have nothing but a fictional death!”

“therapy. therapy for everyone.”

“f**k c!dream <3 i honestly don’t think people who abuse kids (or anyone) for fun should ever be redeemed i think they should just rot in a hole somewhere”

“It would be hypocritical to say that one character deserves redemption more than another, especially considering they've all done (almost equally) horrible things. Either everyone deserves redemption, or no one does.”

Conclusion: in the end, this is all the ways in which we like to enjoy fiction. However, for some completely unrelated reason, I am now about 45.6% less likely to attempt to interact with anyone outside my immediate group of friends in the fandom.

Thank you for reading!

#dream smp #dsmp fandom critical #tw abuse ment #tw torture ment

134 notes · View notes

gundhams-pandemonium · 4 years

Text

Oumota

I wrote this all on the night of the 23rd, and "polished" it up today,,, I have no idea what possessed me to make this besides I just really really wanted to

He couldn't stop staring at him. Watching with anticipation as the other's adam apple bobbed up and down with every uncomfortable gulp. The way his face, that usually had a dumb cheesy grin on his face, slipped into something more of the side of worry. It was so natural, so real. The man in front of him had let his guard down just enough for the mask he wore with the word "hero" on it to slip off.

Kokichi Ouma was a hypocrite, but he'd never deny, at least in his own mind, that he was. He hates liars, and yet he was one. He hated every facade with a burning passion, yet his own was always with him. Hell, blind optimism made him sick yet here he was gazing at the astronaut who was the opposite of a cynical.

Maybe it was because he was a hypocrite that he was so enamored by making the other teen uncomfortable. That was the reason he kept coming back, with snide little remarks that developed into lingering stares of various emotions. Most, of not all, simply a display of talent then a show of genuinity.

Today was differnt, the supreme leader sat on a throne. A throne consisting of stupid maroon pants, and a jacket hanging off. The throne in question hadn't kicked him off yet, but the look in his eyes proved it be sooner than later.

Perhaps he'd rushed in to soon, should've started with small touches to the back in the hallway. The ones that start on the right then you quickly dart to the left so your opponent is scrambling every which way. It would've been exhilarating to see his head swing back and forth to catch the crook in the deed, and he'd get to see his gelled hair slightly shift with the sudden movement.

However, with the look on Kaito's face, it was well worth the jumping in. For a moment he was jealous of the robot who could print out moments from thier memories. He could permanently have the expression in his possession, and plaster it to his wall to wake up too. A trophy of his triumphs.

A pity he didn't have a camera in his head, alas memory would have to do.

The astronaut shifted, but the supreme leader did not sway. Keeping as sturdy as concrete. He wouldn't get away so easily, not without at least speaking.

It was odd to not here his voice by now, usually he was cursing his name under his breath. If he was lucky he'd wave an arm and tell him to "stop screwing around". Every once in awhile, it must be when he's truly exhausted by his own character he shows, in which he only grunts.

Never silent, though. Not until now, where he squirmed beneath and a slow trail of sweat accumulated on his forehead.

It was so tempting to break him out of his trance by saying something sharp. Calling him an idiot cut him deeper then he'd ever admit. But the supreme leader didn't want to ruin the moment with something as mundane as a burst of anger and wounded pride. If he could he would reach out to run a finger along his trembling lips.

That would ruin the mood as well, as anticipation was key to the success.

The astronaut let in a sharp exhale, still awaiting the next move. Like the end of a game of chess where you want it done but you refuse to lose. Secretly your wish your opponent will pull a move you never saw coming just to be releaved of the constant adrenaline of game.

The supreme leader replied to the inhale with a single hum. Not a melody, nor an affirmation. Something left in the air to accumulate with everything else. Soon enough the air would be so filled up they would both choke. What a horrible end to thier game, if they both lost from circumstance.

He opened his mouth, but not a sound came out. It was pointless, but it made him stop staring directly at his neck to travel to the bottom half of his face. The purple facial hair stood straight down, as if asking to be suddenly yanked on. Would the other help at that? Would he automatically bring up a fist to fight? A combination of both? Or maybe neither, and he'd continue with his self imposed silence.

He wanted to speak so badly, could tell by how his tongue moved but his jaw hesitated.

He took the opportunity, Kokichi leaned in to be right beside his ear.

"Say it," The mix of a hiss and a whisper, and the supreme leader saw the chill run through the astronauts body.

That wasn't the only reaction, the after math was heavy uneven breathing. Like the words themselves caused him to pull out a supply of oxygen from his throat.

"Say it," He emphasized the it this time, but still left the hiss in his ear. From the corner of his eye, he could see that the self proclaimed Hero had shut his eye lids.

He expected to have to say it again, but before he could he felt two hands yanking at his face. Was this when he was going to be dethroned? Pushed off, and he'd have to shamble away? Just because he lost the main prize, didn't mean he that he lost the challenge. That tended to happen when the competitor and the perfered prize was one in the same.

It'd still sting, win or lose, to be pushed so suddenly. The second whisper must've been too much, or too soon. He barely let him recover from his almost hyperventilating.

But now, the surprise flipped as he remained on the throne and the hands merely guided him away from the ear to the front of his face. He couldn't even predict what would come next, as lips were suddenly crashed into his.

Seconds passed like an eternity, both in a trance. They stayed there for a while longer, neither wanting to break the spell.

His game had gotten him far more than anticipated. Kokichi Ouma relished in his win and his reward had many kisses in the future.

#kaz writes #oumota #danganronpa #kokichi ouma #kaito momota #killing harmony

24 notes · View notes

fooliery · 3 years

Text

pregame ouma headcanon masterpost

first off, my pregame ouma is NOT the shy weepy type. there's literally nothing wrong with this interpretation i just take mine in a different direction and i think that's important to keep in mind. i’m basically asking you to put your preconceptions aside for this post.

warning for self harm (though not gone into too much detail) mentioned under the cut

typically, when i write overall pregame headcanons, i tend to try and keep some semblance of their ingame self (with maybe certain traits downplayed or exaggerated) the way they are in canon; pregame akamatsu claims she wants to be a protagonist (someone people can trust and see themselves in), pregame saihara has a nervous disposition similar to ch1 saihara, and pregame momota has a fierce determination reflected in his ingame character arc. they’re similar but not the same.

pregame ouma is his in game self’s flaws put under a magnifying glass. he’s a horrible, compulsive liar who will lie to himself to the point where he loses grip on who he really is. he provokes people because it’s a hobby, he thinks of himself as the only one who knows what’s best for everyone, he overthinks and often times he’ll mock others and hurt their feelings because it’s the “greater good”. above all else, he has a dangerous ego reflected in his ingame self. he’s a coward, he’s a hypocrite, he’s haughty.

his biggest flaw, especially in the world of team danganronpa, is his empathy. he cares for other people, sees the way they hurt others and get joy out of it, and is in turn disgusted. he believes that everyone can change for the better, which is why he despises the people around him. it turns him into a bitter and cynical husk of himself, where he’ll attack others (almost exclusively verbally) to take out his frustrations on the nonsensical way their world works. everywhere you turn, there are people smiling at the suffering of others. it’s a sickening thing. he’ll provoke people into attacking him as both a form of self harm and to instate his control over people who could so easily kill him for entertainment; if they let words affect them, they’re no better than him.

this means he does have a softer spot also reflected in his ingame self, but pregame ouma is so terrified of it being taken advantage of in their current society he’ll deny and lie about it ever existing to the point where even he believes it. instead of laughing and joking around and spending his past time pranking others, pregame ouma is so bitter he turns to internet forums, where he argues with people he sees lower than him just to rile them up, resulting in his numerous doxxings (which in and of itself is another form of self harm).

regarding him working for team danganronpa: he’s such a cynic he sees no way for the world to change after the damage danganronpa has wrought on it. this drives him into desperation: he auditions as an escape where either he dies for good or even if he survives, it’s as a completely different person. his work posing as his ingame self for interviews and the like is a “ends justifies the means” situation, plus it pays his rent and means he gets to live away from his parents. when he isn’t lashing out at people since he’s, you know, in a business situation, he’s just sort of quiet, does his work, and then immediately leaves for home. likewise, because of his doxxings, he does anonymous work where his ingame self’s name isn’t revealed: instead, he goes by his DICE codename “joker” and dons his DICE mask everywhere he goes, both for suspense and to protect his identity.

although he’s a bitter person, he still has that soft spot mentioned from earlier where he can’t help but empathize with others. an example of this is his interactions with my pregame kiibo (which others do not have to adhere to btw im just using him to illustrate a point): kiibo is reprogrammed into this completely subservient and complacent robot servant for team danganronpa’s purposes, as it’s convenient and they can just load in his true personality shortly before the game starts anyways. it’s kind of hard for ouma to conceptualize kiibo is literally programmed into having nearly no personality, opinions, or feelings: kiibo sports a human face, walks and talks like a human, and even if people say that he’s nothing more than a glorified computer, ouma can’t help but try to break the ice with chit chat and eke some kind of opinion out of him. kiibo looks like a human, ergo, it’s hard for him to conceptualize kiibo doesn’t behave like one either. it’s probably one of the few times he’ll let his guard down enough to extend kindness to someone else and part of that is due to the fact that despite kiibo’s ties to danganronpa, he poses like someone who isn’t normalized into the commodification of violence the way most others are.

tldr: pregame ouma is like ingame ouma but if he stopped being/pretending to be happy and took a nosedive STRAIGHT into cynicsville

#this is a lot of rambling lollll #⬖⟩⟩ ooc #⬖⟩⟩ wretchedly i come to hate it but i come to like it. ( pregame )#⬖⟩⟩ cannon for your head and a penny for your thoughts? ( headcanons )

2 notes · View notes

hamliet · 4 years

Note

I can’t believe you’re reading 2ha too now! I started following u way back when you were posting tg and snk meta and it’s so weird in an amazing way how you started posting mdzs meta at the same time I started reading it! I’d like to ask you for your thoughts on 2ha so far? (Maybe on Nangong Si and Ye Wangxi’s relationship?) Thank you :)

Ahhhh hi Anon!!! Thank you for sticking with me through all my fandom phases! And hooray, my first 2ha ask!! My general thoughts on the story are that it is a highly enjoyable story with fantastic, compelling characters and genuine emotional beats, though it also was thematically contradictory. That said, I really enjoyed it, and I’m eagerly looking forward to the live action even if it’s going to be heavily censored! I love it and want to make more content for it.

But onto the meat of your ask: Ye Wangxi and Nangong Si, the ship that tears our hearts out. *art is from the audio drama* So 2ha's cultivation world is, like the worlds in MXTX’s novels, utterly hypocritical, corrupt, and filled with people desperate for a justice that does not exist; it's also much more cynical than MXTX's novels in its view of humanity. Nangong Si's and Ye Wangxi's arcs are wrapped up in this view of the world, in concepts such as corruption and justice and the like, so I'm going to open by talking a bit about this before delving into their arcs, and keep in mind I will have discuss spoilers from the manual translation.

I don't think there's a better summary of what 2ha thinks about justice than what Xue Zhengyong says in this scene when a horribly abused child is on trial for terrible things the child, now grown, went on to do:

Fate...

Some people were born rich.

It's not fair.

When fate had poured injustice on those at the bottom, a mere price adjustment order could take the lives of the loved ones around them.

Where is justice?

They were all living people. How could they not hate him? How could they feel relieved?

Even if this child had missed it, even if he was not his blood kin, even if his fate played with him … Thinking of this, his heart still ached.

...

Xue raised his face and watched the clouds drift by."Okay, now that his sin has been repaid, he should at least repay the debt he owes this world."

The wind was blowing .Xue Zheng Yong suddenly choked with sobs.

"But this world owes him … Did someone give it back to him... Has anyone returned it to him … "

What about the crimes done to this person to make them that way? Does punishing this person bring any justice? How do we live in a world that is--perhaps irretrievably--broken? Every character explores this idea, and Ye Wangxi and Nangong Si are no exception.

Nangong Si and Ye Wangxi are both obvious foils: they're children used by their parents, tools more than people. They also both--but especially Nangong Si--foil Shi Mei and Mo Ran in this, in terms of something horrible happening to their mother, something that scarred them for the rest of their lives. For example, Nangong Si's last words to his mother were:

"I don't understand, I don't want to understand, I …I …” Nangong Si raised his tearful eyes and cried out to his mother, who was outside the forbidden spell, "I hate you! I don't have a mother like you! "

Mo Ran’s mother died and he had to drag her rotting corpse for two weeks to get to a place where he could bury her; Shi Mei’s mother was brutally eaten alive for her power. From these incidents, all three boys learn that the world is cruel in a distinct flavor that will influence everything they do from then on: Mo Ran learns no one will help him even if he begs for it, leading to him being both extremely clingy and extremely mistrustful; Nangong Si learns fate can be cruel and that he, too, can be cruel; Shi Mei learns that he can’t protect everyone and that his heritage puts him and his loved ones, all his people really, in huge danger--and that people will do evil things for power. Guess what he ends up doing.

Ye Wangxi is also a Mo Ran foil: adopting a false persona and different role to please the people who took them in and were kind to them. Mo Ran pretends to be Xue Zhengyong and Madame Wang's nephew, when he really isn't; Ye Wangxi pretends to be a man to please the father who adopted her. That father is gray; I mean, technically he's morally repulsive, but he did genuinely care for Ye Wangxi. However, Ye Wangxi's willingness to sacrifice her life is not entirely a positive thing: clearly, Nangong Si will do whatever he has to in order to protect her, even marry Song Qiutong; his sacrifice there, likewise, leads to unhappiness for them both.

Ye Wangxi and Song Qiutong are definitively foiled, and I'm going to sound as if I'm saying Ye Wangxi=good and Song Qiutong=bad, when, while that may be how the novel frames it, is certainly not what the novel actually says (it's an objective contradiction) nor is it what I interpreted. But they are distinct foils, which is why they are the two characters romantically linked to Nangong Si, representing to him the two paths he could choose to go down. Ye Wangxi will sacrifice herself to protect others, as seen in the sacrifice of her love for Nangong Si and her sacrifice of her identity and willingness to sacrifice her life.

In contrast, Song Qiutong will throw others under the bus to save herself. For example, when she is accused of cheating on Nangong Si, she does not trust people to defend her and falsely accuses Ye Wangxi of rape--even though Ye Wangxi had previously risked her safety to save Song Qiutong from an auction. Now, I've an issue with how the novel frames Song Qiutong for this: I don't understand why Song Qiutong is condemned when (as far as we and Mo Ran himself know at the time) Mo Ran is himself a rapist and when she was entrapped into the situation (i.e. if many characters hadn't been put in certain situations, they wouldn't have done terrible things), especially given her past (constantly living under the threat of being killed or raped--let's be honest, if she was deemed at fault, do you really think they'd just let a Butterfly Bone Beauty go?) and given story otherwise stating that people shouldn't be faulted for wanting to live. Who has repaid her for the wrongs done for her?

I digress. Still, the tl;dr is that Song Qiutong's way of surviving involves hurting others. Song Qiutong also directly foils Nangong Si. Nangong Si starts out as... well, also as a very self-centered person who didn’t care that Song Qiutong was about to meet a fate worse than death in the light of the inconvenience Ye Wangxi saving her caused him. Additionally, he takes his frustrations out on those around him:

However, even after his father is revealed to be like, the literal worst, Nangong Si cannot condemn his father. He could easily abandon him: in fact, in this cruel world, it might be perceived as more righteous for him to do so, but he doesn't. He gives his father a chance, and when they need a sacrifice and the most logical one is his mentally de-aged father: Nangong Si faces a choice: does he want to be like Song Qiutong? Or does he want to be like Ye Wangxi? He chooses to be like Ye Wangxi. This is not, however, a solely beautiful choice, because remember 2ha's world sucks and its suckery infects everything. The world itself is wrong, and so righteousness--true righteousness--is utterly impossible. Nangong Si sacrifices his life to save them all, but that leaves Ye Wangxi alone and many characters (and readers) grieving. It also could be read as highlighting, for Mo Ran at least, where he has yet to go: a few chapters earlier he almost sacrificed his reputation to warn everyone, but panicked and did not in the end. Mo Ran, of course, is related to Nangong Si by blood and could have sacrificed himself (I'm not saying he should have; the circumstances suck), so I suppose you could view it as Mo Ran still slowly developing (and his callous treatment of Rong Jiu and then entrapment of Song Qiutong as him slowly learning, but if so I wish it had been called out as a "well, I handled that hypocritically" moment later on). Or maybe that's reaching on my part. *shrugs* Ye Wangxi is a moral character, perhaps the most righteous in the story. She is the only one who stands by Mo Ran when he's put on trial to be tortured, declaring confidently:

Ye Wangxi fed him some warm water.

Mo Ran said in a low voice, "Why …."

"You helped A-Si." Ye Wangxi did not raise her head. "You helped me too."

"... On Mount Flood Dragon, if I was the one to die, Nangong will …" Ye Wangxi's hand paused slightly. She was trembling, but she still said in the end, "Everyone wants to live. I won't blame you just because you want to live."

"..."

"Drink it." She said, .”..you've been helping me and A-Si by risking our lives. Now, even if no one is willing to help you, I will still help you." Her expression was still dull, but it was firm. “I'm here." As she said 'here', she was indeed standing by the side of Mo Ran.

It's fitting, then, that Ye Wangxi's ending contrasts her with Shi Mei. She rescues refugees before the final battle and then travels the world with Nangong Si's wolf, because she will never forget the one she loves, and to presumably act justly and do righteousness, sow kindness into a world, rescue people despite how rescuing Song Qiutong actually endangered both her and Nangong Si.

Shi Mei wanted to change the world, quite literally rewriting time, but only made it worse in the end. Ye Wangxi's way of change might be slower, might be less fantastical, but it's not going to hurt people in the meantime. (Side note: I wish the novel would have been more optimistic and come up with some kind of justice for the Butterfly Bone Beauty people, but it really doesn't as far as I understood (this may be wrong; the MTL of the last twenty or so chapters are confusing!))

#ask hamliet #2ha #2ha meta #erha #erha meta #ranwan #mo ran #mo weiyu #chu wanning #nangong si #ye wangxi #song qiutong #nangong si x ye wangxi #WHAT IS THEIR SHIP NAME #shi mei #if i got into how xue meng and mei hanxue also foil them #we'd be here all night #Anonymous

85 notes · View notes

redhatmeg · 4 years

Text

“Astro B.O.Y.D.” from old Gyro’s fan perspective

People who follow me at least from the time when the first The Great Dime Chase preview came out, know that I don’t exactly like what the reboot did to my favorite Duckverse character. And as much as Gyro Gearloose’s introduction to the new DuckTales had some redeeming qualities, each subsequent appearance of Gyro made me like him less and less. This was partly because some of his best qualities were given to other characters (like Fenton or Ludwig von Drake), while what left of him was a generic Insufferable Genius schtick with Bad Boss elements. I also said that the writers would have to pull a really good Day in the Limelight episode for me to like him again.

However, after GlomTales I’ve realized that Gyro Gearloose is barely in this show and he’s also barely a part of the McDuck/Duck household. I’ve come to conclusion back then that if Gyro would get some more screentime that would flesh out his character more, he could be salvaged for me. The fact that he took part in initial Earth defense in Moonvasion gave me hope because he had his nice moments.

So when I’ve learned that Astro B.O.Y.D. will be somewhat a Gyro Gearloose-centered episode, I was nervous but hopeful. I’ve had my suspitions on what it will be about and I waited.

Then I’ve finally got to watch it.

And well... More under the cut, becuase it involves spoilers.

From the moment when Gyro sees Boyd, he reacts with anger, fear and dehumanization of Boyd. We know there is some history between them, but Boyd isn’t quite aware of it, because his memory core got overridden too many times. Huey points out that it’s a bit of hypocritical of Gyro to insist that Boyd is evil, since he keeps saying that his own inventions are “not evil, just wildly misanderstood”. Almost all throughout this episode Gyro treats Boyd as a threat and referres to him as “it”.

And then we get to see doctor Akita. Doctor Akita, who was Gyro’s mentor and under whom Gyro was doing his intership. And then we see the newspaper clip about killer robot attacking the city. This is also the first moment when the viewer can see Gyro from that times, and he very much looks like his classic self - arm bracelets and nest hair, and all.

This is how the writers indicate what I suspected for quite some time - that reboot!Gyro was once the idealistic, friendly and kind Gyro we know and love from the comics and original DuckTales. Further scenes showcase that what happened all those years ago caused him to become the cynical bastard that he is right now. Boyd was his first real invention and then it became evil due to Akita’s meddling. So all the dehumanization, all the disdain Gyro has for the little robot stems from this horrible experience that his invention was a disaster. He tries to distance himself from Boyd, he tries to “live it down”, but this blast from his past won’t let him.

And then there is the revelation that Boyd’s earliest memory is of Gyro activating him and telling him that he’s “most definately a little boy”. This is the moment when we actually see how Gyro was back then really - sweet and nice but also timid. This is Gyro who has heart in the right place, but Akita constantly treats him poorly (almost in similar way as Gyro treats Fenton, which is problably the reason why at the end of this episode Gyro gives Fenton a promotion to a full-time employee, not just an intern). It takes Huey to remind Gyro about his previous relationship with Boyd... and it really seemed to me that Gyro didn’t remember it (maybe it’s a clone thing?). It also takes Huey for Gyro to fight with Akita.

In the climax, Akita still referres to Gyro as “intern” and even says that he never invented anything useful. I think this might be something Akit was saying all the time during Gyro’s internship. (And then - surprise, surprise - Lil’ Helper comes out and kick’s Akita’s ass which is beautiful.)

In the end it is Gyro Gearloose who stops Boyd with catching him into a hug. Everything ends well.

So what do I think about Gyro Gearloose in Astro B.O.Y.D.?

To be fair, after finishing the episode I was a bit disappointed. And maybe a little bitter. Because once again I was reminded that there is a far better, nicer Gyro instead of the one I got in the reboot. I will probably always mourn, to some extend, the kind, idealistic Gyro from the flashback, classic DuckTales and comics...

However, after thinking about his scenes and analysing them, I’ve come to conclusion that this episode at least gave us an interesting insight into his character; and a heroic moment to showcase that he’s not evil, just bitter.

I will probably watch this episode couple of times over and come with additional analysis.

But now the question is: Will we see more episodes like that in the future? Or at least scenes when Gyro is nicer?

#redhatmeg to her followers #ducktales #gyro gearloose

41 notes · View notes

88y53 · 5 years

Text

REVIEW OF PUNISHER: MAX -- INTENTIONALLY NIHILISTIC

Comic books are a medium just like any other form of storytelling, not just reserved for superheroics. However, it’s safe to say the niche wouldn’t have survived without them.

Garth Ennis seems to be in resentful denial of that fact.

It’s no secret that Ennis holds nothing beyond absolute contempt for superheroes, with only three known exceptions, chief among them being the Punisher. They say that you should write the kind of stories that you want to read, and I think Ennis did just that with this Punisher. I don't think he even really hates superheroes, but more of what superheroes epitomize — wholesome do—gooders possessing incredible powers with integrity and idealism, and he seems to just love it when those kinds of characters either fall into existential despair at how ineffectual they are, or just die. Brutally.

Frank Castle AKA The Punisher - a noted Marvel anti-hero and murdering vigilante who, in the wake of his family’s death, chose to martyr himself and become the sin-eater of society - is here recast as a psychotic Serial-Killer Killer Sociopathic Soldier who is unabashedly addicted to war, fighting criminals that represent the worst dregs that modern society can offer.

Ennis himself once said something to the affect that the difference between the villains and the heroes in his stories is that the "villains aren't lying to themselves," and from the start it's obvious that any time Frank shows any kind of sympathy towards someone, he's just going through the motions to further convince himself that his war is justifiable.

It's not. He's just psychotic (who possibly made a deal with the devil or went completely insane, but that’s something else entirely).

This series wears its juvenile interpretation of “maturity” on its sleeve, with stylistic and gritty writing that masterfully tricks the readers into thinking there is depth where there is none. The caricatures that masquerade as characters range from misogynistic to downright racist, without an ounce of relatability that could make them the slightest bit sympathetic, that are all merely walking targets that only exist for Frank to viciously dispatch in the most ruthlessly efficient way possible. The women, meanwhile, mainly serve as objects to be abused or to be madly in lust with Castle’s raw animalistic masculinity. Sometimes both.

I can only think of one villain that has any kind of realistic motivations behind their actions and it was that IRA dude who’s portrayed as an idiot for sincerely believing in his actions. The rest (when he’s not just shooting random gang members) are all vicious killers who feel their entitled to get what they want and to be as awful as they wish (like Barracuda, who basically exists so Ennis can write the word “nigga” for as long as he finds it amusing). Now, sometimes that can be compelling, but not like this. A good example is the Enron expy; the actual Enron scandal can largely be chalked up to out-of-touch executives who became victims of their own impulsive decision-making and not truly recognizing the consequences of their actions. The Dynaco executives are all coked-out yuppies that are fully aware of the immorality of their actions, but just think they’re untouchable.

What's worse, Ennis chooses to portray Frank's world as the real world, and the safe existence that everybody else leads is just a fantasy that regular people have deluded themselves into leading that is all too easily ripped away at the first trauma.

Ennis is a noted military buff and it shows in his descriptive ways Castle stalks his victims like he is still in the humid wetlands of Vietnam. Now, whether the writer is attempting to glorify or condemn Frank is a matter of debate, but one could argue that Ennis himself doesn’t even know. The Punisher will contemplate on how much he hates himself and the world while massacring human beings with the detachment one would use to kill an irritating mosquito.

It says something when a Terminator can have more believable emotional depth than this Punisher, who possesses a near-permanent Clint Squint scowl, which is about as close as he gets to emoting.

Ennis, to his credit, did feature sympathetic characters and veterans who're on the side of good — and I'm not impressed. They’re shown to have never re-adjusted to civilian life and are just as corrupt and cynical as Frank is, but are just better at hiding it. There's not a single good person in the series that doesn't die horribly due to their own naive stupidity.

I think what cemented my loathing for this comic was the oft lauded Slavers arc for how it portrayed the victims: people who're absolutely fucked. There's no hope for them healing, or becoming activists, or any kind of good coming out of the whole ordeal.

It's as if therapy doesn't exist in this world.

And the less said about his double-standards when it comes to male rape victims, the better.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so grating if Ennis wasn’t so fucking pleased with himself for going against conventions and being oh so “realistic.” And hypocritical, too — out of all of the superheroes he hates, Garth Ennis holds particular disdain for Captain America, whom he considers an insult to “real heroes” of WWII. Ignoring that the character was actually created before America entered the war (so was actually a huge anti fascist statement, and was enjoyed by real G.I.s), but generally evolved into an avatar for everything that could be good about the country he represents (something an Irish-born WWII-buff Americophile like Ennis should love). Conversely, the intention for the Punisher was to be a tragic anti-hero, and as an symbol of the failure of the American military and legal system. The Punisher as a concept is an massive anti-war statement, which has been perverted beyond all recognition.

I can understand that storytelling in Europe has different standards and history than what became dominant in the Americas, but I don’t have to like it.

This series clearly isn't for me, and I think it did irreparable harm to the Punisher as a character because he was supposed to be a more tragic, Rambo-esque tortured soul.

Over all, I would recommend this series if only for its attention to realistic action, and more broadly, because it’s almost complete antithesis to the human condition.

#Punisher max #Marvel Max #Punisher

8 notes · View notes

chelsieheartstriker · 6 years

Note

Whether batman/superman should kill or not is a bogus fight because Zack's fans refuse to acknowledge the comics n only focus on his version of realism. Whether that realism is someone's cup of tea or not is another question entirely. But thinking it's only one group being dicks to the other and one group being hypocrites is biased perception. Neither his fans nor his haters have any right to bully each other but here non comic fans are on arrogant ignorant rant n talking over genuine criticism.

This is blatantly untrue. Zack’s fans are always acknowledging the comics and how Batman v Superman is a damn love letter to them. You want examples? Because I can give you those! How about…okay, how about this. The most common criticism I’ve seen about Man of Steel is that Superman doesn’t smile. Take a look at this, from Supergirl’s 2005 series:

Clark, just like Kara in these panels, is a person, not just some caricature that can never do wrong and always smiles no matter what happens or how horrible the circumstances. What makes him a hero isn’t that he always knows what the right thing to do is, isn’t that he’s perfect. It’s that every time he gets knocked down, he gets back up and keeps trying to do better.

Also, this is gatekeeping nonsense. I’m a comics fan. I’ve been a comics fan since I was six years old. I can hold an intelligent discussion about comics any day. But you want to know something? Nobody “knows” comics. Anyone that claims they do is a dumbass, because we’re talking about eight decades worth of material. There are dozens of equally valid interpretations, and it’s both ridiculous and offensive to dismiss the perspectives you don’t like by saying, oh, whoever thinks that must not read comics, because there is canonical evidence to support just about every statement anyone could make. At this point, Batman and Superman are far more than just comics characters. They are a part of our public consciousness. Does that mean that the comics don’t matter and shouldn’t be considered the purest form of the source material, no! But there is so much content out there, none fundamentally “more right” than the rest, that it is ridiculous to suggest that people don’t read them just because they interpret the characters in a different way than you do and appreciate different stories. If you’re claiming Zack doesn’t read comics…well, then I don’t think you know much about Zack Snyder. He loves comics enough to not only read them, but be critical of them, even when he’s basing an entire movie off a specific one.

BvS was very clearly based on The Dark Knight Returns. Duh. And the thing about The Dark Knight Returns is…I fucking can’t stand it. I think it’s a terrible comic. But Zack took it and flipped it around so that Superman is the hero and Batman has fallen. Built on it so it was way more than some macho power fantasy about Batman beating up government stooge Superman. That’s what he was deconstructing - the Miller idea of Batman. And he was reconstructing the idea of superheroes and morality and doing the right thing by setting it all in a universe where that’s hard. Where the threats aren’t just external and physical, but internal, psychological. Clark picked up a spear and sacrificed himself to defeat Doomsday for a world that hated and feared him, because that was what the right thing to do was. Because altruism matters. Because protecting those that can’t protect themselves matters. Because he may not have been born on Earth, but Earth is his home and humans are his people. I wrote this post nearly two years ago about how BvS reconstructs the concept of superheroes, and I stand by every word. Since I wrote it, not one person has been able to actually convince me that it is anything even close to a cynical story, much less that it’s a sign of a lack of respect for the comics.

And I’ve never actually heard genuine criticism. Most of what I’ve heard is people judging it for what it’s not, rather than what it is, or super subjective statements presented as fact. It’s more “Batman shouldn’t do this” than an honest evaluation of the movie itself and how that does or doesn’t succeed in expressing how he got to that point. It’s preconceived notions, not the movie itself.

#Anonymous #replies #Zack Snyder #DC Extended Universe #DCEU positivity

85 notes · View notes

travllingbunny · 5 years

Text

The 100 6x06 Memento Mori

Another late review from me, putting in one place all my thoughts about episode 6x06, from things that everyone has talked and posted gifs about a lot (like Bellamy’s emotional state) and had different stances on (such as, how you feel about Murphy and his character arc), to things that haven’t been discussed much (like some of my thoughts on the Flame and the Sheidheda plotline).

In the end, I talk a bit about my expectations and predictions for episode 6x07, Nevermind, which many will see tonight, and that I’ll get to watch tomorrow, and the following episodes.

I have huge expectations for Nevermind, but Memento Mori was a great set-up. I have to say, much as I loved other things in the episode (particularly grieving, emotional Bellamy and the hardest decision he ever had to make), my enjoyment of the episode rose by about 100% because of the last scene. Sometimes you don’t need to be surprised by a TV show: sometimes a reveal is something you expect and enjoy all the more when it finally happens. And oh, did it deliver. The scene was amazing, with the dreamy atmosphere, cinematography, the introduction to Clarke’s mind-wall (the prop department really outdid themselves with this one!), and the wonderful music. The 100 always has great, on-point musical choices, and this season has been one of the best in that regard.

Eliza Taylor continued to be amazing – maybe even better this episode than in 6x05, as Josephine was openly Josephine in front of some characters, continued to pretend to be Clarke in several others, with varying degrees of effort and success, and intentionally put on a pseudo-Clarke persona in front of someone who already knew she wasn’t Clarke, just to mess with his mind (the last one was reserved for Bellamy). While Josephine’s Clarke-act was absolutely terrible in 6x05 – because she didn’t even know almost anything about Clarke, so she was making blunders left and right – this time (after learning a lot about her from Murphy) she was, at times, a little more convincing and almost approached some version of Clarkeness, but this only produced the Uncanny Valley effect: it was like a skewed, caricatured version of Clarke and felt really, really creepy.

One such moment of Josephine playing a skewed version of Clarke was when she was fooling Raven, Emori and Echo. She was putting on Clarke’s serious, concerned look and tone of voice (Murphy must have coached her on all of that), but her phrasing at times still should have alerted them to her flippant attitude – as when she said that the whole murder and bodysnatching thing really lit a fire in Bellamy. Maybe that hint was too subtle - it was similar to her line “the Kane problem”, which Abby noticed, but Abby is Clarke’s mother after all and knows her better. Echo was surprised that Bellamy supposedly left by himself, not just that he didn’t ask her, but also that “Clarke” let Bellamy go by himself with the foraging party – but she was more concerned with Bellamy’s safety than she stopped to think much of Clarke’s behavior (and after all, she doesn’t know her that well compared to most others).

Josephine also used the same argument she tried to sell Bellamy in 6x04 and that served as more confirmation to him that she was not really Clarke – the whole “we have all done bad things, what right do we have to judge them, so let’s just do nothing and let the bodysnatchers continue doing their awful thing”. Real Clarke feels guilty and is critical of her own actions, but doesn’t start criticizing all of her friends unprompted and talking about how they’ve all done awful things, and certainly not in order to justify tolerating evil actions of someone else! But JosephineClarke’s argument is actually one that I have seen in the fandom – this idea that “there are no good guys”, that everyone is a villain, that Clarke and Bellamy and the rest of them are just as bad as the Mountain Men or the Primes (with some BS equations between completely different things such as “well, they all murdered innocent people” – so, apparently, defending yourself and your loved ones, the only way you can, from an evil overlord society in the process of horribly killing you to use your body parts, is exactly the same as brainwashing people into worshiping you as gods and stealing their bodies because you think you’re superior and should live forever!)… so therefore, they don’t have the right to fight against evil. After all, fighting evil also makes you do things like kill people, so why do anything? Just keep your head down and don’t do anything. But the show has (in the Abby/Jackson conversation in 6x05) addressed the fact that doing nothing and letting evil happen is as bad as doing evil. And there is something incredibly meta about Josephine, the show’s villain masquerading as the show’s hero Clarke, cynically uttering these lines to deceive our protagonists and make them complacent about the horrible things she and her family are dong, just as the same morally bankrupt argument is used by some fans to defend the show’s villains.

(In this episode, we learned even more (directly and through Xavier) about how awful the Sanctum society is – in addition to the fact they bodysnatch the hosts, they call people without the Nightblood gene (who therefore cannot happen to have Nightblood children) “nulls”. Nulls are not allowed to have children and get to do the lowest jobs, and there is also the sacrifice to the trees in the Offering Grove – which is apparently also “voluntary”, in the sense of people being brainwashed by a cult to sacrifice themselves.)

Bellamy never bought that this was really Clarke, and that Clarke would argue in favor of tolerating murder and bodysnatching, but Raven and the others swallowed it. It seemed to play right into Raven’s recent conviction that Clarke is not feeling guilty over anything and is just putting on an act, and into her self-righteous streak, which was in full force, even worse than before. Do I even have to point out the ridiculousness of Raven’s line that, unlike Clarke, she never did anything she regrets? I could start listing (as many of us have over the past week) facts such as: Raven tortured Lincoln with electroshocks, Raven tried to turn Murphy over to the Grounders to be murdered by prolonged torture for a crime that Finn had committed, Raven tried to get Clarke to kill Lexa and start a war over Finn even though that would have gotten many people killed including Clarke, Raven withheld medication from dying children because of rationing (and felt horrible about it), Raven made Clarke make a list of 100 people who would get to survive in Arkadia – while simultaneously bashing Clarke over it (“choosing who lives or dies is your specialty”), Raven gave Echo an OK to kill Shaw at one point, Raven participated in many of the hard and problematic things Clarke and the others had to do – blowing up Grounders on the bridge, burning 300 Grounders who had attacked them, etc., Raven was OK with potentially killing Raven left Clarke behind to die (and Clarke ended up alone on the deserted planet for 6 years as a result) and was ready to leave Bellamy, Monty, Emori and Murphy to die in the season 5 finale… Some of these things I don’t consider wrong under the circumstances, some of these were just one of the two bad choices – but that’s also true of most of the things Clarke has done. Being angry at Clarke for her recent betrayal is something I expected and was perfectly fine with, but being as hypocritical as Raven is now, that is really annoying. So what is going on with Raven now? Like many others, I haven’t enjoyed her characterization in season 6. It’s one of the few things I didn’t like this season. Murphy has also had his annoying moments, but he also has a real storyline, one that’s not just about being mean to Clarke. Raven currently does not. But maybe, as I’ve been hoping, this is all building up to a real character development and some sort of soul-searching. We have had many indications that Raven actually feels guilty and unworthy deep inside – Sinclair’s remarks to her in season 3, Shaw’s message “Tell Raven that she deserves happiness” – and that her high horse attitude is just a cover. I hope this is something that season 6 gets to really explore and resolve.

On the other hand, it was much more enjoyable to see Raven turning her anger and moral outrage at someone who really does deserve it – one of the Primes. And since Ryker is not a sociopath or narcissist, and does have the capacity for compassion and remorse, Raven’s words are, hopefully, going to make him rethink everything and realize he can’t go on like that. He’s been raised since teenage years and surrounded by people telling him that it’s OK to move from body to body and see others sacrifice themselves for you, but he’s over 200 years old and responsible for his own choices. And feeling sorry about hurting people is really meaningless if you go on and do the same thing again, without any intention to change. That makes you a hypocrite like Russell and Simone with their “thank you for your sacrifice” mantra said while murdering people who definitely didn’t make a choice to sacrifice themselves.

Speaking of which – Josephine really is devoid of any deeper feeling for pretty much anyone other than herself. We already saw it when she killed her “best friend” Kaylee Lee, but that was supposed to be a permanent death. Now she managed to convince her mother to wipe the entire Lee family. (Interesting that she referred to Russell as being led by the heart. The show is again going with the pseudo-parallel between Russell and Simone and Bellamy and Clarke, as in the parallel Power Couple shots in 6x03). Bye bye, four of the Primes, including one we got to know a bit better. I can’t say I feel sorry, since I think all the mind drives will have to be destroyed by the end of this season, so a definite end would be put to bodysnatching. Now there are 8 more Primes who are “alive”, but two of them are still just on the mind-drives and out of commission (the two members of Miranda’s family, whom we haven’t seen in the present), and Josephine got 4 empty mind-drives. She gave two as payment to Murphy for his part in coaching her to fool Abby and getting the others (mostly Bellamy) to decide not to take revenge for Clarke, she promised Abby one for Kane, and it still leaves one. But the other Primes would certainly not be happy if they found out about all these things – now it’s not just the fact that Russell and Simone skipped the line for their daughter, when Miranda’s loved one was next, but also that they permanently killed four of the Primes. A good way to defeat the Primes would be to start by turning them against each other. Just saying.

Abby and Murphy are two characters whose current role and actions are pretty controversial at the moment and that fans disagree on. Both of them are the most convenient target for Josephine to corrupt and get on her side due to their current issues. With Abby, the debates are mostly about whether she has realized that Josephine is not really Clarke, and is just playing along and planning to wake the people on the ship, or if she really has been fooled, which many hold against her. I’m really not completely sure, even after watching the episode twice and replaying the last shot of the scene between Abby and JC. Abby did indeed notice several weird things about “Clarke” and seemed on the brink of realizing the truth, but that time, Josephine really went for the jugular and used all the cards Murphy has taught her to play: guilt over her addiction, over cannibalism and the Dark Year, turning Jake over, failing Kane due to her addiction and indirectly causing his injury/death by indulging Vinson because of her addiction, her idealization of Kane which is a result of both love and guilt, and even her relationship with Clarke – the last card JC used was telling “her mom” that she cannot lose her. But during the hug, as we saw their faces, Josephine was not the only one who didn’t look like a loving family member: Abby’s weird, blank look could be read in different ways. And I’m sure this is exactly what the show is going for, ambiguity. We’ll probably only be sure in two episodes. Abby’s face almost made me believe the theory that she’s just pretending, but at the same time, it would be too easy if she simply goes to the ship to wake an army to come to Sanctum. Or maybe she almost knows it, but doesn’t want to admit it to herself? At the same time, Raven definitely still doesn’t know that Clarke is dead, and if Abby hasn’t figured it out, she still won’t learn it for some time.

On the other hand, it’s pretty clear where Murphy stands and what he wants, but fans seem divided over whether it makes him a bad guy, whether they hate him, and whether it is in character. I think it definitely is, and shouldn’t be surprising. Murphy certainly genuinely wants immortality – he straight up told Bellamy in 6x05 that he finds the idea appealing. While he’s always been motivated by his own survival, it used to be all about trying not to die any time soon. I don’t think it would have extended to wanting to live forever – until he died this season and saw what he thinks is “hell”. I don’t know if we’ll ever learn what he saw, or if it will remain a mystery, and just used to motivate him. His fear of going to hell is driving him, and, of course, he wants Emori as his eternal companion. (That sounded like something from vampire fiction, which is weird.) Now, that doesn’t mean that Murphy doesn’t also care about Bellamy, Raven and the others, including Clarke. I do think he was sad to learn of her ‘death’, but, of course, his reaction was never going to be as strong as Bellamy’s or Madi’s. He would only feel that way if Emori died. But keep in mind that Murphy doesn’t know that Clarke is still alive and can be brought back. From his point of view, there is no use in antagonizing the Sanctum people, and risking the lives of Bellamy, Raven, Echo, Jordan etc. and of course, Emori and himself, just to avenge someone who’s already dead. And he’s never been a person with deep ethical convictions who would care deeply about the morality of bodysnatching in general, or the lives of unknown people who mean nothing to him. I do think he cares about his friends, and that he wasn’t just doing what he needed to do for immortality, but what he thought he had to do to protect them, even from themselves –as I’m sure he thought while he was trying to manipulate Bellamy. Now, when he finds out that Clarke can be brought back, it’s only then that he will really be put into a dilemma to choose between friends and immortality/fear of death.

What can I say about Bellamy in this episode that hasn’t been said by so many other people already, both in reviews and meta and in hundreds of gifsets and videos? Even the released script pages confirmed what was so obvious. This was a great Bellamy episode, and Bob Morley’s best performance this season. While I have enjoyed most of Bellamy’s arc over seasons 5 and 6 (just as every other season), and while I disagree with fans who claim that we haven’t seen Bellamy be emotional since season 4 (he had a lot of emotional, angry, hurt, passionate, happy moments over the course of the second half of season 5), we haven’t seen this kind of outbreak of emotion in a very long time. We can only imagine how Bellamy grieved for Clarke after Praimfaya, but I think this was even worse for him – because it wasn’t her choice and her heroic act this time – she was murdered (as far as he knows), and because, after learning to love on, he got Clarke back and lost her again, just as they had finally fully emotionally reunited. And to make things so much worse, he has to look at this person who is nothing like Clarke, mocking him by walking around in Clarke’s body. Bellamy’s arc in this episode was all about his pain, grief and despair, and the way he had to be strong and reign in his anger and desire for revenge, for justice, for something other than having to be there among people responsible for these her death. I love the fact that, even shackled and tied, he managed to tear Josephine’s self-portrait. On top of it, he had to endure Josephine messing by propos(ison)ing him to “help each other get through it” (hmm) while putting on a pseudo-Clarke soft, caring face and voice (which felt so fake, like a caricature) – which made him turn around because he couldn’t even look at her. She could have almost killed him there, and I don’t even know what he would have done if she had tried, but Murphy saved him through his and JC’s manipulation of both him and Russell.

Was JC’s lack of concern over her daddy’s life just because she expected Bellamy to back down from killing him, or did she expect him to kill Russell? I tend to think she thought he wouldn’t kill him, but wasn’t too worried if he did. In any case, I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for Bellamy to decide to spare Russell and also agree to not take any actions against him and the Primes. And just like after Praimfaya, he decided to do “What Clarke would do” and what she would want him to do after her death – survive and try to keep all of their people alive.

Now, was their decision the right one? I think that deciding not to act out of revenge, prioritize that over survival and protecting people who are still alive, and especially, deciding not to get a lot of other people killed, was absolutely the right decision, and what Clarke would also do. Clarke could do all sorts of crazy and extreme things to protect her loved ones, but she never killed anyone out of revenge. However, that doesn’t mean that going along with the Primes is the right thing. Standing by and letting evil happen is not “being a good guy”. The Primes will keep killing and oppressing people and treating them like cattle if they are not stopped. And I don’t think Bellamy being for that in the long run. But right now, I think he feels defeated and has lost the will to live, rather than just survive and ensure his people’s survival. But everything will change when he finds out that Clarke is alive and can be brought back.

In the meantime, I really want to see Jordan’s reaction. He was MIA in this episode, but I don’t think he will be happy to play nice with the Primes, not just because of Delilah but also because he does have a strong moral compass and was horrified about bodysnatching.

Is anyone still pretending that Bellamy and Clarke are just BFFs? That’s a question I keep asking throughout the show. I’m sure that, if someone were to see just this episode out of the show, they would definitely conclude that Clarke was Bellamy’s girlfriend (wife?) that he is really in love with, while Echo is his good friend who works for him and may have a crush on him. Come to think of it, 90% of the show makes it look like that. He never seemed to think of his actual girlfriend while being broken up over Clarke, and Murphy never brought her up as a motivation for Bellamy to forego revenge and focus on his own survival and the reasons he has to live. Echo gave him a brief hug to try to comfort him, but Bellamy still left to grieve all by himself, away from all of them. He also once again rejected Echo’s suggestion (she assumed they would go and fight the Sanctum people) and instead chose the “What would Clarke do?” course of action.

At this point, I’m sure that the show is intentionally portraying their relationship like that, since it’s done that consistently, especially comparing Bellamy’s relationships with Clarke and Echo all season 6 – and the scenes where Echo gets some long-overdue character development have all been when she’s away from Bellamy. Echo figuring out that Clarke has been bodysnatched – not through JC’s behavior, as Bellamy, but based on other evidence, such as how Jade behaved – didn’t end up contributing to the plot, as everyone else already knew about Clarke, so it was there probably just 1) to confirm that Echo is indeed smart and perceptive enough not to be duped, as a spy is supposed to be, and, I think 2) to develop her relationship with Jade. These two could have an interesting dynamic, as both are soldiers/spies who define themselves by following orders. Echo threatened to kill Jade’s “master”, and during the eclipse, Emori taunted her that she was still just following another master’s orders (Bellamy now being her ‘master’) and this seemed to resonate with her. At the same time, this time, Echo showed that she does have a compassionate streak when she mercy-killed the guard who was being slowly eaten by the trees in the Offering Grove, in spite of Jade’s protests. It puts her in a completely new kind of dynamic – Jade is like an even more single-minded version of her old self. The fact that Echo didn’t kill Jade and instead promised to come back (she has to do it soon, though, before the trees get too deep into Jade!) suggests we’ll see more of that dynamic.

Bellamy had the hard task to tell Madi the news of her mother’s death. But Madi is the one person who is definitely not going to play nice and who doesn’t want to restrain her desire to “burn the whole place down” for revenge. The question I’ve seen brought up is, is the Sheidheda arc even necessary to motivate her? Isn’t an angry teenage girl with a head full of dead Commanders, most of whom believed in the “Blood must have blood” mantra, already enough? I think that Madi is going to take some extreme actions, or we are supposed to be afraid of what extreme actions she must take, and that this is why they wanted to give her an extra push – and another plot about “facing your demons”, with Sheidheda as a “devil on her shoulder” character.

The existence of Sheidheda also poses the question, why is it that the Grounders think that having the Flame in your head is a good thing for the next Commander, when at least one of the voices inside is one they fear and consider evil? When Titus said that the Flame makes the good and the bad in a person stronger – it is because Commanders literally have different voices, good and bad, inside their head. But really, how beneficial has the Flame “wisdom” proven to be, even without Sheidheda? Almost every time we learned about advice of past Commanders (with the exception of Lexa's in 5x12), and that wasn't often, it didn't seem to be good or useful advice. In 3x06, Lexa said that the past Commanders were upset with her new path of choosing to forego war and revenge. (Was it really all of them? Including Becca?) In 5x13, Clarke thought for a moment that Madi got the wise advice to not kill the prisoners of war from the Flame - but she didn't, she got it from Bellamy. And there's something about the Flame that never made sense and still hasn't been explained. It was created by Becca to help humanity by passing on knowledge and wisdom... and Becca was the first Commander. So how come Grounders managed to forget all about technology and history before the apocalypse? That never made sense even without the Flame. With it, and Becca's memories, they should have known even more about science and technology than the Mountain Men, and that could have helped defeat them. Mount Weather people were descendants of the US government employees, and some of them may have been great scientists, but Becca was a genius scientist. How did they instead turn into a medieval-level technology warrior society that worships violence and revenge? Something must have gone horribly wrong. And the only explanation seems to be Second Dawn, which seems to be behind the Grounder religion, and probably their world view as well. (That reveal really explained a lot.)

After we found out about Sheidheda from the trailer, there was some speculation to the effect of "since Grounder culture favors violence, war and revenge, what could have set this one guy apart, to the point that he is considered the Dark Commander?" From what we learned in this episode, Sheidheda was Chaotic Evil, whereas most Commanders were trying to stick to the tradition and were being either Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil or somewhere in between. This guy apparently said, Screw tradition, killed his mentor, and actually did whatever the hell he wanted. And, well, killing your Flamekeepers, no doubt, the exact thing that would make the Flamekeepers talk of you as a dark, terrifying presence. Flamekeepers are mentors to the Commanders who want to maintain control and influence over the charges, even if they are technically supposed to be their subjects. And what Sheidheda said about killing your mentor before they kill you.... he may have had a point? Not about Gaia, of course, but we've seen that with Titus and Lexa. He did try to control her, taught her toxic views like "Love is weakness", which are apparently generally a part of Flamekeeper teachings. He got upset when someone else - Clarke - started influencing Lexa with ideas contrary to his traditionalist Grounder ideas such as “Blood msut have blood”… and, well, he did kill his Commander, not intentionally, but it happened as an almost direct result of his desire to maintain his control over her and her views and political actions.

The B-plot with Octavia, Diyoza and Xavier had some big revelations in this episode, with the healing power of the sap from the withered trees, the temporal flare from last episode that has apparently withered Octavia’s arm and made it look like she is 150 years old (which, come to think of it, is roughly her chronological age) and the mysterious spirals that are signs of the Anomaly calling to her and Diyoza, as it apparently once called to Xavier. Now, some people speculate that Xavier is Gabriel, but I don’t believe that. His personality is nothing like Gabriel’s, from what we’ve seen of Gabriel so far, and I imagine Gabriel is even more guilty and sad these days – nothing like Xavier’s lively, snarky personality. I don’t think we’ll see these characters in 6x07, but (spoiler – if you consider titles of future episodes spoilers) we should learn what the Anomaly is in 6x08. I expect the bodysnatching story to be wrapped up in season 6, but I think this plot with the anomaly offers a lot of different possibilities, with its time-warping theme, and may continue to be addressed in season 7, kind of like the City of Light was set up in season 2 but fully developed in season 3.

The last scene was a perfect intro into the upcoming episode 6x07. I have huge expectations, because I have been wishing for a Clarke-centric, character-based episode like that for a long time. I love psychological SciFi stories, and Clarke fighting Josephine in her mind, while dealing with her own demons and her own past, seems like a dream. I must say, while it’s been fun analyzing and identifying various scenes and characters from the drawings from the walls of Clarke’s mind-space and various lines that were heard on top of each other and half-drowned in music, most of these are just Easter Eggs for hardcore fans. What matters most is what the show focuses on. In this episode (ignoring the sneak peeks), the scene focused on the drawing of Abby (as we heard lines from the very first scene of the show), then Lexa, and then Bellamy, which was an interesting choice. But I hope people don’t get too distracted by questions such as “which characters will be referenced and how many times”, “which past actors will have cameos”, etc. I don’t want the episode to be a clip show – I would love references to everything that has impacted Clarke, but what’s important is that it is all for the purpose of Clarke’s character development, her emotional state, her ability to fight her own demons and decide that she really wants to live and deserves happiness. And for her to be able to fight Josephine and signal Bellamy others that she is still there.

Rating: 9/10

youtube

#the 100 #the 100 6x06 #the 100 season 6 #memento mori #bellamy blake #clarke griffin #josephine Lightbourne #john murphy #raven reyes #abby griffin #madi #madi griffin #sheidheda #the flame #echo #echo kom azgeda #xavier #the primes #sanctum

9 notes · View notes

peachdoxie · 6 years

Text

My official opinion of Ralph Breaks the Internet, with spoilers:

Ralph Breaks the Internet was an uninspired and predictable film whose attempts at originality failed to live up to the standards set by its predecessor and Disney's reputation. In short, I very much disliked it.

Before I begin, I will say that I did not expect much from this movie. Its trailers did not encourage me. And yet, somehow, Ralph Breaks the Internet was even less than I expected.

I will not say that Ralph Breaks the Internet was a bad movie. It had fairly decent animation, editing, cinematography, etc. Nothing spectacular, but nothing particularly horrible either, as I've come to expect from Walt Disney Animation Studios.

What made me dislike Ralph 2 was the fact that it was a conglomeration of cliches and stereotypes, none of which were handled well. Many of the jokes and plot elements relied on classism, ageism, cynicism, emotional immaturity, and/or unimaginative attempts at meta-analytical humor that ultimately fell flat. It attempted to be original and clever but instead felt like a low-budget Saturday morning cartoon by recycling the same jokes and plot devices instead of coming up with fresher and more creative ones.

Here are some of the many examples I am talking about and why I had an issue with them, in approximately chronological order:

After Sugar Rush is shut down, Felix and Calhoun take in the fifteen child racers. As soon as the racers are "adopted" by them, the racers instantly start wreaking havoc and breaking things, which is played for laughs. Instead of being grateful that they have a home after their game was unplugged, the racers were instead rude and destructive.

Later, in Tapper's bar, Felix comes across Ralph, who offers him Vanellope's root beer since she didn't show up. Felix claims that he has never drank root beer before, but decides to start because being a parent is too stressful. It's played for laughs, but the root beer is obviously a stand-in for actual alcohol. Normalizing alcohol and getting drunk as a solution to stressful parenting, anyone?

Any time a joke was made about Ralph's size could be taken as a metaphor for the world not being open to people whose bodies and accessibility issues fall outside the norm. However, since practically every instance of this was played for laughs, the movie instead presents Ralph's struggles with everything being too small as a thing to laugh at, instead of something to take as a serious issue.

The character of JP Spammly was subtly classist in presenting a lower class persona as inherently distrustworthy because they run a sketchy website.

During Vanellope and Shank's race, one of them brushes past a homeless man and knock his cup of coins out of his hand. This is, again, played for laughs, showing that we're supposed to find it funny that a(nother) misfortune fell a homeless person.

Practically all of the jokes about Ralph's lack of understanding regarding the internet were stereotypes of adults who don't understand the internet. This isn't really an issue like some of my other bullet points, but I'm just really sick of this stereotype, since there are many adults out there who understand the internet fine, of not better than young adults and teenagers currently.

The interaction between the male player of Slaughter Race and his offscreen grandmother is an ageist cliche. Two, actually: that the parent figure in the situation doesn't respect the teen's hobbies, and that the teen doesn't respect the parental figure's desires for family time.

Knowsmore was rude and condescending and unnecessarily so. Yes, I know he essentially works a customer service job, and it is canonically thankless. That does not give him the right to rudely badmouth customers after they are whisked away because they didn't thank him (they're computer avatars with limited communicability, so it seems) and it most certainly does NOT give him the right to condescendingly comment on a woman's weight. The customer in question was searching for size small tights and Knowsmore made a rude comment implying that she shouldn't be looking at small tights.

The scene with the princesses bothered me. Yes, it has been on the internet already and discussed at length. But it really frustrated me how it reduced all of the characters to basic stereotypes of themselves. I also figured out why the "does everyone assume that all your problems can be solved by a big, strong man?" comment has bothered me so much. It's inherently hypocritical: the way that it's presented is as a feminist statement that the princesses don't actually need a big strong man to save them, and yet that's what they're defined by, as everyone exclaims "she is a princess!" when Vanellope agrees with them.

Ralph finds the Buzztube comments, which are all extremely negative. I know it's a joke to not go on the comments on anything because they're always awful, but that's also not actually true. Most of the comments are just inane or showing support of something. It was obvious what was going to happen as soon as Ralph walked into the comments area. Yes, yes, the lesson of "don't get bogged down by the few bad things people say" could be relevant, but it wasn't presented that way because Yessss didn't point out any other comments or strongly try to encourage Ralph of the opposite. She just accepted that as fact.

There are more examples of this type of thing, these little moments that were ageist, classist, or just plain rude that made watching Ralph Breaks the Internet unenjoyable overall. The issue that I have with things like these are that they present small but harmful stereotypes as things to laugh at. People learn by example. That's basic human development stuff. And so if they see jokes in media that show harmful things as funny, they're going to replicate them and contribute to the same kinds of biases and hurtful behavior. The sheer number of these together make up one reason why I didn't like Ralph Breaks the Internet.

The second major reason why I didn't like Ralph 2 is that the entire emotional conflict between Ralph and Vanellope comes from a series of miscommunications that could have VERY EASILY been avoided if they had just TALKED TO EACH OTHER AND LISTENED. This is repeated multiple times in the movie. Ralph is afraid Vanellope will leave him for Slaughter Race and won't be his best friend anymore. Vanellope wants to find something new and exciting in her life but is afraid that Ralph will be upset. We also see the cliched trope of character A (Ralph) overhears character B (Vanellope) say something out of context that hurts character A's feelings. And here is the thing - instead of talking it out, both Ralph and Vanellope make assumptions about what the other wants and get upset and yell about it.

I. AM. SICK. AND. TIRED. OF. THIS. TROPE. All it does is show two emotionally immature people without good introspection skills hash out their problems in an unproductive and hurtful way. Yes, I am aware that Ralph in particular has insecurity issues, since they made an elaborate metaphor out of that as part of the film's climax. I'm not saying that's bad, necessarily. BUT. This type of thing happens over and over in media and it is, quite frankly, a lazy and unoriginal source of interpersonal conflict. Also, recall what I said earlier about humans mimicking behavior they see. Instead of showing problem solving after conflict based on miscommunication, why not just skip all the unnecessary drama and show the characters talking out their problems ahead of all that? It will save me the frustration and eye-rolling, that's for sure.

And my last major problem with the film is the ending. Vanellope abandons Sugar Rush for Slaughter Race. In what world is that a reasonable ending? Yes, there's the message about following your dreams and whatnot. But it is a very immature and selfish decision on Vanellope's part to abandon the game she came from, especially right after the game broke. It was expressed early on in the film that the players' favorite racer is Vanellope. What do you think they'll do when she's just suddenly not there? Do you think they'll play the game as much? Is pursuing your "dream" really worth risking your game being unplugged again, Vanellope? Is it worth it after all the pain and hardships Ralph went through to buy that replacement Sugar Rush steering wheel so that your game isn't unplugged? It was a lame ending that made an already frustrating movie thoroughly dislikeable.

I'm disappointed. I expect better from Disney, given their history of recent films. Frozen was better than Ralph Breaks the Internet. Heck, I like Moana better, and I was very critical of it. Honestly, Ralph Breaks the Internet suffered from the worst sequelitis I've ever seen and is not a worthy successor to Wreck-it Ralph in any way.

Also, if any of you come at me and say "it's just a movie calm down" I will block you because obviously you lack the critical thinking skills necessary to understand this post and I don't feel like being the one to educate you on something as basic as "media affects reality and human behavior".

#anecdotes by peachdoxie #ralph breaks the internet

45 notes · View notes

hiimmisterowl · 5 years

Text

My Owl Point Of View #1

The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wild

How I first met the character of Dorian Gray

When I was young and still a little boy simple-minded, I had two movies in my library. One was « Around the world in heightening days » of Franck Coraci with Jacky Chan and « league of the extraordinary gentlemen » of Stephen Norrington with Sean Connery an adaptation of the comic books of the same name written and drawn by Alan Moore. I remember me watching over and over these two movies without knowing the references of these movies.

Here I had met for the first time, Dorian Gray. Despite the fact that the character is not in the original story, he had something appealing and he looked totally badass to me. Those character from my childhood movies (even if some of these movies were terribly bad) became my door to English literature years after without I have noticed it. Now that I’m older, I find this door like I would find dusty cardboard from an old relocation, and I’m opening it slowly with nostalgia but also with a great curiosity about what’s behind and Dorian Gray is the first character to rise behind this door.

Summary

Disclaimer

Introduction

The Duality of Fate

Where and Who is Wild

Art and Reality

Consequences and Morals

1.Disclaimer

In this review/analysis, I will expose only my interpretation and opinion of the Story and other elements of the novel.

2.Introduction

The Picture of Dorian Grey is a novel set in the London Victorian of the early nineteen century that centres on a beautiful young man clean of all the sins and temptations of the humankind who has recently inherited a fortune.

The novel starts with Basil Hallward, a painter, and Lord Henry who is a wealthy man of the City. Both of them meet in Oxford and are friends. Basil present to Lord Henry a portrait of a recent friend of Basil named Dorian Gray. This one has a very good influence on basil’s art. Lord Henry wants medially to meet him, and because the fate seems to be favourable to this meeting Dorians appears to be waiting at the door to come in so that basil can finish his portrait.

While Dorian is taking the pose Lord Henry is twisting the personality of Dorian by exposing hypothesis about how to fight temptation and he should yield to these temptations and enjoy his youth.

In the end, Dorian became very confused about Lord Henry words and wish that his portrait aged instead of him.

But the portrait will not just be aged, it will also take all the consequences of Dorian sins to come up.

3.The Duality of Fate

Lord Henry and Basil are both friends and opposite minds, They have a particular relationship.

Basil appreciate the beauty because the natural beauty of a being doesn’t last in opposition Lord Henry corrupt Dorian with the idea that :

« When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. »

Lord Henry and Basil could represent the demon and the angel that could stay on his shoulders to advise him, and where this interpretation seems to be correct is when Dorian decides to kill basil and the novel reach his climax.

Dorian can’t step back anymore from his sins. He is doomed.

4.Where and Who is Wild

Lord Henry and Basil are both two faces of Oscar Wild, and it seems more obvious after you look a little bit closer to who is Mister Wild.

Lord Henry is the cynical part of Wild, actually, this character would perfectly feet in « The importance of being earnest » published five years later. He is the perfect parody of the Victorian high society, he is the representation of a style of life: The Dandyism.

The Dandyism is a style of life typical of the Londonian upper-class consisting to be elegant, refined, impertinent and cynical

Basil is the most simple part of Wild, nice and full of good intentions. Basil doesn’t consider Dorian just as a friend, he loves him, he is obsessed by him.

What made the painting of basil so beautiful wasn’t the influence of Dorian, but the expression of love that basil had to Dorian transcribe through his art.

The fear that Basil had to exhibit the portrait of Dorian was because he is also afraid that people saw the admiration that he has for Dorian and in extension the love that he feels for him in a society where being homosexual is illegal.

5.Art and reality

In his novel, Wild is making many parallel between Art and Reality.

The first is obviously the picture of Dorian turning his sins and his ageing into Art, literally Art.

Also, there is Sibyl that is an actress that Dorian found in love but after her horrible performance Dorian admits that he found in love with the actress not with « Sibyl »

And to finish, there is the yellow book that Lord Henry sent to Dorian.

« His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him. What was it, he wondered. He went towards the little pearl-coloured octagonal stand, that had always looked to him like the work of some strange Egyptian bees who wrought in silver, and took the volume up. He flung himself into an arm-chair and began to turn over the leaves. After a few minutes, he became absorbed »…. « It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed. »

This book is the representation of Lord Henry influences, as Dorian says:

« It was a poisonous book »

These parallels between Art and Reality gives us subjacent questions:

Can our life became Art ?, Can we fall in love with Art ?, And How Art is influencing us?

Of course, these questions are philosophical questions, that Wild is rising in his novel and each of us is invited to found an answer.

However, Lord Henry(Wild) is giving us a very precise answer to the first question when he tells that to Dorian in the last part of the book:

« Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days have been your sonnets. »

6. Consequences and Morals

we spoke earlier about Dandyism and Lord Henry, but early in the book, Lord Henry speaks about Hedonism, an extended idea of the Dandyism.

Lord Henry define Hedonism to Dorian like that :

‘« Realize your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar, which are the aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. A new hedonism,—that is what our century wants. »

In some way, Lord Henry is trying to transform Dorian in his ideal of humankind. Someone who doesn’t care about Morality, Consequences and most of all ageing and death.

But you know the expression, « every action has its consequences » and sometime somehow you couldn’t avoid the Consequences anymore, they catch you every time and that’s what the picture of Dorian Gray represents.

Dorian thinks that after killing Basil, opium will be his loophole, but nothing can erase his sins, they are painted on canvas. So in an attempt to make his picture less « Sinsnical » he decides to don’t abuse of the young innkeeper’s daughter and guess what, it didn’t work. When Dorian goes to check his picture to see if now the painting was not dating the girl he didn’t abuse one day ago(humour)

The painting almost didn’t change, only a look of cunning and a wrinkle of a hypocrite added to the picture. And rather than confess the crimes he did, he prefer taking the knife that he used to kill the painter to kill the painting.

After stabbing the painting, Dorian killed what symbolized his art, his life.

« When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was. »

to conclude, I will take once again the words of Lord Henry:

« Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days have been your sonnets. »

In some way, Basil and Dorian didn't die, or not completely. They reached the posterity, they became immortal. Dorian Gray will always be young and beautiful in the masterpiece signed by Basil Hallward,a mysterious artist who disappeared.

Ps. It sounds like the plot of a novel by Agatha Christie.

#Oscar Wild #dorian gray #Mister Owl

2 notes · View notes

izzyovercoffee · 7 years

Text

my first initial thoughts on TLJ when saw it below the cut from conversation. super, super long, and lots of spoilers.

izzy complains about star wars

first thing: so the whole arc with Finn was pointless

you could actually cut out that entire arc and almost nothing would change there was no pay off and they failed completely, and it's ... not good writing in general

the pay off didn't have to be success, and in fact they should have still failed completely

the pay off SHOULD HAVE BEEN Rose and Finn connecting with the downtrodden underclass of Canto Bight, and inspiring hope for a new rebellion in the sequel, for one example

the pay off SHOULD HAVE BEEN stormtroopers SEEING that they had an option to leave, that Finn left and survived, and not only survived but kicked Captain Phasma's ass and escaped

and other stormtroopers SEEING this and realizing they are not bound to stay, they dont HAVE to remain in the First Order, and rise up

as it stands, Finn ... goes through the same bull shit character arc of the first movie, nearly gets killed off, and doesn't even have ONE line of dialogue with Rey.

he’s constantly brutalized and that brutalization is played for laughs, compare to the treatment of Kylo and his injuries which are in no way treated as funny. multiple people have said this better, but you know what? they’re right

Rose and Finn also save a bunch of slave animals that will probably be recaptured but don’t do shit for the slave children which they could, actually, save ... and we’re supposed to buy that one brief moment in which Rose goes “I’m with the resistance” and gives one kid a ring, is supposed to be inspiring when in actuality they did not do anything for those kids and even more likely got them into a huge hell of a lot more trouble because those kids were responsible for those animals

Rian’s explanation for the kid at the end? makes even less sense, as he attributes it to Luke Skywalker who wasn’t even there as opposed to Rose and Finn, who were.

second thing: Poe Dameron is almost completely OOC

but not OOC in a way that I can buy, but OOC in a way that is super stereotypical and typecast “hotblooded latino men” ... who gets taught a lesson by a white woman ... but the lesson doesn't even matter because he still retains / takes command when they're on Crait anyway.

he gets a slap on the wrist for shitty overall behavior and it has no weight to it because by then nearly everybody died anyway and so he has to take command anyway.

it only makes sense not as Poe as established by TFA (which I did rewatch yesterday) and expanded canon, but as a young, hot headed, specifically latino boy/man. incredible.

third thing: "The Jedi need to die" but the reasons brought up aren't the actual, real, serious hypocrisy that the Jedi Order are even responsible for.

instead, it's shit they can't actually be held accountable for, ie. allowing Sidious to rise to power --- literally something they couldn't have prevented. there's no mention of the actual things they're at fault for doing (accepting and using an army of slaves, acting as the arm of a corrupt government that did in fact hurt harm or otherwise look away from corruption in the galaxy)

by presenting it like that it frames the very idea of the Jedi needing to die out, it frames the valid concern that they were hypocritical, arrogant, and vain ... as ridiculous and borne out of a cynical and broken man's depression, instead of very real, very legitimate problems they contributed to in the prequel trilogy

fourth thing: the lesson we're supposed to take away is that we cannot hold onto the past as it leads us to destruction ... but that lesson is completely and totally undermined because Rey still has the books ...

the original Jedi Lexicon from the Old Republic books Luke thought he destroyed, but they're .... still on the Falcon? ?? Finn takes out a blanket to cover an unconscious Rose, and the books are in that very drawer

fifth thing: I also just ... don't buy Luke's attempt on Kylo's life. Luke went out of his way, defied everyone and everything, even the rest of the galaxy, to save Vader ... even when Vader absolutely gave him no reason to believe in him.

so he ... saw the darkness in Kylo and decided to ignite his lightsaber over him in the middle of the night? like, forget about the EU, forget about all of Legends, who cares! just the original trilogy, I would never believe Luke would do that to his own nephew.

I mean, maybe AFTER the destruction of the Temple, or literally ANYONE ELSE in the Jedi Order would do that to Kylo

but BEFORE?

Luke, Luke I don't give a fuck about what's expected of a Jedi Jedi Luke?

like .......... all they had to do was like ... just say or frame it as Luke was tricked by Snoke, say that Snoke fouled his senses or made him see the “future” and confuse it with the at-then present. that’s what the dark side is about. they already had MULTIPLE visions, they already set up complex subterfuge by mind fuckery. there’s no reason that they couldn’t have indicated that Luke only needed a little push, a little bit of confusion, a little bit of smoke and mirrors.

but Luke acting alone, of his own volition? that doesn’t make sense. and like, I don’t even like Luke, but the characterization is straight up inconsistent, in a way that totally fails to grasp the AWESOME opportunity to really SHOW HOW SNOKE IS TERRIFYING.

but instead they ... didn’t do that.

sixth thing: I feel like this movie did not help with the flack Rey was getting.

"she's too perfect" or "she knows too much too fast" wasn't fair in TFA because in TFA there's a foundation to believe she would know how to fight, talk to droids, repair things, fly, whatever ...

but in this movie? she didn't get an actual training montage with Luke, she didn't actually get much from that whole experience. her connection with Kylo wasn't explored in a way that would clarify how she might suddenly know multiple types of lightsaber forms

she's presented even more as a Mary Sue but without the world building to support her skills. people already hated Rey before ... and they WILL hate her more now because of this lazy writing.

this lazy writing that’s specifically done to maneuver her into a position to do the most emotional labor for not one but two grown ass fucking adult men

this is supposed to be about her, and instead she becomes sidelined in her own story for two men too fucked up to do their own emotional labor.

and the thing is ... we're not presented with any reason for her to still be good, even in the face of abandonment by Luke. we don't have a reason to believe Rey would be as good as she is ... not that good people have to prove they are good, but that Rey came from literal desert hell shithole, surrounded by horrible people who do horrible things, was RAISED by horrible people doing horrible things

and it's hard to break that self interest when it's one born of a need for survival in the worst situations for over a decade ... and we ... don't get a reinforcement of that for her, and we do actually need it

IF it was revealed Luke was her father, somehow, in some way? even if Luke didn't know ... hell, even if no one knows except us, the audience? then ... then it would have made sense

not just because that goodness was who Luke used to be, but because they would have had that connection between them in the same way Luke continuously tried to reach out to his father and was rebuffed

but instead we have ... Rey No One, from Nowhere, born from Nothing .......

not only is that not a good answer, but we cannot even trust it because that "answer" comes directly from Kylo Ren, someone we cannot trust, because Kylo has every reason to lie to Rey to make her join him ... and again it's just ... playing into the confusion of "what is the lesson, exactly?" between letting go or holding on to the past

because letting go of the past? is not what Rey is doing. she goes from seeking a connection with could be / would be parents, to pursuing this forced connection between her and Kylo, and then bouncing because he betrayed her. it's the past repeating itself, and then she ... still has the books so the Jedi Order persists

it cannot die and be reborn because it wasn't fully destroyed in the first place.

sixth thing: they also straight up dropped Phasma completely, she shows up there's a quick fight and she’s dropped in some fire and we can HOPE she survives that because like hell does it make sense for her to die right there, what the fuck?

and she could have been a GREAT ANTAGONIST but they completely threw her in there as a side note one note character, in what I totally assume was a result of decimating Finn’s original storyline to begin with.

seventh thing: it would have been REAL NICE if Rose didn’t straight up fuck up Finn right in the beginning, and have that whole stun him so he crashes HIS FUCKING WOUND INTO THE WALL and play that for jokes.

WHY do we constantly have to do this. WHY. WHY can’t I be allowed to have my SEAsian representation WITHOUT a heavy dose of antiblackness? WHY is that apparently impossible? this is exhausting.

#here comes the salt #TLJ spoilers #SW spoilers #star wars spoilers #whew im done complaining

20 notes · View notes

blue-rose-89 · 7 years

Text

RWBY Vol 5 Chapter 11 (The more the Merrier)

Also known as the “Crap hits the fan” Episode.

What did we Learn.......

1. Qrow, RWY, JNR, and Osca-pin have arrived at Haven academy and thier suspicions of Lionheart are made clear to them and the audience. Lionheart has been on Salem’s side since day one and he’s been responsible for Cinder’s team entering the festival, throwing Amber under the bus (who else would’ve known about her whereabouts?), and killing most if not all the Huntsman and and Huntresses in Mistral. Remorseful as Leo may be I’m going be very surprised if everyone forgives him as if nothing happened. Remember that there’s a little girl out there that never going to see her mother again because of him.

2. Leo is a Lion Faunus. His weapon appears to be a shield that shoots out Dust combos.

3. According to Raven, Ruby inherited Summer’s unyielding optimism (”You sound just like your mother”).

For those of you who were hoping that Ruby’s idealism would be challenged at some point then you’ll find it in this scene. Ruby tried to do the “We’re here because of teamwork and you should join us.” speech on Raven and it doesn’t work. Whatever Ozpin did to Raven back when she was member of the Ozlumenati, Raven is not the strong and determined woman that Tai fell in love with. The Raven Branwen we’re seeing (at least right now because there’s definitely more to her than what we see on the the surface) is a cynical, selfish, hypocritical coward who will say anything that will help her sleep at night.

3. We get a couple of fights. We have:

-Cinder vs Jaune: The fight we’ve been wanting to see since the day Pyhrra was killed by this woman.

-Yang vs Mercury: Round 2

-Ruby vs Emerald: The not so Weiss vs Emerald fight we were hoping to see.

-Ren and Nora vs Hazel: The fight we saw in the intro

-Weiss vs Vernal: The fight in which Weiss proves that she’s more than just a part of Schnee family. She is Weiss “The Huntress” Schnee.

-Osca-pin vs Lionheart: The “fighting the traitor” fight

-Qrow vs Raven: The “you’re dead to me fight.” fight.

4. Emerald confirms that she sides with Cinder out of obligation when she saved her from the streets. I wonder if her loyalty towards Cinder will change if the Fall Maiden ends up abandoning her.

5. Cinder once again proves just how much of a horrible human she is during her fight with Jaune. She “forgets” who Jaune is. She taunts Jaune when she does “remember” him. She gets mad when Jaune lands a hit on her face. And to add more salt to the wound, she stabs Weiss just hurt him.

Cinder will not get redemption no matter how sad and sympathetic her backstory might be. She does terrible things to people because she can.

And that thing about Weiss.....

[See more under the cut]

Weiss Schnee is not going to die

Things seem bad right now but come on, guys. Do you honestly think they’re going to kill Weiss when:

1. She’s one of the main characters.

2. Team RWBY hasn’t been reunited yet. This volume has been building up for this reunion so wouldn’t killing Weiss be counter productive?

3. If we ever return to Atlas then there’s a chance that she’ll be at the centre of a subplot that revolves around her family. Don’t you want to see Weiss stick it to jerk-wad father and bratty brother?

If you thought that Vol 4 was a waste of time then can you can bet that Vol 5 will be an even bigger waste of time if Weisss die before you can resolve the plot threads I’ve mentioned above.

Again, calm down guys. Weiss is going to be fine. I’m sure that this will be the point where Jaune’s Semblance will be revealed to have some sort of healing ability and he’ll save her.

#rwby #rwby volume 5 #rwby vol 5 #rwby spoilers #rwby weiss #rwby ruby #rwby jaune #rwby raven #rwby cinder

10 notes · View notes

sharoncantstandhercarter · 7 years

Note

There is no logical reason for Sharon to help Steve in CW, and the sad thing is I don't think M&M even realize it, they viewed her as a plot device that much. Steve's desire to save the Winter Soldier only makes sense if you know everything Steve, Sam, Nat, Fury, and Maria know. If you know that he's Bucky. No one else is going to think Steve's desire to save the WS is a good idea. There is no reason for Sharon, who was never involved in the WS plot of TWS, to commit treason to save him. [1/5]

Sharon can only reasonably know what the public and what the average agent would know about the WS. In CW, it looks like his identity as Bucky has been revealed along with the fact that he was Hydra’s top assassin, but no one seems to take the idea that he’s a victim seriously. Why would Sharon, who is famously one of the most cynical characters in Marvel, who thought he couldn’t be saved in the comsics, suddenly want to help Bucky here? It’s illogical and out of character. [2/5]

And Steve wouldn’t have told her Bucky’s story. One, it’s not his place to talk about the most personal and horrible details of Bucky’s life. Two, he barely knows Sharon at the time she helps him. Why would he tell her? And he has no reason to believe telling her anything about Bucky would help his situation either, so there’d be no reason to. Sharon arguably didn’t even know Steve wanted to save Bucky at the time she gave him the info, unless she was listening to his call with Nat. [3/5]

She just decided to commit treason to save a hydra assassin because he used to be Steve’s friend. Or, if the deleted scene at Peggy’s funeral reception has been kept in, because Sharon wanted to sleep with Steve. No other reasons are given. Sharon certainly doesn’t tell us what she’s thinking, so there’s no reason to believe that she did it for justice or integrity. And the worst part is that if the writers had used Maria instead, it would have worked perfectly. [4/5]

Maria knows about Bucky, she knows what Steve has been trying to do. She and Fury are Steve’s most likely source of intel on Bucky leads, as Steve was trying to keep his search a secret from the team, esp Tony. She works for Tony, who was working with Ross, so she could have given him the info, given him the gear, and then be perfectly placed to bring Steve and Tony back for IW. But the writers needed Sharon for the no-homo, so they turned Sharon into a tool and threw Maria away. [5/5]

This is so well thought out and makes so many excellent points. I’d like to make a few of my own. Even more so than Sour Sharons constant dragging of Hayley, perpetual desire to belittle Steggy, upset over Peggy getting too much time, and persistent lies about Sharon’s role in WS being given to Nat, it’s Maria where you truly see their misogynism.

If Maria had been given Sharon’s few actually actions in CW, the plot would have made sense. Hell, if Maria had been the one that kissed Steve, it still would have seemed rushed, but at least not completely out of content. They knew and respected each other. There was at least a friendship there, unlike Sharon who was a stranger who came into Steve’s life on a lie.

The Sour Sharons claim they are all about defending women not being treated well in the MCU, but their absolute lack of acknowledgment of Maria and how it would have made actual sense for her have Sharon’s very limited actions in the movie, really shows how hypocritically they are.

You are also very correct in saying Steve would never tell Sharon about Bucky and his history. Not only did he not know Sharon, he had no reason to trust her. This is the woman who spied on him and never apologized, after all. She did that on orders. She could, and for all appearances would, pass Steve’s confidences up the chain of command if asked. She’s proven her orders mattered more to her than her morals in the past. Steve had no reason to trust her.

And then there is this:

“[Sharon] just decided to commit treason to save a hydra assassin because he used to be Steve’s friend. Or, if the deleted scene at Peggy’s funeral reception has been kept in, because Sharon wanted to sleep with Steve. No other reasons are given.”

This is the main problem with Sharon. You can’t from the context of the movie assume that she helped Steve for any noble reason. She helped him without a full picture of the dangers she could be putting the public in because she wanted to bed Steve. That’s it. That’s canon. And that’s why nobody likes or respects Sharon. Her in movie actions all center around sleeping with a man. Period.

#sharon carter #agent 13 #agent thirteen #shield agent 13 #agentxthirteen #sharon carter defense squad #sharon carter deserves better #sharon carter appreciation day #sharon carter appreciation month #scburgers13 #scburgers #scad #scam #staron #steve and sharon #captain13

1 note · View note

theironweasel · 7 years

Text

Fullmetal Alchemist: And Why I’m worried Avatar has spoiled me.

SPOILERS!

This was the series more than any other anime I had seen that I was hoping that could live up to the quality of the Avatar franchise. It was an Action/Adventure series about the same length as both series and it was even TV-PG, allowing even darker situations and themes, and it had a strong starting concept. Once again, however, I was ultimately disappointed.

The Humor. This is a rather small complaint in the grand scheme of things, but I felt the humor in FMA fell pretty flat most of the time. I think there are two reasons for this, first most of the jokes are just repeated time and time again and are the one comedic note a character has. Edward gets mad when someone calls him short, Armstrong has his weird physique obsession, and Hughes loves to go on about his daughter. The other issue is the tonal shifts the humor creates. I’d describe the humor in FMA as exaggerated, with background changes, chibiesque faces and other anime humor tropes. However this doesn’t really gel with the serious and dark tone of the rest of the series, this is why the humor seems to work better in the small number of “comedy” episodes such as the Flame Alchemist. Compare this to both Avatar series. In each, characters also tend to derive their comedy from one particular place, but it isn’t limited to a single joke. Sokka has his cynical sarcasm, Toph has her blind jokes, Katara has her deprecation of her brother, Bolin has his naive silliness, and even Mako get’s his overly uptight attitude and awkwardness. But they don’t just repeat the same joke over and over and the reactions of others is also a huge part of the jokes, from annoyance to anger to confusion. Additionally the jokes don’t tend to break from the tone too much. Sokka’s sarcasm is usually a result of the bad situations he tends to wind up in, and Katara tends to get on Sokka’s case when she is annoyed at him for some reason. These jokes are also much more subdued and realistic, they feel like real human beings who have these personalities would say these things in the situation they are in. In FMA, most of the time, it feels like characters become caricatures whenever their humor moments emerge. Also, a lot of humor relies on the reactions of other characters with FMA it's very easy to predict the over the top reactions that will happen. One of my favorite jokes in Avatar is when Bolin is checking to see if Aiwei is in his house “He's not home. Or he's hiding in there. (gasps) Or he's invisible.” To which Mako gives him an amazing look of annoyance that is simply expressed in a pursed mouth and a cocked eyebrow but the timing and sincerity of it always make me laugh.

2. The Pacing. FMA has a problem I rarely even talk about or notice, because I tend to find as long as the pacing is consistent it doesn’t matter much how fast or slow it is. With FMA the pacing is all over the place. At first The Pacing was quite good, letting a single story last only 2 episodes at most, but shifting from a continuing arc to one off episodes relatively well, though the time skip is bizarre. However this changes once the Lab 5 arc begins. 4 episodes are almost entirely in one building over one night with a continuous story that creaks along at a snail's pace. This was the beginning of the longer arcs that would mostly comprise the rest of the show. The worst offender was the Izumi arc which lasted 8 episodes, and the locations that were visited were: An island, a house, some streets, a meat shop, a military base, a bar, a mansion and some sewers. Basically each episode averaged one new location. By comparison, the Ba Sing Se arc in ATLA minus Appa’s Lost Days, was 7 episodes and covered many more locations: The Drill, the outer walls, the lower ring, a tea shop, Zuko’s apartment, the Gaang’s house, the palace, Lake Laogai, a zoo, a haiku club, a restaurant, a fountain area, a spa, The Dai Li headquarters, The Jasmine Dragon, The Water Tribe camp, The Eastern Air temple, The Catacombs and several other locations. Additionally, The entire second half of Book 2 could be considered a single arc that’s 11 episodes long from The Library to The Crossroads of Destiny, however while there is an overarching plot, each episode also has it’s own plot where a number of aspects are resolved each episode, making each feel like a complete story even if the larger story is only slowly developing. FMA has a habit of arcs essentially being one story broken into a number of parts which tends to kill the pacing. It could be argued that LOK is essentially 4 season long arcs going from 12-14 episodes each. While this is technically true, each episode feels independant from each other while also building on the overall plot. While people complain that the pacing gets slow in the middle of Book 2, it isn’t as bad as some of the FMA arcs and bounces back quite well in the second half. And Book 3 is one of the best examples of a slow buildup with an amazing payoff that I’ve ever seen.

3. The Villains. I’m going to be blunt here, the villains of FMA are pretty bland and boring, which is a real shame.There really isn’t much going on with these villains, at best they aren’t completely one dimensional and have some tragedy in their backstory. At worst they have one, continuous boring note they hit and that's it. This is such a waste given the naming convention for most of the villains. We have 7 villains named for the 7 deadly sins, there is so much that could have been done with this, exploring the nature of these concepts from the obvious to the imaginative, to the subtle. We could have seen how a being that is supposed to be an embodiment of a vice interacts with humanity, or how these supposed vices could also be virtues in certain situations. There are a million things that could have been done with this, but for the most part this just plays out as: a guy who will eat anything, a woman who dresses kind of sexily, and a woman who talks like she just woke up. One of the strengths of Avatar are the villains though each series handles them in different ways. First, ATLA tends to have more traditional villains, save for Zuko, though Azula teeters the edge between traditional and humanized, though this is what makes her one of the best villains in fiction by combining pure evil with humanity and tragedy. Back to my point though. Most of the villains are pretty simple, and all of them are essentially aspects of Ego. This is the exact opposite of FMA, taking one concept and exploring it in different ways. Zuko is about the infliction of one's ego on another person and how that can screw someone up and learning how that ultimately, feeding that ego won’t lead to real contentment. Zhao is a bully who enjoys inflicting suffering on others to boost his own ego and his actions both for and against his nation's interests are simply to serve his delusions of grandeur. Long Feng is all about control as an extension of his ego, he rose up through society to prove himself and demanded complete control of Ba Sing Se as an extension of himself. Azula is about the control of Ego as well as how it becomes a defense mechanism to replace a lack of love from those around her, showing how it is ultimately unsustainable because when it is stripped away there is nothing left. Finally, Ozai represents the power hungry nature of Ego and how it will never be satisfied, abusing and manipulating those around him for power and eventually being driven close to madness by a belief in his own power and invincibility. I love this aspect of ATLA as it examines all the aspects of Ego from subtle to extreme, with Ozai being the climax and showing just how terrifying and horrible an absolute devotion to Ego is. LOK takes an opposite approach, each villain represents a different ideology that is taken to an extreme but also humanizes them more than in ATLA. Amon represents how a devotion to extreme equality is misguided as it requires punishing the naturally gifted even though they may choose to use their gifts to help others (Like the Krew) and that in any political movement a figurehead is required and it can be the ultimate weakness. On the other hand it also shows how Amon started as a good person whose ideals were warped by abuse and even though he wants to try and start again he is ultimately killed because of the inevitability of repeating the mistakes of the past, while he may want to change in the moment, all it takes is temptation for the whole thing to start over again. Unalaq is a pretty boring villain but at least he does believe in the need for spirits to be a part of the physical world only taking it to an extreme. And we at least got Vaatu as a pretty cool embodiment of ultimate Darkness and Chaos. Zaheer is extremely interesting in how humanized he is without giving him any real backstory. All this comes from his actions which reflect someone who cares deeply about his friends and loved ones and genuinely wants to help people, but is also ruthless and willing to do ANYTHING to get his way even if it is hypocritical. He also represents a kind of violent Individualist Anarchism that is relatable in how it advocates for total freedom in the midst of an extremely oppressed society. However, it fails to account for how people, especially those who have been oppressed for a long time, don’t tend to act responsibly. More importantly, most people want safety more than freedom and are willing to turn to a horrible dictator to feel safe if necessary. Which brings me to Kuvira, a representation of Fascism who emphasizes Strength, Order, and Military might, from her jackboots to her mechanized army, with a face that could cut glass and an intimidating voice that will make you pee your pants. Seriously, while Hitler was a powerful Orator he didn’t have much else going for him, Kuvira is like if an Übermensch was also the Fuhrer. But beyond that, while her humanization is limited, the final reveal of her character while minor, ties all of her actions together as someone desperately seeking validation in opposition to her abandonment complex. Seriously, look at how long I went on giving just a brief description of each of the villains of Avatar and I could go into much more detail. FMA’s villains are so boring that I could use the same space to write about every single detail we know about all of the villains from backstory, to powers, to motivations and I would at most miss a few minor details.

3. The Plot. The plot starts out simple and interesting, however it eventually becomes way too convoluted with multiple factions with different motivations and goals that aren’t always made apparent so that we aren’t always certain what is going on and why. While it is okay to have some of these things, too much and you start becoming unsure what exactly is going on in relation to everything else. Another unfortunate effect of this is that there are a number of plot points that revolve around one group knowing some information that other groups don’t know. Again while occasionally okay, it is done too much. ATLA has a very simple plot with only a few twists occasionally, but for the most part, most episodes are self-contained stories so it’s difficult to get lost. LOK has more complicated plots, but each one only lasts 12-14 episodes and there is still plenty of stories that wrap up well in one or two episodes and the plots are all pretty interesting and engaging.

4. The Characters. This is more of a mixed bag, I like both Edward and Alphonse and think the relationship between them is pretty great. I do wish the show had taken more advantage of this and focused more on it, because the closest I came to crying watching this show was early on when Alphonse quietly lamented to his brother how he can’t feel anything anymore, specifically he can’t even find physical comfort in his own brother. However there are way too many side characters and most of them are kind of boring and onenote. A huge red flag for me is when Hughes died, this was probably the most likeable of the side characters and this should have been gut wrenching, but I only got a little misty eyed and mostly because of the kind of exploitative child crying during his funeral. It also feels like a number of characters who were supposed to have a bigger arc really didn’t, like Scar who winds up not really changing at all and stupidly plays into the villains’ plans. ATLA was pretty smart in knowing how to handle characters, have a small number of complex main characters with a ton of minor characters with a lot of personality who aren’t seen often, so they are memorable but their schtick isn’t over used. LOK didn’t have quite as interesting main characters, but made up for it with great side characters such as Lin Beifong, Tenzin and Varrick.

5. The Fights. While decent, I got rather tired of Ed using his arm blade to fight and all of the other Alchemists using just one ability the same way over and over. While I understand the specialization of the Alchemists, I wish they would use other abilities more or use their specialization in more creative ways. Avatar was always excellent about coming up with creative ways to use bending from the specializations, to just the imagination of how to use bending from utilitarian such as using sweat as water, to the fantastic, such as firebending magic shows.

6. The Tone. While FMA is praised for it’s dark tone, I think it has a habit of kind of wallowing in it’s darkness too much, especially in regards to the Ishvalan war. While it’s good to have dark moments and even an overall dark tone, I found FMA to not really utilize it’s darkness well. I often felt like the darkness was just dragging everything down into a kind of depressing miasma. The best example I can give with Avatar is Korra Alone which is the most consistently depressing episode of the entire franchise but it is all born out in Korra’s character whereas with FMA it’s mostly worldbuilding/ character development for side characters and doesn’t go into it enough to really justify how relentlessly dark it can get.

7. Winry. Ok this mostly comes up in one episode: Her Reason, but it is essentially just an exaggeration of her normal problems. She comes off as selfish, conceited, and acts like the world revolves around her. She doesn’t consider the emotions of others and never apologizes when she makes a mistake, letting those around her take the blame. At best she just comes across as a kind of boring love interest. Compare this to Avatar, where even the most love interest focused characters such as Yue, Suki and Opal are still pretty strong characters even if they aren’t super deep. And they have the ability to rebuff their love interests if they are acting like jerks without resorting to violence, something that Anime characters seem to have difficulty doing.

8. Izumi. OH MY GOD. If there is one thing I HATE about FMA it is Izumi. She is hateful, hypocritical, uncaring and oh yeah ABUSES CHILDREN! Now I get that in a dangerous world sparing is necessary even if they get their butts’ kicked. However, leaving two prepubescent boys on an island by themselves for a month with a guy who kicks the crap out of them IS ABUSE and no life lesson is worth the trauma that would have resulted from this in real life. There is also the insufferable tendency of the show to follow up her abuse with kindness which is the exact thing an ABUSER would do to fuck with their victims emotions. I could go on for awhile about Izumi, but instead I will compare with Avatar. Iroh is one of the most amazing characters in fiction, at first he may seem like the wise old mentor stereotype but it's quickly apparent that he is a bit of a goofball, but also deeply kind and caring, even putting up with his largely ungrateful nephew. And as we learn, Iroh used to be a very different person and his journey reflects the journey of other characters. In LOK we have Tenzin who is a rather flawed mentor in that he takes himself way too seriously and is rather inflexible in his ways. However he deeply loves his family and culture, learns a lot over the course of the series, and while he is a bit stiff he is also kind of a doormat so that even when he is acting his worst, it never comes across as malicious because if people were really fed up with him they could just ignore him and all he would do is harumph.

As for the Movie, all I will say is that while I liked what it did with the kind of silly plot point at the end of the series. However I don’t think it did enough with it, I wish that most of if not all of the characters had been universe swaps. And in addition, I wish it did more with this concept, turning Hughes into a stick in the mud, single, Nazi was a bad move. It would have been fascinating if they kept the same characters but showed how might they react in a vastly different situation. For example what if Hughes was his usual self, with a family, and because of this he is terrified that the weakness of Germany is a threat to his family, hence why he would reluctantly join up with the Nazis. Ideas like this could have given a lot of depth to the story. Oh, and the villain sucks. Yes FMA made a dimension hopping Nazi boring, with her entire motivation tying into the on the nose moral of “Racism is bad M’kay?”

However, despite all this, I don’t think Avatar has spoiled everything for me. When I look back to Trigun I remember how invested I became in the characters to the point of being moved to tears on multiple occasions and I consider Vash, Wolfwood and Milly to be characters I will always remember and love.

#fullmetal alchemist #edward elric #alphonse elric #winry rockbell #izumi curtis #Avatar The Last Airbender #legend of korra #korra #aang #bolin #iroh #uncle iroh #tenzin

2 notes · View notes

kamiyandisease-blog · 7 years

Text

INFO

Age: 16 Birthday: Unknown Eye Color: Grey Hair Color: Black Height: 5'6 (168cm)

Personality: Seeing how he projects himself on the surface, Touma doesn't exactly appear as the most interesting fellow on earth. At least, this is only what we see on the surface as he is actually far more complex and complicated than what he makes himself out to be. His actions depending on the situation can become really unpredictable, but he still can be a fairly simple guy when there's nothing huge going on. If you were sitting in a classroom with him, he would be that one person who is staring absentmindedly outside of the window when everyone else is joking around or he'd be sleeping in the middle of a lecture. His classmates tend to view him as a pretty cynical, aloof and lethargic person for example. He has a somewhat lazy outlook on life and does not seem to have any motivations beyond that. But in reality, Touma is actually pretty intelligent when it comes summoning up past lessons in class. For example, he was shown to be really good at physics during the World War III arc. But since bad luck follows him around, he can never get a break with getting through school without something horrible happening to his homework, him getting attacked by a magician, his freeloading nun getting kidnapped, his home city being placed under attack by an entire group of magicians or even being in the middle of a world war where magic and science are clashing for the right of dominance. The most eccentric thing about him is the fact that he always gets caught in the middle of some kind of misfortune. It can be small bad luck like losing all of his money to a soda machine or huge bad luck like him nearly getting killed by a robber whenever he was only a child. The misfortune that he was attracting gotten so bad that he was treated as a freak show in his hometown and his father had to move him to Academy City. Because of that, Touma could be protected from the harsh realities of the world and Academy City's science could analyze why Touma is such a magnet for misfortune. And the main focus of all his problems is the power within his right hand. He desires a normal life, but the ability that resides in his hand rejects the chances of that happy opportunity. As long as Touma has that power, then he feels that he will have to deal with misfortune for the rest of the life. Touma has a special ability that cannot be measured or detracted through Esper power tests. In Touma's eyes at the start of the series, his right hand is completely useless to him since it kills any good luck around him and even God's blessings. He still shoulders this pessimistic outlook on his right hand until he ends up meeting a young nun named Index. Index ended up becoming the turning point in Touma's life by exposing him to magic and protecting her from violent magicians. But those magicians actually happened to be old friends of Index who were ordered to erase the memories in her head due to fabricated lies from the church. It was at that point where Touma had decided to save Index's memories by "killing" the magic that was responsible with his right hand, but as a result, Touma ended up frying over half of his brain cells and his memories along with them. While Touma did end up losing the memories in his brain, the memories in his heart still remain. The 'old' Touma that had desired to become a hero in the past had died and now the 'new' Touma that has forgotten everything is now living the ideal that his old self wanted to be - A hero to everyone. And he now believes that his right hand can help make miracles for others instead of breaking them. Touma enjoys fighting for others and helping others for simply himself. It's a promise that he made from his 'past' self to his 'current' self that makes him who he is. And also, even though he says that his own life is unfortunate, he also considers himself very fortunate. A lot of people in the world go along and live their lives carefree without knowing how much suffering other people are going through. Touma, on the other hand, would rather stay unfortunate and get himself involved into the other people's suffering in order to help them. So in a way, this makes him the luckiest guy in the world. A lot of people do look up to him and see him as a heroic figure, then you've got others who view him as a incomprehensible threat that can foil plans completely. But despite all of the attention and chaos that he's thrown into, Touma still tries to keep his sense of normalcy because living a regular life (despite his misfortune) is when he feels the most comfortable. He's not arrogant or overly cocky because of the feats he has accomplished. As the novel states on the types of 'heroes' that the story has to offer, Touma is pretty much the hero who charges forward to do what he feels is right within his heart even if no one else agrees with his opinion. To go a little deeper into it, Touma sees himself as a clown who wants to grab the ideal future that he wants and discards everything else. He doesn't care if he has to swap out his ideals and morals one second and pick up a set of new ones for the next - He'll do anything as long as he can create the perfect happy ending with everyone smiling. In a twisted sense, Touma could definitely be seen as a selfish person on one side of the coin as he does what he wishes. But at the same time, he's also a very selfless person considering how far he'll go for people. Touma can be full of contradictions and he's perfectly aware of it, yet it's a way of living that he's content with. He would much rather live like that than be a great hero who follows their ideals to the end and can't smile together with everyone. It's because of his mindset why Touma can be a very unpredictable force and is viewed above basic concepts like 'good' and 'evil' because he always does what feels 'right' for him in the heat of the moment. As long as he does what he wants and stays consistent with his own ideals and personal will, then he feels that he's being true to himself. Still, because of the fact that he has amnesia, Touma acts carefully around who he interacts with since he could end up bumping into an old acquaintance that ends up discovering the fact that he lost his memories. The reasoning behind this is because Touma does not want to hurt the ones around him by revealing he doesn't know them at all. In a lot of ways, that makes Touma two-faced since he's lying to people and even to himself which makes him living a fake life. Touma sometimes has internal struggles with himself since he has no idea who he interacted with, what kind of relationships he had with people and what kind of person he was. He even admits that it hurts whenever Index looks at him because he feels that it's the 'old' Touma that she's looking at and he's just a fake who's taking responsibility of the 'past' Touma's life. While the pessimistic outlook on his life still remains, he still has great ideals towards the good of mankind. Now Touma tends to be determined to do something up to the point where it's pretty stupid. The guy can be hot-headed and stubborn to a point where it truly ridiculous and it really irritates people. If there's a huge goal in mind, he'll discard everything that is given at the moment and purse it. For example, if Index gets kidnapped for the umpteenth time? He'll run around recklessly through the city and won't hesitate to yell and complain at people who stop him about his situation. And then, Touma will not hesitate to punch out a girl. As much as he honestly does not want to kick a girl's ass and is actually a gentlemen when it comes down to it, he won't hold back on anyone (male or female) that shows disrespect to human life or harms his friends. And a funny character quirk other than his bad luck is that Touma tends to (and in the third person on occasions) goes on long tangents about his own misfortune or on the ideals of others to correct them. To some people, he's like a hot-blooded teacher who lectures you and solves all of your problems by punching you in the face. One of the defining traits of Touma is that he "shatters illusions" or the ideals of a person to make them see a different and more optimistic point of view in life. That reason alone is why Touma has ended up with a lot of friends and allies by his side who have changed their lives for the better. It's not so much that Touma believes in solving issues with violence, but it's his human emotion and his right hand that connects with people and changes how they are. Touma would much rather use his right hand to solve issues than start using a weapon that ends up compromising his ideals at that point in time. Even if he were in a situation where he could use a gun to end a fight quickly, Touma would refuse to use it as he would want to aim for an ending with no one dying. From one point of view, it takes a lot of guts to do that. And in another point of view, it's a hint of Touma's insanity on how far he'll go to get the ending he wants. If he is forced into a situation where he'd have to kill someone to save someone with his right hand, he'd always try to pick the third option to save both. But in NT7, we see that Touma can show resolve in killing another person with his right hand to save another. He's called contradicting and hypocritical, but Touma claims that he's not saving people to see if there's a 'right' or 'wrong' answer to what he did as long as he can save someone. He just goes with what he feels is the best option at the time and reflects on all the lies, pressure and the consequences of his actions later on. But all that aside, Touma is simply an average high school student who gets involved within issues that are over his head. He can get easily irritated when there's a situation he doesn't understand or when someone breaks the limits of common sense and he's very genre savvy about certain subjects. He'll even break the fourth wall if the situation calls for it. Like when it comes to overly complicated magical and supernatural explanations, he bases his knowledge on video games/anime/manga and other media. He'll even throw jabs at dating sims whenever he gets involved with a girl and how he would rather be uninvolved in growing a harem. Like for example, he'll jab at the the fact how certain love comedy situations he ends up in can be considered as an 'event' which gets you closer to a girl... Or in Touma's case, he always gets himself a Bad Ending due to his poor choice with words or his blunt nature. He'll even tease cute girls sometimes or snark at his perverted friends whenever he's in his casual moments. One of Touma's biggest weaknesses is the fact that he trusts people too easily due to his revolving door set of ideals. Because of that, he can be used and manipulated very easily to other people's ends. Even though he's kind enough to help others, he learns that it can end up causing more harm than good in the long run. Through the events of the series, a part of Touma's actions had led to climatic battle of World War III due to magicians fearing the power of Imagine Breaker. And then, this ends up biting him in the butt once more in NT3 and NT4. In NT3, he was used by a magician named Leivinia Birdway who had put Academy City in a horrible position due to her wanting to drag out the true identity of organization known as Gremlin out from the shadows. The organization that Touma and everyone else was fighting again previously turned out to be a smokescreen for the real motives of Gremlin. This situation makes Touma reflect on how while he was able to save everyone in Hawaii, it ended up putting his home town in danger due to his actions. Then in NT4, Touma learns that Kihara Kagun was manipulating him throughout the events in Baggage City. He was able to save everyone, but Kihara Kagun himself. Because of the man's death, Touma was left quite shaken and learned that there were times when not everyone could be saved whenever he enters the stage. Basically, it hits him hard that his good actions can lead to bad or worst results than planned. The first half of the series was all about building up Touma's accomplishments and the second half seems to be all about showing him the consequences that come along with doing the right thing. The world isn't all sunshine and rainbows. There will be happy endings, bittersweet endings and even sad endings to go through. Because of those events, Touma was left rather bitter and it shows in NT5 when Thor (a true member from Gremlin who decides to betray them) tries asking him for his help and he denies it at first. Since Thor wanted to save a woman named Fraulein Kreutune, Touma wasn't sure if he could believe him or not without any proof. As a result, they literally duke it out and Thor hits it home that Touma has been acting different compared to the stories that he's been hearing. Touma admits that he still wants to help people, but he hates it when someone else ends up making his good actions become bad results. This once again goes into how Touma always wants to live true to himself and by his own will. Due to the fact of being constantly manipulated by other factions, Touma had become more cautious with helping people because he was afraid causing more suffering as a result. But the fight was enough to shake off any and all of Touma's doubts and he continues to stick to his own way of living to the bitter end. While he still assists Thor due to Fraulein Kreutune's suffering, Touma still decides to be wary of him and even planned on fighting back against Thor if he was using him to his own ends. And another huge character flaw is the fact that Touma can be too self-sacrificing for his own good sometimes. It's almost to the point of insanity where he feels that he has to set himself up as a sacrificial pawn for the sake of someone else. For example in NT6, Touma tells Birdway that instead of going through all of the manipulations and tactics she did to drag Gremlin out from the shadows, Birdway could've just set him up as a scapegoat to bring out Gremlin due his Imagine Breaker. While that would've put himself in harm's way, Touma would've been content with that as his friends would've been not been in danger. And as a result, Birdway views him as insane for having this kind of sacrificial mindset. But nowadays, Touma's views of self-sacrifice has gotten a small shove in a more positive direction as he's grown a little more aware that he has to take care of himself more. The grand shebang is in NT9 whenever he faces off against Othinus in countless worlds where the Magic God attempts to break his mind to steal his Imagine Breaker. Touma doesn't break until she finally hammers it in that Touma can save all the people that he wants in the world, but he cannot save himself from the infinite hell that she's caught him in. It takes a long talk from the Will of the Misaka Network to convince the boy that it's okay to be selfish and fight for himself sometimes. He doesn't always have to be the self-sacrificial pawn who puts his own life on the line for the sake of other people. After that, Touma decides to fight Othinus and turn his back on the happier worlds that she showed him to get the original world that he was in back. This extends further to Touma going as far to challenging and fighting the entire world to protect Othinus after understanding her feelings to give her a fair trial over her crimes compared to giving her a death penalty out right. For once, Touma was fighting for his own personal desires and wanting to redeem himself for destroying the perfect world over staying in that false world where everyone was living in happiness and he wasn't. Overall, Touma has matured a lot as a person through his many harsh experiences. The young man has gone from reacting to terrible situations around him to becoming more proactive and jumping into the fire. He'll still be considered a chewtoy, he'll still complain and moan over trivial things like his misfortune and he may never get to finish his homework... But no matter how many times that he's knocked over, gets game over and presses restart - He will never stop moving forward until he reaches the ultimate Happy Ending for everyone involved.

#character info #tldr

0 notes