#how he does have flaws and he is cruel but his cruelty comes so deeply from love and how everyone in knights needs to learn how to again

[raelyn-dreams]

Some characters get so much more interesting when you look outside the fandom view and get to know them on their own terms.

[hot-lesbian-knight]

This articulated my feelings on John really really well, cause like yeah The Necrolord Prime is pretty fucking awful, he is the direct and specific cause of suffering on a level we cannot comprehend. But John Gaius before it all was just a flawed man with good intentions. Hell there's even that line from C- when John is planning to hold the Trillionaires hostage with nukes about him caring less about being a savior than he does about dealing out punishment and how she loves him but he can be the most appallingly vindictive person she's even known.

John is just a man, but a man who's been given unbelievable power, and that unbelievable power takes all of John's flaws and magnifies the scale and scope of what those flaws effect . One tired stressed man of science whos got a vindictive streak really wishing all the Trillionaires would explode because of how much they have hurt him is understandable and honestly so fucking relatable. But once you give someone that ultimate power, those whims and that vindictive anger is suddenly a lot more scary and a lot less reasonable.

John is such a phenomenal character specifically because he is so relatable, he's just a guy with flaws who's been made all powerful and immortal and now has had to live through the consequences of every vindictive impulsive cruel choice he's made. He may be a horrible twisted person who's cruel and violent and vindictive in the extreme, but he's still so appallingly human in all his actions.

Everyone has cruel vindictive urges and thoughts. If you've worked retail you've wished you could explode someone with your mind before, even if you would never you've still thought about it. But now imagine if you're fleeting little vindictive thought would actually make them explode because you've become a god all of a sudden with no instructions or explanation, you've suddenly got the power to make those shitty asshole retail customers who are making your life hell just dissolve with your mind and it happens at the speed of thought.

Tamsyn is an author that does not write in black and white, only shades of grey. Each character in this series cannot be so simply sorted into "Good" or "Bad" because they are all complex nuanced characters in terrible, impossible situations making messy human choices that would normally kill people except that it doesn't and now they have to live with the consequences.

So yeah, John has done unimaginable harm and cruelty and is an appallingly vindictive person, but he's also fundamentally a person. No one in his position, no matter how noble or steadfast, would come out of this on top, no one could have handled that level of absolute power in that pressure cooker of a situation without being twisted and corrupted. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that jazz.

I deeply love John, he's such a fascinating character who's trying his damned best. I deeply hate John, he's such a vile little worm of a man. I would kill him if I had the chance just to put him out of our misery, I would hug him if I had the chance just to give him some comfort, I would see him put to rest because no one should have to live for 10000 years.

God I sound like Mercymorn...

I think what bothers me most about how John is talked about in the fandom is the implication that a different (implied: better) person would've done things differently and somehow more right than he did.

When the text goes to lengths to explore how suddenly coming into an incredible amount of power in a fatally constrained situation cannot lead to a good outcome.

If you're putting John in dialogue with the concept of the "magical girl", which Muir has said he is (a little tongue in cheek, but)--these are young, often profoundly unready people, who often get taken advantage of by the people who give them their powers. And like, yes, John is not a teenager, but I think that's part of the point, is that at no point is a person really prepared to become as powerful as he did--even before he merged with Alecto. Even when he was fully in control of his powers, even when they were given with honest intent and trust, even when he used them with the best of intentions and tried to do the right thing, there was no way for him to be prepared, especially given the situation he was in.

And it's funny to talk about how bad John must be in bed, but also, this isn't a scenario where John is some self-deluding Elon Musk-like villain or loser. He is genuinely trying to do the right thing, in terms of rescuing the Earth's population, rescuing the Earth Herself, and doing it ethically (see: M--'s insistence that they perfect the cryo containers until they could transport pregnant women).

I really do think this is something people are blocking out, because it is one of the uncomfortable parts of Muir's message with the series. But ESPECIALLY because the people "critiquing" him as an embodiment of patriarchy and empire are failing to see that part of Muir's critique is of human vulnerability to power: That is, that power corrupts.

And this even has echoes with Gideon & Harrow's story! Harrow begins the series in a deeply unequal dynamic with Gideon! And she does horrible things, not just because she is traumatized, but because she is traumatized and has the power to act her desires out on Gideon. She might have the motive (trauma), but that's not enough without the means (power).

And, yeah, I do have a semi-salty angle on this because people are frequently loath to think critically not just about axes of oppression but individual relationships of power when it applies to them and to people they like. ESPECIALLY when there is a very vocal segment of the fandom that is enthusiastically pro-harassment. It's very convenient to villainize John and actively dis-identify with him, because otherwise, you'd have to face the question of whether you'd do any better in his place. But the thing is, the mission of revenge he embarks on is a lot closer to many peoples' hearts than they'd like to consider.

That's the whole point.

[gwynsplainer]

On The Grinning Man and the De-Politicization of L'Homme Qui Rit (a Spontaneous Essay)

Since I watched The Grinning Man I’ve been meaning to write a post comparing it to The Man Who Laughs but I have a lot of opinions and analysis I wanted to do so I have been putting it off for ages. So here goes! If I were to make a post where I explain everything the musical changes it would definitely go over the word limit, so I’ll mostly stick to the thematic. Let me know if that’s a post you’d like to see, though!

Ultimately, The Grinning Man isn’t really an adaptation of the Man Who Laughs. It keeps some of the major plot beats (a disfigured young man with a mysterious past raised by a man and his wolf to perform to make a living alongside the blind girl he rescued from the snow, restored to his aristocratic past by chance after their show is seen by Lord David and Duchess Josiana, and the interference of the scheming Barkilphedro…. well, that’s just about it). The problem I had with the show, however, wasn’t the plot points not syncing up, it was the thematic inconsistency with the book. By replacing the book’s antagonistic act—the existence of a privileged ruling class—with the actions of one or two individuals from the lower class, transforming the societal tragedy into a revenge plot, and reducing the pain of dehumanization and abuse to the pain of a physical wound, The Grinning Man is a sanitized, thematically weak failure to adapt The Man Who Laughs.

I think the main change is related to the reason I posit the book never made it in the English-speaking world. The musical was made in England, the setting of the book which was so critical of its monarchy, it’s aristocracy, and the failings of its society in ways that really haven’t been remedied so far. It might be a bit of a jump to assume this is connected, but I have evidence. They refer to it as a place somewhat like our own, but change King James to King Clarence, and Queen Anne to Angelica. Obviously, the events of the book are fictional, and it was a weird move for Hugo to implicate real historical figures as responsible for the torture of a child, but it clearly served a purpose in his political criticism that the creative team made a choice to erase. They didn’t just change the names, though, they replaced the responsibility completely. In the book, Gwynplaine’s disfigurement—I will be referring to him as Gwynplaine because I think the musical calling him Grinpayne was an incredibly stupid and cruel choice—was done to him very deliberately, with malice aforethought, at the order of the king. The king represents the oppression of the privileged, and having the fault be all Barkilphédro loses a lot thematically. The antagonism of the rich is replaced by the cruelty of an upwardly mobile poor man (Barkilphédro), and the complicity of another poor man.

The other “villain” of the original story is the way that Gwynplaine is treated. I think for 1869, this was a very ahead-of-its-time approach to disability, which almost resembles the contemporary understanding of the Social Model of disability. (Sidenote: I can’t argue on Déa’s behalf. Hugo really dropped the ball with her. I’m going to take a moment to shout out the musical for the strength and agency they gave Déa.) The way the public treats Gwynplaine was kind of absent from the show. I thought it was a very interesting and potentially good choice to have the audience enter the role of Gwynplaine’s audience (the first they see of him is onstage, performing as the Grinning Man) rather than the role of the reader (where we first see him as a child, fleeing a storm). If done right, this could have explored the story’s theme of our tendency to place our empathy on hold in order to be distracted and feel good, eventually returning to critique the audience’s complicity in Gwynplaine’s treatment. However, since Grinpayne’s suffering is primarily based in the angst caused by his missing past and the physical pain of his wound (long-healed into a network of scars in the book) [a quick side-note: I think it was refreshing to see chronic pain appear in media, you almost never see that, but I wish it wasn’t in place of the depth of the original story], the audience does not have to confront their role in his pain. They hardly play one. Instead, it is Barkilphédro, the singular villain, who is responsible for Grinpayne’s suffering. Absolving the audience and the systems of power which put us comfortably in our seats to watch the show of pain and misery by relegating responsibility to one character, the audience gets to go home feeling good.

If you want to stretch, the villain of the Grinning Man could be two people and not one. It doesn’t really matter, since it still comes back to individual fault, not even the individual fault of a person of high status, but one or two poor people. Musical!Ursus is an infinitely shittier person than his literary counterpart. In the book, Gwynplaine is still forced to perform spectacles that show off his appearance, but they’re a lot less personal and a lot less retraumatizing. In the musical, they randomly decided that not only would the role of the rich in the suffering of the poor be minimized, but also it would be poor people that hurt Grinpayne the most. Musical!Ursus idly allows a boy to be mutilated and then takes him in and forces him to perform a sanitized version of his own trauma while trying to convince him that he just needs to move on. In the book, he is much kinder. Their show, Chaos Vanquished, also allows him to show off as an acrobat and a singer, along with Déa, whose blindness isn’t exploited for the show at all. He performs because he needs to for them all to survive. He lives a complex life like real people do, of misery and joy. He’s not obsessed with “descanting on his own deformity” (dark shoutout to William Shakespeare for that little…infuriating line from Richard III), but rather thoughtfully aware of what it means. He deeply feels the reality of how he is seen and treated. Gwynplaine understands that he was hurt by the people who discarded him for looking different and for being poor, and he fucking goes off about it in the Parliament Confrontation scene (more to come on this). It is not a lesson he has to learn but a lesson he has to teach.

Grinpayne, on the other hand, spends his days in agony over his inability to recall who disfigured him, and his burning need to seek revenge. To me, this feels more than a little reminiscent of the trope of the Search for a Cure which is so pervasive in media portrayals of disability, in which disabled characters are able to think of nothing but how terribly wrong their lives went upon becoming disabled and plan out how they might rectify this. Grinpayne wants to avenge his mutilation. Gwynplaine wants to fix society. Sure, he decides to take the high road and not do this, and his learning is a valuable part of the musical’s story, but I think there’s something so awesome about how the book shows a disabled man who understands his life better than any abled mentor-philosophers who try to tell him how to feel. Nor is Gwynplaine fixed by Déa or vice versa, they merely find solace and strength in each other’s company and solidarity. The musical uses a lot of language about love making their bodies whole which feels off-base to me.

I must also note how deeply subversive the book was for making him actually happy: despite the pain he feels, he is able to enjoy his life in the company and solidarity he finds with Déa and takes pride in his ability to provide for her. The assumption that he should want to change his lot in life is not only directly addressed, but also stated outright as a failure of the audience: “You may think that had the offer been made to him to remove his deformity he would have grasped at it. Yet he would have refused it emphatically…Without his rictus… Déa would perhaps not have had bread every day”

He has a found family that he loves and that loves him. I thought having him come from a loving ~Noble~ family that meant more to him than Ursus did rather than having Ursus, a poor old man, be the most he had of a family in all his memory and having Déa end up being Ursus’ biological daughter really undercut the found family aspect of the book in a disappointing way.

Most important to me was the fundamental change that came from the removal of the Parliament Confrontation scene, on both the themes of the show and the character of Gwynplaine. When Gwyn’s heritage is revealed and his peerage is restored to him, he gets the opportunity to confront society’s problems in the House of Parliament. When Gwynplaine arrives in the House of Parliament, the Peers of England are voting on what inordinate sum to allow as income to the husband of the Queen. The Peers expect any patriotic member of their ranks to blithely agree to this vote: in essence, it is a courtesy. Having grown up in extreme poverty, Gwynplaine is outraged by the pettiness of this vote and votes no. The Peers, shocked by this transgression, allow him to take the stand and explain himself. In this scene, Gwynplaine brilliantly and profoundly confronts the evils of society. He shows the Peers their own shame, recounting how in his darkest times a “pauper nourished him” while a “king mutilated him.” Even though he says nothing remotely funny, he is received with howling laughter. This scene does a really good job framing disability as a problem of a corrupt, compassionless society rather than something wrong with the disabled individual (again, see the Social Model of disability, which is obviously flawed, but does a good job recognizing society that denies access, understanding and compassion—the kind not built on pity—as a central problem faced by disabled communities). It is the central moment of Hugo’s story thematically, which calls out the injustices in a system and forces the reader to reckon with it.

It is so radical and interesting and full that Gwynplaine is as brilliant and aware as he is. He sees himself as a part of a system of cruelty and seeks justice for it. He is an empathic, sharp-minded person who seeks to make things better not just for himself and his family, but for all who suffer as he did at the hands of Kings. Grinpayne’s rallying cry is “I will find and kill the man who crucified my face.” He later gets wise to the nature of life and abandons this, but in that he never actually gets to control his own relationship to his life. When I took a class about disability in the media one of the things that seemed to stand out to me most is that disabled people should be treated as the experts on their own experiences, which Gwynplaine is. Again, for a book written in 1869 that is radical. Grinpayne is soothed into understanding by the memory of his (rich) mother’s kindness.

I’ll give one more point of credit. I loved that there was a happy ending. But maybe that’s just me. The cast was stellar, and the puppetry was magnificent. I wanted to like the show so badly, but I just couldn’t get behind what it did to the story I loved.

[soupwaffle]

p5r rant!! *spoilers*

okay. so. i’ve played p5 and p5r many times over the past few years, and my thoughts and feelings towards the game have mostly stayed the same, if not became more critical of its flaws. however, there is one thing that has changed the most, and that is my opinion on goro akechi.

the first time i played regular p5, i was doing a playthrough with an old friend of mine, and i wasn’t super into it. i used to really hate turn-based combat styles (except pokemon because, well, it’s pokemon. come on) so i was kind of just along for the ride. i really, REALLY hated goro during that playthrough, especially upon reaching the shido arc. i saw him as the surface level character archetype that he was, the antagonist of the game and akira’s foil. i could not comprehend why he did what he did, and why he committed all of the murders. He hated his father, hated doing what he was doing, so why did he do it? i despised his actions, and in turn despised him. which, honestly, is valid- you don’t always need a deep and thoughtful reason to hate a character- sometimes you just don’t like them. however, i feel like goro is a character that deserves an analysis and reflects more humanity than is displayed at the surface.

goro despised his father and his actions, truly and genuinely. however, there is always, ALWAYS, going to still be that lingering hope and love in him. the concept of parental relationships is often times built upon the idea that your parents are your world as a youth- you have to make them proud, you have to love them no matter what, because they are your caregivers and can do no wrong. the plot of persona 5 is, quite literally, going against this exact narrative, every villain arc in the story centering around a parental/adult figure in one of the phantom thieves lives and how their desires and cruel inward view of the world harms the children they raise. every phantom thief comes to terms with the abuse and trauma they hold from their guardians- ann and ryuji dealing with kamoshida’s child abuse and pedophilia, yusuke dealing with the false love and encouragement that turned out to be just using and fraud out of greed, futaba and the death of her mother, believing herself to be at fault in the situation, makoto and her sister’s desire to be the best and succeed on all accounts, ignoring the plight of her sister and the issues she was facing, haru and her negligent father, who saw her as an object used for personal gain, and finally, goro and his father, the man who forced him to go into the metaverse on his own for years and kill anyone that he considered to be in his way, in terms of his political and business careers (which p5 does a great job of showing the dangers and negative impacts of intertwining business and politics, i think- but that’s for another time).

and every single phantom thief, upon realizing that there is an issue with the situation they are in, become determined to fight against the evil of those people they trusted throughout their youth- the awakening of their personas- and avenge their lost childhoods, all while attempting to fix the cruelty in those that they loved.

except for goro.

goro was a phantom thief, yes, but he is the only one who actively did not (or, more accurately, could not) go against his father and follow the path of akira and his friends and find that acceptance of himself and his past. he could not move on from the abuse of his father, and could not accept that there was any other way to gain the man’s love than to cater to his every whim- even if it meant destroying his own life and the first true friendships and loves that he had ever had, and eventually dying because of it. this is a fantastic representation of how the abuse towards children from their mentors/guardians can change the course of their lives and how they perceive the world forever. goro wanted so, so deeply to be loved by his father and for him to be proud of him that he was driven to insanity trying to achieve it, when it was impossible all along. akira knew this about him, knew that deep down, goro was never evil, and was never an antagonist to him. goro had simply become a slave to the very evil akira had been fighting against, and was unable to help him overcome the trauma-induced insanity at the point in which they had met. goro was too far gone, and, although he canonically showed before his death that he held that desire somewhere inside to be free of his father, and to live like akira- a hero to many, and a kind soul. that’s why he despised him so much, his first and only friend, and refused to refer to him as anything other than a rival- he envied the life he led, and the ability and strength he held to fight against everything shido stood for. goro would’ve given anything to be like that, and to fight against his father, as the rest of the phantom thieves did. but he couldn’t- couldn’t bring himself to, and almost certainly lived in fear of what would come once he didn’t have his abuser’s hand around his neck. despite the trauma and terrible experience that is abuse, it is really common for a victim to fear a life outside of the abuse, and a life of comfort- something that seems impossible, ESPECIALLY if the victim has always been living like this.

he would’ve also had to come to terms with the terrible things his father had made him do, and would have had to learn how to live with what he’d done, despite the fact that he did not want to do it in the first place.

after knowing all of this about goro, and understanding his character and how he and akira reflect yet contradict each other and relating on a deeper level to his story and emotions, i have decided he is one of my favorite characters in the series. i don’t condone his actions by any means, and he still held the ability to make decisions and act on his own, so the blame is not entirely off of him. however, i understand why it was done, and hold a lot of sympathy for the broken child that he was, and how deeply he desired to be loved.

[amuelia]

do you think the red wedding outcome would happen in a universe where domeric bolton lived & fought in the WOTFK? would he have remained loyal to the starks, or have been included in roose's plans?

This is an interesting ask, but unfortunately also one with a lot of unknown variables... I will divide this long reply into chapters:

Characterization of Domeric

We only know little about Domeric’s personality. We know that he was a “quiet boy”, very talented with a diverse array of hobbies. We also know that he was friends with Lord Redfort’s sons, implying that his quiet personality doesn’t translate to him being a loner and that he has a social streak to him - he also later wants a brother by his side, so it seems he was lonely in the Dreadfort and craved company.

In the Vale, Domeric had enjoyed the company of Redfort's sons. He wanted a brother by his side, so he rode up the Weeping Water to seek my bastard out.

We know nothing about Domeric’s feelings about the Starks. He was born and raised a Bolton, who historically do not have the best relationship with the Starks; despite Boltons bending the knee to House Stark, we do not have a recorded marriage between the two houses. However, Domeric spent 4 years as Lady Dustin’s page and 3 years at the Redfort, opening up the possibility that his values might not have been entirely influenced by Roose (similar to how Ned got an education in honorable values through Jon Arryn). Barbrey is known to despise the Starks, but was also Brandon’s lover and is shown in aDwD to still have fondness for him, so it is unsure which values she might have imparted on Domeric.

Domeric is said to have been a good jouster, and enjoyed the company of his friends. He might have liked being part of Robb’s honor guard, which has at least several characters that seem to be around his age (i got the impression it’s all young people, like a squad for Robb).

While we never hear about Domeric being cruel or unlikable, we also have to take into account that most of his descriptions come from his own father talking about him, who has reason to concentrate on the positive aspects. Barbrey seems to have loved him, but she is also his aunt, and since her positon as Lady of Barrowton forces her into being an eternal widow, she might have seen Domeric as a son of sorts, so she would have been biased. We also know he was good friends with the Redforts, so he probably does have charme to his personality and does not present himself in an unlikable way. However I do not think this necessarily has to translate into him being a good person or a “cinnamon roll”; there’s plenty of characters in the books that are well liked and charming but still commit war crimes and other cruelties.

Relationship to Roose

Roose never makes a direct statement about his relationship to Domeric. We know he took care to give him a good education (music, histories, and fighting are mentioned), and he sent him to House Dustin and House Redfort to be fostered which is a great opportunity for a young Lordling to forge connections. 

I believe Roose expresses fondness for Domeric in the way he talks about him; He mentions him and then launches into a long reminiscence without much of a reason (thought granted that is pretty much the theme of that chapter), he proudly mentions all his talents and how gifted he was, and seems to talk with a certain sadness/bitterness:

Now his bones lie beneath the Dreadfort with the bones of his brothers, who died still in the cradle, and I am left with Ramsay.

Horses … the boy was mad for horses, Lady Dustin will tell you. Not even Lord Rickard's daughter could outrace him, and that one was half a horse herself. 

Unfortunately that doesn’t necessarily need to translate back into Domeric being fond of his father - We can compare this to Roose’ relationship to Barbrey, where he seems to put trust and effort into her (”How many of our grudging friends do you imagine we'd retain if the truth were known? Only Lady Barbrey“ | “[Roose] takes care to keep me sweet”), while she on the other hand talks in a very disillusioned way about him (”Roose has no feelings, you see.”). We do know Roose appears to be the only Bolton (besides Ramsay), so the lonely Domeric might feel attachment to him in that aspect. Roose is generally liked by few characters, and often appears cold and unfeeling. He is deeply flawed, has a mean aspect to his character (like his mean sense of humour), is mocked for his strange health habits, and seems to talk a lot and think hes very smart and witty. On the other hand he is also somewhat tolerant/laissez-faire (”Your amusements are your own, I will not chide you on that count”), he seems to have provided Domeric with everything he could want and supported all his hobbies, and judging by how Walda seems to like and trust him (”Lady Walda gave a shriek and clutched at her lord husband's arm.”), and he also doesn’t agree with Ramsay’s treatment of Jeyne ("Roose is not pleased. Tell your bastard that."), we can assume that Roose does not treat his family members in a cruel way. It is also worth mentioning that his cold and unfeeling attitude seems to be at least partially motivated by him trying to hide his intentions in fear of them being used against him (in line with his other cautious behaviour), so it might very well be that he is warmer towards people he trusts (Note that we only ever observe him from the PoV of people he is not close to). So while there is a lot to dislike and be annoyed by about Roose, he also has qualities that Domeric might have liked.

It is interesting to analyze the scenes with Roose and Ramsay for how he might have interacted with Domeric. We know Roose loves to educate Ramsay on how to be a good Lord and impart his wisdom to him, and that he also frequently enrages Ramsay with the tone he uses. The quote “I forbade it, but Domeric was a man grown and thought that he knew better than his father.” suggests to me that he might have butted heads with Domeric in a similar way, giving him advice that Domeric doesn’t always listen to. Since Domeric openly disobeyed Roose, it appears he was not scared of his father, and that he had a proud/stubborn aspect to him.

It is of course also important to note the differences: Ramsay is of a lowerclass background (Roose has been shown to be classist - “His blood is tainted, that cannot be denied.”); He has a cruel und unwise personality that might frustrate Roose and make him resort to using a meaner tone with Ramsay; and we know Roose on occasion talks negatively about Ramsay when he is not there (”Ramsay's nature was sly, greedy, and cruel. I count myself well rid of him.“), though he has also talked positively about him in related scenes (”Yet he is a good fighter, as cunning as he is fearless.”). While he talks in a condescending tone to Ramsay and even insults him, he might have had more of a respectful tone to his competent, trueborn son.

Domeric and the Red Wedding

I think in any case, Roose would have tried to take care to keep Domeric out of any great danger. Domeric would have surely argued with him on many points (”Domeric was a man grown and thought that he knew better than his father“), and since he seems to have had martial prowess he would have probably insisted on participating in battle. If Roose had tried to participate in the Red Wedding without Domeric’s knowledge, Domeric would have probably been a nuisance; he appears to be highly intelligent, he has no fear of speaking out against his father if he doesn’t agree with an idea, and he doesnt seem to blindly comply with his fathers wishes if he doesn’t see a reason to. Roose would likely not have let him near a situation as dangerous as the Red Wedding especially if Domeric doesn’t know about the plan, but it might have been hard to get him out of the way without a good reason.

If Domeric knew about the Red Wedding, he would be a good asset, since he’d likely have a position close to Robb (as i mentioned the guard seems like something he’d participate in). However even in this case I think Roose would have tried to keep him out of the Wedding itself, as not to put his sole heir in danger.

However, another problem is that not only does Roose never state his precise list of reasons for the red wedding (making it a point of debate to discern what exactly changes if you change the course of events), according to grrm he also wasn’t even completely set in his tracks to go through with the Red Wedding until pretty much the last minute:

As for Bolton, if you reread all his sections carefully, I think you will see a picture of a man keeping all his options open as long as he could... sniffing the wind, covering his tracks, ready to jump either way... even as late as his supper with Jaime at Harrenhal... - SSM 8/3/2000

Domeric’s presence could influence so many plot points it is hard to say if Roose would have even come to the point of getting the Red Wedding in motion.

Would Domeric even go to war with Roose or would he stay behind as Castellan of the Dreadfort like Ramsay did? Is Ramsay even still there/does he still have a position of power or role in the story? If Ramsay isn’t there do Bran and Rickon even flee and get presumed dead? If Bran and Rickon are still alive does Cat still free Jaime and commit an unpopular political decision? Does Winterfell still burn? It doesn’t seem likely that Roose instructed Ramsay in the minutiae of what happens in Winterfell considering Ramsay is presumed dead before he even enters it; So would Domeric in charge of the Dreadfort have instead opted to liberate Winterfell if someone reached out to him? Note that the disaster at Winterfell seems to be one of the main reasons that Roose considered the Red Wedding:

"I [serve] the King in the North. Or the King Who Lost the North, as some now call him.“ - aSoS, dinner with Jaime

"What … what do you owe me, m'lord?"   -   "The north. The Starks were done and doomed the night that you took Winterfell." He waved a pale hand, dismissive. "All this is only squabbling over spoils."   - aDwD, dialogue with Theon

Also with a trueborn and gifted adult heir, would Roose even have considered marrying a Frey maiden? Would Domeric have wed one instead, or would Roose prefer a better alliance for him? Would Roose marrying a Frey count that much for an alliance if the Frey child wouldn’t even inherit the Dreadfort?

Conclusion

As you see there are many questions and What-Ifs, and probably even more that i didn’t mention considering how much of a butterfly effect all of asoiaf is. So i don’t think there is any “canon answer” to what would have happened; it all hinges on how you interpret Domeric’s personality, his relationship to his father, what changes to the plot his presence might have brought, and how you think Roose might have reacted to them.

[aegonbeingfakeisracist]

Soooo that person was an asshole - but I’m genuinely curious now to your thoughts on Oberyn as a father ? He definitely had his flaws a father, and how the story about Obara’s mother was cruel made him seem overly cruel in that situation - but then we see him as a loving father?

You I will absolutely answer. 😊

Oberyn was a deeply, deeply flawed person. He was genuinely terrible to Obara’s mother. There is absolutely no excuse for hitting her, and while giving Obara the option to come to Dorne was perfectly acceptable, the circumstances in which he did so are so horrible that it wouldn’t have seemed like an actual choice. Obara was ten years old and a prince had just slapped her mother - who was to say he wouldn’t have hit her, too, had she said she didn’t want to come? I don’t really get that impression from how she describes leaving Oldtown, but this is twenty years later - time, experiences, and biases may be colouring her telling of the story.

This casual cruelty, I think, is heavily informed by the general terribleness of Westerosi society. Oberyn is a prince and a second son, and we can see from his life’s experiences that he’s grown up doing whatever he wanted with no real consequences for anything - Elia and Doran were the dutiful ones, and Oberyn could live life fighting duels, going off to the Citadel and dropping out once he got bored, spending a few years as a sellsword, never marrying but having flings with whoever he chose. So Oberyn had money and power but no actual responsibilities. Coupled with living in a deeply classist society, that’s a bad combination, as evidenced by his treatment of Obara’s mother. Instead of just talking, he slapped her, then dismissed her tears. It betrays a serious lack of empathy for people that are “beneath” him.

We don’t actually know what prompted him to start collecting his daughters. It could have been anything from Elia’s betrothal spurring him to be a more present parent to Tyene’s birth making him decide that if he was going to raise one daughter, he might as well raise the others, too. Obara’s resentment of Oldtown is also questionable. Did her disdain for it stem from an unpleasant childhood as the half-Dornish daughter of a prostitute in the Reach? Was it the association with powerlessness in how she left that made her hate it so? Or was it some combination of the two? We have no idea. If it was the first, then that still doesn’t excuse Oberyn’s treatment of Obara’s mother, because nothing does, but it does somewhat soften the cruelty in taking Obara away. It could still tie into his personal prejudices - regardless of what kind of childhood Obara had, it does not seem implausible to me that Oberyn believed that as a prince of Dorne, she would be better off with him no matter what. The combination of why Oberyn took so long and what was going on with Obara could go part of the way to explaining why the man we know to genuinely care about his children took ten years before claiming Obara and came to claim her in such a jarringly violent way.

In addition to being a flawed man, he was also a flawed father, which is both an extension of his incredibly privileged upbringing and a product of the fact he’s spent practically half his life grieving for the sister he loved more than anyone in the world. We see that in how his eldest daughters don’t know what to do with their grief but pursue vengeance, how Nymeria thinks Oberyn had no use for grief at all. But I do think he loved his daughters deeply. He shaped up, sort of, after losing Elia. Instead of being a pretty absent father, he actively raised them. He took Tyene to visit her mother. He explained history to Sarella. He taught them to wield weapons so they’d never be powerless. He built a life with Ellaria and was a good father to their children, even nicknaming his Elia Lady Lance. And his daughters clearly loved him very much in return. But that love is not enough. He always prioritized vengeance for Elia Martell over his living family, and did not do a good job making sure his daughters knew he loved them.

So what I think it comes down to here is...Oberyn loves deeply. He loves his siblings, Ellaria, his daughters, but he failed as a father in providing an example of choosing something over vengeance, and beyond that, he demonstrates a capacity to completely dismiss the people that aren’t a part of the small grop of those that are important to him. I don’t think the Oberyn we meet is the same as the Oberyn that slapped Obara’s mother. But I do think that that casual dismissal is a part of him that contributes to making him the character that loves some people fiercely while being completely apathetic towards others.

[linkspooky]

Oh! Top 5 Kimetsu no Yaiba characters?

I only have four characters I’d truly call faves from Kimetsu no Yaiba, but let’s go!

1. Doma - “Human emotions are nothing to me, like mere dreams…” 

Every time someone claims that Doma is the only demon without a tragic backstory I want to fight them. Apparently most people think that children who grow up in cults aren’t traumatized at all and grow into rational and well-adjusted adults. 

Doma is a character who shows no signs of empathy. However, he was a character who was never taught or shown any signs of empathy before. By the time he was an indpendenent adult he gave up on understanding it. Doma despises the cult, but it’s telling that he always stays there because it’s truly all he knows. He laughs at the people who come to the cult to distract themselves from the misfortunes of their life, but Doma too stays with the cult as a distraction for how empty and small his own life is. 

Doma really was too mature for a child, but also too immature as well. He was forced to grow up too fast because neither of his parents actively wanted to parent him. People act like he’s a born sociopath for being observant enough as a kid to notice that the all the adults who entered into his life were only there to use him. Kids are sharper than you expect, but also duller as well. Doma never realized that life was any different outside of his environment. He stayed in that childish mindset forever, and egocentric little kid who only saw himself first and foremost. That’s not the thinking of a sociopath, it’s the thinking of a child, children can’t imagine viewpoints other than their own because they haven’t developed empathy yet. 

There’s this assumption that people are either born good empathic people, or they’re not, but empathy is a quality that’s developed and learned. It was almost natural Doma became a demon by the end because not a single person in his life treated him as a human. Yet, despite reveling in being a monster Doma is still desperately searching for some meaning in his life too. He wants to have friends. He wants to feel the same way that other people. Even if it’s just a hollow imitation on his part, that was something in his lifetime but never got even up until the end. Doma’s this tragedy of empathy, because all he ever wanted was to feel the same way that everyone else did, to have the same connections they did, but because he was so isolated he only destroyed every small chance he did have at learning to empathize with another person. 

2. Shinobu -“Yes I’m angry, Tanjiro. I’ve always been angry.” 

I think Shinobu is interesting because she’s a bad person. I wish people would stop trying to paint her as a wholly good person who was loved by everyone around her. Shinobu’s character introduction is going out of her way to unnecessarily torture a demon for fun, and her attitude implies she has done this before. Torture is a universally bad thing, even if you’re doing it to a bad person. 

I’m not trying to moralize Shinobu. I think she’s much more interesting this way, as a fundamentally flawed person. A cracked vase that can never truly be full. Yes, Shinobu is loved by a lot of people, but she’s also fundamentally unable to receive that love. She’s stopped living a long time ago, part of her stopped when her aprents died, and she gave up when her sister died. If Kimetsu no Yaiba were a more morally complicated story, Shinobu existing for the sole purpose of revenge would not be treated as a good thing. It’s an empty way of living, and the only thing Shinobu can do to keep living is to cling to all of the ugly and negative emotions inside of her. 

The most interesting version of Shinobu is just rotten at her core, because she’s let the rot sink in and fester, because she doesn’t want to let go of her anger towards demons. It’s rare female characters are allowed to be filled with such ugly emotions, or allowed to express them in terrible ways. Shinobu plays games at being a healer, at being a person capable of nurturing like her older sister, but it’s just an empty imitation that falls flat. Shinobu at least in regards to herself doesn’t want to heal, she doesn’t want to get better, she wants to stay wounded forever so she can keep taking out her pain on the demons around her. 

I like to think that when she summoned up a hallucination of her sister in her final moments to encourage herself, that was entirely a fabrication on her part. Shinobu wanted to imagine her sister who once told her to just quit the Demon Corps and find a way to live and be happy was just as angry as she was. Shinobu’s delusion of Kanae is a sister that validates her and tells her that she has to be angry, that she has to stand up and fight again, that there’s strength in this. And that’s exactly it, Shinobu at her very core wants to be strong. She hates being powerless and weak. I think Shinobu is at her best when her anger isn’t righteous. She doesn’t want to protect others - she wants to feel strong. 

3. Iguro Obanai - “I want to defeat Muzan and die. I hope that will cleanse my corrupted blood. If we reincarnate as humans in a world without demons I will definitely tell you that I love you.” 

I like how Iguro is nasty, and unpleasant, and also mean to the main character for really petty reasons. Shinobu’s trauma is easier for a lot of people to swallow because she doesn’t show it, she just puts on a mask of being nice and people buy into that mask. Iguro even though he wears a physical mask over his mouth is less good at hiding his disfigurement. 

Iguro’s very traumatized and he acts that way. He’s anti-social. He’s withdrawn. He doesn’t get along well with others. He’s prone to violent outbursts. The scars left with Iguro are so deep they’re permanent. And I believe it’s because down to his core, Iguro believes himself to be a bad and selfish person for surviving while half of his family died, and thinking only of himself with his escape. 

It’s not really his cursed blood that Iguro wants to escape from, but rather his trauma. He can’t find a way to live with his truama or accept himself so he seeks some escape with it by suicidally charging into battle. And that’s another thing that speaks to the permanency of his scars. Iguro is deeply in love with one person, but he can’t admit, or accept that love because he views the current iteration of himself as so unlovable. 

He can neither give or receive love, and yet there’s some small part of Iguro that wants to heal. He wants to feel okay again. I think there is a part of Iguro that is very selfish. The way he acts towards Mitsuri isn’t really romantic, his protectiveness and jealousy are signs of entitlement. However, the thing is traumatized people do end up feeling entitled to happiness. Iguro’s so terrified of losing Mitsuri because she’s the one good thing in his life, and because of that he’s unable to love her in a healthy way. 

Even if Iguro’s given up on himself and decided that he’s poison, unlike Shinobu I see that there’s some part of Iguro that genuinely wants to heal. He wants to feel like a good person, he wants to find someway to continue living, its just he thinks it’s impossible for him to. Iguro’s desire to die and be reborn is so compelling that I actually want to see him live and be forced to deal with the prospect of his slow healing rather than getting his wish to be redeemed by death. 

4. Sanemi Shinazugawa - “My Nemi is the kindest…” 

Tanjiro as a character is kind in a way that’s easy to digest. When he’s angry it’s always righteous anger. His kindness never becomes a difficult. Tanjiro never does anything that’s difficult to swallow. That’s okay, but it’s also not that deep. 

Sanemi’s kindness and his anger are both a part of him. His cruelty does not detract from how kind he is, his kindness doesn’t excuse his cruelty. Sanemi is driven to act cruel, to be merciless, to be vicious not because he doesn’t care about people but he cares too much and the loss of almost everyone he’s loved in his life disfigures him permanently. 

Sanemi is a little kid who hunted demons all on his own for years by letting them fight him until he bled. He always fights by intentionally harming himself, hence why he shows his scars at all time and makes no attempt to hide them. Sanemi as a person is damaged to his core, but he still retains that kindness because it’s a part of who he is. 

Sanemi is angry because he’s kind. He’s violent because he’s kind. He’s so afraid of losing others again, the only way he knows how to be with them is to protect others from afar. Sanemi thinks he can abuse his brother, but as long as he protects him from demons from a distance it will all be okay in the end. 

What I like about Sanemi’s narrative is that it wasn’t. His actions ended up hurting his brother far more than helping him, the more distance he put between them, the more Genya threw himself into harm to get his brother to acknowledge him. At the end everything Sanemi did to protect him amounted to nothing, and Sanemi is the one protected and comforted by his brother when he should have been the one taking care of him. I think the author rushed to the tragic ending rather than letting the characters developed to get there, but still there’s an interesting choice that Sanemi is the one to survive and not Genya. Sanemi who has always wanted to just go off and die somewhere eaten by a demon while his brother gets to live happily. Now Sanemi’s never going to fix things with that brother, and nothing he can do will make up for what he did to Genya. However, he still has to find a way to keep living for himself. Watching broken people trying to find a way to keep on living is the primary reason why I read fiction in the first place. 

[jadelotusflower]

Robin Hood Rewatch: 1x08 Tattoo, What Tattoo?

aka Robin wants to do a war crime.

It’s been a while, but I’m back on my rewatch. This is actually one of my favourite episodes of the whole show, so get comfortable, this is a long one. Also, I welcome comments/discussion on any of these posts - I’m always up to talk Robin Hood!

Flashback time! 1191. Now, we’ve had the current date set as 1192 by earlier episodes and this is the story of How Robin Got His Scar - assuming that he must have spent some time convalescing before returning to England, he can’t have been back more than a year at the absolute most.

There’s no point talking about historical accuracy on this show - my approach is that any story ostensibly taking place in our history is that it’s an alternate universe, and this is an easy way to ignore when things don’t square with real events.

Robin fights with a broadsword in this scene, not his scimitar, and we never find out how/why he got the latter.

For plot reasons, Robin neatly slashes through Guy’s tattoo instead of cutting off his arm.

Okay, Richard’s birthday was 8 September. The attempted hanging in the first episode was 26 April, so it’s been less than five months? Actually, I think this works fine.

In an earlier episode I lamented that we never saw the bright green shirt again, but I was wrong, Robin’s wearing it under his hoodie and it had very frayed hems. I do think the show does a pretty good job of using costumes for the gang that actually look like they live in a forest and show significant wear and tear.

This is one of my favourite Marian’s costumes - it’s beautiful!

I never noticed before, but after Guy announces the engagement, Edward takes Marian’s hand and it’s very sweet.

The possessive way Guy holds up Marian’s hand to show off the ring is...yikes. And don’t the guests sound enthused!

Nobody ever brings up that it was Robin ignoring the signal because he just had to stick it to Guy and take the ring is the reason Djaq is captured, and they really should have. That said, I do like him being cheeky and kissing Marian’s hand before depriving her of the ring.

Guy could very easily have freed the dagger holding his sleeve with his other hand - but he wanted Robin to know it was he that almost killed him in the Holy Land. Just like Robin could have easily escaped, but instead waited for Guy in the forest - this confrontation has been brewing all season - so let’s get into it.

Guy starts with saying that the King has enemies because he wants peace, and “there will never be peace with the Turk.” So we assume that his motivations are with the warmongers - to scupper the peace talks with Saladin so the Crusade continues and Jerusalem is conquered. Which...doesn’t really make sense with what we know of Guy, that he would care about claiming the Holy Land, and this stance is actually contradicted later. It makes more sense that they would want to keep Richard in the Holy Land so Prince John can usurp his power while he’s away, and Guy can maintain his position. I think we can assume that is the case, and Guy is just deflecting/pushing Robin’s buttons with the war talk.

And of course, the confrontation is only ostensibly about Guy’s treason, secondly about dick swinging over Marian. Guy gets kicked in the face (for the second time this season!) and only stops his throat getting slit by the timely arrival of the gang.

Djaq is cool, calm and collected the entire episode, despite no doubt being reminded of her time in slavery.

“That’s what you taught us.” Robin told the gang all about the articles of the Geneva Convention, but like many a self-righteous superpower, thinks they doesn’t apply to him if a breach is “necessary.”

I jest, but Robin actually does stay his hand initially and listen to the gang. He does knock Guy out, but I don’t think we can hold that against him. Concussion Count: Guy (Total: Robin x 1, Guy x 1)

It’s kind of understandable that the gang are skeptical of Robin’s claims it was Guy who tried to kill the King - it can’t have gone unnoticed that Robin has war-related trauma, and just that morning a nightmare of that very event. It would seem convenient indeed that he suddenly claims he remembers Guy as the assassin, right after the engagement to Marian was announced.

I’ve said this before, but I really think it’s a strength of the show that it is prepared to Go There with Robin as a deeply flawed protagonist. Because the gang is 100% right, and he is 100% wrong - Djaq’s life should take precedence, and he is in no state of mind to be making life and death decisions. 

Concussion Count: Guy and Robin (Total: Robin x 2, Guy x 2)

Confrontation Round 2 - ding ding!

Robin is straight up manipulative of Much to get himself untied and it hurts to see - there’s a real power differential to their relationship that Robin takes advantage of. Much knows more than anyone else how damaged Robin was by the war, he knows there’s this other, brutal, side of him that can triggered (”earlier...you were not yourself”), but he still loves his friend, he wants to believe in his promises, and he’s spent his life following Robin’s instructions and those habits die hard. He does try to do the right thing - he talks in a soothing voice (”you’ve had an upset” is so Soft), tries to get Robin to sit down and talk it through, but he is too far gone.

“I will kill you whether you talk or not.” Guy doesn’t believe him, and throws his earlier words back (“show me an argument ever settled with bloodshed”) but Robin is deep in his cold rage and when Much tries to intercede we get the heartbreaking “that is because you are also simple” which really, really hurts. Now, obviously we can explain Robin’s behaviour as a trauma response/ptsd episode, but not excuse it, because it really is a cruel thing to say, targeted to hurt Much the most and push him away, and all the “I did not mean it”s in the world doesn’t change that. It’s a disturbing pattern; that Robin will say something cruel in anger or frustration, then immediately take it back and say he didn’t mean it - but the thing is, a part of him did mean it, must mean it, because he said it - it may be a dark fleeting thought, those unkind things we all think sometimes, but Robin gives voice to them and causes hurt, and that can’t be undone.

Again, I give credit that this is a show that doesn’t always cast its hero in the best light - he does screw up, he does say the wrong thing, he does make poor decisions despite his good heart. Robin is such an interesting, complicated character - heroic but with another side to him, a capacity for cruelty and violence that most of the time he keeps in check, but every now and then he can’t stop it rising to the surface, can’t keep that dark side of himself contained, but can only try to push it back with regret.

He then shifts from trying to kill Guy to trying to torture him, and obviously it’s all very thinly veiled social commentary, but this was 2006, and as I’ve said in a previous post social commentary is why we retell stories like this.

As I said above, Guy contradicts his earlier reasoning with “what kind of king deserts his people to fight someone else’s war in a foreign land?” but I think this is more the fear talking, with that red-hot sword close to his face, trying to appeal to Robin’s kinder/protective nature. To which we get another yikes line from Robin - “if you were his people he was right to desert them.” I don’t think Robin believes this, he’s deflecting Guy’s very good point to try and justify torturing him.

But in the end, he can’t justify it, at least not without making it a fair fight. And it’s a good fight! Well acted and choreographed, visceral and emotionally intense - they way they get progressively sweatier and dirtier and more exhausted, the way the music shifts from the jaunty theme to silence to those haunting strings - one of the best sequences of the show, imo.

Guy continues to throw out arguments that I don’t think he holds himself, but rather what he thinks will appeal to Robin - “it’s not England’s war, it’s Rome’s” was the exact point Robin made in the first episode (”Is it our Holy War? Or is it Pope Gregory’s?”). When Robin rightly points out that Guy’s assassination attempt broke the ceasefire, and Guy responds that “there will always be war”  and he wants a King that will fights for England’s gain, not the Pope’s. That, I think, is close to his true motivation.

We get confirmation that religious conviction is why Robin went on crusade, but that it was meeting those of other faiths and realising the Holy Land should be shared, not conquered, that turned his heart. This seems to be the primary cause of Robin’s trauma - that he fought in an unjust war, made under false pretenses, and that he was not a warrior for God, but a murderer. While Much is obviously also scarred from the war, I think he handles it better partly because it wasn’t his decision to go, he was just following Robin, and he didn’t have his faith and understanding of the world shattered like Robin did. Also, he’s selfless, he’s a caretaker, so I think he buries his own trauma deeper and it doesn’t bubble to the surface as much as Robin’s does but comes out in sadness rather than anger.

UTTER EXHAUSTION.

Guy’s taunts become more pointed - calling out Robin’s glory seeking and loss of status, then turn to Marian, and it seems his obsession with her (other than being The Only Noblewoman in Nottingham) is in part to have everything Robin once did  - his lands, his title, and the woman to whom he was betrothed - especially taking into account the backstory of season 3. It’s rather gross the way he speaks of Marian (“do you think I won’t laugh every time...”) although I suppose you could argue that it was a targeted attack on Robin and not how he actually feels.

It’s interesting that at this point, Guy accepts that Marian is sympathetic to Robin and still has contact with her - he’s not entirely clueless.

Concussion Count: Guy (Total: Robin x 2, Guy x 3)

The scene between Robin and Marian is also very good - he does throw her “everything is a choice” back at her somewhat petulantly, but it shows that he listened to her, and took what she said to heart. Marian, like the gang, assumes the accusation against Guy is about her engagement, and they have two tense conversations at once (”you took his ring/you took his ring” is rather deft).

I feel for Marian here, because she’s in a bad situation forced into marriage with Guy, and it would be made so much worse if he’d done what Robin says. She’s trying to make the best of it.

Everyone’s reaction to “I like her/I think I love her” is priceless, and I will defer to this commentary on this excellent post. Also a shoutout to @angel-in-a-big-blue-box’s tags #I also love how marian's stepping back like 'I don't understand. Y'all just voice your feelings like that? #You don't passive-aggressively snark at each other?’ SO TRUE - neither can fathom actually being this direct - Robin snarks that “everything is a choice” about running off into the forest, when he means “choose me” but can’t say it.

Concussion Count: Robin  (Total: Robin x 3, Guy x 3). Both of them about to develop CTE at this rate.

I’ve said it before, but for all his faults, Robin admits when he’s wrong.

Will’s awkward little “Djaq” and Allan’s grin and nod is so cute.

I would have liked a longer conversation between Robin and Djaq tbh, her “and you gave him up for me?” is perhaps a trifle too magnanimous of her, but it’s a nice little coda with the gang all sitting down together and forgiving Robin.

[afriendlyirin]

Steven Universe: On the Effectiveness of “Change Your Mind” as an Abuse Narrative

Crossposted to AO3. Please respond there if you would like to comment, as Tumblr is terrible for holding conversations.

I did not like “Change Your Mind”.

I used to be diplomatic, and say that I respected its validity as an abuse narrative even if it was a complete non-sequitur to the narrative that came before. However, upon reflection, I don’t think I can say that any more. This is for two reasons:

1) This isn’t Steven’s family.

They aren’t. They just aren’t. Steven does not know these people, even given the smattering of Pink’s memories he’s experienced. He has no reason to care about what they think of him or to be invested in their well-being to this extreme degree, a degree so much greater than even his normal concern for others.

As awful as it is to say he has to keep picking at this scab because you have to care about your family, even that conceit only works if he actually sees them as family, and it makes no sense that he does. (And to muddle the waters further, the movie establishes that he doesn’t in the first place.) Why does he care what White thinks about him or Yellow or Blue? Why does he care so deeply about them respecting him that he’s willing to bet Connie’s life on it? (Yes, you shouldn’t have to apologize to an abuser for something that wasn’t wrong. But I don’t care about should, when lives are on the line you cannot hold your ideal world above them.)

Steven already has a loving family who cares about and respects him. It’s the flaws in that family that are worthy of attention, and what had been the focus of the story up to this point. The diamonds’ family dynamic should be completely alien to him and even more irrelevant to him personally. This abrupt shift does not make narrative or emotional sense, and it’s a particularly toxic message to say that abuse victims should forget about their found family to keep obsessing over their original one.

2) The resolution and associated message is not just wrong, it’s dangerous.

Steven defeats White Diamond, his abusive mom, by forcing her to acknowledge and accept her own flaws. The message is clear: White Diamond’s dressing-down of everyone was a projection born of insecurity. She genuinely believes everything she’s saying, that the reason she hates her children is because of their flaws and they could overcome it if they just tried harder, like her.

Except that is not how abusers actually think. That is a lie abusers tell to manipulate people. You cannot engage in abusers in good faith. When they tell you you’re bad because of a flaw, they don’t actually believe it, they are just saying whatever it takes to break you. We know this, because abusers’ arguments become inconsistent and contradictory if objectively observed over a long period of time. It’s the underlying desire to hurt and manipulate people that motivates them, not what they actually say.

Change Your Mind did accurately model abuse, terrifyingly well. A viewer experiencing abuse in real life will immediately recognize it on the screen. But it followed it with something an abuser never does: being convinced with a witty one-liner.

The events of Change Your Mind are a fantasy. I get escapism and everything, but this is a dangerous fantasy. It is telling people it’s safe to engage in abusers in good faith, that if you just say the right thing and come up with the perfect comeback they’ll see reason. And at the same time, that if they haven't, it's because the other person hasn't tried hard enough yet, that if you just keep trying and giving them second and third and dozenth chances it’ll end with everyone happy, with the abuser a good person.

And what it doesn't do is have them take any actions that would truly show change. We aren't shown them doing anything that would suggest they actually understand what they did wrong and are willing to change. Abusive people can change their behavior – indeed, it's important to understand that abusive people aren't out of their own control and victims. Abusive people simply don't want to stop being abusive, and fundamentally don't care that they're being abusive, and so they'll change only precisely as much as they need to for precisely as long as they need to.

We even see this in the movie, where the diamonds have only made surface changes, ones they are holding over Steven’s head to try to keep him under their control. And this is true to abusive behavior, but the show refuses to acknowledge it as such, instead presenting it as what change looks like – what you should be satisfied with. It denies even the escapism of actually having abusers change and care in favor of showing abuse continue and claiming that their slight changes in how they express that control and cruelty is care.

The only safe way to deal with an abuser is to cut all ties. Change your face, change your name, run as far away as possible and hope they never find you again – Pink Diamond had the right idea the first time. And it does not matter if the abuser "loves" you, or "misses" you. That isn't your responsibility. (And neither is handing them a replacement victim – as true as that is to how people often try to deal with abusive people.)

And this is all doubly harmful because it’s reinforcing an existing cultural narrative: that family ties trump everything else, and that no matter how cruel and dangerous your parents are you have to keep trying to mend bridges with them because they’re your parents. That’s a deeply-seated narrative that has already done incredible harm and is incredibly difficult to unlearn; reinforcing it is not brave, it’s irresponsible.

[sairenharia]

Why Chloe Does Things

‘She doesn't do good things to be altruistic, but to receive recognition.’

Which is true, but framing it as solely bad thing is completely ignoring the fact what recognition means for Chloe is Validation.

Chloe is very much a product of how she was raised. She had a father who was very busy and would give into her every little whim. She had a mother who could barely remember her name and was the kind of person who would tell Chloe the only thing of worth about her was her mother. In front of people important to Chloe and on TV after it was obvious she was having a breakdown. A mother who taught Chloe love was not unconditional, that you had to be exceptional AS A CHILD to have attention and love.

Does it make it right she’s been malicious and cruel? No, but it explains why she does what she does.

Much like Adrien’s own childhood explains much of how he is. Adrien has a hard time standing up for himself and others because rocking the boat could make his father upset. So he let’s Chloe be a bully for so long, and let Lila lie because Adrien was raised to NOT rock the boat by a controlling father who expected his son to be perfect. And what it’s made is a boy whose willing to sacrifice himself for others to the point it’s deeply worrying. He can be overbearing and entitled to Ladybug because that’s what he learned from his father. He doesn’t understand when people like him unless it’s stated because he hasn’t been around people. These are all traits he gained from his own toxic home, but because none of these things make him ‘lash out,’ he’s forgiven for a lot of it. And since Emilie is said to be kind, Adrien at least knew how to be nice and kind despite these flaws.

Chloe, however, is someone who grew up in a toxic home who learned to lash out. If someone is competing with something for what she wants? Her father has taught her to destroy her opponent. If someone does something to displease you? Her mother taught her to tear them down and get rid of them if possible. If there’s an obstacle in your way? Throw money and influence at it. Unconditional love does not exist. Chloe’s parents taught her to be rude and overbearing and aggressive, and if that doesn’t work, be sneaky and underhanded.

And what happens if someone isn’t like that? If they’re nice and step back and don’t demand attention?

Then they’re like Adrien, constantly denied things he wants. Or they’re servants, ordered around.

Everything in Chloe’s life has taught her to be aggressive and mean or else she will be walked over and ignored. For all Bustier may not be a good teacher for the rest of her students, she is right. Chloe needs to LEARN how to be a better person and to do that, she needs people to SHOW HER.

And unfortunately, no one’s been truly following through on the lessons.

Despair Bear. Adrien puts down his foot and Chloe tries to be nice. She decides to bring Tom to the party On Her Own. No Mister Cuddly, no butler, no Adrien. She decided this was a nice make up thing herself. And yes, she gets mean after, but that’s also the moment where Adrien should have told Chloe ‘hey, no, calm down,’ and Chloe would have most likely course corrected.

But even with that, Chloe’s rate of Akuma’s went down DRAMATICALLY. After having her cause most of the Akuma’s in the first season, to have her only causing a few afterwards, is extremely telling. It means she’s pulled back her hostility, and aggression. And while absence of cruelty isn’t kindness, it’s still an Improvement and a good one.

We have Zombizou and Chloe was acting out because she didn’t get a gift for a teacher she liked and it was pointed out how her mother didn’t remember her birthday. We saw her forget Adrien’s birthday too, this is clearly a kind of trauma for Chloe. And she acted out because of it. Then at the end, she sacrificed herself, and she took responsibility, and she apologized.

And most telling.

She gave Bustier a present. Moreover, she gave her a present and HID THE FACT SHE DID THIS. Bustier would be the one to know and no one else or so was her plan. This wasn’t Chloe doing a good thing to be recognized. She did a good thing because someone gave her love and validation and she wanted to show she CARED. 

With Style Queen, Chloe put herself in HARMS WAY for Adrien. She quick talked an Akuma, who she distracted and lead around to buy Ladybug time and safety. She tried to free Adrien. She had to deal with the fact her own mother may hurt her and she still did what good she could and was fairly effective at it. Because someone she cared about was in danger because she never even bragged about this. She didn’t talk about helping Ladybug, she didn’t even brag to Adrien. She didn’t seek recognition at all because it was about helping Adrien.

We have Queen Wasp and the whole ordeal is a mental nightmare for Chloe. We don’t even know what Chloe had PLANNED to do for the Miraculous. We don’t know if she always planned to reveal her identity, or if she planned to just show up at an Akuma attack, or anything. What we do know is she hadn’t planned to show herself then.

Chloe’s always had a problem with Marinette. For all Alya is the more aggressive of the two, it’s Marinette who gets under Chloe’s skin. Marinette basically gets everything Chloe wants no matter what she does. Which is nice from the viewer perspective to see, but Chloe sees it as Marinette stealing things that are her’s. To have Marinette in particularly get her mother’s attention, her admiration, to get an offer to come to New York to be her protege when Chloe hadn’t even been on a TRIP to VISIT...

Then to have her mother tell her she’s not exceptional at all, that she’s useless in her mind, of course she revealed she had the Miraculous because superheroes are exceptional. If she can be a superhero, then she has to be exceptional.

Chloe’s first run as Queen Bee wasn’t an attempt at fame and glory. It was a desperate plea to be loved, to be seen. She wanted to be approved. She wanted to be useful. To thing of note, Chloe has no growing pains. She knows to use the top, she doesn’t hesitate to run, she even knows her weapon works as a phone. She knew how to USE her powers which meant she learned what she needed to do.

And when she runs from Ladybug, we don’t see her mad once she’s alone. She’s sad. When she’s deakumatized, she’s sad. She begs to be given a chance. She’s in tears. Chloe’s mother hammers in that she’s not exceptional and she’s holding onto that Miraculous even more. Then Chat Noir and Ladybug show her kindness, they offer her understanding, and encouragement, and she hands it back and apologizes, even offering them a smile.

And when she’s alone, she’s upset and doesn’t want to see anyone because she’s hurt her mother doesn’t love her and she’s allowed to be hurt. It’s at this moment Chloe realized her mother wasn’t going to love her, but she had done the right thing. The heroes had approved of her even if her mother didn’t.

And what happens next?

Marinette brings Chloe to Audrey and then talks about how Chloe is exceptionally mean. Surprising Chloe then making her mad, saying she’s the worst person she’s ever met and a rock is more capable of love. So she gets mad.

And then Audrey finally acknowledges her. And she uses the fact Sabrina is her only friend as a bragging point, even though we know it HURTS her that no one likes her later. She’s doubling down on her behavior to get her mother’s approval and when she gets the hug, she looks so relieved to get it.

Chloe was ready to accept her terrible mother wouldn’t approve of her, but the superheroes did, and it could have been a moment to change, but then she’s encouraged to be exceptionally mean to impress her mother.

Much like the end of Zombizou where Chloe showed kindness to the one who gave her validation, after Queen Wasp, Chloe did what the person who gave her validation wanted. She became Exceptionally Mean.

Malediktator rolls around and while her documentary was vain and over the top, having her mistakes thrown in her face, and then having Marinette, Marinette who had HELPED WITH HER MOTHER, tell her off was probably a whiplash that Chloe wasn’t ready to deal with. Really, Alya and Alix had said just as much as Marinette, but it’s Marinette she focuses on. Then Chloe decides she wants to shut down the school and banish Marinette, which is extreme even for her. She’s usually for petty brands of nastiness and revenge, not life ruining levels. (Kung Food is the only one on that level, but it was also clear Chloe didn’t think it was a serious contest.)

And the fact she came in with Audrey, she probably complained to her, and they fed into a cycle of anger and meanness. Because Audrey gave Chloe validation, so Chloe listened and trusted her. But even when she couldn’t be mean, she just decides to leave. And when her father shows up Akumatized, promising her what she wants, she’s conflicted. Everything she wants, but her father is also an Akuma.

By the time she talks to Ladybug, Chloe gives in to tell the truth. It takes prompting, but she always struggles to admit the truth. Nobody likes her, she has no friends, she’s useless. Ladybug is a superhero and she serves a purpose. And by the end of the fight, she hands back the Miraculous without prompting, and is surprised by a fistbump. And the thing is, she’s not the one who goes out of her way to get the attention.

In fact, what she does do is decide she has to do things for herself. She has to clean up her lair.

Then Marinette throws a party together for Chloe. Chloe whose utterly shocked that she’s being celebrated. Chloe didn’t expect it, she didn’t arrange it, she didn’t do any of that, Marinette did.

And what Chloe learns is she’s given admiration, attention, and VALIDATION when she’s Queen Bee. Left alone, she would have cleaned up her lair, and feeling useful, like she helped Paris and her family. She was in a good place and I wouldn’t say the party hurt the progress she was waking on that front.

What it did do was encourage her bragging tendencies. She would bring up she’s Queen Bee more and more, she would brag, which had it’s pros and cons. On one hand, she was bragging a lot and seeking more importance than she really had. But on the other hand, she was also quick to act. She was getting protective of Sabrina and was quick to get somewhere that Ladybug could find her and recruit her. And when Chloe is Queen Bee, we see she’s on task and she’s quick to work with people.

When Chloe is being a superhero, she’s actually GOOD at the job. She adapts and focuses and is ready to do what she needs to. Braggy, sure, but she’s still doing GOOD.

And Miraculer happens and of course Chloe is hurt. Of course she lashes out. Because Ladybug doesn’t explain anything to Chloe. She let’s her hope longer and longer with no sign. Chloe is yet again ignored by someone she adores. She hopes that Ladybug still believes in her and will recruit her.

And Chloe says no to an Akuma. Because she believes in Ladybug. Because she wants to be a superhero. Because she wants recognition.

And this is where it’s a disservice to Chloe to treat recognition as a bad thing.

Because Chloe said NO. To an AKUMA. Because she wanted this recognition. This isn’t someone just wants to be popular, or have bragging rights. This is a need for recognition that overcame all of Chloe’s anger and resentment and fears. It was strong enough for Chloe to want to do this the RIGHT way.

This is Recognition in the need for Validation.

Validation is something humans need. Validation is necessary for humans to learn they have worth. Marinette in Origins needed Chat Noir to tell her she could be a hero because she’s already saved one life, he validated her as being able to do this by pointing out the positive effect she already had. She could only see her mistakes, she needed validation.

Adrien in Syren also needed validation. After having his partner lie to him and not explain anything, of course he doubted his worth, and he needed Plagg’s encouragement, for Plagg to say he had value before he started to believe he had worth. Adrien is minimizing his rebellion in hopes his father will validate him.

Chloe doesn’t have validation. Chloe sees herself as useless. Really think about it. It’s not that Chloe messes up or makes mistakes, it’s that she’s useless and has no purpose. That is a deep well of self deprecation there that Chloe covers up with hostility and arrogance because everytime she confronts those beliefs, she’s brought to tears.

She has a mother who barely paid attention to her. She had a father that spoils her rotten, and teaches her bad lessons. She learned to rely on that power to get what she wanted instead of earning what she got.

She never learned how to be a good person. She didn’t learn how to be empathic. She barely knows how to love.

But she wants to. She just doesn’t know how.

Because the people we see Chloe truly admire besides her mother are kind people. She adores Ladybug. We see her adore Adrien. Prince Ali is the only celebrity we’ve seen Chloe treat with admiration. These are kind people. These are the ones Chloe chooses to admire.

Chloe doesn’t do things with altruism because she doesn’t know HOW to. And no one is teaching her how to. Everytime she’s about to do something that would help her start to overcome emotional issues, things get in the way.

She is ready to give up on her mother and she’s encouraged to be exceptionally mean.

She accepts doing a good job as Queen Bee and is given a party. She’s given validation and appreciation that doesn’t depend on being mean.

Except then she can’t be Queen Bee. She tries to double down on that more then being mean because the only Akuma’s she causes after Queen Bee is Stormy Weather and Miraculer, and Stormy Weather reeks of her being terrified she can’t change. With arguably helping Animaestro and Gamer 2.0, but that was a fire already. Because what Chloe wants is to be Queen Bee.

Chloe wants to be USEFUL. And she uses it to gain attention because she can’t be Queen Bee, so she just has to convince everyone she’s still that awesome because if they believe it, maybe that will be close enough.

Chloe doesn’t have the tools to be altruistic. She doesn’t know how to do it, what it means, not really, and no one in her life is helping her. The only person to really push her to try is Adrien, but he isn’t enough of a force to try, and Ladybug is Marinette who still doesn’t want much to do with Chloe. Bustier and her Butler is too passive. Sabrina is a trashfire of a person.

The only way Chloe is going to change is because she gets the validation to encourage her to do so. Because humans NEED VALIDATION. Because validation is what let’s us learn how to think and relate to others. If a human doesn’t need validation, doesn’t need other people, then they see things just from what they want out of things.

Which may work if the person has a nice enough disposition, but more often it’ll result in a selfish asshole. Chloe tries to pretend she doesn’t need recognition or validation because she’s that awesome and amazing. A Chloe who truly does not seek out recognition just means Chloe is still Chloe except she doesn’t have crippling self doubts and a belief she’s useless.

Chloe does good for recognition. And once she’s given recognition, she repeats that behavior. When she repeats that behavior, she does good in the world. And if she does that enough, she will LEARN what is good, what is right.

Because right now, Chloe does one good thing, and then she’s left alone, or encouraged to do something directly counter to what else she’s just learned. She needs positive reinforcements, she needs positive influences, because no one becomes a good person in a void, especially if they were a bad person. They need good influences and no one is GIVING THAT TO HER.

She doesn’t need the Bee Miraculous back.

But she needs friends. Marinette may not owe Chloe to help her, but Adrien sure as hell does. Adrien has seen himself be a positive influence on Chloe and if he gave her encouragement, she’d improve. And if Marinette did commit more to helping Chloe be a better person, I think she could help to. Chloe was willing to work with Marinette. Hell, she let’s Marinette sit with her in the library unharrassed, there is potential there for Marinette to influence Chloe to help her learn.

Teasing her with a Miraculous and expecting her to suddenly know how to be a good person without any help is frankly unfair to a girl whose obviously extremely messed up and suffering extreme self esteem issues.

If she does good for recognition, then THERE IS STILL GOOD BEING DONE IN THE WORLD. And she is finally learning what it means to be good.

Saying Chloe has to be altruistic for her goodness to be valid undermines everyone whose ever struggled to be good because they didn’t know how to be. It tells kids that hey, if you’re not good for the RIGHT REASONS, then you might as well not even bother trying to be better at all. If you’re good because someone said good job, it DOESN’T COUNT, and you’re still a bad person.

No, that is not growth works. If you want Chloe to be good for the ‘right reasons,’ then you have to give her the chance to grow out of them and you can’t expect her to learn that on her own. She needs people for it. It’s like Bustier said, she needs the good examples because she’s responded well to those, only to have them snatched away before she had her feet under her.

LET CHLOE BE GOOD FOR RECOGNITION. Because she is desperate for validation and it’s a psychological human need. Then you build from THERE to make her a good person.

Because guess what, Thomas.

She’s goddamn fourteen years old and she has a lot of growing she needs to do and kids learn by being validated by the people they learn from.

[basketballandtextbooks]

disaster take

i saw this discourse on other blogs and come to the realization that most people probably won’t agree with me but... here’s my two cents:

wendy and kyle are very similar characters, not identical, but the character writing in south park is usually quite shallow (for any character in the cast) and normally any depth that can actually be found in any one character is entirely coincidental or accidental on the part of the observer. For example, in a previous post I mentioned that Kyle probably learned to dance after the events of the rain forest episode, and we know he must have because of highschool musical. This creates and interesting nugget of character depth that fits with his overall character but the connection is most likely entirely accidental. Did the writers think that deeply about Kyle’s character, or did they just forget the throwaway joke they kin-assigned Kyle for one episodes purposes?

for me these gaps between writers intent and interpretation are entertaining and it’s very fun for me to play detective, putting together the whole characters through the lens of ‘death of the author’ and figuring out how the characters behave based on not only their behavior in any one individual episode, but how the inconsistent and shallow character writing makes an overall character-arc (no character is more fascinating in this fashion than Eric Cartman, who has the most cohesive and entirely accidental character arc that spans from episode one and showcases a fascinating and horribly flawed individual)

All of this stated, the similarities in how Kyle and Wendy are written may not be intentional, but the fact is that given the same exact situation they respond similarly and to varying degrees. A good example of this is when they are jealous or their ego is bruised, they both have a tendency to have excessive if not murderous reactions (teacher into the sun, nuke canada, burn down the school, bully your friends)

I don’t think anyone can really make a good faith argument denying that they have strong similarities. There are of course differences, during the smurfs Wendy showed a much cooler head than Kyle would in the same circumstance. They do not need to be identical to share strong similar characteristics

Now for how fandom has perceived Wendy.

There is good reason that some individuals feel that the fan-reaction towards her isn’t entirely based on her writing being inherently ‘worse’ than Kyle’s. It also isn’t true that everyone who loves Kyle and hates Wendy is sexist or suffering from a case of internal misogyny.

That said, Wendy is held to a higher standard than Kyle is. Or more accurately, she is held to account for her actions in canon and Kyle is not. A primary example that I’ve heard multiple times in explaining why she’s a ‘bad’ character or a ‘bad’ person is that she broke Stan’s heart by dumping him. Some accuse her of cheating on him (with either Gregory or Token, pick your poison).

We can dismiss the cheating accusations immediately, there isn’t even a sliver of evidence she ever cheated. The times where she pursued other love interests they were either broken up or not together.

But the underlying message that hurting Stan makes her a bad character and not holding Kyle to that same account when Kyle, as early as the super best friends episode and as terribly as the assburgers episode, has a pattern of hurting Stan and in worse ways.

Wendy dumped him, that’s awful, but she’s allowed to have different feelings for other people and she’s allowed to end a relationship with a boy who constantly vomited on her. But the fan perception of this is “what a bitch” while the reaction to the style friend breakups is “oooh the angst”

This is only one of the ways we can see her being held to a different standard than Kyle. Not every fan is guilty of this, but enough people share this sentiment that is entirely justified for people to point out what appears to be underlying misogyny in how the characters are treated.

There are arguments based more on her writing than her actions, I have heard the ‘she’s always right and that’s not realistic’ on at least four different occasions now. But not only is this factually untrue if you’ve actually watched the show, it ignores the many times Kyle has also been right for seemingly no other reason than the writers convenience. Making him the moral center of the episode or a center of a joke. I find the ‘she’s too perfect’ to be a bad faith argument because the research behind it is shoddy and even when the person behind it acknowledges cases where she was wrong (killing her teacher, bullying, petty grudges to name a few) it’s always hand-waved away as ‘oh, okay, that once, but other than anything that disagrees with me, she’s too perfect. This is a very clear case of confirmation bias. Any evidence that backs the argument that she’s too perfect is guarded and anything that refutes it is discarded.

There will be some fans that hate her and love Kyle for completely unrelated reasons to holding her to a different standard, sexism, or internalized misogyny. But it is a fact that a significant amount of the fandom holds her to a completely different standard and a very possible reason for that is either her gender or how she disrupts their precious ships.

I would make the argument that she has a far stronger and more engaging characterization than Clyde using the same standards I set above where I judge characters based on the totality of their appearances rather than on individual episode. A even removing that framework and basing solely on episodes that focus on them individually, she has a stronger character. And yet I have never once heard or seen anyone making the argument that they dislike Clyde because his character is too flat. This is another case where she, and the majority of the female cast, is held to a different standard. I’ve never seen anyone say ‘it’s hard to write Gregory because he has very little character and the writers only created a flat stereotype’. But I see that sort of perspective all the time for female characters that have more screen-time and development than Gregory ever had.

I love all the characters above and I find their characterizations and lack thereof to be a fascinating puzzle that I spend my free-time putting together.

But female characters in South Park do suffer from what I would consider a form of internalized misogyny. Most fans don’t do this on purpose (thus internalized) but the society we’ve been raised in has a tendency to put men and women on different scales.

This isn’t a scale that’s fair to either sex. The unconscious mentality that “its okay if he has no personality because he’s a guy” does men a disservice too. If you do fall under the category of someone who judges the female characters more than the male ones, I’m not trying to say you’re a bad person or even that you’ve done a bad thing. I want you to reconsider your opinion. Take a moment to actually think about it. I know I’ve been guilty of holding men and women to different standards. In both real life and fiction, I expect less from men. I look down on them in an unhealthy fashion that if I don’t address, could lead to ending up in harmful situations or harming someone else.

fiction is a lens that we can use to better understand reality. I am an advocate that you can treat fictional characters in any way you like and it doesn’t fucking matter. You want to kill Wendy because you think she’s an annoying bitch? Go for it. It doesn’t matter. Wendy is not real.

I don’t want you to change your fandom behaviors, I want you to reexamine them and ask yourself how deeply the disparity in how you view men and women goes. If you use fiction as an outlet for misogynistic or even misandrist feelings, I think that’s valid, but I want you to know that you’re doing it.

If you hold men and women to different standards, whether in fiction, real life, or both, I want you to be aware of it.

Now the elephant in the room.

Damien is one of the most popular characters in South Park and he has one episode focusing on his character. His personality is frequently discarded because in canon, he’s an uppity little git who is both petty and weak. He wants to be liked, is affected by bullying, and cries to his daddy about it.

In fandom he is frequently portrayed as a cool and collected impervious person who, yes, has a temper but instead of how petulant and bratty he appeared in canon, fandom portrays this as ‘badass’.

To put it simply, fandom has a tendency to ignore canon entirely in the name of what’s ‘hot’. They want the prince of hell to be sexy and dangerous, so he is just that.

The majority of popular fanon characterizations fit these same molds. They want Butters to be cute and sweet, so every character flaw he’s ever had is hand-waved away.

How does this relate to my topic?

Fans of the female characters are not impervious to this. Heidi Turner is an extremely flawed and vicious individual who would stoop to any low to protect her damaged pride. She is also a victim in a toxic relationship that put her through a horrible experience. And so the fandom either acknowledges one half, how cruel she can be, or the other, how pure a victim she was someone protect her. And neither combine her to a whole character. A person who was in a bad situation, had a lot of positive traits, bad things happened to her, and she didn’t bad things in return. Her penitent for cruelty in some earlier episodes when she was still a bg character is completely hand-waved away by both camps.

She’s an interesting character and she’s dumbed down for the pleasure of the audience, isn’t this the same treatment the men receive and thus invalidates my entire thesis that they’re held to a different standard?

For starters, the idea that an argument is entirely invalid because of one exception is in itself a fallacy, but to avoid acknowledging her existence would be confirmation bias. She is an anomaly, a female character given the same treatment as the male characters. Is it because she’s deeper or better written than the other female characters? I would argue no, critically watching her episodes she has tons of the same troped behavior that the fans love to despise in the rest of the female cast. Although unlike the other characters (both male and female), where I must do an in-depth watch of the series over the course of 20+ seasons in order to create a whole understanding of them, the majority of her arc happens over the course of two seasons.

An easily digestible amount of content. No one needs to put together the puzzle pieces to understand her like you do with the majority of the cast, it’s all there.

Except it isn’t, and this is why I mentioned her behavior in earlier seasons is discarded. The way people frame her is solely from the seasons where she’s a primary character, ignoring the clear characterization we got from her in earlier seasons that do help to create a more whole understanding of her personality and character.

That all said, there are still portions of the fandom who hate her purely because she blocks their kyman or style or insert-gay-ship-here. There are fans who hate her not because of her flawed personality or even that they find her character flat, but purely because they want to see ‘two hot boys kiss get the gross girl out’. Which is a pretty common mistreatment of Wendy as well.

Now, male characters are on occasion given this treatment but nowhere near as often. While creek shippers and crenny shippers might fight until their last breath, neither group seems to actually hate Kenny or Tweek. But in the ship wars of a ‘het ship’ vs a ‘gay ship’, the female character is frequently trashed by the gay side.

I could go into an aside about the troubling fetishization of gay men that borders on outright homophobia at times, but this has been surprisingly alot.

I guess my point is that any which way you fandom, try to at least understand that sexism is real and be aware when you might be perpetuating messages that can appear unbalanced. And maybe, ask yourself why you do that.

[leavingcertnightmares]

Shakespeare uses an array of dramatic techniques to convey a world of corruption and deceit in his drama ‘Hamlet’

The metaphoric and symbolic complexity of Shakespeare’s tragedies is perhaps what he is best known for. Outside his great drama and fascinating characterisation, the imagery and dramatic techniques used ensures these masterpieces live on centuries after his death. In studying ‘Hamlet’ I was fascinated by the use of the supernatural as well as theatre, and the imagery of sickness and poison. It is, however, the use of an anti-hero/anti-villain, the depiction of a world of greys instead of black and white morality, that sets Shakespeare’s work aside from the very popular Elizabethan revenge tragedies.

Shakespeare continuously subverts expectation by shirking the idea of any truly good or evil characters existing in the world of Elsinore. Both of the main characters display a depth uncharacteristic of the hero/villain they are meant to be representing. This lack of a ‘good vs evil’ plot that is so central to what audiences have come to expect, paints a picture of a corrupted society with uncomfortably ambiguous morals. 

The audience expects to be hailing Hamlet as the hero of the story, but as the play progresses he provides many examples of villainy and indecisiveness. His treatment of Ophelia for example, in act 3 scene 1 is downright cruel. ‘Wise men know well what monsters you make of them’. He treats his mother with the same cruelty in act 3 scene 4. With his accusations of murder and incest he denounces female frailty and unchastity and makes known his horrified sense of the consequences of marraige. ‘Frailty thy name is woman’. ‘Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul, and there I see such black and grained spots’. After Hamlet’s many displays of misogyny and procrastination, the audience cannot be sure if his intentions are heroic or not. He is deceitful and weak-willed, two decidedly villainous traits, and is the epitome of an anti-hero.

Claudius too breaks away from the role of villain at times and cannot be treated as wholly evil. Although he is guilty of murder and does many awful deeds, one has to consider his initial introduction as a brilliant king who is well loved by the people of Elsinore. He balances the grief of a kingdom along with the threat of war with Norway. One of the most impactful scenes with Claudius is act 3 scene 3, the prayer scene. He expresses genuine guilt for his actions ‘Forgive me my foul murder’, and shows that he does have a moral compass. He shows true complexity when he weighs up being forgiven over giving up the fruits of his crimes ‘My crown, mine own ambition and my queen’. And the moment he decides against repenting for his sins is the moment he is truly corrupted. Shakespeare crafts Claudius into the perfect embodiment of an anti-villain whom the audience cannot completely turn against. Afterall one of the biggest tragedies is when someone can be good, but chooses to be bad. This technique of portraying morally grey characters is one of the most influential in conveying the corrupted, deceitful nature of the drama but is not the only one.

 Shakespeare uses the Ghost not only as a plot device but as a symbol of the inherit corrupt nature of Danish society. The Ghost plays a hugely important role in the play as he is the first evidence that ‘something is rotten in the state of Denmark’. He effectively captures the audience from the beginning when he is classed as a ‘dreaded sight’. The Ghost of King Hamlet introduces the theme of corruption and deception. It shows deep disturbances in the kingdom, ‘bodes eruption to our state’, which shows the audience that this is not a regular occurrence in Elsinore. 

Hamlet’s dead father is the catalyst for change, and it is his dramatic revelations that get the play underway.  The revelations about ‘the serpent that did sting thy father’s life’ allow the audience to join the dots and understand that it is indeed Claudius who is the snake in question. Hamlet’s problem with his mother is confirmed when the Ghost speaks of ‘his shameful lust that will of my most seeming virtuous queen’, which gives the audience an opportunity to form an opinion about Gertrude. However, the task of vengeance imposed on his son intensifies his suffering. Shakespeare proves how filial duty is of utmost importance to the young prince. He is fully aware of the corruption that infects the monarchy, he knows being loyal to his father is the only way to stop this vicious circle.

The Ghost also forces the other characters to question Hamlet’s sanity. When he returns to ‘To whet thy blunted purpose’ during the closet scene, Gertrude cannot see the Ghost of her husband past. She can only see her crazy and disturbed son. We are almost unsure what is and isn’t deceptive at this point. This phantom works as a narrative exposition, he sets the theme of deception and corruption from the moment he enters the play and gives Hamlet a sense of purpose.

Another core technique used in the play is Imagery. There is a running motif throughout of sickness and poison. The play begins and ends with poison which lends a cyclical quality to it. Claudius is referred to by the Ghost as a ‘serpent’, an animal not only a fitting symbol of poison but whose biblical connections associate it solely with deceit and corruptness.

 All characters who die in the tragedy die of one fatal flaw. Polonius of interference in the business of others, Hamlet of indecisiveness. That is the nature of poison, it is slow-acting, targets weakness, and ultimately corrupts. 

The consistent view of Denmark throughout is of a society that is infected or dying, ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’. Even the events of the play are diseased, ‘Oh to my sick soul’, ‘Quick of the ulcer’, ‘canker’. This image of sickness combined with the image of poison creates a sense of inevitability, a foreboding atmosphere, if Elsinore is sick then its unavoidable death will soon follow.

A technique that also contributes to this corrupt society is Shakespeare's use of Theatre and Acting. There are no characters, with the exception of Horatio, that are completely honest. In fact, deception plays such a huge role in the drama, that the audience can only be sure a character is giving their true thoughts in asides and soliloquies. Shakespeare uses this technique both in grand, obvious ways, such as the Mousetrap, as well as more subtle ways. It is a constant throughout the play, present in almost every scene. Hamlet’s antic disposition, the most major example of theatre, blurs the line of acting and true madness until the audience is sure of nothing, and can trust no one.

 And just as the audience is getting used to questioning everything, Shakespeare presents a scene, the only scene, that is completely devoid of acting.

The arrival of the actors. Hamlet is shocked into dropping all pretences for a moment around those he believes he can trust. ‘My excellent good friends’. The appearance of Rosencranz and Guildenstern brings out the jovial sociable side of Hamlet. In this scene Shakespeare uses the dramatic technique of theatre as a composer might use silence. When a movie has an amazing, emotional score the whole way through, composers will often have one scene with no music at all. This draws attention to it. In allowing the audience to feel an absence of what we expect, it draws attention to the moment. Shakespeare, using the absence of a major theme in this scene, expertly calls attention to its huge presence in the rest of the play.

The facades and acting of all the characters in Elsinore create an image of a crooked, dishonest kingdom, that relies so heavily on deceit that ‘to be honest is to be one man picked out of a thousand’.

The world of deception and corruption evoked by Shakespeare is effectively brought to life through the use of the moral ambiguity, the supernatural, imagery, and theatre. These techniques bring this world to life for the audience and help them to deeply understand the themes and characters of the play. The play would be much less compelling and would lack depth. I personally think that the masterpiece that is Hamlet is thought provoking because of all of the hidden techniques Shakespeare effectively used to evoke the world of deception and corruption.                H1 Standard: 95%

[dualdreamt]

TOPIC // ROMANCE & RELATIONSHIPS

Shoto gets crushes /very/ easily when people are kind to him & has probably had some very slight feelings for most of the class that were easily ignored. However, when he has strong feelings for someone, he’s likely to completely shut down & try to avoid them because he’s not sure what to do about it & he doesn’t want to be cruel like his father or vulnerable like his mother.

Relationships scare him but make him curious all at once due to the fact he has only ever had one example of a relationship & isn’t sure one can be healthy.

However, more than having crushes, he also holds a deep yearning for friendship (which he originally suppressed) & for platonic affection, even if he’s still wary about his hands touching people. A sure way to relax him is to pet his hair, though, & that’s his favourite thing to ask for.

Shoto likes to express his love in both small ways & grand gestures, depending on the day — i.e special occasions — or his current mood. Some of the many ways he likes to prove his love for people are:

Holding them while they sleep / cuddling & hugs. He believes any type of physical contact to be rather intimate. This also includes kisses & hand holding.

Cooking for them or providing for them. He thinks that buying food & other necessities is a form of affection that can’t be easily matched, especially if it is done preemptively without being asked or because he noticed they may be out of something. He enjoys making sure the people he loves are well taken care of, especially if he’s the one doing so.

Dancing. He loves to dance with people, whether friends or lovers. He finds it relaxing & fun to dance in any way as well as a good way to be close to people that isn’t odd.

Observing them. He thinks that watching someone & paying attention to their routine & the way they go about daily life is important, as it allows him to fit himself (mostly) seamlessly in their life without being disruptive & so, believes this to be a comfort & a way of platonic love (or romantic).

Making sure they sleep. He’ll often go out of his way to check on loved ones to make sure they’re resting & that they’re in bed & comfortable. Often times, he’ll move people from their desk to their bed & the like in order to help them sleep peacefully.

Spending time with people! He believes giving up his time for others is a way to show his appreciation for them & that they will view it the same way, as he grew up with little time to give anyone, he thinks that time is very precious & to give it up to spend time with someone must be a form of deeply caring for them & that everyone views it the same way.

Shoto does get jealous quite easily!

While he isn’t possessive in an unhealthy way, he worries that he’s going to lose someone easily or that they’ll fall in love with someone else. While he is aware these thoughts are irrational and that his partner wouldn’t leave him for someone else, that they chose him, it’s more of an insecurity than anything. He knows he isn’t the nicest person, he knows he’s flawed & struggles with emotions & that those aren’t things that most people want to deal with, especially when someone better comes along.

He worries he’s not going to be good enough for them, that he’ll turn out just like his father & be abandoned because he deserves it, but he doesn’t want it to happen, & his fears translate more as jealousy than anything else.

Personality for definite. Being demiromantic, Shoto needs to have an existing emotional attachment — typically, that of a semi-close friend — in order to have any attraction for someone & as an asexual, this is never physical & so, he does not date based off looks as he does not subjectively find anyone attractive without that existing attachment, albeit he does objectively understand what constitutes as attractive or unattractive.

When he has developed romantic feelings — which are from friendship & therefore, a testament to the personality or the other rather than how they look — he will likely comment on that he thinks they look nice, as he finds this something more special & rare than it may be for other people.

He wouldn’t date someone he didn’t like romantically, either, so he looks for a good personality & a strong existing relationship in order to decide who he dates, as well as waiting to fall in love & see if his feelings are genuine.

He would never date someone who wants to be with him for his quirk & for children. He has no interest in reproducing or having children, as he hasn’t got the best perception of romance, marriage or children & he worries he won’t be able to treat them well or will suffer mentally from any of those. This is because he doesn’t know how he’d cope in a similar situation to his mother’s or if he became anything like his father & hurt someone he loved.

He wouldn’t date someone who treated him with intentional cruelty constantly. This does not mean Bakugo, who can be mean but isn’t always trying to hurt people & break them down, but someone who has no compassion for others, no care for them & wants nothing but to hurt. Likewise, if he has dated someone before & they hurt him physically or mentally, he would not be getting back with them, refusing to put himself in that sort of situation & leaving someone at the first sign of abuse when he has recognised it.

[touchmycoat]

book reflections: Confessions by Minato Kanae

Confessions

The heart of this book deals with revenge. It's a familiar theme: when a heinous crime has been committed, are criminal justice procedures ever enough? To what degree is revenge, personally exacted, justified?

Confessions complicates this question by throwing the spikes of tension between children and adults.

Children are such a fascinating subject of study—not to go too far into it, but “childhood” is very much a socially constructed phenomenon (my formative understanding of this is Kathryn Bond Stockton's The Queer Child, which narrates a history of adults-depicting-children, and the values and anxieties that reveals). Confessions asks the question, “what happens when children commit heinous crimes?”

The book begins with a monologue by middle school teacher Moriguchi on the last day of the semester. What first seems like philosophical rambling lays out a multi-layered social phenomenon.

Layer one: social inclination to believe that children are always the victim, never the perpetrator. This is outlined in the story about the teacher who was called out by a female middle school student seemingly in need of help one night, then accused of sexual assault. The student later confessed it was because she wanted revenge—the teacher had scolded her for chatting during class. The teacher was forced to reveal, under these circumstances, that she's trans, and that she had no designs on the student in question (which is certainly a narrative choice to think further about—the quickness of the anecdote and the inherent logic it's meant to convey, that simply by proving herself a woman, the teacher convinced her coworkers that she's exonerated of all suspicion. At least trans identity isn't being inherently linked with deviance?). The teacher was still fired, and the school instituted a new policy that should students ever call teachers for help after school, only male teachers can go to male students, female teachers to female students, etc.

(The narrative, in its determination to gesture to the incapability of institutions to fulfill human needs, uses this as the ignition point for Naoki's unhappiness with Moriguchi.)

Layer two: children receive public anonymity in the court of law, meaning punishment is dealt in secret, and presumably, they can return to society afterwards carrying none of their criminal history. This is outlined in the “Lunacy” case, where a young girl kills her own family with cyanide, after conducting a series of experiments on what poison was most effective. The case got plenty of sensationalist press coverage, but where is the girl now, Moriguchi asks. Has she gotten her punishment? Was justice ever exacted?

Layer three: sensationalist press coverages without embedded moral value only teach children the outliers. At worst, it teaches children that this is the way to get attention (which is precisely what Shuya and Mizuki took from the Lunacy case). Moral outrage loses ground to morbid fascination, becoming worse than an empty gesture; like the teacher who replaces Moriguchi, posturing as some beacon of moral justice is merely for self-satisfaction.

Maybe, more accurately, the book wants to know, “how do you punish a child?” Some, like Moriguchi's not-husband, like Moriguchi insinuates the juvenile criminal justice system to be, answer, “you don't.” Children are products of their environment, so the ones who should be punished are the teachers (as posited by the “Lunacy” case and the chemistry teacher who got all the public blame for giving the child access to cyanide). Alternatively, children are still learning and growing. Moriguchi's not-husband was quite the problem child himself, but he turned things around and became the most truly moral figure of this entire book. He believes in the capacity for change in children.

But Moriguchi doesn't care much about that. Shuya and Naoki plotted to and killed her four-year-old daughter. She wants revenge.

What makes her fascinating as the central figure of this book is her clarity of mind. She isn't someone who's lost herself to vengeance; she systematically identifies the flaws (or what she thinks of as flaws) in the juvenile criminal justice system and then chooses her own revenge. On one hand we have the empathetic response to a mother losing her child, and the willingness to let a fictional character play out, for emotional catharsis, something we might not necessarily endorse in real life. On the other hand we have the unease of her turning this calculatedness toward children: Boy A and Boy B, middle school students.

(Cue comparative cinema studies of the 2010 Confessions film and 2007's Boy A. Oh, apparently Boy A is based off of a novel as well?)

Oh, and then she does take her revenge. She says she's laced Boy A and Boy B's milk cartons with HIV-infected blood.

And now, in what is the true brilliance of the book, Confessions starts to give us other perspectives. We get Mizuki the perfect student, who is first victimized by the hoard of angry classmates (and it's such a consistent literary and real life theme I guess, the cruelty of a mass of children). We get a peak into her questionability in a somewhat tender moment though: why does she just have a poison-testing kit lying around? In this section, we also get a protagonistic portrayal of Shuya; it's not that we doubt Moriguchi's version of the psychopathic-child-inventor Shuya, but now he's the martyr (as per the title of the section). He quietly suffers the bullying of the class, tells Mizuki his negative blood test, and becomes “genuinely” happy at Mizuki's compliments, saying all he's ever wanted was that acknowledgement.

Mizuki also bares her teeth against the new teacher, accusing him of being the cause of Naoki's mother's murder. At this point, it was almost narratively heroic, after we've suffered the annoyance (through her perspective) of the self-important teacher. But afterwards, in Shuya's section, we hear her confess to wanting to poison that teacher for “ruining Naoki's life.” She's killed by Shuya before we hear more, but might that have played out? How much do we fear the mental criminality of children?

We also get Naoki's sister and mother's perspective. We get a doting mother insistent on the innocence of her child, making excuse after excuse for Naoki, even when Naoki's fully confessed to throwing Moriguchi's daughter into the pool. How much responsibility does a parent have toward her child? Does she hold ultimate faith in him, stand staunchly at his side in support of him? Does she do right by the society (and in theory by her kid) by turning in her own child? We were meant to be annoyed by her cruel insistence to blame everyone but her son, but we see in Naoki's section right after that his sanity relied so much on this idea that his mother unconditionally loves him. He believes that, once he's gone to jail for his crimes, he can do his time, reform and return to society as long as his mother is there to love and support him.

Of course, that's when his mother decides to kill both him and herself—a murder-suicide for her failure as a mother.

(It really does haunt me, thinking about Naoki and his stymied possibilities. He killed Moriguchi's daughter in a moment of callous spite, motivated by a desire for revenge against Shuya's dismissal of his overtures of friendship. He lived in such a tortured state for a long time, a child grappling with the terror of impending death by himself, terrified of infecting those who love him. His instincts, when he emerged into the real world again, was to weaponize his “infected” blood. Yet he ended up on such a hopeful incline—mother's love with save me. All this happens as his mother spirals downwards, coming to terms with her own child's monstrosity. The book seeds Naoki's redemption, but takes the sprout away before we can see whether or not it carries infection.)

Finally, we get Shuya's story. I fully bought into it, as I was expected to. The book gestures multiple times at his ability to pen a convincing narrative of innocence. Or at least, a narrative of the anti-hero. He walks us through his absolute love for his mother, the engineering genius. She gave up her career for him, but then turned that dissatisfaction into abuse. Abuse turned back to gestures of love when she was found out, divorced, and forced to move away, and Shuya held deeply on to his faith that he will be reunited with her again. The desire of a child for his mother's love motivated the murder of Moriguchi's daughter, the planting of a bomb at the school festival. It ended up killing Mizuki as well.

Moriguchi bookends this tale, tying up loose threads. Yes she absolutely put the blood in their milk, but it was her not-husband that swapped out the infected cartons. Yes, she wanted to destroy Shuya and Naoki's lives; it won't bring her joy and it won't bring her daughter back, but nonetheless she wants her vengeance on the two boys. The possibility that she was only scaring Naoki and Shuya, that she threatened to but never did anything actually immoral, is completely swept away. She tells Shuya she visited his mother and told her all of his crimes. Baiting Shuya with what his mother said, she instead tells him that the bomb he planted had been deconstructed at the school and reconstructed in his mother's lab instead. Making the bomb and detonating it had both been Shuya's choice.

Shuya had killed her daughter. Now she's killed his mother.

(But did she? I have no doubt she did, but this book doesn't deal in absolutes.)

So—what are we left with? A psychopathic child inventor-slash-murderer motivated by a desire for maternal love? A girl who admired another murderous young murderess and wanted a turn of her own with poisons, murdered before she could prove herself either way? A cruel and reactionary accomplice who came to the conclusion that he had done something wrong but that he could repent? A mother who refused her son's criminality until the very last moment, and believed they were both beyond salvation?   Another mother who took justice into her own hands by ruining the lives of two young boys who killed her daughter in cold blood?

...Is there such a thing as cold blood in this novel? Every “cold” act was done with passionate motive: Shuya wanted to prove himself to his mother, Naoki wanted to prove himself better than Shuya, Moriguchi wanted to give her daughter proper vengeance. HIV is the symbol here of criminality, first given, then saved from, then weaponized by both boys. There's so much, with the blood! Naoki coming to terms with the infection he didn't have made it possible for him to confess the truth, to start himself on the path toward salvation (even if it only lasted a few pages). Shuya embracing the infection right away because if he were dying his mother would surely come back; losing that possibility of death led to him befriending, then of course in the end murdering Mizuki.

Shuya plotted the murder of Moriguchi's daughter, but wasn't actually responsible for the cause of death. Naoki was the accomplice, but at the last moment, made the choice to actually extinguish her daughter's life. This murky twist of motion and motive (Kathryn Bond Stockton!) would prevent them from getting the full punishment of homicide in a juvenile criminal justice court, as Moriguchi explained. Now, because of the blood, they've both committed an inarguable murder with their own hands. Naoki loses his mother and his entire world order that revolved around her unconditional love for him. Shuya's murderous inventions are never allowed to succeed, and he never gets to “prove” his genius, until it was used to kill his own mother, the one person he wanted acknowledge from and to live with. The punishments are incredibly cruel—but are they justified?

[howdoyousayghibli]

Grave of the Fireflies: Thank Goodness I’m Reviewing Totoro Next

I thought Ponyo to Nausicaä was a drastic tonal shift? Oops.

Grave of the Fireflies, a 1993 film directed by the recently passed away Isao Takahata, is a war drama set in Japan during the end of World War II. This alone meant that from the first frame, it was

unlike any movie I had ever seen before.

A WWII movie where Japan isn’t the villain? A WWII movie where—though never present onscreen—the United States of America is the villain? As an American citizen, who as such has ingested the omni-present oorah Saving-Private-Ryan narrative from birth, this aspect of the film alone was deeply disturbing. It’s one thing to watch Japanese planes destroy Pearl Harbor ad nauseum, but it is another thing entirely to watch our planes rain fire and devastation on Japanese civilians. Grave of the Fireflies is careful to never let more than a few scenes pass by without a siren announcing the arrival of another air raid; there’s no chance of forgetting who is directly causing the tragedy unfolding in front of you.

This entirely new point of view alone is sufficient reason for any American to watch this movie; it’s far from the only reason, however. This movie is

as beautiful as it is heartrending.

Or maybe it’s beautiful because it is heartrending. In one of the movie’s few acts of mercy to the viewer, it opens with the protagonist, young Seita, dying. We see his spirit join that of his younger sister, Setsuko, and as the extended flashback begins, we already know there is no Disney ending awaiting us. By clueing us in with the opening scene, Grave of the Fireflies avoids stringing the viewer along, which would have been cruel, but trades that cruelty for another, wherein the viewer feels a perverse tension as they wait for the inevitable demise of these children to bring an end to their agonizing story.

I don’t mean to make the movie sound like 89 minutes of unbroken tragedy; watching it is all the more moving for the small, improbable moments of joy Seita and Setsuko find along the way. Of course, none of these moments remains untarnished, whether it’s a trip to the beach ruined by debris from an air raid or a beautiful display of fireflies ruined by their death within a mosquito net. Still, these moments will carry you through the heartbreak by letting these two children be children, even if just for a moment.

Studio Ghibli’s animation continues to improve with time. While, appropriately, we don’t get any Delicious Ghibli Food™, we do see the beginning of the studio’s distinctive tendency to animate mundane but utterly human actions, just because they can. It stood out to me in Ponyo when Sosuke holds his shorts up out of the water as he wades into the ocean to pick up a goldfish in a jar, and it stands out in countless moments here as well, like Setsuko’s difficulty opening the candy tin, or the two siblings’ preparation to swim at the beach. I don’t think any other studio has managed to capture these small moments the way Ghibli does.

Grave of the Fireflies is a beautiful film, but it does have a few flaws that leave it

short of perfection.

The voice acting is hit or miss, especially Setsuko’s. A bigger problem is Seita and Setsuko’s Mean Aunt. I’m not sure if the problems come from bad writing, bad translation, bad direction, or bad voice acting, but she is an utterly one-dimensional character. She is the Mean Aunt, and we never get a clue as to why she is so consistently and needlessly cruel to her niece and nephew. Her scenes are unpleasant to watch, with all the pain but none of the beauty of the rest of the movie.

I was also a bit confused when Seita withdrew money from the bank near the end of the story. After showing us how desperate he was to care for his sister, the movie owes the viewer a little explanation before having him suddenly withdraw what is apparently enough money to solve all their problems.

In spite of a few issues, this is still a very well-made movie. In trying to describe it, I’m reminded of my feelings as I tried to record a visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to Holocaust victims. “Beautiful” sounds too positive, “terrible” too negative, “informative” too dry, “compelling” too vague. In the end, I can say that Grave of the Fireflies is powerful, moving, and haunting. I recommend it to all (adults), but don’t plan anything for the rest of the day. You’ll need it.

Next up: Totoro, and thank goodness for that.

[clodiuspulcher]

Can I ask what draws you to Agamemnon? He's often kind of a difficult figure to grapple with. Sincere question btw, not meant to sound mean I swear :)

NO NO this isn’t mean at all it’s uh. yeah I know it’s an unpopular Take / Opinion and I really do … care deeply about Agamemnon as a character, so thanks for giving me a chance to explain! it’s complicated, he’s complicated… This is gonna get long

I: APPEARANCE Let’s first put the shallow aspects on the table: he’s big, he’s powerful, he’s My Type (physically), I’m gay. This never comes through in film adaptations (although you know what? 1962 Electra Agamemnon comes close, although he’s overshadowed by the hot Aegisthus) but look at how he’s described in the Iliad: He’s compared to 3 gods, canonically Agamemnon is the most handsome man Priam’s EVER seen in his like one million years of life (a list of men which includes Aeneas , Hector, etc). (this post). When Priam says he’s “Every inch a king”, baby, you know what that means-Anyway , @kashuan‘s art is VERY good for conveying how I imagine Agamemnon based on these descriptions. and he’s drawn like exactly my type there. It’s a lot to reckon with.He’s big. He has big arms and big thighs and could kill me if he wanted and he’s powerful and his aristeia is badass and i’m gay. thanks. II: PERSONALITY Now this part is. more about Agamemnon’s character. first, Agamemnon in the Iliad is in fact deeply flawed- he’s imperious and arrogant and shortsighted and short-tempered, he’s stubborn and selfish and ALL OF THE THINGS PEOPLE HAVE SAID HE IS but there’s also a complexity to his character that tends to get flattened - I think because Agamemnon’s at his worst in book 1, people adhere to this AWFUL first impression and don’t bother to look beneath the surface / take the rest of his behavior / his character into account / use this as the baseline of their understanding, but there IS MUCH MORE to him than that behavior even in the Iliad itself, as detailed in THIS POST. He’s a powerful warrior in his own right, and his failings reflect both the internal flaws of his character and the weight of his responsibilities; we see his concern for his men, for the army, the people, in books 4 and 10 (when he can’t sleep because of his anxiety about his men, about Hector). He DOES however, learn and become better, he grows, he’s dynamic: he and Achilles finally make up (book 19! book 23! They’re good now!) and the Odyssey also ends with their ghosts talking as friends.

(Side note I wonder how this works out when Agamemnon’s son kills Achilles’s son but… that’s for another day).

There’s complexity in Agamemnon’s characterization in the tragedies as well, each tragedian has a different portrait of Agamemnon but he’s never one-dimensional.Euripides’ Hecuba has Agamemnon as concerned about his image and his reputation, anxious (and almost insecure) about his authority, but also concerned with justice and the rule of law, even towards one’s enemies. Sophocles’ Ajax portrays an imperious, proud, stubborn Agamemnon who refuses to realize he’s in the wrong but is able to be convinced by the council of Odysseus and eventually, again, comes to an understanding. Seneca’s Trojan Women shows Agamemnon as a Stoic voice of Reason, urging Pyrrhus not to be too violent/hubristic in their victory, and I love both the presentation of Agamemnon as a tired old man wanting to go home and the sort of man who gets into arguments with teenagers about war crimes. As usual, Seneca excels at this subtlety of characterization, this is like the epitome of the Dichotomy of Agamemnon, sympathetic and infuriating, a good leader and a stubborn, proud man, stoic and short-tempered, as present in the Iliad, is here too, and I love it , and him. Seneca’s Agamemnon almost reverses this (HE REALLY SAYS “What can a victor fear”) but I still love that play, and there’s something to be said for the characterization of Agamemnon as someone who learned ABSOLUTELY nothing from victory.

Overall, it’s true that we get, mainly, a portrait of a hard, ruthless, powerful, embittered man- remember how he destroys that one guy Menelaus wanted to save in the Iliad - but he has a sort of “aggressive charisma” as Kashuan once put it and I REALLY see it, and honestly that in itself has some sort of an appeal to me. But with this portrait of his personality, his softer aspects, the moments of gentleness we see, are more striking, they really stand out and indicate the extent of his feelings. In the iliad, for example, we clearly see he loves Menelaus and while he’s almost laughably over-protective (MORE ON THIS LATER), his care for his brother is evident, touching, especially juxtaposed with his shortsighted selfishness. Just look at what happens in Book 4, when Menelaus is barely wounded and Agamemnon is practically writing his eulogy. Right afterwards, also, “Noble Agamemnon showed no reluctance, no cowardice or hesitation, only eagerness for the fight where men win glory”- he rushes in to fight (but not before first taking out his anxiety on his men by demanding more from them. Cannot do anything appealing / good without mitigating it with irritating behavior. love this fool). It takes him like 9 books to finally apologize to Achilles but he defends Menelaus from Nestor’s reproach in book 10, is anxious about Menelaus being in danger if he’s picked to go on a night raid with Diomedes (HERE) and is endearingly not-subtle about it, frets over him in book 4, when he’s wounded, etc.

The love for his family is something that continually stands out and is perhaps his main “redeeming” trait. In the Odyssey, as mentioned, he ask Odysseus desperately about Orestes with heart-rending choice of words especially when one considers Orestes’s Actual Fate: “Come tell me, in truth, have you heard if my son is still alive, maybe in Orchomenus or sandy Pylos, or in Menelaus’ broad Sparta: that my noble Orestes is not yet dead?”. Agamemnon’s no longer a king- he’s a worried father, he regrets the most not being able to see Orestes before he’s killed; it is this pain, of not being able to be a father to his children, which seems to cut the most deeply, which he speaks of multiple times to Odysseus. Then they just cry for a while, with each other. (I like these tender aspects hidden in a big mean man.. but I also like his big meanness).

the Tragedies take this to another level, of course, to drive home the PATHOS required for his death to have an impact but his love of his family is very much on display there. Iphigenia in Aulis in particular provides us with some agonizing demonstrations of this love: Iphigenia reminisces about an exceptionally tender moment in their relationship, when she was young (you used to ask me, “I wonder, my darling, will I get to see you married one day, married and settled happily in your husband’s home, your life ever blossoming, making me proud of you?” And I’d touch your chin, my father, hang from your beard, father, like I’m doing now and say, “and what about you, father, will I get to see you, father, an old man, visiting me at my house, ready for me to repay you for your hard work in raising me?”) an image hard to reconcile with the merciless violence and stubborn arrogance Agamemnon displays in the Iliad (BUT AGAIN, THAT’S THE APPEAL). Clytemnestra assumes he’s crying because he’s sad to see Iphigenia leave them, Agamemnon’s messenger tells him the arrival of his family will cheer him up: even his subordinates know how important they are to him.

I’d need a whole nother post to talk about his relationship with Clytemnestra but please peruse these crumbs I picked off the ground (HERE). they Had something, tbh the tragedy ONLY WORKS if they did and I will DIE on this hill. In Aeschylus, Clytemnestra calls Orestes the “mutual pledge of their love”, he calls her a “great-hearted woman”, she shirks in Aulis at his curt, demanding tone towards her, noting it as something out of character, she takes charge anyway, knows he can’t or won’t actually force her not to be involved in the Iphigenia marriage preparations-All of this creates an image of a man whose imperious, ruthless, stubborn character is balanced with a surprising capacity for tenderness, a genuine fondness and love for the members of his family, which makes the fact that his hand, albeit forced, aids in its destruction, that much more devastating.III: PSYCHOLOGY/HISTORY

Where things get especially interesting for me, character-wise, is when one thinks about his lineage, his past, and his childhood with respect to his current character. This section is about the House of Atreus in general.

Agamemnon clearly bears the scars of his environment: he was born into the House of Atreus and IMO that informs everything he says and does, all his thoughts and feelings, the way he perceives both the world and his place in it. Seneca’s Thyestes is a horrific portrait of what Agamemnon (and Menelaus’s) childhoods must have been like, ATREUS is their father, they were old enough during this event to almost be accomplices which means they’re clearly old enough to remember it. Speaking of that, Atreus isn’t worried that participating in his god-crime schemes will turn his sons evil because, in his mind, they were born evil (Ne mali fiant times? nascuntur. God GOD). Agamemnon and Menelaus grow up in a nightmare house, adjacent to atrocity, under the almost comically cruel hand of Atreus who sincerely believed his sons inherited said cruelty as if its on the same chromosome as the “house-curse” gene. It’s genuinely a miracle Agamemnon and Menelaus grew up to be functional fucking human beings, in my opinion. It also gives a lot more weight to his relationship with Menelaus and the hard imperious cast of his character; their bond was forged in fire, Agamemnon likely protected Menelaus from the worst of Nightmare House being the older brother, and being as protective as he is. There’s this one Iliad adaptation, I can’t think of it off the top of my head though, where when Agamemnon’s freaking out about Menelaus being Barely Wounded he says “don’t die… for you are all I have” and that’s absolutely  how I think about their relationship in this context- Menelaus WAS all he had for so long, they clung to each other, they preserved their humanity in the face of horror BECAUSE OF each other.

But functional like.. .for a given value of “function”. Agamemnon is clearly deeply affected by these events, the weight of the Curse of the House of Atreus clearly impacts him. Take Iphigenia in Aulis, where he says “each one is born with his bitterness waiting for him”, the fact that a Son of Atreus would say that, I think, speaks to the innate, unspeakable fear of the certain destruction of his world, of the tragedy that awaits him, at his own hands, of the House-Curse waiting perched on his shoulder to strike just when he thought he’d created something impenetrable. The tragedy of Iphigenia in Aulis is Agamemnon’s realization that he has locked himself into this, that he has no other choice (see: this post about the Odysseus impact, there is in fact a point when it’s inevitable, although he still made the first move which makes it even WORSE he created this, etc) and all he can do at this point is watch as the life he so carefully built for himself and his family collapses around him, just like he must have always dreaded it would. (Also in the Iliad It’s Agamemnon who says “We must toil, in accord with the weight of sorrow Zeus loaded us with at birth” and that reminds me of this aspect of him too: Good Things Never Last, Bad Things Never Die, etc.)

It’s made clear that the story of Atreus and Thyestes is widespread, familiar; Teucer in Sophocles’ Ajax and Neoptolemus in Seneca’s Trojan Women both call out Agamemnon for trying to reference his lineage as a source of authority because it is a HORRIFIC lineage. “I know about the famous family of Atreus and Thyestes”, Neoptolemus says. And THEREIN LIES A CONFLICT: Agamemnon’s sense of self comes from his authority, his kingship, his position of power and his social status as a member of the nobility, of the class of royalty BUT. It’s all undercut by the fact that this power, authority, indeed his very identity is based in cruelty, violence, and crime; Agamemnon is descended from the most ignoble nobility, which he knows all too well.

It’s Interesting that Agamemnon’s relationship with his identity, status, family, power is brought up in Ajax, of all plays, primarily concerned with the destruction of Ajax’s identity- reminding Agamemnon of the crimes of his house genuinely cuts him down. I see Agamemnon as a man who genuinely fears his past, who dreads the legacy of his father and in his desperation creates a crisis for himself (as happens in tragedy).

We (I) laugh at Agamemnon “forgetting” about the god-crime shit before he pulls rank by referencing his Authority and Status but there’s something in Agamemnon continually being owned by forgetting about the House….  Agamemnon wants to distance himself from the “legacy” he inherited from Atreus, but he can’t without disavowing his power, his authority, his identity. Whether he likes it or not (he does Not), this is fundamental to who he is. I feel like that knowledge too lurks in his mind, rises to the forefront occasionally at his lowest points-

Clytemnestra in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon pretty clearly sees him / his actions as the next link in the god-crime family chain, a continuation of the house -curse, heir to his father’s throne and his crimes, hence her belief that killing him is the only way to end it/ stop the cycle of violence (spoiler she is wrong but there’s another post coming eventually about how they are Very Similar Characters short version the Etruscans Understand).

IN short, I think there’s a lot of complexity in Agamemnon people overlook, or don’t get to see since they don’t read the peripheral plays. Agamemnon seems to me a man in conflict with himself, a Man of Contradictions, who defines himself by his authority and status while fearing the source of it, whose devotion to his family contrasts with the horror of his childhood, and with his own agonizing role in its destruction, a man who willfully ignores or cannot bring himself to fully interact with the legacy of Atreus, who tries to distance himself from the crimes of his house and the cruelty of his father while being reminded of both every time he’s called by the epithet Atreides.