#i hate that my right to exist has become a subject of debate

[linkspooky]

THE GREATEST REDEMPTION ARC OF ALL TIME IS NOT ZUKO'S

Apparently, I like getting hate in my inbox so let's continue criticizing a series that most people consider to be an untouchable masterpiece. Here's my controversial statement for the day. Zuko's redemptoin arc is... fine. It's just fine. (Remember to send all of your anon hate to linkspooky dot tumblr dot come slash ask). It is a servicable character arc where Zuko is clearly in a different place then where he began, but when I think greatest redemption arc of all time I think Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

So now in order to make my point I'm going to compare the two seemingly unrelated franchises which both feature a bad guy who eventually joins the heroes side.

What is a Redemption Arc?

So I'm going to start off by blowing everyone's minds by saying that I hate the words "redemption arc". If only because the term is so overused, and the word 'redemption' itself is subjective and tied up in personal beliefs of what morality is that 'redemption arc' basically has no meaning. It's kind of like how people use the word 'enemies to lovers' to describe stories like Pride and Prejudgice, because like in most romance stories the two main characters start out the story disliking each other.

Redemption arc is now a buzzword, and every time a villain shows even a small amount of humanity a new discourse on whether or not they deserve a redemption arc starts up. So is the problem that there are too many redemption arcs?

No, not at all.

In fact off the top of my head I can only name a couple of redemption arcs that actually complete and don't end with the character dying, Spike, Zuko, Catra, and uhhhhh..... uhhh.... Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment.

There's not nearly enough redemption arcs and yet there's so much debate over the term 'redemption arc'. So here's my solution stop calling them redemption arcs, because using the word 'redemption' requires that the reader make a moral judgement on whether or not they have done enough to be morally redeemed.

A redemption arc is just a character arc. If you take out the word 'redemption' and just judge a redemption arc as a character arc, an arc where a character needs to change in a singificant way and be in a significantly different place than they were at the start of the story it becomes easier to discuss the quality of a redemption arc without turning it into a morality debate.

A redemption arc is just a regular character arc, where a character starts off in a much, much lower place.

You can describe most "redemption" arcs in the same way you would describe a regular character arc, in terms of a need / want arc. In most stories the main character starts out with a want, that drives them forward. In a disney movie, this takes the form of a disney princess "I want" song. The want is an external need that the main character actively pursues. My favorite disney princess Elphaba Thropp starts the story singing "The Wizard and I" about how she wants the Wizard to recognize her and see her for more than just the color of her skin, and make it so she's seen and accepted for who she is for the first time. Dorothy sings "Over the Rainbow" because she WANTS to get away from her dreary existence in Kansas and go somewhere else.

Contrasting this want is a need. This is something internal that they need to fix about thermselves in order to have a complete character arc. Oftentimes, the character is so distracted by what they want, they spend most of the plot failing to realize what they need to do in order to fix themselves. The need is a lesson, only attained upon self-reflection and self-evaluation, an honest step towards self-fulfillment. A character usually demonstrates growth by realizing what is important to them, what they need to do, instead of focusing only on what they want.

Elphaba realizes her want for acceptance is distracting her need to do right by outcasts who are just like her, which is why she chooses to become the wicked witch rather than stay by the wizard's side in Defying Gravity.

"You can have all you ever wanted." "But I don't want it. I can't want it, anymore."

Dorothy's I want song is all about how she wants to go somewhere far away, but at the end of the movie her greatest desire is to go home, and she's finally able to return to Kansas by clicking her heels after realizing how important home was to her. Glinda even says that Dorothy always had the magic inside of her to go home to begin with, she just needed to realize it, and her journey to Oz was all so she could make the internal realization of how important home was to her. Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, the Lion all go to the wizard to ask him to grant him their wish, something that they WANT, only for the Wizard to turn out to have no magic. The Wizard instead points out to all of them they already had those qualities inside themselves, he gives Scarecrow a Diploma because Scarecrow was always smart, he gives Tin Man a heart shaped watch because Tin Man was the most sensitive of all, and he gives the Lion a Medal because the Lion was always courageous never running away despite the faft he was a scaredy cat.

Anyway, the point of this tangent is I can put Zuko's arc in these simple need / want terms even though he starts the story as an antagonist, because a redemption arc is a regular character arc.

Zuko starts the story with a conflicting want and need. He wants to capture the avatar in order to restore his honor and gain his father's approval, but what he really needs to do is question what "reclaiming his honor" truly means. He needs to question the values of the country that he was born in and realize that the fire nation is wrong and what the fire nation is doing to the world is wrong. This conflict with his want, which is his desire for his father's approval, because in order to gain his father's approval Zuko has to act like a fire nation prince and contribute to the war effort.

Much more simply you could say that Zuko wants to meet his father's expectations and be a good son, but what he really needs to do is learn to be a good person by his own definition of right and wrong not his father's.

I would compare it to Elphaba's arc, Zuko would start singing "When I'm with the Wizard" and when he finally realizes that he doesn't want to exist to please his father especially when his father is hurting the world and so many people he'd bust out into "Defying Gravity."

My point being that Zuko is no different from any Disney Princess.

No, actually my point being that what Zuko is going through is just a regular character arc, it's just more complicated because he has more flaws than any of the other main characters.

But, every character starts out with a flawed understanding of the world. Every hero should have severe flaws that they need to overcome in order to learn and grow.

If anything I think the reason redemption arcs receive so much focus is that they are much more clear cut character arcs, because the characters who receive redemption arcs have glaring, obvious, flaws.

All characters should have flaws, there's no reason for a character to grow if they start out the story perfect. However, often the good guys, because they are the good guys will either be less flaw, or the plot will brush over their flaws and won't challenge them as much which is why their arcs will come off as less compelling than redemption arcs. Not because redemption arcs are automatically deeper, but because a redemption arc always starts out with a more obviously flawed chracter and the narrative HAS to address those flaws which is going to lead to a better character arc.

Redemption arcs are just regular character arcs, and I'm going to judge both Zuko and Spike's arcs as regular arcs in order to illustrate why in comparison's Zuko's is incomplete.

BTVS vs. ATLA

Buffy the Vampire Slayer seems like a strange show to compare to Avatar the Last Airbender, but they actually cover a wide range of similiar topics. They are both about the burden of being the chosen one, Aang being the Avatar who reincarnates again and again to try to lead the world to balance. Buffy is the Slayer, one girl in all the world who can hunt vampires.

Briefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a show by Joss Whedon based around the concept of what if the Cheerleader who died in the first five minutes of every horror movie wasn't a victim, but instead was the thing that monsters were afraid of.

Buffy is a normal teenage girl whose life changes when she finds out she's the slayer, a girl gifted with super strength and combat ability who is tasked with using these abilities to fight off an endless army of demons and vampires that come her way. Usually at least once a season she fights a big bad that threatens to end the world. While at the same time, Buffy tries to maintain some form of a normal life, with her mother, her friends, and her mentor who teaches her how to be a better Slayer.

Aang, is a normal teenage boy who finds out when he is twelve years old he is the reincarnation of the spiritual leader of his people, the Avatar who is tasked with maintaining the balance between the four nations. Aang runs away from this responsibility and ends up frozen in the ice for 100 years. When he wakes up he finds out the fire natoin has killed all of the airebenders, and invaded over 3/4s of the war, and that if he doesn't master all four elements before Sozin's comet returns a year from now then the fire nation will likely use the power of the comet to permanently win the war.

She is also one in a long line of slayers, but while avatars reincarnate, the Slayer fights until they die and then a completely new Slayer takes over from there. Aang is able to bend all four elements and has a connection to the spirit world, Buffy has super strength and the ability to have visions. Both characters want to live a normal life, but because they are the chosen one they are forced to fight to save the world. They're both surrounded by a gang of friends who follow them because they are the chosen one, Buffy has the Scooby Gang, and Aang has Team Avatar / The Gaang.

Both stories are not only deconstructions of the pressures of being the chosen one, they are also bildungsroman that are about their main character growing up and learning adult responsibility alongside learning how to fulfill their role as the chosen one. They both die once and are magically revived. (Buffy voice: "Hey, I've died twice".)

Perhaps the biggest connection and the one this post is about is both shows are thematically about redemption, and eschew traditional Christian ideas of good and evil in favor of a more nuanced look at morality.

BUFFY He wants forgiveness. GILES Yes. I imagine he does. But when James possesses people they act out exactly what happened that night, so instead he's experiencing a form of purgatory. He's doomed to kill his Miss Newman over and over again - and forgiveness is impossible. BUFFY Good. He doesn't deserve it. GILES To forgive is an act of compassion, Buffy. It's not done because people deserve it. It's done because they need it. Now Buffy goes off - her spite palpable. BUFFY No. James destroyed the person he loved the most in a moment of blind passion. And that's not something you forgive. No matter why he did what he did. No matter if he know now that it was wrong and stupid and selfish. He's just going to have to live with it. XANDER He can't live with it Buff, he's dead.

They are both shows about forgiveness above all else, and this is why a major plotline in both shows feature a character who starts out as an antagonist making a long journey and eventually changing sides to join the heroes.

ZUKO VS SPIKE

So, since there are really no objective ways to determine the quality of a "redemption arc" because the idea of redemption is entirely subjective and based upon your personal beliefs, I am just going to judge Zuko's redemption arc by comparing it to what I consider a complete arc.

I am going to oultine the stages of Spike's arc, and why I consider his arc to be a complete arc and then compare Zuko and see if he checks all of the same boxes that Spike does.

There's really no objective criteria for judging redemption arcs. It's not like the hero's journey. So, in order to give this post some organization I'm going to make up my own template based on Spike's character arc, because I consider it to be a complete arc. I will be judging Zuko based upon how far he progresses through the different stages I outline in Spike's arc.

These stages are Origin - usually a tragic backstory, but is just a backstory that describes why the villain is the way they are currently and what circumstances led to their current motivations.

Season Two Spike - The character is just a straightforward antagonist, though usually with some redeemable qualities so the audience can see the potential for a future redemption. In terms of character arc, I would say that this is when a character is entirely guided by their mistaken assumption of the world.

Season 4 Spike - A dramatic change in circumstances for the villain, that forces them to re-evaluate their life. The antagonist usually loses their spot as main antagonist to someone else, or stops being an antagonist entirely but also has yet to join the good guys. This major shift in circumstances is what causes the antagonist to start re-evaluating themselves, it's meant to be a shocking eye opener.

Season 5 Spike - The hero now wants to be on the side of the good guys, but for all of the wrong reasons. They make overtures at redemption, but it's not true redemption yet because while they might be trying to do the right thing it's for mostly selfish reasons, or they still don't know what right and wrong truly are.

Season 6 Spike - Character regression, this is an inevitable part of almost any redemption arc, and honestly should be a part of good character arcs. Basically, the character regresses right before the big change, they get worse before they can get better, this is what adds tension to the story. This regression is necessary because a temporary reversion to their old self, and overcoming that regression is a way to demonstrate that the character has indeed permanently changed.

Season 7 / Season 1 of Angel - Spike The character is truly redeemed because they have done the work that they need to change, and as proof of that they have re-evaluated their previously flawed moral code, and now have invented a new set of morals to follow and live by. This is what I consider the most important part of a redemption arc, the character has to show proof that their way of thinking has changed. Every character starts with a flawed understanding of how the world works, and one of the biggest benefits of going through a character arc is the wisdom gained as a part of that journey. Every character arc should end with the question: "So, what have you learned?"

ORIGIN: The Storm vs Fool for Love

So this is going to start out making Zuko look like a way better character than Spike, but bare with me for a second. Zuko and Spike both receive entire episodes devoted to their backstories (Zuko gets two, but we're only discussing the Storm for now).

In the storm we learn the circumstances for Zuko's banishment, in parallel to learning exactly why Aang ran away from his own destiny as the avatar and how he ended up frozen in Ice. During the course of the episode, after Zuko orders his crew to sail right into a storm they start to express their displeasure about Zuko's treatment of them until Iroh takes one man aside and explains how Zuko was banished. That Zuko used to be a more idealistic prince, who was banished because he spoke up in a war meeting against the sacrifice of young fire nation soldiers. That the Zuko of the past was punished for trying to defend fire nation citizens and that's why the current Zuko is so desperate to find the avatar to restore his honor he disregards the safety of his crew.

At the end of the episode we are shown a glimmer of the old Zuko who once spoke out against sacrifice soldiers when he goes out of his way to save the life of one of his crewmen during the storm and drags them back onboard.

Spike's origin was that he's bad poet, and everyone laughed at his poems so he decided to become a vampire.

See when I describe it like that, it makes Zuko sound like such a better character, because his backstory is obviously more sympathetic. If the reason Zuko was banished was because everyone laughed at his bad poetry, I think it would be much harder for audiences to connect with him on an emotional level.

However, Spike's backstory works in spite of the fact that it's not immediately sympathetic. It doesn't need to be a tragic backstory, because it establishes the same thing that Zuko's does, once Spike was a normal person before he was led astray.

Both of these backstories exist to portray the humanity of the antagonist, and also the reasons why they want the thing they want. I'm going to simplify both characters for the sake of comparison, but arguably both Spike and Zuko want the same thing. They both want love and approval from an external source. They are both chasing love, for Zuko it's chasing his father's love and approval, and for Spike it's chasing first Drusilla's love, an d then Buffy's. Both are also willing to completely remake themselves into someone they're not in order to get their love, Zuko acts like a much harsher version of himself that's obsessed with war and conquest because he thinks that's what his father wants. Spike basically remakes his entire personality depending on the person he's in love with, he decides to be a good guy only because he falls in love with Buffy and decides that if he's good now Buffy will love him back. However, before that Spike remade himself into a vampire because he thought that is what would impress Drusilla.

They've both completely remade themselves in order to please someone else, but there remains some hints of their original self. By the end of the episode after spending the whole episode acting out their aggressive persona, Spike and Zuko give a sign that the person they were in their origin story is still there. Zuko saves a crewmember from drowning, and Spike ends the episode trying to comfort Buffy even after she's rejected him and made it clear that there's no chance of a relationship happening between the two of them.

Buffy looks up at the sound, her face wet with tears. BUFFY What do you want now? Spike is about to pull the trigger when he sees her tears and through them, her pain. His rage vanishes in an instant. SPIKE What's wrong? BUFFY I don't want to talk about it. Spike lowers the g*n. SPIKE Is there something I can do? Buffy says nothing, the reality of her mother's situation hitting her like a steel weight, overcoming her. Spike sits down next to her and tentatively pats her back, trying to comfort her. She lets him.

Both of these episodes follow the same formula, and the Storm is my favorite episode of Avatar the Last Airbender, but I'm still going to elaborate right out the gate on why I think "Fool for Love" does a better job at spinning an origin story.

This is where I'm going to start outlining one of my major problems with Zuko's redemption arc too, in that it cares more for audience pathos than it does the actual events that happen in the story. Zuko basically wears a t-shirt that signals he's going to get a redemption arc, so a lot of the steps in his arc feel signposted.

Starting with the episode itself, like we learn about Zuko's tragic backstory, because Iroh was explaining to the crew that this is the reason why Zuko was treating him poorly, and therefore the crew should feel sorry for him. This isn't who Zuko really is, this is who he is as a result of trauma, and let me explain the trauma so you will now sympathize and understand him better.

It's not bad, it's just less organic. You can see the author's fingerprints what I'm saying, and remember this is my favorite episode of ATLA so I'm not saying this is a bad episode. I just prefer Fool for Love because it's more interested in exploring Spike as a character, it's not telling the audience to feel sorry for him.

Fool for Love is an episode that begins when Buffy accidentally slips and is stabbed by one of the random mook vampires, the ones she usually kills without a problem every night. This small slip almost killing her leads to her to have a crisis, as she tries to figure out what went wrong exactly.

She ends up going for Drinks with Spike, and pays him money to tell her about the two slayers that he's killed in the past one hundred years. She's hoping that since Spike has killed two slayers, he can tell her what her mistake was, what her weakness is so she can fix it.

Spike who has fallen in love with Buffy that point, ends up treating the entire night like a date. He tells Buffy his entire life story, as a means of answering her question. First that he was nothing more than a poet named William Pratt, called William the Bloody for his Bloody Awful Poetry. That he fell in love with sire Drusilla and had an eternal love with her that lasted more than a hundred years, and in the process reinvented his personality from a sensitive poet to a violent vampire that relished in bloodshed. That he eventually became bored with his immortal existence and started to chase after slayers because they are the only thing that can kill vampires as powerful and old as he, and killing one in the boxer rebellion, and one in the 1970s.

In between the story of the two slayers he killed, we also see a highlight reel of Spike's romantic failures. Spike confessed to a girl asking her to see that he was a good person deep down only for her to say she was beneath him.

SPIKE I know I'm a bad poet but I'm a good man and all I ask is that... that you try to see me- CECILY I do see you. That's the problem. You're nothing to me, William. You're beneath me. She stands and walks off, leaving Spike devastated and alone.

Spike then is eventually rejected by Drusilla his forever love, and the girl he became a vampire to try and impress. Then at the end of the episode he's rejected by Buffy in the exact same manner.

BUFFY Say it's true. Say I do want to. She shoves him to the ground and looks down at him with disgust. BUFFY It wouldn't be you, Spike. It would never be you. She tosses the wad of cash at him contemptuously. BUFFY You're beneath me. Buffy turns and walks off into the night, leaving Spike alone in the dark alley.

Spike became a vampire because he was too sensitive to survive as a normal person. Yet deep down he wanted to be loved for who he is, not for the person he is pretending to be, yet every time he asks someone to see the real him he's told again and again that he's beneath them.

The entire episode is basically about all the ways that Spike changed himself, in order to hide that softer version of himself and try to be a version of himself someone would loved, and how that failed over and over again.

A character needs to start out the story with a flawed understanding of the world. Spike and Zuko both have a very flawed understanding of what will get them love, Spike sees becoming a vampire as the greatest thing that ever happened to him, and Zuko sees that he needs to be a better, more vicious prince like his father wanted him to be and capture the avatar to restore his honor.

BUFFY So you traded up on the food chain. Then what? SPIKE No, please. Don't make it sound like something you'd flip past on the Discovery Channel. Becoming a vampire is a profound and powerful experience. I could feel this new strength coursing through me. Getting k*lled made me feel alive for the very first time. I was through living by society's rules. Decided to make a few of my own. Of course, in order to do that... I had to get myself a g*ng.

However, the story is much harsher on Spike. No one really takes Buffy aside and sits down to explain to her "Here's why you should be more patient and understanding with Spike, because before he turned into a vampire he was a very different person." No, in fact Spike explaining his entire backstory to Buffy doesn't win him any sympathy points in her eyes at all. After learning everything about him he's still "beneath her".

Arguably it doesn't really engender much sympathy with the audience either. Who is more sympathetic, the guy with the obvious facial scar who was kicked out of his home by his abusive father and is now pursuing the avatar because it's the only way for him to return home... or the guy who's a bad poet who's sad because his girlfriend dumped him.

However, I find Spike's to be more complex because it doesn't tell the audience that Spike is sympathetic and redeemdable, it just shows that through his last action of choosing to comfort Buffy when he saw her crying alone on the porch in spite of the fact she rejected him. Zuko's origin story episode does the same thing, and if you had cut the fact that Iroh was explaining this to Zuko's crew so they'd go easier on him it'd be entirely show and not tell.

Jeel: I'm sick of taking his orders! I'm tired of chasing his Avatar! I mean, who does Zuko think he is? Iroh:Do you really want to know?

Imagine if it was Zuko explaining his backstory to one of his crewman, and then at the end much like Buffy the crewmember went "I don't care you're still an asshole" and then Zuko had to save them anyway. That would make the moment feel a lot less telegraphed and a lot more earned.

SEASON 4 of Buffy:

I'm going to skip the seasons where Spike and Zuko are main antagonists, because I think I already established what their flaws are, and what their want/need arc is. Both Zuko and Spike wrap themselves in anger and aggression, in order to mask their softer sides. They want love, and they pursue it by trying to earn it by accomplishing external goals, instead of doing the hard work of fixing themselves. They need to become better people, but they ignore this need in favor of their want.

This is most apparent in Season 2 of Avatar, and Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In season 4, Spike returns to Sunnydale only to have a chip put in his head that shocks him every time he tries to harm a human. Now that he's incapable of being a vampire, Spike has an existential crisis that leads him to re-evaluate his life. However, Spike does not conclude that he needs to become a better person.

In fact Spike spends the entire season in denial of the change of the circumstances in his life. Instead of trying to change for the better, Spike just wants to get the chip out of his head so he can go back to being a vampire.

Denial of the change in circumstances, and wanting to go back to being their old selves is what colors this stage of the redemption arc. Zuko also, is declared an enemy of the fire nation after his actions in the seige of the north pole. He no longer has his ship and crew, has to live the life of a refugee, and his much more competent sister takes down hunting the avatar.

During this season changing sides does not cross Zuko's mind either. He spends the entire season wanting to go back to being a prince, and in denial of his change of circumstances. He cannot accept that he a royal is now living the life of a beggar. He steals an ostrich horse from a couple who helps heal his uncle. He declares himself the prince of the fire nation after fightnig off some bully earth army soldiers and then acts confused as to why the locals seem disgusted with him.

All characters start the story with an incorrect view of how the world works, and instead of mending their incorrect beliefs, Zuko and Spike in this respective stage of their arcs choose to keep clinging to those incorrect beliefs. They are still pursuing that want, and ignoring what they need even though that want gets farther and farther out of reach. The idea that Spike might want to change sides to the good guys does not even occur to him, because he defines himself as an evil monster.

Spike: (looking around) I admit, it's a bit of a fixer-upper. Needs a woman's touch. (looks at Giles) Care to have a crack at it? Giles: While I'd loved to go on trading jabs with you, Spike, perhaps I'll come to the point. As much as it pains me to say it, um, I owe you a debt of gratitude for the help you provided me in my recent . . . metamorphosis. Spike: (rubbing a crick out of his neck) Stuff the gratitude. You owe me more than that, mate. Giles pulls out a small bundle of dollar bills and offers it to him. Giles: Three-hundred. Count it if you'd (Spike snatches it out of his hand). . . like. Spike: I'll do that. While Spike starts counting the money, Giles looks the place over. Giles: Um, thinking about your affliction and, uh, your newfound discovery that you can fight only demons; it occurs to me that (chuckling) I realize this is completely against your nature but I-I-I-- Has it occurred to you that there may be a higher purpose-- Spike: Ugh! You made me lose count. (faces him) What are you still doing here? Giles: Talking to myself, apparently. Spike: Well piss off, then. (indicates the money in his hands) This bit of business wraps up any I got with you and your Slayerettes. From here on I want nothing to do with the lot of you. Giles: Your choosing to remain in Sunnydale might make that a little difficult. Spike: Well you and yours will just have to show a little restraint is all. Get out. Giles doesn't say anything and heads for the door. Spike: (following) And I don't want you crawling back here knocking on my door pleading for help the second Teen Witch's magic goes all wonky or little Xander cuts a new tooth. We're through. You got it? Giles opens the door and Spike flinches away from the brightness. He looks over his shoulder at the vampire and his eye twitches. His feelings might be a little hurt. Spike: (callously) Honeymoon is over. Giles leaves without a word.

Spike in particular receives help from the good guys several times, and refuses to change sides because of his denial of his change in circumstances. When Spike first escapes after getting chipped, he receives shelter from Buffy and Giles, lives with them under hiding for a long time, only to spit on them several times and learn nothing from the experience. At the end of the season he even betrays them to the bad guy for the chance at having his chipped removed so he can go back to being a vampire.

Zuko receives an offer from Katara to help heal Iroh with the same hostility. Though, there are more consequences to Spike spitting in the face of the Scooby Gang, because in season 5 and season 6 when he decides he wants to start getting along with them because he's in love with Buffy they are all reluctant to let him join because they all collectively hold him accountable for his previous behavior.

Either way though the pattern of behavior is the same, Zuko and Spike refuse to acknowledge the changes to their lives and leap at the opportunity to go back to their old life. They only think about their wants to the point where it distracts them to the reality of the situation.

Iroh: So, the Blue Spirit. I wonder who could be behind that mask ... Zuko:[Sighs and takes off the mask.] What are you doing here? Iroh: I was just about to ask you the same thing. What do you plan to do now that you've found the Avatar's bison? Keep him locked in our new apartment? Should I go put on a pot of tea for him? Zuko: First I have to get it out of here. Iroh:[Starts yelling.] And then what!? You never think these things through! [Points at him.] This is exactly what happened when you captured the Avatar at the North Pole! You had him, and then you had nowhere to go! Zuko: I would have figured something out! Iroh:No! If his friends hadn't found you, you would have frozen to death! Zuko: I know my own destiny, Uncle! Iroh: Is it your own destiny, or is it a destiny someone else has tried to force on you? Zuko: Stop it, Uncle! I have to do this! Iroh: I'm begging you, Prince Zuko! It's time for you to look inward and begin asking yourself the big questions. Who are you, and what do you want?

Both Zuko and Spike are refusing to answer the big questions, and only focusing on getting what they want, even as what they think they want gets farther and farther out of reach.

I'm not going to speak too unfavorably of Zuko's arc in comparison of Spike's here, because the denial of both characters is portrayed well except to say that Spike's is harder hitting. If only because as I'll cover later, the Good Guys actually remember the multiple times they saved Spike's life and he spat in their faces for it, and this infleunces their behavior towards him in later seasons and makes his redemption arc harder.

SEASON FIVE of BUFFY

This part I'm going to have to go slightly out of order because Spike follows this order, in season 5 he redeems himself for the wrong reasons, in season 6 he regresses as a character, and in season 7 he finally redeems himself for the right reasons after climbing back from his lowest point and committing to the work of self improvement. The regression stage is important because it's what shows the audience that the redemption will stick, that the character won't fall back on bad habits.

Zuko's arc is slightly out of order. Instead of the redeeming himself for false reasons, he skips right to the character regression stage. He chooses to go back to the fire nation, spends ten episodes regressing as a character after betraying his uncle in favor of everything he's ever wanted, and then finally after the Day of Black Sun joins the good guys in order to correct his mistake.

However, I think by skipping the "redeems himself for the wrong reasons" stage we are missing out something critical, which is why Zuko's redemption in the last half of season 4 reads to me as so rushed and incomplete. Now, let me attempt to explain the reasons for my reading, by explaining what I think is so brilliant of Spike's arc in Season 5 of Buffy.

To begin with I am going to explain what I mean by Spike is redeeming himself for the wrong reasons. In order to do that I am going to borrow a lot of quotes from this meta on ao3, Spike, Buffy, Angel & Romanticism.

When I say Spike is redeeming himself for the wrong reasons, what I mean is Spike is genuinely trying to help the good guys, but his understandings of good and evil are flawed because he is a soulless monster without a conscience that helps him judge between good and evil. For Spike, much like Zuko, most of his jugdements are based on what he thinks will give him approval. He is chasing external validation from others, and therefore he has no internal moral code. Even when Spike is trying to help out the good guys in Season 5, his motives are impure (he's just trying to score good boy points because he thinks if he demonstrates he's a good person Buffy will fall in love with him). He also has not truly changed, because Spike is still seeking external validation, he just wants Buffy's validation instead and he thinks acting like a good guy is how he will earn it. He's changed the person he's trying to please, but he hasn't really changed anything about himself.

Yet, Spike spends the entirety of season 5 convinced that he is a monster who is redeeming himself. That is one interesting layer of both Zuko and Spike's arcs, they both think they are on journeys of redemptions. Zuko thinks that capturing the avatar will redeem his honor, because in the eyes of his violent culture that is what will redeem him by fire nation standards. He doesn't stop to think whether or not fire nation standards are incorrect, or like Uncle suggests whether this is his destiny or jsut a destiny someone else forced upon him.

Spike on the other hand sees himself as a romantic figure, much like Zuko. When he falls in love with Buffy, he convinced that loving Buffy is what redeems him and he will become a good guy out of love for her. Just like Zuko, he views himself as a protagonist of a story about a man on a redemption quest but has absolutely no idea what true redemption would even entail.

However, Buffy goes a lot harder on deconstructing Spike's view of himself as a romantic hero. Spike is a poet, he is a romantic, he sees the world through a certain romanticized lens like it is a story where he is the main character and Season 5 goes through great lengths to disabuse him of that notion.

Moreover, the episode reveals his entire aesthetic and personality to essentially be a construct. But most tellingly of all, it reveals him to be an idealist. Spike is not just a performance artist; he yearns for the “effulgent”, for something “glowing and glistening” that the “vulgarians” of the world don’t understand. In other words, he yearns for something bigger and more beautiful than life: something romantic. Later, he chases after “death, glory, and sod all else.” Spike may be a “fool for love”, who has a romantic view of romantic love specifically, but the episode is very clear about the fact that he is also a romantic more generally. When Drusilla turns him, she doesn’t tempt him by telling him she’ll love him forever. She tempts him by offering him “something…effulgent”. (Which, in typical Spike form, the episode immediately undercuts by having him say “ow” instead of swooning romantically). The fact that “Fool For Love”, Spike’s major backstory episode, is so determined to paint him as a romantic–and in particular, a disappointed, frustrated romantic–that it is willing to contradict canon to do so, tells you that this choice was important for framing Spike and his new, ongoing thematic role. (Impalementation)

Zuko and Spike both start out with a flawed understanding of the world. They have this certain narrative about themselves, and if they follow the script then things should work out the way they expect it to. Zuko's script is if he brings the avatar back home he'll earn his father's love and restore his honor, which is continually frustrated by the fact that Zuko is not the person that he is trying to be. He's not competent enough to bring the avatar back, not ruthless enough to survive in the world of fire nation politics. He's doing everything he can to follow the story, but the story keeps proving to be false and Zuko can't cope because he's working with a flawed understanding of the world., The narrative lens which he applies to everything is twisted by Fire Nation propaganda and his own trauma, and because he hasn't seen anything else he can't see it.

Spike is basically doing the same thing, he is a vampire who has read both Dracula and Anne Rice, he knows the tropes of the soulful vampire. As impalementation points out above Spike is a romantic and a disappointed romantic at that, he longs for a world that plays out like the stories he's read, longs to roleplay the chivalric romance of a knight protecting their love, first with Drusilla and then with Buffy, only to be disappointed at every turn. Spike has read lots of books, and he too thinks that reality is supposed to function like a story though in Spike's case it's a love story between a loyal knight and the one they serve, and when reality goes off script Spike cannot cope.

We’ve talked in the past about how season five is all about the tension between the mythical and the mortal–between big, grand, sweeping narratives, and the reality of being human. Buffy is the Slayer, but she’s also just a girl who loses her mother. Dawn is the key, but she’s also just a confused and hormonal fourteen-year-old. Willow is a powerful witch, but she also just wants her girlfriend to be okay. Glory is a god, but she’s also a human man named Ben, and finds herself increasingly weakened by his emotions. And Spike embodies this tension perfectly. He’s a soulless vampire with a lifetime of bloodshed behind him, but he’s also this silly, human man who wants to love and be loved. He wants big, grand things, but every time they are frustrated by a Victorian society, a rejection, a chip, a pratfall, or dying with an “ow”. Furthermore, his season five storyline is all about the tension between loving in an exalted, yet often selfish way, versus loving in a “real” or selfless way.  (Impalementation).

Both ATLA and Buffy explore the idea that these characters are following false narratives, that they're thinking of themselves like characters in a story. ATLA goes a long way to deconstruct what Fire Nation propaganda is, and the way Zuko's understanding of honor is tainted by the culture he grew up in, that despite being obsessed with honor he doesn't really understand what restoring honor would truly mean. However, it doesn't go to quite the lengths that Buffy does, in completely peeling away the romanticism until the reality is left underneath.

All throughout Season 5, every time Spike attempts to be good it's purely transactional. Spike thinks of himself as a vampire who is redeeming himself out of love, so he thinks if he starts performing good deeds that Buffy will begin to see him in a different light. Only to be rebuffed (haha) again and again when characters refuse to play along to his script.

Rupert Giles : We are not your friends. We are not your way to Buffy... There is no way to Buffy... Clear out of here. And Spike, this thing... get over it ...

The Scooby Gang doesn't want him hanging around because he spent all of season 4 spitting in their faces every time they tried giving him a chance.

So at first, Spike’s “deeds” tend to be shallow and vaguely transactional. He tries to help Buffy in “Checkpoint” even though she doesn’t want it (and insults her when she doesn’t appreciate it), he asks “what the hell does it take?” when Buffy is unimpressed by him not feeding on “bleeding disaster victims” in “Triangle”, he rants bitterly at a mannequin when Buffy fails to be grateful to him for taking her to Riley in “Into the Woods”, and he is angry and confused when Buffy is unmoved by his offer to stake Drusilla in “Crush”.  But these incidents of self-interested narrativizing are also continuously contrasted with scenes in which Spike reacts with real generosity, or is surprised when he realizes he’s touched something emotionally genuine. When Buffy seeks him out in “Checkpoint”, his mannerisms instantly change when he realizes she actually needs real help (“You’re the only one strong enough to protect them”), rather than the performed help he offered at the beginning of the episode. At the end of “Fool For Love” he’s struck dumb by Buffy’s grief, and his antagonistic posturing all evening melts away. He abandons his romantic vision of their erotic, life-and-death rivalry in favor of real, awkward emotional intimacy. In “Forever” he tries to anonymously leave flowers for Joyce, and reacts angrily when he’s denied—but this time not because he wanted something from Buffy. Simply because he wanted to do something meaningful.  (Impalementation).

Season 5 goes to great lengths to show the duality between the real and the romantic, when Spike's actions are motivated by his grand ideas of romance, and when the real selfless gestures of affection are shown.

Expressly, Spike does not get a reward, even for his real moments of generosity. The season begins with Buffy telling Spike that she's beneath her. At the end of Season 5, Spike's realization is that Buffy doesn't love him, but she treats him like a man and that's enough, and he has that realization when she's standing on top of a staircase still above him. Spike has learned in some part the difference between real selfless love, but he isn't immediately given what he wants for it. The reward is the revelation itself, a one hundred year old vampire slowly learning what real love is.

The season doesn't even reward Spike for acting like a true selfless knight at the end of the season, because even after he laerns how to finally be selfless the romanticsism is ripped away. Spike no longer makes demands of Buffy's love, and he's happy just being able to help fight with her and protect her, and he fails to both protect Buffy's sister Dawn in spite promising to, and is unable to do anything but watch Buffy jump to her death.

Spike spends the entire season trying to redeem himself for the wrong reasons, and even when he finally does start fighting for the right reasons he's not magically rewarded because Buffy the Vampire Slayer is much more interested in the reality of exploring what it would mean for a soulless monster to redeem himself even though the universe doesn't give him a reward for getting enough good boy points, then it is the romantic story of a beast being saved by the power of his selfless love.

SEASON SIX of BUFFY

In season Six of Buffy, and the first half of Season 3 of Avatar the Last Airbender, both Spike and Zuko hit their character regression and lowest points after being given everything they think they want. For Spike that is a relationship with Buffy that quickly spirals out of control, and for Zuko that is his father's approval and a seat at his father's side in the war room.

When Zuko returns home to the fire nation, he finds himself too changed to be satisfied by the things he thought he wanted when he was thirteen. This leads him to succumb to paranoia, send assassins after Aang, have frequent explosions of anger, and finally do some deep introspection.

Zuko: [Turning around.] For so long I thought that if my dad accepted me, I'd be happy. I'm back home now, my dad talks to me. Ha! He even thinks I'm a hero. [Close-up of Azula, who smiles.] Everything should be perfect, right? [Aerial view of campsite.] I should be happy now, but I'm not. [Turning back to the others.] I'm angrier than ever and I don't know why!

Spike and Zuko are both given what they want, just when they were starting to learn to let go of the idea of chasing that want and it throws them for a loop. The scoobies begrudgingly accept Spike's presence, and Buffy begins to reciprocate Spike's affection for the first time. Only for that relationship to spiral into one that is mutually unhealthy and codependent.

The regression brings about an identity crisis in both characters. As Zuko and Spike both are still trying to cling to stories in order to provide them with answers for who they are, and what they are doing wrong. Except Zuko is starting to see through the fact that most of the stories the fire nation told him are lies.

Buffy finds herself unable to live up to her personal ideal, and Spike becomes confused about what ideal he’s supposed to be living up to. As their identities dissolve, both of them try to fill the emptiness with different stories. As for Spike, his identity begins to dissolve and he uses romantic stories as a crutch to tell himself who he is, he plays the brooding vampire boyfriend because he is "no longer a monster" but he can't be a man either.

From their very first kiss, it’s clear that the Buffy and Spike relationship will be about using stories to hide out from the confusion of life. Notice how Buffy’s line that “This isn’t real, but I just wanna feel” is overlaid by the trappings of a cliche Hollywood clinch. It’s less to me about what Buffy “really” feels for Spike, and more of a meta statement: stories aren’t real, but they do make you feel something. And that’s what Buffy wants. Their kiss is the culmination of Buffy trying and failing to be the things expected of her. She tries to dress up like the bot at the end of “After Life”, she tries to act the competent applicant in “Flooded”, she tries on all sorts of identities in “Life Serial”, and in “Once More, With Feeling” she sings openly of how she cannot either live up to her Slayer self, or “be like other girls.” (One of the most brutal images in season six to me, and which foreshadows this arc, is Buffy in “Bargaining, Part Two” in her black funeral dress, watching the idealized Buffybot in white get ripped to pieces). Spike, similarly, has been at a crossroads of identity for years. In season four, he tried to cling to the “bad” identity the Initiative stole from him, and in season five, he tried to replace that identity with a noble, Knightly, Lover identity instead. But when Buffy pulls that identity out from under him too, treating him not “like a man” but as a “dead man” who “isn’t real”, the longstanding shakiness of his selfhood becomes undeniable.  (Impalementation).

Either way what the regression demonstrates for both characters is that no change they try to make ever sticks, because their sense of self is so shaky, because for both Zuko and Spike they have been building up themselves based entirely around what other people want. In order to have a stronger sense of identity, they'd have to stop clinging to stories which provide them an easy answer to who they are and instead figure out who they want to be.

Spike is quite literally forced to re-evaluate who he is when he is no longer allowed to play the part of a monster. The ugliness of reality, and of Spike's actions when he does the REALLY BAD THING (which I'm not discussing because I don't want to put a trigger warning on this post) breaks him free of any kind of role he's trying to play.

SPIKE: You know, everything used to be so clear. Slayer. Vampire. Vampire kills Slayer, sucks her dry, picks his teeth with her bones. It’s always been that way. I’ve tasted the life of two Slayers. But with Buffy… (grimacing in anguish) It isn’t supposed to be this way!  He grabs a piece of furniture and shoves it over, with accompanying crashing noises. SPIKE: (angrily) It’s the chip! Steel and wires and silicon. (sighs) It won’t let me be a monster. (quietly) And I can’t be a man. I’m nothing.

Both Spike and Zuko are put through character regression for two reasons, one to illustrate to them that the things that they wanted aren't what they want and won't make them happy, and two to make them question the stories that they've been told to strip away romanticism, and be real people.

In order to grow as people, they must first learn to question all of the stories they've been told, and stop listening to stories and think of what they want, to form their own identity. The only way to change as a person, is to... look at yourself critically as a person.

Thus the resolutions of Buffy and Spike’s arcs in season six are all about personhood and change. They’re about letting go of stagnant, destructive illusions and embracing the idea of living and growing in the world. They’re about seeing beyond romantic roles, and accepting responsibility for one’s own identity. (Impalementation).

This is where I once again will argue that spike's redemption is superior, because while Zuko and Spike both reach their lowest points it's Spike who actually has all of his narratives stripped away and is challenged to become his own person and think about how he is and what he wants, whereas Zuko never fully stops thinking of himself as a romantic hero. By the end of season 6, Spike is on a journey to learn who he is as a person, whereas on the day of Black Sun and the rest of Season 3, we're still following the story of a prince on a journey of redemption.

It's because by the end of season 6, Spike's journey has entirely focused on the internal, how can he be a man? If he's a soulless monster, then is it possible for him to be a person living in the world like Buffy is? On the other hand, Zuko's arc never changes from an external to an internal goal.

Zuko is still tied up in notions of destiny and honor like he is a main character in a story.

Iroh: Because understanding the struggle between your two great-grandfathers can help you better understand the battle within yourself. [Zuko sits down, with his head facing down.] Evil and good are always at war inside you, Zuko. It is your nature, your legacy. But, there is a bright side. [Zuko looks up.] What happened generations ago can be resolved now, by you. Because of your legacy, you alone can cleanse the sins of our family and the Fire Nation. Born in you, along with all the strife, is the power to restore balance to the world. (Season 3, the avatar and the firelord).

If Iroh didn't tell Zuko that good and evil were at war inside of him, and that he's from a special bloodline because he's descended from both Roku and Sozin and therefore this means it's a part of his destiny to bring balance would Zuko have done the same amount of self reflection?

While Spike is faced with unrelenting reality, Zuko has the notion that he is a romantic hero reinforced over and over again, most particularly by Iroh. Spike doesn't have anybody sit there and point out for him that he's at war with himself and doesn't know whether to be a man or a monster, because Spike is actually capable of self reflection. Whereas, Zuko seems to do everything because he's told that destiny said so. He doesn't move until he's told he's the romantic hero following a pre-planned destiny.

Zuko: But I've come to an even more important decision. [Closes eyes and momentarily pauses.] I'm going to join the Avatar and I'm going to help him defeat you. Ozai: [Smugly.] Really? Since you're a full-blown traitor now and you want me gone, why wait? I'm powerless. You've got your swords. Why don't you just do it now? Zuko: Because I know my own destiny. Taking you down is the Avatar's destiny. [Puts his swords away.] Goodbye.

Zuko is allowed to play the part of a character in a story and because of that he doesn't reach the same level of self-evaluation as Spike. He certainly tells us some things, like that he's learned that the fire nation is wrong, and that the war needs to stop but once again these things are more like telegraphed to us then actually shown onscreen.

Zuko's arc isn't really about learning that the fire nation is evil, like that's a part of it, but what his arc is really about is learning that his father was abusive and instead of living to please his abusive father he needs to figure out what type of person he wants to be.

Which is why I compare him to Spike, a character who's arc revolves around love, who isn't a part of a fascist regime currently colonizing the world like Zuko's is. In fact in spite of Zuko witnessing the poverty of the world and going through the experience of being a refugee, and the one time a bunch of farmers were angry at him for being the prince of the fire nation in Zuko Alone, we don't really see Zuko reflecting on the after effects of the war or the lies of fire nation propaganda. We are told that Zuko's arc is about these things, but most of the actual meat of Zuko's arc is instead Zuko learning that he doesn't have to bend over backwards to please an abusive father. You can stretch it and say that from that Zuko learned that the values his father taught him are all the wrong values, and that he has to learn how to be a proper prince but Zuko is more motivated by abuse and his desire for love then like reflecting upon what is morally right.

Which is why I made the comparison for Spike, but Spike's arc forces him to do a lot more self reflection on who he is, and forcing him to form his own identity outside of what others expect from him, even though Spike's character arc is much more blatantly about his selfish desire to be loved.

Like, what arc contains more self-reflection on the nature of good and evil and what growing to be a better person means, the arc about the boy who was prince of the evil empire, who became a refugee saw how his nation was destroying the world and teamed up with his father's worst enemy to take him down and end the war, or the 100 year old vampire who falls in love with the hero and starts stalking her.

The answer will surprise you.

As I said above it's because after a certain point, due to what probably were time constraints with not having a fourth season to work with Zuko's arc becomes very railroaded.

Spike has to step away from the role of monster, vampire, and lover in order to become a man, and begin the process of forming his own identity because that's what it means to be a person living in this world, to grow up and accept responsibility for your actions.

Zuko is told that it's his destiny to join the avatar and bring balance to the world, and so he does that because it's his destiny, and also he learned that the fire nation was evil at some point offscreen, and then he switches side to join the avatar and decides he wants to be firelord because that's his destiny too.

It's a good arc, and it's mostly complete and servicable, but also lacks a lot of the humanity that Spike's arc has because Zuko until the end is still playing the role of the romantic hero. We never see him break free of that role, and while the arc still works just fine, we are missing out on actually seeing Zuko do the hard work of forming his own identity.

Zuko spends the entirety of his time onscreen chasing external objectives, and by the time he's switched sides he still has an external objective he's chasing, he's still trying to live up to somebody else's standards rather than it's own it's just he's chasing the Avatar, and his Uncle's approval rather than the approval of his father.

SEASON SEVEN OF BUFFY

So season six ends with Spike hitting his lowest point and doing the really bad thing, and Zuko having betrayed team avatar and his Uncle in order to get his throne back. Now both of these characters have to deal with the consequences of what they did at their lowest points and slowly earn back the trust of the heroes and prove that this time they have changed for real.

I will say that Zuko's arc once again perfectly functionable. He spends enough time making it up to each person he's wrong, that it's believable that the gang would trust him. There is enough evidence that Zuko is not going to revert to his old ways again like he did at the end of season 2. He spends enough time onscreen working to earn his redemption and forgiveness of each cast member.

However, therein lies the rub, or at least what rubs me the wrong way about these sets of episode. I spent time during the Season 5 section of this post, discussing why skipping the "redemption for all the wrong reasons" stage is bad, and right here is why. Though this is supposed to be the climax of Zuko's redemption arc, it feels like Zuko is at the exact same place that Spike was in Season 5. Zuko is trying to redeem himself yes, but it's because he wants to earn good boy points and have the main characters trust him.

There is a scene where Zuko yells at Katara and asks why she won't forgive him, and it sounds like something Spike would say at Season 5.

Zuko: This isn't fair! Everyone else seems to trust me now! What is it with you? Katara: [Turns around furiously.] Oh, everyone trusts you now?! I was the first person to trust you! [Places her left hand on her heart.] Remember, back in Ba Sing Se. [Points to the ocean.] And you turned around and betrayed me, betrayed all of us! Zuko: [Closes eyes in resentment.] What can I do to make it up to you? Katara:[Cuts to shot of her and Zuko standing on the cliff as she approaches him while snapping at him angrily.] You really want to know? Hmm, maybe you could reconquer Ba Sing Se in the name of the Earth King. [Cuts to side-view of her and Zuko.] Or, I know! You could bring my mother back!

Everything about this scene indicates that Zuko's understanding of redemption is flawed, that much like Spike he's attempting to do good things to earn good boy points so the heroes will accept him.

There's nothing wrong with this, it's actually a part of a redemption arc to learn to do good things for the right reasons, not just to earn other people's approval. It's just Zuko himself never gets to the second part, because suddenly doing good things to earn good boy points starts working out for him.

The plot contrives several different field trips so he can make it up to each member of the gang he personally hurt, a field trip with Aang in order to learn about the true nature of fire bending, a revenge trip with Katara, a trip with Sokka to help him get his father out of prison.

However, when the plot doesn't present Zuko with a convenient way to redeem himself he doesn't really seem to care. When Toph tries to tell Zuko about her worries over her parents he blows her off, and when Suki confronts him about burning down her village it's just played off as a joke.

There's actually nothing wrong with Zuko only trying to redeem himself for selfish reasons because he wants the gang to accept him, it just doesn't get addressed. Since everyone accepts Zuko so easily, Zuko's never forced to do the hard work of forming his own identity instead of constantly seeking the approval of the people around him. As a result even though Zuko goes through a character arc, we don't actually learn that much about him as a person or what his true motives are because Zuko never reflects upon those things.

Zuko's arc still works if you view it as a romantic story, but not as a human one. It works as the story of the lost prince coming home and retaking the throne to set the nation on the right path, but not about Zuko the person.

Starting with the big apology both Zuko and Spike make. Zuko's apology is not to Katara, not to Aang, no the most important person he needs to apologize to is Iroh, because Zuko still has not broken away from the idea that he needs to live to please his father figure. His worst crime is not trying to kill the avatar repeatedly, but disappointing Iroh who believed in him.

Whereas Spike at least begins his scene with an apology to the person he hurt the most, Buffy. Spike's arc in season 7 is all about getting a soul, soemthing that makes him now capable of making a moral judgement. The first thing he does after getting a soul is finally feel guilt for the first time in one hundred years, and now with the added benefit of a conscious he realizes how horribly he had been treating Buffy all along.

Spike's big act of redemption is to seek out a soul, so he could become the type of man that would never hurt Buffy again.

Zuko's big act of redemption is to leave the fire nation and join the avatar's side... because, it's his destiny to do so.

See the difference here is Spike is challenged to form his own identity, by literally giving himself a conscience and the ability to feel guilt whereas Zuko just has to follow some destiny that was laid out for him. He doesn't have to question himself beyond "it's destiny". Whereas Spike's soul forces him to self, reflect because now that he's no longer a soulless monster he has to reflect on all the ways he has hurt the people in his life.

Spike's apology scene is also a lot different than Zuko's is to Iroh.

To begin with, Spike only appears to offer his help and tells Buffy that if she wants him to go away he will. He doesn't even tell Buffy that he got a soul for her sake, because he doesn't want her to feel obligated to forgive him. He spends the whole episode hiding it, until we at least reach the cross-hugging scene.

A scene which brilliantly shows the agony of feeling guilty and genuinely understanding you did something wrong and wanting to be forgiven, without prioritizing Spike's feelings of guilt and self-loathing over the feelings of the person he hurt.

SPIKE I dreamed of k*lling you. Keeping an eye on him, Buffy bends down to pick up a large splinter from the broken pews at her feet to use as a stake, if necessary. Spike starts pacing. SPIKE I think they were dreams. So weak. Did you make me weak, thinking of you, holding myself, and spilling useless buckets of salt over your... ending? Angel—he should've warned me. He makes a good show of forgetting, but it's here, in me, all the time. (walks around toward her from behind) The spark. I wanted to give you what you deserve, and I got it. They put the spark in me and now all it does is burn. Buffy's face shows shock, disbelief and, finally, comprehension. BUFFY Your soul. SPIKE (laughs) Bit worse for lack of use. Buffy turns to face him. BUFFY You got your soul back. How? SPIKE It's what you wanted, right? (looking at the ceiling) It's what you wanted, right? (presses his fingers to his temples, looks down, and walks toward the altar). And—and now everybody's in here, talking. Everything I did...everyone I— and him... and it... the other, the thing beneath—beneath you. It's here too. Everybody. They all just tell me go... go... (looks back over his shoulder to Buffy) to hell. BUFFY Why? Why would you do that— SPIKE Buffy, shame on you. Why does a man do what he mustn't? For her. To be hers. To be the kind of man who would nev— (looks away) to be a kind of man. Spike walks toward the 6-foot-tall crucifix altarpiece at the front of the chapel. Sounds like he's quoting something. SPIKE She shall look on him with forgiveness, and everybody will forgive and love. He will be loved. Spike's standing only a foot away from the crucifix, staring at it. SPIKE So everything's OK, right? (sighs) Spike embraces the crucifix, resting one arm over each side of the cross bar, and resting his head in the corner of the vertex. His body is sizzling and smoke is rising from where it touches the cross. SPIKE Can—can we rest now? Buffy...can we rest?

Spike is forced to be very honest about his desire to be forgiven and loved even though he's done bad things, and it is very selfish, and also very human to be grappling with those feelings in front of the person you hurt. Spike's desire for a release from guilt, to finally rest instead of having to struggle with everything he's done.

It's a genuine apology which is accompanied with proof that Spike has taken steps to show that he will never hurt Buffy that way again, that he specifically got a soul in order to become a man who can't hurt her that way.

In comparison this is Zuko's apology scene to Iroh, which is just as heartfelt but also, like everything in Zuko's arc just a little bit easier.

It is a genuine apology, but again my focus is on is Iroh the one that Zuko needs to apologize the most?

Zuko's character is all about his personal conflcits, his relationship with his uncle, and his newly made firends in the gang and learning to do right by them, even though it's supposedly supposed to be about him learning that the fire nation is wrong and how he needs to make the fire nation better.

In comparison, Spike's character arc is framed from the get go about those personal stakes. Buffy is the person he hurt the most so it makes sense he would apologize to her first before anyone else.

In Spike's apology scene Buffy doesn't even forgive him. She walks away and leaves him there hugging that cross. She sheds some tears for him and is clearly moved by his suffering, but the show clearly equates that Spike's suffering and remorse isn't enough until he's provided concrete proof in action that he's on the side of good now.

Spike doesn't get convenient field trips that let him earn back everyone's trust in Season 7. He is forced to help everyone, not because he wants to earn forgiveness, but because he wants to demonstrate that he has changed. What we witness in season 7 is now that Spike has accepted truly that being a good person won't make Buffy love him, he's now forced to grow as a person because he wants to live inside the world just like Buffy does. To grow and change like a real person would, not an undying thing.

Because Spike's arc is about taking this character that was an immortal being who had not changed in a hundred years, and making him want to change, and making him learn what it means to live in the world and continue growing and changing every single day like everybody else does.

Spike's reward for his efforts to be a better person isn't to be told that Buffy forgave him all along but that... she believes he can be a better person.

BUFFY No. I don't hate like that. Not you, or myself. Not anymore. You think you have insight now because your soul's drenched in blood? You don't know me. You don't even know you. Was that you who killed those people in the cellar? Was that you who waited for those girls? SPIKE There's no one else. BUFFY That's not true. Listen to me. You're not alive because of hate or pain. You're alive because I saw you change. Because I saw your penance. SPIKE (lunges violently at her, but chains hold him back) Window dressing. BUFFY Be easier, wouldn't it, it if were an act, but it's not. (walks toward him) You faced the monster inside of you and you fought back. You risked everything to be a better man. SPIKE Buffy... BUFFY (in his face) And you can be. You are. You may not see it, but I do. I do. I believe in you, Spike.

Spike isn't told that he's forgiven, or he's some destined hero, the only thing he's reassured about is that he has the capacity for change, which is because Spike's entire arc is about whether an undying monster can finally learn to change and how to be a better than.

I could go on longer, I could mention how in Season 5 of Angel Spike still has to be a good person even though Buffy isn't even around to support him. That's where Spike is truly challenged to stick to his goal of becoming a better person every day, even though he's not going to receive Buffy's love as a reward.

However, I'll end it here because I think I've made my point. Zuko's arc is fine, but it's also missing that final step that Spike's arc. As a redemption arc it's fine because in the eyes of the audience and the characters around Zuko, Zuko has clearly done enough to earn redemption. He has gone through the motions and shown onscreen that he has changed.

As a character arc it feels woefully incomplete for all of the reasons I listed above, because Zuko did not do the work that Spike did of learning what kind of man he wants to be. Zuko ends the story as a hero, but he never becomes his own person like Spike does.

[josephbrassey]

I really hate that this is becoming a political account. I just want to talk about books, but these are the times we live in.

It’s weird to try and respond to this calmly, but I’m going to do that, and I think by the end of this post you’ll understand why:

The president has dropped all pretense of cloaking anti-trans orders in the language of protecting people, of protecting children, which were always falsehoods but at least had a veneer of deniability that allowed people to dismiss the concerns of the affected. Now they’re saying—explicitly—that to be Trans is incompatible with the honor and humility requisite to be a servicemember. That every Trans person is knowingly, intentionally lying about who they are.

This is absurd on its face. Trans women are women, and trans men are men. The vast body of scientific study on the subject backs this up.

But the absurdity is not the salient point. It’s easy to get lost in the cognitive dissonance of a deliberate attack on another persons humanity. It is **easy** to go “wow that’s insane” and not treat the attack as the serious threat that it constitutes. The salient point is that the attack has been made. All pretense has been discarded. They are no longer saying “Trans people are deluded.” They are saying “Trans people are vicious, dishonorable liars who can’t be trusted.”

So, if you had the “benefit” of the pretense up until now that this wasn’t what the powers that be were building towards all along, I am telling you—they are telling you—that this is their endgame. You cannot say that they are only looking to protect children or that they think Trans people are simply mentally ill any longer, because they are no longer saying that themselves.

Now we get to the part where I explain why I’m being very calm about this. I am done. I am done with debates about my friends and my fellow citizens. I am done with debates about my fellow humans. I am done with patiently sitting while people hold up paper-thin unrealities as pretense to justify doing nothing while my government outrightly dehumanizes them. What does this mean? It means I’m not going to put up with that being done around me, anymore. I am not telling you what you have to do. That’s not how a boundary works. I am telling you what I am going to do. If you do this sort of thing around me, if you engage in theory-crafting about the validity of the life experience of people the government is now actively persecuting, you will be corrected. Gently at first. Then less gently, until you are asked to leave. Or I will leave. Whichever makes more sense.

You have a right to find other people confusing. You have a right to not understand their experiences. You don’t have a right to delegitimize their existence, and you don’t have a right to force me to sit and listen to the slurry you’re passing off as logic or reason when you do that.

I am done. This subject is no more up for debate for me than whether or not the moon exists or whether the earth is round or vaccines save lives. All of those things are true.

I am no longer willing to entertain debate of basic fundamental truths. I will explain if you don’t understand—happily. I think curiosity should be rewarded. Arguing with that explanation, however, is no longer curiosity and skews into bad faith time-wasting.

And I simply don’t have the patience for it anymore.

[wuxiaphoenix]

Worldbuilding: A Matter of Definitions

If you have more than one culture in your world, and particularly more than one language, you have the opportunity to play with translations. Do all your characters mean the same thing when they use a word? The consequences if they don’t can range from humorous to catastrophic.

Astute readers on my other blog have probably noticed that Fengye called the Walking Death a guai, while Corbett called it a demon. They’re talking about the same thing, a horrible infectious and evil monster. And yet, they aren’t.

Corbett is a Lumeneth Lorekeeper; a student of magic and lore from Lumen, a kingdom that reminds Matt of all the King Arthur tales. Welsh, Norman, and other influences included. They honor four major gods; the Lord of the Sun, the Lady of Night Lightning, the Deep Waters, and the Hearthfire. (The Deep Waters might be male and female, and doesn’t much care about the mode of address as long as it’s properly respectful for one who can End You With One Wave. Creatures of water are shifty like that. The Hearthfire is a shapeshifter in the best Loki tradition, and he or she depends on the stories of the region you’re in.)

That’s two gods light-aligned, one of all things hidden and casually deadly, and one usually friendly but terribly dangerous on an off day. None of these gods are responsible for demons. In Lumen’s worldview, gods, magic, and monsters like dragons are natural.

Demons aren’t. Demons are paranormal. Or supernatural. Or whatever term you want to use for things that shouldn’t exist and hate humans with a vengeance. Clerics fight demons. When they can, they exterminate them. When they can’t... well. The Walking Death is not the only nasty thing out there.

(Note, I need to figure out a few more Nasty Things.)

Fengye comes from... let’s say much further east. Some of the best-known gods in her land are the Emperor of Dawn, the Wild Tiger Woman, and the Judges of Hell. In her worldview what her people call “demons” are the servants of the Judges, torturing sinners so they can hopefully be reborn into a better life. They’re natural.

The Walking Death has nothing to do with the Judges.

The Walking Death is a guai, an entity born of the spiritual energy of massacred victims, often summoned into that form by an evil shaman. It is unnatural evil, a cruelty to the dead and a horror to the living it devours. Demon-slayers hunt such guai, but any reputable servant of the gods or scholar of magic is bound to fight them.

...Granted, if you are a young initiate of any of these, your duty is not to fight, but to run and get help. Guai who devour magic-bearing souls become the most powerful of all. If you can’t fight it, don’t feed it!

Note I didn’t mention undead such as vampires, zombies, or skeletons. (Or much more.) Those are subjects of debate in both lands. But holy water works on them as well as it does on Lumeneth demons or eastern guai, so when in doubt....

Different cultures. Different perspectives. Different definitions. Who’s right?

...Well, Matt’s going to have to figure that out himself....

[supergoopersworld]

What’s this? I wasn’t going to keep you waiting another year for an update. I think it’s quite fitting that one of the recentish pieces of content is Star Wars adjacent because it segues very well into retelling this story.

Part III: The Last Strawmen

We finally reached pre-modern Quinton and in order to understand how he ended up with no one on his corner by the end of the year we have to put the whole year of 2018 in context as it further serves to explain how his channel died for 2 years and eventually rose from the ashes of total irrelevance once he started to make multi-hour long videos.

Like all Internet slap fights the root is Star Wars. The Last Jedi is the movie of all time. My opinion, your opinion, any opinion here is irrelevant. What you need to remember is that it is a divisive movie, it made movie discourse online dreadful and how people used it for their own ends led to the current review ecosystem. Quinton loved TLJ and there are people in this story that didn’t, that’s all we need to proceed.

Q makes a positive review of it and people disagree in the comment section. Those people turned out to be Mauler and Rags, two thirds of what eventually became Every Frame a Pause, a podcast that can last almost an entire day. EFAP is yet another rabbit hole (sensing a pattern so far) that has become quite amusing over the years given Quinton now fills a very similar niche for a different demographic.

Is during this saga that Quinton would show one of his biggest character flaws and one that will remain with him throughout his career: his obsession with having the last word. EFAP would extend an invitation to have a debate over the merits of TLJ which Q declined (something he is fully within his right to do) but Q also insisted on generally being dismissive of them and taunting them. Q’s official statement as to why he refused to accept talking 1-on-1 was that he wouldn’t waste his time explaining that they didn’t understand what subjectivity is, in quite a dismissive way but he also went out of his way to lurk in a proto-EFAP stream to taunt Rags.

Things escalated in a geek cold war and we got A Critique of Citizen Kane.

Of this video only the 5 minute teaser survives and considering Quinton has only referenced this video once, on a now unlisted video we’ll touch in a bit, has allowed this video to exist in an almost mythical state including the immortalizing of one of Q’s lesser known great quotes: a review is a description of an experience.

The EFAP side narrative as to what happened has prevailed as to what this video was so take this a big cup of salt. A Critique was a video where Quinton mocked Mauler by replicating his reviewing style (long, verbose, going on tangents) to say that Citizen Kane was overrated. What Q was trying to achieve exactly has perplexed Quintstorians for years.

One of the few screenshots from A Critique to survive and official explanation as to what it was supposed to be. According to the main narrative, half of the comment section thought Q was really saying Citizen Kane was overrated and agreed with him and the other half knew of the beef with EFAP and were getting sick of his antics.

In an already very neglected part of the lore, we get a little side story about Quinton’s first Discord fan server revolting against him. Quinton nukes his first fan server and makes a second one called Noah’s Arc, where he invites loyalists and according to the lore, had to almost dox themselves to enter. An anti-fan server is created and tries to recreate the old. Some genius gives Quinton the link and he keeps joining to dunk on his former fans.

With that we close by far the most anecdotical part of Quintstory and pretty much everything from this point onward has piles and piles of evidence.

Do you remember this all started because of TLJ? I Hate Everything (back when he made videos) released a piece that can be summed up as people should be free to like TLJ and was pretty inoffensive compared to the shite made back when. Rags then decides to make a video response (the I drew myself as a Chad and you as a soyjak kind that even breadtubers do) to that video. And then The Right Opinion decided he had to step up and defend IHE’s honor.

This is one of the videos of all time. The first of TRO’s current line-up of over edited video essays on Internet drama. You may not know it because it’s unlisted.

Why is it unlisted?

This video is a fucking pain to watch. If you don’t like TRO, you will hate this video. Is TRO, IHE, back to TRO, Rags, back to TRO for two hours of half-made statements about a fucking space movie. The kicker is that TRO by his own admission doesn’t know anything about Star Wars so he enlisted the help of a friend of his to cover for that.

Can you guess who?

36:41, in case the timestamp done shat the bed.

For a refresher. We’ve established so far that Quinton refused to debate EFAP (again, within his right) but he still enjoyed to mock them from the safety of his own community without giving them the right to talk back. So Quinton accepted to appear on a friend’s channel to talk about a subject involving EFAP and attempted to destroy them with facts and logic. Despite acting very pleased with himself like he just deconstructed their entire existences, Quinton will walk away from this with no major problems than a bruised ego and a tarnished reputation, handing EFAP one of the few Ws they ever got from anyone not named MovieBob.

Quinton dedicated his whole segment to talk about Mauler (and Rags, don’t forget this is a response to him) as two pretentious douchebags that held their opinions on media as fact and a holy crusade while sounding like a pretentious douchebag that held his own opinions as fact and a holy crusade. Basically the pot calling the kettle black and is funnier in hindsight because one of Quinton’s favorite arguments against Mauler was that he needed several hours of tangents to make a point. For extra basedness, Quinton had sent TRO a phony script of his segment so he wouldn’t stop him on using The Right Opinion channel as a battlefield for a disagreement he refused to address like an adult on his own channel.

Suffice to say, no one looked good during this and to boot IHE ended up having an amicable discussion with Mauler over liking TLJ, whereas TRO ended up appearing in EFAP to explain that he didn’t know what Quinton had done because at the time he didn’t check what his editors sent back.

Despite this, the friendship wouldn’t officially die until several months later in an even sadder note.

[amethysttribble]

I feel the need to reblog this old post- which I still think is useful and I stand by the original body of; though I’ve made a few edits to more accurately reflect my now greater knowledge of real world linguistic history- because it’s going around again lately with some additions.

Some of which I do not strictly align with in my own thoughts on the Matter of Thorn and some of which are… pure misinformation, I can’t put it another way. So I just want to clarify.

I think it’s important to remember as I go forward, though, that Quenya is a fictional language and the phase out of the Thorn we see in English is NOTHING like what happens in Tolkien’s works. It’s all made up. It’s fine, we’re all fine, okay?

Mostly, I just have two things to say:

1) I don’t think there is, frankly ever, a right or wrong way for native speakers of a language to speak that language. No one was in the wrong here.

Whether the Noldor used the Thorn or not, the accents that developed around it literally hold no moral or even linguistic weight. People have different dialects and pronunciations, it happens every day, it’s fine.

To make that point, I almost want to say ‘no one was speaking with a lisp, okay’, but it feels rude. Some people probably did speak with a lisp, though that wasn’t what caused this linguistic fight, and I don’t was to belittle or, honestly ‘other’ that way of speaking.

The almost point-and-laugh way ‘lisping’ is talked about surrounding Quenya as a way to delegitimize either side of this linguistic debate rubs me the wrong way. In the same way people have accents, some people have speech impediments. This is a normal thing, not an argument winner.

2) Indis had literally NO dog in the Thorn fight. Leave her out of it. PLEASE just leave her out of it.

Some key quotes about the whole situation from the Shibboleth:

“The change [thorn] > S must have therefore have been a conscious and deliberate change agreed to and accepted by a majority of the Noldor, however initiation, after the separation of their dwellings from the Vanyar. It must have occurred after the birth of Miriel, but (probably) before the birth of Feanor.”

By the word of god, Miriel was probably still alive when this debate started and Indis was far away. Even when she did marry Finwe and lived among the Noldor-

“Indis was a Vanya, and it might be thought that she would in this point at least have please Feanor, since the Vanyar adhered to [thorn]. Nonetheless, Indis adopted S. Not as Feanor believed in rejection of Miriel, but in loyalty to Finwe.”

As a note, just as I’m not interested in hating Indis, I’m not interested in hating Finwe either. That being said, so we have full context here:

“For after the rejection of his prayers by Miriel, Finwe accepted the change (which had by not become almost universal among his people), although in deference to Miriel he had adhered to [thorn] while she lived. Therefore Indis said: ‘I have joined the people of the Noldor, and I will speak as they do.’”

Okay? TLDR: Indis’s natural inclination was to speak as a Vanya, to use the thorn, and she didn’t, specifically to please the Noldor. If any ‘political statement’ was being made, it was by the VAST majority of the population of the Noldor and it started LONG before Indis arrived on the scene, and she just went with the flow. That political statement, should it exist, has NOTHING to do with Miriel as a person, it was just a debate she engaged in at the time and then she and her legacy were unfortunately caught up in it after death.

It was never about Miriel v Indis, it was about (insert any kind of interesting political debate you find interesting). Really, we should go wild with this more. What kind of involved, long standing political movement did this family issue co-opt? There’s a lot of room for freedom there! (I’m going to start headcanoning it as a class struggle).

But while we’re on the subject of ‘Indis’s line’ and any ‘benefit’ they might receive from this linguistic kerfluffle (none, in my opinion)-

“…[Finarfin] often sought peace among the Teleri, whose language he learned… loved the Vanyar (his mother’s people) and the Teleri, and in his house [thorn] was used.”

Finarfin used the Thorn, like his wife, relatives, and in-laws. So did his sons, but-

“It is clear nonetheless that opposition to Feanor soon became a dominant motive with Galadriel, while her pride did not take the firm wishing to be different from her own people. So while she knew well the history of their tongue and all the reasons of the lore-masters, she certainly used S in her own daily speech.”

The ONLY person stated to be making a political statement with lack of Thorn usage was Galadriel. Hot-headed, prideful, young Galadriel. Fingolfin doesn’t even get that mentioned as a motive. Frankly, I believe he didn’t have one, Nolofinwe was literally just speaking like all his friends and classmates probably did; like his father did.

The Thorn being used as a heavy political and familial complication during the unrest of the Noldor is fun. I love it. I think it’s such a neat worldbuilding and character building thing for Feanor, as he desperate tries to hold onto his mother’s legacy with his fingernails. It’s an interesting conflict and I encourage people to explore it.

But let’s be really clear here onwho was on what side here, who was on a ‘political’ side at all (frankly: just Galadriel), and who wasn’t on ANY side, because they just didn’t care (Indis; most characters). There was no mastermind or conspiracy going on.

It was a linguistic shift. They happen. One Indis simply did not care about.

———

I originally made this post specifically to try dispel some of the mystery, and, yes, some jokes I didn’t find funny, around the Thorn and the ‘Feanorian Accent’. I wanted to provide information, so that people could learn- no shame, no insult meant, no harm done or strings attached, just a little guide to help (and, yes, maybe cut down on those lisp jokes).

What I didn’t want to do was turn that linguistic ignorance around as a way to insult the ‘accent of Indis’s Line’ (not a real thing).

I just… I don’t know, friends, what I’m trying to say here is that no one should be insulted, mocked, hated, have aspersions cast upon, or belittled for the way they speak. This is an interesting inflection point in the Silmarillion but it’s only interesting if you let it be nuanced. Otherwise, it’s just mean.

About the Thorn (Þ, þ)

The thorn, as a letter, gets a lot of mention in the Silm Fandom, for obvious reasons. For such a petty linguistic fight in a very grand story, it’s pretty emblematic of Feanor and all his… Feanor-ness. It’s also a subtle, fun way to show loyalties through language!

That being said, I see a lot of people using the Thorn incorrectly, because the Shibboleth doesn’t explain it all that well and it’s pretty obscure trivia knowledge at this point. But I have too much trivia. So here’s a short run down on the Thorn- what it is, and what it isn’t- for all your general linguistic pettiness needs!

þ is a letter. It is pronounced ‘th’. 

It is not an alternative pronunciation for ‘s’.

It is an additional letter to the alphabet, an alphabet which would have already contained the letter ‘s’.

Historical and Linguistic explanation under the cut.

Keep reading

[genderqueerpositivity]

Tumblr is and always will be the hellsite, but lately the absolute worst discourse takes I've seen have come from Instagram and Twitter.

Mostly this has been a problem within the LGBTQIA+ communities, but it has steadily spread into other communities as well. I really hate how common this has become in the neurodivergent community.

The worst thing about "The Discourse" is how we've normalized treating the personal identities of individual people as a subject up for public debate.

It's like we're no longer the authority on our own selves and our own experiences. Coming out as an LGBTQIA+ person is met first as a challenge from within the community now, just as it always has been from those outside of the community.

I've shared exactly zero pictures of my transition online since starting HRT. I've been very selective about what experiences with hormone therapy--and it's effects on my gender and sexual orientation--that I've chosen to write about.

I'm torn, because I really miss keeping an actual personal blog. I'm also really excited about my transition and I wish that I could share that excitement! I really wish that I were doing more to document my changes from HRT and writing more about these new experiences I'm having at this point in my life. I miss having a spot to post about my day to day thoughts and feelings.

But I don't want to open myself up again to commentary and criticism from those who feel that they are a greater authority on my own transness and queerness than I myself am. I don't want this community to pick apart my lived experiences, searching for some imagined evidence to prove that I've committed a non-existent offense. I'm not interested in the legitimacy of my gender and dysphoria being up for debate.

I'm not interested in being held to the bullshit standards of other people's respectability politics. I'm also not interested in having the language that I use to name myself and my experiences debated or criticized by people who can never live my life for even one day.

My identity and my place in this community aren't negotiable, my pain isn't up for debate, my joy doesn't exist to be stolen.

Something about the internet brings out the worst in people and the LGBT community is not exempt from that.

Too many people in our communities feel like they have to right to decide how other people should identify and feel about their own identities. Too many people feel like they get to decide who belongs in our communities and who doesn't.

I blame the ace discourse for this, especially. When we normalized gatekeeping and identity policing, we fucked up enormously.

We need to make our way back to embracing the reality that each individual is the expert on their own lives, experiences, genders, sexualities. We need to trust that those who choose to be a part of our communities are here because they need to be. We need to realize that there are as many ways of living and being as there are people. And we need to accept that for many people gender identity, romantic attraction, sexual identity are complicated, confusing, fluid, messy, changing, deeply personal, complex, and not easily confined to existing labels.

Until we get to the point of respecting the experiences, autonomy, and agency of every person, all of our pretty words about our communities being safe spaces are just pointless talk.

Liberation won't come through treating each other the same way that cishetronormative society already treats us.

[astaroth1357]

Unpacking the Angel Event (Through My Own Perspective)

Okay so uh… this was a very uncomfortable seat the Devs have offered us today and like all things that give me moral uncomfiness, I HAVE to analyze it. Blame the ethics classes. A full disclaimer, this is not spoiler-free and is pretty much entirely just me unpacking my own feelings here. What may bother or not bother me could really affect you and there is nothing wrong with that. You are entitled to your own perspective. This is just me trying to walk through all the stuff in this event that just… rubbed me the wrong way. So let's get to it.

The Costumes

So. Let's start at the beginning. Diavolo apparently had the bright idea to put everybody in magical costumes of their angel forms (or something like it in Satan's case). This is… problematic.

The reason the brothers lost their angel forms was because they fell after the Celestial War… who's greatest causality (in their eyes) was their sister, Lilith. So one could imagine that their memories as angels aren't particularly happy ones… By this point in the "continuity" (this is Post-Attic, more on that later), they would have known that Lilith didn't actually die which may soften something like this a little. I dunno, I'm not one of them and trauma is uniquely personal to the individual, but the bigger issue is that Diavolo thought this was a good idea to start with to which I say! - I'm not at all surprised by that. Hear me out.

Diavolo is heavily implied to have had a huge ass crush on Angel Lucifer. He's also uh… probably a little sheltered (as sheltered as the royalty of Hell can be) and probably not used to think of his subjects' feelings on the things he does before he just does them. This is fairly evident in other events where he'll order the brothers to do XYZ task even if they want no part in it. It doesn't surprise me at all that Diavolo would want to see them (Lucifer) as angels again and not take into account how that could affect them. I don't think that'd be malice on his part, just shortsightedness, and he likely would have apologized if any of the brothers expressed an emotional problem with it to him directly.

Do they have problems? Yes. But since the event kind of wipes them of their true selves, that's better discussed elsewhere. Moving on.

The Bangles 

Holy fuck, how do we even approach this? So Simeon, in conjunction with Michael (probably, at this point I have to wonder if he's telling the truth about this) gives the brothers jewelry, presumably to wear to the party, that would… I'm not even sure. Curb their impulses? Force them to be mannered? The important thing is he did not tell them about that little detail before they put the bangles on…

This is… also problematic. First, we can try to establish Simeon's intentions versus what actually happened: 

The bangles were (likely) intended to be removable. It was the mixing of the magic that locked them in place so we can assume he didn't mean this to be a permanent change.

The magic on the bangles was probably amplified by the angel costumes. What this means is though we can assume that Simeon never intended them to become quite so… different, we'll never know just how much influence he was actually trying to put on them. It could have been anything from suppressing their sins to full blown force you to say please/thank you. We'll just never get to know now… 

I won't be the first person to liken this to mind control (nor the last) because… that's kind of how it turned out. Even worse still, it would have been completely involuntary on the brothers' part. Simeon DID NOT tell them what the bangles were going to do. Now, he claims later that he would have eventually, but we don't get to know when that would have been. I presume at some time after the party, because like. These are our boys. They're not going to consent to wearing something like that, they're just not.

This poses all kinds of questions and problems ranging from issues of consent to anatomy and even the worth of good deeds done out of obligation vs. free will and… I mean quite literally when I say Jesus Christ, Simeon, what the hell?!

I could write a completely different post debating whether or not what Simeon did actually had any moral merit but I won't because it'd be very dry and boring. I think the most interesting thing to take away here is that Simeon thought it was okay to do like, at all, and with approval from Michael (maybe) no less… That reflects something on angel society that I doubt will get explored but I need to ponder farther…

This section is all kinds of sticky so we need to move on.

The Development(?)

First off, to new players, don't worry this probably isn't canon (at least to the main story continuity). The Brothers should be back to normal in the new chapters and this won't have a long term effect on anything (aside from maybe a tie in to the next event ala Beach event-> Games). That's how Obey Me has always treated their events it seems and I sure hope they stick to it now. But, these are still the same characters going through a unique situation and that can offer some insight so… Let's discuss.

I mentioned earlier that the brothers had problems with this… Unfortunately, I think we only get to see Lucifer and Satan's thoughts in any detail because everyone else is too far gone by the time we reach them… Lucifer can pretty much be summed up as troubled and unhappy because (you know) not a lot of great memories as an angel. I presume that his wounded pride after the fall may also contribute. 

Satan is… more complex. I’m honestly more bothered by his change than anyone else’s because even he expresses how weird this is for him... (We get confirmation that he never in fact had an angel form, btw). Poor baby is going through a full on identity crisis and there’s a certain part of his mind that he’s not even allowed to use right now... Anger. The Avatar of Wrath, born from Wrath, can’t get angry and… Something about that just bothers me at a deeper level, not even I can express properly…

Everyone else is too far gone once we reach them. Their personalities are completely different and they can’t even acknowledge that’s the case. They think that they’ve turned a new leaf but we know that’s not the reality, that leaf was very much turned for them and it doesn’t make anything feel any better…

This may be my own opinion, but part of me thinks that this portion (and only this portion right here) was actually what the Devs were going for. They wanted us to be uncomfortable by all of this for like, story reasons. It’s a narrative trick. Think of the phrase “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” I think they were trying to use the absence of the brothers’ usual flaws and traits as a weird way of celebrating them. Kind of like saying, “We could have given you guys these perfect brothers, but they’re not perfect and we know that’s why you like them. Look at these perfect guys, doesn’t it feel wrong?” The answer is, yes. It does feel wrong. And under other circumstances, it would be affirming like they’d be intending, “I don’t want this emotionally-open non-otaku, give me Levi dammit!” But when you add this intended discomfort with the already sketchy way we got here it just makes it all the worse… 

And absolutely NONE of this is helped by...

The… End?

I think the thing I hate about this event the most (actually legitimately hate) is how it ends. In that it doesn’t. It kind of just… abruptly stops right after Lucifer starts coming to himself again. Though I suspect that’s because they’re putting incentive into getting the event cards, this in NO WAY does the narrative any favors.

Most people are not going to get those cards. Even with Lonely Devil as an option, it’s a huge time/resource commitment to get there. Because of that, the majority of people are not going to get to see the aftermath of what happened. We don’t get to see how the brothers feel about what happened. We don’t get to see if they do, in fact, come to and if they have any takeaways from the experience or if they’re utterly disgusted by it. The player character doesn’t even get the option to comfort them after something that was probably terribly traumatic. It. Just. Ends.

What that means is all of that discomfort that we had just lingers… There’s no resolution or pay off. It just… stays… This is the worst possible thing they could have done. If you want your audience to feel uncomfortable, that’s one thing, but unless you’re telling like, a psychological thriller you gotta settle them back down again! Deep moral conflict is not a turn on!!!

Personally, I don’t hate that this thing exists. I don’t. The part of me that majored in Philosophy loves analyzing media like this so I can’t say that I didn’t get anything out of it. I don’t think all media should play it safe, it’s okay to leave the audience with no good answers or a feeling of unease, but you really got to be self-aware of it. The biggest flaw of this event, in my opinion, is that it rarely comes across as self-aware of its own horror. You get a very brief glimpse of it from Solomon when he comments on how creepy things are, but Simeon’s happy. Diavolo’s happy. And though he’s a little uneasy, Luke’s pretty content, too. Add that to the abrupt ending and we never get to know if ANY of them realize how awful of a thing this was to do to the brothers... It makes it all come off as an endorsement of mind controlling your friends into better people and (to me) that feels really, really wrong.

So in conclusion… I dunno. If the next event isn’t something along the lines of “Angelic Demons Part 2: Fixing What We Fucked Up!” then I think they really botched this one guys… I hope somebody was taking notes.

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Lily Evans and Severus Snape: Headcanons

So, I was asked in the ask about Sirius and Regulus what I thought about Snape and Lily. At this point people are probably going, “Oh that Carnivorous Muffin is just clearly a Snape stan who thinks he could never do anything wrong and anyone who was slightly mean to him is evil.” Shockingly, I’m actually not, I just happen to think sexual harassment and attempted murder are bad and probably worse than JKR intended (I do think she was trying to go the “boys will be boys” route versus “oh my god, they just dumped pigs blood on Carrie at the prom and then threw her at a starving vampire”)

So let’s start on Snape.

First, Snape did live an incredibly shitty life, with circumstances beyond his control, that did lead to many of his poorer choices. In no way am I saying that it was alright for Snape to have grown up in an impoverished, abusive, household and endured years of humiliation and torment at school. 

That said, I believe that we all, in some respects, are responsible for our actions and our decisions. Yes, even when we come from non-privileged backgrounds. Life is hard, some people will have it much easier than you, that doesn’t excuse you becoming a domestic terrorist or tormenting and terrifying your students, young children, so much so that an entire generation comes out with a loathing and incompetence in your subject.

I guess let’s start back on his friendship with Lily Evans. We get... a really weird perspective from Snape on that friendship. Time and her tragic death have warped it into this strange worship where I’m not sure the Lily Evans that exists in his mind and memory is the one that really was there. She’s this shining Madonna idol who he failed, actively betrayed, is very very hung up about it years later.

I suspect they weren’t as good of friends as either of them thought they were and it comes down to Snape’s resentment of his own upbringing and muggles. I believe Snape was very racist towards muggles, specifically, due to his father. It was his way of grappling with his home life and only fueled by being in Slytherin. Lily was probably, in his mind, always a golden exception to the rule (Lily is the token, gold standard, muggleborn where she’s pretty, brilliant, charming, etc.) That Severus himself was a halfblood clearly caused him some angst. What I’m getting at is that I believe throughout their entire friendship, especially when they got to Hogwarts, there was an unacknowledged undercurrent of intense racism that eventually boiled up with that one incident in Snape’s fifth year.

Calling her that, while he views it as a slip of the tongue that damned him for all time, I see it more as a Freudian Slip. That sort of thing doesn’t just slip out from nowhere, not at that age when they both knew exactly what that word meant, it simmers beneath the surface, and was ultimately what he thought of her. Later, she became the Madonna figure that he views her as today (ironically perhaps even less of a person than he viewed her as at the time).

That said I think a number of factors played into the young Snape becoming a Death Eater. One, becoming friends with Lucius/that crowd who were all being sucked into Tom’s influence. Two, having his terrible home life and all the implications of Snape resenting his own blood status as well as muggles and muggle borns at large. Three, the loss of friendship with Lily (now there’s nothing to hold him back anymore, he has no reason to preserve muggleborn life). Fourth, Dumbledore’s letting Sirius, James, and Remus entirely off the hook in the werewolf incident.

That last one, especially, I imagine cemented Snape’s utter hatred of ‘the light’ (don’t get me started on the stupidity of light/dark in Harry Potter but I guess I’ll use the term) and those that cater to muggleborns. They’re hypocrites of the highest order, Dumbledore claiming to defend the poor and non-nobility, when he goes and does the exact opposite (James is the next lord Potter, Sirius is still pureblooded even if disowned, Severus Snape is a dirt poor halfblood). 

So what I’m saying is I understand why Snape did become a Death Eater, I do not condone this action. Especially as, unlike Regulus, Snape never gets cold feet. He loves being a Death Eater at first, he’s living the dream, getting all the revenge he ever wanted and burning the stupid wizarding world to the ground as he scrambles for ways to climb in Tom Riddle’s graces. We don’t see any hint that he was wavering, thinking of the fact that beloved Lily might die in battle, perhaps at his hand, until the prophecy. 

Now, I’m a little kinder than some about the prophecy. We know Snape overhears the first portion of the prophecy in early 1980. He eagerly rushes to the dark lord, regales him with the prophecy in both a) aid to the cause and b) in the hopes of climbing in the ranks and gaining the dark lord’s notice. At this point, Lily Evans is pregnant, perhaps knows the gender, but has not given birth. Months later, when both Neville Longbottom and Harry Potter are born at the end of July, Snape realizes he has signed Lily Evans’ death warrant (because despite Dumbledore talking, I imagine Tom always planned to kill off both children, Pettigrew just happened to make things convenient for Tom to go to the Potters first).

With Lily’s death now so inevitable, and her blood on his own hands, Snape has his existential crisis, goes to Dumbledore who puts the Potters in hiding and becomes a double agent. Snape also pleads for Lily’s life with Tom and he puts in a minimal amount of effort to spare the woman. 

Then Lily dies anyway and now Snape lives in the bitter cynicism most commonly seen in characters from Game of Thrones. He’s Dumbledore’s agent and sort of a Dirty Harry character, getting to see all the nasty things that many of the other order members never have to deal with. He’s one of the more intelligent characters in the series, able to see the truth of the world he lives in, but he also doesn’t care enough to actually do anything about it. He’s a bitter, resentful, and angry protector of Harry Potter, choosing to hate a naive child for all the reminders of his own terrible life (both in Lily, for failing and betraying her, and in James his most hated rival and tormentor). He gleefully enables the favoritism of Slytherin (my god how he panders to Draco Malfoy) while tormenting poor Neville into terror (that Neville’s greatest 13 year old fear is Snape is very telling).

Basically by the time we get to him in canon Snape not only isn’t happy but I think he doesn’t want to be happy. He’s accustomed to his bitterness, his cynicism, his quiet rage and moves forward out of both resignation, guilt, and a sense of obligation to a woman’s ghost. The actions he takes in canon aren’t so much for Harry as they are for the memory of Lily Evans.

Even if Snape could be happy at that point, change his life or his purpose, I do not think he would. He’s a man who has given up on life.

Now, onto Lily Evans.

You probably think I’m going to rail on her to for the sheer hypocrisy and nerve of marrying James Potter. I’m actually not. Lily Evans is one of my favorite characters in the Harry Potter series and probably the one I’d label as the most moral (though that’s a very low bar in Harry Potter, the characters are almost all assholes, but even so Lily would still be very high on the list).

You know what, I’m just going to damn myself and sound like a crazy person. Lily Evans always reads to me as a more moral young female Tom Riddle.

What the hell? You undoubtedly ask but I’ll explain.

Lily, while having a far more stable homelife than Tom Riddle, also comes from a muggleborn background. She’s exceptionally brilliant, very good looking, and very charming with a lot of people who would call her friends but no one close. Lily, aside from Snape (and that’s debatable), has no friends.

If Lily had not been a Gryffindor, and were Dumbledore not a raging misogynist, his Tom Riddle bells likely would have been ringing with her.

“But wait, that can’t be right!”

Oh, yes it can. First, as I went into above with Snape and Lily, there was something deeply wrong with that friendship. I believe they both considered themselves best friends, didn’t see many of the warning flags, but ultimately we see the giant fissure when Snape lets loose the m-word. Given all of that, I would not label them having been true friends in the first place. Just the appearance of friends.

Otherwise, while it’s very easily to canonically point out James’ friends it’s incredibly difficult to do so with Lily. First, people hardly remember Lily. We get Dumbledore talking about her like she’s the Virgin Mary, saving her son with the power of her love. We get Snape’s weird Virgin Mary impressions of her. Otherwise, it’s pretty much just Slughorn. Everyone else remembers that she married James and that was great because JAMES WAS SO COOL and that she had very striking eyes and was “nice”. Lily is less than a ghost in Harry Potter canon (sadly Harry never really realizing it).

Also, unlike James who has Sirius, Remus, and Peter to point towards (that are very important characters in canon). Lily has no one. The godmother was Alice Longbottom, a woman many years older than Lily and James who probably liked Lily well enough but I can’t imagine was a close friend. In canon there’s an offhand mention of two girls named Mary and Marlene but we don’t see much of them/Severus was always cited as Lily’s closest friend. As for Lily’s sister, well we know they’re estranged. I think it’s very telling that Lily writes a letter to Sirius, James’ best friend and certainly not hers, telling him that James is pouting over his invisibilty cloak. It’s because there was no one else to write.

So Lily Evans is a brilliant girl, who everyone likes and is very charming, but has no friends and led a very lonely and short life.

Here’s where my slack towards Lily comes in.

When she dumps Snape I completely understand why she did so. Snape dropping that word wasn’t simply a mistake, a moment of infinite regret, but something that revealed what he truly thought of her and where she came from. Lily was absolutely right in walking away.

However, without Snape, her closest friend is suddenly gone and the world is cold. As graduation approaches I imagine Lily’s career options become clearer and clearer. While very talented and smart, Lily is a muggleborn, what job she does manage to get (thanks to the sheer nepotism of the wizarding world/lack of jobs) will likely be through Slughorn if she manages to get a job at all. The world is cold and it is cruel and no one seems to even notice.

Cue James Potter. I do believe, probably until seventh year, Lily loathed James, not simply because of the horrifying things he did to Severus (and I’m sure she knew very little of it, Snape hiding most of it from her out of pride and shame), but because he’s just a giant dick. He’d make flirting with her a kind of game and joke to be shared with Sirius, something to hold over Snape’s head, like she’s a prize to be one.

However, by seventh year the werewolf incident has happened, Snape’s retreated further and further into Death Eater recruit land and she’s cut him off, and for all my “James is a dick” I do imagine he calmed down a little. Now that Snape is no longer friends with Lily/after the whole almost murder incident I imagine they didn’t bully him nearly as much as they used to. Though yes, they probably still bullied him, but Lily probably doesn’t know that now that she’s lost contact with Snape. 

James is charming and very good looking. He seems a bit more mature than he used to be. Lily is desperately lonely, living in a world that rejects everything she is, and James seems like one of the few who does support her (that James is more of a ‘pretty fly for a white guy’ kind of support for muggleborns doesn’t hit until later). So Lily is charmed and makes the largest mistake of her life, she and James start dating.

Now, given their extreme youth as well as Lily’s pedigree (say what you like, I don’t think Mr. and Mrs. Potter were thrilled that their son was dating a muggleborn) I imagine the wedding was a shot gun wedding and Lily got unintentionally pregnant. Yes, go ahead and throw fruit at me or call foul, I just can’t imagine they’d want a child that young while in the middle of a war while they’re part of an active resistance movement and only just out of Hogwarts.

Then things start snowballing downhill. Lily and James have just joined the resistance movement, Lily’s son is prophesied to defeat Voldemort, they strongly suspect one of James’ close friends is a spy, and they’re forced into hiding.

In hiding is where I imagine stress runs high and their marriage begins to fall apart. We know from Lily’s letter that James was routinely leaving hiding, using the cloak, so he could meet up with Sirius and Peter (I imagine Lupin’s on the out as they suspected he was the spy). While James might not realize what a big deal that was, I imagine Lily always did, and she begins to realize just what she’s gotten herself into but there’s no way out while in hiding.

Now we go really off the rails into headcanon territory in: what the hell is up with Harry Potter?

In my stories, I often choose the unwitting god route. Harry can’t die because he is a god, he becomes the master of death and always was the master of death. This is an answer, but it’s one that makes canon Harry a god and... I would not want canon Harry as a god. JKR and Dumbledore push the “Lily loved her child so much that it deflected death... multiple times” but this always felt... unsatisfying. Many parents love their children (fathers too, JKR, let’s not make this weird Virgin Mary thing) and yet Harry Potter alone in the history of mankind survives multiple times. 

Most likely, Lily pulled off some insane bullshit with absolutely no resources and minimal education AND EVERYONE IGNORES IT. We do know that Lily crafted the blood wards, wards stronger than anything Dumbledore himself can come up with/than Voldemort can break. Ones that protect Harry not only at home but away from it as it melts Voldemort for simply touching his skin. Lily pulled off the impossible in only a few months and did it right under everyone’s nose.

This makes her easily one of the most intelligent characters in Harry Potter. Probably beating out Dumbledore and maybe tying with Tom Riddle. And Dumbledore tells us, “Your Virgin Mary mother loved you so much, Harry, that it courses through your veins and lights those that would want to harm you on fire.”

So, that’s Lily for you.

Now, that said, I’m probably a bit biased and clearly very lenient with her marrying James. To be honest it took me years to figure out why the hell Lily would ever marry James after what happened with Severus and was always one of those weird canon things I never quite understood. He’s that good looking and charming, I guess, was my response.

The answer I now land on with some confidence was that the world is that cruel and bleak and Lily was utterly alone for two years.

By the way, a side note/plug, of all my stories while head canons do pop up here and there I think “October” is one where they tend to crop up more. It’s a vast AU of canon, but it gives an idea of what I think x character would do in y situation. 

[smolstarthief]

Persona 5/Persona 5 Strikers: Pro-Police or Anti-Police?

Hoo boy... So this honestly has been a LONG time coming on my end because I have seen so much of that debate on social media (Twitter namely) and I can see the points of BOTH sides but there have been moments where it just got out of hand... Especially whenever people tried to put in a more grey/nuanced take only to be slammed and taken out of context. Even repeatedly mentioning the interrogation at the beginning of P5 which, I will admit has gotten tiresome. At least for me, I do still feel for Joker and I wished the game acknowledged his trauma more but there's a thing called, "beating a dead horse" and this is one along with "Haru says ACAB" in Strikers (which was done THREE TIMES in the same arc and it got annoying fast, like shut up already! We get it!). So, let's dive in a little bit:

MAJOR SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT!!!

Persona 5/Persona 5 Royal

Now let me just say I know! Police in Japan are just as bad if not worse than the West and I STILL hate the idea of Makoto wanting to become a cop for such naive reasons (especially with what happened to Sae, her own sister!)... But there are at least some of form of nuances sometimes and by that I mean, I can see what they were trying to do? I do agree that P5/P5S backpedaled SEVERELY by deciding to sweep issues under the rug after addressing them and not continuing from such. In fact I feel like it could have been a hell of a lot better. But P5 did something different compared to previous games and addresses the issues DIRECTLY right at the beginning of said game! It was tense and horrifying, but needed. Of course... They then sweep it under the rug and act like nothing traumatic happened to our protag which is NOT a good look at all and I'm still pissed off about it. In the main game's case, it's portrayed as more black and white with only a SMALL amount of nuance like that cop that was trying to help Futaba when she went out by herself and got lost (which people ignore entirely by the way). So I CAN see where people got the "anti-police" message from... But that's only the tip of the iceberg as it's ACTUALLY more about Systematic Corruption, not exactly or JUST police corruption. Namely in politics with Shido and the Conspiracy (which is apparently still somewhat around in Strikers until Owada's downfall) controlling everything all the way to law enforcement. The force had been basically under his payroll (including the corrupt SIU Director before his death) whether by force or not (mostly not in this case though). Now honestly, the police depicted there are undoubtedly rotten to the core save for a VERY SMALL handful (the cop that was trying to help Futaba which, again, gets ignored by several). Look at the interrogators who ruthlessly beat and drug a minor without any second thought or remorse for example. But again, the black and white narrative the game kept unwittingly doing ended up being to its detriment in a way. I'm not defending those assholes AT ALL! They deserved every punishment given to them! But for a game that goes on about grey morality... It doesn't quite deliver on that. Still though, it does emphasize that it's more of the fault of the whole corrupt system, not just one part of it. There needs to be change and reform which is what our MCs were trying to do in a way (more like inspiring change but still). In the end, it's all about the following:

Corruption and abuse of power.

Again the police depicted in this game were incompetent at best, corrupt at worse with very few silver linings. But it's not just them but rather the one person responsible for the whole mess. Who had them under his payroll? Who controlled them and by extension all of Tokyo? Who was willing to dispose of anyone who "outlives their usefulness" or is perceived as a threat to what he wants (including his own family)?

SHIDO AND BY EXTENSION THE CONSPIRACY

Bottom line: They are definitely a problem but it's not just them.

"But, Joker and his trauma?"

I definitely understand that and still do. I fully believe he has and still has trauma with the police. Easy! But... I do feel like people go too far with it sometimes. It's hard to explain but there have been moments where people either use it as a justification/argument against someone trying to provide a more nuanced view of things or... Dare I say, depict him like a "uwu soft traumatized boi." Like I said, it's hard to explain on my end so feel free to ignore it. Everyone deals with trauma differently so there is STRONG chance that I'm overanalyzing it. I just remember moments where I just feel a little, I guess annoyed? I'm not sure exactly but final thing: I understand what he went through and I can't imagine how long it would take to recover but I hope he DOES overcome it.

"Sae? Akechi?"

Yep, even though their jobs are different, they are by and large members of law enforcement no matter how you spin it. Both were broken in a way. Akechi is pretty easy to explain with how Shido negatively impacted his life but not much about Sae, who dealt with sexism/misogyny at her workplace along with the trauma of her father's (also a cop) death. She no doubt had some idealism only to be hit with the fact that she's gonna have to use underhanded/downright illegal tactics to get by and even rise up the ranks. She, therefore ended up (well, nearly) corrupted herself before coming to her senses. That's honestly one of the BIGGEST REASONS why I felt like Makoto joining the force to become a police commissioner isn't a good, even a downright naïve, idea. I honestly would have been somewhat fine with it if it weren't for that fact among other things. Regardless of her willpower, it will go south fast.

Now... Onto Strikers!

Persona 5 Strikers

Since the game came out and I started playing it, I still feel like the system is still beyond saving, especially when attempting to do it from the inside. But I don't mind the added nuances that P5 didn't do much of. It's still continuing the critiques, just shows more of what does happen within said system and even has an ACTUAL officer (Zenkichi) say, "Yeah, my job sucks, everyone's corrupt, there are much better ways to do things and make a change but not this. I'm only staying because I have a daughter to take care of and it's all I know. I'm no different from them." Was it all handled well? I wouldn't say "yes" (Joker's trauma is BARELY addressed at all of course) but a little better than what P5's narrative did which only addressed the issues but not exactly follow up on them. Now to be fair... In the system, regardless of where you live, any one within it who remotely tries to do something or speak against it either lose their jobs or even go "missing" irl. Those have happened and it's more proof that yeah, it's rotten to the core. There's no denying it but regardless, that's NOT what the game is about at all. At least that's what I feel about it as it's only PART of the narrative. I think Zenkichi puts it best here:

Speaking of Zenkichi... Oh boy... Now I definitely understand some of the criticisms with him but honestly, he was the best written (PT) character I've ever encountered! He was honestly the perfect representation of those that genuinely want to help and do good, only to be held back by an extremely harsh reality. It was already hinted at with Sae but here? It 100 percent confirms just how harsh and even cutthroat it can be if it could break someone's idealism so badly. Even Kaburagi of all people thinks the same thing Zenkichi said:

Then there's his past and it's a tragic one! But let's look more at the decisions he ended up making:

While it was no doubt done to protect his daughter, he ended making a selfish decision along with a selfless one (which was brilliant!) with not only allowing the cover up of his wife's death and denying justice for her, but also ruining an innocent person and their family's lives.

It's horrible, but also... There's a grey area/nuance as with the rest of his character. It was both understandable, but also wrong as he, as Akane's Shadow puts it:

He sacrificed his values, his morals, all for the sake of having a peace of mind. Speaking of Akane, she's also an interesting case in a way that she more or less perfectly represents the more "black and white" views on justice in general. Namely the more toxic/biased kind. Her reasons are also understandable but she was also acting selfishly by only focusing on how SHE was effected by Aoi's death and not even considering those that were also grieving her death and/or that people grieve/handle grief differently than her. But back on topic.

Her own views and beliefs that law enforcement basically SHOULD be dismantled (mostly out of said childish bias and black & white views) and it's framed as WRONG and it's very much correct on that. Chaos and order are two sides of the same coin, one can't exist without the other. When I say ACAB, I'm calling for reform, defund, have the corrupt held accountable for EVERYTHING and even face jail time for their crimes! Defund the police, have the ones that arrest, harm, and even murder out of bias (race, gender, etc.), lose their badges/jobs and locked up, make improvements! It's saying that there IS still corruption out there and there's no denying it. But fully eliminating the law in general will just lead to more problems. Now granted, she's young and clearly doesn't fully understand why those views are ultimately wrong but still... It was a very interesting subject to tackle and I feel like they handled it well.

Now back to Zenkichi, he was at first in denial about his decisions ultimately being the wrong ones too and even tries to justify it. Of course, his Shadow said otherwise and that was when he finally admitted that he really did act no different from the criminals he despised. But it also doesn't mean he can't redeem himself and that's what ultimately leads to his new resolve:

That right there along with everything else! There's the nuance! And ultimately despite some hiccups, Strikers handled the grey morality and nuance beautifully! Especially regarding law enforcement! Dare I say, even better than the base game! It continues the critiques with no problem but also showing different sides and areas of it! There is good and evil, but what about in-between? What about the more greyer area? It still says that there IS corruption, sometimes even beyond saving but... Sometimes a small silver lining is hidden somewhere.

Now, the ultimate question:

Is P5 & P5S (namely the latter) Pro-Police or Anti-Police?

Personally, my answer is this: Neither.

Why? What theme do they both have in common?

JUSTICE

Someone puts it best on Twitter that the games are more pro-justice and I fully agree!

P5/P5S gives the idea about following your OWN justice, your OWN moral code and rules, paving your OWN path and not let others dictate it! That's what the MCs ultimately start to learn in both games. Therefore it's pro-justice. Again, do I agree that the system is beyond saving? Yeah. Do I at least acknowledge and understand what the narratives are trying to say and nuances regardless even if I don't agree with some writing decisions (ex: Makoto wanting to become a commissioner despite everything)? Also yes. But at the same time, don't judge a book by its cover for other people (not just law enforcement and politics mind you). Especially some that genuinely DO want to help at best. That there is nuance and greyness, just have to look closely. Some of the MCs are still TERRIBLY written and executed (even annoying) but the message was still somewhat there.

Final Thoughts

Now I fully understand how you all feel of course! I still believe in ACAB and even I agree that maybe I'm one to talk and have a lot more to learn about the world... This is just my own attempt at putting my own two cents in. If you disagree, that's fine! This is just what I've felt should be at least talked about more often. And I tried to phrase it as best as I can without coming off as insensitive or ignorant and if I did, I sincerely apologize for that! I'm not trying to say, come off as a "bootlicker" or any of the sort. I'm just trying show discuss more of the grey areas and nuances that are, more often than not, constantly overlooked. How one interprets both games is ultimately up to them. You, the player. And this is my own interpretation. Simple as that. I hope you all have a good day/afternoon/evening!

[tamhrayis]

I brought a theory from Reddit.

Disclaimer:

I am here to not disrespect the author by any means. I simply have questions as a person who is reading it and pointed out which parts are confusing. It’s up to you to believe this theory or not.

What’s more, reborn Ymir will be in the same position as 2000 years ago – the Founding Titan's shifter. BUT, this time she's free. Therefore, once she pops out and gets her abilities back, she can do whatever she wants with them. She no longer needs to be commanded by royals, which gives her the ideal opportunity to conclude everything. [How does Eren know that an infant can assist him in such an endeavour?]

Well...Ymir was definitely not free, but Ymir wasn’t born with her abilities. She got them because of hallucigenia attached to her back when she fell into that water in the tree. She wasn’t born special.

Another point. How Ymir being born with titan powers will stop the cycle of hatred?

Zeke’s death was a necessary distraction, deliberately included by Isayama to divert our attention. It tricked us into thinking that the baby inheriting Zeke’s titan is relevant as it would help Eren resume the Rumbling. But that’s not the case. The child will indeed inherit the Beast but what’s important here is the baby inheriting the Founder (what Isayama tried to hide behind Zeke’s death). Also, his death served the purpose of stopping the Rumbling as it is not needed anymore. Most of the world's population is already massacred. [What was the point of Zeke dying? Will the baby inherit the Beast Titan?]

Hm...Yeah, Zeke’s death indeed helped to stop the rumbling, because Eren could reach the Paths because of him and killing him stopped the whole process, but why would Isayama make such a distraction at the last third chapter of the whole manga? Shouldn’t he kill Zeke before, so Eren and Historia’s plan would work and it had more screen time?

“In a vision, Eren saw that Ymir will be reborn after his death. He told Historia that he has to figure out which random child will inherit the Founder”. [“What would you think… about me having a child?”]

Which vision? Ch.1 or after kissing Historia’s hand? Ch.1 vision was Eren and Mikasa’s shared dream and we still don’t know what exactly Eren saw while kissing Historia’s hand.

Of course it’s safe to say that it was his future memories, but it yet has to be revealed.

Random child. How Eren can predict that the baby will be Historia’s? Does he know how many pregnant women are there on Paradise? Okay, let’s say that it’s FT and Paths magic, but can he control which child will be born with Founder’s powers?

It would also explain why Historia didn't appear in Ch. 138 – if Isayama showed the baby coming out seconds after Mikasa decapitated Eren then it would’ve been obvious what’s going on.[“What would you think… about me having a child?”]

Chapters are 45 pages long. Why Isayama didn’t cut out some panels and didn’t put it here? Why not to show it right after the kiss page? Distraction?

Moreover, Ymir is smiling at Eren and Mikasa not simply because she saw affection. Yes, she does care about bonds but another thing could be that Eren's plan downed on her – she connected the dots and figured out that it's now her turn to contribute and complete the mission Eren wordlessly gave her. I believe next chapter will start with her disappearing from inside the Founder's mouth and switch to her being born. [“What would you think… about me having a child?”]

Okay! I agree with the part that Ymir smiled at Mikasa and Eren because of the affection they showed to each other and the part that she will contribute to the “mission”.

They showed affection to each other. Why would Eren show affection to Mikasa if he is having a child with the woman he loves?

What about the hallucigenia? Will it still stay there or disappear with her?

Immediately after she cries for the first time, all Eldians will perhaps be summoned in Paths, where Eren will be waiting. To their surprise, he will announce the end of the Titan Age. Then, Ymir will make the command and Paths will begin collapsing. Eren will hold her in his arms as all traces of titans disappear. "You're free." will collectively be directed to Ymir and all of her Subjects. [What will happen after she is reborn?]

Hold on. Can the power of Founder be shared between two people? Is it like One for All? If Ymir was born with FT, doesn’t that mean that Eren no longer has FT, AT and WHT? How Ymir can summon them? She is an infant. She doesn’t have a proper consciousness to purposely summon everyone into Paths. Where AT and WHT will go? To random Eldian children or Ymir?

It has always been suspicious as to why Eren teased Zeke about them not reaching "the part where he eats their old man". It's strange that Grisha gave Eren the power of the titans when beforehand he begged Zeke to stop him. The only logical thing would be that Eren showed him what I described above: the resolution. [What did Eren show Grisha?]

Wait. Why would Grisha be this heartbroken and scared if Eren showed him the resolution? He doesn’t look like crying from happiness. Sure, he was crying because he killed children and others, but why would he look at Zeke like that? He was in literal pain.

What used to be nonsensical before is now super logical. Grisha and Kruger were not helping the Alliance because Armin’s TnJ (talk no jutsu) worked. They aided them because beforehand Eren revealed the truth of what is to come and that they will NEED to kill him in order for Historia’s baby to inherit the Founder. Basically, they didn't feel sympathy for Marley all of a sudden – instead, they were helping Eren in liberating Eldians from titans. [Why did Grisha and Kruger help the Alliance? Why did Ymir revive them if they were going to go against Eren?]

Well...Besides Grisha and Kruger, Marcel, Ymir, Mr. Xavier, Porco and Bertholdt were there. Did they want to help Eren too?

As it has been confirmed by Isayama's notes on Ch. 138, it’s not an AU. So we should probably forget about time loops. It's a dream. Eren entered it (through Paths, duh) as he wanted to convince Mikasa to behead him as fast as possible as they have no time left. Him joining her is why Aaron Yogurt dream Eren got shifter marks on his face and why in Ch. 1, he saw this particular moment. [What’s up with Mikasa’s hallucinations?]

Oh! “A long dream” topic again. I went to the link author put and this is what I see (see below).

Okay, let’s say that he entered it via Paths, but why not to straightforwardly say that? Why to create a dream where they live happily? Why to show this hug, “I want to live with you for the rest of my 4 years”?

I don’t really like the time loop concept myself, because I don’t like time travel stuff, but why then he saw the exact same dream in ch.1? Something is not clicking.

The former will likely return to being humans. There’s no reason for them to disappear as they’re material beings that exist in the physical world – what will be removed is just titanization. Plus, with this, Eren will keep his promise of his friends living long lives. Though, this is something I cannot predict properly and just speculation. The latter will be free from the Curse of Ymir (good luck, Reiner, no dying for you). [What will happen to the titanized Eldians and titan shifters?]

Fully agree! No debate.

There's no question really. I feel like it should be self-explanatory after everything discussed so far. The farmer being Ymir's father would be a more shocking twist than Eren being the dad. [Is it sure that Eren is the father?]

Why wouldn’t Isayama add a plot twist into his story? It’s not hard to do. But Isayama’s plot twists work because he visually foreshadows it or uses characters’ dialogues. He already has showed us farmer. Why he is here? For cover up? Why would Isayama put these words if farmer is unnecessary? Why not to add more information?

To stop the cycle of violence and hate once and for all. If Eren removed titan powers without the Rumbling, most people (especially Marleyans) would’ve still despised Eldians and they would've just been defenseless. So Eren wanted to prevent that. [Why did the Rumbling have to occur?]

I agree with this. Rumbling was a cause for people to work and stop fighting each other as I said here. Rumbling plan was very risky, but it was unavoidable, because Marley is way more advanced and Paradise would terribly lose. Good point!

But why would Historia, who has decided to live for herself agree with Eren’s plan? How would she benefit from it? Okay, she and Historia are in love, but why would she want the person she loves to become a mass murderer? Why she couldn’t stop him? Why she was crying when he told his plan? She is a royal blood after all too! They could come up with another plan which wouldn’t involving Zeke.

I assume it would just die/disappear/go back to the tree it emerged from. [What about hallucigenia?]

Where’s that tree? How it will get there?

In conclusion, the theory isn’t bad, but it would work if Historia and Eren had more set up, the importance of Zeke would be explored a little more here and ch.138 didn’t have clear symbolism between Eren and Mikasa. There’re some holes, but the author gave some good points, which is truly appreciated!

[xz1005fanblog]

2021-02-27 Some things I want to say

WARNING LONG POST

Context first, translation of his post above will follow:

Disclaimer: I have no interest in other artists other than Xiao Zhan, and I am merely explaining the situation of the fandom in China that led us to the fiasco in March 2020. I do not care for bjyx, I ship WangXian but I do not ship real people as a basic principle.

My opinion as an international fan of Xiao Zhan and as an AO3 user (yes, I am not Chinese nor do I live in China, I just happen to be able to read Chinese) is that C-entertainment industry is TOXIC and celebrities are not free targets for you to cyberbully. They are human just like you and me. 

Everyone needs to learn a bit more about compassion. 

I am sure all of you read about the cyberbullying Xiao Zhan went through last year. There were multiple factors that started all of this, most of which XZ doesn’t talk about in this letter because of how sensitive the topic is in China. I’ve never explained entirely what happened because I personally thought that this is not something overseas fans should worry too much about. Especially since most of you don’t have a wb or db account, there’s nothing you can do about it anyway. But since Xiao Zhan himself decided to post a letter to respond to this subject, I’ll put in my 2 cents just that so everyone is on the same page.

Basically, after The Untamed aired in China, the show fandom split into 3 groups. XZ fans, WYB fans, and CP fans (or bjyx, whatever you wish to call it, those who love shipping these two real people together - not just the characters in the drama). Of course there are still people who would watch the show without becoming a fan of the actors.

At the beginning, most people thought they were good friends with each other, with all the short BTS clips from The Untamed. However, fans slowly discovered that it wasn’t the case. Some unofficial BTS clips emerged where WYB said XZ was shooting multiple dramas at the same time = 轧戏 (which is very frowned upon and a disrespectful thing to say to an actor), whereas in reality, XZ only asked for a couple of days days off during the shooting for The Untamed because his scenes in Joy of Life had to be redone and he was bound by contract. On the contrary, WYB had to ask for most weekends off because he was participating in Produce 101 at the time. Other clips shows them fighting about somethings WYB said about WWX, which made XZ mad. So this broke a lot of CP fans’ image of their relationship, and they either stopped shipping/became XZ or WYB fans only. This angered WYB’s fans, of course, which made them blame XZ for the entire fiasco.  

Other incidents continued to happen after the show which increased the friction between these 3 fan groups. XZ fans and WYB fans would fight about various voting charts, and fight with CP fans because they don’t like seeing the two actors together. In the meantime, CP fans continuously feminize and weaken XZ in order to ship the 2 actors together (it’s rather an unhealthy trend in China, I’ve been in multiple other western fandoms before - not real person shipping - but we rarely glorify weakening/feminizing the bottom of a ship, because of the underlying prejudice against real homosexuals, who are not synonymous to transgenders).

Some incidents added oil to the fire afterwards. It’ll take me too long to explain everything, so I’ll just put here the main ones to explain why there’s so much bad blood between these 3 groups of fans.

On XZ’s birthday, some CP fans found XZ’s parents’ apartment building and yelled BJYX is real. This angered a lot of XZ fans, because of how disrespectful it was towards the old couple and the clear breach of privacy. WYB fans and some CP fans were also angry that XZ didn’t reply immediately to the birthday wish on wb that WYB sent at midnight (??? XZ was busy shooting a drama, can you blame him for not being on wb at midnight? Give the guy a break.)

In November 2019, WYB filed a lawsuit against some of XZ’s fans (instead against of his own haters!) for dissing him (although I’ve never seen any proof, and a few of those fans remain active on wb now, one of whom has even defended WYB's portrayal of LWJ before...). This angered a lot of XZ fans and CP fans who didn’t understand how he could have done this to his “friend”, and further proved that their relationship wasn’t that fantastic to begin with. WYB fans felt justified in hating XZ and all XZ fans as a result, and openly bullied XZ fans on the grounds of the Nanking CQL Concert. 

In January, The Untamed was named to Beijing Journal Drama award. CP fans and WYB fans were unhappy that XZ was named to the Best Male Lead category and WYB was named to the Best Male 2nd Lead. They attacked the award committee wb by spam commenting all their wb posts and the entire drama was pulled from the nomination afterward. XZ fans were especially angry that they started all this only for the nomination to be pulled out - because the only possibility was one Male Lead per drama, and anyone would agree that if chosen between WWX and LWJ, the character with the most scenes and importance in the story is WWX. 

Yadda yadda yadda, fast forward to February 2020, it started with a fanfiction written by a CP fan that depicted XZ as a prostitute transgender woman and WYB as a highschool kid (UNDERAGE) = AKA very sensitive material in China. It was posted on AO3, but the author posted the link of said fic on wb and a lot of CP fans broadcasted it around, so much that XZ fans became aware of it. Due to how sensitive the material is and how badly it would taint XZ’s image for his future roles, some XZ fans started reporting the wb post that contained the link (NOT AO3) and the author’s wb page. This is common practice in fandom on wb, usually done to get the wb posts taken down. This caused panic in the CP fans crowd because they thought XZ fans were reporting AO3 and that they were gonna lose the website (which is impossible, because AO3′s servers are in Sweden and not subject to Chinese laws anyway). 

Because of how sensitive AO3 was in China and how haters tried to pull in antigovernmental into their crowds, the subject quickly became too dangerous for XZ fans to get involved in. Official fan groups in China unanimously decided to ask all fans to stop participating in the online debate and stay within the fan group circle only. 

Someone on AO3 made a commentary about this incident that you can find here. She dug up a lot of info on the companies feeding money to the trolls online, but as I am an overseas fan and cannot really verify her info, I will not comment on those statements. 

Sometime in the middle of this fiasco, someone started spreading the notion that XZ fans hated fanfiction and were trying to report anything that goes against their image of their idol... And subsequently people who were not CP fans or XZ fans became aware of this problem when they couldn’t access AO3 suddenly because too much curious fans where trying to access it and they crashed the servers. However later on, people could access the website without any problems. I am not personally in China right now so I can’t verify these claims of the website being walled or not for real, but I know from various reliable sources that on March 1st it was only an overload of the server, and people could still access afterwards. 

With this however, haters (which include previous CP fans, WYB fans, and other idol’s fans) attacked XZ for not telling his fans to stop reporting, for not saying anything. They attacked XZ’s endorsements and spammed hate speech on the products he was promoting. They would rate 1 star in all his dramas and songs on db, and then buy accounts to further rate 1 stars (yes that thing exists in China, everything can be bought in China, don’t ask me why.) The reason why I believe that all this wasn’t coincidental, is that barely the day after the fiasco started, someone posted on db the exact list of all his sponsorships, detailing exactly who to call to protest, what words to spam in the comment sections of various official brands’ wb accounts. This entire thing was too well planned to be just a normal fandom fight. 

Whether it was other actors’ fans who organized this to cut down competition, we will probably never know for sure. The following year was laden with fake rumors, hate speech blasting from multiple directions. They attacked his personality, saying that his polite manners are just for show (when the reality is that he has always been a gentleman even when he wasn’t popular). They attacked XZ for faking donations to Wuhan, forcing him to show his donation certificate to prove himself. One of his friends couldn’t stand the cyberbullying anymore and revealed publicly that his grandfather recently passed away (the date on this drawing is 2020.03.03, he couldn’t post this last year). 

His friend defending him from the cyberbullies, saying that he had plenty of reasons to stay silent. That his grandfather passed away recently and his family has been planning his funeral. 

(Sources also said that his mother was hospitalized a few days afterwards. And that haters went to his mother’s hospital to harass her and her nurses)

Haters saying that XZ is using his grandfather’s death to excuse himself (??? is he not allowed to grieve like a normal person???)

Haters wishing that XZ becomes depressed from the cyberbullying and kills himself, wishing that he was dead, wishing that his fans were dead too. Photoshopping his picture into a funeral portrait to curse him

Haters admitting they are cyberbullying XZ, but rejoicing in the fact that they are so many so XZ can’t sue all of them. They have also reported his upcoming dramas for various reasons just so they cannot be aired. 

The airplane incident I’ve already talked about here.

A picture antis made to diss on XZ fans: AO3 can be still accessed even if it’s walled, Lofter can be still access even if it’s taken down from the app store. Your gege’s picture are still accessible even if he died. 

I’ve only posted here the tamest screenshots, there are far worst ones that I won’t be posting because the amount of vitriol give me nausea just looking at them. 

In all this fiasco, antis gave him the tag of “idol who didn’t manage his fans well”. But Xiao Zhan never thought fans needed to be trained, he thought of them like normal people, and their love, something to be treasured and not used. But some people in China still blamed his fans for starting all this mess, and partly him and his studio for not being able to stop it. 

Below is the translation for XZ’s letter, posted on the wb post above

Some Things I Want To Say

Today, I have something to say to everyone. I’ve thought of a lot of ways to do this, but in the end, I chose the simplest way to tell everyone about all my feelings and thoughts in the past year. These opinions, maybe they won’t be able to represent anything, nor won’t they be able to change anything, but I still wish to say this today. 

On this day last year, the incident happened very quickly, as if a bomb exploded on my face - endless phone calls, never ending message notifications, everyone’s opinions and questions came in like a tsunami. I wanted to say something back then, but I didn’t know what exactly. I was apprehensive of making a statement, afraid that one wrong word, or one wrong sentence would be taken the wrong way and end up adding oil to the fire. This is why at that time, I chose not to say anything. 

I never thought that the online fighting would grow bigger and bigger like an avalanche, getting larger crowds involved, and gradually leaving one person’s control. Even though afterwards I made repeated statements to make amends, it could not develop as I wished it to anymore. 

This life filled with broken protests and tumultuous noise continued to this day. And I felt I was going through a very dark and never ending tunnel. Unrest, ruminations, turmoil... I have also asked myself what did I do wrong exactly, why did everything after that day became as if it were an uncontrollable vessel. 

I spent a lot of time to digest, and then spent a lot of time to understand, understand everyone’s words and actions. Slowly, I started to understand what everyone was criticizing about me personally. The moment that I chose not to say anything, I lost that window of opportunity to reason with everyone. So I was wrong, from the very beginning. 

At that time, I wasn’t yet able to clearly understand the entire incident, to understand everyone’s feelings, nor did I know what kind of responsibility I had to carry as a public figure. Thus, I missed that opportunity to communicate with everyone, and wasn’t able to withstand the responsibility of letting these antagonizing feelings grow. Now, I can clearly recognize that throughout this year, this criticism that everyone had against me of “Idol Who Lost Its Voice”, was correct. During this year I reflected upon this repeatedly, as a public figure, I have to not only improve myself within the boundaries of my profession, but also have to carry the social responsibility that comes with my influence. To influence those who like me, who follow me, towards the right worldviews within my capacity. Even though my studio and I have already expressed some opinions through wb and interviews, but scars that this incident that brought such antagonistic emotions between different circles are still difficult to heal. 

No matter how late, my own problem has to be corrected. I would like to express my first comment: Xiao Zhan, would like to apologize for “losing voice” towards those who have been affected by this incident. This is my first responsibility towards the public, face the problem and admit my faults. 

Also, I would like to use this opportunity to speak with my fans. This is my second responsibility. In one of my interviews last year, I have said, I do not really agree with “managing” my fans (some celebs in China have hired people to manage fan groups in order for them to behave in certain ways for their purposes. Antis tried to spread the false rumor that XZ also had those people and that they directed their fans to start this mess), because everyone is an individual. No matter my studio nor myself, we do not have the authority to “manage” them like some would manage workers in a company. Afterwards, I reflected many times, maybe I cannot use the word “manage” to define my relationship with my fans, but I do have the responsibility to “correctly influence, and actively advocate”. So today, I would like to tell my fans, everyone has the right to like or hate something, and it should be respected and allowed within their own space. Of course this right should be reasonable, should not hurt anyone else, and remain within the boundaries of the correct values and norms. I hope my fans and friends can understand that no matter which profession, no matter what age, one’s own preferences or actions should not cross the line for one’s professional ethics or disrespect basic principles. 

(Here he is referring to reports of teachers using his name in class or asking children to say his name to cheer for him. This is a problem that occurred also with other celebrities in China, and for which he has already expressed himself previously.)

No matter online or in real life, everyone should be responsible for their own words. I also hope that we are not represented tags like “xx’s fans”, that we do not set this as the basis of where we stand on a topic nor do we let this determine what’s right or wrong. Everyone have their own hobbies and interest, respect everyone’s choice and freedom of speech. No matter whether they like me or hate me is their own right. Passion, this should be a source of strength to everyone, I do not wish for it to consume or hurt anyone. Perhaps I cannot change this kind of environment, but at least for you and me, today is a new start point. 

At last, I would like to talk a bit about myself. Ever since I came into this field, until today, I have always been defined by some tags. But the reason why I originally stepped into this circle was my passion for performance and music. And this is why, I will keep working on becoming a better actor and singer. The sudden criticism of “having lost voice” made me realize that, other than what I have always focused on professionally, I have to also be able to carry the responsibility of a public figure and an idol. I was born in a normal family in Chong Qing, and have lived a normal life, like many other people, for more than twenty years. Today I will also use this opportunity to apologize for the words I have said before as a normal person (I’ve already talked about it here), for the people I have inadvertently hurt. As I work hard on studying to become a better person, I will try to become a better “public figure”, so that these two Xiao Zhan can blend in together, for a better self. 

This past year, no matter big or small, I have to be responsible for the incidents that happened because of me. I can demand this for myself, but I have no right to force it on other people, so I can only hope that those who really like me can really listen to me: please be a bit more reasonable for things outside of personal preferences. Live a healthy life, put more time and energy onto one’s real life, and less on the senseless fighting behind fake IDs and unreliable online world. Only to become a better self. 

(Here he’s referring to an online fight that an anti called 晨小晨 started. I’ve already explained a bit here.  #微博管理员回应晨小晨事件# )

Sorry for any grammar errors, this post was really long to make and I didn’t proofread. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to translate the entire thing for overseas fans since you don’t understand the entire context, and because I wanted my wb records collection tag to be complete, I felt I had to... and I got carried away trying to explain everything. Tried to summarize it as much as I could.

As a fan of Xiao Zhan and also an AO3 user, I would still like to apologize for how this bullshi*t ended up disrupting respectful and peaceful users of AO3. The Untamed tag did not contain hate fics before all of this happened, it is unfortunate that a place where there used to be only love, ended up being tainted by antis and haters.

To the anonymous person who asked me a few months ago if I supported bjyx, this is my answer: You have the right to like whatever you want within your own corner, as long as it doesn’t bother anyone else and isn’t against basic principles. I ship WangXian as characters from a novel, but I have never liked RPS as a principle. 

[desidarling123]

FATWS Episode 4: A Definitive* Rank Ordering of Most Interesting Character Arcs, from Yours Truly

(*And by definitive I mean completely subjective, but yanno.)

IF YOU HAVEN'T FIGURED IT OUT BY NOW: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR FATWS. SCROLL AWAY NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT EM.

Now let's get into it:

1. John Walker

Let me start by saying -- the near-universal John Walker hate from fandom has always been largely undeserved, and that's a hill I'll die on. It comes out of, I think, a visceral sort of need to slot him into an easily understood black-or-white binary when, truthfully, he is neither, and I think this episode was the BEST example of that. The sheer range he exhibits in such a short time -- a handful of character moments and action sequences in the larger fifty minute episode -- serve to humanize him in a way that's messy and intense and very, very real.

Because MAN. Whether you were already sympathetic to John's plight or not, the death of his partner, Lemar Hoskins, is viscerally disturbing. There's no other way to put it. FATWS has not shied away from some pretty crazy onscreen kills, but this one was arguably the worst in how brutally mundane it was. Lemar was in the wrong place at the wrong time -- a man fighting amongst a whole room of super soldiers. He never stood a chance -- and yet, he still jumped in harm's way to save his best friend, a man in whom he saw indisputable goodness, even when the man could not see it himself. There's an obvious Steve/Bucky parallel here, but with a much darker and more realistic twist -- not all of us, after all, can be lucky enough to receive super strength that could save our lives. Lemar was always a regular mortal -- and for that transgression, he pays the ultimate price.

And then. What happens after. Oh. My. God. I felt Walker's rage and hopelessness through the screen. The death of that Flag Smasher -- at the hands of Captain America, no less, a man he'd admitted to admiring as a child not ten minutes earlier -- was brilliantly executed.

With the final shot of the townspeople recording the brutal murder it becomes overwhelmingly clear -- we are witnessing the tragic fall of a man who was, for all his previous missteps, trying to be a hero. But John's moral compass just died a meaningless, horrible death -- and without him by his side, Walker has become a man unhinged.

2. Bucky Barnes and Ayo

I debated putting this one at number two because I'd argue there were some weird elements to the writing choices made (more on that in a sec), but, nevertheless. Bucky and Ayo get slot #2.

That flashback to Wakanda got me excited, but I didn't expect my heart to get shattered almost right away. Oh. My. God. His interactions with Ayo BROKE ME. There's so much nuance in a scene that’s incredibly well-acted by both Sebastian and Florence — you see both of them in a moment that is incredibly pivotal for the former’s character, and we see the latter reacting with sympathy, strength, and enormous grace. I had expected a scene like this to be with Shuri (given that we last saw her with Bucky in the post credits of Black Panther) but, given the context of what was being performed (a final test of the trigger words) having Ayo there made a lot of sense. She could take him down if need be — but as the scene so wonderfully shows, thankfully, she doesn’t have to. Instead, she’s there to let him know that for the first time in almost a century, he’s free again.

Now, let’s get into some of the unevenness. I had hoped, at the end of the last episode, that Bucky had at least informed the Dora Milaje of his liaison with Zemo — that, perhaps, it had been Bucky’s intent to hand him over all along. Alas, that was not the case — Bucky, it seems, had broken Zemo out with little thought to — or perhaps simply silent acceptance of — the consequences that would come with it.

This is the part, again, where the writing felt a bit weak. We know from the opening shots of the episode that Bucky cares enormously for Ayo — they’re not simply soldiers in arms, but they’ve shared a moment of immense vulnerability together. We ALSO know that he cares enormously for T’Challa, for Shuri, and for Wakanda as a country (see Infinity War, where he says “I love this place” in reference to his new home).

So that begs the question — why? Why did he betray them in that way, besides sheer desperation for a lead? And it’s not one, I’d argue, that we are given a satisfying answer to. Bucky has been reckless to an alarming degree in the last few episodes, but not informing Wakanda of his intention to liaise with the man who killed their king feels like a MAJOR tactical oversight. Is he willing to burn everything down to win this battle against the Flag Smashers? Are these his self destructive tendencies kicking in? OR, is he just truly so blinded by his emotions surrounding his past that he’s willing to throw away what could very well be his future? Only time will tell. But I hope he’ll do right by Ayo and Wakanda, as he clearly has a LOT to make up for.

3. Baron Helmut Zemo

God. I love Zemo’s psychotic, problematic ass. Say what you want, but the man is the most efficient of them all and he isn't a super soldier or an Avenger. Over and over, he shows that he's truly smarter than them and always has been.

He doesn't get personal. He doesn’t get distracted. He knows exactly what his goal is, and he executes on it. Mans didn’t hesitate to unload several bullets into Karli, and as soon as he figured out what the vials were, he destroyed all except one. Like I said, the most efficient person on the team. Has arguably done more to forward the cause against the Flag Smashers/continued existence of super soldiers than anyone else and it’s only been a few days. Between that, his god-awful dancing skills and him shooting the eugenicist scientist without so much as a blink of an eye, I think he's a man after my own heart. I’m almost sad to see him get what’s coming for him come next episode. (Because y’all, he did still kill King T’Chaka, and there’s no way the Dora leave here without taking him out on a silver platter and an apple stuffed in his mouth). But again, let’s see how that pans out.

4. Sam Wilson

WHAT are the writers doing to Sam, I swear to God? We didn't get too much introspection into where his head's at during this episode, and when we did the treatment felt uneven at best. I think, in trying to have him create a rapport with Karli, the writers have created some areas of commonality that didn’t always translate as they’d like. It was also weird to see Sam swinging from the well-earned cynicism of the previous two episodes to the sort of wide-eyed optimism Steve used to portray. Perhaps that was simply to try and show Karli an alternative, but as the episode showed, she clearly wasn't buying (though, in Sam’s defense, he came pretty close).

Something about Sam’s characterization in this episode didn’t really do it for me — I would argue episode one and two were both stronger in that regard. Nevertheless, I’m hopeful that they’ll correct it in the next one.

5. Karli Morgenthau

Her treatment is arguably the worst of them all. She is young, yeah, but she oscillates at an alarming rate between spouting class discourse that, by this episode, feels largely derivative (like someone scrolled on Twitter and put a bunch of keywords together in hopes of evoking an emotional audience response) and homicidal tendencies that show a brutal yet fundamentally messy underpinning. Unlike Zemo, she is still too easily confounded, and that will come to bite her in the ass sooner rather than later. (See: The Power Broker)

Perhaps I'm meant to be rooting for her on some degree but I really can't -- she's cruel and sloppy, which I cannot forgive.

Oh, and she killed Lemar Hoskins and threatened Sarah Wilson. Yikes.

Overall Episode Takeaway: A lot of shocking moments and great acting beats for everyone involved (arguably some of the best of the series thus far), but the weakness of the writing does crop up in parts. Whether they'll be corrected for going forward is to be determined...

UP NEXT: Meta pieces for Sam, Bucky, John, and Zemo all in the works!

[david-talks-sw]

About the supposed “dig  at Rey” in the Mandalorian finale.

So a lot of people have taken to YouTube and social media, saying that Luke’s line about “talent without training (being) nothing” is a dig at Rey “bEcAuSe ShE’s A mArY sUe who’s good at everything and never trained!!”

No.

Quick recap: The Mandalorian is created by Jon Favreau, and he develops it with Dave Filoni (who created The Clone Wars with George Lucas, invented Ahsoka Tano, and created Star Wars: Rebels), among others.

As far as Dave is concerned, Rey is no different than Ahsoka, she’s not “OP”, she’s not a “Mary Sue”. He’s all for strong, independent, female characters.

He talked about this at the National Center for Women & Information Technology, you can find his full speech here. If you want to see the extracts specifically about Rey and female character in Star Wars, you can find it here (though I’d advise just ignoring the intentionally-triggering title and seeing the video for what it is).

All the backlash he saw about Rey? He saw it for Ahsoka too.

“Oh, she’s fighting Grievous and she’s only, like 13?! That’s so OP!”

“She feels like a Mary Sue written for a prequel based fan fiction.”

“Oh, she disobeyed an order from Yularen on Ryloth?! She’s so snippy!”

“Ugh, I hate her and her stupid voice!”

“She’s always pointing out stuff other characters have missed, like she’s so perfect! She's a Mary Sue with an annoying voice and personality.”

And honestly? I remember that period. People hated Ashley Eckstein and Ahsoka, just like they hated Hayden Christensen, and most Prequel-related content.

So no, that line is not a dig at Rey. If you expect that to ever come from Dave, big chance you’ll be disappointed. He is all for Rey, as a character (as am I, tbh). There may be issues with how she’s written, but none of it is related to her being too strong, or her being good at everything. Guess what? Captain America and Goku are good at everything too.

What The Mandalorian tackles, with that line, is a debate with bigger implications than just Grogu.

We get two sides of the same debate, from both Ahsoka, and Luke.

“I cannot train him. His attachment to you makes him vulnerable to his fears. His anger. I’ve seen what such feelings can do to a fully trained Jedi Knight. To the best of us. I will not start this child down that path. Better to let his abilities fade.”

“He is strong with the Force, but talent without training is nothing. I will give my life to protect the Child… but he will not be safe until he masters his abilities.“

The subject they really subliminally tackle is:

Should Anakin Skywalker have been trained to be a Jedi?

On the one hand:

Anakin has the potential of being the most powerful Force-user in galactic history, as the Jedi know it. It’s just a matter of time before he accidentally Force chokes someone in a fit of anger, or when submitted to extreme stress. He needs to be trained to hone his skills so he’s not a danger to himself and others.

Jedi Training would also help him get over the trauma of growing up as a slave on Tatooine, as it is aimed at keeping your emotions under control, whereas Anakin isn’t even acknowledging their existence (he pretends he’s not afraid in front of the Jedi Council, and seems to be the only person in the room to think that he should hide his fears). His hidden fears, his anger… Jedi Training would teach him to confront them.

Also, there’s a big chance the Sith are back! If they let this kid just go out into the wild, who knows, maybe the Sith Lords pick him up and make him one of their own. Better to keep the boy close.

Anakin is a good boy, raised by a loving mother, with a kind heart. If anything, he’s got the drive to do good as strong as that of any Jedi’s. Him being down-to-earth more than your average Jedi can potentially make him the best out of all of them. He could bridge the distance between the Jedi and the Senate, he could lead the Jedi into a new age. If anyone could be the next, better and improved Yoda, it’s Anakin Skywalker.

On the other hand:

Jedi training is for Jedi only. AKA, it’s perfect if you’re raised in the temple at a very young age to be a diplomat/wizard who upholds the values of the Republic, in control of your emotions and in Balance with the Force. But if you’re not? Then the strict rules of the Jedi Order will basically seem like an insurmountable (bordering on unreasonable) obstacle.

Any normal person will see these rules as attempting to turn you into a sociopath. Because if you’re a normal person, they might. For all intents and purposes, Anakin is a super-powerful normal person. If they take Anakin in, 10 years old, with the attachments he’s formed (his mother), the emotions he represses, the trauma from his upbringing - all of which, in a normal person, are totally fine and common - and try to force him in a mold he just won’t fit in, that’s just a recipe for disaster.

Of all people, Qui-Gon Jinn - Mister “I’m always right because I follow the Will of the Force and you don’t” - who is not the most forthcoming of people, as opposed to Obi-Wan, is insisting that he should train the boy. You give a chaotic Master a chaotic Padawan? That’s adding extra ingredients to the recipe for disaster.

The BEST thing to do would be Qui-Gon leaving the Order with Anakin, and raising Anakin as his surrogate son, teaching him his values, rather than training him as a Padawan and teaching him the values of the Jedi (which he’s too old for and which essentially make the Jedi the Senate’s lapdogs). But Qui-Gon’s insisting that he train him as a Jedi.

Anakin’s mind is too fragile as it is. If they add the stress of being a Jedi to that too, there’s a big chance he won’t be able to take it, and bring about the destruction of everything they are, stand for and care about.

And, to be honest? Both points are fair.

Because Anakin was both…

… the best of them…

… and their destructor.

But then, should Grogu be trained?

In my (and Luke’s) opinion? Yes.

Ahsoka’s logic makes sense… but it only applies to how things were before, back when the Jedi served the Republic as Force-sensitive diplomats/ambassadors, making decisions that impacted whole planets and their billions of inhabitants, keeping the peace through mediation, and occasionally investigating a crime.

But in Grogu’s case… things are a bit different.

The Republic is gone.

The Jedi’s mission of upholding its values seems to be gone with it.

So literally any surviving Jedi, has a new mission: just help people.

Be it Ezra & Kanan helping the Rebellion during the Dark Times.

Or Cal Kestis, saving the Force-sensitive children.

Or Ahsoka, helping the village of Calodan, after the fall of the Empire.

Or Luke, literally being a space-vagabond/Jedi archeologist for 10 years and helping out wherever and whoever he can.

The Jedi no longer have to deal with planet-sized problems, or mediations, or investigations, because the New Republic hasn’t included them in its government, seeing as they have their rangers, now.

So now, the pressure of “upholding the Republic’s values” and “going on missions which impact billions of lives” is gone.

Now, the Jedi operate at a smaller scale and just help people out. As they did, before they became Republic officials.

Sure, they still keep their emotions in control, but that’s simply for the sake of living a healthy life, rather than for the sake of objectiveness and diplomacy.

In these circumstances? It’s totally fine for Grogu to be trained, as he should be.

The line was about the fact that training Grogu to hone his skills is fine, and should be done, before he becomes a danger to everyone around him.

[urmomsstuntdouble]

Can you do one for america

Since I received this about an hour or two after posting my lithuania analysis, I assume you’re asking for an america character analysis. I was debating whether or not to go through with writing this or not for a while, but i’ve decided that I’ll try. I hope you enjoy it!

Idealism

The first thing that sticks out to me when thinking about america is that he’s super idealistic, and I think this has its roots in his birth. Everything in his life has been about hope and being better than others, even down to the decision to colonise north america. England needs to be the most powerful country in europe. Better set up a colony in america so that it can save us. It’s that sort of logic that i think gives america the idea that he needs to be perfect, or that he can be the ideal person. And though a lot of what we consider to be the “american” identity (intense patriotism, nativism, idealism, etc) took recognizable shape in the 19th century, i think this way of thinking was nothing new to alfred. He’d been raised on it, with the desire to please arthur sort of in his blood? Anyway i feel like the idea that the colonies would be so so prosperous really put the idea into america’s head early on that he was perfect and that he was destined to be such a great person, even if that wasn't true. I often see his daddy issues presented as solely abandonment issues, but my interpretation of america is more of a combination of abandonment issues and the pressure, some of it self inflicted, to be a perfect country. Basically, his idealism is deeply rooted in unhealthy places. 

Also, a religion headcanon i have is that while he was more raised to be a puritan, freddie prefers quakerism. Though he’s not the most compatible with quakerism, as it rejects violence and quakers often refer to themselves as the society of friends, and are very welcoming, i think it gives him some hope. One of freddie’s biggest problems is that he wants people to be better than they are, and quakerism helps a little with that, because it’s a way that he can help himself become better than he currently is. I feel like he’s been a quaker for a very long time, so he’s not a very good quaker, but this is still something that’s very important to him. 

Hero complex and other mental bullshit

America having a hero complex and also being physically 19 is something i think really highly of. First of all, it very much fits with the mythology of america being a sort of world savior. Secondly, a lot of american media focuses on heroism, whether its on the behalf of average people, like the hunger games, or on the behalf of superheroes, like the mcu- especially over the past 20 years. Though i think it’s a good thing to promote heroism, the hero-martyr complex that gen z has is. Oof. And i think alfred fits very well into that toxic sort of “heroism” that most gen z kids have. He thinks he’s somehow able to fix everything wrong with the world, just because he really wants to. Though that desire is genuine, it’s not always something that’s his place to fix or something that even needed fixing. There’s also a selfish component to that- He needs to prove himself, and heroism is the only way he thinks he can do that. It’s why he works out constantly and cares so much, on a personal rather than country-avatar-thing level, about being #1 at everything. He has to be better than everyone else because he has to be the perfect hero. 

I also think it’s interesting how america seems to have more pronounced daddy issues than canada, and i think this is something that harkens back to the 13 colonies (side note i hate the term ‘colonial times’ when referring to the time before the revolutionary war or canadian independence. These are settler states, its always colonial times.) and american independence. Canada sort of only exists because of british loyalists, as they made up the majority of the population around the turn of the 19th century. They saw themselves as being The Better Colonists. Real daddy’s boy types, and I think this is something that contributes to the hero complex. Because matthew refused to rebel so openly, that made arthur favor him as a son, so alfred felt the need to be even better than matthew- even though, of course, alfred was a bit more favored. 

Fighting Style

Freddie is very good at violence, but not in the same way that a lot of other nations are. Where they tend to be more well trained in specific styles of fighting, freddie just sort of has all of them? His mind is very crowded, i think. Also, the way that he would have learned to fight is different from the other super powerful countries by virtue of his youth, and by virtue of the different regional fighting styles in america. One that’s haunted me is a trend in the ability to rip off ears and noses- Particularly by white gangs in the antebellum south, this was seen as being like. A real badass. I think alfred was something of a feral child. If you know the saying “it takes a village to raise a child,” i think it really did with him. He had so many parents, just like a lot of the western hemisphere countries. But anyway because of all his many many parents, there was never any strong parental force in his life, so it’s more like he didn’t have any at all, and because of that, alfred was a very strange child. And because violence is so ingrained in american society, alfred is very good at fighting, both in order to be fun and flashy and for his own self defense. Though he doesn't really like to fight unless he feels like he has to (and other people are very good at convincing him that he does have to)

Sports

Though america is definitely super athletic and could probably naturally be good at most sports, i think there’s a few that he’d more gravitate towards. Those are basketball, track and field, and olympic lifting. I would include american football but it’s a stupid sport that doesn’t make any sense, so it will not be included for spite reasons. In basketball I think he’s sort of an every-man. I think he’s around six feet tall, so he really could play any position on offense, and as for defense, I think he’d play his best defense against the point guard, bc i feel like Alfred is really fast and good at getting up in your face. He’d have a ton of steals whenever defending against the point guard. I think he’d be a good center on offense, because he’s a bit aggressive and that would be useful for getting rebounds and put-backs, though i wouldn’t discount point-guard freddie, because he does like to be very inspiring. He’s pretty energetic as well, and a point guard can really carry the entire team in terms of energy and spirit. As for track and field, he’d also be an every man- I feel like he’d gravitate more towards sprinting events by personality, but his coach would stick him in wherever. Where olympic lifts are concerned, he’s absolutely a snatch specialist. 

Empire and contradictions

America is an empire. No way of getting around that. I think imperialism in hetalia is an interesting subject, especially where america is concerned. @mysticalmusicwhispers did a good job running that down here, but basically my thoughts on the matter are that alfred doesn't really like being an empire. There’s many angles to that. It’s lonely at the top, for one. There’s no one who relates to being a 21st century empire in quite the same way as him. Then you have the fact that a lot of people living in america have suffered under imperialism as well. Because of that, there’s a lot of self hatred and anxiety and a not knowing if he can fully trust himself. Theres also the obsession that many americans have with people from other cultures being able to assimilate to american wasp culture. Because of all the people who live in the states who are very much not wasps and who can never be, it’s really hard on alfred, though he refuses to admit that things are anything but fine. 

Extras/Fun stuff

A book that reminds me of him is The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. It’s a collection of short stories about O’Brien’s time serving in the military during the Vietnam War. It’s a very haunting book and I think about it at least once a week, but it is very violent and there’s a lot of fucked up stuff in it.

giveme chubby alfred or give me death

i feel like this shouldn’t have to be said, but sometimes there’s people who depict him as being pro-trump or pro-right wing bullshit, which. absolutely not. just because of all the political turmoil that exists within alfred, and because of all the pain he goes through because of all the hate that exists within his borders- hate that the entire world is forced to pay attention to. even though he might not have all the best sympathies or motivations, he’s just so tired of all the pain he personally goes through because of domestic political unrest, and would like it to end in the way that’s the least painful for him as a person. 

Bi king of my heart 

not a natural blond

I hc him as being mixed, though i’m not sure what exactly he’d look like? But i do enjoy alfred but not white, as poc are the driving force behind a lot of american life, right down to the languages we speak. Like. something like half the states names are the words of their indigenous peoples, and even more toponyms are indigenous across the country. Then of course i feel he’s very protective of aave and will always pronounce words in Not English correctly. (if u want to hear more about my language thoughts they’re linked below. Not gonna rehash it here cause those posts are Long™) 

My playlist for him!

Other analyses (age, linguistics) 

writing requests

[silverandarsenic-hcs]

Ghost Slander

I know I’ve done this before sorta but this is the Finial List of all the shit that’s really just bad about them. the first half of each is serious bad stuff and the second half is just silly annoying shit they do. I am not apologizing for this so that’s that on that. I also still love them anyways.

Papa I:  too old to do anything. he may be strong and smart, but he’s old, and tired, and gets grumpy when he’s tired. and when he’s grumpy hes a fucking asshole. he really doesn’t want to do anything, like go out for a fun day in the city, or try new things. can’t teach an old dog ne w tricks, and he doesn’t even try tricks he’s known about for forty years. He can be boring, and he can be punchy and shitty when he’s annoying (I don’t mean like punchy as in hitting, just you know when you were grumpy as a kid and you get really irritated and annoyed and kind of just wanna have a hissy fit and cant control it???? that.)

Papa II:  Super emotionally unavailable and it just becomes taxing to try and get him to open up unless he’s ready and willing - which, spoiler alert, will never happen. He really does have a shitty temper and when he gets angry he sees red. Refuses to delegate tasks to other people around him because he thinks no one else can do it right. When he does, no matter what they do it’s never good enough and he makes all his interns cry and/or quit. for fun: he gets the “man flu” in which he will not take medication or go to the doctor until he literally has muscle dystrophy. thinks Advil or Tylenol is some hippy bullshit brainwashing pill invented by liberals that are trying to trick him into being happy. conspiracy theories. thinks aliens built the pyramids. watches ancient aliens in his spare time and never shuts up about it. Unable to use technology, and falls asleep in “special chair” at home. 

Papa III: cant take no for an answer. he doesn't understand when someone refuses his advances because all of the girls in the clergy falling all over him his whole life has made his head a little too big. if you want major fucking ego, he’s the brother for you. if you don’t want flowers, and you don’t want random extravagant things, he’s not the brother for you, because if you tell him you don’t like the things he’ll assume you hate him and decide that you shouldn’t be together anymore. sure, it comes from a place of caring and wanting to spoil his s/o, but fuck, bro, tone it down. He’ll also talk at you for hours even if you’re not listening just because he loves the sound of his own voice. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to do something else, or are tired, or you just don’t care, he’ll stop talking when he’s ready and only then. For fun:  at a kids soccer game he would be That Dad that screams at the other kids like hes the assistant coach and probably be drunk and fist fight the other drunk dads in their lawn chairs. makes his s/o wax his back before they go to the beach or anywhere he has to be shirtless. its gross and hairy and he wouldn't care if his s/o didn’t bully his persian-rug body into it so hard one time he canceled a vacation. 

Copia: He has no back bone. He’ll work until people give him what wants but he’ll never come right out and say it, in any kind of relationship or work. You’ll constantly be guessing whether or not what he said has a second meaning and if it’s really want he wants or he’s been waiting for you to figure it out the whole time. It’s fucking annoying. He’ll never be the one to put his foot down, or silence a room, or command attention like the other papa’s have, he just doesn’t have it in him. For fun: Calls his stomach his “spare tire” like what the fuck who says that?? Talks to everyone, you literally have to drag him away from talking to strangers. The person next to him at the cafe has their headphones in and he’s just chatting away. Small talk but just gets worse, and he subjects everyone to it.  rides one of those bikes where you're basically lying down and doesn't shut the fuck up about how low impact it is on your back and knees. thinks the government is out to get him and everyone else but doesn't put two and two together and still has a google home thing or an alexa, buys that facebook skype camera thing for your tv that literally follows you when he walks. he just thinks their neat.

Dewdrop: Has a hot temper and genuinely gets mean when he lashes out. He doesn’t care that everyone has to chase after him all the time and has no remorse for what they have to do for him or what he ruins for them. He’s gonna do whatever he want’s whenever he wants and no one can tell him otherwise - everyone thinks this is so fun and quirky and great until it’s been a few months and they’re wondering why Dew hasn’t calmed down even a little. He’s too self obsessed to even care what other people want for him. A total mess wherever he goes, eats all the soap and candles and doesn’t replace them. 

Swiss:  saying someone is too good at everything doesn't sound like an insult, but it does when they brag about it. Swiss has always been the multi ghoul, meaning hes always been pretty good at everything, but never specialized in something. so rather than do more to hide the fact he’s a jack of all trades but master of none, he just brags about every tiny little thing he does. hes like 6′ but his ego is like 8′4″. Insanely jealous in relationships which can cause problems. he’s a liar. there. i said it. unless he’s your s/o, if his mouth is moving, it’s probably a lie. whether hes bigging up his own adventures, or trying to cover his tracks about where he was and who he was with, its probably all bullshit. the only reason he doesn’t lie to his partners is because he HATES being lied to in return and if he has feelings for you its a little harder to just shut you out once you realize he’s full of it. He mostly lies for fun, and partly just to see what people will really believe, so it get’s wilder and wilder every time. Refuses to do anything that’s boring to him like clean or do laundry, but he hates disgusting messes so he’ll just pay someone else to do it. 

Mountain: Disgustingly messy. When I walk into a room i leave a hurricane of my shit everywhere, but if you took an actual hurricane and put it in his bedroom, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. No one in the whole church will go near his room, partly for the smell, partly for the fact of that there is no where to stand that isn’t a foot high with garbage and dirty clothes. If he cleaned his room i think a new disease would be unlocked. Super stubborn, and inpatient. He’s pretty chill, but refuses to wait for anything without getting super annoyed, and it’s impossible to change his mind about literally anything once it’s made up. Trying to debate him about anything is a fucking nightmare. 

Aether:  when you’ve been together for a while, and you’re comfortable with each other, things can get boring. he’ll stop taking you on dates every week, and stop thanking you profusely for everything you do, and stop treating you like a queen. things will get stale quickly, so unless you’re into routine, steer fucking clear or you're doomed.  when he’s in a shitty mood, he will say literally anything to you to get you away from him. he just wants to be left alone and if you wont let that happen he’ll break up with you, tell you to fuck off, tell you to get away from him, tell you to go fuck yourself, whatever it takes. he doesn’t mean it, and even if he knows that deep down, you’re still causing the problem by existing, in his mind. refuses to accept that there may be a different way to do things. it’s Aether’s way or the highway and that's it. he thinks that if somethings easier, or faster than the way he does it, then it’s not being done right, and it’s fucking annoying how he wastes so much time doing stupid simple tasks because its the way he was taught and its the way he’ll do them until he dies

Rain: A baby. An actual baby. Needy and clingy and even a little bit pathetic sometimes. Here and there it can be cute and you might feel the need to nurture him, but honestly most people can’t handle it all the time but for Aether. He constantly needs attention in the exact way he wants and if he doesn’t get it he’ll whine and cry and try and make you feel like shit. Maybe it’s manipulation, maybe it’s not. Who knows. But you have to make sure he eats properly, make sure he gets dressed properly, make sure he sleeps, pretty much be a parent to him half the time. The amount of emotional labor is borderline slavery. His attitude is insane, and he’s sassy and bossy all the time as if he’s actually in control, and if you tell him otherwise he’ll scream (at the top of his lungs). Uses baby talk at an inappropriate timing and makes people uncomfortable  sometimes.

Cumulus: Collects tiny little themed knick knacks that are literally everywhere and take up all the space in her and Cirrus’ little sapphic cottage. Nosey and wants to know everyone’s business all the time. The only person she tells is Cirrus but she won’t rest unless she knows every detail about a persons life and drama.

Cirrus: Leaves all the lights on wherever she goes. Leaves all the cupboards open. All the lights are on so much that it lights up the whole house all night, and people call them to tell them to either close their blinds or turn the fucking lights off.

[itsthenovelteafactor]

Superhero Gothic

Thanks to everyone who responded to my previous post (special shoutout to @jeyfeather1234 💛 ) about superheroes and gothic media! I know it’s been, like, a month, but here we go.

Here’s a bit of a look into some common gothic themes, and how they apply to Doom Patrol, The Boys, Watchmen (2019), and The Umbrella Academy. This one’s a bit long, not gonna lie, but I hope you enjoy! 

Part I: Let’s Talk About Gothic Media

There is not actually an all-encompassing definition for gothic media, or even a universally agreed-upon one. You’re probably familiar with some well-known gothic works (think Dracula, Frankenstein, Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen King) but there is a lot of debate on what exactly makes them gothic. 

There are some common themes in gothic works, though: families/characters under the control of a tyrannical paterfamilias, the crumbling of the established order/estate, long-buried secrets that have consequences in the present, and supernatural events that are stand-ins for/reflective of the emotional state/past actions of the characters. 

(Note: these aren’t all the themes of gothic works or even most of them, but for purposes here, I’d like to limit this analysis to them. I’d love to talk about other themes/ideas, though, if anyone has them. 😊)

So… superheroes (quick overview in case you haven’t watched any of them… spoiler warnings for the rest of this discussion)

Doom Patrol:

Five misfit superhumans attempt to rescue their mentor figure when he is kidnapped by an old enemy.

They are very, very bad at it.

Also features a singing horse head, a sentient nonbinary teleporting street (who is by far the best character) and the narrator is the fourth-wall breaking series villain. 

Beautifully weird but will also emotionally devastate you. Criminally underrated, tbh.

Watchmen (2019):

Story takes place after the canon of the graphic novel which is too much to summarize.

Alternate history (that should really feel more fictitious than it does) where white supremacist organization the Seventh Cavalry, masked police officers, and former superheroes in hiding all collide in Tulsa Oklahoma

Swept the Emmys this year and ABSOLUTELY DESERVED TO

The Umbrella Academy:

Washed up former child superheroes are forced to reunite when their father dies under mysterious circumstances 

Time travel, dysfunctional siblings, and a killer soundtrack

Basically a family drama with the superhero story as secondary (complimentary)

Probably the most obviously gothic of all of these it is aesthetic AF 

The Boys: 

Superheroes exist but they are corporate sellouts under the control of evil company Not-Amazon (AKA Vought)

Regular human protagonists try to hold them accountable for their actions with varying (read: usually minimal) success

Yes, it’s the one from those weird ads earlier this year

Billy Joel!! 

Part II: Niles Caulder, Ozymandias, and Other Terrible Father Figures

The Tyrannical Paterfamilias: 

Does not always mean a father figure explicitly, often relating to the notion of a patriarchal tradition, or family inheritance that plays a role in controlling the main characters. 

Sometimes, it is a father figure. 

Sometimes, it is a representative of patriarchal tradition/male head of pseudo-family unit.

So, uh, role call: 

Reginald Hargreeves (even in death) holds power over his children, and has shaped all of them into the adults they have become, and that drives the majority of the conflict. Each of the major character individually grapples with the after-effects of his abuse. Luther feels the need to be the leader and protect everyone and alienates his allies as a consequence. Diego constantly asserts himself as a hero (often to dangerous extremes) because it is the only way he was ever valued. Allison has to teach herself boundaries and responsible use of her powers after he encouraged her to abuse them for years. Klaus turns to drugs to cope with his childhood trauma. Five disobeyed his father with disastrous consequences and is constantly fighting to not become him. Vanya spent her entire childhood in the background, and never learned to assert herself in a healthy way. Thanks, Reggie.

Homelander says that The Seven are like a family. While whether or not this is accurate (it isn’t) is up for debate, he does occupy the tyrannical paterfamilias roles incredibly well. Homelander controls every member of the Seven, threatening them and their loved ones whenever they step out of line (read: do not do exactly what he wants in the exact way he wants them to do it.) He is also very closely tied with conservative/patriarchal rhetoric in-universe and at one point dates a literal Nazi. 

William Butcher less evil than most of the other characters on this list but the bar is also like, on the ground. Butcher tries to control the Boys in a similar way (Butcher and Homelander are character foils, okay? it’s actually pretty neat). He’s perfectly willing to sacrifice them in pursuit of his own goals, disregards their points of view and the well-being of their loved ones, and tries to cut loose anyone who disagrees with his methods (recall when Hughie tried to rescue his friends at the end of s1 and Butcher… punched him in the face? Yeah, that.) The difference is that the Boys can push back against his without being, you know, brutally murdered. (And also the Butcher isn’t a literal monster; I’m not anti-Butcher, okay? He’s an interesting character and the fact that he seems constantly on the verge of becoming that which he hates most is part of what makes him interesting.)

Guess what, folks? It’s hating Niles Caulder hours. He engineered accidents to turn the main characters into his test subjects, and then kept them conveniently hidden away in his large manor. Stole their autonomy and independence but paints himself as a benevolent father figure. And that’s not even including what he does to his actual daughter, Dorothy. He’s terrified of her growing up (read: becoming a young woman) and so he locks her away for almost 100 years and, when she is freed, yells at her constantly and makes her terrified of showing any signs of maturation (even though she’s 111 and clearly tired of being written off as a child).

The relationship between Ozymandias and his daughter, Lady Trieu, is integral to the final act of Watchmen. Heralded as the “smartest man in the world,” Ozymandias refused to acknowledge his daughter as his until he needed something from her. While Lady Trieu is more self-sufficient and independent than some of the applications of this trope, she goes to great lengths to prove herself, first to him, and then to herself when he rejects her.

Part III: Been a Long Time Gone (Constantinople) 

Gothic fiction is often associated with change, and particularly, the collapse of established systems of power. For example, many works like The House of the Seven Gables and The Fall of the House of Usher take place in old, crumbling manor houses. There is a reason for this! These kinds of estates are remnants of a past that is irreversibly gone, and their continued presence in decrypt forms serves as a reminder. 

Each of the four series takes place at a moment, either on a wide scale or on a personal scale (or both!), in which an established order is being questioned, and the constant reminders of that failed order are used to gothic effect.

The Umbrella Academy plays this most directly (In fact, there are TONS of parallels between the end of s1 of TUA and House of Usher that I don’t have the time to get into right now... lmk if you want that meta). We can see the Hargreeves mansion as a very literal example of this. While not worn down, the house is notably both very large and very empty. Shelves are filled with merchandise for a superhero team that disbanded over a decade prior, and portraits of a family that no longer speaks to each other. None of the family members ever seem truly comfortable or at ease in the house, and for good reason - every back corner is a reminder of their incredibly traumatic childhood. 

In The Boys, the story begins with the fridging death of the main character’s girlfriend, Robin, at the hands of a member of the Seven, a group of heroes so ingrained in the public consciousness that when they later hide out in a costume shop, literally every single costume is for one of Vought’s heroes. The Seven represent the system in power, which, at the disposal of Not-Amazon means corporate greed, shallow altruism, and the cultivation of public personas at the expense of actual humanity. 

From that moment on, the sheer presence of The Seven on everything from public billboards to breakfast cereal is a remainder for Hughie (and the audience) that this established system doesn’t work and is based on lies, which serves this effect on a personal level. In the broader scale, however, we also see that the Seven themselves are fracturing under an unsustainable business model. Even their name, “The Seven” starts to seem a bit dated when halfway through season one through the end of season two there are notably... less than seven of them. 

The main characters in Doom Patrol are all in recovery after the accidents that irreversibly changed their lives. We see through flashbacks the people that they used to be, and the difference is striking. They were each established in their own elements: Cliff a famous race-car driver, Rita a world renowned actress, Larry a hero pilot, Jane was involved in counter-cultural movements, Vic was a student and athlete. The foundations upon which their worlds were established are completely decimated by the accidents, and now they (save Vic and sometimes Jane) live mostly in isolation in Niles’ manor house, an estate that is far larger than would be necessary to comfortably house a group of their size.

And you feel the emptiness, both in the manor, and in the lives of the characters. They have barely created a shadow version of their own existence when the series starts, so fragile that a simple trip into town devolves into utter chaos. 

Angela Abar of Watchmen has also constructed a life following the terrifying act of terrorism on the White Night. It’s a bit of a double life, and we see that the balancing act is challenging for her, even before the story truly begins. The death of Judd Crawford, and the revelation about him that follows is not only traumatizing on a personal level (but it definitely is that), but also upsets her understanding of the world. People she’s come to trust are not just dishonest but truly monstrous. And the more Angela learns about what has been happening, the more her understanding of the world begins to unravel. Her memories, and the memories of those around her are cast in a much more sinister light, and the effect is genuinely chilling. 

Part IV: “I’m the Little Girl Who Threw the Brick in the Air”

In episode 3 of Watchmen, Laurie contacts Dr. Manhattan on the cosmic phone booth to tell him a joke. It’s a version of what TVTropes calls the “brick joke,” and it relies on set up taking place early on, other stuff happening, and then the response coming at an unexpected moment. 

So, yeah. Events of the past/buried secrets resurfacing with consequences in the present.

Continuing with the theme from Watchmen, the entire series is punctuated with the way the past and the present intertwine, with elements from both the original Watchmen graphic novel, and actual American history. One of the things we talked a lot about in my gothic lit class was the manner in which the overhanging specter of past atrocities casts a shadow over the present, and how many works cannot help but have gothic themes because there are so many horrifying things in the past that cannot be ignored, and provide both context and nuance for the discussions we have in the present. No series tackles these topics quite so directly (and with as much care) as Watchmen. (note: it does not always make for easy viewing, but if you’re in a place where you feel like you can engage with that kind of material, I highly recommend the show.)

In Doom Patrol, the past actions of the characters very much control the storyline (see: previous discussion of Niles Caulder), but the character whose storyline I want to talk about here is Rita (partially for plot reasons and partially because I just love Rita, okay?). We learn when we first meet Rita that in the past she was... not a great person. We know that the trauma of the accident that gave her her powers has changed her, we also know that she still holds on to the guilt and that her guilt has limited the scope of her world for years, but we don’t know what exactly it is that she’s done. 

Enter Mr. Nobody, all-powerful narrator who is not just aware of Rita’s greatest sins, but perfectly capable of manifesting reminders of them into the story. She is confronted with empty cradles, and the sound of crying children in the background of many scenes and we see how much it effects her, without a full understanding of why it does (see: The Tell-Tale Heart). Her past begins to haunt her physically, and she begins to crumble in response to it, until finally she is forced to confide in a stranger (and thus the audience). The past actions do not just inform the audience of Rita’s character - they show up to influence her behavior in the present. 

The ending of The Umbrella Academy season 1 is super evocative of the gothic genre with Vanya breaking open the soundproof chamber (wherein she was silenced for years) and rising from the basement to destroy the last remnants of the Hargreeves legacy (which would be awesome if the last remnants of the Hargreeves legacy didn’t include the rest of her family). Pretty much every mistake the siblings make over the course of the season feeds together to create the finale, but the primary cause isn’t something any of them actually did. It all ties back to Reginald Hargreeves’ complete inability to be nice to children. Any children. His own and random strangers that need help. 

In The Boys, while the extent to which people are making f-ed up choices in the present cannot be expressed enough, we see through the characters of Homelander that many of the present difficulties are a result of past mistakes. Particularly, the profit-seeking corruption within Vought. We learn in s1 through Vogelbaum that Homelander was raised in a lab by Vought as an experiment, only to be unceremoniously thrust into the spotlight and told he was a superhero (which... does not justify a single one of his actions but is still a major yikes). As the head scientist of the project, Vogelbaum is very aware that ignoring his conscious if the name of research has essentially created the biggest threat their world has ever seen. 

(Seriously y’all just stop raising your super kids in isolation) 

Part V: Put Them Together, and They’re the MF-ing Spice Girls 

Having the environment respond to characters’ emotions/mental states is pretty common in gothic works (it was a dark and stormy night = someone is probably not doing super well). One of the advantages of the genre’s tendency towards the supernatural is that, often, those elements of the stories, as well, are reflections of the main ideas of a work of fiction (see: Stephen King’s really unsubtle period metaphors).

Because all of these shows have a ton of supernatural/scifi elements by virtue of being, well, superhero shows, I thought it would be easier (and more fun!) to come up with a short list of elements, what they mean, and what cases they might apply to.

1. A Nonlinear Experience of Time

The Umbrella Academy: legitimately about time travel. Characters are attempting to fix the timeline but are unable to because they are both mentally and sometimes literally stuck in the past. 

Watchmen: In the episode This Extraordinary Being, Angela experiences firsthand the experiences of her grandfather, under the influence of a drug called Nostalgia. The episode touches on many themes, one of which being the impact of generational trauma in marginalized communities. Throughout the series, Dr. Manhatten is cursed with experiencing all time at once, and the episode A God Walks into Abar illustrates that, because of this, he is constantly facing the consequences of particular actions before, after, and while he is preforming him.

Doom Patrol: Mr. Nobody is able to physically travel to one of Jane’s flashbacks via his fourth-wall breaking powers, and gives Dr. Harrison an ultimatum for the future. 

What it implies: Events, particularly events that evoke guilt or conflict, are not as rooted in the past as one would like to think.

2. Powers/Abilities that reflect personal trauma/failings

Doom Patrol: Larry’s abilities/bond with the Negative Spirit have made it so that he is constantly covering himself with bandages/avoiding other people, which reflects his experiences having to hide his identity as a gay man in the 50/60s. Rita forced herself to walk a thin line, betraying everything in pursuit of her image; her abilities require constant effort to keep her entire body from becoming misshapen and out of control. Vic’s father with boundary issues can literally control his perception of the world through his cybernetic enhancements. Dorothy’s abilities manifest as imaginary friends because she was kept isolated for years at a time. 

The Umbrella Academy: pretty much all of the kids’ powers are representative of the interpersonal skills they were never able to develop. Luther is super-durable but also the most emotionally vulnerable of the group. Five can teleport and time travel but always seems to be too late to stop things. Diego can manipulate the trajectory of projectiles but cannot escape the path his father set out for him, not matter how much he resents it. Vanya always forced herself to stay quiet until the sound literally explodes out of her.

The Boys: Annie’s abilities allow her to control light, but she struggles (in the beginning) to bring to light the horrible things done to her behind closed doors. 

Watchmen: Not technically a power, but Looking Glass’ mirror-mask is a constant reminder of the hall of mirrors that both saved his life and traumatized him forever. 

What it implies: from a story perspective, these allow for an exploration of trauma/guilt to occur on a scale much larger than people simply talking about their problems (as if anyone on any of these shows knows how to talk about their problems...) It also means that the trauma/guilt of the characters takes on a physical form that is able to haunt them, and constantly remind them/hold them accountable for their past actions.

3. Diluted Sense of Reality:

Doom Patrol: The first season is narrated by its main villain, and throughout the season we see that the act of narration itself has an impact on the story.

Watchmen: The event that kicks off the plot of the story is hinged upon a paradox introduced by Angela near the end of the series when trying to speak to her Grandfather in the past through Dr. Manhattan.

The Umbrella Academy: The pair of episodes in season 1, The Day that Wasn’t and The Day That Was take the same point in time and explore two possible avenue for the future from there, with The Day that Wasn’t ending with the events of the entire episode being completely erased from the timeline.

What it implies: you can’t necessarily trust everything you see, even from the audience perspective, giving them a position not unlike that of the characters. The character’s uncertainty and confusion is magnified and reflected in the world that surrounds them.

Other examples: an apocalypse (The Umbrella Academy, Doom Patrol, Watchmen (of a sort)), ghosts (The Umbrella Academy - hi, Ben!), immortality/invulnerability (Watchmen, Doom Patrol, The Boys), and characters that look significantly younger than they actually are (The Boys, The Umbrella Academy, Doom Patrol). 

Part VI: Why Did You Write a Literal Essay Don’t You Have Real Schoolwork (yes... shhhhh...)

And... there you have it. I don’t really have some grand conclusion here. This is (clearly) far from a complete analysis but it is the most my finals-week brain can concoct at the moment. 

If you have other ideas, let me know! You can always add to the notes or message me – my inbox is always open!  If you got this far, thank you so much for taking the time to read this! Much love! ❤️