#i just love the way its done like he isnt absolved of blame but hes also not treated like some asshole
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
hecksupremechips · 2 months ago
Text
Something about the way Ashton Frey has horrible self worth issues and constantly feels like he’s a bad friend and letting everyone down by existing wrong but also the way he shows his affection for his friends is by bothering them by invading their personal space crashing on their couch without asking first using stupid nicknames no one likes and like, they genuinely do get annoyed with him for this! But he lacks the social awareness to know where he’s gone wrong and just assumes he’s this horrible presence who inevitably ruins everything for everyone. It’s like he knows he’s annoying but doesn’t know WHY or how to make it stop. Good shit
2 notes · View notes
expired-blueberries · 4 years ago
Note
Ooh what’s the headcanon for frank tennyson you mentioned in the tags in that one post??
okay so forgive the delay in answering but i wanted to rewatch the single episode we ever saw frank in (What Are Little Girls Made Of, aka the one where we first see verdona) just so i could be sure i had my facts straight lol
ANYWAY this is actually gonna be a two part answer, but ill put the headcanons in a list and then ill put more of an analysis (not really an analysis because i dont have time but more of a rambling of my thoughts lol) under a readmore 
- i cant remember if its canon that frank is a lawyer or not. i feel like i remember it being mentioned in canon once but im not positive. so if thats not canon then thats the headcanon
- following that, lawyers work long hours; frank probably isnt at home very often (and we also know this because he only shows up in One. Single. Episode), opting instead to work late at the office. 
- my guess is that natalie is more of the disciplinarian both because of his long house but also because natalie is more uptight than frank is. frank has to be some measure of Not Uptight by virtue of his upbringing with verdona (if he were completely rigid in all things he Would Have Snapped at this point) 
basically frank just isnt in gwens life as often as would be best. i am NOT absolving him of the blame, he 100% should have told gwen of their alien heritage and took more of an interest in her life, but theres only so much time in the day i guess and at the end of it if your only daughter is healthy and seemingly happy, theres only so much you can do.
- also my last headcanon (that does not in any way relate to the previous headcanons) is that frank (and carl and ken and ben) DOES have anodite energy locked away inside of him, but that anodite dna is dormant... until its given a reason not to be. (remember, frank can sense when verdona is around even when shes invisible, despite, in verdonas words, ‘not having the spark’ 
 gwen was able to learn magic and use powers BECAUSE she was exposed to high levels of magic (hex and charmcaster fights when she was 10, along with the charms of bezel)  and also high levels of STRESS (literally her entire life). frank and carl were both kept in the dark about max being a plumber; they both knew he had a double life but they werent sure what it was (carl says this in the episode Grounded, the one where bens parents find out about the omnitrix). frank and carl all told have a pretty calm life, even when they were kids, and despite being around verdona and her mana for some of the time (i imagine she was still just a free spirited then, and probably especially as they got older and were more capable of taking care of themselves, she probably stayed around less and less until she finally left them). if they were put under a high level of stress and a more constant stream of mana, then they would unlock their powers. frank has gwen around, but low stress. carl has decidedly more stress (remember the highbreed fight? also his son is literally the most famous, and most sought after person in the galaxy), but a lower stream of mana. i imagine the omnitrix probably lcoks down the anodite dna so it can keep the human dna sample (ben) as close to human as possible. ken, now in college, has zero mana stream near him, but a relatively high amount of stress (both the dnalien attack and also, just, college). i imagine he might unlock his powers if he were to ever become a plumber and spend more time with gwen. 
when i rewatched the episode, one of the things that stood out to me was frank commenting on not being allowed into gwens room for ‘quite some time.’ thats pretty normal for a teen, but then we remember that gwen has been studying magic for the last five years, since she was ten, so i think thats probably originally when she stopped letting him into her room, so that she could hide her spellbooks and magical artifacts etc. BUT we also know that frank is the one that she invites into her room and the one she tells about meeting with verdona. she DOESNT invite natalie into the room, despite natalie being just downstairs. gwen trusts her dad more than her mom and believes he wont dismiss her concerns (he does dismiss her magic ‘hobby’ but then goes on to explain that there is no such thing as magic, just aliens, so im willing to let that one slide) .
frank smiles when gwen talks about possibly going with verdona, then frowns when natalie talks about ‘wishing [gwen] had taken after [natalies] side of the family’, but then smiles when gwen talks about going again, and says they wont stand in her way. more than anything, including his interactions with verdona, this tells me he (and natalie) have been thinking on this for a long time. he says he and natalie had both thought gwen wasnt an anodite since she hadnt shown any sign of the spark by alien force, but my guess is that, like his mother leaving for anodyne as soon as carl and frank were out of the house (probably late teens or early 20s), he expected that if gwen WERE to be an anodite, she would follow the same path. gwen, however, is sad that they ‘wont stand in her way’. 
gwen needs to feel like shes wanted around. her parents arent telling her to go, but they arent telling her to stay; same with ben. later in the episode, gwen talks about loving her life, but she specifically mentions crime fighting and hobbies, not bringing up family. she isnt as close with her parents as she could/should be, same for them with her. 
theres a few things throughout the episode (usually done or said by verdona) that hint at the type of life frank had growing up. verdona talks multiple times about frank not having the spark, even saying ‘there was nothing [she] could do’ in regards to him at one point. verdona refuses to listen to gwen not wanting to leave at first, dismissing it as a tantrum. she outright says that 16 is too young to make up a mind. verdona is curt with kevin because he isnt an energy being, and doesnt really care for anything ben has to say because hes the same way. once she left, verdona hadnt visited the family for ‘quite some time’, presumably ever since ben and gwen were born, and once she noted they werent anodites, she left again. 
basically, frank (and carl) grew up with a dad with a double life (which they knew about but were NEVER told the NATURE of, not until they forcibly found out during af) and a freespirited mother who seems hung up on her children not being what she wants them to be, and who left as soon as she could. frank, i imagine, probably had to take care of carl a lot as the older brother, especially with a flighty mother around. frank doesnt seem to harbor any hard feelings towards verdona, but seems to take it more as a ‘this is the way she is, there is no changing it’ sort of way. so i guess frank is more used to having to go with the flow than anything else 
(this isnt a jab at verdona - she was away from her home planet and her people, she and her husband were growing apart, and neither of her children were like her; she was effectively alone and i dont necessarily blame her for wanting to leave. granted, i still think she was probably in the wrong more than in the right, but still.) 
listen im SO sorry this is so jumbled i wanted to organize it better but its 7 am and i havent slept yet lol 
61 notes · View notes
transvoxman · 4 years ago
Note
hold on, isnt it shadowy in the carl episode? its shadowy pretending to be venomous. its not actually venomous. this is heavily implied since we HAVE an episode with ven and ko to compare their interactions to, and he straight up wears shadowys gloves driving home. thats why he was trying to get tko out. "teaming up with shadowy" was more shadowy taking over and locking venomous away (like we saw tko do once or twice to ko)
It IS heavily implied, but I’m not sure what I headcanon personally. For one thing, I don’t trust shadowy figure as far as I can throw him, so when he says that venomous tried to reach an agreement with him, I can’t decide whether venomous really did try to work together with shadowy at first, or if venomous was genuinely trying to get rid of shadowy 100% and shadowy completely took over before venomous could succeed.
I do think that by the time he’s wearing shadowy’s gloves driving home, shadowy’s definitely fully taken over, but there’s so many possibilities for how much venomous was in control up until then.
SO many theories under the cut I’m so sorry for this oncoming wall of text
The most straightforward theory is that shadowy’s been completely in control ever since venomous found out about him in Let’s Get Shadowy -- it would certainly line up with his threat to take over venomous permanently if fink told venomous about him. BUT on the other hand, I feel like it’s one of the less interesting explanations, because it doesn’t give venomous the chance to be confronted with the choice between getting rid of shadowy and pursuing more power.
Then, there’s the possibility that venomous came back at the end of Let’s Get Shadowy, and was genuinely trying to get rid of Shadowy like he promised KO, but for whatever reason (the intense anxiety of knowing how high the stakes are if he fails to get rid of shadowy, the panic of realizing how much he’s upset fink and boxman and so many others while in a form he can’t control or remember, etc) he transformed into shadowy against his will, and THEN shadowy fully took over and didn’t let venomous come back. This one gives venomous the most benefit of the doubt, and like, yeah, I’d love to believe that this is what happened, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because we got barely any episodes in season 3 to develop venomous’s character, or just because I love angst too much, but I don’t 100% buy that venomous has grown enough as a person yet to do this. It would’ve just been SO EASY for him to rationalize not completely getting rid of shadowy, like “I’ll just figure out a way to stop myself from transforming against my will, and then I can very carefully learn how to gain control over the power and it’ll be fine”. Like, this man has such poor impulse control, and is so bad at standing his ground in certain cases, y’know? So then there’s the possibility that venomous really did succumb to the temptation to see if he could control shadowy instead of getting rid of him, but as soon as he tried it out, shadowy instantly took over completely, which would mean that shadowy’s in full control from the very beginning of the episode Carl. This Might be the one I think is most likely? But it’s totally fair if everyone disagrees with me here, I’m Here for angst and super flawed characters but I know not everyone is. And finally, there’s the option that I think is the most fun, although I’d need to rewatch the episode before I said anything about whether I think it’s actually likely or not: venomous DID give in to temptation, made an agreement with shadowy, and for a little while, shadowy let him co-pilot, so venomous would let his guard down a little and get some hope that he really COULD have it all. So then, at the beginning of the episode Carl, venomous really is mostly in control. He might’ve lied to K.O. about getting rid of shadowy, but all that matters is that he’s got it under control, right? He could even tell himself that this was even better, because now that he has shadowy under control he can teach K.O. how to get TKO under control! A win-win! Another fun thing about this would be the parallels it has with the episode where KO and TKO co-pilot his body together and it briefly seems like it’s working out fine. But anyway, over the course of the episode, shadowy takes over for brief moments that get more and more frequent, and then by the time venomous realizes that shadowy’s trying to fully take over and never meant to keep his end of their agreement at all, it’s too late, and sometime later in the episode, shadowy’s taken over completely. AND ALSO, all of these theories aside, I’m really conflicted on what the show’s trying to say about whether the dark alter egos are separate people or not, and by extension how much responsibility they should take for what their alter egos have done. On the one hand, there’s this entire heartfelt message about KO realizing that he and TKO are the same person and he has to stop thinking of them as separate people, but on the other hand, TKO repeatedly gets angry at people for calling him KO, so he clearly wants people to respect them as separate people, and I think it’s common decency to respect that! And yeah, the obvious thing to point out here is that TKO and Shadowy Venomous do things that KO and Venomous would Never Do, AND in venomous’s case he doesn’t even REMEMBER what shadowy does while he’s in control, both of which are big points in favor of KO and Venomous not needing to take all that much responsibility for their alter egos’ actions. BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, the entire climax/message of the show being about TKO and KO accepting that they’re the same person is a pretty big point in favor of the completely opposite view. And since I’m so torn here, I think the best thing I can do is set my stance on a middleground--venomous and KO should absolutely not be held COMPLETELY responsible for their alter egos’ actions, but they still need to take SOME amount of responsibility. It would be shitty if people blamed them for causing so much pain and destruction in their turbo forms, BUT it’s still their responsibility to work towards learning how to be in control of their alter egos / emotions so their alter egos can’t hurt people like that again, and I think it would also be a good idea for them to help with damage control when they DO regain control of themselves--like in the episode TKO Rules, KO cleans up after TKO even though it wasn’t exactly HIS fault, he doesn’t just say “I didn’t do this, so it’s not my problem”.
So, I don’t know exactly where I stand on literally anything I’ve written here, but the bottom line is, I think it’s more complicated than shadowy taking over venomous against venomous’s best efforts to get rid of him, and I’m conflicted on whether I absolve venomous of ALL blame for what shadowy does. I tend to lean towards whatever I think is the most interesting to explore in my headcanons, which Also tends to be the least charitable interpretation, BUT I realize that this show’s tone can often lean towards being more lighthearted, so what I think is most interesting to explore has no relation to how likely it is to be true.
So yeah, personally I THINK I lean towards venomous being in control for part of the episode, and even if he’s not in control for any of it I think it’s a little too straightforward to say that he’s 0% at fault for anything shadowy does. But that’s completely just my edgy headcanon/theory lol
16 notes · View notes
thoughts-on-music-tm · 3 years ago
Text
Let's talk about Sorry by Nothing But Thieves!
I absolutely love this song. The lyrics, the instrumentation, the way he sings, its all amazing.
but what really strikes me about it is the emotional maturity and complexity. Most "im sorry" songs feel so,,, contrived. like they dont mean it all and just want either PR points, the money, or they just dont care. This one doesnt feel like that. Alot of others make cop-out excuses like "yea i was wrong buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut" and those suck. they just suck. no good apology makes excuses.
and this song does that. The chorus is excuse (maybe I'm bad natured), excuse (Or maybe I'm Done), Im sorry (so sorry for what I've done). on one hand it emphasizes the apology by putting the excuse before it, but that's really me rationalizing why i still like this song. part of the real reason this doesn't ruin the song is the fantastic performance. Its played so sincerely that none of that matters. more than that, the structure of the song and the story it tells reveals that this song was never about sorrow to begin with.
the real interesting lines come at the end of the second verse (I broke your heart so carelessly / But made the pieces part of me / And now it hurts what we've become / 'Cause you taught me how to love / It's me who taught you how to stop / And you just say I drink too much). he spends the first two admitting his flaws, showing he understands where he went wrong. and it ends with his partner making more excuses for him. "You just say I drink to much." this line makes the entire song work. He spends time after time laying bare his flaws, putting the failing relationship on his own personal flaws. notice where the blame lies. but his partner just says he drinks too much- which shifts the blame away from him. its no longer a personal flaw, but rather the alcohol as the cause. his misunderstanding of love isnt, as he puts it, his communication and unhealthy infatuation, but something else entirely.
This is mercy. he is undeniably in the wrong, but she chooses to overlook his personal flaws and extend him grace. and on one hand, thats powerful. on the other, it ends poorly for both of them. the second time he says "you just say i drink too much" he almost sounds sad about this. he's seen the pain this mercy has caused and at this point, acknowledging his own flaws changes him for the better. he no longer just wants mercy.
he's sorry. this isnt a song about sorrow or mercy. its a song about forgiveness. he knows that forgiveness can heal where the mercy could only distract or discard at best and enable at worst. maybe he's bad natured, or maybe he's just young. it doesnt matter. he wants, he needs forgiveness. to move on. to be better. to let himself let go of all the things he's done wrong.
i love the bridge into the last chorus, because he realizes there how much he's needed this for so long and hes ready both to say his part and also to recieve his forgiveness. he, at this point, is willing to let himself be forgiven. And when it explodes into the last chorus, I always felt like he's no longer singing to someone. just gloriously, set free. he sounds happy. the emotional climax of this song isnt him being forgiven, or wallowing in his sorrow. its his realization that he's ready to be forgiven. we actually don't ever hear if she actually forgives him. Sure, she's absolved him, but there's a big difference between "it's not your fault" and "it's okay now, regardless of who or what was at fault." hes no longer the person he was, and more importantly here, hes grown enough that he doesnt feel broken and weighed down by what he did. he starts the song regretful, ruined by his actions. if he had gotten his forgiveness then, he would have stayed stuck in his misery.
Im not going to say "thE mOrAl Of thIs Is jUst stOp fEELing sAd And yOUll bE hAppY" cause thats not what happens here. he (to borrow a christian phrase) works out his own self love with fear and trembling. with pain and sorrow. and it took him waiting so long. the moral here is one of self love, and self forgiveness. it is a hard road, but a freeing one nonetheless. its a deeply personal story, being able to move past your flaws, being able to move past tragedy regardless of the part you played in it. its hopeful. we dont know if he ever receives the forgiveness he seeks. but we do know he doesnt need it.
3 notes · View notes
im-the-punk-who · 4 years ago
Text
Honestly i think a lot about how the two things that stand out to me about silver as a character are:
1) what he believes becomes his reality
2) everything is always someone else's fault because otherwise the guilt and hatred would consume him
And given those, i think the main reason he doesn't do this is his absolute need and drive to stay alive and that his past, and the way he has internalized it, is so horrifying that it feels insurmountable. Its not even the trauma at that point. Its shame and guilt and fear and all the emotions that make a task so much more difficult to deal with than it actually is. And all the things that grow if left to fester - the only emotions that can grow in untended soil.
And so I don’t buy that it was something that happened to him that made him the way he is. Or, not to say that nothing bad has happened to him because obviously these reactions come from somewhere. but that the way he reacted or the things those traumas made him do, made him feel so alienated in himself and so full of shame/terror/disbelief that he rejected it even happening.
Like, when I was a kid, my childhood and the people I grew up around made me believe anger was the only real emotion - the power move you could pull out to drive anything how you wanted it driven. That if you were angry enough about something, it absolved you of any guilt you had of your part in it. That you could use anger and sadness to rewrite reality to make other people believe your version was the truth.
That made me do things that ended often with bad decisions, deaths, and a lot of things it has taken me years to even admit were my fault - let alone dealing with the feelings associated with that guilt.
But for years I thought not talking about it, ignoring it, leaving it unspoken, denying it, saying there was nothing I could have done differently and so my actions had no relevancy to the actual events, made it so those things never happened. Or, that they did but I didnt need to include them in my story. Because they werent a part of my story.
But here's the thing about doing that: it isnt possible. You can say the past has no meaning and that its irrelevant to who you are but what you're saying in reality is that you've locked that terrifying thing in a box so tightly sealed for so long that you can no longer even remember what looks like. Cant even really hear the screams from inside. But here's the secret: without those memories and experiences the inside of you is hollow and eventually all that fills it are the monsters' echoes. You don’t recognize them because they're so distorted - so unrecognizable as the cries you know the monster to possess. And so you might believe the actions they call up in you are completely separate from it.
But just believing in something hard enough doesn't make it true. The truth is buried in that box and yeah, the only way it feels like you can keep yourself safe is by keeping it buried, denying its existence. And that might work for a bit. But sooner or later those distortions are going to become all you hear, as the monster, ignored for so long, only gets stronger. Angrier. More powerful as the things it drives you to do multiply. The only way to appease it is to open the box and talk with it. To bring it into your story so you can write it an ending. But you've left it so long it feels impossible to do on your own and you've pushed away anyone who might have been willing to help you. Made it their fault. Made it someone else's fault. Someone else is the bad guy. They have to be - because you can't be and every story needs a well crafted villain.
Anyway it's that book meme but its black sails season 4 if instead of silver making flints confession all about how he sees it reflecting on flint dooming his loved ones, if he had used that opportunity to talk with someone he knows also did dark things - really terrible dark things, and things that have happened to him that still affect him a decade later - who has now finally opened up to him about the reason. But instead he turns it around. Says how the deaths of miranda and gates and thomas are flints fault because by now that need has grown so strong that it's become necessary even for things silver himself had nothing to do with - make sure they know it wasn't you - and he buries his own trauma deeper, adds another shovel full of dirt, another lock to the box. And the monster again has to grow louder to make itself heard.
(Of course that isn't the only time silver pulls this card - it's his ace in the hole - but it's the one I think really could have made a difference if he had taken a chance.)
(Also it's really super extra sad to me that I think the only time he DOES actually admit to thinking something is his fault is when he thinks Madi is dead. Because Billy warned him, silver knew, even flint knew his reservations about the people close to.flint being in danger, and yet silver still 'chose' to let her go to the exchange with flint. And it ended up costing him so much the box ended up breaking open of it's own accord. He cant blame flint for it - or Billy, or eleanor, or anyone and the guilt has no one he can direct it on but himself. and not just that sadness - but maybe all of them - come tumbling out, uncontrolled and uncontrollable except by lashing out at anyone and anything it could. And then madi ends up being alive and ending the things he could blame it on to make himself think it would never happen again becomes the only option. That if b not a, you fixed it and don’t have to think about it again. That by ending the war he could keep madi safe. That by locking flint away he could keep madi safe. That madi being safe is what he needs - not to work through his guilt or talk or listen to flint when flint says it will pass. If Madi is safe then the monster might go back in the box.)
Idk
“A lot of things start with violence and wailing. A lot of them end that way too.”
14 notes · View notes