#like ok in subtext if we go into deeply interpreting it however the fuck we want

[island-in-the-shadows]

Me to me: Don't engage with the ones who don't get it. Don't do it. It's a losing battle, you'll get an aneurysm, itsnotworthit...

[assortedpuzzlepieces]

Ok, I’m about to go off on a GIANT rant about a specific issue I have with John Winchester & how the show intentionally & canonically portrays him as an ableist, homophobic asshole through his portrayal by JDM, so buckle up.

For the record, this is something I’ve always believed, but after listening to podcast episodes from @otrsupernatural & Carrying Wayward, one super clear example of why has just snapped into place & I feel compelled to share it.

So I want to start by noting a couple things that stand out. First & foremost, I think JDM is an incredible actor & I think he brings his A game with his portrayal of John. John Winchester is undeniably an asshole, & yet JDM balances that so well against the idea of loving parent, to not only make the character more realistic, but also to give real authenticity & depth to the trauma his children experienced at his hands & answer why they act the way they do in regards to him as their parent.

John is someone who, on the surface, appears to be a loving and concerned father, who makes mistakes, but does so because he’s in shitty circumstances & doesn’t have a lot of options or has his own trauma to battle that limits the choices he believes he has.

However, the show also gives us other content that proves there is more to John than that caring but broken man from as early as S1 & into the beginning of S2, & this content screams the truth of his ableism & homophobia, & gives some really strong evidence as to why these are two of the primary struggles of his children through the end of the series.

To explain, we 1st have to look at characters from earlier in S1. In 1x10, Asylum, we are introduced to Dr. Ellicott. He is shown to be someone who is canonically ableist to people with MHI. He sees them as less human, he does unethical experiments on them, he tortures them, just, lots of gross stuff there. On top of that, we see him as a ghost using what appears to be electrical shocks to Sam & Dean to possess & harm them, which resembles electroshock. There are also strong echoes of conversion therapy in this episode.

After this, we have 1x12, Faith, where Sue Ann is using dark magic to attack & murder people she hates, which specifically includes a woman who was pro choice & a gay man. This not only shows that she was homophobic, but that she condemned sexual freedom & bodily autonomy for women as well, which is in relation to homophobia, as well as deeply rooted in misogyny.

So essentially, we are shown a doctor who tries to force people to be less mentally ill or queer by “curing” them, & then a woman who took it a step further & murdered them to “cleanse” the town. We are given two different, but very interwoven ways with which society has tried to get rid of queers & disabled people, & it’s not subtext, it’s literally stated.

Now, in the show, both Dr. Ellicott & Sue Ann are the villains, & while the show demonstrates their ableism & homophobia, it also clearly condemns them for those actions. They are both dead/gone by the end of the episode & their actions are shown as evil. This is SO important, especially for a show that has failed in other episodes to truly state what exactly is the problematic action in the episode (looking at you, Bugs & Route 666).

That said, if Dr. Ellicott & Sue Ann are villains, then we must also extrapolate that ableism & homophobia are intentionally being written as evil in the show, so other characters who demonstrate these actions are also bad. (Yes, I know I’m being super redundant right now, but I just want to be really damn clear on this to demonstrate why I believe John’s characterization is intentional).

Now, in 1x21, John finally “learns” about Sam’s psychic abilities, & I say that in quotes bc there’s reason to believe he knew about it already from Missouri & was just in denial until confronted with the evidence, at which point he has a very strong reaction. As Ali pointed out, it’s interesting that he has such a strong negative reaction, as he clearly doesn’t have an issue with Missouri as a psychic, & yet he’s upset about Sam being one. He demonstrates the mindset of “othering” people outside of his family, which is a common treatment of both people w/ MHI & queer people - the mentality that “those people” are fine in general, but “not my son/daughter/family/me”.

So here in that episode, we are already getting an attitude from him that clearly parallels ableism & homophobia, & that is on top of other comments he made that are clearly rooted in misogyny, like his “that’s my man” to Dean in the flashback in Something Wicked This Way Comes (1x18).

THEN - the final nail in the coffin is the “secret” he tells Dean before he dies in 2x1; that Dean needs to either save Sam or stop him. By now it’s crystal clear he views Sam as something “other”, something not fully human, & his response? It’s literally “cure or cleanse”. Either make him “normal” or get rid of him.

To repeat, John LITERALLY uses ableist & homophobic language & tactics towards him son because he is different, & also tries to force Dean to do the same, passing on that legacy, by trying to erase anything about Sam thats not his personal definition of “normal”, all out of FEAR of who his son is & what he might do.

And the show CONDEMNS this behavior from the very beginning, even before we ever see him act this way!! They make it clear that ableism & homophobia are BAD, show John act that way, & then condemn him AGAIN when Dean tells Sam & it is made clear to the audience that what John asked of him was wrong.

Like… holy fuck. There is literally no way I can watch this & not believe that his characterization was not 100% intentional with him being set up as a bad person & his actions as condemnable. It’s just not narratively possible. John Winchester was intentionally written to be an asshole & we are supposed to see him as one, & any love we see from him is only meant to validate the complicated feelings Sam & Dean have towards him, not undermine the knowledge that he is a bad person. It’s literally in the text.

*Edit - Im adding a point here, since it’s been brought to my attention. John’s concern about Sam being infected with demon blood & possibly corrupted does not detract from the parallel being made between his actions & those of IRL people who are homophobic or ableist. In fact, this is another argument for that in interpretation, & here is why -

For literal thousands of years, mental illness has been viewed as demonic. People w/ MHI were thought to be possessed, evil incarnations, or even just sinfully corrupt & given to wickedness. People w/ physical disabilities were believed to be punished for moral failings, not faithful enough, etc, etc. Queer people were believed to be sexually deviant, witches, destroyers of families, etc.

These beliefs carry across many religions, but especially Christianity, & are present even today in some more extreme sects. And the people that believed these things? Well many of them were parents who “loved” their child & were trying to protect them from evil by purifying them. They too believed they had valid fears & good reasons to torture, maim, & even kill their children.

So to anyone who would argue “well it’s not the same because John had a good reason to be afraid of Sam” - shut the fuck up, because no, he didn’t.

Sam hadn’t hurt anyone. He wasn’t doing anything worth killing him over. He was a good kid who was hurt by someone outside his control & yet he only started doing anything that was truly wrong when he was pushed to it by circumstances that were again, beyond his control, & only then bc he was trying to do what was right!!

Anyone would do that, not just a kid w/ some demon blood powers. So let’s not act like he was inherently dangerous just BC he was different, bc guess what? That’s part of that mindset too. Sam was a good fucking person & John seeing him as less was John’s failing, not Sam’s.

[quentyl]

What does ATLA tell us about Ursa?

For context, originally this started as a response to an ask. I felt like I couldn’t answer properly without going over Ursa’s portrayal in the show first, ergo this very long post. I’ll answer the actual question later.

Ursa only appears in one episode of the show (not counting Azula’s hallucination), has about a dozen lines, and apart from that is mentioned just a very few times. That’s not much, but there’s still a lot we can infer from that limited screen time.

Without further ado, let’s talk about Ursa as a mother first:

In her first scene, she’s sitting with Zuko on the ground and feeding turtle-ducks, giving off an aura of tranquility, relaxation and effortless grace. Even contentment. This is how the show chose to introduce her to the viewer: as someone who can laugh with her kid, be affectionate, and enjoy a peaceful moment.

Of course, she’s not just affectionate and sweet in this scene, she’s also protective. She says it plainly: “Zuko, that's what moms are like. If you mess with their babies, they're gonna bite you back.” At that moment, she was just joking with Zuko, but it foreshadows what she’s going to do a few days later, when the Fire Lord himself tries to mess with her baby: she bites back like a true mother. Ozai said that she did “vicious, treasonous things” that night. She herself, just before her disappearance, basically admits to having done terrible things, and she can’t leave without telling Zuko why, she needs him to know: “Everything I've done, I've done to protect you.” It’s interesting to note the plural here (“vicious things”, “everything”). So, though we aren’t shown anything directly, the show still seems to insist on the fact that Ursa got her hands dirty to save Zuko, that she killed Azulon herself and actually might have had to do other unpleasant things to accomplish that. So in spite of the lightness that seems to emanate from her at first, there is a dark side to Ursa.

Wrt Azulon and Ursa’s personality, there is another moment that is telling: when Zuko fails his demonstration before the Fire Lord, she does not hesitate to go over to comfort him, acting as if they are alone in the room. As if the most powerful man in the world isn’t watching, as if this isn’t a formal audience, as if she isn’t wasting the time of the Fire Lord. She tells Zuko that she loved watching him, as if it wasn’t Azulon’s opinion that mattered. She just throws propriety and caution through the window, Zuko’s hurt feelings eclipsing everything else in her mind, and forgets to give a fuck about her lord’s opinion (or her husband’s for that matter).

Ursa is also presented as her children’s primary authority figure, the one who’s charged with watching over them, giving them news, and preparing them for surprise meetings. But more than just an authority figure, she’s presented as the main good influence in their life, the one who teaches them about right and wrong. She makes Zuko play with Azula because she thinks they should bond as siblings (from the way Azula manipulates her using this, we can assume it’s a point Ursa has stressed as important in the past). She teaches Zuko to see things from others’ point of views (the mom turtleduck), she admonishes Azula without losing patience when her daughter shows lack of consideration for her uncle’s life, she reprimands her more strongly when she’s being deliberately insolent.

To summarize the above points: Ursa in the flashbacks is (almost) portrayed as the ideal parent: gracious, affectionate, playful, comforting, fiercely protective, authoritative, respectable, and the person who provides moral guidance to her children.

Ok but what about “our mom liked Zuko more than me” and “my own mother thought I was a monster” and “even you fear me”? Well, first things first, these are Azula’s thoughts, years after her mother abandoned her in order to protect her brother. While we have to respect her feelings, they do not necessarily match who the real Ursa was and thought. In particular, I think the Ursa we saw in the flashbacks didn’t seem to think of her daughter as a monster, or to be afraid of her at all - or she wouldn’t have forced Zuko to play with her (she does wonder “what is wrong with that child” but that’s in reaction to Azula making a deliberately provocative and ominous comment: she’d been acting borderline treasonous and kinda worryingly obsessed with the succession). Personally, I think that it’s more likely Azula who sees herself as a monster, not Ursa, and she projected that unto her mother because Ursa was the one who taught her how to distinguish between right and wrong and she believes that her mother wouldn’t have approved of the person she chose (and keeps choosing) to be.

That said, Zuko absolutely may have been Ursa’s favorite (studies found that most parents have one). Zuko himself doesn’t argue the point with his sister, and Ursa’s character description on the old Avatar website supports this (Zuko is flat-out described as “her favorite child”). Note that this doesn’t necessarily translate into Azula being treated unfairly by her mother. All we know for sure is that 14 years old Azula feels her mother liked Zuko more and that this thought hurts her deeply (personally, I tend to think that it hurts Azula more as a teenager than as a child, because it ties into her teenage self's deep well of anxiety about being unlovable in general - a “monster”).

The rest under the cut.

Now that I’ve gone over how she was portrayed as a mother, I think it’s time to delve into her and her husband’s dynamic, and how it fits into her relationship with their kids:

(Disclaimer: note that Ozai and Ursa never interact during the flashbacks, so to know more about their relationship we have to read the subtext - and since it is subtext and not text, basically everything below is technically just my interpretation, and at best I can only argue that it is the most fitting interpretation.)

Let’s go back a moment to “What is wrong with that child?”: Ursa sounds genuinely puzzled here. But she shouldn’t be puzzled, she should be alarmed. “Fire Lord Azulon. Can't you just call him ‘Grandfather’? He's not exactly the powerful Fire Lord he used to be. Someone will probably end up taking his place soon.” - this isn’t just Azula being insolent and stanning her dad, like her earlier comments. Ursa should have taken the second part, “someone will probably end up taking his place soon”, as a warning. But she doesn’t (at least not at that moment). She just silences Azula and doesn’t immediately think “oh shit my husband is planning something” or even “what kind of fuckery has my husband been discussing in our daughter’s earshot”. Instead her reaction shows that she is kinda clueless about what’s going on. She seems to think the issue is just Azula being a weird child, and doesn’t immediately link her words to Ozai. So what we can infer from that is that Ursa, before that day, wasn’t very... aware of Ozai’s ambitions. At best, she knew he’d like to be Fire Lord without realizing that he actually does intend to do something about it - sorta like just because you know someone is jealous of their sibling’s sport car you don’t suspect they’re gonna kill them to steal it. The idea of Ozai attempting to take the throne is just not on her mind like it is for us, the viewers, when we’re listening to Azula talk about how her dad’s glory days are coming.

Note that Ursa is not the only one who didn’t expect such a move from Ozai. Azulon is furious and surprised at Ozai’s impudent request.

This disconnect between Ozai’s ambitions and Ursa’s simple enjoyment of life is also shown through her relationship with his older brother: it’s clear from the little we see of them that Ursa and Iroh get along very well. Ursa seems very fond of him: she’s happy to read his letter, laughs at his joke, admonishes Azula for her callousness regarding him (“it would be awful if Uncle Iroh didn’t return”), and is genuinely heartbroken for him when she learns of Lu Ten’s death (”Iroh has lost his son”). These scenes are telling us that Ursa isn’t in on Ozai’s plans, and wouldn’t support him if she knew of them.

But Azula supports him, wholeheartedly. Azula wants her dad to be Fire Lord because clearly he deserves it. There’s something a little unsettling about the fact that Ozai’s little girl knows what’s in Ozai’s heart and what’s on his mind, his dark designs, but his own wife doesn’t. Was she spying on him (we see her do just that at least once) or did he just take her into his confidence (also very likely, it looks like they do spend time together without their other family members)? Whichever way she came by her information, it immediately creates a chasm between mother and daughter - because suddenly they’re not on the same side anymore, politically. And the worst thing is, Ursa isn’t even aware of that chasm - or at least, she doesn’t seem to understand its importance yet (even though Azula tries to tell her).

To go back to Ozai and Ursa, by the time of the flashbacks not only are they not on the same page politically, they’re also not aligned on the matter of parenting. Ursa admonishes Azula for words that could have come directly from Ozai’s mouth, were he honest. They also don’t react in the same way at all to Zuko’s fumblings: while Ursa is just sorry that he feels bad and is proud of his tenacity, Ozai is unhappy about him even attempting a demonstration. So however their arranged marriage started, they failed to become a unit on the two most important fronts of that contract.

But note that while Ursa makes a show of comforting Zuko, Ozai’s disapproval is actually subtle - the viewers see it because the camera makes a point to focus on it. I don’t think Ozai was full-on abusive toward Zuko yet at this point, when Ursa was still in the picture. Copy-pasting from a previous meta: “In these flashbacks, Zuko didn’t seem scared of his father yet. He wasn’t afraid to perform before him, to cry and lament his failures before him, or to be comforted by Ursa before him. He didn’t seem overly worried to have embarrassed him in front of Azulon himself. He wasn’t afraid to demand answers from him after Ursa’s disappearance.” So it is very possible that Ursa wasn’t very aware of the depth of his disdain for their son, just like she wasn’t very aware of how intensely (terribly) he desired his father’s throne. Before that fateful day, it seems Ozai kept the monster inside himself hidden.

So what happened between them the night of Ursa’s disappearance? One thing that is really important to note, I think, is that Ozai was ready for a takeover before Ursa decided to do anything. Not only does Azula basically spell it out before Ozai even makes his request to Azulon (he did not intend to wait patiently for his father to die of old age, he intended to replace him “soon”), we see after the fact that he has at least the head Fire sage in his pocket (“As was your dying wish you are now succeeded by your second son” - that was most certainly not Azulon’s dying wish). When telling the story to Zuko, Ozai rejects the whole thing on Ursa, saying she was the one to propose a plan - but the flashbacks imply he had one himself beforehand whether it involved her or not.

Ursa somehow found a way to get to Azulon in the middle of the night. How did she even have access to his chambers? Did she kill the guards too? Is she a secret ninja or did she somehow trick them?

Even though Ozai was in on Ursa’s plan (by his own admission), he still banished her for it. Now he didn’t do that to save face, since the official story is that Azulon died of natural causes (it’s actually less suspicious if his wife doesn’t disappear on the same day). It could be a weird thing like Ozai actually did feel some love/attachment for his father, or respect for his position as Fire Lord, and felt he was somehow duty-bound to punish her for his murder even if he himself incited her to commit it (maybe he let her do the dirty work so that he can still feel like he himself is clean?). Or he banished her to silence her or keep her from assassinating him next (the justification he gave in the comics).

But then, whatever his reasons for banishing her, the question becomes why didn’t he kill her instead? He did not spare her to avoid bad press or some form of retribution, since as far as the public eye is concerned him killing her and then making her body disappear would look exactly the same as what he eventually did. Ultimately, she’s much less of a hazard dead than alive somewhere out of his control. At the very least, he could have kept her prisoner. So, unless there’s some other variables we’re not aware of, I can think of two explanations. The first is that after she left Zuko’s room that night, Ozai did actually kill her (or attempted to and she somehow managed to escape) and just lied to Zuko during the Eclipse - though I’m not sure why he would lie in that particular context. The second explanation - brace yourselves! - is that Ozai let her go because back then he still had ~feelings~ and couldn’t quite bring himself to kill her.

Subtext does, in fact, support the idea that Ozai did once feel something for Ursa, whether this is the reason he spared her or not. In animation everything is a choice. The people who made Zuko Alone decided that on the morning of his triumph - his father’s death and his impending ascension to the throne - Ozai wasn’t celebrating or plotting. He was brooding while thinking of his wife, just standing still at a spot where we know she used to spend some time (she’s sitting there when she receives news of Lu Ten’s death). Even if he wasn’t sad, at the very least he was contemplating what he lost in order to get what he wanted. Which means that there was something to lose there, that he could have chosen another life, but did not. The writers could have elected to show him pretending to be mourning his late father, or plotting, or preparing for his coronation, or not to show him at all, but they didn’t. This is a characterization choice.

So I know this is controversial but I do believe Ozai chose power over love (the opposite of Aang in The Guru). It’s also hinted at via Zuko’s idyllic memories of his childhood - of their family vacations on Ember Island. At one point, Ozai was willing to devote some effort to being a husband and a father, enough to take his family to his summer house and give Zuko a few happy memories with his father - the memories that he desperately clings to years later.

It could also maybe tie back to “what is wrong with that child?” i.e. Ursa not immediately recognizing that her husband was the problem. Maybe Ursa was unable to see how far he’d fallen because she remembered the person he used to be at the beginning of their marriage, and maybe this is also why she accepted to leave her children in his power and didn’t even warn Zuko about him or anything. The last thing she ever says to Zuko before leaving forever is “no matter how things may seem to change, never forget who you are” - she might be telling her son not to turn out like his father, if she feels like Ozai forgot who he was. These are all just possibilities though.

So I think that’s about it: what I can infer from the show about Ursa’s relationship with her husband and children. Before I conclude this post though, I also want to talk a little about Ursa’s family before her marriage, because I find this fascinating:

Ursa supports the war effort. I don’t think you can find a joke about burning Ba Sing Se to the ground funny unless you’re fully on-board with the Fire Nation’s imperialism. The writers didn’t have to show us this tidbit - it’s irrelevant to the rest of the episode - but they made a point of including it. It becomes even more interesting after we learn that Ursa descends from Roku and that Zuko didn’t know it. You don’t just forget to mention to your kids that they’re the Avatar’s great-grandchildren - this information was deliberately kept a secret. So there can be several possibilities:

Ursa wasn’t raised by Roku’s family i.e. she was raised by her other parent’s family, or she grew up in an orphanage, or she was adopted by some other folks. In this case, she might not feel any connection to Roku, if she even knows he’s her grandfather (Iroh knew but I don’t think this means we can irrevocably assume Ursa did too).

Ursa was raised by her family to support the war in spite of Roku’s position: this means that either Roku’s entire family basically disowned him and sided with Sozin, at least in appearance, or the family was divided in two with only one part rebelling against the throne.

Ursa was raised to support Roku, but she made up her own mind and decided she didn’t like being taught to hate her nation and Sozin was right, in spite of her family’s opinion.

Whatever the case, Ursa eventually just disappeared and no one seems to have made a fuss. So she either didn’t have any family left at that point, or she did but they were so alienated that they didn’t care, or she did but they were too utterly powerless to even demand an explanation.

[queenofnohr]

On Innuendo and Gawain

Ok so! I sat in on a lower div writing class today where they talked about innuendo and I thought I should make this post because 1. the entire 3 or so hours afterward I freaked out about possible misunderstanding with my Gawain translation and 2. Gawain himself exists in a weird place where his entire character is a sort of innuendo.

Now, for my first point - there seems to be a misconception about innuendo. Innuendos do not have to be sexual, and are not the end-all be-all to interpreting a text. What innuendo is, is nodding to (which, coincidentally, is where it’s actually etymology comes from) or hinting at the possibility of a second meaning in a text. The more catch all term for this exact happening would simply be subtext, with innuendo being a more specific term for clear double entendre (again, double entendres in of themselves are not necessarily indecent).

That being said, Gawain’s Valentine’s event works on innuendo/double entendre/subtext, but that does not mean that it is expressly sexual. However, the way his character is and especially his role in CCC doesn’t mean it’s not there.

In fact, on my first reading I thought it was perfectly innocuous! If you are reading it in that way, the narrative is as follows:

Gawain greets you in the morning, inquires if you’re relaxing on your holiday - you then give him chocolate and he’s pleased with it. However, he can’t express his joy to the fullest because there are other people in Chaldea (with the implication that it would be unbecoming of a knight). He is then troubled because he can’t “reciprocate as much as he’d like” - in this narrative, because you are not a knight and Gawain is kind of oblivious to anything not having to do with knightliness. He then gives himself a pep talk and reasons with himself to treat it as Gareth’s birthday (because she’s his little sister). He then gets you a skincare set to help out because Chaldea is up on a fucking mountain and it’s bad for your skin - a surprisingly considerate gift considering his usual exploits. Of course, as always, he goes a bit too far in his well wishes for your health and growth, overstepping his boundaries in his interest which prompts you to respond that it’s none of his business (the implication being how you grow). He laughs, acknowledging that he knew you’d have an adverse response to the gift, and then going on to say that if he sees your healthy face, it’ll make him hit harder (the phrasing here is still odd), and tells you since he’s your knight he’ll protect you from anything.

Perfectly innocent! But……. here’s the thing. A lot of things are phrased vaguely enough, and perfectly crafted so that if you are reading with such subtext, motivations and such flip flop and read as…… less than innocent. The narrative structure in this case is - 

Gawain greets you in the morning, you give him chocolates. Here’s where it differs - we’re now operating under the assumption that Gawain is taking chocolates to mean something different than simply giving chocolate (aka, as Valentine’s chocolates sometimes (barring girichoco) assume, romantic or even sexual endeavors). Thus he’s overjoyed but….. oh no, he can’t there would be a scandal - but he delights in telling you how he’d sweep you off your feet nonetheless. You, perhaps blushingly, tell him he’s being too much, and he responds telling you that there’s nothing too much about returning deep affection with deep affection of his own. Then he goes on to say he’s troubled because he can’t “reciprocate as much as he’d like” because you aren’t a knight, but a magus. Now, this wouldn’t be so much if the later part of this event didn’t focus so heavily on getting his Master healthy or if the fate series has a long standing tradition of equating magi/magic users with no physical combat skills (it’s always seen as a :o moment when a magi/Caster (or someone who’s supposed to be a proper magi) pulls out their fists and wins). But as it stands, the ambiguity of his statement lends itself to the narrative that you can’t do whatever he was planning because he’d break you (this could literally be anything, not just sex - Gawain is notorious in EXTRA for being disgustingly strong and nigh invulnerable, and even in GO he has a triple buster). Being unable to reciprocate the way he intends, he decides to think of this not as ~Valentines~ but getting his little sister a birthday gift. So he comes back with a pretty innocuous gift, and explains why he got it. Again, it’s pretty courteous considering his personality— but then he gets weird about it. And he gets weird about it no matter which way you read it (which is why you call him out on it) and oversteps his boundaries by concerning himself too deeply with your physical body. In our innocent rendition, this can be attributed to a brotherly or familial sort of concern taken too far for his position. But in this narrative framing, it already has a sexual undercurrent because of what has already happened. Then we get you calling him out for being intrusive, prompting his understanding - and then of course, the weird line of “If you’re healthy, more strength will enter my sword” relating to the conundrum earlier of not being able to fuck you because he’s a strong knight and you’re a frail magus (and of course talk of swords has been used for phallic innuendo for centuries across all walks of life - heian court literature and tokugawa literature had it too). Saying “this body” really isn’t that odd (it happens a lot in various media for emphasis) but after all that it kind of is… (although my weirdness with that line was more of how it was composed with a “to” instead of a “toshite” following “kijo no kishi”) The narrative then ends on a kind of “we can’t do anything……. yet ;)”

But that’s not to say both narratives can’t or don’t exist at once. You don’t have to “choose” a narrative. Both can coexist, with Gawain being perfectly innocuous in his proceedings, but since he’s fucking terrible with people, he gives off weird sex vibes that are just kinda like…….. friend can you not? In fact, that’s perfectly in character for him to not understand how uncomfortable he’s being or the implications he’s putting out. But, it’s also in character for him to be kind of a ridiculous perv, too.

Because, here’s the thing - the moment CCC was released and shed another light on Gawain, the moment his character existed in a dual spectrum, with every single one of his actions being up in the air in regards to intent. The “real” Gawain, all of who Gawain is, exists somewhere in between the “perfect” if assholish knight from EXTRA and his goofy presence in CCC where he’ll comment on literally every single girl’s charm points and say extremely lewd things without batting an eyelash.

So really, the innuendo his Valentine’s scene presents and how deliciously vague it is ties directly into who he is and how he was conceived and packaged to viewers as a character.