#no matter the villain’s sympathetic backstory

[teafiend]

Am a fan of the character of 蔣簥 and despite my many issues with the show and its unremarkable writing, am rediscovering the reasons why it left an impression in my mind. Quite a few lessons to be gleaned here.

[utilitycaster]

one of the many things I think a lot of people do not get about villains is that the villain feeling bad about their actions and continuing to do them anyway heightens the villainy for me, rather than reduces it. Like, I think the Joker fucking sucks and isn't very interesting because it's a lot easier to dismiss a fictional guy who is just Evil Because They Love To Be Evil. You know where you're at; they're never going to change or grow because they are going to be a villain no matter what. But a person with a cause? A person with a sense of right and wrong who looks straight at "wrong" and does it anyway, repeatedly? That's far more horrifying. It's similar to the concept of showing a sympathetic backstory for a villain: if done well, especially if they share elements of said backstory with the hero, it shows that they had an opportunity to be better and they actively chose to be worse.

[writingwithcolor]

What Makes an Ethnic Villain "Ethnic" or "Villainous?" How Do You Offset it?

anonymous asked:

Hello WWC! I have a question about the antagonist of my story. She is (currently) Japanese, and I want to make sure I’m writing her in a way that doesn’t associates [sic] her being Asian with being villainous.  The story is set in modern day USA, this character is effectively immortal. She was a samurai who lost loved ones due to failure in combat, and this becomes her character[sic] motivation (portrayed sympathetically to the audience). This story explores many different time periods and how women have shown valor throughout history. The age of the samurai (and the real and legendary female warriors from it) have interested me the most, which is why I want her to be from this period.  The outfit she wears while fighting is based on samurai armor, and she wears modern and traditional Japanese fashion depending on the occasion. She acts pretty similar to modern day people, though more cynical and obsessed with her loss. She’s been able to adapt with the times but still highly values and cherishes her past.  She is the only Asian main character, but I plan to make a supportive Japanese side character. She’s a history teacher who knows about the villain and gives the protagonists information to help them, but isn’t involved in the main plot otherwise.  Are the way I’m writing this villain and the inclusion of a non-antagonist Japanese character enough to prevent a harmful reading of the story, or is there more I should do?

Why Does Your Villain Exist?

This makes me feel old because David Anders plays a villain with this kind of backstory in the series Heroes starring Masi Oka. 

I think you want to think about what you mean when you say: 

Villainous (In what way? To whom? To what end?)

Harmful (What tropes, narratives and implications are present?)

I’m relatively infamous in the mod circle for not caring too much about dimensions of “harm”. The concept is relative and varies widely between people and cultures. I don’t see much value in framing motivations around “What is less harmful?” I think for me, what matters more is: 

“What is more true?” 

“Are characteristics viewed as intrinsic to background, or the product of experiences and personal autonomy?”

“Will your portrayal resonate with a large audience?”

“What will resonate with the members of the audience who share the backgrounds your characters have?” 

This post offers additional questions you could ask yourself instead of “is this okay/not okay/harmful.” 

You could write a story where your antagonist is sly, sadistic, violent and cold-blooded. It may not be an interpretation that will make many Japanese from combat backgrounds feel seen or heard, but it’s not without precedent. These tropes have been weaponized against people of Japanese descent (Like Nikkei Japanese interned during World War II), but Japan also brutalized a good chunk of Asia during World War II. See Herge’s Tintin and The Blue Lotus for an example of a comic that accurately showcases the brutality of Japan’s colonization of Manchuria, but also is racist in terms of how Japanese characters are portrayed (CW: genocide, war, imperialism, racism).

You could also write a story where your character’s grief gives way to despair, and fuels their combat such that they are seen as calculating, frigid and deeply driven by revenge/ violence. This might make sense. It’s also been done to death for Japanese female warriors, though (See “Lady Snowblood” by Kazuo Koike and Kazuo Kamimura here, CW: sexual assault, violence, murder and a host of other dark things you’d expect in a revenge story). 

You could further write a story where your antagonist is not necessarily villainous, but the perceived harm comes from fetishizing/ exoticizing elements in how her appearance is presented or how she is sexualized, which is a common problem for Japanese female characters. 

My vote always goes to the most interesting story or character. I don’t see any benefit to writing from a defensive position. This is where I'll point out that, culturally, I can't picture a Japanese character viewing immortality as anything other than a curse. Many cultures in Japan are largely defined by transience and the understanding that many things naturally decay, die, and change form.

There are a lot of ways you could conceivably cause harm, but I’d rather hear about what the point of this character is given the dilemma of their position. 

What is her purpose for the plot? 

How is she designed to make the reader feel? 

What literary devices are relevant to her portrayal?

(Arbitrarily, you can always add more than 1 extra Japanese character. I think you might put less pressure on yourself with this character’s portrayal if you have more Japanese characters to practice with in general.) 

- Marika. 

When Off-Setting: Aim for Average

Seconding the above with regards to this villainess’s story and your motivations for this character, but regardless of her story I think it’s also important to look specifically at how the Japanese teacher character provides contrast. 

I agree with the choice to make her a regular person and not a superhero. Otherwise, your one Asian character is aggressively Asian-themed in a stereotypical Cool Japan way (particularly if her villain suit is samurai-themed & she wears wafu clothing every so often). Adding a chill person who happens to be Japanese and doesn’t have some kind of ninja or kitsune motif will be a breath of fresh air (well, more like a sigh of relief) for Japanese readers. 

A note on characterization—while our standard advice for “offset” characters is to give your offset character the opposite of the personality trait you’re trying to balance, in this case you might want to avoid opposites. You have a villainess who is a cold, tough “don’t need no man” type. Making the teacher mild-mannered, helpful, and accomodating would balance out the villainess’s traits, but you’ll end up swinging to the other side of the pendulum towards the Submissive Asian stereotype depending on execution. If avoiding stereotypes is a concern, I suggest picking something outside of that spectrum of gentleness to violence and making her really boring or really weird or really nerdy or a jock gym teacher or…something. You’re the author.

Similarly, while the villainess is very traditionally Japanese in her motifs and backstory, don’t make the teacher go aggressively in either direction—give her a nice balance of modern vs. traditional, Japanese vs. Western sensibilities as far as her looks, dress, interests, values, etc. Because at the end of the day, that’s most modern Japanese people. 

Sometimes, the most difficult representation of a character of color is making a character who is really average, typical, modern, and boring. 

- Rina

[haine-kleine]

rewatching Naruto and going insane over the extremely obvious way Horikoshi copypasted the essence of that story into MHA. funnily, the ending proves that he doesn't seem to fully understand the source material.

what really makes Naruto stand out is that every character is treated as a human who is worthy to make their story known. it's still shounen so the powerscaling and violence are ever present but the humane element never goes away. it might seem downright ridiculous that up until the undead evil aliens come to assume the big bad role in the end, every big bad that has been carefully hyped up before ends up revealing their sob story and leaving the spot vacant. but this was precisely what made the characters so interesting that they still have loyal fans nearly two decades later. the audience was always allowed to sympathize with the villain, no matter how evil, violent or how long their kill list is, because what it really comes down to, is a collection of various people's stories about their trauma and how they deal with it.

all of the villains have extensive kill lists: Gaara was a serial killer at the tender age of 12, Itachi killed his best friend, his girlfriend, then his entire clan and mentally tortured his 7 years old little brother, Sasuke later goes on a killing spree and nearly murders several people who considered him heir friend, Obito and Madara killed more people than there are named characters in the Naruto universe, and so on and so forth. the story still encourages the readers to sympathize with these characters, to the point of obnoxious stubbornness, but it drives the point home. Naruto's approach to writing the villain characters is the antithesis of 'cool motive, still murder'. the story is much more concerned with telling the stories about individual characters, their traumatic backstories and how they deal with the trauma, than it is with the worldbuilding angle of 'and what legal consequences are coming for them next?'. the story would rather conveniently lean to fit the chosen narrative for each villain character than deal with realistic consequences, just so that the character remains sympathetic and/or tragic in the eyes of the audience. Gaara was known for being violent and unstable in his village, but after he had his change of heart he is allowed to become the Kazekage and is accepted and supported by his village. Nagato wipes out the entire Konoha village because he is supposed to be introduced as the ultimate big bad to date, but then magically brings back everyone to life in a disney esque move, because after unlocking his tragic backstory, we are supposed to consistently feel bad for the guy. the story would rather be ridiculously unrealistic to overstress the tragedy and trauma, because realism was never the purpose.

then, in MHA, which is a story about magic people using their individual magic skills to fight and save people, you would assume that the realism wouldn't be a primary concern here as well. at the heart of the concept, before it fell apart, MHA seemed like a perfect successor to the message conveyed in Naruto, which excused the various rip offs. it seemed Horikoshi had successfully cracked what was the problem at the heart of every single villain in Naruto: trauma and mental illness, and capitalized on it. the concept of the story seemed to be 'what if Naruto set out to save the Akatsuki?'.

(and it is impossible to deny the heavy inspiration, because s1 Shigaraki is literally chuunin exam era Gaara. they are the exact same character)

as a fan of Naruto and not much of a shounen enjoyer, MHA seemed to take everything i loved about Naruto and amplify it. the kids characters got to spend more time together as a clas, rather than being paired randomly during filler episode missions. we got to spend more time with the Akatsuki League of villains and got to see how they interact with each other as a group and what their individual relationships are like. they got to build up their tragic backstories early on, to be dramatically revealed later, and not immediately die afterwards. Shouto got to actually talk to his older brother, and discover his tragic backstory from the source instead of hearing about it after his death and being powerless to do anything but cry about it.

but then, around the final arc, the story, or rather the author, seems to realize that it has become too big for a shounen. and his way of dealing with the issue was abandoning everything he has been building up for years. the comparison with Naruto really highlights how the issue lies not in the characters and their irredeemable actions but in the story straying too far from the main theme and eventually getting lost completely.

that is not to say the execution or the plotline wholeness were not an issue in Naruto, it's riddled with plot holes and retcons. but where it lacks the logic and stability, it makes up with the sincerity and compassion the author never fails to have for his characters. the uchiha massacre was a really shitty plot line from a political standpoint, but it's not there as a part of the plot. it has always served as a background for Sasuke, first and foremost, to the point Itachi's character was reshaped and retconned twice to fit what Kishimoto had going for him. the plot, the world are a stage for the characters, not the other way around.

and what made MHA's writing fall apart was switching the focus from the characters as the driving forces for the story to the sociopolitical plot starting to use those characters as tools. before the war arc, it wasn't meant to be realistic, the 'reality' was a playground for the characters. just look at the MVA arc (the best MHA arc). what about a malnourished insomniac Shigaraki defeating a CEO who happens to be the leader of a terrorist organisation so hard said CEO is so impressed with him that he gives up his spot for Shigaraki is realistic? alternatively, what about the Sports Festival arc makes sense? nothing! the students of the most prestigious hero academy having the competition where they show off their quirks and all of its drawbacks for the entire country to see on live TV is the opposite of sensible, and during the licence exams the students of the other schools even point this out! Horikoshi just wanted to have his own chuunin exam arc, and can you fault him for that? it was cool as hell.

the thing about MHA is that it was never meant to be too realistic. it can't be, because the realism hurts this kind of story. shounen isn't meant to be realistic, it's meant to be flashy, cool, over the top dramatic, perhaps tragic, but realism really has no place in shounen. most importantly, because shounen is supposed to tell the story of the main character, whose epic journey is as enjoyable as it is inspiring.

but the main character's journey is supposed to have an end purpose, and successfully achieving it would be the culmination of the story. Naruto's purpose was saving Sasuke, who was taken in by the Big Bad Orochimaru, when everyone else has given up on him. Izuku's purpose seemed to be saving Shigaraki, who was taken by the Big Bad All For One, and the entire world has given up on saving him when he was just 5 years old. thus, Izuku would become 'the world's best hero', because he achieved an unprecedented fit of saving a villain. hell, he would have been even cooler than Naruto, who mastered the therapy talk jutsu on all the villains he had successfully reformed, but still had all of them die on him.

but no. funnily, Izuku fails spectacularly at achieving the purpose he had set for himself. Izuku doesn't save Shigaraki, he actually kills him. not even on purpose, Tomura's death was entirely an accident. (to really drive home how ridiculous that is, can you imagine Naruto murdering Sasuke on accident during their final battle, and then moving on with his life? an even more accurate example, imagine Naruto killing Gaara instead of giving him a heartfelt speech in s1)

by simple shounen logic, this means Izuku failed as a shounen character. he doesn't get his happy ending, because he didn't deserve it through consistently written and developed hard work towards a singular goal the character had chosen for himself. this also means Izuku didn't become the world's greatest hero. he lies to us in the prologue.

but we can't have a tragic ending to such optimistic and hopeful story now, can we? so the story does a very awkward and forced job of switching the perspective to drive the audience attention from the reality of the tragedy the ending brought on it. to drive attention away from Izuku and his failure, we have the public aggressively blaming Shigaraki for the destruction. his story is never made known and Izuku is not particularly interested in making it known, putting this responsibility on Spinner. Allmight, who felt personally responsible for Shigaraki's kidnapping by AFO back when he was alive is suddenly unbothered by his passing. the epilogue has nothing to focus on because every hero character had failed at achieving their personal goals and thus peaked. it is also weirdly stubborn in its refusal to seriously view the aftermath as tragedy, following the characters (acknowledged!) failure to save the villains they intended to save. the explanation was still warranted however, so the chosen strategy was focusing on the outside world and how it was affected by the consequences. but it simply won't work because the story was never focused on this before! it's no Avengers Civil War, The Boys or even MHA Vigilantes. MHA was always about the characters and their individual experiences. the world leaned into the characters plot points and shaped itself accordingly, not opposed the various socioeconomic and political problems that the concept of heroes would bring. the heroes ranking and HPCS are the highest authorities we know of in MHA. who is the president? who are the politicians? why is so much budget spent on the heroes, to the point the devastated and ruined after the war country deems it important enough to build various statues of them? the issue of quirk racism is consistently important, but why aren't any anti racism organisations brought up? isn't there any legal punishment for violence against mutants? does the law just permit harming or even killing mutants? shouji had his damn face cut up as a kid and his parents never went to police or made a lawsuit about it? we do know that police exists separately from the heroes, but how does law work at all in this universe? the answer is, it doesn't, because Hawks has a footage of him committing a murder shown on national TV and he doesn't face any legal repercussions at all, and is in fact promoted to a HPSC president shortly afterwards.

i hope the above paragraph conveys how utterly cartoonish MHA's 'realism' is. and what makes it bad isn't the illogical inconsistency or even the double standards, it's that the realism is used as a coverup for the author smashing the core theme of the story he took from another manga with hammers and setting it on fire. it's 400 chapters too late to make the core theme of the story the society in general and various social issues as concepts. it was supposed to be a story about Izuku saving Shigaraki, Ochako saving Himiko, Shouto saving Dabi. i don't have to reach to get that message from the source text itself, because no one forced Horikoshi to repeat the world 'save' 27363279 times throughout the story. it was supposed to be a story about saving traumatized people who had no one to save them. it didn't have to be, Horikoshi could have easily continued with Kishimoto's established trend of having his villains die immediately after finishing their therapy session. but he didn't take that direction, and capitalized on the theme of saving people, even those who don't seem to deserve it, even those who say they don't want to be saved. and in the final, crucial moment, he didn't carry through.

this is the story of how Izuku didn't become the greatest hero.

my not-hero academia

[bluecrocss]

Somethings I'm looking forward to in PJO Season 2 that I don't see people talk about as much

Villain!Luke: Most of TLT/Season 1 is Luke playing as an ally/friend/older brother to our protagonists. We see him in a mostly positive light as the show tries to hide his true intentions until the reveal.

SOM is the first time we get to see Luke in pure villain mode, and I'm so excited. Despite my issues with the movies (Especially the second one), I can always appreciate how much fun Jake Abel was obviously having hamming it up in the second movie. Literally, all he needed was a mustache to twirl lol

Anyway, Charlie did such a good job of making Luke sympathetic and likeable, I'm so excited for when we first see him on the Princess Andromeda in all his Villain glory. I can't wait to see how he plays it.

Clarisse redemption: Look, I will always defend the right of viewers to dislike a bully, no matter how sad their backstory is. However, in my opinion, SOM and TLO is probably where we get the most character development for Clarisse (the show can even add more depth to that if they play it right).

Hints at her abusive relationship with Ares, the first inklings of her friendship with Percy, there's so much more we're going to get out of that character, and I really hope they SHOW (not tell) it right.

Tyson/Annabeth beef: I am going to be on the front-lines as a Leahbeth defender this season. Like with the growing fandom dislike towards Annabeth of late, and the general way audiences treat black female characters whenever they show any negative traits, Annabeth's interactions with Tyson in SOM (and her later interactions with Rachel Dare in BOTL) are not going to be some of her best moments; but also are great character moments for her because those two books more than any are about showing Annabeth's flaws. She's a 13 year old girl with PTSD people!

Tyson's a sweetheart, obvs, but watching 5"2 Leah Jeffries consistently intimidate 6"5 Daniel Diemer is gonna be kind of hilarious. And Tyson's constant attempts to win her over are so endearing (Especially when he does succeed towards the end).

I do hope they make some changes to the backstory of why Annabeth doesn't like Cyclopes though. Because even in the books, I thought that seemed a bit forced in.

Annabeth's Circe island makeover: Yes, Walker as a guinea pig, hilarious. Yes, the siren scene, heartbreaking. The childhood Percabeth shipper in me, can't wait to see what makeover Annabeth gets in the show!

Say what you will, but one of the best parts of Annabeth now being portrayed by a black actress is (in my personal opinion), I think there is no group of women on earth with more variation in hair styling than black women.

As such, there's an infinite number of styles and looks that I could see them giving Leah for this. Braids with gold accessories, Afro puffs, a Grecian take on Bantu knots, etc. etc. I mean, the fan artists have been eating with that already.

What have I missed? What other less talked about moments is everyone excited to see brought to life?

[misscammiedawn]

The Only Murder Alter I Respect

CW: abuse, neglect, sexual assault, incest, harm to an infant

"Oh, I am one yet many."

In my last article on The Murder Alter we spoke a little about the history of the Murder Alter trope in fiction.

To quickly recap, fiction has a fascination with depicting those with dissociative identity disorder as being inherently evil. The roots of the trope come from misunderstandings of the text of Jekyll & Hyde, assuming Hyde to be a personification of evil rather than the disguise of a man who wished to indulge in socially unacceptable actions.

To cut the long story of the previous essay short; Jekyll loses control of a physical transformation, the potion only draws out "evil" within him in the way that he is able to act without fear of consequence. All the evil of Hyde belonged to Jekyll. Alas, the play version of the story hit London about the time of the Whitechapel murders committed by Jack The Ripper and the public began to compare these real life murders to the plot of the play, going as far as accusing the lead actor of being Spring-Heeled Jack.

To see more, read the first chapter of this essay.

-

In my view a vulnerable minority of any kind being a villain is offensive if they are handled with no respect. If their stereotype overwhelms their role as a character.

For the case of a murderer or serial killer character we have to ask their motives. Many pieces of fiction will assume that the existence of trauma alone is a motive. In recent years there has been a trend of giving irredeemable characters trauma in their 'sympathetic backstories' to justify their wanton killing without any regard that they are actually communicating that abused people will become abusers or worse killers themselves.

It's not the kindest sentiment to put out into the world.

In Split, a horrible movie that I absolutely despise, the evil "Beast" personality spews out this horrible line of dialogue:

"You are different from the rest. Your heart is pure! Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice."

To be clear, as mentioned before, traumatized victims are far more likely to be the victims of violence, not the perpetrators of it. Trauma does not make someone strong, enlightened or more capable. It makes us traumatized.

Then there is the absolution of guilt which becomes the argument that people with DID have no responsibility for their actions. The first chapter of this essay mentioned the real life cases of Gein and Milligan being unfit for trial by reason of insanity and being held in mental care facility.

In fiction, however, this trope was taken to extremes with the case of Primal Fear (and again, more recently, with the Joker sequel) with the idea that a successful DID based defense would allow "not guilty by reason of insanity" lead to a release upon a miraculous cure of the condition which the fictional characters were faking to escape their crimes.

Not the kind those with the real life condition need the public believing, especially when we currently have the McLean Hospital that specializes in treatment of dissociative disorders assuming that people seeking treatment are faking for attention.

Even if they had a character whose murderous alters motives were not stigmatizing and they took responsibility for their actions, there's still the matter of them being sympathetic. Typically the split personality trope is rolled out to reveal a twist villain in the third act. If there is an evil alter responsible for the crimes they are typically hidden from the audience until the very end to keep the audience in the dark.

For a hyperbolic example of how bad this trope is, the movie Adaptation presents the trope to the audience as lowest common denominator slop wheeled out for a reaction and born from the worst instincts of a dedicated writer.

Donald Kaufman: Okay, well here's the twist. We find out that, that the killer really suffers from multiple personality disorder, right? See, he's actually really the cop and the girl. All of them are him. Isn't that fucked up?

Unrelated to this essay but Adaptation marks the only time an alter has been nominated for an Oscar along with their host. Technically.

The point is, we cannot sympathize with the person depicted as having DID if their condition is kept hidden for the sake of a surprise reveal at the end of the story.

There are other considerations but in tallying some of the reasons this trope is harmful and horrible, I now want to turn the topic to more positive things because I find that a blanket statements are not helpful. The stigma of depicting a person with DID as a killer is harmful, this is undeniable. It paints all with the condition in a negative light.

But surely it is possible to depict a character with justified motive, agency for their actions, a chance for audience sympathy and an accurate depiction of the illness.

Now, for the sake of spoilers, I am going to be talking about a murder alter and thus revealing their identity is going to give heavy spoilers to the media that they are from and for engagement sakes I am tagging this article with that media's name.

So. Below the cut will be a discussion of a character who can easily be read as having DID who fits the parameters of a murder alter and yet I feel is compassionate representation of this mental illness and an incredibly written system.

Be aware that these spoilers will completely break the intended experience of reading this media. But knowing the media is a spoiler alone.

Essentially I've written myself into a corner of engagement because the only people who can safely click through already know half the stuff I'm going to say which means I am encouraging the click from those who have never heard of or enjoyed this media while knowing that I am breaking the entire experience by talking about it.

So we're going to do a readmore and trust y'all to know that there are massive spoilers below.

Tumblr audience, allow me to introduce…

Beatrice, The Golden Witch.

Ahaha.wav ~ Ahaha.wav ~ Ahaha.wav ~ Ahaha.wav ~ Ahaha.wav

Though Beatrice is the murder alter in question, let's talk about who she was prior to becoming the lord of the Golden Land.

Let's talk about...

Sayo Yasuda.

Yasu was a meek and timid young thing, only having known a life at an orphanage which trained young people to become maids and servants for high society families.

Raised in a childhood where they were forced to work, despite being timid, forgetful and clumsy; Yasu did not know the love and affection of a family. Moreover after being brought on to work for the Ushiromiya family, the younger staff of the house, all in their late teens, resented and bullied the young child for being a burden to their duties and because they were inexplicably given favor by the head servant, Genji and the head maid Kumasawa.

Yasu was only 9 years old as this happened. Going to school and working long hours as a servant. Berated for being slow, weak, impolite and forgetful.

Their only ally within the orphanage was an elder maid, Shannon, who was capable and would always advise (but never take over) and encourage Yasu. Young Yasu wanted to be just like Shannon when they grew up.

They shared a room and would talk long into the night, Shannon always quietly encouraging the young kid.

Shannon was Yasu's first alter.

The isolation and bullying and exhaustion of working and studying constantly made it so they were desperate for any company, encouragement and acceptance. The only kindness they had ever known had been given by coworkers. So of course they would imagine a perfect, kind and loving maid to be a friend and keep them company in the endless isolation of their lonely room.

Dissociation, the absence of awareness of what one is doing or what is going on around one, is a normal process that occurs from time to time. Fantasy stories and characters created by the preschool child often take on a separate reality. Imaginary playmates may be an enjoyable fantasy, an expansion of experience, a way to fill loneliness or boredom, or a process for working out fears and ambivalent feelings […] If, however, a child’s experience continues to be either frightening or non-supported (no soothing or opportunity to process the upsetting situations that have happened), dissociative experiences are likely to continue. As dissociation continues, more and more of the child’s perceptions, feelings, physical sensations, or knowledge of the world become stored outside active awareness and the child’s internal sense of self becomes disrupted. The perceptions, feelings, and knowledge are still there—they have, after all, been sensed and processed in some form by both the brain and the body—but they are shut out of active awareness. Because this “shutout” or dissociation protects the child from negative situations, the child is less likely to develop coping mechanisms that do not damage the sense of self. Consistent learning and the building of consistent friendships are difficult for the child. If there is no intervention from supportive, consistent care-giving or therapy, this fragmentation is highly likely to continue and, in many situations, increase as the child grows up. - Sandra Wieland (Dissociation in Traumatized Children and Adolescents)

When a child is bored and left unsupported and under-stimulated they will begin to engage in their imagination. This is a natural and normal part of childhood but without consistent connections, support or care they will continue to dissociate their experiences without building a stable sense of self. These components of dissociation, compartmentalization and a lack of stable identity are what cause a child to develop DID.

Yasuda, without friends or family, was unable to establish a stable identity. In fact they were unable to establish a stable name or relationship to their own body.

Sayo Yasuda was born Lion Ushiromiya. For reasons I have decided to avoid discussing in depth, Lion, assigned male at birth, was placed into the orphanage by the head servant of the Ushiromiya family after a tragic "accident" nearly killed them as a baby and severely injured their body.

The name Yasuda was given to protect the child from their own family, the servants thought it would be kinder to have them raised as a servant than to be raised as an Ushiromiya. Due to the injuries of the child they could raise it as a woman and lowered the age of the child by 3 years to avoid the family seeing a young servant the same age or gender as a baby that died.

Within the orphanage the children are given 'blessed names' that they are called while working. They keep their true names hidden spare for those they love and trust. As Yasuda has no one who will say their name, they instead are called Shannon or 'Yasu' when she is being punished. She came to despise the name.

Shannon, the alter, is the maid that Yasu is being trained to become. The young child hearing this other name imagined it as a completely separate person.

Moreover, Yasuda was weak and exhausted from her constant school and work schedule and would often find herself drifting in and out of consciousness, letting her mind fog while she was working on tasks and forgetting things. A common enough experience within dissociation that I need not elaborate in this essay.

The eldest maid of the island, Kumasawa, would tell local folklore and tall tales, spinning tales like a grandmother would to their grandchild. The tales of a shrine that sealed an evil demon, a ghost of Beatrice the family head's deceased mistress whose spirit is said to reside in the sealed off VIP room.

In time Yasu began believing in this lore and began blaming her forgetfulness and losing track of keys and cleaning items on the ghost. On Beatrice.

In the face of abuse and neglect, especially at the hands of those they love, children need enough psychological distance from what is happening to avoid being overwhelmed and survive psychologically intact. Preserving some modicum of self-esteem, attachment to family, and hope for the future requires victims to disconnect from what has happened, doubt or disremember their experience, and disown the “bad [victim] child” to whom it happened as “not me.” By holding out some sense of themselves as “good” disconnected from how they have been exploited, abused children capitalize on the human brain’s innate capacity to split or compartmentalize. That “good child” might be precociously mature, sweet and helpful, perfectionistic, self-critical, or quiet and shy, but, most importantly, he or she has a way to be acceptable and safer in an unsafe world. Splitting or fragmenting in this way is an ingenious and adaptive survival strategy—but one with a steep price. To ensure that the rejected “not me” child is kept out of the way (i.e., out of consciousness) requires that, long after the traumatic events are over, individuals must continue to rely on dissociation, denial, and/or self-hatred for enforcing the disconnection. In the end, they have survived the failure of safety, the abuse, and betrayal at the cost of disowning their most vulnerable and most wounded selves. Aware that their self-presentation and ability to function is only one piece of who they really are, they now feel fraudulent. Struggling to stay away from the “bad” side and identify with the good side, they have a felt sense of “faking it,” “pretending,” or of being what others want them to be. For some, this conviction of fraudulence engenders resentment; for some, shame and self-doubt. For both groups, the legacy of the trauma remains alive rather than resolved. - Janina Fischer (Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors)

Yasu disowns her experiences so well that when she is punished for not doing her job completely or misplacing items that she zoned out on and lost track of. Over time the existence of this ghost. Of this witch became a firm fact and thus the witch, the ghost of the family head's mistress looking for a body, came to possess Sayo. At first it was misplacement, but as the teasing and bullying persisted she began to believe this witch was real and picking on her. So the witch became real and it began happening.

"This isn't the first time this has happened. Whenever I look away, ...keys, handkerchiefs, pencils, erasers...all of them vanish almost right away. Even though I was planning to use them later, or just wanted to put them in their proper place, they disappear as soon as I turn around. It isn't someone hiding them as a prank. It's happened many times when I'm the only person around. ...Everyone always says I'm too careless and forgetful, they laugh at me... get mad at me. I do try to be alert, but like some kind of bad joke, I lose things easily when I forget about them for even a short while.So, sometimes, I think 'this eraser is gonna disappear sooner or later', and I stare at it. But at those times alone, it doesn't disappear. Nothing disappears when I'm alert.But as soon as I think I'm safe, and the tension relaxes just a bit, then something else will disappear...! Why is it always me?"

The second of Yasu's many alters was born of her shame and frustration. She was only 9 years old and expected to work as an adult while enduring schooling with no friends or familial love.

Having trained herself to imagine the shape of entities not of the natural world, she gives shape to the witch.

"Without turning around, ...I slowly let my range of vision fill the entire chapel. It was as though the viewpoint of my soul was floating out from the shell of my head. ...See? ...Inch by inch, ...my range of vision is floating out of my head..... and drifting upwards. As I looked down at myself, standing there with head hanging and eyes tightly shut... The eyes of my heart....very slowly.... rose to the ceiling of the chapel. And when I looked down from there... I saw myself, standing in the center of the chapel, ...and the witch standing behind me."

This is the experience of dissociation. Particularly in children. To disconnect from the events of the moment and what is going on in our own body and "examine" the area surrounding us. Many have described it as viewing the world through a floating camera.

Our own imagination is painted in this way. Our old therapist, while diagnosing us, noted that the way we described locations in memories was a big hint to them that it was what we were experiencing.

In making friends with the witch, Yasu had a new friend. To one side the ideal maid, Shannon, and the other the witch Beatrice who pranked people by stealing items or leaving windows open. In reality Yasu would switch to Beatrice and play pranks on the other servants. Many would not even believe that it could be the meek and timid girl, especially as she grew older and became more capable as a maid at the house. A mixture of confidence and an interest in mystery novels allowed these pranks to become all the more believable. The servants were mean to Yasu or claimed witches do not exist and then Beatrice would punish them with pranks.

A small start but for the first time in her life a part of the system had a way at lashing out at a world that was so cruel to them and the myth of the witch began to spread through the serving staff and as the superstition grew, the myth continued to grow. Beatrice, both demon of the island and ghost of the master's dead mistress as a single entity, became a known superstition, acknowledged on the island.

"Everything went completely white, and my mind stopped. Once again, that tingling sensation slid up my body. I could feel it all gather in the fingers of both my hands... and come out the tips of my fingers. It was unfathomable, indescribable, ...unknown sensation. My head went blank, and I couldn't think at all. I could do nothing but abandon my soul to the sensation."

From a first person perspective we get to see Yasu switch into Beatrice and punish her fellow servant by stealing her keyring and hiding it.

It's here I address the original thesis of the article a moment. Why is it that this game's use of the murder alter trope is so acceptable and praiseworthy to me when I despise it being used in any other media.

Firstly, I want to address the name Sayo Yasuda. In most of the media mentioned prior to the readmore the identity of the killer personality and the existence of DID is hidden until the final act. Here, we are learning of the existence of DID at the end of the story but we had been introduced to all the alters in the system.

Spare for Yasuda herself. This chapter she is being introduced to us along with her condition and it is not in the way of revealing that the entity known as Beatrice is a dissociated personality. We are taken through a history that justifies the existence of a dissociative disorder and shown how one experiences the symptoms. We are introduced to forgetfulness and zoning out long before we are introduced to other identities as voices that Yasu communicates with and this, deep into chapter 7 of 8, is the first time we have a switch described from a first person perspective.

Though the groundwork of dissociative disorders have been long established. In the essay about Ange Ushiromiya's trauma memories. we spoke about how Ange had learned to maintain alters in her own mind and Maria's personality shifts had been seeded as early as the first chapter.

The existence of DID was not treated as a reveal either in narrative or psychologically. It was carefully presented with respect to the symptoms of people who live with the disorder and treated with care.

DID is not an excuse for the killing. So the minority being a culprit is not stigmatizing, the author has understanding of the disorder and depicts it with kindness.

But that only handles one of our issues with the trope. So it is not wheeled out as a last minute twist and it depicts the disorder with stunning accuracy.

But still, the idea of a murder alter is an ugly and repulsive thing and even here in stealing keys Yasu is abdicating responsibility to this witch. One of the other things that I hated about the trope was the motive being excused because of trauma and responsibility falling to an 'evil personality' that the innocent host cannot control and so far the game appears to be committing both of those sins.

...well, let's continue...

Upon experiencing the power of 'magic' when Beatrice possessed her, Yasu tells Shannon that she no longer wants to live as a servant but wants to become a witch like Beatrice. She decides to become the witch Beatrice.

The witch above is renamed to Gaap and the alter who had the name she hated, Yasu, takes the name of Beatrice the Golden Witch for herself, imagining her new form and changing her behaviors to match, taking on the voice of a lady of high station and decides on weaknesses such as seeing her reflection.

In DID there are no 'original selves' or 'real one'. We spoke about this a bit during our essay on Mr. Robot.

A "host" simply refers to the part that is most active within the system. In her book, Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors, Janina Fisher describes the "host" personality as the most predominant "going about normal life" part. There is no original because the child failed to integrate a stable personality and the "going about normal life" part Fisher describes by definition is a dissociated part unaware of the impact the trauma holds on the nervous system.

It is so important in treatment to understand that all alters in a system are real and equally as important to the functioning of the whole. I bring this up the character we are following had their birth name, gender and age changed by caregivers and now has voluntarily erased their own name; opting to adopt the name of Beatrice.

After co-fronting with the witch she realized how wonderful it felt to let go and not exist, to let herself exist as a magical being of imagination rather than a pitiable servant.

In real terms the traumatized part that had suffered so much retreats from reality to escape her pain, taking all of the negative experiences away from the other alters and sinking into their unconscious mind. There, inside the safety of their imagination, Beatrice begins working on creating her 'golden paradise', an internal world of dream and magic where she can safely reign as the ruler.

We know from other chapters that this coping mechanism is eventually taught from Beatrice to Maria and then from Maria to Ange. If generational trauma is the theme of Umineko then generational healing is too and Ryukishi is well aware that the imagination is a powerful shield for those most hurt by the world.

In changing her 'form', Shannon was left as the new host of the system and as Shannon had never met Beatrice, the dissociative barriers between the parts solidified and Shannon is left alone.

The scene where Shannon fronts for the first time, alone and confused is truly emotional. She is confused by the inconsistencies in her understanding of the world and slowly starts rationalizing. Had she always been alone? In a single bed? She begins adopting traits that Yasu had embodied when she was the host, such as a love of mystery novels. Speaking to herself until she falls asleep.

Shannon was the name of the servant and earlier in the story we learned her real name was Sayo. She adopts the 'legal identity' and the one who had been fronting the entire time until this point opts to exist within the night, pranking the house and keeping the myth of Beatrice alive.

If the responsibility and agency of DID depictions in media was an issue to overcome then here we see that though there are barriers of dissociation between the parts, Beatrice and her pranks are not evil in nature and we see that in all her parts there is communication and genuine care within the system.

Which brings us to motive.

In bad media the culprit is unsympathetic and driven to wanton crime for little reason other than "hurt people kill people" which is inaccurate and a dangerous thing to imply.

Shannon continues working on, unaware of her history as Yasu and the bullying that she had endured when she was younger. She has a hobby of reading mystery novels and speaks about them with the head maid. She sometimes gets praise from the head servant. She's happy.

Right?

But the loneliness had not been dealt with. The Ushiromiya family were still cruel to her. Though Shannon is an ideal maid by design and convinced herself to be happy with her lot in life the unchanged circumstances still trigger the pain that her heart ached and called for salvation.

And so Beatrice's presence makes itself known again within their shared mind and Shannon began imagining a rose garden where the golden witch would share tea with her. She wanted to allow Shannon to join her in the "world of witches", "the golden land" an innerworld she built within their mind.

Shannon rejects the offer, as if such a thing could be and leads Beatrice to become curious as to what could possibly be worth living for in the real world.

There Shannon, with Beatrice in the back of their shared mind, witnesses the Ushiromiya Family Conference where all members of the family gather, including the grandchildren of the family head and there Beatrice witnesses Shannon forming a relationship bonding over mystery novels with the series protagonist Battler, 6 years before the massacre.

The pair discuss their love of novels and in that conversation the mutual understanding of both the fictional characters and the author is that a murder should have a passionate motive.

Shannon takes on Battler's perspective and begins reading all of the books that Battler enjoys, completely infatuated with him. The pair got to have a short fling. Every time Battler visited the island they would talk about their shared passion and enjoy the time stolen. It couldn't work in long distance. Battler says that when Shannon quits service of the family she can come to him out in the world.

Battler promises he will ride in on a white horse and save her from a lifetime of servitude.

Beatrice understands instantly.

"It takes two to create a universe" magic must be shared and love is the most important element. Something that even the endless witch Beatrice cannot create with her magic. It is the first time in their shared life that the system formerly known as Sayo Yasudo has been offered love from another human.

She's enraptured by it.

...and then in the time between visits, Battler's mother passes away suddenly and his father instantly marries his mistress who he secretly fathered a daughter with while married. Battler is disgusted by his father and leaves the family, abandoning Shannon.

Beatrice, wounded for the part of her in deep pain, pulls Shannon into the innerworld and comforts her; telling her that she needs to succeed at a trial to have faith and wait for Battler to return. That if she doubts him then he will not come. She even argues that Battler leaving the Ushiromiya family was an attempt to make it so that he could marry her without the family name being an obstacle.

Magical Thinking is a symptom of dissociative disorders where the mind generates beliefs between unrelated events despite the absence of any plausible causal link between them. Much of the effects of DID, particularly during the denial phase, are born from the ability to rationalize inconsistencies and inconvenient truths in the shared life.

In this case the idea of losing the love that was offered to them for the first time in their life was more than they could handle and thus they chose to believe that it was still there and that if they held faith and waited it would come to them.

When one dissociates from their emotions they are able to rationalize and intellectualize their situations and continue their trained habit of enduring. When Shannon's ability to rationalize the years of silence fails she blames herself, as she is able to rationalize and intellectualize her own actions and has no way of knowing Battler's. Thus if she blames it on her lack of faith she can hold to hope and endure the years.

But the trials continue.

Letters are delivered from Battler to everyone at the family conference. Shannon is neither mentioned nor receives a letter at all (there is a possibility that George destroyed it, but that is a theory). Her faith shakes but the bud of love in her heart simply cannot die.

...and now the love that had once given Shannon so much hope and life had become yet another source of pain and trauma and so once again Beatrice reached into Shannon's heart and claimed the bud of love. She would take it into herself, another trauma for her to hold. Leaving Shannon confused, disorientated but happy again.

In order to keep Shannon's heart saved from pain she created a new alter, a brother named Kanon.

Kanon would be a quiet and guarded boy who was deeply protective of Shannon and who shielded his own heart. Born wary of other people and their motives. He will make for a calloused heart.

Shannon once again allows her mind to dissociate from the pain in her heart and once again became an ideal maid, free from the hurt of her past or the love.

In 1984 Kinzo, knowing he is to die soon, commissions a painting of his former love, the original Beatrice, with an epitaph that once solved would lead someone to the family fortune and chose who would be the inheritor of the family after he dies.

At least this is what the family were lead to believe. It is theorized in universe that Kinzo had come to recognize that his child/grandchild was alive and in the house and wanted to apologize to her and thus make up for the sins he had committed against his mistress and their daughter.

Another part of the tragedy was sealed the moment Kinzo began this process.

With the help of Genji, who knew their birth identity, Beatrice solves the riddle and becomes the inheritor of the family fortune... and she is also given the truth to their birth, their original name and the identity of their father and grandfather.

During the entire sequence the child of many names is disconnected, overwhelmed, confused and not able to summon the confidence of her witch self. She cannot bring herself to take the seat at the head of the family and asks that the servants of the island pretend nothing had happened, opting instead to continue waiting for Battler.

It was said that if Battler did not show up to the island in 1986 or showed up a year earlier or later then the tragedy would have been avoided.

But as it stands. Tragedy was inevitable.

Beatrice largely goes into dormancy after inheriting the family fortune, choosing to let Shannon and Kanon continue their life on the island. Searching and waiting for the magic that is beyond her, Love.

And so we get the events at the start of Chapter 2 and 3.

Shannon and Kanon are living as servants of the family as the tensions between siblings becomes more and more tense. But as time goes on Kanon and Jessica, who lives on the island, become closer... and George proposes to Shannon.

The first 2 hours of chapter 2 depict Shannon, a being who has made to think of herself as nothing more than furniture for the family to use, feeling love bloom in her heart and despair over the fact that the Ushiromiya family would never allow her to marry, filling her ears with poison and abuse; as the family speak of a political marriage with George and Shannon's heart is threatened with heartbreak again she calls out to the witch Beatrice and the alter in her heart awakens again to comfort and guide her.

If Battler showed up a year earlier then Beatrice would have reconnected with him and she would have been able to use the family fortune to ride off with him. If he showed up a year later then she would have married George.

But in showing up while Shannon was trying to handle being proposed to. While Kanon was growing close to Jessica. While all futures existed within the catbox at once. Each member of the system has adapted their personality to suit their partner. Shannon is the type of woman George would enjoy. Beatrice becomes the exact type of brash woman Battler enjoys and Kanon was the aloof and distant type Jessica would love.

Only one of these futures could possibly exist.

Every member of the system is marked by their inability to change their fate, even when handed the opportunity. Since birth they have only been able to act as a servant, as furniture and dive into escapism and magic to cope. The pain was not simply the pain of the heart. It was of being alone. It was of being bullied. Of being disregarded. Ignored. Forgotten.

When presented with the gold and the headship of the family the system, we shall revert to calling them Yasu, were unable to risk confrontation with the family. Much akin to Marta in Knives Out, she was a servant being offered a vast fortune with a hostile and abusive family who would never accept her position and so she backed down and didn't risk further pain.

I said earlier that victims of abuse and neglect are more likely to be victims than the perpetrators of violence. Here Beatrice, formed from stories of ghosts, demons and murder mysteries, retreats into fantasy but she actually has the unlimited resources; the "golden magic" to make her schemes a reality and so she attempts to do so as a form of escapism, as a way of letting the "roulette wheel" select her fate as the system are unable to decide for themselves.

We never know for certain what happens in the catbox, though Eva's journal does give us some clarity. We can say for sure, based on the survivor's testimony, that Yasu didn't go through with it. We never find out if they ever could have outside of dreaming. For all their posturing and posing, they were just an abused child desperate for family and love and freefalling into complete despair.

At the end of the day Beatrice is sympathetic, she experiences accurate symptoms of a dissociative disorder, we get to know her alters and understand their motivations and outlooks and her choice to kill the Ushiromiya family is not informed by her condition.

The fact she never successfully kills anyone in the (most likely) true version of the Rokkenjima massacre, she simply cannot bring herself to follow through when presented with the reality of her schemes, does not change the fact that she planned out the massacre and her actions did trigger the tragedy.

Beatrice The Golden Witch is the only murder alter I respect. But she is also an (attempted) murderer who just happens to be an alter. Those two statements have nothing to do with one another.

Though her motive is based upon the pain of her life, she is not a killer for the fun of it and is far from a homicidal maniac. She has a heart. A large heart.

And I respect the fuck out of her.

-

Lowkey this one wasn't my best work, especially after the ISaT entry raised the bar so high for us. Umineko is a fairly dense work and I have been struggling for months to find the words after promising to write about it in the first Murder Alter essay and teasing it in the Ange one. In the end I just decided to get it out.

Thank you for reading.

For more media essays on Dissociative Disorders please check out Media, Myself and I tag or check out the following articles:

Accepting Trauma Memories in Mr. Robot Time Loops and Dissociation (In Stars and Time) A History of Murder Alters Discworld and Plurality Incidental, intentional and accidental representation Gender, Dissociation and Clinical Stigma in The Third Person Recontextualized Memories in Umineko Derealization in Night in the Woods and Metal Gear Solid The Dangers of Hypnotic Personality Play in Penlight System Origins in The Incredible Hulk Relationships with Systems in The Incredible Hulk The Healing Journey in Mr. Robot

[chaifootsteps]

maybe this is an exaggeration, but glitz and glam feel like stella on crack to me, because its not one, but two women, who have to not only sexualize themselves for the sake of a job they probably wouldnt be doing if they had a choice for a better paying career, (because they fucking hate each other obviously, they dont want to work together at all, even if theyre good at it,) they also have to sexualize their other sibling.

imagine if you had to sexualize yourself and the twin sister youve grown up with your entire life, because you dont have any other monetary option. why else would they be doing it at all if they fucking despise the other, if not for income? viv making them hate each other so much and trying so goddamn hard to make them unjustified assholes, accidentally did the opposite, because just like stella, the anger they feel towards someone else they're forced to be with is justified, no matter how the narrative wants you to think theyre not.

especially when family doing sex work together, especially women, parallels the real world scenario in which it happens as well, making money off of peoples (mostly mens) incest fetish, by giving them the real deal. that's what glitz and glam are supposed to be, except it's supposed to be bad that they're making bank off of people in hell wanting to see sisters flashing their tits, and actually, theyre the bad guys for exploiting a nasty kink people have, and for working with mammon exclusively for money instead of out of passion like fizz did- money that they probably need to live far more then mr. immortal-bride-to-be-of-fucking-asmodeus-himself needs!

and y'know what the worst part is? it literally didn't have to be this way. squidderdoodles concept art only showed the glitz and glam sisters serving cunt with their outfits/designs and serving actually clowning on the stage, not sexualized fan service, but viv threw that away and was like, "nah, actually, i think they should be siblings! that rub their asses and flash their tits together :)" just because she wanted fizz to look better in comparison, and understood she needed a comedically bad villain in comparison, because she must think her audience is too stupid to understand that youre supposed to root for fizz in this ep, unless theres a newly made and conveniently placed character to make that obvious to the viewer. i mean, why else does oliver exist? i genuinely think thats the only reason theyre written like caricatures of bitches, despite the fact they unintentionally have just as much of a potentially sympathetic backstory/episode to me as stella does.

An entire, Viv-free series based off of Salem's vastly superior concept is what Glitz and Glam deserve, what Salem deserves, and what we all deserve.

[ladyloveandjustice]

Fall 2024 Anime Overview: Acro Trip

Premise: Chizuko is a huge fan of her local  magical girl, Berry Blossom. The magical girl’s arch-nemesis is a villain named Chrome, but he’s…incredibly pathetic. He’s hardly a challenge for Berry Blossom, and Chizuko is disappointed because this means her hero doesn’t really get a chance to show her stuff. She has a lot of ideas on how Chrome could be a more effective villain, and he overhears her talking about some of them. Now he’s trying  to recruit her for his evil organization, saying that if she helps him, it will mean cooler fights for Berry Blossom that will make her rise in popularity. What’s a fangirl to do?

Acro Trip is a lot of fun, and I recommend it to any magical girl enjoyer. I also recommend it to anyone who loves pathetic failguys, because my man Chrome is the most hilariously pathetic of them all. You like bad boys? Well this man is literally bad at everything.

He’s incredibly endearing—his idea of  “evil” is flipping restaurant maps or littering, he trembles pitifully when a middle school girl hits him with an umbrella, he fucks up in every way possible. At the same time, he’s a sweetheart who clearly takes his responsibility to be a good “mentor” to Chizuko very seriously and cares about her a lot. The show loves him and so do I.

 But wait! Girl failures have their rep too!

Chizuko is incredibly relatable to all of us magical girl fangirls, and her matter-of-fact way of dealing with things bounces off Chrome's himbo antic well. She has her fair share of failgirl moments herself, usually caused by her…well, it definitely seems like it's her crush on Berry Blossom.

We’ve been there, girl. I do feel Chrome gets a little more of a spotlight than her, but we also get to see her actually develop, going from refusing to get involved with Chrome to embracing her power.

Meanwhile, one of my favorite running gags is Chizuko's sweet lil’ grandfather who just rolls with every weird thing that happens and is way too excited to engage in criminal activity.

Berry Blossom herself is actually almost as big a dummy as Chrome is, with her mascot being the one who has to keep her on task. The classic dynamic! I do wish there was more to her, but I’ll discuss that later.

I felt a little concerned when it was confirmed Berry Blossom was a teenager and that Chrome was…probably in his mid-to-late twenties, because in the first episode there was a part where Chizuko seemed to think he was in love with Berry Blossom, and he was also very clear he was a masochist who is, uh, blissful when he gets punched in the face by Berry. However, the show immediately drops this. The idea of Chrome being in love with Berry Blossom never comes up again, and in fact it’s made clear he isn’t, as he repeatedly is more focused on being a good surrogate big brother to his “apprentice” over her. The masochism is mostly dropped too. On the other hand, Berry Blossom does seem to be developing a crush on Chrome, which makes me wary, but thankfully it’s extremely one sided right now. He’s completely oblivious to this, clearly doesn’t think of her that way, and it’s built on her constantly misunderstanding him requesting gifts to cheer up Chizuko (like her autograph).

It's not exactly a perfect show though,. As fun as it is, not all the gags hit, some side characters kind of dull, and my enthusiasm waned a bit as the series went on. The animation is…pretty rough. This anime clearly did not have a lot of resources allocated to it.

There’s also a bit of missed potential. It takes Chizuko way too long to get in the action, Chrome’s backstory would probably be more effective if his “rival” was a little more complex and sympathetic, there’s an interesting part in the finale where Berry Blossom mentions she doesn’t really have interests or hobbies and her mascot gave her purpose and then that’s just…brushed aside. Like how is it she doesn’t have any interests? She lives alone too, is she like, depressed? It feels like a major thing for her to say, and something Chrome should acknowledge but it’s like. "Well fight for your fans! They love you”. Perhaps it gets addressed in the manga or an (unlikely) season 2, but it sort of felt like the show wasn’t putting any thought into this heavy, kind of sad character detail they introduced. Whenever the show attempts to give its characters some depth and pathos it always seems a little half hearted.

The finale also set up a really dramatic conflict where various truths come out, and then just. Undid it all immediately. One of my least favorite tropes. There was obviously more manga left, but it really felt like the season just came to a stop rather than ended in a satisfying way.

However, the show succeeds at it’s main purpose- it’s a cozy good time for those who enjoy goofy, incompetent villains and goofy, incompetent magical girls. It’s a very sweet, silly, and occasionally funny show. Don’t go into expecting anything deep, but you can certainly have fun with it.

I implore you to give it a shot, because it’s fantastic that the lazy dark and edgy Madoka ripoffs are finally dying off, and we’re getting more variety again. We’re finally getting magical girl shows with fun premises, ones that aren’t reboots or Precure! So if you care about the genre at all, it’s so important to support them!

[menofsweaters]

I've been thinking a lot of deep thoughts about the end of MHA, so I've decided to spit them all out here rather than letting them live in my brain 24/7.

The more time that passes, the more satisfied I am with the ending, particularly with the deaths of the villains. The ending is definitely not what I would write or choose if I had the option, but I think I'm savvy enough these days to recognize the difference between "this is not my preference" and "this is poor writing." I'm also looking in from the perspective of consuming MHA for enjoyment and entertainment, whereas I believe the author was writing this ending in an attempt to make a political/literary statement, not to please the masses.

All of the most sympathetic and tragic members of the League of Villains met grisly ends by the time the manga wrapped up, and I don't think that's a coincidence. Twice, Toga, Dabi, and Shigaraki were all fan favorites with deeply moving backstories, but that didn't save them from dying. You can say they were all doomed by the narrative, but I think these characters were doomed by their own choices at every turn.

All of these characters - to varying extents - had the opportunity to stop their villainy, but were too dedicated to a certain cause or obsession to do so. Dabi is the most obvious example, as he could have returned to his family at literally any time and saved all of the Todorokis a lot of strife, but the others were also offered outs by the heroes they interacted with, and they all chose death and destruction over surrender.

I'm trying to make a point here but it's kinda hard to verbalize.

Basically, I think Horikoshi wanted to show us that it doesn't matter how "good" or "bad" you are as a person, it doesn't matter how moving your story is, it doesn't matter how deeply you believe in your cause, it doesn't matter if you love your comrades - your actions are the things that matter. As beloved and tragic as all of these characters are, they still murdered and maimed many innocent people, they still destroyed cities and hospitals, they still tortured families and loved ones.

Those innocent people are the ones who really suffer in bloody coups. I genuinely do not give a shit about anyone's ideals if they consider everyday people as acceptable canon fodder for the revolution. The LOV's ideals, Stain's ideals, the PLF's ideals, whatever you want to call it, are not worth the abject destruction of society over.

AFO and other power-hungry dictators feed off of people like Twice, Toga, Dabi, and Shigaraki. People who suffer from mental illness, who are estranged from their families, and who are rejected by society. The LOV was used by more powerful forces to commit horrific acts. As engaging as those characters are individually, they still fell prey to a violent ideology that offered nothing for them and everything to the person in power.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's easy for even the best of us to get wrapped up in some "cause" and end up suffering over it, or causing others to suffer. I think Horikoshi was trying to make a statement about who ends up paying the price in war and I'm finally accepting that statement. Those deaths were meant to hurt and they did, and I think that's why some readers hate it so much.

I've got more to say about the whole "they didn't fix hero society!!" stuff, but I'll gather those thoughts later.

[trashogram]

i don't know if anyone else feels the same, but i hate that the lack of nuance with stella is so aggressively on the nose at this point, that it creates a shift where stans are like "stella is an evil bitch with no redeeming qualities who should die!" because of them interpreting that smile that was obviously meant to be manipulative. viv wrote that scene that way so fans would react to it ike this.

but then antis are like "diversity win! mother and daughter interact but aren't voice acted because god forbid we DONT spend millions of dollars to pay vassago the useless fuck to be stolas's cheerleader and literally fucking nothing else, for the very first time in the series...... at the end of s2. nearly at the MIDWAY point of the series and these two don't even talk to each other even when stolas is a major focus and these two are a big part of his life, and probably won't talk to each other until fucking s3 if they don't kill stella in the finale since her brother just seems like a replacement for her more then anything now because this show treats women like vegetables you have to eat before you get the pudding for desert - were eating so good because we got less then the bare minimum anyone would expect from women characters in a TV show :D!"

like. the bar is in fucking hell at this point that even antis are eating dogshit now. i just hate that for a show about "queer people being messy and flawed" or whatever bullshit viv spews in interviews to explain why 90% of her characters are mean little cunts without a hint of compassion in their stick thin bodies, she won't let the one character who's dripping with potential moral grayness and a possibly sympathetic backstory thats like stolas's, be the main villain with understandable motivations like she had before in s1, because they're a woman who gets in the way of a yaoi ship.

viv won't even consider the possibility of her being queer - in the show that won a queerty - without spindlehorse social media manager suddenly insisting shes homophobic, when, at any opportunity to BE homophobic towards stoliz in the past, she's never been. not even in the most recent episode, where she.. somehow knows that blitz and stolas had a deal for the book? when all she thought before is that the ONLY thing they were doing before (in her bed btw) was fucking..?

No I feel you. I think there’s a small community of people like us that feel the same way, actually. We see all the manipulative bullshit from this show’s creators for what it truly is and have no reason to stifle ourselves for speaking out on it — even the little rats that try to harass us out of it aren’t worth the trouble of humoring by this point.

Stella and Octavia don’t matter beyond their connection to Stolas, and it’s so minor by this point that they might as well not exist. Stolas’s victim status will be shoved down our throats regardless.

Viv and her crew have only shown consistency when it comes to using queerness in its many forms and facets for 1.) self-gratification and 2.) predatory pageantry.

It’s gross to hear HB won an award for it, but imo media-based award ceremonies are breeding grounds for corruption.

[chestfullofnuttycream]

Something that never sat right with me with the DT17 series was this sort of....idk if demonization is too much, but this sort of like "wow you need to overcome your fears, how horrible are you to not like adventure?" mentality. Like, Bradford's backstory was about him being fearful to go on adventures. It makes me wonder if he was forced to go on them.

The show tries to make some sort of realistic argument about adventuring, triying to give realistic consequences to them in the characters, but just as they try, the show wheels back around to the fantasy of adventuring. It is a very confusing narrative.

Bradford in my opinion, reminds me a lot of David from Hilda, or Chuckie from Rugrats. Also afraid to adventure, but not mocked or seen as a bad guy for it (not as much with David at least). Bradford is seen as someone trying to protect the world from the dangers of this sort of haphazard behavior, because he's seen it himself what sort of damage can be caused by it. Thats the realism part of it. But the narrative goes back around to "family is the greatest adventure of all".

It's just a confusing thing to add. If they were not going to address the realistic emotions and consequences of these scenarios and the impact they had on the characters instead of just brushing it off like "he's a villain so we just want him to be hated, nothing matters" then you are doing a major disservice to the audience. It also gives the horrible message that it's ok to push someone to do something, that they need to "toughen up". It's not right. And Bradford's response to this was going the extra extreme route. Angones says he couldn't handle it - that is a sympathetic reaction from the audience. Many children are sensitive to the elements, are not that sporty, are anxious and need more help. To show this in such a negative light is, to me it's horrifying. What kind of message is that?

In many modern animated shows like Amphibia or Steven Universe, we see the humanity behind the antagonists. Their feelings are sympathized with. We don't just throw them away. Punishing a villain is not revolutionary. DT added this element to Bradford's backstory, and never addressed it again, dealing with it a final blow by turning him into a feral bird, a fate worse than death. What message does that bring, too?

[maxwell-grant]

Reverse Unpopular Opinion: Noriaki Kakyoin

I really like that he's a bastard, might actually be my favorite thing about him. He's designed to be "the thin and sensitive one", he's made to be pretty and attractive to an extent the others aren't, and of course he's given a very sympathetic and tragic backstory and death, but a lot of the time the spotlight's on him, he's kind of a mean jerk but in a really understated fashion that makes it funny. There is a line of succession among Araki's pointedly villainous heroes that starts with B.T and is embodied in the current protagonist Jodio, and I think Kakyoin is in there, predating the likes of Rohan and Giorno. It's not for nothing that he is our first villain Stand user, and why they make a point of contrasting his charming honor student personality with his horrible gross tentacle puppet power.

I also like that this ties into his prideful personality, and the reasons why he's tagging along to defeat DIO. He's a guy who's grown used to being disconnected from people and ostracized and self-reliant (much of what I love about Death 13 retroactively is that it's hitting Kakyoin hard with this before we understand why this is a personal button for him, and it's not a beat that would work with the other Crusaders), having maybe the closest bond with his Stand that we see among the Crusaders, and his dynamic with DIO is interesting to me because he blames himself for falling victim to DIO more so than he blames DIO for it. It comes up more prominently in the D'Arby fight and the finale that he's pushing through not just a deep fear, but also a form of self-hatred whenever he thinks about what DIO did to him. He feels ashamed and humiliated and even abused, even knowing about DIO's power and the flesh buds and having seen others in his situation, seeing what happened to Polnareff and Enya, and it doesn't really dissuade him from this thinking.

It's that whole speech he gives to Jotaro in his debut about how evil is determined by who wins and who loses: people tend to forget it because he's being brainwashed, but the flesh bud doesn't alter personalities like that, Polnareff refutes this in his first encounter. That wasn't the fleshbud, that was Kakyoin talking, and he'd come back to that sentiment later. He lost to DIO, nothing else mattered, he was the loser and thus the evil one. And so he wants to make up for it, to stand up to DIO again and not give in, to be freed from him. He's constantly putting his friends first during the journey but at his most personal, when he's steeling himself, he thinks back to that and swears to overcome it. People talk a lot about how Kakyoin was a mega hit with the female demographic because he's pretty and charming in a way the sweaty buff men aren't and because he makes a good pair with Jotaro, and okay sure that's part of it, but I think the fact that his arc being that intimate, that tragic, and panning out into a story about overcoming abuse and standing strong in the face of your abuser, even if all you can do is save others from him, that was the secret ingredient. Intentionally or not, that stings pretty deep.

But mostly I like him because he is a bastard, and he's the character who's not supposed to look or act like one, so the fact that he is makes it better. "Tricking your friends into feeding a baby his own shit" is not a beat that would work with the others, or even something you could land, no matter how evil the baby was, if the guy doing it wasn't capable of selling it as a cool and funny and karmically satisfying thing to be doing.

[agender-witchery]

It hurts

After talking with people in discord for the week that this has been going on, I think my feelings on the Project Moon situation are just. Like, this was a company I felt was "safe". Obviously corporations are not your friends, but this was a studio that consistently pushed out games with progressive - and at times even radical - messaging. This was a studio that has consistently written solid characters with gender as an absolute afterthought. Emma is a boy! Harold is a girl! That's how little gender matters, which, ironically, is something that matters.

I can't think of another franchise I've engaged with that just... writes women as people. I've heard George R.R. Martin is like that, but I never engaged with the TV series that introduced the US to the concept of filler or the book series it was based on. I'm gonna gloss over Lobotomy Corporation a bit here because the story only has 13 characters, but 12 of them return for Library of Ruina. In Ruina you have Binah, Angela, Nikolai, and Elena as assertive women that take control of the situations they're in. You have passive uwu smol beans like Hod and Eileen! You have characters who are war criminals and that's not a mark of a villain, that's just a part of their backstory! Some of the women here have just Done Crimes! One of the women IS a crime! And men are treated the same! There are characters with traumas and behavioral disorders who act like real people would! Lesti saw the aftermath of Love Town and started talking about food! Beef intestine no less! Philip saw his colleagues get murdered and physically manifested a mental breakdown! Xiao saw her husband get murdered and physically manifested literal burning rage!

All of the writing has been good! All of it! And it has consistently written women in a way that is flat out rare, even in 2023. And Limbus has been doing the same! Outis is assertive! Ryoshu is assertive! Hermann is assertive! Don is an idiot and Faust refuses to talk half the time! Heathcliff is assertive! Meursault is assertive! Gubo is assertive! Hong Lu is an idiot and Sinclair is/was a pathetic sop! Across the board, the character writing is just GOOD. As Lobotomy Corporation progresses, Ayin's shitty behavior becomes more and more apparent! And that all culminates with Angela being tossed aside like garbage once she's no longer useful to him, as you hear her desperate wishes to just be seen!

All of that, or at least most of that, was Kim Ji-hoon. But Kim Ji-hoon is also the person who hastily fired VellMori at 11 PM, over the phone, while he was out of office in Japan, because some incels accused his company of being sympathetic to feminists in 2023.

And it fuckin hurts that the source of those stories, the stories that I just spent three paragraphs praising, the stories that are so important to me, could turn heel in half a second like that. As if he was writing completely different stories than the ones I've been reading. And I hate that? I hate that. Because there isn't a replacement! I don't get Grandma War Crimes and Dumbass Justice Enactor in other stories! Like, maybe some will come close, maybe some will have the same exact character somewhere, but never all of it together. Never written as amazingly as the City is.

So it hurts. And the silence is loud.

[haine-kleine]

when I attempt to analyze Todoroki Touya's character, I get a distinct feeling Horikoshi's spreadsheet for him before chapter 290 looked like this:

'DABI IS TODOROKI TOUYA (hint at him being Todoroki Touya as much as possible) (make something up for his backstory later)

that's not how you write a secret evil relative subplots. the goal shouldn't be making the reveal as dramatic as possible. especially in the corruption 'break the cutie' type of stories. to make the readers feel for this character, you shouldn't be dedicating your time to teasing them with the possibility of the reveal, you need to also tell the actual damn story.

and Horikoshi just. forgot to do that.

to make the reveal hold any weight and not just serve as a delayed gratification clickbait after years of teasing the readers, you have to establish who the character actually was before they became the villain. if you don't do this, the reveal alone won't do anything to make the audience sympathize with the character, because by that point it will be too late to sway the established opinion with an angsty backstory alone.

Arcane tells a very similar story of the family conflict, but to have the audience be interested in the sisters reunion, to have them feel bad for Jinx despite the horrible acts she commits, you have to first see Powder, the troubled unfortunate and insecure child who loved her sister. only once we are emotionally attached to that innocent and unfairly suffering character, we will start questioning her motives and our emotions once the corruption starts.

if you show the before as a sympathetic character, the after becomes painful not only to the in-universe characters affected by what their once close person had become. if you show the after and hold off the before until after the characters have already reacted to the identity revealing event, your audience will react with 'cool motive, still murder', because they never developed any emotional attachment to said character, no matter how much you make them cry in the flashbacks.

loose reimagining of the family arc under the cut.

and it was so stupid to skip this step because Horikoshi didn't even have to do much. the first point of view we have on the Todoroki family history is Shouto, the youngest sibling who had been isolated from the rest for most of his life. he didn't know much about his siblings, but let him know something! especially with how closely his and Touya's stories are paralleled by design, he should know about Touya the most out of anyone, and Touya is the sibling he should be most curious about.

think about it from Enji and Shouto's pov. Touya was the heir Endeavor created for fulfilling his dream, and after Fuyumi he wasn't planning on having more kids. it was Touya's incompatibility with his own quirk, the eugenics experimentation failure, that is the only reason Natsuo and Shouto even exist. and Shouto is the chosen heir, perfectly fulfilling all conditions demanded by Enji. so he trains him like he wanted to train Touya, but that's not all of it. while Shouto is genetically fit to be a perfect replacement for the role Enji had prepared for Touya, his father had never emotionally connected with him the way he did with Touya. and he made sure Shouto was aware of that, because he talked to Shouto about Touya.

Shouto, who had been miserable because of his father for most of his life, knows that Touya was the older brother who should have been in his place, and he escaped that place. he stopped his training and left the dojo to live a normal life, together with his siblings. and Shouto wanted to have that life more than anything. he begged his father to let him join his siblings, he wistfully observed them through the windows, he imagined what his siblings are like, he asked his mother about them. and the entire time, the sibling he knew the most about was Touya, his eldest brother whom he had to replace as father's training dummy.

there's so much space for depth in there! you can do so much by briefly sharing the intensity of Shouto's complicated feelings, by giving a bare glimpse of his rumination about his siblings. just don't lump them all together into a faceless blob of happy children that unhappy little Shouto wanted to join, because their history is so much deeper than that.

inserting the flashback of Enji talking to Shouto about Touya during the Sports Festival arc would have been the best way to set up the intrigue. just a bare glimpse of Enji using Touya as the example little Shouto was failing to follow, cut to Shouto observing his three siblings through the window.

and that would be enough to connect the initial story threads of the Todoroki family and nudge the readers in the right direction. Iida also has an older brother who is a hero. with that example in mind Shouto not mentioning Touya at all would be suspicious enough to have people start questioning the mysterious older brother's identity, because surely, if the number one hero, who trained Shouto to be the most proficient hero in his class trained his older brother as well he would be a licenced hero already?

then, the lack of said brother's presence in the story starts to become glaring. the simple mention for Enji having trained Touya and telling Shouto how good his brother was with his quirk, separates him from the faceless group of Shouto's civilian siblings who are out there doing their boring civilian stuff and not necessarily needed to be in this story about kids becoming heroes. Touya being dead is a reveal put away for later, but to drive up the intrigue, he needs to be a ghost haunting the narrative. make it inconsistent and confusing, make characters talk about him and omit saying anything outright.

then you can use Natsuo as a red herring by not introducing the siblings by names when they visit Rei together. he's Shouto's older brother, he is weirdly hostile to Endeavor, he lives away from the family. well, this checks out. but wasn't this weirdly anticlimactic?.. also didn't he say he doesn't do well in hot temperatures?

later, during the Todoroki family dinner arc introduce Natsuo by name and confuse the readers even more, because the new brother turned out to not be Touya whom we have been anticipating to meet since Shouto had first talked about his family. make Shouto, who is still adjusting to being able to interact with his siblings, start asking about their childhood. he wants to express that happiness he feels about being together with them, so he wonders out loud if Touya also felt this happy when father allowed him to play with Fuyumi and Natsuo more. his brother and sister's faces turn weirdly grim at that remark. Fuyumi offers some stories from their childhood, trying to lighten the mood. that's the readers first proper glimpse at Touya in the flashbacks. Fuyumi talks about him always being on his computer, how impossible it was to drag him outside to play. Natsuo reminisces how the slightest stretch of intense activity was enough to have him fall to the ground and refuse to get up. Fuyumi talks about the time Touya and herself made 8 years old Natsuo carry both of them. Natsuo proudly reports that he didn't even break his back. the atmosphere in the room is light and comfortable, Shouto listening to their stories with undivided attention, his eyes glistening. after a moment of idle silence, Natsuo glances at him. he tells Shouto how usually it's hard to read his face, because he is so unexpressive. but he remembers when Shouto was little he was a total crybaby, just like Touya was.

with the picture of Touya the child painted and the question about adult Touya up in the air, Enji can join the dinner. Natsuo storms off and Shouto follows him and Enji, not understanding what caused his chill older brother to act like this. Fuyumi attempts to hold him back, to no avail. she doesn't want Shouto to hear what Natsuo has to say to their father. she also is no longer sure that keeping him in the dark is the correct decision. she sighs, 'mother, what should I do?'. she is too young for this.

insert Midoriya into the family dinner if you want your dramatic storytelling, and have him timidly ask Fuyumi why did their older brother not join them for dinner. cut to Shouto hiding behind the door, listening to Natsuo's shouts about Enji abandoning him and Fuyumi, stealing their mom and Shouto from them, ruining Shouto's childhood. 'but you know what you will never be forgiven for, not even in hell?' Natsuo asks, tears streaming down his face. cut to-

'Touya is dead', Fuyumi tells Midoriya, his pleasant smile frozen on his face, eyes growing wide.

cut back to Shouto, hyperventilating behind the palms covering his face. he doesn't even notice sliding down the wall. he barely registers the heavy footsteps of Enji going back in his direction and he can't be bothered to care about his eavesdropping being discovered. his mind is still echoing Natsuo's words on repeat.

'you can play hero all you want, but you know what you really are is a murderer'.

boom. hook, line and sinker. no need to have the characters spell out who thinks what, the '[Natsuo thinks that] Enji killed Touya' was so stupidly unnecessary it turned a mystery drama thriller Todoroki subplot into a Law and Order episode. let the characters speak their minds and reach their own conclusions! when they learn something horrible, don't send the good and righteous character rushing to correct their assumption. let Shouto be actually curious about what happened to the members of his family, let him learn their different perspectives! dont make the Todoroki Touya reveal into a singular event, an award for the readers who have been arguing about it for years. turn it into something that holds weight for the actual characters inside the story, a mystery, an investigation with the reveal being at the finishing line the characters themselves need to reach, not an inescapable event that will happen despite the characters' actions.

letting Dabi interact with the non-Enji Todorokis wouldn't have ruined the mystery, it would have given much more depth the all the characters, defined the actual drama they are going through, given them more individuality by allowing them to have different opinions on the situation instead of joining them into a Frankenstein mindless blob of 'family' taking their collective 'responsibility'.

make Dabi and Shouto's first meeting an uncomfortably long moment of staring, Dabi looking at Shouto with sad condescension, Shouto being visibly confused by the villain's loaded expression. make this about the characters themselves, and not about the readers being smart enough to connect the only villain with a flame quirk to the only family of flame quirk users.

let Natsuo and Dabi meet, make Dabi kill Hood for attacking his brother because his father was too late. make Natsuo question the villain's identity together with the readers, make him and Shouto join their efforts to unfold the mystery of what had happened to their older brother.

the question should never have been 'is Dabi Touya Todoroki?' asked by the author to his readers. it should have been 'what does Dabi being Touya Todoroki mean to the characters associated with him?'. and it should have been answered by the characters themselves.

[m3nt4llyr4v3d]

Miraculous and Redemption

You know, I think I understand what my issue is with this show’s stance on redemption. It’s not specifically who gets the redemption, even the hypocrisy of who does or doesn’t get redemption/forgiven is only one part of the issue.

It’s specifically how they treat the characters who don’t get redemption.

I have seen, in media, where terrible characters who’ve done terrible things get a redemption, and the mean characters, who are just mean, don’t change at all. That’s fine! People are complex, some change and some don’t, some have done horrible things and some are just school yard bullies. It’s fine to showcase this, I mean hell, in the Owl House, Boscha was still an asshole in season 2, and this was past the point that characters like Lilith were forgiven (Lilith isn’t really terrible in Season 1, she just has done a lot worse than Boscha)

Miraculous’s massive issue with this, however, is that the narrative/the authors treats those mean characters as worse than those characters who’ve done horrible things.

I mean, what other media has one of the creators say that some high school bully is comparable to Trump when her literal rich, corrupt, politician father is right fucking there?

Usually the media where a terrible person is redeemed and the mean character isn’t doesn’t treat it as a moral issue. It’s not “oh well this person can’t change” or “oh this person is even worse!” It’s usually “they’re mean, and that’s annoying, but oh well”. That media never treats the character like Satan incarnate, or treats their meanness compared to actual villainy as a moral issue. When characters are around them, they aren’t treating that mean character as literal scum compared to the former villain, the narrative doesn’t treat them as more than an annoyance or, for lack of better words, “small fry”. I mean, while Owl House acknowledged that Boscha was still a prick in season 2, they didn’t act like she was worse than Belos.

Miraculous treats Chloe and Lila, some petty, mean teenagers, as the literal devil compared to other characters. Lila is a master manipulator who somehow convinced 3 people she’s their daughter and has a trillion disguises! It doesn’t matter that that twist came out of nowhere, and it makes it a little weird that this teenager has multiple disguises that she uses around the city apparently, one where she looks like a 20 year old, making people theorize she’s an adult because how on earth is she smart enough or resourceful enough to do this. Chloe is a villain comparable to Gabe, even when she was a hero! Her backstory doesn’t justify any of her actions, but for literally everyone else, we are going to justify their actions! If they don’t do that, they’ll just sweep their actions under the rug completely! It doesn’t matter that she’s consistently being manipulated by the fully grown adults around her, she’s terrible don’t think about it! She neglected her father somehow (???????????????????) so it’s fully justified to send her off with her abusive mother! We aren’t even going to acknowledge that Andre literally had a part in raising her and her turning out this way, because somehow he did no wrong! And what sucks is that it’s succeeding at making those characters appear that way, because some fans are completely genuine when they say that Gabriel is more sympathetic than them. I mean, if you frequent the Reddit (which you absolutely shouldn’t, one way or another it will melt your brain), you’ll consistently see character rankings with Gabriel, Lila, Tomoe, and Chloe in the same category. Somehow the show put the bullies in the same categories as the literal abusive terrorist and his helper in these people’s eyes. You will constantly see these literal teenagers be put on the same category as adults who have done infinitely worse. Even Andre, who is a corrupt politician and terrible role model and literally RAISED CHLOE… is “woobified” by some fans, even going as far to say that Chloe abused him! Nevermind how that would even be possible when she was like, 5-7 when her mom left! I can’t point my fingers at the fans for this though, because the show goes out of its way to place all of its sympathy on the adults, even when they don’t deserve it, EVEN WHEN THE PAST WRITING LITERALLY PAINTS THEIR ACTIONS AS BAD

(It also doesn’t help that the fully grown adult’s actions are all forgiven but god forbid you’re terrible as a teenager, then you’ll get sent off to live with your verbally abusive mother while your basically deadbeat father adopts your half sister literally right after wiping his hands of you)

I will talk about the hypocrisy in redemption at some point, and how bias and forgiveness is handled, but godDAMN, this sucks

[an-excellent-choice]

While I like thinking about how the dead three's chosens (Ketheric, Orin, Gortash) could be redeemable. Today, I want to think deeper and talk about how they are irredeemable. (i like villains being villains oki)

So, all three of them have tragic backstories that you can sympathize with Ketheric losing his family and being ignored by his goddess, Orin being indoctrinated from the very start and her mother trying to kill her, Gortash being sold off and fighting for his life every step of the way.

So, these three experience the worst in life and thus also started doing horrible things. Generally, people in pain can cause great hurt to others but these three had specific actions that made them irredeemable.

These actions for me is inflicting the same pain they have experienced but worst. They didn't just continue the cycle of pain but they multiplied the pain in their cycles.

They had this pain and rather than think that nobody deserves the pain I experienced because it destroyed me. They decided that I experienced this, now it is your problem and your turn for it.

Ketheric lost his faith because he lost his family. Ketheric then proceeded to subjugate and murder families for still having faith in Selune. Not only that but he also cursed the very lands that were once filled with by families and friends.

Orin's mother attempted to murder her on Sarevok Anchev orders for Bhaal's approval. Orin ended up murdering (or attempted to murder) durge because she wanted to be the chosen one on nobody's orders.

Gortash was sold off by his parents and had fight his way to freedom/life. Gortash sells Karlach into slavery knowing full well that she will be a prototype to the engines. Karlach can never be free because of it, no matter how hard she fights or runs she still an engine for a heart that needs to stay in hells.

They are great villains. Sympathetic but still monsters in the end. Maybe redeemable but unforgivable for their victims