#often do and like it is a little more understandable given her direct parallels to susan but also. like. they’re weirder than that. the

[quietwingsinthesky]

it’s like. okay. twelve is a lesbian. we all say it enough, don’t we, that the doctor is genderless in the first place so we can get silly with the labels and twelve, for sure, is a lesbian. don’t you see, that’s why twissy is secretly yuri.

but if you ship bill/twelve, that’s disgusting. hey, why is that. what’s the implication here.

because to me the implication looks like, well. in this hypothetical that we’re playing with, where we can call the doctor a lesbian for fun but flinch from the doctor, you know, interacting romantically with another lesbian, then it feels like it’s only the aesthetics of the label that were important at all. the gender exploration feels more shallow the minute you go, right, but not with bill, because bill is a real lesbian. the doctor can’t be. the doctor is only a lesbian so far as it is funny to claim this old man could be one, so far as it isn’t too challenging.

(which is not to say that you should be making bill/twelve your priority number one ship or even that it actually enhances the text to think about their relationship romantically. i mean, i don’t ship it. i’m just making a point here. that it’s a weird line to draw in the sand, when everyone loves to talk about twelve’s gender, twelve’s lesbian vibes.)

there’s a certain level of genderweirdness that is acceptable to put onto characters. this guy is a lesbian, you can just tell from his vibes. the lady’s the gayest man i’ve ever seen on television. but don’t go too far there. don’t take the next step, push it into ‘hey, but what if they are, really’. because then, well, you’re encroaching on the territory of real gay characters. as if some minor speculation could change what’s in a show filmed and aired years ago. as if it causes any harm to say what-if.

because at the end of the day, the brick wall remains that twelve is still too much of a man to be a lesbian. it’s fine for jokes, light-hearted banter! but a complex gender? even in a fictional alien? and by this, we also bar other ways for bill and twelve to relate to each other, because if he’s too close to masculinity for pairing them up, then he’s too close to be an older queer mentor, too.

maybe this doesn’t make any sense. but i think it’d just be nice to have a little more embracing of genuine genderweirdness, not as a joke but as an actual thought exercise. and to not play in that space without feeling like you’re being watched for the minute you go a little too far in exploring how messy a character’s gender can be. because. i mean. if their gender isn’t allowed outside a box, what about the rest of us? where does that leave real multigender people, nonbinary people, people who just can’t slot in neatly to a comfortable label?

you know sometimes you think about making a post and then you realize how incredibly poorly it would go down and decide okay maybe i will keep that to myself actually

[emblazons]

I'm the last anon. I forgot to point something.

Do you think Henry stating that Brenner wasn't a monster but just an ordinary man seeking for special things in other people can make El realize Mike isn't her savior but just an ordinary boy who admire others for what make them different?

Not trying to say Mike and Brenner are the same, but they do have been paralleling/contrasting each other. Mike is a good person and has good intentions, but his insistence in seeing El as superior is not good for her nor to their relationship.

!!! okay I finally got a chance to answer this—and yes, I absolutely think those two ideas are meant to be connected for her (though I'm not sure she's parsed them out yet). Its one of the first thoughts I had watching part ii as a little-deeper than GA way back in July of 2022, so...its not even my ongoing analysis brain that brought it up (though its definitely expanded since then lol). Let me see if I can explain.

forewarning: this is really long and probably the most brutal anti-mlvn post I've ever written. It is not intended to be cruel to Mike in the slightest, but. In order to talk through the narrative, I must address what is going on in El's mind, and tbh...it's not all that pleasant in anyone's direction but Max's & maybe Hopper's at this point.

The entirety of S4, El is repeatedly presented with people attempting to challenge her oversimplified and depressed sense of self and others, given that, in the time since she's lost Hopper, her first home, her friends and her powers, she's been desperately trying (and failing) to sort through her place in the world.

Please note that the depression part is absolutely critical...because it's how Vecna can so easily influence her thinking, both via what she sees in NINA memories and during his monologue to her in Piggyback scenes.

We see her do it with Mike:

We see her do it with Brenner:

And we see her do with with Henry/Vecna:

—and as she goes along learning from each, we watch her come in contact with more nuanced (potential) self-concepts each time.

With Mike, she gets a fellow 14 year old with no framework for powers trying to navigate El's complex existential crisis he's spent several months unaware of and has no equivalent context for—which is why he pulls on her being a "superhero" so much. Its how he understands her, and what has been most obvious to him over the years; she's saved him, saved Will, and saved Hawkins in just the few years he's known her, and that (in his very nerd-oriented mind) is something worth celebrating and being excited about, even in people who don't have superpowers.

For him, El is not a "tool" necessarily...but the oversimple "superhero" side of her certainly overshadows the rest for him. Its why they struggle so hard in a "normal" romantic relationship—interpersonal closeness and emotional intimacy isn't what their bond is built on, though they do care for and want to protect one another.

With Brenner, she gets a more mature (and yet still power-focused) person who is familiar with her powers and past enough to give more nuanced insight, but who is also 1) abusive, manipulative and selfish and 2) has never looked at El, Henry or the other numbers as human beings, but rather tools to accomplish goals. Even so, Brenner is an adult, and therefore understands that El cannot move forward understanding herself so simply because his own actions require complex jumps and justification to make sense to himself—

—and also because, as anyone who has see themselves change over time knows, we do not keep the same oversimple self-concept of ourselves as we age, make mistakes, and grow. Brenner sees the girl with powers, and knows what she's capable of...just like he (and Owens, honestly) knows that she is not truly evil or monstrous despite having great destructive capability. The "monster" in him though is very human-oriented...which is why El so often finds herself associating Mike's insecurities within Brenner's manipulation.

Disclaimer: that last sounded bad for Mike, but: he is literally 14, and not trying to manipulate or abuse El in any way, shape, or form. Mike Wheeler is really just insecure kid who makes mistakes thrust into an extremely unusual situation, trying to do his best with the knowledge he has. Even so...immature and under-informed people often do things that mirror mature people with legitimately cruel intentions—one is just an adult aware & intentional about the tactic, where the other is a boy who isn't.

With Henry/Vecna though, El finds an true equal, but as a foil—the actual "monster" to her "superhero," though we spend the entire season realizing that even Henry cannot be parsed down to something so remedial or one-note as "monster" either.

Henry is someone who is almost exactly like El, down her powers and being abused/manipulated by Brenner—though she's made different choices, which is the radical difference between the two of them (and one I think will be core for her to learn as we move into S5).

While Henry and El are in fact quite identical in many ways, its the choice El made to say "no" to Henry when he asked her to join her + her resistance of his desire to overpower others (which he himself notes)—on top of her desire to protect others' lives and autonomy in a way he does not that makes her good!different, rather than the bad!different Henry is.

Even so...the similarities of experience and struggle they've had at Brenner's hands make what he says resonate with Eleven—because, as we all know, some of the best villains are the ones whose concept has clear mirroring within the protagonist, only a shade off (think Killmonger and Black Panther).

Its pretty clear then, why this long lead up through Mike, Brenner and Henry presenting her with increasingly complex concepts of self & humanity would make her reflect on Mike (+ their relationship).

From the beginning, Mike' finding El and taking her in first fits him (for better or worse) squarely into the "males whose presence in my life has been formative" corner—which is why we get Mike/Hopper, Hopper/Brenner and Mike/Brenner comparisons/parallels throughout course of the show this paragraph deserves a whole post on its own, but I'm trying to stay on track here lmfao.

Its also why this line in particular (and, finally, to your point) serves as a brutal reminder that El and Mike are incompatible—not because Mike himself is doing anything to harm El, but because Mike, like Brenner for her and Henry, 1) focuses on her powers and 2) has no framework for understanding her feeling different the way she wants (and needs) to be understood.

Given that El has already confronted Papa (and left him to die for what he's done to her) and she believes Hopper is already dead—

the only person left (truly guilty or not) in the line of people who 1) were integral to forming El's understanding the world; 2) tried to tell her how she should use her powers; 3) put up resistance to her autonomy; 4) lied to her and 5) could not understand her in her difference...is Mike Wheeler—

—who she already disappointed with, who is entirely unaware any of this shit is happening within her, and who is also being encouraged by an only slightly less unaware (and in love) Will Byers to "be the heart" and lead the party like he would a campaign.

...these are also the circumstances we get this supposedly "romantic monologue" in...and where we see him reference (and remind El) not only the moment he took her in (aka ended up in one of the inadvertent authority positions she's currently rebelling against), but also the fact that he thinks she's a "superhero," (which she doesn't believe about herself after Henry's monologue).

It's no wonder then, why she seemed uncomfortable af with all he said during the entire monologue...or why she ignored him the rest of the season (except, we learn, to say to Mike that Brenner—someone she can't stand, and who she's now spent a solid chunk of this season internally associating him with—was right).

Basically: the fact that a deeply conflicted and depressed El found kinship with a manipulative Henry (while simultaneously feeling rage at Brenner...and Mike by PTSD association) means that the displeasure she feels at Brenner and everything is gonna come out at another figure who has mirrored the things she is rebelling against—her very unaware boyfriend, Mike.

Hopper isn't there to balance as a "positive" adult male perception for her either...which leaves Mike in the wildly unfair position of being the "last man standing" for the parallel sadness & rage El feels about being different, much like Henry.

That is why Vecna saying that Brenner was an "ordinary, mediocre man" now has an immediate association with Mike in El's mind...one that is just another nail in the coffin of their romance, and that she will have to pull out of her perception if they're going to heal even on a friend level from the disaster this season has created in S5.

—I will say that the presence of Max as contrast through all of these moments is critical, as Max is the one person who has asked her who she is and what she wants, as well as who parallels El signs of internal conundrum about how she sees herself (that El overhears when she enters the void). Max is also the one who reminds El of the autonomy and positive human identity that El so wants for herself.

Hopper coming back and reclaiming the spot as a positive (actual) father figure that El has been projecting onto Mike in his absence is critical as well, considering his presence (and knowledge of Mike) will likely temper the brutality El is directs at Mike in her weakest moments of the season too). But...that is a whole other post, and I've already written (another) novel.

[rosedhall]

Thinking about Maya having intricate and close relationships with each of her ghosts, thinking about how all her living friends abandoned her.. that she can never touch, be with or genuinely know these people who want her safe because they're stuck in their own times and perpetually re-living through their deaths. She can't ever have something tangible.

Anyway, as such, here's some "Maya and the ghosts interpersonal relationships" headcanons:

Amy Bell. Maya immediately develops a soft spot for Amy, given that she was only aged ten at death, though she can provide little support and can never quite bring herself to explain to Amy that she's been dead for 30-odd-years whenever Amy excitedly tells her that she wants to be just like her when she's big, she does like to show her more of what the world has to offer. She plays video games with Amy excitedly directing her through them, completely stunned by the graphics. Loves to take her on walks and drives. Though it hurts her immensely that Amy doesn't seem to understand that only Maya can talk to her.

Doctor Bose. Bose and Maya also get off on a good foot, he's soft spoken, polite and (generally) the most emotionally intelligent ghost. I picture him being good at soothing her when she's distressed - psychiatrist and such - it starts the moment they meet, his warm, hollow self pressed against her flank trying to count her breaths as she clutches at her bleeding scalp. He wants nothing more than to tuck her under his sports jacket and chat aimlessly about her post-university prospects.

He resents her inability to cook well, tuts through the box if she has pesto pasta more than two nights in a row. Is far too invested in the gossip of her housemates and will trail them, flickering the lights if they touch Maya's food. He does not like them but tamps down any particularly scathing criticism for her peace of mind. Big old gossipy softie.

Harvey. Due to Harvey's actual chronic inability to have tact, he and Maya are not initially keen on each other. He's also incredibly old fashioned in his mannerisms and Maya has a deep distaste for being called "pet", "love" or "girl" (oh, what range a middle aged northern bloke has) and such their first interactions are pretty biting and unpleasant. Very snarky on Harvey's end.

However, they do eventually start to warm towards each other. Harvey begins to realise that Maya is a genuinely good, if nosey, person who's often left out by her peers due to her quirks. Maya realises Harvey is a deeply emotionally repressed man. They find comfort in being aware of these aspects. Harvey also decides he needs to be a protector of sorts, though he's stiff about it, Maya just likes winding him up, but knows he'd probably kill for her if he could.

Rosemary Hall. Much like with Harvey, Rose and Maya are not able to bond well initially. Rose holds herself at such a distance from potential connection, because the moment she stops playing aloof she gets hurt. And Maya doesn't understand why Rose is so cold with her. (Also, confronting the reality of Maya's experiences means that Rose will have to contend with the person Jimmy's become.) The parallels between them both are striking and as Maya becomes cognisant of that fact, the more she's able to wriggle her way into Rose's good books.

Once they settle in with each other more, Rose let's herself be a little more maternal; she'll constantly keep track of what Maya ought to be doing and remind her of it, she offers hangover remedies and insightful relationship advice. She wants to braid Maya's hair the way her mother did her own, but she's such an amorphous spirit that her fingers drift through the strands. Maya likes to listen to her go on about the hotel's glory days and watch shit soap operas together.

[chaikachi]

Since the writing team simply refuses to have Oscar meaningfully interact with most of the main cast besides Ruby and Jaune (for now, at least) smh smh, what sort of dynamic and relationships do you think Oscar would have with WBY? Pine boy deserves more justice!

Ohhhh v good questions!! Basing off their respective characters and what few interactions he has had with them, it's still tricky to say, but I'll do my best. DISCLAIMER: RG GLASSES ARE ON FOR THIS, I AM VERY SORRY. IF YOU WANTED AN UNBIASED APPROACH YOU CAME TO THE WRONG PLACE 😭

Both him and Blake are fairly quiet and more introspective members of the group. I think if they had any sort of relationship they'd probably talk to each other about their shared love of books and stories. I do think it would be fun if Blake teased him a little bit like she started doing with Ruby in v8, although Yang is doing a good job of that on her own. My guess for their dynamic is dependent on where Blake's character goes from here though, which is yet to be seen.

As for Weiss... She seems to care about him a lot! And Oscar got super happy when she agreed to go to the movies with him and Jaune. It's hard to say what their 1-on-1 dynamic will be. Honestly i picture it being a bit like Oscar's existing dynamics with Jaune or Nora after the comic relief treatment Weiss got for all of v9. But it's also hard to say, I wish I could come up with more than that. :(

Lastly Yang... honestly she's the one I have the most hopes for future interactions. We've seen so far that their dynamic is a bit goofy with Yang teasing him lots, but she cares about him a whole bunch too. Very much living up to big sister energy imo. She also seems very aware of how close him and Ruby are with how often she brings him up when talking to her sister (Ex: Yang being the one to first call Ruby when Oscar went missing in v6, asking her how Oscar felt about lying to Ironwood, emphasizing that they brought Oscar back from Salem when trying to cheer Ruby up, etc.)

I think I'd really like to see a heart to heart between Oscar and Yang in the future. Not as much as a Ruby and Oscar or Ruby and Yang conversation, but Yang expressed a lot of frustration, hurt, and confusion after Ruby snapped. She doesn't understand why her sister hasn't spoken to her or the rest of their team about her struggles... but Ruby did speak to Oscar about them at one point. We've also been given direct parallels back to back of how Yang and Oscar both approach Ruby differently about the same issue. And I think there's a lot to explore there.

As much as I would love to look at this question as exclusively about Oscar + one other person, with no exterior influences, I really can't. When I think of the canon narratives around all these characters, it really skews my read on what to expect in the future.

During v9, we see WBY being setup to be more mindful of Ruby and her struggles in the future... compared to Oscar who has always paid attention to those things. And how any dynamic that mixes those two sides together could lead to Oscar and WBY learning to take better care of their Ruby together.

Also, while we don't get a lot of other relationship focus for Oscar outside of what's absolutely necessary for the story (curse you limited budgets), it is worth noting that Oscar is very often included in team RWBY meetings/arcs where the rest of JNR is not.

Look at our little deuteragonist go. I don't feel like I answered these questions well but I don't know what else to say ahh i'm sorry but thank you for listening😫

[elriell]

Two Mates? Elriel & (El)ucien Theory.

These are just a few of my thoughts compiled together regarding having two mates, the signs and breadcrumbs Sarah has incorporated. If you know me you know am a Lucien fan so this is nothing hateful towards him and we will be looking at his place within it all as well, that being said this will have bond rejection/misalignment talk so if that is not your cup of tea I understand and you can skip this! As always I would love to hear everyones thoughts so long as we are all respectful ♡

Let's start by discussing the where the two ships align and parallel mates behaviour, and then we will discuss where their arc's veer from each other...

“TOUCH HER, SMELL HER, TASTE HER– THE INSTINCTS WERE A RUNNING RIVER.” (Lucien in ACOWAR about the mating bond.)

“Letting his scarred fingers touch her immaculate skin. Letting them brush the side of her throat, savoring the velvet-soft texture.”

“Azriel's fingers lingered at her nape, atop the first knob of her spine. Slowly, Elain pivoted into his touch. Until his palm lay flat against her neck.”

“They'd exchanged looks, the occasional brush of their fingers, but never this. Never blatant, unrestricted touching. ”

“He prayed she didn't peer down. Prayed she didn't understand the shift in his scent. ”

“Her arousal drifted up to him, and his eyes nearly rolled back in his head at the sweet scent. He'd beg on his knees for a chance to taste it. ”

“He needed to know what the skin of her neck tasted like. What those perfect lips tasted like.”

“This one moment, and maybe a taste, and that would be it.  

“Yes" Elain breathed, like she read the decision. Just this taste in the dead of the longest night of the year, where only the Mother might witness them. ”

Now you can easily parallel this to any of SJM's mates, like Feysand or Nessian. But for the sake of brevity I will leave you with the original link to the wonderful @suelky post where it was pointed out w/ Feysand quotes as well. [source]

Also "The instincts were a running river.” sounds a little like “Azriel’s Siphons guttered, the stones turning as dark and foreboding as the deepest sea."

The Bonus POV has a lot of typical "Mates" behaviours manifesting between Elain and Azriel, and it would make sense this would be a extreme POV shift as we have never been inside either of their heads before so we were bound to have a major learning curve, especially with Az who is so reserved with his emotions.

“But Lucien’s attention went right to the hallway toward the back, his nostrils flaring as he scented Elain’s direction. And who she’d gone with. A low snarl slipped out of him—”

“So you will leave Elain alone. If you need to fuck  someone, go to a pleasure hall and pay for it, but stay away from her."  Azriel snarled softly.”

There are countless main trio parallels but most of you are aware of which one is my favourite...

“Knelt on those stars and mountains inked on his knees. He would bow for no one and nothing— But his mate. His equal.”

“Her arousal drifted up to him, and his eyes nearly rolled back in his head at the sweet scent. He'd beg on his knees for a chance to taste it.”

"Every instinct in his body came roaring to the surface, so violent he had to choke them with a brutal grip or else he'd find himself on his knees, begging her for touch, for anything."

And on to where they go their separate ways from a textual perspective;

"Elain only shrank further into herself, no trace of that newfound boldness to be seen.”

“Rhys kissed the hollow of my collarbone, and my core went utterly molten. “My brave, bold, brilliant mate.”

“You can give everyone that I Will Slay My Enemies look—which is my favorite look, by the way. You can keep that sharpness I like so much, that boldness and fearlessness. I don’t want you to ever lose those things, to cage yourself.”

“And he had the nerve once his powers were back to shove me into a cage. The nerve to say I was no longer useful; I was to be cloistered for his peace of mind.”

“Remember that you are a wolf. And you cannot be caged.” He kissed my brow one more time, my blood thrumming and boiling in me, howling to draw blood.”

I think finding freedom and power from within is something that the books have emphasized through Feysand and Nessian's journey's. Which is so interesting considering Lucien and Elain are both feeling tied to each other, as if in a cage of sorts.

Elain herself has been stuffed in to a box of other peoples making throughout most of the series, it quite prevalent she might feel caged by their opinions of who she is.

"Maybe she was never given a chance to be that way." I whipped my head towards him. "You think I stifle her?" Rhys held up his hands. "Not you alone."

“Nesta had been right. It was like a prison, this place.” [Graysen's Manor]

“Shall I tend to my little garden forever?” When Nesta flinched, Elain said, “You can’t have it both ways. You cannot resent my decision to lead a small, quiet life while also refusing to let me do anything greater.”

“She ignored me, and saw Elain as barely more than a doll to dress up, but Nesta was hers. Our mother made sure we knew it. Or she just cared so little what we thought or did that she didn’t bother to hide it from us.”

And as for Lucien I think his duty and honour to her is what is caging him;

“I can’t stand to be in the same room as her for more than two minutes. I can’t stand to be in this court and have your mate pay for the very clothes on my back.”

“Why are you here?” Cassian asked, unable to help the sharpness. “Where’s Elain?”

“I am not always in this city to see my mate.” The last two words dripped with discomfort.”

“Why?” Not a flicker of emotion. “He is Elain’s mate.”

I waited. “It would be an invasion of her privacy to track him.”

Godbless Azriel for respecting Elain's privacy.

I think we would see/understand a lot more if we got a chance inside their heads but the one time we did see Lucien's POV we got a good glimpse at how he feels about his situation with Elain and it wasn't particularly positive and reminded me of Rhy's parents.

"She’d seen him not as a High Lord’s seventh son, but as a male. Had loved him without question, without hesitation. She had chosen him. Elain had been … thrown at him.”

“...to remember that she picked it. Picked me. That it’s not like my parents, shoved together.”

Not using the word cage per say but the implication isn't much better.

“You know them better than I do. But I will say that Lucien is loyal—fiercely so.”

“So is Azriel.”

I don't think the debate is really whether Lucien is deserving of her, or even Azriel for that matter, it is a question of who is actually right for her and vice-versa, who has she been consistently written to thrive and smile alongside. And that is Azriel.

Why does Sarah constantly put Azriel in the picture, from day DOT. She was screaming "hey look Azriel is here, and they would work magically together"

“And I think Elain—Elain would like it, too. Though she’d probably cling to Azriel, just to have some peace and quiet.” I smiled at the thought—at how handsome they would be together.”

There are several instances/evens that occur throughout the series that set both Elucien and Elriel's relationships apart, and I think it is highly intentional on Sarah's part...

“I said quietly, “We will get her back.” But Lucien was watching me warily. Too warily.”

“From the shadows near the entrance to the tent, Azriel said, as if in answer to some unspoken debate, “I’m getting her back.” Nesta slid her gaze to the shadowsinger. Azriel’s hazel eyes glowed golden in the shadows. Nesta said, “Then you will die.” Azriel only repeated, rage glazing that stare, “I’m getting her back.”

Or we can look at both Solstice's and the clear differences in how their relationships are growing, and also how well one and other know each other.

“Tell me when you knew,” he demanded, his knee pressing into mine. “That Rhysand was your mate. Tell me when you stopped loving Tamlin and started loving him instead.”

“He left the rest unspoken. Because her mate was here, sleeping a level up. Because her mate had been in the family room and Azriel had needed to stay by the door the whole time because he couldn't stand the sight of it, the scent of their mating bond, and needed to have the option  of leaving if it became too much.  Elain's large brown eyes flickered, well aware of all that.”

&

“I want to see her. Just once. Just—to know.” “To know what?” He hitched my damp cloak higher around us. “If she is worth fighting for.”

“Azriel stiffened. “I know. I helped rescue Elain, after all.” Az hadn’t so much as hesitated before going into the heart of Hybern’s war-camp.”

GIFTS REFLECTING THEIR RELATIONSHIP MILE MARKS

“Az ran a hand through his dark hair. “Are we …” Unusual for him to stumble with words. “Are we supposed to get the sisters presents?”

“I handed Elain the small box with her name on it. Her smile faded as she opened it. “Enchanted gloves,” she read from the card. “That won’t tear or become too sweaty while gardening.” She set aside the box without looking at it for longer than a moment. And I wondered if she preferred to have torn and sweaty hands, if the dirt and cuts were proof of her labor. Her joy.”

“Don’t forget that gardening often results in something pretty, but it involves getting one’s hands dirty along the way.” “And torn up by thorns,” I mused,”

“I didn’t dare mention that if she had been wearing the enchanted gloves Lucien had gotten her last Solstice, nothing would have pierced them at all.”

“He and Lucien did not exchange gifts, though the male had brought a gift for Feyre and one for his mate, who barely thanked him after opening the pearl earrings. Cassian’s heart strained at the pain etching deep into Lucien’s face as he tried to hide his disappointment and longing."

Not only is she visibly uninterested which is painful to watch, it also highlights how little he knows about her. SJM is creating a visible gap in their dynamic.

“The golden necklace seemed ordinary -- its chain unremarkable, the amulet tiny enough that it could be dismissed as an everyday charm. It was a small, flat rose fashioned of stained glass, designed so that when held to the light, the true depth of the colors would become visible. A thing of secret, lovely beauty. “It's beautiful," she whispered, lifting it from the box. ”

“My Nesta. Elain shall wed for love and beauty, but you, my cunning little queen … You shall wed for conquest.”

“I painted flowers for Elain on her drawer,” I said, sawing and sawing. “Little roses and begonias and irises. And for Nesta … ”

“She plucked another figurine from the mantel: a rose carved from a dark sort of wood. She held it in her palm, its solid weight surprising, and traced a finger over one of the petals. “He made this one for Elain. Since it was winter and she missed the flowers.”

“Elain bit her lip and then smiled sheepishly. “It’s for the headaches everyone always gives you. Since you rub your temples so often.”

“I led her into the sitting room, where Cassian had a bottle of amber-colored liquor in each hand, Azriel was already rubbing his temples,”

“She hadn't bought her mate a present. But she'd gotten Azriel one last year -- a headache powder he kept on his nightstand at the House of Wind. Not to use, but just to look at. Which he'd done every night he’d slept there.”

“Azriel unwrapped the box, glancing at the card that merely said, You might find these useful at the House these days, and then opened the lid.  Two small, bean-shaped fabric blobs lay within. Elain murmured, "You put them in your ears, and they block any sound. With Nesta and Cassian living there with you...”

See yet again a very thoughtful and funny gift on her part. Now at it's core even just simply comparing their general reactions says a lot about the story Sarah is putting forward.

"Silence again. Then Azriel tipped his head back and laughed. I’d never heard such a sound, deep and joyous.”

“He chuckled, unable to suppress the impulse. "No wonder you didn't want me to open it in front of everyone."  

Elain’s mouth twitched into a smile. "Nesta wouldn't appreciate the joke.”

“Elain bit her lip and then smiled sheepishly."

"Cassian’s heart strained at the pain etching deep into Lucien’s face as he tried to hide his disappointment and longing."

“She hadn't bought her mate a present. "

The writing is nothing if not clear about the discomfort both Lucien and Elain feel in regards to each other, though they lay under different reasons.

We are given multiple incidents in which we are told about how mating bonds are not perfect and we are given clear examples of it repeatedly, about woman enduring out of obligation, and do not forget this is heavily discussed literally in regards to Elain and her circumstances.

“She’d been revealed as his mate, and endured the miserable union mostly from gratitude for her unharmed wings.”

“You said your mother and father were wrong for each other; Tamlin said his own parents were wrong for each other.” I peeled off my dressing robe. “So it can’t be a perfect system of matching. "

“She glowed with good health. Except … Her brown eyes were wary. Usually, that look was reserved for Lucien. The male was definitely in the family room,”

“Elain had already departed with Feyre, claiming she had to be up with the dawn to tend to an elderly faerie’s garden. Cassian didn’t exactly know why he suspected this wasn’t true. There had been some tightness in Elain’s face as she’d said it. Normally when she made such excuses, Lucien was around,”

“Elain, the wretch, had taken the seat between Feyre and Varian, about as far from Lucien as she could get.”

VS

“That smile grew, bright enough that it lit up even Azriel’s shadows across the room. “I would like to build a garden,” she declared. “After all of this … I think the world needs more gardens.”

“Then his gaze shifted to Elain, and though it was utterly neutral, something charged went through it. Between them. Elain’s breath caught slightly, and she gave him a shallow nod of greeting before brushing past, leading Nesta into the room.”

What if ”—I jerked my chin toward the window, to my sister and the shadowsinger in the garden—“that is what she needs? Is there no free will? What if Lucien wishes the union but she doesn’t?”

“Can you truly fly?” He set down his fork, blinking. I might have even called him self-conscious. He said, “Yes. Cassian and I hail from a race of faeries called Illyrians. We’re born hearing the song of the wind.” “That’s very beautiful,” she said. “Is it not—frightening, though? To fly so high?”

“ I couldn’t tell if she was looking at his blue Siphon or at his scarred skin beneath as she breathed, “Beautiful.” Color bloomed high on Azriel’s golden-brown cheeks, but he inclined his head in thanks and led my sister toward the back doors into the garden, sunlight bathing them.”

“This is Truth-Teller,” he told her softly. “I won’t be using it today—so I want you to.”

“Never, Rhys said from where he finished buckling on his own weapons against the side of the wagon. I have never once seen Azriel let another person touch that knife.”

The romantic subtext is there and has been for quite some time, they prove it book after book when SJM continues to grow their bond and nurture it whilst breaking her connection with Lucien further apart, and for what reason?

“A mating bond can be rejected,” Rhys said mildly, eyes flickering in the mirror as he drank in every inch of bare skin I had on display. “There is choice. And sometimes, yes—the bond picks poorly. Sometimes, the bond is nothing more than some… preordained guesswork at who will provide the strongest offspring. At its basest level, it’s perhaps only that. Some natural function, not an indication of true, paired souls.”

“Why not make them mates?” I mused. “Why Lucien?” [...]

“I’m serious.” I turned toward him and crossed my arms. “What decides it? Who decides it?” Rhys straightened his lapels before plucking an invisible piece of lint from them. “Fate, the Mother, the Cauldron’s swirling eddies …”

“What if the Cauldron was wrong?”

“Just this taste in the dead of the longest night of the year, where only the Mother might witness them.”

“The Cauldron chose three sisters. Tell me how it's possible that my two brothers are with two of those sisters, yet the third was given to another.”

It is remarkably interesting to me that we are told about what Rhys suspects/believes is responsible for mating bonds, paralleled alongside Azriel questioning it all, I also think it is abundantly clear from his answer to Feyre he doesn't truly know for sure.

We also have several lines of dialogue talking about the sisters and fate, their reason for entering the IC's life. Not only that but we get a glimpse at Azriel's personality and how despite the world (Rhys and the mating bond in general) telling him to despair, he still found it in him to have hope the Cauldron could be wrong.

This is so significant, and she has carefully woven his character throughout the series to make this incredibly plausible.

“If I had not met a shadowsinger, I would not have known that it is the family you make, not the one you are born into, that matters. I would not have known what it is to truly hope, even when the world tells you to despair.”

“And then he said to my sisters, “We have not known each other for long. But I have to believe that you were brought here, into our family, for a reason, too. And maybe today we’ll find out why.”

“All three sisters blessed by fate and gifted with powers to match your own.”

“Even after the bond is rejected, they see her as belonging to them. Sometimes they return to challenge the male she chooses for herself. Sometimes it ends in death. It is savage, and it is ugly, and it mercifully does not happen often, but …”

“Oh, I can, and I will. If Lucien finds out you're pursuing her, he has every right to defend their bond as he sees fit. Including invoking the Blood Duel.”

As you can see even back in ACOWAR she was weaving the web for Elriel's journey and an upcoming Blood Duel/The threat of one.

“Many mated pairs will try to make it work, believing the Cauldron selected them for a reason. Only years later will they realize that perhaps the pairing was not ideal in spirit.”

I think it is pretty clear from all the quotes above that Lucien is no her ideal spirit and vice-versa to be frank when you put it side by side his budding relationship with Vassa or hers with Azriel they are clearly very different.

“On the continent, there are territories that believe the females literally belong to their mate. But not here. Elain would have our full protection if she rejects the bond.”

“Azriel's hand slid up her neck, burying in her thick hair. Tilting her face the way he wanted it. Elain's mouth parted slightly, her eyes scanning his before fluttering shut.  Offer and permission.  He nearly groaned with relief and need as he lowered his head toward hers. ”

Elain is choosing Azriel, choosing their bond over the one assigned to her time and time again... Back to mating bonds;

“The ancient healer jerked her chin toward Lucien. “See what he can do. If anyone can sense if something is amiss, it’s a mate.”

“The mating bond. It is a bridge between souls.”

"She pointed at Lucien as she saw herself out. “Try sitting down with her. Just talking—sensing. See what you pick up. But don’t push.”

“Can you hear mine?” He wasn’t sure if she truly meant to address him, but he said, “No, lady. I cannot.”

Her too-thin shoulders seemed to curve inward. “No one ever does. No one ever looked—not really.”

"Azriel’s hazel eyes churned as he studied my sister, her too-thin body. And without a word, he winnowed away. Mor watched the space where he’d been standing long after he was gone.”

“Should we—does she need …?” “She doesn’t need anything,” Azriel answered without so much as looking at Lucien.

Elain was staring at the spymaster now—unblinkingly. “We’re the ones who need …” Azriel trailed off. “A seer,” he said, more to himself than us. “The Cauldron made you a seer.”

“It made sense, I supposed, that Azriel alone had listened to her. The male who heard things others could not … Perhaps he, too, had suffered as Elain had before he understood what gift he possessed.”

“But Azriel nodded. “You knew,” he said to Elain. “About the young queen turning into a crone.” Elain blinked and blinked, eyes clearing again. As if the understanding, our understanding … it freed her from whatever murky realm she’d been in.”

Are you telling me that Madja saying a mate would know, would sense whatever is going on with her, and as it turns out Azriel was the one to sense and uncover it is solely what, a coincidence? Also to emphasize what she said about "A bridge between souls..." Where else have we heard that terminology? The Truth-Teller scene.

“I saw the painting in my mind: the lovely fawn, blooming spring vibrant behind her. Standing before Death, shadows and terrors lurking over his shoulder. Light and dark, the space between their bodies a blend of the two. The only bridge of connection … that knife.”

Not to mention this scene is simply iconic for a multitude of reasons, how poetic Feyre describes them, the clear soulmates/ying-yang subtext and him giving her something he has given no other but that's another story.

Azriel has also been displaying some very protective fiercely so mating vibes towards her,

“Azriel stilled. “What happened to Elain?” Cassian waved a hand. “A fight with Nesta. Don’t bring it up,” he warned when Azriel’s eyes darkened. ”

“Cassian surveyed the shadows gathered around Az. “You all right?” His brother nodded. “Fine.” But shadows still swarmed him.”

“Nesta saw the blow land, like a physical impact, in Elain’s face, her posture. No one spoke, though shadows gathered in the corners of the room, like snakes preparing to strike.”

“Azriel’s Siphons guttered, the stones turning as dark and foreboding as the deepest sea. “Where did Lucien go.”

I think there are some mixed opinions on Lucien and whether he deserves her (and vice-versa in this fandom) but I don't think that is what this comes down too, they are both handling it in the way they think best/following their instincts.

Lucien is hurting throughout this process as well, but I think ultimately it is honor and loyalty binding him to her not any genuine emotion for her as a human being fae. I think realising they are not meant for each other and supporting each other developing true bonds with other people will be their journey. And it would be a completely fresh and new view of a mating bond.

Smaller pieces of dialogue that need little explaining and a rather oddly specific choice of words in the latest book that is meant to set up the next one in the series:

“You’d know if she’d died,” Azriel said, pausing his work and looking up at Cassian. He tapped his brother’s chest with a scarred hand. “Right here—you’d know, Cass.”

“Elain and Feyre—that was the new status of things. The bond Elain had chosen.”

"I'd never do such a thing. you must be thinking of your other mate."

Honestly? At this rate I have no doubt Elriel are endgame and everything within canon text spells that out but I truly believe he will be her second mate/the will form a bond via some circumstance that shall arise due to these little hints.

I would love to hear your thoughts and/or additions because I by all means didn't do a massive deep dive and there are most likely tons more examples to add but I didn't want it to become overwhelming to read!

Hope everyone has a spectacular and magical evening <3

[seyaryminamoto]

Do you think canon Zuko has any understanding of the idea of duty? That he, especially given that he aspires to political power, should act like his status as Prince gives him certain responsibilities? That doing what's best for the for Fire Nation or the world might require him to do things which make him unhappy or uncomfortable or require him to make grave personal sacrifices? Does he even understand duty as a concept?

Oof. Complicated questions, thus, this sat in my inbox for a veeeery long time.

I honestly, seriously, genuinely... don't think Zuko truly understood, at any point in canon, what it really meant to be a leader. I know many of us (and I think you, too?) don't particularly like the comics, but in my opinion, The Promise did a surprisingly decent job at highlighting several problems left in the wake of the end of the war, and perhaps unintentionally, this is one of the problems: upon becoming Fire Lord, Zuko is remarkably erratic, unsure of his choices, even seeking advice from his FATHER, of all people, because he has no idea what he's doing.

In the most favorable possible view of Iroh, he taught Zuko to be a better person. I don't entirely adscribe to this belief, but fine, let's concede that he did, or else this answer would never end: not just because you're a good person, however, are you guaranteed to be a good leader. Zuko, as we both know, is far from the best person in the world, and he is prone to making impulsive, emotional mistakes that can cause harm and trouble, and typically, Zuko doesn't face the consequences of most his actions, or the narrative just pins the blame on someone else. When we see this sort of behavior in a real-life politician, the immediate reaction we would have is "this guy is awful at his job", and sadly, I find myself thinking that quite often when it comes to Zuko's canon tenure as Fire Lord.

So... what is Zuko's concept of duty? Going by his pursuit of Aang in the first two seasons, duty is a task given to him by someone whose approval he seeks (in this case, Ozai) and he must pull it off, no matter what, to gain said approval. By Book 3, this logic still applies fairly easily to how Zuko acts over Iroh: I've highlighted in the past that the main motivation for Zuko's redemption is Iroh, doing right by Iroh, making amends to Iroh, regretting how he treated Iroh. He points that out explicitly in Ember Island Players, he does it as well indirectly by bringing up Iroh first of all, when confronting Ozai: this is his main priority. Ergo... I'd honestly say it's safe to judge that this is what Zuko regards as duty, as what he has to do. Iroh wants him to be Fire Lord? That's exactly what he becomes. The difficulties and complications in this particular line of work are taken for granted, and so, we have an outcome that was remarkably well depicted in The Promise, despite that comic's many glaring flaws: Zuko gets swept back and forth, twisted left and right by all the pressures and responsibilities, because he has no idea what he's doing as Fire Lord, and no idea/experience in how to be a real leader.

As far as I can tell, the core of the matter is that nobody really seems to have taken Zuko all that seriously as future Fire Lord. Ozai, evidently, wasn't training Zuko to be his personal heir. Ozai himself is a questionable source of information regarding learning what it means to be Fire Lord, considering he, as well, wasn't raised to take that role, just as he didn't raise Zuko for it. Yet Iroh didn't exactly teach Zuko how to lead anyone either, as far as I can tell: his lessons were meant to be of a more personal nature, and even then, Zuko had lots of trouble accepting most of them. Iroh's firebending lessons to Zuko were typically stunted in the basics because he was hot-headed and rash about getting to the intense and interesting stuff...

So: neither Ozai nor Iroh gave Zuko actual responsibilities. Ozai gave him a punishment Zuko was trying to endure however possible, a punishment he wanted to prove himself unworthy of by finding the Avatar and "regaining his honor". Then, Iroh punished Zuko as well by giving him the cold shoulder in Book 3, then he escaped and Zuko did everything he did, after betraying Ozai, to prove himself worthy of Iroh's kindness once again. It's not actual duty, the way it is in Azula's case: no doubt, Azula wants Ozai's approval too, but she has the madman's trust when it comes to finding her brother and uncle, to taking down the Avatar, and to conquering Ba Sing Se, as far as anyone can tell. I do doubt Ozai gave her all these missions at once, but he gave her the resources through which she pulled off ALL of them: she had the firebending procession, she had a ship, she had a train-tank, she had mounts... Zuko had a rundown ship that looked like a 1:10 scale version of every other ship in the harbor back in the very third episode: he was being punished. In contrast, Azula is entrusted with a mission, with LEADERSHIP, while Zuko has no visible, tangible, objective experience with the latter (consider how Azula steals the Dai Li's loyalty from under Long Feng: when did we see Zuko pulling off something like this? Even with Jet, Zuko was more of an associate to the Freedom Fighters, and Jet was still the leader).

I've always thought Zuko wasn't prepared to be Fire Lord, and the main reasons are the ones you indirectly point out through this ask: Zuko doesn't seem to treat the throne as a responsibility, but as his right. I won't get tired of pointing out that this was NOT Zuko's birthright, he was NOT born thinking he'd be Fire Lord: he was born to the second branch in the Fire Nation family. We literally SEE the day in which Lu Ten's death is revealed to him. According to somewhat official sources? He's ELEVEN in Zuko Alone's flashbacks. I, personally, think he looks a little younger than that, but I think that's the official wikia age, no idea where they got that info but that's what it says. Meaning...

Zuko, objectively, only had been crown prince for FIVE YEARS.

Zuko was NOT raised, not by his mother, not by his father, with the belief that the throne would one day be his (Ursa is gone before Ozai is crowned and Ozai clearly wanted Azula for the job rather than Zuko).

And yet, when you backtrack to the show? It seriously looks like that was the case. He clings to the throne in Books 1 and 2 as though he had no other purpose in life, as though this was everything that was promised to him (in contrast, Azula only ever indicates wanting the throne in Sozin's Comet: Part One). Even when he's an outlaw, discarded and cast out, he STILL talks about the throne, as though most his identity were built upon the notion that he must become Fire Lord: why? How come? Within five years, he's crafted his entire existence around being the heir to the throne? That's... a bit weird.

And a bit wishful, too. Which is why I commend that the comics show him struggling as Fire Lord, if anything they should've had him struggling MORE than that, because Zuko is simply NOT prepared for these responsibilities. He never gave any indication, any sign, of seeing it as such. He sees it as his right, his birthRIGHT. Why? Why more people don't ponder how utterly strange this behavior is, beats me. But it really does bother me that Zuko built his entire existence around being Fire Lord in a very similar way to how Korra built her own about being the Avatar. I have very little praise to give LOK in general, but the premise of Korra learning she was a person, a human, and not just the Avatar felt like the perfect parallel to Aang's story, where he was very much anchored in his humility and belief that he was just "one kid", and his rejection of his duties as the Avatar was meant to change gradually as he learned to accept himself as he was. Korra, however, never fully hit the mark with this subject, in my personal opinion... much as Zuko doesn't hit the mark either, since the show's only direct attempt to "deconstrue" Zuko's clinging to the throne happens in one dialogue, and his attachment to the idea is built up again, right afterwards:

Zuko: And then ... then you would come and take your rightful place on the throne? Iroh: No. Someone new must take the throne. An idealist with a pure heart and unquestionable honor. It has to be you, Prince Zuko. Zuko: Unquestionable honor? But I've made so many mistakes. Iroh: Yes, you have. You've struggled; you've suffered, but you have always followed your own path. You restored your own honor, and only you can restore the honor of the Fire Nation. Zuko: I'll try, Uncle.

And there we have it. The only point in the show (that I can remember) where Zuko seemed to not feel worthy of the throne and questioned he should be the one sitting on it (RIGHTFULLY!), buuuuuuuut he goes right back to wanting it, right afterwards, based on how this single exchange was enough for him to be 100% determined to take down his sister, merely a few lines later.

As for his willingness to make personal sacrifices... some might say he was outright willing to die for Katara in the finale -- though I'll point out he was trying to redirect the lightning anyway, didn't do it as well as he should have, but he wasn't exactly, consciously, trying to DIE for her... --, some might say that he left Mai behind in the FIre Nation, and that as well was a sacrifice... but was it? We don't see him missing her, or suffering about her fate, at any point in time after SHE sacrifices herself for him in the Boiling Rock (my biggest gripe over this particular canon couple is this, tbh). I feel like the show generally presents Zuko's situation as somewhat... self-sacrificial? Especially in Books 1 and 2, and yet that's really not the case: it isn't Zuko himself who makes the choice of traveling to find Aang, it's a punishment inflicted upon him.

This particular view upon his circumstances makes it so Zuko is never responsible for... well, any of his choices? It's always someone else's fault, therefore, whatever he suffers through, there's always someone he can (and usually does) resent for it. Therefore... I can't genuinely think of anything Zuko sacrificed in order to come as far as he did. He was forced to let go of things by his father, typically, by Zhao as well, maybe, but even then, it's not like we saw that he has a super healthy and happy relationship with, I don't know, Earth Kingdom people (his only meaningful positive EK bond was with Jin, which went nowhere and goes forgotten after a single mini episode)? The Palace staff? The commoners of the Fire Nation (they just treat him like a hero and he seems awkward and distant about it anyway, like he can really just do without their worship)? He doesn't have other friends beyond Azula's own friends... thus, he doesn't sacrifice anything that really matters. And in a sense, some people might say he doesn't have to sacrifice anything at all: he already went through so much strife and struggle that why would he need to sacrifice anything else? But the thing is... you DO have to learn to make such sacrifices if you're going to be a good king.

So often, people who devote themselves to their jobs have to consciously neglect their families, to name one thing: Zuko neglects Mai and she explodes at him for it in The Promise, then he just tries to get her back at all costs in Smoke & Shadow, with no thoughts given to the fact that maybe he isn't ready to juggle both a relationship and the throne, that maybe Mai could be happier with someone other than him, someone who can give her the attention and relationship she's looking for... THOSE are the sacrifices I'd be referring to, personally, sacrifices where his happiness and peace of mind have to be set aside for the sake of something much more important than himself, and I expect that's the kind of sacrifices you're referring to, too. I seriously don't think he's ready to make them, and with the comics as reference, there's seriously no evidence to suggest he's prepared to accept these burdens that come with the heavy mantle of leadership and ruling. I've never seen any signs of him being ready for it, myself. Maybe I need to reexamine the show and see if maybe I'm missing something... but I don't really think I am.

The worst part, for me, is that Zuko isn't even doing the bulk of the things he's doing in pursuit of genuine happiness: he's doing it over a sense of destiny. He never stops to reason with that destiny, to wonder if maybe he doesn't need to be Fire Lord, if maybe he could have a life beyond that role. Book 2 veeeery briefly suggests he MIGHT be on his way to questioning that destiny, but as I've said before, I don't see the sense in Zuko's big change of heart after the Appa incident considering we don't really understand what he's learned, other than how to be the perfect nephew for Iroh, apparently. Zuko never really is happy, as he says in the show: his happiest moments are with Mai and they're only like a 25% of his relationship with her, everything else is a mess (and his relationship with her isn't exactly the core of his character, either). So, the way I see it... Zuko is even worse off than it looks at first glance. He's out to fulfill a destiny he has never stopped to reason with, a destiny he's 100% sure is his, despite he has only been on that path, objectively, for five years? Despite he wasn't raised all along under the belief that this was what he was supposed to be? If given a chance to be genuinely happy, what on earth would he even do? A lot of the growth I gave him in Gladiator was based on that particular question: is the throne really what Zuko needs to be happy? It doesn't look like it, even in canon. If it's not... then it's not happiness he seeks, it's some sort of sense of assurance that he's doing the right thing, according to the figure of authority he follows at a set point in time: by Book 3, said authority is Iroh, and Iroh wants him on the throne. His motivation, as far as I can see it, is as simple as that.

Long story short... I don't think Zuko really has a strong grasp on many concepts that he absolutely should have reasoned with and worked out in order to become Fire Lord. In a sense, he's way too young for the role he's given, for the heavy burdens he has to deal with, and I'll NEVER see the sense in not having Iroh taking the throne (beyond how "poetic" the creators and writers found it to crown Zuko to finish his story, of course), at least for a short time, before Zuko can be ready. This is exactly why I wrote things that way in my oneshot where Azula takes Zuko's role, more or less: Iroh serves as regent while Azula prepares for taking the full role of Fire Lord when she's ready. I love her, she's awesome, I absolutely adore her character... but I don't think an Azula who was sidelined and sent on a long voyage with her uncle for YEARS could possibly be ready for the responsibilities of being Fire Lord right away.

Meanwhile? Iroh was given leadership of military missions enough times that he became a general in the Fire Nation forces. By all evidence, he was Fire Lord Azulon's pampered and spoiled son, whom he DID prepare for the duties of a Fire Lord for as long as Iroh was born: Iroh literally had fifty-ish years of preparation, as far as I can tell? How is he NOT the better suited person to take the throne, if just temporarily, while his nephew learns what it really means to rule by watching him, or by maybe learning leadership by managing smaller duties first, a specific town or city, and then putting his knowledge to good use by becoming Fire Lord properly?

Eh... because it wouldn't be an epic enough finale for the show, I suppose. That's the only answer I can find for this particular question.

So... yeah. That got long :'D but in short... I don't think Zuko has a strong grasp on responsibility and duty, let alone on the burdens inherent to these concepts. Yet more reasons why his character's arc can't hit all the marks it should, imo, to make it as great as the whole fandom is already convinced it is.

[esther-dot]

The thing is the Willas and Tyrion post made to show the situation for Sansa was almost similar. Both are old men, disabled, heir to their house, trying to steal Sansa birthright. I don't think that op once said that Willas is cruel like Tyrion. I never saw Jonsa hated Willas. I think op means that Tyrells will be better than Lannisters yet they are opportunist like Lannisters. Maybe some do not like the pairing but no one called Willas a bad guy.

(in reference to this post)

I didn’t see the post my anon was referring to, but often, one post inspires other posts on a similar topic and depending on who you follow, you’ll experience a totally different conversation. Not all of us put our posts in the main tag so sometimes we’re responding to things the next person hasn’t seen. If you check on one blog and see a post once, it’s easy to ignore. If you scroll through and see the same post 5 times with added commentary or tags, and additional posts talking about it too, it hits you in a totally different way. It sounded to me like my anon felt what was happening on their dash went beyond the Lannister and Tyrell comparisons. I’m not characterizing the original post in any which way, just saying as the conversation evolved my anon got a specific impression that they objected to, and as I had spoken fondly of Willas before, they reached out. I didn’t mind in the least. Although, for what it’s worth, I haven’t seen Jonsas hating on Willas either. The benefits of curating your tumblr experience!

I agree with you that there is a comparison to be made between the Lannisters and the Tyrells, and that it is worthwhile to find parallels since the author enjoys those so much. I just think the contrast between the two scenarios (marriage to Tyrion vs marriage to Willas) better highlight the issue at hand rather than saying the parallels mean they’re the same. Saying, oh, here’s a good guy and a much nicer family and Sansa could have something rather beautiful there and—oh shit, they’re still using her, little girls are still being handed off as the means to an end, Sansa is still not being seen as a person—that’s the interesting stuff to me. 

Just because one family chooses methods that are less directly violent doesn’t mean there aren’t victims to their machinations, and there’s a really interesting direct parallel with the Lannisters killing Robb, and Olenna killing Joffrey. Obviously, one is a whole hell of a lot more sympathetic, one is a lot more evil, but there are a lot of intersections in their stories. But I think there’s a difference between living within the context of their world and being particularly evil. I suppose that’s what my previous anon and I agree on. Houses cared about advantageous marriages, marrying off children to procure things/alliances was normal (as in, the Starks were gonna do this), but even though it’s normal to them, we shouldn’t be ok with it, and we should recognize the shades of grey to each scenario. But the underlying sentiment is that it is all bad. It leaves girls and women incredibly vulnerable and that plays out later in other people’s stories where people marry and then kill women to get what they want. I believe that fate awaited Sansa if she had given Tyrion a child. I’ve written before that Sansa saved herself and the North when she refused to have sex with Tyrion, and as weird as the castle-y sex metaphors are, I think that supports the idea that this is something the author is consciously writing about.

But back to this topic specifically, in spite of the similarities between the scenarios, the big difference is that the Lannisters were holding Sansa hostage and forced her into the marriage, the Tyrells were offering her an escape from a horrible situation. Darling Sansa immediately romanticizes it and dreams of love and family, but even though she didn’t understand that the offer was not about her happiness and they had a goal, if we compare the two offers, if Sansa had a choice, she would probably choose Willas because she was a prisoner to the family that murdered hers and being forced into marrying one of them is a special brand of horrific.

Another thought I have is that we need to be very careful when comparing Willas and Tyrion because my other anon may have felt that people were emphasizing Tyrion’s dwarfism as his defining trait or Willas’s bad leg his. To their world that matters, but to me as a reader (to everyone in our corner of the fandom, I believe), I care more about who they are. And from what we know, as individuals, they’re nothing alike. Just because Willas would be married to Sansa doesn’t mean he’d have the same goals because we don’t know that he is power hungry or wants Winterfell for himself. His family is a bit conniving, but I don’t think we know that about him. Tyrion will never inherit his father’s castle, but Willas is the heir to Highgarden. That’s really scary for Sansa fans and that element, Tyrion’s lust for that position, (potentially) isn’t there in her marriage to Willas. I think that’s an important variable. So, broadly speaking, sure, similarities, but other Jonsas have notes there Willas may be foreshadowing for Jon, share parallels with him, and I tend to think they’re onto something. Anyway, if we’re thinking of Sansa as a person, it makes a huge difference that one man is a bad person (rapist, murderer) and the other is by all accounts a sweetheart. That one man has nothing and desperately wants title/castle/his evil father’s approval, while the other is loved by his family, has his own estate, and while his father wants to become more powerful, his methods are much more in line with normal standards for their world. So, not only are Sansa’s feelings about it different, her circumstances entering into such a marriage and prospects after are as well. That matters to me. I like to imagine Cat’s reaction to the news of a Sansa x Willas marriage compared to her reaction to them forcing Sansa to marry Tyrion. I think it would be quite different.

As I read your message and responded, I just kept thinking that it’s possible we don’t even really disagree. I can see why someone would say “it’s the same” and I think you can understand those of us who say, “but let’s make sure we acknowledge where it isn’t.” So, I don’t really feel like I’m arguing with you, just saying I come at it from a different angle, as my previous anon did.

[writing-in-april]

Converging Parallels

Spencer Reid x Female Single Mom Reader (Spencer’s POV)

Summary: Spencer goes to a support group Penelope suggested after the death of Maeve. He quickly connects with a single mom who’s experiences have been similar to Spencer’s.

A/N: I’m prefacing this by saying I know shit about math and am horrible at it lol 😂 so my math analogies might be horribly off 😂 This is my fifth fic for my 30 fics in 30 days for April- this one was requested by @samuel-de-champagne-problems- this is the request- (go check out there fics too!!) I tweaked it a little bit so I hope you enjoy it 🥺 a lot of it is confined to Spencer grappling with his thoughts- but there is dialogue I promise lol 😂I had a good time writing it ☺️Thanks for all the love recently and if you want to drop me an ask for any reason you can do so here- I’m always looking for some new friends on here (I promise I don’t bite lol) Thanks again and hope y’all enjoy 🥰

Warnings: Angst with a hopeful ending, General dealings surrounding death and grief, Mentions of Maeve’s death, Reader’s a widow, Guilt about moving on, Reader’s child is a daughter

Main Masterlist Word Count: 1.6k

Parallel lines were never supposed to meet, they were set on a strict path following in a similar direction with no hope of ever converging. At least that’s what was the widely accepted definition by anyone with any authority in the field of mathematics.

My own math degree was being contested by a set of two lines set on a collision course with each other, though they were not supposed to. Logically I knew that the two lines were not beholden to any mathematical equation as I was referring to two human lives.

We were set on a similar course, only slight differences that seemingly were leading us to different destinations, or at least I tried to convince myself that. I tried every night to convince myself that she was only a friend, that it wasn’t what she wanted and I was desecrating the memory of the person I still claimed to be the only person I loved.

Logically I knew that by forcing where I wanted our relationship to go, what I thought the universe wanted to happen wasn’t what I truly wanted. The reason I had boxed us in so vehemently was only because I was scared and guilty, I knew it too. I wanted us to converge, but logic doesn’t always win out when dealing with guilt.

It had all started with Garcia mentioning that I should consider going to a grief support group after the death of Maeve. Every action I took was being weighed down by her death, whether I cared to admit it or not.

Garcia had good intentions when she suggested going to this meeting to me, of that I was sure. It isn’t that I saw no reason to go to the support group, I just knew that it would dreg up all the unwanted feelings that bombarded me enough already.

The flier in my hands felt heavy even though it was made of paper it weighed my hands down enough where I almost dropped it. I could have let it go then to have it fly away, being taken by the wind, that would let me forget about it. But, I knew it would have only made me forget for a short while, I’d inevitably get questions from Garcia and my own mind wouldn’t let me forget the reality of what had happened. And, logically I knew that it would most likely help. So instead of letting the wind take it away, I crumpled the paper slightly in my hands out of frustration, moving my feet forward one step at a time to enter the building.

That’s where I had first met her. When I first walked in I didn’t immediately lock eyes with her or anything, my eyes were too fixated on the ground for that to happen.

I only noticed her when she was invited to tell her story. Her strength instantly captivated me, almost making me feel like a failure at first. Her story of how she lost her husband was eerily similar in some aspects, especially the cause of his death. The feeling of failure on my part to be strong swirled in my gut as she recounted her struggles that were so starkly similar to mine. She even had a young daughter to take care of as well, she often spoke of her whenever she told her story, almost neglecting herself sometimes- which she admitted she knew she needed to work on.

However, when she came up to me to talk after the meeting was concluded my opinion switched to view her as inspiring. We began getting coffee after each meeting, sometimes talking for hours, sometimes sitting in silence. Whatever I needed she was there to give it to me, whenever she needed help I wanted to be there too.

To see our almost parallel lives begin to converge at first felt like someone had driven a car into traffic about to collide straight into my path. My mind would not stop arguing about whether or not I should pull away from her or not, like guilt was on shoulder and my potential happiness was on the other.

—-

Guilt was eating away at me from the inside out slowly, that part of my mind would not stop clawing away any good aspect of my relationship with Y/N. The relationship between us had shifted in recent weeks, tension invading what had once been a simply platonic connection formed through our shared experiences. When it became clear to me what our lingering stares and touches were leading to, guilt had reared its ugly head to burrow its way down deep and take root.

It had disrupted my sleep even more than usual, nightmares ranging from Maeve guilting me to the visuals of her death. The images of Maeve and any time I had shared with her invaded my brain at all hours of the night, haunting me. I scrunched my eyes up tight, maybe that would banish the images from my brain. That only made the guilt worse it seemed as I now felt double the guilt for wanting to banish the thoughts about a person I still claimed to love.

My hand hit the pillow in frustration, then grabbing it and throwing it to some unknown location across the room. Sitting up, no longer being able to tolerate laying down knowing that sleep would never come, made my exhausted joints beg me to lay back down. I leaned forward to put my head in my hands, also tangling my curls with my fingers. I tried to think about what Y/N had said to me at one of the first meetings I had attended, my normally impeccable memory struggled as the memory of Maeve’s bloodied face would not leave. Screaming internally was the only thing that seemed to work to push the words I was looking for forward,

“I try to think about something my therapist told me- Although it's difficult today to see beyond the sorrow, May looking back in memory help comfort you tomorrow.”

The quote wasn’t something groundbreaking or new, though the origins were unknown. But, the words still struck me deep everytime I forced my memory to call back on them.

The words she had spoken in the meeting when talking about her husband made me want to try too. She inspired me whenever she told snippets of her story to me or the rest of the group, her story had been similar to mine- with the added element of having a daughter to raise on her own.

Her strength was what had drawn me to her initially, like a moth to flame. Our relationship wasn’t even a friendship at first, just two people sharing advice (more her giving it to me) about how to deal with crippling grief.

What had blossomed since then from death and decay had thrown me for a loop. I hadn’t been expecting for this to happen, I never even thought romance would be an option for me again. I thought that I would have one great love and that our time in the sun had ended along with any option for romantic interests in the future.

Then she came along and spun my thinking upside down, not that I blamed her at all for it. She originally had just reached out to help me, not to pursue any romantic connection purposefully while I was vulnerable.

She continued to stay with me to help despite my urge to push her away even though that’s not what I wanted. I tried hard to convince myself that our lives were never meant to connect, that we were destined to remain apart.

It took many more sleepless nights for me to realize what I hadn’t seen for so long, even with Y/N reassuring me at every turn. Maeve would want me to be happy, I was sure of it. So I’d try to let myself, no longer letting myself get hindered by my own swirling thoughts of guilt that Maeve wouldn’t have wanted me to feel.

—-

Asking her out on a date had been surprisingly easy once I had let go a little of my guilt. We had chosen to go somewhere different than a coffee shop, since we already did that often. I took her out to more of an upscale restaurant than she was used to, which may be too fancy for some for a first date, but she deserved it. She worked so hard to take care of her daughter and even me to some extent.

At the end of the night we were both standing outside her door ready to go in to relieve the babysitter for the night. I had already given her a chaste kiss for the night, even though my nerves kept trying to talk me out of it. I was about to say goodbye when she grabbed my wrist to hold in her hands. She looked afraid at first, almost like she wondered if I wouldn’t like her touching me. Touch may bother me with most people, but she wasn’t most people, I’d happily share germs with her. When I did not pull away relief was evident in her eyes, then taking a big breath before speaking,

“Would you like to meet my daughter?” Her voice was shaky, understandably full of worry.

“Of course.” In the past hesitation would have littered my voice if she had asked me the same question. But, my thoughts had been slowly shifting to want our lines to converge fully and with no fear. Sure, Maeve would always capture a place in my heart, but I was ready for our lives to collide. Our parallel lives converged into one line, with a set path forward. It may get derailed from its intended path, but we would be stronger together than apart.

Ask me anything

—-

Tag lists (message me if you want to be added):

All works: @shotarosleftpinky @oreogutz @90spumkin @kyra-morningstar @s1utformgg @takeyourleap-of-faith (damn tumblr just let me tag them)

All MGG characters: @muffin-cup @willowrose99

Spencer Reid/CM: @calm-and-doctor @destiny-tsukino @safertokiss @slutforthegubes @onlyhereforthefanfics @jareauswifey

[hunterexamcheatsheet]

Explaining how the Mafia functions, Kurapika in the mafia community and why the other “Neon died” theories don’t work from the Mafia Structure perspective

Please read this if you’re interested in how Kurapika in the mafia functions in the HxH world. 

I went to roam around the Chinese forums using Kurapika and Neon's name (酷拉皮卡和妮翁; pronounced as Kù Lā Pí Kǎ and Nī Wēng) to try and find some KuraNeon content in the Chinese fandom. 

I found a Chinese blog that also talks about the dolphin theory that @anotherworldash​ has thought of. You may use Google translate for the link above to read it. You may also view what @u-named​ had summarised here regarding the dolphin theory. I had reblogged it before but I got very excited when I saw that another fan had thought of it. 

I’m so glad that other people from non-English fandoms had also thought of it (and not just the usual theories of Neon dying, but exploring other explanations why it’s possible for her to be still alive). I might be slightly biased, but I disliked how everyone just jumped into the assumption that she’s dead because her name disappeared from Chrollo’s book. From what I see, HxH deaths are often shown or at least heavily implied. We also got false narratives like the one with Kite in CA arc. 

We do not see her dead body. Or any major hints of what happened to her. 

What’s more, Kurapika implied that the previous owners where he had acquired the Scarlet Eyes from did not need to be killed. While this only means that Kurapika did not kill Neon, and it’s possible that other people might have killed her or she had died by accident/natural cause, it’s still something to think about.

The flaw in some of the “Neon’s dead” theories

I think u-named already discussed this a bit, but I’m going to elaborate it a little further. I am actually thinking of posting regarding the mafia theme, but that will take a while. I had been researching the functions of mafia in both reality and media, in order to understand what goes on in mafia families in HxH. 

The theories regarding “Neon was killed by the mafia community”, “Light Nostrade killed her” and “she committed suicide” are possible, but I’m going to need to nitpick on the reasoning. I suspect people who formed these theories don’t know how the mafia works or at least, attempt to understand how it works (not that I’m an expert, I’m still trying to understand it from mafia movies, videos, a book and journal papers). 

Of course there is a discrepancy between the actual mafia and what is depicted in media, but given that Togashi had mafia themes in his previous works like in Ten de Showaru Cupid and in Yu Yu Hakusho, and until now, he is using mafia families in his current arc. 

“Oh, but what if Togashi doesn’t do his research?”

I genuinely think he does. York New City and the Ten Dons could be a parallel to the actual Five Powerful Mafia Families in New York City back then, formed in 1931. The Five Families is also what inspired the five mafia families in The Godfather. (I don’t know, maybe Togashi was a fan of The Godfather or any mafia movies; that trilogy was very influential in the media). Even the family name Nostrade is both a reference to Nostradamus (a French fortune teller) and La Cosa Nostra (a nickname for the Italian mafia). The coincidence is too uncanny. 

From what I gather from resources, the mafia functions like an organisation/corporation, but their services are largely illegal. Their main aim is to acquire money (and also power, but power comes with money). 

Neon’s fortune-telling ability is highly sought after because accurate information in many places (which includes being in businesses) are crucial. If you guys are familiar with The Godfather, information and strategy is important when trying to win over people or crushing your enemies. The concept of knowing your enemy is also a huge main idea in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. 

And it’s even more valuable when these information is from the future.  You will always be one step ahead of the enemy if you have accurate information in regards to the future. 

Now, there are people envious of Light’s climb to power because he exploited his daughter’s fortune-telling ability and they gained influence as she has fans among the Dons. They see Light’s acquiring of power as a threat, which is why Light protects his daughter. 

Another reason (not really stated, I just thought of it) is that information from the future is a disadvantage when your enemy has it and you don’t. You already lose when the other side has information that you do not have. 

By the end of the YorkNew City arc, we see that the Ten Dons are assassinated by Illumi. Therefore, there seems to be empty seats when it comes to the leadership of the mafia community. Not stated, but without leadership, a corporation/business will either crumble or someone else will assume leadership. Be it brutally or by succession of an heir, we’ll never know. 

Neon’s ability is no longer on hers. Who is affected negatively? Light Nostrade because he just lost his way of influence and attaining money/power. His enemies, who are envious of his climbing up the ranks, will see it as an advantage. A blessing perhaps. Because the threat (which is Neon’s powers) are gone. 

While murder among mafia members are not uncommon, killing one’s family member (especially one’s direct children) is irreversible and poses serious consequences. An all out war could evoke and it can be costly. Going back to my point about the mafia community’s main aim and how it functions as a business, negotiations are actually another way to deal with possible disputes.  They do not need to do the killing because her powers are simply GONE. Without her powers, she’s just an ordinary “citizen” who is a family member of a father whose in the mafia community. 

Therefore, “mafia community killed Neon” theory is flawed if you look at how the mafia community functions as businesses and negotiations. The reason why they decided to be brutal and aggressive in York New City is because they were up against the Phantom Troupe. Additionally, the lack of manpower and leadership that follows after their fiasco with the Phantom Troupe is another concern. A girl who no longer poses a threat is the least of their worries. 

Now, onto the “Kurapika let them die off”, “Light killed Neon” and “she committed suicide” theories. 

The reason why I have a problem with these is because it’s based on the big assumption that they became broke. Either Light Nostrade went crazy and he killed her; or they became broke and Neon couldn’t handle the stresses of being poor so she committed suicide. But the thing is, they aren’t broke. 

Even on the Hunterpedia states:

The Nostrade Family survived the loss of Neon's ability and is now led by Kurapika. The organization is exclusively involved in legal activities such as personal security details and gambling.

This is backed by what Linssen has said to Mizaistom in the Dark Continent Expedition arc. 

The reason why they survived the financial slump? Kurapika. 

During the Greed Island arc, Kurapika reassured him that he’ll “take care of it”. And during the Dark Continent Expedition arc, we see that Kurapika’s title is “Nostrade Family Waka-gashira”. Waka-gashira means “Young Boss”. There are many mistranslations to this text where they state that he’s the mafia organisation leader, but in the hardcopy (which I have), the title is “Nostrade Family Boss”. 

In the context of the Japanese yakuza, the Waka-gashira is the second in command, just below the Oyabun. 

The second in the chain of command is the wakagashira, who governs several gangs in a region with the help of a fuku-honbucho who is himself responsible for several gangs.

While it seems that the inspiration of mafia is from the Italian-American mafia families in York New City, the terminologies they used is that of the Japanese yakuza. I think that this is because the original language is in Japanese. 

In Italian-American mafia, the term “mafia organisation” is synonymous with “mafia family”. Therefore, if you say that a man is the mafia organisation leader, he is also by default the head of the mafia family. 

In the context of Kurapika, it does make sense that he is the second-in-command and Light is the oyabun (if you go by the yakuza terminology), or Kurapika is the head of the Nostrade family (if you go by the Italian-American way). 

Now, I’m just going to backtrack a bit because I want to address that theory that “Kurapika let Neon and/or Light die and overtook the Nostrade mafia organisation”. 

If you go by the Yakuza terminology, it already doesn’t make sense because it implies that Light is still in charge, and Kurapika is the second-in-command (wakagashira). The Yakuza also assimilate members into the mafia organisation and “making your own family” (via trust). 

If you go by the Italian-American way, it also doesn’t make sense if you look at the way they appoint the head of the mafia organisation. From what I read and seen in mafia movies, aside from mafia organisations functioning like a corporation, it functions like a family business, where typically, the head of the family is a male. This isn’t just exclusive to mafia families, but pretty much family businesses in [East] Asia. Togashi also depicts this male heir and family business dynamic within the Zoldyck Family. 

While there are actual records of women leading mafia organisations, what is depicted in media is that the mafia community are often populated with men. This is also evident in the York New City arc, where the mafia community is filled with armed men. 

Even among the Yakuza, it is like this: 

The Yakuza is populated almost entirely by men and the very few women who are acknowledged are the wives of bosses

Light Nostrade only have one child, a daughter to be exact. While Morena Prudo is the boss of the Heil-Ly Mafia Family, this isn’t the actual case for Neon. Neon is a young girl who likes to shop and collects dead body parts. She enjoys luxury and materialism. She doesn’t have an interest in the mafia business or where the money comes from. Besides, as mentioned before, a male heir is often depicted. 

In Japanese family businesses, when there is no male heir available, they will have to resort to mukoyoshi practice. Taken from Wikipedia:

When a family, especially one with a well established business, has no male heir but has an unwed daughter of a suitable age, she will marry the mukoyōshi, a man chosen especially for his ability to run the family business. 

This is done to preserve the business and name of the family when there is no suitable male heir, since traditionally businesses are inherited by the oldest male heir. Mukoyōshi is also practiced if there is no capable male heir to run the family business.

This is a centuries-old tradition and is still widely practiced today. Many Japanese companies with household names such as Nintendo, Kikkoman, and Toyota have adopted this practice.

This is why I often liked the whole “Kurapika married Neon for the title” theory because it takes into a Japanese practice when it comes to family businesses + how the mafia family business are run into account. 

We also have to note that Neon Nostrade’s character blueprint is Princess Luna from Level E. Princess Luna is betrothed to the main character, Prince Baka. Initially, Prince Baka did not want to marry her. Arranged marriages do not need to be founded by love or a relationship bond. In fact, arranged marriages are often agreed on because of practical reasons, such as a family business. 

Princess Luna is also why I take the marriage theory more into account, rather than the idea that Ligth adopted him. Kurapika is considered as an adult (or nearly) anyway. 

Side note: Whether or not you agree with this because it seems sexist or the possible sickening idea that Kurapika married a flesh collector, is irrelevant. Me being a KuraNeon shipper also does not make this theory hold any less weight. In fact, I started liking them together because of this theory. This is based on how [mafia] family businesses are depicted in the media, the mukoyoshi practice in Japan and Princess Luna being Neon’s character blueprint. Remember that theories are based on evidence, not based on how you feel. If anything, this gives more depth to Kurapika because it shows how far he’s willing to go through in order to gain power and money for his clan. 

Regardless of how Kurapika had gotten this title, it is via assimilation. Not coercion or force. 

It also doesn’t make sense if he were to function businesses under the Nostrade family name, if he disliked Light and Neon so much that he’d let them wither off. Why would he still keep their family name in honour if he had let them die off? The answer is getting the title via assimilation. Be it through trust or becoming a member of the family (literally or figuratively). 

Neon being uninterested also meant that there is no one to challenge Kurapika for the title, and Kurapika had already reassured to Light that the business during Greed Island arc. 

Therefore, the “Kurapika had let Light and Neon wither off to get the title” is flawed when you look at the way mafia organisations functions as a family business and Neon’s character. 

Why the Nostrades aren’t broke

Linssen stating the Nostrade family gains its income from gambling and personal security detail businesses that the Nostrade family runs, thanks to Kurapika being the head of the family. 

Aside from that, we also see Kurapika obtaining many sets of Scarlet Eyes, with him stating that there are various ways he had done so. 

“I’ve threatened, coaxed and paid people off” - Kurapika (based on the hardcopy Volume 33 that I have)

During the York New City arc, one set of Scarlet Eyes are already worth like what, millions? Not only money, but Kurapika needs influence and connections to gain these Scarlet Eyes. Threatening and coaxing meant that you’ll need to invoke fear or drive them into situations where they are forced to surrender the Scarlet Eyes. How to do that? Creating dilemmas. Give the person two options, both that are undesirable, with the lesser evil option being the one you want. 

Basically, giving an offer they can’t refuse (sorry, this reference was too good to pass up lmao). 

This is why being part of the mafia, and more so being a mafia leader is an attractive pathway for Kurapika because it gives him the resources, in terms of influence, finance and aggressive force. 

Another thing to note is that Kurapika has hired Izunavi, Melody, Basho and Bisky to apply for the Kakin Bodyguarding contract. It’s evident that Kurapika has the money. Therefore, the Nostrades aren’t broke. 

Hence, the idea that Neon was killed because her father could not face financial difficulties or that she committed suicide because she’s no longer rich, falls flat when you consider Kurapika’s involvement with their family. 

“But didn’t Linssen say that gambling and personal security are legal businesses and he told Mizaistom that they are not the crime syndicate? Why is it part of the mafia?” 

Yes. You see, the mafia deals with LARGELY illegal businesses, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deal with the legal ones too. Perhaps the Nostrade family has been legitimised, but it wouldn’t be the case because Kurapika’s title still states “mafia”. 

While these facts seem to contradict what Linssen claimed to Mizaistom that the Nostrade organisation is not a crime syndicate, it can be argued that Mizaistom is a Crime Hunter (aka like a detective). It makes sense for Linssen to tell a Crime Hunter that you are not a crook, and it’s easier to lie about it if your services in the mafia business is legal. 

Also, in actual mafia businesses where gambling is involved, the place of the server where online gambling may be legal, but in the place where the people use the online gambling may be illegal. 

Taken from 10 Businesses Supposedly Controlled by the Mafia: 

But mobsters have adapted to the times and taken their act online. These days, they are more likely to be busted for online sports gambling. In 2008, a Queens district attorney charged the Gambino family with illegal sports and casino-style gambling operations. Players were allowed to borrow gambling money at 200 percent interest [source: Bonner]. More recently, members of the Genovese family in New Jersey were indicted for making millions of dollars each year through illegal gambling operations [source: Ivers].

In Europe, officials have raised concerns over the vast amounts of money being laundered by the Mafia through online gambling, particularly sites based in Germany, where there are no penalties for illegal gambling activities [source: Walther].

Personal security details kind of vague, but I believe it’s Protection Racket. I went to have a look at Wikipedia for a short while and found ties with the mafia: 

A protection racket is a scheme where a potentially hazardous group guarantees protection from violence, looting, raiding, piracy, and other such threats posed by them outside the sanction of the law, to polities, businesses, individuals, or other entities and groups that pay to them in cash or kind. 

Protection rackets tend to appear in markets in which the police and judiciary cannot be counted on to provide legal protection, because of incompetence (as in weak or failed states) or illegality (black markets).

Certain scholars, such as Diego Gambetta, classify criminal organizations engaged in protection racketeering as "mafia", as the racket is popular with both the Sicilian Mafia and Italian-American Mafia.

While this “personal security details” the Nostrade family business provides, the stuff that involves in it may be illegal. 

We don’t really know why Kurapika resorted to these two types of businesses. I have two guesses: 1) He wants to compensate and retain his moral values, therefore he opts for legal businesses, 2) He wants to have a loophole in being in the mafia yet avoiding legal troubles. Either way, it’s a smart move for Kurapika in my opinion. 

Side note: With Togashi liking mafia themes so much, I truly believe that it’s a hard opportunity for him to pass up the idea of making one of his main characters a mafia leader. We get to have our own Michael Corleone, and that’s hot. (Simping hard for mafia boss Kurapika right now). 

What about the Kakin Bodyguard thing? And the fact that Kurapika’s a Zodiac now? Does this mean he’s no longer the Nostrade Family Boss? 

He is still the Nostrade family boss. These three are not mutually exclusive.

In the manga panel where they showed his title, it was slightly after the Zodiacs meeting. Therefore, he still retains his title as the Nostrade Boss. Being part of the Zodiac is a position within the Hunters Assocation, they are the counsellors to the Chairman. Just as when Kurapika is a hunter and the Nostrade Boss at the same time, he can also be a Zodiac and the Nostrade Boss. 

The Kakin Bodyguard thing is like an employment contract. As mentioned, Kurapika hired a few people to apply for being a bodyguard because six Kakin Princes were looking for bodyguards to get close to the 4th Prince Tserriednich.  You can actually see this as a link to his “Protection Racket” mafia business. Being a Kakin bodyguard is a type of Protection Racket. Therefore, he can still be a Kakin bodyguard while holding onto the mafia title. 

Kurapika doesn’t need to be in the mainland overseeing everything in the business, in fact, it’s kind of noteworthy that Linssen was not on board - it is definitely possible that he had left the other parts of the mafia business to a second-in-command (a consigliere, shategashira, or the saiko-komon). He may also leave the businesses back to Light Nostrade. 

Okay, what if Neon committed suicide because she couldn’t take how she’s being mistreated, rather than her being broke? 

That could be possible, but we don’t really have a clear hint of that. Yes, I can see some potential daddy issues because she’s no longer of use to her father and also the possibility that Light favours Kurapika more now and maybe even sold her off to Kurapika, but I don’t find any strong evidence of that. And we don’t actually exactly know how Kurapika will act around her now that he seems to have more power than her. In fact, we don’t really have any insights as to what Kurapika thinks of her, only sweeping statements when it comes to flesh collectors which may or may not apply to her. 

(I know people assume that he hates her, because they like to infer his prejudice on flesh collectors to her, but we really have ZERO clear indication of what he thinks about her specifically. To say that he definitely hates her is inaccurate. I literally just argued with someone on Youtube comments for this. And even if he did hate her, that’s hot if she’s his wife because hate-sex is wow.)

To Conclude: 

The theories surrounding Neon Nostrade being dead falls flat when you look deeper into how the mafia functions. I have also explained more in detail at a possibility of how Kurapika might function in the mafia community and as the Nostrade family leader. 

Other sources aside from above (so that ya’all know I don’t pull this out of my ass):

 New York Mafia Families

What does the mafia even do anymore? 

How to Make an Offer they can’t refuse like Vito Corleone

The Godfather by Mario Putzo [film/fictional book - watched Part 1 and 2]

Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires By Selwyn Raab [book - only read a bit]

When culture matters: succession challenges for Asian business families

Behind the Yakuza: documenting the women of Japan’s mafia

How Japan’s family businesses use sons-in-law to bring in new blood

Pretty much the whole of Hunterpedia LMAO. 

I only wanted to post the Chinese blog but ended up a huge full-on essay about the mafia in HxH HAHHAA. (Because I’m so sick of people talking about theories without taking the mafia structure into consideration). 

[ascalonianpicnic]

Hey! Y’all want a salty essay about the bullshit treatment Caithe gets from the fandom at large that compares Rytlock and Caithe’s characters? Cause I wrote one!

Warning: this essay is incredibly bitter and salty, and that bitterness and salt is directed at people who hate Caithe. I swear in it. I’m mean to Rytlock in it. I heavily imply people who hate Caithe are sexist in it. This was written in the middle of the champions releases, but doesn’t focus on s5 or past pof in general.

A morally grey assassin, jaded from a traumatic past who thinks they have to do everything themself to ensure it's done right. They had to kill someone close to them for the greater good, were deeply hurt by a former partner, no longer work with their old crew due to a tragedy they could not prevent and blame themself for. The two people they care about are their brother whom they love and understand despite his quirks and oddities, and their new young mentee who they have mixed feelings about and who they don't want to admit they care for for fear of losing them. They have a blood soaked past and make mistakes, but they're learning and growing thanks to their young mentee and the hard work they're putting in at reflecting on their past actions and accepting they don't have to bear the weight of the world alone.

Y'all would like Caithe if she was a man. She's built on several tropes so commonly seen in male protagonists and mentor figures. Mistakes she's made that people claim are unforgivable are made by other, less apologetic, male characters who are forgiven and still held in high regard. And I know these archetypes are popular among the guild wars 2 fandom, considering the high crossover with dragon age fans, and how many dragon age fans love Zevran the assassin who regularly hides his true feelings and bears so much guilt, and Duncan the former thief who sees little crime in what he views as rightful murders and views death as an acceptable cost to protect some secrets for the safety of the world. The guild wars 2 fandom in general would love Caithe so much more if she wasn't a woman. 

But because she's a woman, killing Wynne, killing a few courtiers during personal story, keeping the secret of the sylvari to protect her people from a massacre at the hands of the other races, and taking the egg to ensure it wouldn't fall into the wrong hands are all seen as unforgivable sins. She's learning and growing every step of the way. She's taken the time to look back on what she's done. She's apologized for not trusting and betraying the commander (who she has a complicated relationship with regardless of race, that person stole her wyld hunt because she was somehow not good enough to kill a dragon alone), she's learned she can rely on others to have her back and doesn't have to do everything alone, she's realized bloodshed isn't always the answer. She's come a long way, learned to let herself trust again, and is working so hard to grow. Yet loads of y'all still hate her for her past mistakes, and some of y'all think it's okay to wish death on her fucking openly with no warning. 

And yet, so many people who hate Caithe and wish death on her, citing her actions during Living World Season 2 and Heart of Thorns as the reason why, will in the same breath mention that Rytlock is one of their favorite characters in the game. As I said, y'all would like Caithe if she was a man. 

Rytlock has made the exact same mistakes as Caithe during the story. Alright maybe not exactly the same, but his mistakes parallel hers very cleanly. He isn't an assassin, but he is a born and raised soldier who has killed countless people in his rise to the rank of Tribune. He didn't steal an egg, but he did jump into the mists and free a clearly powerful and dangerous figure for the sake of getting his sword back. He didn't keep the secret of the sylvari, but he did, in fact, keep the secret of Balthazar. And he had his own mentee who he had a fraught relationship with. Let's take this one by one. 

If you play through the blood legion story on a charr, you probably remember overthrowing the legionnaire of your warband and taking over. In this segment, Rytlock not only encourages you to challenge your Legionnaire, he forces Urvan Steelbane to fight you. Then, at the end of the fight, he gives you the option to kill your superior. Rising through the ranks in charr society is a mixture of proving yourself a reliable soldier and proving yourself superior to your superiors through combat so you can take their place. As a tribune, Rytlock has risen high through the legion, spilling lots of blood and putting those around him at risk. It is noted that prior to his promotion to tribune, Rytlock got in serious trouble more than once for risking missions and endangering his own warband for the sake of his own fame and glory. While not an assassin, much like Caithe he has a very bloody history and a habit of trying to do everything himself  

One of the biggest events held against Caithe is when she steals Aurene's egg from the dying Master of Peace as he tries to give it to the commander. While especially true for the sylvari commander, Caithe has a lot of her own reasons for not trusting this incredibly important egg in the hands of the commander. At the same time, her calling as one of Aurene's guardians, her wyld hunt to protect this egg, and the poundings at her mind of mordremoth are all overwhelming her and leaving her confused. Feeling she has to do everything herself, as she often struggles with, Caithe takes the egg to protect it from falling in the wrong hands. She later admits this was the wrong move that put people around her in grave danger and risked the world and apologizes for it. The way Caithe acts about Aurene's egg is pretty similar to how Rytlock acts towards the sword Sohothin. The first time he sees it, he jeopardizes the mission he and Crecia are on to steal it, putting her in extreme danger and blaming her when she has to act to protect herself. Later on, when he loses the sword through a mists portal during a ritual to try and cleanse the foefire ghosts from Ascalon, he abandons the ritual, ensuring it fails, so he can pursue his sword, leaving the commander and the iron legion imperator to face the danger of Barridin's ghost army alone, much like how Caithe left the commander to face the Shadow of the Dragon while she fled with Aurene's egg. While in the mists, seeking his lost sword, Rytlock frees a very clearly powerful and dangerous figure (who we'll come back to) in order to reclaim Sohothin. Like how Caithe put the world at risk by trying to protect the egg alone, Rytlock puts the world at risk trying to reclaim his sword. 

Let's take a brief moment to talk about Caithe and Rytlock's mentees, before we get on to the biggest similarity the two share. Caithe's mentee, if she has one as it depends on the player, is the sylvari commander. The sylvari commander is a decently young sylvari, who only a few years earlier emerged with a parallel wyld hunt to Caithe herself. Caithe is a loner in general following the pains of Wynne's death, Faolain's abuse, and the breaking of Destiny's Edge. Now she's handed a youth who was created to help her with her Hunt that she was always told she had to do alone, basically saying she is no longer trusted to perform her hunt alone and now she has to train her replacement. She does seem to care for the commander, but the relationship there is always going to start off complicated, and it leads to her betraying the commander, leaving them to fight the Shadow of the Dragon, and taking the egg she doesn't trust them to handle. Later on, once she realizes her mistakes, she reaches out to the commander to apologize, and repeatedly puts her trust very clearly in them, acknowledging that she does need them and she did in the past. How that relationship ends is of course up to the player, but she makes an attempt at reconciliation after the fallout. Rytlock's mentee of note here is Rox. He takes her own as a promising young woman who he thinks would fit well in his warband and takes a hand in helping her train and find her place again in the legions. In order to join the Stone warband, Rox is given the incredibly difficult and definitely not soloable task of killing Scarlet Briar. Rox, when it comes down to it, chooses to put Braham's life and safety over dealing the killing blow to Scarlet herself, trusting the commander, whoever they are, and Kasmeer to get the job done while she stays back with Braham and Marjory. Following the victory over Scarlet, Rox is too afraid to face Rytlock. She didn't kill Scarlet herself, meaning she failed, and she's afraid Rytlock will kill her for it. This is itself a sign of a deeply unhealthy relationship between Rytlock and Rox. On top of that, Rytlock has as of yet never tried to reach out to Rox, to check up on her or apologize or do anything to repair the relationship between the two of them. (A note from replaying s2, Rox does join for the barradin keep mission with Rytlock there, but Rytlock doesn't really check up on her, and he sure as hell doesn't offer her the more than earned position on his warband despite everything.)

The last point is the one I believe I've seen held against Caithe the most. During Living World Season 2, Caithe keeps secret from the commander and from her own brother Trahearne that the Sylvari are purified minions of Mordremoth, leading to Trahearne's attack against the dragon ending in a massacre. Caithe, when she was incredibly young and impressionable, learned the truth from Wynne before having to kill her to keep Faolain from learning the truth as well. She has, for years now, been the only one to know this secret, and she believes that if it were to get out, the world would turn against the still young and fairly defenseless sylvari and slaughter them. As she sees it, she has to bear the burden of this secret alone, as she has to do everything alone. While dealing with her duties tied to Aurene's egg and struggling with the growing voice of Mordremoth as well, she may not even know of Trahearne's plans to fly an army into the jungle. She has every reason to keep this secret still, it's for the good of her own people. Yes it is a mistake, but she didn't know this at the time. She believes, as she keeps this secret, that it is the only way to prevent the sylvari from dying off as they're just coming into the world. She regrets the loss of life, but she can't go back and change it now. 

Now Rytlock also keeps a very important secret, from the commander and everyone else. He refuses to share details of what he saw and did in the mists during his hunt for Sohothin. While in the mists, Rytlock meets an old man in chains. The man, recognizing Sohothin in Rytlock's hands, unlit, says he can reignite the sword if Rytlock frees him. Rytlock accepts the deal and frees the man, returning Sohothin to its original glory and gaining access to a portal out of the mists that the old man makes. Now, Rytlock grew up while the war between humanity and the charr was still growing strong. He spent a lot of his early years in Ascalon, exploring the ruins, likely fighting humans trying to reclaim their land, and definitely fighting the ghosts of humans. That alone should have been enough for him to recognize the human god his enemies worshipped while waging war against him and his people. Beyond that, after Rytlock came into possession of Sohothin, he researched the sword's history. The sword, originally crafted and wielded by Balthazar, is one Rytlock is familiar with. It stands to reason Balthazar himself is at the very least a familiar figure to Rytlock. So when Rytlock encounters a large, powerful figure in the mists who recognizes Sohothin in a state very few have ever seen it in, and has the power to relight the flames that the god Balthazar had originally created, Rytlock has to know who he is talking to. He knows who he freed in exchange for Sohothin's flames. He may say otherwise, but there is no way he doesn't know who he freed in the mists. Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt and say he didn't know who exactly he freed, he still should have told the commander about the man with very powerful fire magic and the ability to make portals who he followed out of the mists. Rytlock caused the tragedy that is Path of Fire and almost caused the end of the world, because he decided to keep the fact that he freed Balthazar a secret from everyone until it was far too late and Elona was already burning. Caithe's secret may have resulted in the failure of the Maguuma campaign and the loss of lives of many soldiers, but Rytlock's secret resulted in the near destruction of an entire civilization and the deaths of countless innocents. 

Yet Caithe is still hated deeply for keeping a secret that she thought was for the good of the world, while Rytlock is quickly forgiven for keeping a secret to protect his pride. Rytlock has made all the same mistakes Caithe has and has arguably handled all of them worse, yet he is still a fandom favorite while she is hated by the community. It's pretty clear that Caithe isn't hated for her actions and mistakes. That's just an excuse. 

You would like her if she was a man. 

[shihalyfie]

The Kaiser wasn’t very good at being a villain (and that’s the point, actually)

Ken’s journey of redemption is generally well-documented overall, and it was explicit enough in the series that there’s only so much you really need to explain it, but due to the blurred boundary of what was supernatural influence from the Dark Seed and what was Ken’s own emotional problems wreaking havoc, it’s somewhat more difficult to bridge that gap between the Kaiser and Ken, and how they can be the same person.

The easiest way to understand it comes from both directions. One is that Ken, even in his normal element, is much more assertive than he’s often given credit for -- it’s just that the Kaiser is a (fragile) manifestation of that very carefully cultivated to channel that in all of the wrong directions. The other has to do with the fact that the Kaiser is actually really terrible at being a villain, and the persona itself is very fragile and difficult for him to maintain.

Rewatching the first half of 02 shows multiple indications that, for all he seemed to be the stereotype “evil genius”, Ken was forcing himself into the mold. He was never cut out for it from day one. Even from the beginning, Ken’s actual nature as a lonely and inherently kind eleven-year-old child was tearing apart at the Kaiser persona, and the fateful episode 21 was not so much a single turning point for him as much as it was the last straw in a series of things tumbling down for him.

Before we continue: While all of the meta on this blog is only possible thanks to support and input from a handful of friends (whose names will not be disclosed on account of privacy requests), this one in particular arose from a long and extensive discussion with said friends that I am extremely grateful for. As always, I hope I was able to convey your points well.

Well, firstly, it’s important to understand that, much like nearly any other character in this series, Ken’s surface demeanor is a bit deceptive. The Crest of Kindness has the original Japanese name of yasashisa (優しさ), which has a secondary meaning of “gentleness” (lost in translation, but still apparent with the bubble metaphor in 02 episode 23). That also ties into the secondary meaning of “kind” -- it’s not just about being naturally “soft”, but actively choosing to be gentle with others even when you’re theoretically capable of not doing so. (For those of you who have seen Appmon, the entire point of that series was about what it means to consciously and deliberately choose to be kind, and, in fact, quite a few parallels could be made between Ken and Haru...)

The contrast between Daisuke and Ken goes far beyond just the surface. Daisuke’s surface demeanor is abrasive, but he’s not actually very good at being assertive until push comes to shove, and he otherwise tends to bend easily to others or get overwhelmed; in contrast, Ken has a more polite demeanor and for the most part seems non-confrontational, but has much stronger control of his emotions and is more easily able to be assertive than Daisuke is. (Of course, both of them share the common point of being like-minded when it’s something that really matters, but Ken is much better at imposing his will and getting what he wants done before Daisuke ever gets to that point, which is what fuels the whole punchline of Daisuke and Ken’s Shopping Carol.)

So, the point is: Daisuke is kind out of instinct and just “naturally” being so, but Ken is kind because he consciously believes in treating others well and not causing conflict, and not causing pain to others.

That’s not to say that Ken’s behavior is out of suppression or anything! It’s not a case like Takeru, who’s trying to push complicated emotions down while pretending they’re not boiling under the surface, nor is he like Hikari, who’s compulsively pressing her emotions down out of a desire not to burden others. Rather, even as early as 02 episode 26, he’s very straightforward about what his issue is and what he thinks about it. Ken’s “shyness” during the latter half of 02 is largely due to shame and hesitation from not knowing the other 02 kids well, but as the series goes on and as we go into post-02 material, he indicates that he’s perfectly wiling to be vocal about what he thinks without necessarily fighting any compulsion to suppress it. For someone who claims he doesn’t know much about his own heart, he arguably seems to have the best grip on understanding himself compared to a lot of this cast!

So in essence, the main take-home here is that Ken is theoretically capable of being strong-willed and assertive, and is very good at choosing when he wants to be assertive and when he wants to hold back. And he likes seeing people get along, and he wants everyone to be happy, and he doesn’t like seeing people be hurt or hurting others, and under normal circumstances, Ken has very good control of his emotions for the most part and quite a lot of self-awareness. That’s why Ken is the one to get the unique designation of this Crest; everyone in this cast can be said to be generous and supportive of others in some form, but there’s a difference between being a “natural” doormat who defers to others by default (Daisuke being a very good indicator of how this kind of mentality has a flip side of lack of self-esteem and high insecurity, and Tamers’s Takato being a good indication of how “being deferential” doesn’t necessarily preclude you from having tendencies towards selfishness or cowardice), versus choosing to be kind by understanding everything and still being gentle out of a belief that it’s the right thing to do (again: see Shinkai Haru). And it’s why Wormmon says in the 02 episode 23 flashback that Ken’s kindness can be used against him; being “kind” in this way requires a lot of mental fortitude, strength, and guts, all of which are things that could easily be very bad things when applied in the wrong direction.

This means that all the Dark Seed really needed to do in order to turn him into the Kaiser...was make him lose grip on that self-control.

Actually, Ken says it himself in less-than-subtle words in Spring 2003:

…It was revenge. But who was this revenge against? Did I want to triumph over the ones who made fun of me? The ones who looked down on me and used me? But… In the end, it was revenge against myself. I couldn’t do anything but deny the kind of human being that I was.

So in other words, the Kaiser persona was, effectively, a self-loathing eleven-year-old boy throwing a massive tantrum. A lot of the Kaiser’s actions in the first half of 02 are honestly rather petty -- he’s basically upset at the kids spoiling his holiday in 02 episode 6, he attempts torturing Daisuke out of a petty grudge over a soccer sliding tackle in 02 episode 8, and everything to do with expanding his territory and eventually (hopefully?) becoming ruler of the Digital World is frankly very sloppy. For all he’s said to be a genius, his genius only seems to extend to book smarts, and his “tactical planning abilities” never really expand beyond that of a soccer field sort of affair; his way of locking down control on other things is basically just “brainwash it harder” or “whip it harder” and applying harder brute force instead of doing something in the long-term like, say, trying to rule with charisma and recruiting allies.

(Again, bringing Appmon back into this, seeing Cloud in action will give you a much better example of a charismatic human villain who’s actually competent at his job. Or, heck, you can even look back at Savers’s Kurata, who at least was savvy enough to pull strings with people in powerful positions. Or even the Kaiser’s predecessor Saiba Neo from V-Tamer, who may have been openly sadistic but still had the sense to align himself with background power. Really, compared to all of these folks, the Kaiser is downright pathetic.)

Remembering that Ken fell into the Kaiser persona partially as a desperate attempt to become a “perfect person” like Osamu, Ken “imitated” Osamu’s cruelty to him because he felt that was how he could improve himself to become a “strong” person better than him. But the irony here is that Osamu’s “cruelty” was something that he himself never liked, and mainly came from lashing out at Ken due to feeling like he had a lack of control over his own life. So Osamu was never happy in that position, and Ken, who is indirectly pointed out via the bubble metaphor to be even more fundamentally inclined towards gentleness, is probably even more miserable.

Because everything Ken does as the Kaiser is “unfocused lashing out at everyone”, the Kaiser has less control over his emotions than Ken normally would. Takeru manages to emotionally pin him to a corner by confronting him with enough assertion in 02 episode 19 (this is before he punches him), and correctly points out that the Kaiser isn’t capable of winning with words (i.e. ideologically) and resorts to violence as the first thing he can think of. You’d think that if the Kaiser were actually someone with the self-confidence to consider the other Chosen Children beneath him, he wouldn’t even bother giving them the time of day, but Takeru just happening to be a little assertive is enough to make him lose his composure and start falling apart, and a lot of his shaken “insects!” yelling comes from him seeming pretty desperate to cling onto that rather than being all that confident about his natural superiority over anyone. 02 episode 20 establishes that he’s getting himself in over his head by tampering with the powers of darkness he can’t control, and while, on a plot level, it means that he’s misjudged his own capabilities, on a metaphorical level, it corresponds to the fact that even Ken himself is incapable of getting himself out of the emotional abyss he’s in.

And on the flip side, one of the biggest “tells” that Ken is still miserable during all of this is 02 episode 9, where he’s seen ruminating on the “glory” he’s getting in the real world despite having just decided to leave it all behind. The episode prior, after all, had been called “The Digimon Kaiser’s Loneliness”. The media is using him like some kind of “hot topic”, his parents’ affection (in his mind) is shallow and based only on his achievements, and he has no friends (how much of a role Akiyama Ryou played in his childhood is unclear, but either way, he’s no longer around now). With no emotional support coming from any direction in the real world, he’s resorting to at least trying to have some “fun” in what he perceives to be a “game”, and yet he’s still not having fun at all.

If you look carefully at a lot of the Kaiser’s actions during the first half of the series, one thing you’ll notice is that there are multiple indications that he’s not quite up to par to being as sadistic as you’d think he’d be. Recalling that we learn in 02 episodes 20-21 that the Kaiser is under the impression that the Digital World is like a game that he can “reset” and the Digimon in it not real living beings, it has interesting implications of the fact that he’s actually very hesitant to physically harm other human beings -- he certainly likes emotionally toying with them, but even when he’s trying to take petty revenge on Daisuke in 02 episode 8, he goes out of his way to set up a trap with Bakemon to torture him rather than, well, actually using the kids as hostages. That’s a hell of a lot of work to do, but he instead uses this extremely roundabout way to get them out of the picture in a somewhat less harmful way, risking having them escape (which is exactly what happens).

And in 02 episode 19, when Takeru confronts him and he ends up whipping him, you can hear a slight “...gh?” in the Japanese audio for a split second right after that, meaning that the Kaiser is, for some reason, having a hard time dealing with the fact that he just hit Takeru, and he does a very poor job defending himself against Takeru punching him out despite ostensibly being trained in judo. (Seriously, if you watch the animation of the scene, he’s just lying there while Takeru repeatedly punches the hell out of him, because he’s so out of it.) Regarding the Digimon, he’s convinced himself that they’re not living beings, but regarding the human Chosen Children, who undeniably are, no matter how much he might look down on them, he has a suspiciously hard time harming them as much as he could...

On top of that, one interesting question that might come up to one rewatching the first half of 02 is the strange “contradiction” of why the Kaiser ostensibly seems to hate Wormmon so much, calling him an unworthy idea of a partner in 02 episodes 10 and 19, and yet does remarkably little to get Wormmon away from him or off his case (he hates Wormmon calling him “Ken-chan”, yet doesn’t really try very hard to stop him). He could have easily locked Wormmon away in a cage or something if he really wanted to -- actually, there’s the question, why doesn’t he slap an Evil Ring on him? Because in the end, Wormmon is the only emotional support he’s really getting, and so it’s likely he unconsciously doesn’t want to lose that. Recalling that Digimon are fundamentally linked to the inner self, the Kaiser rejecting Wormmon for being “weak” is analogous to Ken rejecting his own self for being “weak” and “not perfect” -- which means that the fact he still keeps Wormmon around is analogous to the fact that Ken hasn’t really been able to bring himself to completely let his fundamental nature go. And, hence, it’s why he gets so initially incensed at Wormmon’s “betrayal” at 02 episode 10 (and yet still keeps him around despite that), and is ultimately emotionally destroyed by his death in 02 episode 21.

Although, actually, if you look carefully at 02 episode 21, it’s not quite Wormmon’s death that necessarily does it -- the turning point where he sheds the Kaiser persona is right before that (and in case you have any doubts, the animation puts highlights in his eyes for the first time in the series right at that point). Wormmon’s death is the first major consequence of his actions that he has to deal with, but what actually brought Ken back to his senses was his own realization that Digimon are living beings, that his actions have had permanent effects this whole time, and that he can’t take back anything he’d done.

Remember that 02 is a series that is largely about moving on and accepting that you can’t change the past, and that you have to move forward regardless of that. Ken’s fall into sadism was only possible by driving him into extremely deep-seated denial -- he was already starting to face the potential reality of Digimon being real, existing beings in the real world an episode prior. He says, outright, in 02 episode 21, that part of the reason he came to the Digital World to do all of this was escapism -- and, presumably, under the idea that any mistake he made could be rolled back and redone, unlike Osamu’s death. But the Digital World is not a place you can reset like a game, Ken will have to live with the consequences of his actions again, and moreover, every single one of the actions he’d been convincing himself were relatively meaningless had caused severe and permanent harm, and the entire thing overwhelms him.

It’s also important to point out that this was probably where the Dark Seed had to work a lot of magic to get Ken to embrace this kind of denial so easily -- after all, it’s established in the final quarter of the series that it does have a tangible impact on personality and puts a damper on one’s ability to feel empathy. In the flashback in 02 episode 23, regardless of whether Ken considered the Digital World to be a “game” or “able to be reversed” or not, he clearly still didn’t care and treated those around him with proper kindness (even if he did consider it to be all of that, it probably wouldn’t have been entirely unlike how a lot of us have a hard time picking rude choices in video games). It’s a very complicated chain reaction of events that allowed this to be even possible, and it was so against his fundamental nature that once the denial broke and Ken reached his limit, he wasn’t able to do it anymore. The Chosen Children’s main role in 02 episode 21 was really just cleaning up the massive mess he’d made in the form of Chimeramon, but as far as the whole thing about the Kaiser’s persona completely falling apart and Ken being forced to confront his own self goes, that was pretty much all Ken and Wormmon, in a series of dominoes that had already been collapsing for episodes on end.

The following episodes have Ken treat the 02 team with a certain amount of detachment, and this is often construed by a handful of people as being reflective of Ken being standoffish of some sort. The fact that Daisuke and Ken are often promoted in franchise materials as “rivals” mainly due to them being in the “protagonist and right-hand-man” position such characters are in might tempt you to think that way, but they are most definitely not!! (Considering that even saying that Taichi and Yamato fit that mold is a bit questionable, and neither Ruki nor Jian quite fulfill the expectations of the role in regards to the genre-subverting Tamers, Frontier, which is explicitly said to be deliberately written to be conventional, is probably the first proper execution of this trope in the form of Takuya and Kouji.) Ken’s detachment from the group at this time in the series is something he actually gives the reason for quite directly: he believes it’s his fault and doesn’t want to burden them with what he considers to be his job, and in the end Daisuke ultimately breaks through to him and they become completely normal friends who get along. “Rival” what?

Ken is, at worst, distant during this point of the series, but he’s actually very straightforward about what he wants and intends to do; it’s just that he’s being a bit blunt about it because he’s still drowning in his shame and not sure how to approach them. (Also, consider the fact he was rather lacking in friends or a support group before all of this; he doesn’t have a lot of experience in socializing, either.) So he keeps everyone at arm’s length, and the reason he comes off as so standoffish is because he’s so assertive! He directly and bluntly makes some very strong remarks about how he believes everyone else shouldn’t be getting involved! Again, when left to his own devices and not being manipulated into by a supernatural evil seed into multiple levels of denial, Ken is very in control of what he wants and thinks, and is even very open about speaking his mind.

That’s even when they’re not good decisions, mind you. Ken starts off the climax of 02 episode 26 being very firm about wanting to suicidally throw himself into the reactor in order to stop it, and 02 episode 30 has him consider himself a burden to the team after the fallout with Iori and try to stay out of it despite them very badly needing his presence, which Daisuke (of all people!) rightfully calls him out for being childish about. But he also listens to reason very quickly and acknowledges the others’ point very easily, with Daisuke reminding him in 02 episode 26 that his suicidal recklessness is actually pretty self-centered and short-sighted of him, since it’ll prevent him from doing anything else to take responsibility for his actions going forward, and Miyako, uh, slapping him in 02 episode 30. (But he comes quietly right away as if acknowledging his own idiocy, and never holds it against her thereafter.)

Nevertheless, the point is: you can see that this kind of assertiveness is the same kind of assertiveness he had as the Kaiser, just channeled in a different direction and for a different purpose. But as the Kaiser, he was angrily lashing out at anything and everything and stepping on anything he could just so he could have a show of power; once he comes back to his senses, he reserves that force for it being something he consciously believes is the right thing to do (regardless of whether it’s actually the right thing to do or not).

Because of the fact Ken spends a lot of the last quarter of 02 suffering and parsing a lot of trauma, a lot of people have tended to pin him as constantly sad and being a soft crybaby, but that couldn’t be further from the truth! Despite all the emotional pain he goes through, Ken has a hell of a ton of strength through all of this -- he even flings a well-aimed quip at Oikawa in 02 episode 44 despite being in a completely helpless situation, and in 02 episode 45 he himself is the one who volunteers to open the gate to the Dark Ocean, despite knowing exactly what it entails. That takes a lot of guts, and all things considered, his recovery from being the Kaiser spans only four months and is altogether incredibly fast given what he went through -- it did not take long for him to regain his bearings and get himself back on track. Again, it’s the same kind of “assertiveness” and capacity for action that fuels what the Kaiser did, just better controlled and in a direction Ken knows he actually wants.

This is also why I tend to object to insinuations that Ken would be overly touchy about or traumatized by the mere discussion of him being the Kaiser in the aftermath of 02, because the series itself, multiple times, portrayed him as being very able to talk about his experiences bluntly and honestly, at worst maybe considering it a bit of an awkward topic. He has no problems admitting that it was a thing that happened, especially if it involves discussing it as part of taking responsibility or preventing further damage -- it’s just that he of course doesn’t enjoy it either, and is equally as open about the shame he feels as a result. All of the times Ken loses his composure in the latter half of 02 involve either physical pain being inflicted on him, or a lot more actively vicious invocation of his memories and insecurities, and even then he gets himself back on his feet with a rather prompt amount of speed. Poorly timed of a statement as it may have been, Miyako is not incorrect when she says in 02 episode 31 that he has a certain amount of natural resilience that he carried from being the Kaiser.

All the way back in 02 episode 9, shortly after it was revealed to the group that Ken was the Kaiser, Iori, Hikari, and Takeru all label Ken as someone who doesn’t look like someone who could do something so horrible, and Hikari even says that his smile looks “gentle” (note that this is yasashisou, a word derived from the same root word used for his Crest). So in other words, even all three of them were able to catch on to his actual nature betraying himself even during that awful period of time. It’s still poking through, all things considered.

But we as the audience know he’s putting on that face for the camera, and his eyes are still as dead-eyed as they are for the first half of the series, and when Miyako accidentally makes him laugh during the Christmas party in 02 episode 38, it’s very much framed as probably the first time Ken has been this genuinely happy in a long while. He was never able to be this happy even when “satisfying” himself by stepping on others as the Kaiser.

And that’s why it’s so extremely unlikely that Ken will ever be able to lapse back into the Kaiser persona after the events of 02, even with the Dark Seed technically still inside his neck. He wasn’t enjoying it anyway; the Kaiser persona wasn’t a habit that he fell into out of emotional suppression or even catharsis, but rather him forcing himself into a role he was never comfortable in to begin with. He was never truly satisfied with anything he was getting out of it, and moreover, it took the combination of supernatural influence and a hell of a lot of denial to allow it to get that far in the first place, because of how far against his fundamental nature that was.  (Again, for those of you who have seen Appmon: think about what it would take to get Haru to embrace sadism.) Even Osamu wasn’t enjoying being cold; being kind and living your life with positivity is a lot more fulfilling and fun, anyway.

In 02 episode 48, Ken describes the influence of the Seed as “horrible” in retrospect; even if it didn’t involve physical pain and exhaustion the way it did for the Dark Seed children, the entire experience sucked even back then. And while Ken theorizes about the Dark Seed’s influence being countered by the power of love earlier in the episode, when you look at the whole of 02, it’s not just his family’s love -- Ken now has the emotional support of his family, and Wormmon, and his newfound friends, and that’s giving him all of the fulfillment he wanted that putting on a front of sadism wasn’t giving him, and he doesn’t really need anything else anymore.

02 itself is very much about the fact that it’s not a bad thing to rely on the support of others to be happy; the Ken and Kaiser are undoubtedly the same person, but the latter’s existence requires a very specific lineup of events and factors to happen, and one of the massive parts behind that was a severe lack of emotional support or anyone who properly understood him. And by the end of the series, Ken has more than enough strength of heart to accept everything that’s happened and move on, and to stop reaching out to denial and clinging onto the past, and he has emotional support and understanding from a whole new group of friends that thoroughly understand everything he did and went through, and wholeheartedly accept and love him anyway.

He is never going to have a gaping hole in his life like that again.

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Risk”

Welcome back, everyone! I have a lot of mixed, complicated feelings about today's episode and I'm already sure this recap will miss a great deal that should be said. There's a lot to digest, we need some time to do that, so until things have settled I think that the one, entirely confident claim I can make here is that our writers weren't BSing the fandom on twitter. The last few days have seen a number of big claims made regarding "Risk" —

— and whatever else we might have to say about the episode, it certainly delivered in terms of shocking content. From confessions to reveals to a new plan in place, there's a lot to unpack. 

So let's get started.

Our first shot is a problem. 

I don't want it to be! But I've got to work with what I've got. We open on Salem's flying monkeys — or gorillas, if we're being technical — and my immediate thought is where in the world they came from. I mean, obviously I know where. We ended Volume 6 with the post-credit scene of Salem adding wings to an army of Beringels, Hazel commenting that she'll lead the invasion herself. When Salem arrived at the end of Volume 7 and we picked up where we'd left off in Volume 8, the fandom was obviously expecting an attack led primarily by flying, transformed grimm. That didn't happen. For ten episodes the plot forgot that the Beringels existed, focusing instead of the Hound, the grimm soup, then the Whale, then the ground grimm the Whale was producing. Months back I encountered a number of posts asking, "What happened to the resource we know Salem brought to this fight?" and those questions are partly what inspired the "Introducing new grimm that are then quickly abandoned" spot on the bingo board. Now, suddenly, the Beringels have re-appeared and that is a good thing. Though it's too little, too late, as is so often the case with RWBY. Getting something you expect has a sour taste when it arrives months past when it was needed, especially when that something only exists for a second on screen. 

This is doubly true given that we saw Oscar eliminate the grimm last episode.

At least, I thought he had? Pretty much everyone I've spoken to thought he had. This last week's discussions have centered around RWBY nerfing the stakes, taking out a whole army of grimm in one, magical blast. That's far from great. Yet now we see that we were apparently wrong. Atlas remains overrun with grimm, this problem remains a problem... so, yay? But we're once left with a tradeoff. RWBY has no longer eliminated the stakes with a deus ex machina as we had originally thought, but in its place we're left with a badly executed scene last episode and an assumed problem that is "fixed" with an enemy we should have been dealing with since the start of the volume. The road to the Beringels has been messy indeed and all they've done so far is fly across the screen.

Which reminds me: if this army of grimm still exists — and absolutely existed prior to Oscar's blast — how come not a single one is attacking the Schnee manor? This opening is in Atlas, the skies are overrun, we've seen a few grimm show up to help out the Hound, yet miraculously nothing bothers the group while they freak out at the dining table, or freak out as Penny tries to leave. That's a whole lot of grimm and a whole lot of negativity... yet somehow these two things never meet in a way that would inconvenience our characters. While from a writing standpoint I can understand not wanting to interrupt all these conversations and feel good moments, the show can't simply ignore the rules of its world whenever it's convenient. If anything, given that Atlas' population is currently hidden beneath the city, Schnee manor should be even more of a hot-spot than it normally would be. There is one (1) group of people out in the open for them to target. 

Yeah, we're a single shot into this episode. It's a doozy.

Moving right along, those Atlas citizens (and, let's not forget, a large number of Mantle evacuees too) are still huddled in the tunnels, listening to Ironwood's insane broadcast. They're obviously terrified, as are those down in Mantle who are staring execution in the face. Fiona bursts into tears.

It makes me wonder why we didn't get the airship subplot now. As I've mentioned extensively in the past, that decision didn't make much sense and I think the writers knew it didn't make much sense because they chose not to reveal what Ruby and co. planned to do with the citizens once they were on board. The point was never to come up with a feasible plan, something the audience would put to the test, but rather to just make it seem like the group was doing something Smart and Heroic before Ironwood inevitably derailed it. Don't look too closely at the man behind the curtain. Normally, I'd comment that yes, it's damn hard to come up with a brilliant plan to save others in a situation like this — our characters can only be as smart as our authors! — yet that sympathy dissipates when we hit this episode and are given a scenario where airships would have been great. Ironwood has threatened to nuke Mantle. Suddenly, it is imperative that the civilians leave the safety of the crater as soon as possible (whereas before it was not). So Whitley remembers that they have access to these ships and the group hatches a plan to sneak them down while Ironwood is distracted, get everyone up into Atlas so he can't use Mantle as a bargaining chip anymore. Then they're spotted, the plan revealed, and Ironwood shoots their ships down, leaving them devastated that their attempt to help the citizens has literally gone up in flames. We're still left with the problem of why Ironwood wouldn't just allow a continued evacuation now that Salem is briefly out of the mix and the Schnees have provided extra resources — the writing really took a sledgehammer to his characterization — but the group trying to get people to Atlas to avoid death by bomb at least makes more sense than them trying to move the citizens to an undisclosed location, for unestablished reasons, when they were already relatively safe. The bomb is what makes those airships a necessity.

It really makes me wonder how much editing goes on and how much time the writers have before they finalize scripts.

Regardless, we cut from terrified people to Ironwood himself, accompanied by Winter. The animation has some nice parallels going on here, what with the same black, white, and blue color scheme, hands behind their backs, the need for robotic accommodations, and steps perfectly in synch. As we're about to see though, Winter is very good at looking the part of a loyal soldier while actually bending the rules.

However, are we really going to ignore that she betrayed Ironwood last episode? Betrayal from his perspective, that is. Winter was given a direct order, disobeyed that order, pissed off Harriet in the process, and wasn't able to give a good explanation for her actions — she was too busy being creeped out by Ironwood's reaction. For all intents and purposes she should be considered disloyal right now. Or at least under suspicion, yet Ironwood acts as if everything is fine. We've skipped over any meaningful fallout between them, or a reason why Ironwood would dismiss her betrayal. This ties into something I'll bring up later in the episode: namely, that RWBY introduces too much too quickly and doesn't have time to satisfyingly tackle — or tackle at all — the plot points they've introduced, simply because there's always a new one to focus on. We dropped the "Winter went against Ironwood at great personal risk" plotline to make room for the new "Ironwood has randomly threatened Mantle" plotline, which likewise doesn't do Ironwood's characterization any favors. I don't just mean the obvious "Omg he's willing to murder a whole city now" issue. Ironwood used to be smart, yet his unfounded trust in others makes him look foolish now: first trusting Watts, now Winter. Alongside that, the story and fandom have both pushed the idea that Ironwood is paranoid, yet that "paranoia" has only ever been attached to justified threats. If he were actually paranoid then Winter's actions would have caused him to mistrust all of the Ace Ops now, labeling everyone near him a disloyal enemy, despite evidence to the contrary (especially when it comes to Harriet). Yet across two volumes Ironwood has continually been "paranoid" only in regards to things like Cinder and Salem — proven threats — while simultaneously trusting known villains and ignoring when his subordinates straight up say, "She let our enemies go free." There’s little rhyme or reason to any of his decisions here. 

Still! A nice, meaningful shot lol.

As Ironwood and Winter get closer we see the Ace Ops discussing the threat. "Of course he's not going to do it," to which Marrow pushes back with, "So what? He's bluffing with a whole city?" This is a really, really important moment that I don't think the writers realize is important. See, everyone is shocked when Ironwood reveals that he intends to go through with the threat. The Ace Ops, Winter, Robyn, our heroes... everyone grapples with the idea that this is actually happening. Everyone has some moment of, "It's just a bluff, yeah?" and I don't think that's just denial. The characters' shock tells us that Ironwood normally wouldn't be a man who'd do something like this. Ever. That shock has to stem from something, such as an ingrained understanding that Ironwood is a protector, not a murderer. Note the difference between the fandom and the characters' reactions. Whereas a good chunk of the fandom went, "Of course Ironwood means it. We all saw this coming! Remember how he..." and then proceed to list various things — persuasive or otherwise — that prove he was always a bad guy in the making. Yet no one in the RWBY world is inclined to use those moments as evidence. Winter doesn't go, "He's not bluffing. I saw him shoot the councilman just for speaking up" and the Ace Ops don't go, "Oh, he'll do it. This is the man who destroyed his arm to take down Watts. He'll stop at nothing." After everything they've seen — the same things we've seen — there's still some instinctual, nebulous knowledge that goes, "No. Ironwood wouldn't. He's one of the good guys." We can certainly talk about real life people getting swept up in horrible institutions, unwilling to admit how bad things actually are until they hit a specific line they can't cross... but I think this is less a comment on some sort of bystander effect (RWBY isn't that deliberately nuanced lol) and more an unintentional acknowledgement that until the very sudden and entirely unexpected shooting of Oscar, Ironwood actually wouldn't have done this. The Ace Ops are reacting to a man who absolutely existed until the writing erased him and they believe the core of that man still exists. To my mind, he should, but because our show can't actually have Salem as the main villain right now, she's conveniently blown up and Ironwood takes her place.

So we've got some loaded implications there, as well as Vine's comment that he hopes "the kids" see sense now. I am begging RWBY to pick a lane already. Are they kids, or are they adults? Because that answer makes a big difference and we can't continue to have it both ways.

Ironwood and Winter arrive were Ironwood orders that she prep drones with the "payload." That's the moment Winter and the others realize he's serious. Cue that shock all around. The revelation is the last straw for Marrow, prompting him to start yelling some excellent points about how Ironwood is doing Salem's job for her. See, this accusation works. Telling a guy threatening to blow up a city that he's as bad as their villain is accurate. Having Oscar tell that same guy that he's as bad as their villain because he wants to save a city full of people... is ridiculous. Totally different setup here and RWBY got it right this time. The only line that didn't work for me was Marrow asking the Ace Ops if they believe in anything. Uh... yeah. They believe in saving Atlas + all the Mantle evacuees they got. That's pretty well established. I swear,  most RWBY speeches are padded with generic, heroic-sounding lines that don't actually mean anything, or are outright falsehoods we’re meant to ignore. 

We'll see more of that with renora.

Marrow attempts to leave and his eyes go wide as he hears the click of Ironwood's gun. Remember I said that Winter is good at playing the obedient soldier? It's after Ironwood aims that she tackles Marrow. 

On the surface it looks only like she violently disarmed him, but in reality she got him out of the bullet's path and kept Ironwood from firing at all. She saved his life, choosing to play up how she'll “take this traitor to the brig” where he belongs, rather than watching him die. A really nice moment in terms of strategy and one of the few lately where I've actually felt like I'm watching smart characters.

However, I cannot deny the uncomfortable implications in this scene. Smart or not, necessary or not, it hasn't escaped anyone's notice that one of our darkest characters was a) nearly killed by a white man and b) beat up by a white woman. To say nothing of Marrow's status as a faunus. I was cringing during his line about loyalty: “I used to wear this rank with pride. Now I see it for what it really is: a collar." 

Honestly, I don't have the qualifications to unpack all that, so let's just acknowledge that the scene, while good in some respects, was massively insulting in others. I’ll let others in the fandom defend or damn it as they see fit. 

We get a shot of how shocked the Ace Ops are that they nearly watched their team member get executed for speaking up against a bomb threat. It once again highlight's RWBY's strange depiction of violence and when it's deemed appropriate. Harriet has threatened people a couple of times now — here telling Marrow she'll shut him up herself — yet her reaction tells us that she never would have killed him as Ironwood nearly did. Threats, then, mean little... unless Ironwood is making an exaggerated comment about shooting Qrow. Then it's evidence of evil intent that's bound to come to the surface eventually. So does that mean Harriet will be trying to bomb cities herself someday? If so, it once again leaves our heroes in an awkward position, considering that Ruby started the fight Harriet wouldn't, Weiss stuck her weapon in Whitley's face, etc. If it says something awful that Winter would punch a minority — even to save his life — what does it say about Qrow that he would punch a child in anger? Outside of the easy to label actions like Ironwood's bomb threat and shootings, there exists this gray space that asks, “When are you justified to use violence? When is a threat forgivable?” The problem is, the show keeps coming up with contradictory answers. I bring this up not because Winter's punch or Harriet's threat are the most significant examples of this that we've seen, but because the themes of forgiveness and violence take center stage at the episode's end... and RWBY completely drops the ball. Keep these complications in mind. 

Before that though, the group is crowded into the dining room and no matter what else "Risk" might give us, I'm reminded that I really like the design of the Schnee manor. I'm glad the episode found an excuse to show us this room again.

My initial thought upon entering the scene was, "Are we going to talk about Penny's hack? The silver-eyed grimm? Ozpin's return?" and to RWBY's credit it touches on all of these, though I stand by my point about plotlines coming too quickly. Any one of these should have been given the space to grow, not fighting for space against the potential destruction of Mantle. If you don't acknowledge these things in "Risk" you've lost your chance (much like how "Oscar is kidnapped" replaced "Oscar has to deal with Ozpin's return," resulting in a scene where Oscar was just... randomly okay with Ozpin again. We lost the chance to deal with the first conflict introduced because we barreled into the second), yet if you do spend episode time on these issues, it feels like the characters aren't dealing with the immediate threat. Questions of silver eyes, what to do about Penny, and Ozpin's return needed to be given their due before there was an hour time limit resulting in thousands of deaths. Now, you have to wonder why Yang and Ruby are talking about their mother when a city's safety is ticking away. Where were these questions and reassurances years ago?

I think this is why this episode — maybe even this whole volume — simultaneously feels too full and too boring. We're being introduced to lots of Big Things, but then putting them off to focus on other, smaller stuff, and by the time we circle back around it's no longer the right time. We're constantly focusing on the least interesting, least important thing in the room. Why is the group sitting around with their tea when we could have moved the Hound plotline up and started this groundwork earlier? Which means we're doing that work now instead of worrying about Mantle or Penny. All of which is connected to Salem herself being here, yet Ironwood is our villain instead... We're just introducing new idea after new idea, dropping each to focus on something else when the viewer is already emotionally invested in the last conflict. It makes the show feel overly packed with problems we don't have time for while simultaneously having too much time in which the characters do nothing of importance. We're never dealing with these issues at the right time. Talking about a silver-eyed grimm while Salem is here feels like Too Much and having the girls unpack that now, with Mantle’s life on the line, feels like Too Little. Stop sitting around while you've got less than an hour to save half a kingdom! We needed this conversation in a different episode, one not already driven by a problem that’s objectively more important. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We're in the dining room and the group is listing all the stuff that has gone wrong lately. Blake mentions that Qrow and Robyn are still in custody, because we definitely want Blake remembering that Qrow exists, not one of his nieces. Ruby, meanwhile, is having a meltdown. "So then it's impossible!" she yells, head in her hands. 

Emerald sneaks in an insult: “See? If Ms. Hero here with all the answers doesn’t have one..." and the others, of course, jump to Ruby's aid. But Emerald is right! It's entirely Ruby's fault that Atlas didn't get the chance to escape with those they had. Her actions and lack of a plan led to where they are now. I'm not saying she's responsible for Ironwood's insane decisions — that's like saying he's responsible for Qrow's in relation to Clover — but Ruby indeed played the part of the hero who had all the answers... without actually having any answers. Now that things are worse than how they started, her only answer is to say it's all "impossible" and throw up her hands. Ruby is an absolutely terrible leader right now and someone should indeed be calling her out on that, it's just too bad it's Emerald, someone technically still presented as an untrustworthy figure for the next couple of minutes. (More on that later.) Any and every criticism of Ruby is dismissed out of hand. Don't believe Ironwood because he's crazy now. The Ace Ops? His boot lickers. Yang has things to say, but once Ren agrees with her she does a 180. Now Ren is heading towards an extra special apology for daring to doubt Ruby. May calls her out, only to also change her opinion the next episode. Now here's one more person, but she's a bad guy. The show has never once encouraged us to treat these criticisms seriously — never allowed them to stick, let alone lead to change — and at this point I'm done with everyone falling over themselves to absolve and praise Ruby. By making Emerald the criticizer and having Ruby throw herself a pity party, the writing ensures that the conversation goes from, "Yeah. You messed up big time and now have a responsibility to fix things" to "Aww, don't be so hard on yourself! We won't let mean Emerald insult you anymore."

Ruby makes herself the victim here. She gets so upset and acts so defeated that all anyone can do is reassure her. The focus turns towards her, a focus centered around hiding against the table, or cowering on a staircase, so that it feels cruel to call her out on her deadly mistakes when she's so clearly upset. But they still should have, especially since cowering and tears have never protected anyone else from the group's criticism. Ozpin is proof of that.

What I'm getting at is that Ruby runs away. She's faced with the consequences of her actions, is informed she needs to help come up with a solution, and instead of braving that decides it's "impossible" and literally runs from the room. While they're on a time limit. Keep this moment in mind for just a bit longer. These choices become doubly important later.

So Ruby can't handle the responsibility she violently ripped from others and the group goes out of their way to comfort her in this. Especially since the writing again decides to conflate Emerald and Ozpin through a comment of Oscar's, demonstrating that it still has no decent sense of what "responsibility" or "villainous acts" means. These scenes are three years in the making and every step getting here was dogged with problems, so the fact that the end result is a mess isn't exactly surprising.

We (thankfully) leave Ruby for a bit and instead turn to Jaune. He's amplifying Nora's aura, but admits that he can't get the scars to go away. That makes sense. After all, they're scars. His semblance helps people heal, but at this point Nora has already healed. Those scars are the result of that.

She says it was “Just another ditzy move from Nora” and I'm glad we're acknowledging that, even if it is all framed through the lens of Nora being incorrect in that assumption. Once again, the writing continually makes statements about characters, but fails to have their actions reflect that. Nora wanted to do more than just hit things with her hammer without thinking them through... and we showed that by having her hit a door with her hammer without thinking it through. Was it heroic? Absolutely. Did it lead to any growth? No. I'd much rather someone acknowledge that yeah, she did the same thing she always does, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Nora's impulsivity is a part of her and, given the talk of teammates here, she could have gotten reassurance that she'll always have people around to help her temper those impulses. Instead, we're (again) told that she shouldn't do A anymore, watch her do A anyway, the writing presents it like it’s B, Nora admits that she did A, and everyone rushes to assure her it was actually B. Just let these characters make mistakes for once, especially mistakes made in an effort to help someone. This should be the easiest and kindest way to criticize the group and RWBY can’t even manage that. 

Which brings us to Ren. Ren, I am so sorry. You deserved better than this. Nora rips into him, saying, “We were supposed to be a team, but that didn’t matter to you! You shove people out so you don’t have to feel things that are hard!" and again we have RWBY making grand statements that are meaningless. Did Ren keep things bottled up in Volume 7? Yes... and no one tried to help him with that. Instead, Nora decided to bypass his problems completely and try to kiss it better. When that (shockingly) didn't work, Ren was finally forced to open up at Yang's insistence and was abandoned for his perspective. That's what that was, literally and metaphorically: they walked away from him and made it clear that so long as he believes these things, he's not welcome. What were those things? We've made mistakes, Ruby made mistakes, we're not ready for this stuff. That's it! "We were supposed to be a team" makes it sound like Ren betrayed them in the worst possible way, when in reality all he did was acknowledge that they're imperfect and that things are a mess right now. But of course, that is the ultimate betrayal for this group: acknowledgement that they’re not perfect. Everyone can call themselves out to generate sympathy — Nora does it, Ruby does it  — but as soon as someone else agrees and implies that they should make changes, they’re dismissed. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the refusal to question Ruby makes me incredibly uncomfortable. Is this as bad as Ironwood shooting someone who questions him? Of course not, but that doesn't make it good. The group has made it clear from Ozpin to Ren that if you put a toe out of line, that's it. You're gone. You are not a part of the group until you are willing to back the group 100%, no matter what horrible things they might be up to. That Nora yells at Ren for questioning and Ren learns to keep his mouth shut, apologizing to both her and Jaune for speaking his mind is... well, it's horrible. That's not friendship. I know the fandom doesn't want to hear that given how much we otherwise love these relationships, but it's not. If you can't question and voice concerns without about serious topics like this without the threat of abandonment — literal or otherwise — then that's not a friend group you should be sticking with. Ren’s "biggest failing as a teammate and a partner" is that he didn't agree with the others and didn’t immediately change his mind when they demanded it. There are awful implications attached to that, especially since Ren’s perspective was a good one. He’s not out here slinging horrific views like, I don’t know, homophobia at the bee’s non-relationship. He just went “We made mistakes” and the group responded “Absolutely not. Absurd. Fuck you.” They didn’t even consider that position, which speaks to both a lack of respect for Ren and a level of arrogance that keeps getting them into trouble. But these issues are easily overlooked given everything else that surrounds them. Outside of Ren's apology, I quite liked the renora moment. We got a detail about Nora's backstory! She called Ren pretty! We got an "I love you"! He booped her nose!! It's all very cute and wholesome... and soured by the knowledge of what Ren had to do to get here.

Outside of these generalized responses, there are three other points I wanted to make about this scene:

Yes, more obligatory humor to ruin an otherwise serious moment. Jaune could have just smiled softly and slipped out. Or have him leave before the conversation started (because Ren shouldn't have been apologizing to him in the first place...) Instead, we got multiple seconds of him being awkward, including a bunch of funny sound effects.

I'm legitimately happy we got that "I love you" — outside of the problems since arriving in Atlas, I've always enjoyed the ship — but coming on the heels of last week's episode, it makes the bee's forehead touch look even worse. Renora has been confirmed multiple times at this point, but we still can't get something overt for our one, queer ship.

On the one hand, I really like that Nora set a boundary here — a surprisingly mature conversation for RWBY — but I'm confused as to what exactly the boundary is. She says she needs to figure out who she is without Ren, but what does that translate to on a practical, day-to-day basis? Normally, when a couple needs to figure out who they are they separate, but renora can't do that. They're still on the same team, stuck in the same war, presumably off to do the same things they've always done together. It sounds great on paper to say that Nora is going to discover who she is without Ren, but unless they separate again I don't see how that can happen. More likely, we'll get a volume or two of them looking and acting exactly as they always have, but when it comes time for relationship drama again, Nora will insist she's a different person who is now ready to be with him. That she's changed. But change requires, you know, making a change, so is renora actually going to look any different moving forward?

While these two confess their love but also decide to be separate (is that what happened?), Qrow and Robyn have knocked out some guards and retrieved their weapons. Robyn watches four security feeds, whispering, "He's... really gonna do it." See? Even Robyn, someone who never liked Ironwood and considered him dangerous from the start, is in shock that he would go this far. Qrow doesn't want to talk moral downfalls though, he's all action: "Not if we stop him first."

You know, at least Qrow is doing something. What he's doing is stupid, particularly given his motivations, but with the volume we've had I give him props for coming up with a plan and sticking to it. That's more than many of the others have done.

Yet then, suddenly, Robyn doesn't want to kill Ironwood. ...Since when? Robyn has been the most trigger happy of the lot while Qrow initially wanted to talk. Now they've switched places for no reason I can see, with Qrow all murder happy and Robyn cautioning restraint. Which admittedly isn't uncommon. Remember how Nora was all about protecting Mantle and then randomly decided to help with Amity instead? Remember how Yang was critical of Ruby and then decided to defend her to Ren? Remember how Hazel was pro-Salem until he saw a blue naked lady and decided to defect? At this point, characters just do things at random.

Robyn says that Qrow isn't trying to kill Ironwood because that's the right thing to do, only because he wants revenge. A true enough assessment. But then she follows it up by claiming that Qrow is a better huntsmen than Clover because he does the right thing. Without rehashing all my arguments regarding how Clover was not the devil incarnate for refusing to let two potential criminals walk free — especially after they attacked him — we're really playing the dead guy card now? Clover was murdered. Robyn and Qrow were participants in that murder. Now Robyn is making sweeping claims about who is the better person when Clover quite obviously isn't here to defend himself? That's all kinds of messed up.

Before they can bash the dead guy anymore though the elevator arrives. We see Qrow and Robyn's shocked expressions at whoever is behind the doors, presumably Winter and Marrow. It seems likely that Winter didn't really intend to take him to the brig. They're defecting and have now found two more allies to help them. Robyn wants a plan other than run upstairs and stab Ironwood? Winter will likely provide one.

We return to Ruby who, as established, is wallowing in the most dramatic position on the staircase. Obviously things are legitimately horrible right now and if Ruby had been given a storyline different from what we've seen since Volume 6, I'd feel sorry for her. As it stands, it's just frustrating to watch her look like the maiden of a Victorian novel while Mantle's time ticks away. 

The conversation between her and Yang is great though. At least, it is for the first few sentences. I love that the show remembered they're sisters and have them talking again. I love that Yang tries to cheer Ruby up by saying she outshines her big sis in regards to the Hound. I love that she nevertheless acknowledges that the Schnees were a part of that defeat, giving them their due rather than putting all the praise on Ruby. We establish that Yang has learned what the Hound really was. This conversation is going strong...

...but then.

"That's what happened to mom."

Really? Really? In eight episodes we went from, "Lol just because the Hound spoke doesn't mean Summer was secretly made into a grimm. That’s a crazy theory" to "Summer was absolutely turned into a grimm. That's canon now!" Except because it was made canon by Ruby just announcing it one day, we can expect for an even bigger "twist" in the future: Summer is still alive. Why wouldn't she be? The Hound was untouchable outside of silver eyes, so we have little reason to think anyone has defeated her in the last 14 odd years.

I'll admit the timeline works out better than expected (I think) with Salem killing SEWs during Maria's time before switching to experimentation, but there's no emotional weight to this. I just don't care and frankly I don't think the fandom cares either. Oh, there's plenty of excitement over the reveal, but that's all for the version of Summer Rose people have built up in their minds for the last eight years, not anything that exists in the show. If you strip away all the headcanons and fics, Summer isn't interesting because she barely exists. We know nothing about her as a person and therefore we have no reason to care that she's likely another Hound. Worse — because maybe this could be smoothed over if we just care since Ruby cares — everything else surrounding this reveal was badly done. Summer, as said, has been a non-character for this whole series. Yang only just remembered two episodes ago that Summer is her mom too. The only evidence of experimentation we've seen is on other grimm, not people. There was more mystery surrounding why Tyrian was interested in Jaune, not why he'd kidnap Ruby (Big Bads always want to kidnap heroes). We have no idea who this silver eyed faunus was. We have no idea why Salem would randomly start experimenting when she doesn't need additional weapons. We don't know why she would keep these weapons to the sidelines when she’s apparently had them for over a decade. I don't even buy that Ruby, someone who we never see thinking about or questioning any of this, suddenly put all these pieces together to hit on the revelation. 

None of this adds up because it wasn't planned. Summer was dead, added to the series purely because having a dead mom is interesting, and she was treated as dead for seven years. Not just by the characters, by the show. Then, suddenly, the narrative raced to remind everyone that she's supposedly a Very Important Character so we could get this twist. It’s awful. Not because the idea itself is horrible, but because it was shoved into a story that wasn't prepared for it and certainly doesn't need it. The group has Salem herself attacking the kingdom, Ironwood threatening destruction, three Relics still to discover, not to mention all the other personal conflicts going on — Emerald walking around the mansion, Ozpin is back, Penny is being controlled, Oscar has finite magic now, Nora is still recovering — but we're going to introduce another subplot to deal with? RWBY acts like it's terrified that if it doesn't add something new and flashy every third episode, its viewers will jump ship. Despite its hiccups, there's a reason why the arcs of Volume 4 worked well overall: characters were given the time to explore specific problems, like Yang's PTSD and the destruction of Ren's village. Now, in episode 11 of 14, RWBY reveals that two of the characters' mom was turned into a literal monster, but there's only time for a tiny bit of comfort because Penny is escaping and they have less than an hour now to save Mantle. There is way too much going on and we're not devoting enough time to any of it.

Hell, even the conversation can't afford to stay on the Summer reveal for more than a few sentences. Ruby segues back to her self-chastisement, saying that she wasted time on Amity. She did, but not because people didn't come. She never should have made that terrifying, nonsensical announcement to begin with. But just like Ruby never thought through the pros and cons of telling the world about Salem, she apparently never thought about the logistics of getting help. She's written the world off now — so you just know help will appear in the finale — yet she never considered how long all this would take. Our timeline is (supposedly) two days, so how long would it take a kingdom to digest the information she gave them, decide on a course of action, get people and resources together, then fly all the way to Atlas? After Ruby used most of the first day just to send the message? As I and others have pointed out, the answer is “way longer than the group has.” It shouldn't be possible, yet neither Ruby nor Yang realizes basic facts like, "What's the flight time between Vacuo and Atlas?" Like Qrow blaming his semblance rather than his decision to team up with Tyrian, Ruby blames the world for abandoning them rather than her terribly thought out plan. Both have reached the right emotion — regret — but not for the right reasons.

Also, Ruby says that Amity fell. Are Pietro and Maria okay??

Yang talks about blind optimism vs. no optimism at all, something I could really get behind if the group hadn't been governed by blind optimism this whole time. Also if what the rest of what Yang said made sense. She fires back with, “And in case you didn’t notice, my plan for Mantle didn’t work either." Uh... what plan? As far as I recall there was no plan. They just went down to do any tasks that needed doing: supply runs and grimm killings. What plan is Yang talking about?

This conversation is a disaster. We circle back around to Summer with Yang saying she also took a risk (the title is very obvious this episode) but "she's still my hero." Is she? Because the only thing you've ever said about Summer is that she baked great cookies. Regardless, Yang lays her head on Ruby's shoulder and they cry some more.

Then Jaune hurries down the steps because Penny has woken up and broken through a window.

Again: how were they planning to deal with this? Did anyone discuss it? Because it looks like Klein said, "Hey, that friend of yours powered up and could have hurt us," Nora said, "Hey, Penny was fighting some sort of control," and Whitely said, "Yeah, she wanted to open the vault and then self destruct" and everyone just left her alone in some room, deciding they'd worry about that later. If Penny had just snuck out a little more quietly the group would have been screwed.

What I do like though is the teamwork to keep Penny from flying off. It feels like we get so little teamwork nowadays, which makes everyone piling on others' range weapons, or Jaune boosting Weiss' glyphs, really enjoyable. Even Emerald gets in on the action because apparently they gave her her weapons back! 

We're going to talk about this nonsense in a second.

For now, Ruby implores Penny to fight it, which is exactly what I said we'd get. Penny insists Ruby kill her though, saying that if she does she'll ensure that the power passes to her. I find this to be a weird priority. Does the group really care about who gets the Maiden powers right now? The threat here is that Penny will successfully open the vault — which shouldn't even be that much of a worry. Just let Ironwood leave instead of trying to destroy Mantle! Keeping him here has made things worse! — and that Penny will self-destruct. That feels like the biggest worry: that Penny will die. So they're going to prevent her death by... killing her themselves? Priorities and motivations really feel shaky this week.

Luckily, Ruby remembers that Penny is A Real Person and tells Jaune to amplify her aura. The fact that she has a soul keeps the virus from overtaking her. Hurray!

That's like saying my sense of self will beat off rabies. Just believe that you're your own person and nothing can touch you. They go so far as to say, “That’s who you are. Our friend, not a machine” and that feels like such an erasure to me. Penny is a machine. She is! And that was great back when this was accepted as a good thing, not something to ignore. Remember this?

You think just because you've got nuts and bolts instead of squishy guts makes you any less real than me?

Here, Ruby acknowledges Penny's difference and reaffirms that she still has worth. Now, the group denies Penny's difference in order to prove that she has worth. She has worth because she's supposedly not a machine and supposedly can't be controlled like one... even though she is a machine and is being controlled. It's only Jaune's semblance that keeps her from going under again. The concept of Penny's personhood is now connected to her ability to resist a machine-based virus and she has failed to do that. This doesn't confirm Penny's humanity, it tells Penny (and us) that humanity is distinct from the machine parts of her, rather than a concept that includes it, and the moment she is too influenced by that machinery she ceases to be a person. The group isn't accepting her here, they're encouraging Penny to ignore and deny the parts that make her Penny.

If you want an example of how to do an arc like this far, far better, go watch The Next Generation with Data. He's what Penny could have been.

Regardless, the virus has been held at bay, at least so long as Jaune has aura. Which seems to be endless given that he was exhausting himself in the whale, but is now boosting Nora, Weiss, and Penny without any difficulty.

At least that's a minor concern in the grand scheme of things. What we're about to get? Not so much. Honestly, I'm 7k into this recap and I just don't have the energy that these two scenes deserve. Which scenes? The one where Emerald is welcomed into the fold with laughter and Ozpin has to grovel for forgiveness.

Emerald first. Last week I said:

“However this fight ends, we could really use someone like you, [Emerald.]” That’s it then. Discussion over. We knew as soon as it started that blindly trusting her was being presented as the “right” thing to do and now here we are, deciding that conclusively, despite Jaune and Yang’s complaints. By the time the group reaches the mansion, Oscar is defending Emerald from Ruby. We’re supposed to just accept that she’s a part of the group now, only minimal pushback allowed.

and I was right. Over the course of the last week I spoke with a number of friends, many of them working under the belief that this was just the start of an arc for Emerald. Obviously the show wouldn't instantly have the group trust her after all this. They'll need to warm up to her first. She'll need to prove herself. Well, I was far more pessimistic, arguing instead that I thought this was it. She was already being presented as a perfectly trustworthy figure. I'd briefly thought I'd been mistaken when the group turned on Emerald for her comment to Ruby, but then suddenly she's been given her weapons back. It's not even a matter of "You should be able to defend yourself, but you're still not trustworthy" (which would still have problems, but). No, she makes a comment about "switching sides" and that's it, trust achieved. That's all it took — nothing at all.

Now, some shows do function on a second chance policy. We can name hundred of stories where heroes instantly forgive antagonists and there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is that RWBY is very much not that show. In the exact same scene Ozpin apologizes to the group and begs that they try to trust him again:

“I’ve failed all of you. I should have trusted you with the truth and I should never have run the day you discovered it."

This is complete and utter bullshit. Sorry, I'm not mincing words for this one. Two years we waiting for the group to come around, hoping that there would be apologies on both sides, but there wasn't. The group doesn't physically or verbally hurt Ozpin anymore — they do accept his request — but it's done with expressions that say this is what they are owed. You’d better apologize.

I could rehash all the arguments I've already made about how atrociously they treated him, how Ozpin had no reason to trust a bunch of teenagers, how important it was that both sides admit their mistakes, but if you're reading this recap you're likely already familiar with all that. Rather, what I want to emphasize here is that our opinions on Ozpin don't even matter here. Even those who take his apology at face value — fully believing he did fail them, he should have told them everything from the start, and that him leaving was "running away" rather than being driven off — even if we accept for just a moment that Ozpin is as guilty as the show says and heinous as the fandom claims... surely he's not as bad as Emerald? In roughly chronological order she has:

Tried to ally herself with Adam along with Cinder and Mercury

Helped to attack Amber, resulting in injuries that would have killed her if Cinder hadn't gotten to her first

Helped kill Tukson

Pretended to be a transfer student and Ruby's friend for the rest of the semester (that’s a lie that would breed mistrust)

Tricked the world into thinking that Yang had attacked Mercury unprovoked

Uses her semblance on Pyrrha, causing her to unintentionally kill Penny

All of this was in service of the Fall of Beacon, an event that destroyed a school, killed an unknown number of students, killed Pyrrha, and lost Yang her arm

Participated in the attack on Haven which, beyond the intent to further Salem's goals, nearly got Weiss killed

Came to Atlas to assist in the next attack

Went after Penny, Pietro, and Maria — two of whom might still be in trouble depending on if Amity literally fell out of the sky 

Listened to Oscar being tortured, hemming and hawing for a while before realizing that, if the whole world is in danger, she's in danger too

Finally jumped ship

Emerald is one of the bad guys. All the sad looks over the years doesn't change that. Yet somehow an antagonist we've had since Volume 1 is considered more trustworthy than Ozpin, a man who hasn't intentionally helped kill their friends and who has been helping and apologizing for months now.

Yang "Aww"s when Emerald speaks. Just sit with that for a second. The woman who went through all of that horror because of Emerald, who just last episode was correctly saying they can't expect her to forget all that, is going "Aww" after... Emerald helped hold Penny for two seconds? This is ridiculous. These are the faces of the group when talking about Emerald's trust

whereas these are their expressions when talking about Ozpin's

It’s not a matter of who deserves trust or not, here it’s purely a matter of comparison. Emerald should not be more quickly forgiven than Ozpin. 

Now toss in the story Ozpin tells. Unsurprisingly, it's another fairy tale — we've gotten a little heavy-handed lately — about a young girl who flees the consequences of a choice and, having never learned from her initial failure, spreads even more trouble. That's Ruby. That is Ruby to a T in this episode and the last three volumes. She is literally a young girl who has caused staggering consequences, literally ran away from the conversation about those consequences, and is now poised to continue making those mistakes because everyone keeps reinforcing her flaws. That's Ruby, yet somehow the show thinks it's Ozpin. He positions himself as the young girl here, as if he didn't face his consequences generations ago when he left the cabin, didn't learn from his mistakes by keeping Salem's secret, and hadn't been driven away by the very people he's asking for a second chance. This scene has everything backwards and while normally I'd grab hold of the possibility that maybe things will right themselves later on... we're done. This is the ending of that arc. After two years of saying, "Maybe, maybe, maybe," Ozpin has been taken back into the fold after begging his way back in. There's no more time to correct things. RWBY missed its chance. Weiss says that "Trust is a risk" and that's how Ozpin is forgiven. They have taken the risk of trusting him again after months of reflection, life-saving actions, and apologies. Emerald is granted the risk of trust in under an hour. I’ve heard so many people say they’re dropping RWBY this volume and scenes like this are precisely why. 

Ugh. Heavy stuff, folks! I feel like I need to lighten the mood. Here, let's take a moment to acknowledge that the Schnees and Klein only marginally know what's happening.

Someone help them.

That is, to all intents and purposes, the end of our episode. Ruby has some sort of epiphany about actually handing Penny over — "That's actually a risk we haven't considered" — and Ironwood will no doubt fall for whatever plan they've concocted because he's stupid now. He receives a call from Ruby saying they agree to his terms, Watts is attempting to get communication of his own up and running, and Neo arrives to do... whatever she intends to do. Idk, I have assumed she wanted Ruby, but Cinder obviously doesn't have her yet for a trade off. Regardless, Neo is ready for a fight while Cinder just smiles. Team up 2.0?

As for bingo, I'm using my free space for "Worst redemption arc I've ever seen," with an honorary nod to Hazel too, and Ozpin's square gets blacked out in exes because that was just #bad.

This bingo board is a mess. Appropriate lol 

Three more weeks, everyone. Hang in there! 💜

[thebestpersonherelovesbucky]

Falcon and the Winter Soldier Ep. 6 Takeaway

First let me say that I really truly enjoyed this show. I was so nervous at the beginning and I was so nervous for the end, and though there are things that I didn’t like (as to be expected with pretty much any media) my overall excitement was rewarded. I definitely give the show an A and can only hope that we keep getting things like this and WandaVision with their next shows.

Anyway.

Sam and Bucky (and Sharon) coordinating from their different spots. I always like seeing the tactical side of working together in addition to the badass fighting together stuff. 

The officer not questioning Bucky’s presence and calling him Sargent Barnes made me SO happy.

The facial mask thing-y that Natasha had in Cap 2 making a reappearance. Idk why I like that but it’s nice to know that these things are still being utilized.

CAPTAIN AMERICA’S FIRST ENTRANCE!!!! my GOD did Sam ROCK that!!! Fucking AH-MAY-ZING. 

Sam’s new costume is perfect like the comics!! It’s so often changed that it’s so great to see it on screen! 

“I’m sorry, wait. Who are you?” “I’m Captain America.” The parallel between this is Steve’s “Um...Captain America.” in the First Avenger. 

The subtitles saying “Captain America” now whenever Sam in uniform talks.

Bucky trying to talk Karli down, approaching from a different angle than Sam because it’s what he knows and honestly does want to stop her without it coming to a fight. Especially when he realizes it’s a trap and is all “oh fuck me” and needs to haul ass lol. That is Bucky Barnes to a T. 

“Seriously, Bucky, you had one job.” Omg, Sharon. lmao

Sam’s fight with Batroc was so cool. No serum. Just straight up ass kicking plus the au revoir at the end. Yes please and thank you.

Redwing!!!! Yaaaay!!!! (”a little birdie told me” lmao, Sam.)

Seeing the Vibranium wings in ACTION. Bouncing a freaking helicopter off them! FUCK!!!!! SO COOL!!!

I can watch Bucky Barnes throwing himself off a motorcycle all day long. 

Bucky stopping his fight to save everyone.

John Walker and his stupid Walmart Shield arriving just in time to add fire to fire. Thanks, bro. 

Bucky specifically being thanked for rescuing them. He’s spent so much time with so much guilt that having just one person say “thank you for rescuing us” actually made him pause. He’s spent so much time as the “villain” that he’s forgotten he can be the hero and it’s so good to see that finally hit him. 

The metal arm scraping across the ground. Good god. 

Sam popping out of the water and “Boy, you earned this ass whooping!”

That helicopter scene holy SHIT is Sam amazing. 

And some applause for Ayla, too!!!! 

John Walker ultimately choosing to save people instead of going on with his vendetta. Very comic book in character. 

Bucky watching in horror as the van is slowly going over the edge and then smiling in wonder and awe as Captain America saves them all. 

“That’s the Black Falcon there! I tell you!” “Nah. That’s Captain America!” Tears. Actual tears. SO MANY TEARS. Sam Wilson IS CAPTAIN AMERICA, baby!!!

Uh, yeah, so Bucky stopping weapons mid-air is one of my favorite things ever.

Okay, Batroc, go the fuck away now, we’re done with you. 

I do like that when push comes to shove, the mission outweighed their personal grudges and Sam and Bucky “teamed up” with Walker. Not that it was 100% trust on their side. I think Bucky followed Walker bc “eeeeh....can we really trust him?” and since he has no doubt Sam can handle himself, but also, we’re fighting the same thing right as of this moment so lets just keep our heads and do it. 

I am absolutely not thrilled with the direction they took Sharon. Like. Not at all. I’m...reserving full judgement for what I’m assuming will come in the future but like. No. Nuh-ah. Not happy with it.

Sam trying so hard to help Karli. The fact that he legit refused to fight her and she tried so hard to get him to fight back and he just wouldn’t. So beautiful and poignant. Sam’s fighting style. Sam perseverance. Just. Everything about that.

As good as the scene was (and I think it was great. The set up. How it all went down. The raw emotion) I’m kinda bummed they killed Karli. I was hoping Sam could at least talk her down first. However, the emotion and symbolism of her dying in his arms, and whispering “i’m sorry” was so heartbreaking. 

The way Bucky and Walker got the rest of the Flag Smashers was hilarious.

Sam carrying Karli’s body cradled in his arms and flying down with her like a literal angel? I mean. Just rip my heart out. 

“You have to stop calling them terrorists.” and “Your peacekeeping troops carrying weapons are forcing millions of people into settlements around the world, right? What do you think those people call you.” These first few lines of Sam’s speech. God, thank you.

Sam’s Captain America Speech. No fuck’s given. I’m so glad they didn’t hold back and just let him really give that powerful speech. Unabashedly saying “I’m a Black man carrying the stars and stripes. What don’t I get?”. Admitting the weight that comes with it and the judgement he feels. Not backing down. Telling the world he is Captain America “no super serum, no blond hair or blue eyes”. Defending Karli and trying to get them to understand what she was trying to do and why she was trying to do it. Sam was 100% born to be Captain America. 

Everyone watching Captain America’s speech. Bucky. Walker. Isaiah and Eli. Joaquin. Sarah. The world. Beautiful watching Captain America deliver his first speech. 

“Sorry I was texting so all I heard was Black guy in stars and stripes...nice job, Cap.” That back clap Bucky gives Sam there? ((#boyfriends))

“Can you help?” “Always.” 

Very happy that Zemo had another villain move up his sleeve. Didn’t really dig the whole “i’m so graceful feel sorry for me” thing. 

John Walker becoming US Agent.  

Oh and, excuse me while I geek out over Valentina, Walker, Zemo...@marvel, I see where this might be headed. Please don’t let me down!

Bucky making his amends with Nakajima. The overwhelming emotions. The fear of admitting it. I kinda wish we saw a little more but I’m also okay with the ambiguity of it and knowing that Bucky knows that he at least gave him closure and is coming to accept that his role as the winter soldier was not his fault. 

Also liked Bucky giving the book to his therapist. I know it’s an unpopular opinion, but I take no issues with her and I do think that Bucky felt she helped him.

Eli Bradley is fucking adorable. 

Sam’s conversation with Isaiah. All that hope he represents while not erasing the pain that Isiah and generations before them suffered. Still wanting to fight for what’s right just because it’s the right thing to do. Isaiah not condemning Sam’s choice. Beautiful and poignant. 

Um. The museum scene? Yeah, I had to pause for a good ten minutes before I could actually continue with the show. Isaiah Bradley and all his men deserved that ((and so much more)) for so long. The catharsis so visible when Isaiah hugs Sam so tight. The zoom in on the statue. Okay, I’m crying again. 

Yeah, so when Bucky’s boyfriend has a BBQ he shows up like dancing like a dork with a cake and plays with all the kids.

Honestly, happiness looks so good on him. It’s so nice to see that again. 

They really ended it with Sam and Bucky embracing and walking off together in the sunset. 

CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE WINTER SOLDIER

Again, still not thrilled with what’s going on with Sharon but clearly they’re setting up for something so...I’m putting a bookmark in to hold my judgement. 

Bc honestly, my biggest focus is:

CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE WINTER SOLDIER

CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE WINTER SOLDIER

CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE WINTER SOLDIER

CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE WINTER SOLDIER

Seriously though, overall, I think this was one of the best things Marvel has put out there in a while and I know I’ll come back to it again and again. Here’s hoping to more Cap to come!!!! 

[creacherkeeper]

im getting a little too in my family feels today and so INSTEAD of feeling those im just going to ramble for a second about why i fucking love paladin!aelwyn because. im. just like this i guess im coping leave me alone

cw for discussions of child abuse, maladaptive coping, drugs and alcohol, self harm, destructive tendencies, basically everything we see in canon and the implications

aelwyn is ... SO interesting to me because for as much of her interiority as we see, as much of her as we think we understand, as much as i could ramble about her character for hours, we know ALMOST NOTHING about her in actuality?? (besides ... one key thing)

(this is like 2k and probably incoherent someone please stop me)

okay. listen. almost everything we see aelwyn do in s1 is maladaptive rebellion against her parents and home life. the drinking, the drugs, the partying, perhaps some of kalvaxus (though i dont think we fully understand how much of that was forced on her as well, kalina WAS watching her when she was talking to adaine about it). you can say like, oh aelwyn is a party animal, she's impulsive, she makes risky decisions, she's bitchy and rude, and its like. okay but IS SHE ACTUALLY. because under her parents thumb she had an EXTREMELY limited amount of freedom, and usually when people are suffering from very little control over their life, they WILL act destructively over the tiny bit they can, either harming themselves or their environment or people lower than them in the pecking order, because in a way, that feels like a reclamation of autonomy. saying "you have so much power over me but can you stop me from hurting myself and destroying what you havent managed to claim yet?". its just like, kind of what human brains do and frequently has little to do with a persons actual personality or impulses, its just. desperate brains trying to control SOMETHING because autonomy is a fundamental human need and when thats taken away we get. very bad off. (this is one big reason eating disorders are SO common with abused kids.) so i think a lot of the s1 aelwyn we see is like. this is a very desperate, abused teenager "acting out" in the only way it is possibly somewhat safe for her to do so because, on a psychological level, the self destruction is weirdly the only emotional tether and its either this or just dissociate all the time (something we do see she has problems with in canon)

and yes, she did treat adaine horribly in s1. she fully did. obviously what we get in canon is what happens but a moment thats interesting to me is in episode 1 where adaine has attacked aelwyn several times, who either does nothing or just bounces it back, when she says "i never cast spells at you" and siobhan immediately retcons it and says "yes you do, all the time" (i havent gone back and watched this bit so i might be wording this wrong). obviously its an improv show and the canon is built between performers as they go, but that was interesting to me. that brennan hadnt intended for her to have fought back in that way. she definitely feeds into the emotional abuse from their parents and participates in all the toxicity there, but we know in canon that she did that because of overwhelming fear and self preservation. and that her self hatred because of it just fed back into the cycle and made her feel like she wasnt good enough to even try to break free from it. this is very common in golden child/scapegoat sibling relationships where the golden child SEES what the parents are capable of and becomes a participant in the abuse out of fear for their own standing. in any way siding with the scapegoat child not only directs abuse at themselves as well, but frequently makes things WORSE for the scapegoat because the parents will take out the challenge to their power on them even more. so, if aelwyn DID ever try to defend or help adaine when they were small, she would have VERY QUICKLY learned that made things worse for everyone. and just. sectioned that part of her brain off, as she's done with so many other things. (and i dont think im reading too much into the forest scene with the abernants to say their parents were VERY QUICK to turn abuse towards aelwyn if she stepped out of line even a little. like, you dont flinch when a hand moves unless. you know. dont need to say it just something to think about. as far as we saw in canon, she had done everything they asked of her leading up to the forest, and we DONT KNOW what happened in it but we do know brennan specifically called out how in broken spirits she was when adaine was summoned, even though they did the ritual to avoid all of the nightmare bullshit)

(the house party is literally a whole separate post but i think its fair to point out that 1) she was super under the influence when that was happening which DEFINITELY is in no way an excuse for her behavior but worth remembering when trying to analyze that 2) her losing that fight did canonically have DRASTIC consequences for her and even if she didnt know exactly how that was going to turn out, i think she knew how bad it might be. and she did not know adaine or any of the bad kids were going to be there in the first place)

all that said, it feels in some ways counterproductive to say that aelwyn is an extremely devoted and protective person (yes we're getting to the paladin shit i know i've been rambling a while) but i think that thats strangely ALL WE ACTUALLY KNOW ABOUT HER. because we've established that her self-destructive and abusive behavior in s1 is almost entirely psychologically scripted for her by her parents, we dont know how much of her villain shit in s1 was LITERALLY UNDER THREAT OF DEATH because we know at least killing the oracle was and we dont know how much of the rest of it was mandated by either her parents or kalina other than that she probably was under orders not to tell adaine the truth, and we know participating in all of this caused extreme self loathing in her that she refused to show to anybody and was too terrified to act on in any way

so, like. what does that actually leave us?

here's what we do know about aelwyn:

- of all the schools of magic, she went into abjuration

- the entire bbeg plan from season 1 hinged on aelwyn's complete faith that her level 1 sister was the most prodigious diviner in the world

- right after (?) the house party, she locked her memories where only adaine could find it with a note basically saying "theres so much bad blood between us but i know only you could find this"

- she desperately wanted to protect adaine and the fact that she was too afraid to do so made her hate herself (and her knowing that adaine now knows this is the turning point in their relationship)

- despite everything, even in the nmk forest, she still loved her parents

- the SECOND she is shown genuine love and affection and care from adaine, and adaine says whatever you do, i am here with you, all her actions from there forward are just about protecting adaine from their father, very nearly at the cost of her own life

- with what she probably thought were her last words (and would have been if adaine hadnt given her the tincture), all she wanted to communicate was how to help adaine and the bad kids, and how despite everything she had always believed in her

- at five levels of exhaustion, unconscious, she used her first spell slot after nine months of torture to build a shield around adaine

NOW we get to paladin!aelwyn. because, once everything is stripped away, the abuse and the control and the maladaption and the threats and the torture, EVERYTHING we ACTUALLY can glean about aelwyn's personality and inner core is that she's protective and devoted. and of course classes arent locked by personality, but that just screams paladin to me. its her WHOLE THING. adaine even says "wizards dont have heals, we dont care about other people" and of COURSE that isnt true for either of them, but? mechanically? aelwyn chose the wizard school that DID let her protect, and DID let her help, but i dont think, at this point, going forward, thats really going to be enough for her (and we could also talk about the parallels between them, how often adaine uses her portents to help other people)

i think a lot of the different reads on aelwyn come from this fundamental disconnect between her actions and displayed personality vs who she actually is and what she actually wants. and i think there are very different interpretations of what thats going to look like for her going forward. but i think, for a girl who's most hated characteristic about herself was her self preservation at the detriment of others, her perceived selfishness, and her fear ... isn't choosing to be braver and more selfless and more protective and shedding that self-preserving instinct for the betterment of others ... and MECHANICALLY being able to act on all those things ... the logical next step? i think its going to be a LONG TIME before aelwyn can love herself, but what other way is there to try? if adaine loves her, and adaine believes she can be better, isnt being better because she trusts adaine kind of a form of self love? saying, i dont believe in myself, but i believe in the person who believes in me, and maybe, in a roundabout way, thats the same thing. she was never able to TRY to be better before, because trying to improve even a little, even when people arent watching, when a harmful force has so much power over you and your actions ... like, the mental dissonance is honestly TOO much to even try, thats WAY more terrifying than letting yourself be bad, to the point where thats psychologically impossible for a lot of people. but now she actually has space and freedom and CHOICE and she CAN embrace the instincts she always had to shove down, she CAN be the person she knows her sister needed her to be

i dont know, i think theres an inherent love letter to yourself in wanting to be better and wanting to improve, even if you justify it by saying its for someone else. and now aelwyn actually CAN improve, and thats probably going to be extremely awkward and scary and there will be set backs and backslides for sure. but. i dont know. i think she wants to make up for lost time. because she never wanted the time to be lost in the first place. and if a protector is who she always wanted to be, whats stopping her from being that now?

[engekihaikyuu]

View from the Top 2 - Review

Check out the Read More if you’d like to hear about this show!  Askbox is open as well if you’d like me to elaborate on anything out of this.

Before I begin my review of the final show, I do want to start with some caveats:

So as I mentioned previously, the production once again went with PIA for their live streaming platform, which means that live streaming this show is very inaccessible for anyone living outside of Japan.

PIA is a ticketing platform that requires a working Japanese phone number in order to finish activating/registering a new account because you must call the number provided to finish account verification. So without a Japanese contact or a Japanese phone number, this platform is basically impossible.

I have a generous friend in Japan who was willing to share her account information with me, which is how I was able to pay for a show and use her log-in to watch the stream. I did not see this show in-person; I do not live in Japan and obviously travel is off-limits. Even if I did live in Japan, I would have qualms about going to the theater.

There are some logistical issues with this show because of the current pandemic, with the most visually obvious one being the small face shields the actors wear on-stage. They basically serve as protection against direct spittle, but obviously they do nothing to guard against aerosol spread; putting on the play is still an incredible risk to the performers and staff. Another difficulty they face is the fact that Tokyo is still continuing to maintain a nightly curfew. Every evening Tokyo performance needed to be bumped earlier so that spectators can leave the theater in time to make it home for that curfew. Keeping that in mind, the show is a surprisingly condensed 2.5 hours long, where I would have expected 3 hours given the amount of content it covered. This does affect the pacing in Act 2 noticeably, and I get the feeling that were it not for covid and the current curfew restrictions, it would feel a little less rushed at the end.

So, with all that said, here are my thoughts on Engeki Haikyuu’s final play, The View from the Top 2!!!  This is absolutely not spoiler-free, for both the play’s content and everything that happened in the manga finale, so if you have not finished the series, this is your last chance to turn back.

Now that I think about it, I haven’t written a full review on a show since Fly High, so I’m a bit rusty at this, and I’ll probably leave out a lot so as always, my askbox is open for people’s additional questions!

The absolute main theme of this play (and really of the entire Haikyuu story) is the friendship and rivalry between Hinata and Kageyama, and the theme: I’m not alone. Engeki really did right by our dual protagonists by framing the final show as showing both of their journeys from beginning to end. Act 1 begins with that familiar sequence from the very first show: Hinata seeing the little giant on TV, being inspired to start playing volleyball, his struggle to find a team in middle school, losing to Kageyama in his one and only middle school tournament, and finding him again at Karasuno. They repeated the scene almost exactly as it was in the first show, and I think it was very smart of them to show us Daigo’s version of it, so to speak. That way we have a more cohesive vision of Hinata from the beginning of his journey to the end. Then they absolutely FLOOD the stage with a montage of projections with footage from all of the shows from the past five-and-a-half years. So already it’s pretty emotional for me, seeing how far the play had come as well as how far Hinata had come in the story.

To parallel this, the beginning of Act 2 actually begins with baby Kageyama. Yes, the baby Kageyama flashback with his sister and grandfather and how he started volleyball. We see Kageyama’s volleyball journey from childhood (for this they used a small doll similar to the dolls they used for young Kuroo and Kenma from Revival) to playing at Kitagawa Daiichi, to losing his grandfather, to being labeled the King of the Court, to defeating Hinata, and then having Hinata find him at Karasuno. And then they once again, they flood the stage with projections with past show footage, but this time they are more Kageyama-centric in the way that the previous ones were often Hinata-centric. And it just really highlights how much these two are meant to share the stage as the two main characters.

To see this framework and to know what’s going to come at the end, with the two of them reuniting in the pro-volleyball arena… just the beginning of Act 2 alone had me in tears. Another way they paralleled their respective journeys was to show us who have influenced them. In Act 1, there’s a dance with Hinata, Hoshiumi, and Udai (all little giants… well, Tsukishima’s in there too because he’s feeling a particular competitiveness with Hinata in this part of the match). In Act 2, there’s a dance with Kageyama, Atsumu, and Oikawa, because Atsumu and Oikawa are the setters who have had the most influence on Kageyama, and he’s drawing on what he’s learned from them for this match. They are not alone in their journeys, they have had people inspire them and be inspired by them in addition to having the support of their teammates.

The Karasuno vs Kamomedai match is interspersed with bits of action from the Fukurodani vs Mujinazaka match, so the stage was pretty busy for basically the entire time. The wires are back for some sequences so that both Hinata and Hoshiumi have a chance to fly, and there are plenty of acrobatics and lifts, and the same incredible soundtrack we love. Ryuu’s Hoshiumi is the obvious standout on Kamomedai for how many lifts he had, and they definitely tried to have him running around on the stage about as much as Hinata. It was notable how much they drew on past techniques and music for various parts of this match, since this is meant to be Karasuno at their peak. When Asahi was feeling particularly stuck/trapped against Kamomedai’s defense, they incorporated the tying-up visual they had previously used in Winners and Losers, with Kamomedai basically tying up and holding Asahi in place with ribbon. There was Summer of Evolution music when Karasuno does a great synchro attack, and the extras-wearing-Hinata-masks reappeared to show us Hinata’s “afterimage” as he flashes around the stage. If you’ve seen all the plays, you can’t miss these call-backs.

The flow of the match was fast. They hit the highlight plays and the highlight emotional moments, but we are clearly past the point where they need to narrate the actual volleyball to us. There was more dancing/acrobatics than attempting to place the two teams on either sides of a physical net with more overt volleyball moves. Everything was more intertwined and fluid than that. And actually now that I think about it, they have been sparse with their usage of a physical net in the past few shows, because everything has been a little more fast-paced overall.

They definitely wanted to highlight Karasuno’s rise throughout the game, to show that they were absolutely a formidable team, that they deserved to be at Nationals, and to show us all the ways that Hinata and Kageyama had grown. For most of Act 2 leading up to Hinata’s collapse, it really feels like they could win this. And I think it makes it that much harder for Hinata to accept being benched, because the team is riding this high and doing so well, and even Kageyama’s more visibly having fun. I think Takeda-sensei easily has a third of the best lines in the series. His speech to Hinata during the Kamomedai match is one that was really gut-wrenching to read when those chapters came out, and it was great to hear it said aloud.

And here is something I’ve never been able to point out because I didn’t do reviews for the past two tours, but I think Daigo’s voice is one of the strongest aspects of his Hinata. I’m sure a lot of that has to do with the work he’s done as a voice actor, but when he cries or whimpers, it is genuinely the most pitiful noise. A lot of Kenta’s portrayal of Hinata’s frustrations throughout the story had an undercurrent of anger and frustration. He’s upset, but there’s always something behind it that says, “well next time, it’ll be different.” And I think Daigo replaces most of that with pure sadness, especially for this scene. After Takeda-sensei lectures him good and proper, and he accepts that he needs to leave, he just sounds so broken. It doesn’t have that anger and drive underneath, he’s just in despair. And why wouldn’t he be? A part of him understands this is the last match he’ll ever play with this team, his first real team.

We then see Hinata bundled up in a coat and scarf, watching the rest of the match from the tablet that Kenma gives him. Snow begins to fall on the stage as he slowly wanders through it, with Karasuno and Kamomedai finishing out the rest of the match around him. Engeki Haikyuu has always allowed for the losing team in a match to line up at the edge of the stage, say thank you to the audience, bow, and take their leave. It’s so symbolic, and it’s so emotional for the actors and for the audience who are in the theater. It’s a moment that just barely breaks the fourth wall, when they turn to us, the spectators, to say, “Thank you for your support.” And they mean it both in and out of character. And I was so so so sad when I realized that Karasuno would take their final bow as a team without Hinata in the lineup. He’s in the back of the stage, separated from his team, and he does take a bow, but it’s very lonely.

Now, I’m sure people are very curious about the timeskip material, and mostly I just have to preface with: it’s fast. It does not take up as much of Act 2 as you might think. It’s boom, boom, boom, cameo here, pre-recorded projections there, patissier Tendou interview, Kuroo in a suit doing a promotional commercial for the V-League, Kageyama’s curry commercial, a projected Osamu selling his rice balls, get the old team together, fateful encounters in front of the bathroom, GO! The only thing we see of the Brazil arc is Hinata having a brief flashback to tell Kageyama that he met Oikawa while he was in Brazil. It’s very short, and that’s all we get for his time in Brazil. Basically, the play is not the place to see Hinata’s journey and growth from those chapters because he goes through so much of it alone, and there’s just no time. The Brazil arc also brings back a lot of technical details about volleyball itself, especially as Hinata is learning the beach version, and that’s an area where the manga is the best medium to examine the finer details of the sport. I can see why a play version would gloss over the technical details to focus on the emotional arc, which is in this case, Hinata and Kageyama.

Because of how fast the ending is, it definitely feels made for the people who already read the manga; Previous Engeki Haikyuu shows have always presented the story in a way that was very friendly to those who may not have read the manga or watched the anime. You could watch just Engeki Haikyuu and not feel like you were missing out on references/jokes for the most part, but this ending would be way harder to follow for those not familiar with what’s already happened.  

It’s difficult because I do feel like Act 2 was overly condensed to wrap up this story, but I also don’t think the timeskip material is enough for a whole play on its own. If we had stopped at the end of the Kamomedai match, and had a whole separate play to cover Brazil and the Jackals vs Adlers match… the pacing would’ve been slow and low energy especially in the first half, and it would be an odd choice for the final show of a series like this. My preference would have been for this play to have been three acts, three hours, so that we could linger on some of those timeskip moments a little more, slow it down, and let them land emotionally. But clearly the covid situation prevents that in this case. That being said, I don’t think any of those timeskip moments could really hit as hard as when I first read them in the manga. Narratively, that Haikyuu timeskip was so unexpected and so outside the normal sports anime formula, that the initial shock is extremely hard to top. It was fun to see how they presented everyone in the future (seeing Noya on that boat catching a giant swordfish, or seeing Ennoshita almost break a patient’s back) in stage form, but it’s unreasonable to expect them to give us the same feeling of ?!?!?!? when we first read that Noya was in Italy of all places after waiting weeks and weeks for him to show up.

I still cried in several places, it’s still a great ending to one of the best 2.5D franchises in existence, and it still feels like the culmination of their legacy. I don’t know how it would be possible for anyone to watch that ending sequence with all of the team flags and the chanting of their names, and NOT cry.

There are no more live streams until they complete the rest of their tour and then there will be a live-stream of the very last show, which I will be watching with a towel in hand for my tears. Feel free to send in any questions if you’d like, and if you would like some Strongest Challengers or Trash Heap merch, I have a sales post that I recently made.

[gffa]

Hello there! I was recently in a discussion with someone who thinks the Jedi were kinda bad and I was saying I mean I don’t think so, but ok. They tried to convince me with Barriss and how what she said was correct and I’m kind of confused because I kinda feel she’s right but she also isn’t. Uh, could you help explain it, cuz I’m a little lost?

Hi!  Barriss is something of a complicated topic, because I don’t think her story should be divorced from that it’s a really bad look to write the character with a whole lot of Muslim parallels as a bomber and thus it’s hard to take the story seriously on a meta level, because I’m too busy going, “Guys, what the fuck, that’s real bad over there.” and whether she has a point or not often gets overshadowed by that. And it’s hard to set that aside (and I’m unsure if one should even try) where I think the intention of Barriss’ story is meant to make us think about the Jedi’s role in the Republic and in the GAR, but I’m not sure it’s meant to provide concrete answers. What Barriss says:  “I have come to realize what many in the Republic have come to realize… that the Jedi are responsible for this war! That we've so lost our way that we've become villains in this conflict! That we are the ones who should be put on trial! All of us! And my attack on the temple was an attack on what the Jedi have become: An army fighting for the dark side, fallen from the light that we once held so dear. This Republic is failing! It’s only a matter of time.” There are elements of truth here, the Republic is failing, that the people have lost faith in the Jedi and they are now seen as villains, that the war was a tool used by the dark side to gain control over the galaxy. The problem is that she also has fallen herself, that she’s willing to murder innocent people in that bombing, willing to let other people take the fall for her, and that cannot come without being part of the dark side.  And the dark side lies.  The dark side is not an accurate narrator. The problem with Barriss’ words is that we’re not given any better options for the Jedi and it blames a group of people for their own lack of feasible choices.  Is their involvement in the war part of what leads to their own destruction?  Yes, of course it is.  Does that make it suddenly their own fault that Palpatine literally drafted them into the war (according to supplementary books + GL word of god commentary)?  Does it make the point of how, if they hadn’t joined the war, it would be people like Tarkin running the show, and that Tarkin’s introduction into the show was literally meant to show that? Barriss’ accusations have grains of truth in them, but they ignore that there’s never been any offer of an alternate path for them that has ever held any water, especially given what we see of how the Senate treats people who say “no” to them--they get blacklisted and are unable to help anyone anymore and things get worse.  It happens with Padme in the supplementary novels after her actions in TPM, it happens to Mandalore in TCW’s main storyline, etc.  The Jedi are in a position where, if they say no, there’s a very likely chance that they’ll be put in an even shittier position and there won’t be anyone to lead the war in a more gentle direction, if possible. That’s the problem that Barriss is leaving out--does the Jedi’s involvement in the war lead to bad things?  Yes!  But their non-involvement would have been worse.  And to say that they were responsible for this war, when Sheev Palpatine is RIGHT THERE or when Obi-Wan himself points out, “If the people of the galaxy stood up for what was right, this war would have been over long ago.”, is tunnel-visioned at best.  The Jedi didn’t start the war, nor are they the ones keeping it going, that’s all Palpatine right there.  The Jedi stepping away doesn’t mean Palpatine or Dooku will stop fighting, that the clones will suddenly stop fighting, that the droid army will suddenly stop fighting. Barriss’ words treat the Jedi as if they have obvious better options, they treat the Jedi as if they’re the only player in this game, when they’re not.  Did the Jedi make mistakes?  Of course, as well as there’s an impossible to answer question of, “When would have been the right time for them to walk away from everything?”  And what does that even look like?  Do they go rogue vigilantes in a galaxy that already fears them/doesn’t understand them?  Do they just sit on their asses on the sidelines?  Is there any galaxy in which Palpatine would have let several thousand one-man-walking-army nuclear weapons just sit by and not specifically target them?  Knowing that they would have the power to stop him, if he didn’t back them into a corner and tie their hands?  He’s not going to just leave them alone.  They don’t have the numbers to fight the war themselves, that was made clear over and over and over, so, they can’t become a third faction (in the Republic GAR vs Separatists), they can’t sit it out, do they join the Separatists?  Do they just fuck off into the depths of the Unknown Region?  Like, what’s the play here?  Especially when the Separatists are out there poisoning entire planets, enslaving entire peoples, murdering and torturing their way across the galaxy, and the Jedi are just supposed to go, “Well, fighting in this war was making us feel sad and have to deal with darkness, so you guys are on your own now.”? You can say, “The Jedi made mistakes, being part of the war.” and that’s not wrong, but the problem with judging the Jedi for it is that it often ignores that there were other players on the board with far more political power, that they were not given as much power as we want to think they were, and there weren’t really better options for them personally that wouldn’t have fucked over a lot of people who needed help.  Like, should the Jedi have stayed out of the fight when Ryloth’s people were being used as human shields?  Should they have stayed out of the fight when the people of Kiros were taken to be slaves?  Should they have stayed out of the fight when Mon Calamari was being occupied and its people enslaved as well?  That’s the question that never seems to get answered in Barriss’ accusations. And if you have to bomb a bunch of innocent people, without apparently having ever actually stood up and talked to anyone about this first, maybe you’re lost in the dark side and not seeing things all that clearly. (Which is still setting aside that using Barriss for this story was fucking awful.) The Jedi aren’t perfect, I think it’s fair to question their role in the war and the path they took, but ultimately I have yet to find any workable solutions that wouldn’t have left people to get fucked over by the war, that’s where I’ve landed on the subject and I think what the actual worldbuilding of the movies + TV shows actually evidences.  As Yoda says, when asked if he’s sure about their actions and whether they’re on the right path: “Hmm, the right path, no. The only path, yes.” That’s it, that’s the summation for the Jedi’s involvement in the war for me.  The right path, no.  The only path, yes.