#sdmi meta

[queer-cosette]

please keep talking about mystery incorporated it's such an interesting show and I feel like it's not talked about enough outside of the big stuff (velma being a lesbian, scooby being an alien or something, the dog love triangle ect)

also I didn't even put together that the dog dies and marcy might've been connected until i read your post and my jaw dropped

I LOVE that show so so much and everything is CRAZY levels of connected. A red herring gag character in episode 3 with a silly name winds up being instrumental in one of the major reveals of season 2. So many of the villains wind up coming back with an important role to play, or else their crimes wind up giving the gang a clue to the mystery. People love to be like "Episode 2: the gang chase a family of kooky gator people! haha so silly :)" and forget how much the history of Gatorsburg is tied into the mystery of the entity (the alligators drag Porto away, giving Friar Serra the prophecy of how the animal companion must die to keep the world safe. The first key (the last one the gang use) to the entity's dimension is found in an empty grave there. The extinction of the population of alligators ties into the major themes of colonialism and capitalistic destruction.) Episode 5 has a weird genius kid as Fred's civics tutor and the villain, okay, fun one-off character. Episode 10 has a boy obsessed with Velma and his vengeful over-protective ex-military mother as the major characters. Marcie obviously gets more character development in early Season 2, but we don't really tend to think about the time she spent working in espionage for Mr E when it's more fun to focus on her enemies-to-lovers relationship with Velma. AND YET! All of this allows the gang to pull off their mid-Season-2 heist of the disk pieces from the original Mystery Incorporated! They would literally have not been able to do what they did without a preteen "victim", a robotics and chemistry expert, and someone with Marcie's specific knowledge of Mr E's business and secrets. Like it's INSANE how connected the apparently silly details of the show are.

[deathishauntedbyhumans]

WAIT i’m. oh man.

in the new timeline. fred’s name is still fred. there’s NO reason for this bc he wasn’t raised by fred jones sr and he wasn’t named fred jones jr. his last name is, presumably, chiles or some hyphenated chiles-reeves situation. but everyone is still calling him fred. the doylist explanation for this is obviously that they didn’t want to change his whole-ass name bc he’s a very well-known cartoon character and that would be one helluva schtick to pull in the last 5 minutes of the show. HOWEVER. as a watsonian explantion: do you think brad and judy named him after fred sr anyway? he would have been their teacher… if he had a strong positive impact on them, maybe in the new timeline he’s still named after his not-dad, too :’)

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i think i'm going to make a series of posts about the oldgang flashbacks and my interpretation of what's happening in them, namely what i'm extrapolating on for the dynamics and themes i see running through the series in regards to The Bastards, so that when i post about takes that reference/rely on them people know what the fuck i'm talking about lmao

[scrappedtogether]

💖 and/or 😈 for your ask meme if they haven't been done yet?

Thank you so much for the ask! <3 I’m so, so indecisive so I just kind of rambled but THANK YOU for giving me an excuse🙏😂

For 💖:

I LOVE Alejo & Sofia! WNSD is really cool as a series in that the Gang seems to skew a little older so it’s fun to see the Gang with a friend who has a wife/son/family.

I’m also huge into Rufus & Phylidia. I wrote some meta on them in the tags of this post and I have to give them a shout-out. :)

Crystal & Whirlen and Calvin Curdles & Alma Rumblebuns have very adorable side romances in Abracadabra Doo. I enjoy Crystal & Whirlen individually and I think their interactions are so cute! The bg behind Alma and Calvin is perfect and v romantic.

Lena & Simone is !!!! SO MANY THOUGHTS ABT THEM <3

Mayor Nettles & Sheriff Bronson Stone are very adorable together. I also loved his dynamic w/Fred Jones Sr.

THE OG MYSTERY INC from SDMI. It would have been really interesting to see more background on Ricky & Cassidy & Brad & Judy & Professor Pericles. There’s so many interesting dynamics between the core group, especially concerning how everything fell apart. The way they came together only to fall apart later on has so many details that never got fully explored but would have been legit fascinating to see!!! I was also always curious about how the five of them connected to Fred Jones Sr./what that dynamic was like. :)

For totally platonic relationships: I love Crystal & Amber from Alien Invaders, Penelope Bailey and her dad from WNSD’s Recipe for Disaster, and for some reason the dynamics of the band from Simple Plan and the Invisible Man is cute to me. The relationships between the fathers and daughters in Ghoul School also always really warmed my heart (esp The Mummy & Tanis 🥰).

THE HEX GIRLS!! they really deserve the chance to be developed further and I would die and kill for a piece of media that’d get to explore their relationships with each other further.

Surprisingly, I was also pretty touched by Muttley and Dick Dastardly’s bestie-ship in Scoob!

For 😈:

Velma & Omar in Where’s My Mummy. ICONIC. They have my heart!

Captain Cutler from SDWAY!! (and him in BCSD, my little guy). He’s my fav of the iconic WAY villains. His outfits, his vibe, love it!

Bill McLemore ❤️ he is literally so dumb and weird and I have a million random thoughts abt him and how much he loves baseball

^speaking of shout to my other baseball boy Bob Taylor from The Unnatural. we love a villain who commits crimes out of love 🥹

Also: Steve from Stage Fright (just a goofy guy)! Captain Skunkbeard from Pirates Ahoy (very!! good design)! Marcy from WNSD’s A Scooby Doo Halloween (she is my always and forever Corn Princess 👑)! Meadow from Homeward Hound! Phylidia from Riva Ras Regas (I love women)! Headless Horseman from TSDS! Green Giggling Ghosts/Phantom Shadows (I actually think they are THE most iconic Scooby Doo villains of all time)! The Ghost of Mother from BCSD! and Marcie Fleach if you count her ofc 😌

[cometcrystal]

What were the problems with SDMI?

Browse my scooby meta tag

[darkpoisonouslove]

I hadn't noticed before but as season 2 progresses, Angie Dinkley is brought in more and more often in a specific way. First, Velma asks for her expertise on aliens in 2x16. Then Velma literally impersonates her mom in 2x20. And in 2x23 we see how much Velma looks like her mother when she was young, implying that Velma is growing up into a very similar person. And that is later confirmed in 2x24 when we hear from Velma that the conversation with her mom has helped her with the approach to the mystery. All this time Velma has been growing into the open state of mind that is typical for her mom and it starts in the episode that centers on alleged aliens to prepare her for the real aliens. Peak writing right there.

[augment-techs]

AYO YOU ALSO LIKE MYSTERY INCORPORATED?? ME TOO HOLY DAMN

It’s great, isn’t it? The Gang, the design style, the voice cast, the critical difference in it compared to every other iteration. Not to mention the overarching plot, the answers to questions, the meta jokes, the pop culture references/easter eggs, THE ACTUAL FACT THAT THERE ARE CONSISTENT BACKGROUND AND SIDE CHARACTERS YOU CARE ABOUT. I mean, damn, I got sucked into it by becoming interested in a Lovecraft expy that was built up as an actually REALLY good human being and Fred’s gd Mayor Dad. SDMI takes the cake, the crown, and ALL of the bows.

[commandervisor]

For some reason, I somehow keep finding content that compares/crosses over my fandoms even though they're only superficially related and are relatively niche fandoms.

Like... couple of months ago, someone made a meta on the TV Tropes page for EOA that Tua from SWR and Esteban from EOA are similar, and apparently a couple of days ago, someone posted an SDMI/EOA crossover fanfic. Uh.

I mean, maaaaybe I have something to do with it? Not to suggest that the world revolves around me, but I guess if these occurrences aren't coincidental, it would probably because of some sort of association with other fans.

Like, the first case MIGHT BE because I frequent the SW pages a lot and once I got on my EOA groove, I started frequenting that too and I guess some people noticed. But it's kind of crazy that that person specifically compared two of my favorite characters. Maybe we just have a type?

I don't know what's going on with the second one, but looking at what this person has, it’s probably just a coincidence.

I suppose that if nothing else, we just have good taste.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

[cws: discussion of parental abandonment, canon-typical grooming, emotional abuse, and poverty.]

-

headcanon: ricky's biodad ran out on his family when he was six. he took him along to the bus station, ruffled his hair, and said he'd be right back; and then he never did.

ricky was left waiting at the station, alone, until his mom finally showed up in a panic. she'd gotten back after work to find he hadn't come home from school, and she couldn't get hold of his dad over the phone; their marriage had already been rocky for a while, and when she couldn't find them her first assumption was that he'd taken ricky and left.

(sometimes ricky wonders whether he'd been thinking about it, and that's why he didn't just leave him at home to make a clean getaway. sometimes he wonders what he could have done at that last second to make him choose differently. he's glad he didn't--he doesn't regret growing up with his mom and he'd pick her over that asshole any day--but he wonders.)

this is also a major reason it was so easy for pericles to slip into the role he took in their family. being a sudden single parent meant his mom had to spend long hours working herself to the bone to provide for them, which meant that she had precious little time or energy left over for ricky even though she loved him dearly; after a couple years of that it must have seemed like a godsend for another adult to come along and be there for him, even if it broke her heart that she couldn't be there herself.

......which meant pericles had constant access to ricky--a kid with major abandonment and attachment issues, and a hole in his life from the guardian who left him behind--and an overwhelming amount of input into his development as a person, without any parents around to notice his behavior.

(this would also provide context for ricky's fixation on wealth and hard work to establish a comfortable source of that--overwork no less, it's implied, and self-neglect. growing up in poverty will do that to you, as will guilt and worry and loneliness from seeing your parent bust their ass and sacrifice for you to keep your heads above water. add having internalized that work ethic from her into the mix, as well as the fact that he had to completely restart his life from scratch in a new city as a teenager with presumably no money, and it explains a few things.)

all this is a major part of why ricky takes it so hard that pericles, you guessed it, betrayed and abandoned him. (and ended up in a situation where ricky couldn't have contacted him to get closure or an explanation, no less, even if that part was something he couldn't control.) especially considering that on top of the betrayal itself, i get the strong impression that pericles exploited, encouraged, and cultivated his separation anxiety and dependence.

he worsened ricky's issues instead of helping him heal from them so he could position himself as his emotional support to cope with it (hi there, trauma bonding 🙃)..... and then he hurt him in about the worst possible way he could have, when it was his fault that it was so fucking devastating. and he doesn't seem to have even done it to be cruel. he just did it for his own ends, ends which ricky didn't understand or have context for for a long time, because ricky's wellbeing and relationship with him (and his actual physical safety!) was a perfectly acceptable sacrifice for whatever it was that he wanted.

sound familiar?

and he doesn't..... realize this. most of it not fully. he understands that pericles betrayed him and it was Bad, he's maybe connected some of his anger over it to his dad having walked out. but so, so much of what pericles did to him he doesn't know how to articulate, or even that it was wrong in the first place. all he has is his anger and loneliness and hurt and confusion, concentrated on the point where everything finally broke.

and when pericles waltzes back into his life and leans on that pressure point, ricky tries to tell him to fuck off at first; but because that's the only thing he realizes was fucked here, he thinks that being older and angrier and craftier and wiser, having built a life and safety net for himself without pericles and proved he doesn't need him, means he's ready this time. he's strong enough this time. when it comes to this one thing--and in return for every good thing he thinks it'll be a fair tradeoff for--he can keep his enemies close and come out on top.

he's not. and he can't. and we all know how that story ends.

there's a lot going on here. a lot. and i have thoughts about what the curse itself consists of. but i think ricky first started pursuing the treasure not for money or power or even out of spite, but because he wanted more than anything to understand what it was that pericles loved more than him.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i have a lot of complicated feelings about sdmi and its portrayals of SA and domestic violence--which is many posts' worth of a subject, and i'll probably end up properly drafting out at least some of them sooner or later--and one of them is that ricky and pericles are a surprisingly good and chillingly accurate depiction of financial abuse.

this show spikes the ball right into the center of the earth on its other SA/IPV dynamics, but every time i come back to pericky with more life experience and uncover more layers to it, i am genuinely shocked by how consistently they get it right. and not only that, but it's representation for a demographic of survivors that you just do not see in fiction, ever, played fully for tragedy and horror when it would have been so, so easy for them to make light of it or victim-blame.

and just, yeah, the financial abuse is honestly a big one. that's not something you see pretty much ever, let alone in kid's media and let alone with accuracy or respect. this show swings wildly back and forth between 'hats off' and 'what the fuck is wrong with you,' and pericky (as opposed to both romance subplots with the gang 🙃) falls pretty squarely into the first one.

(mostly. boy that sure is some homophobia going on lmfao)

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

Pericles and Purple Scarves (or: why the fuck is the parrot so horny, and why does it matter)

(or: did i think about this way too much, or exactly the right amount? yes.)

[cws: fantasy racism/ableism, dehumanization, mention of homophobia and canon-typical grooming, non-detailed discussion of canon-typical SA/sexual harassment and canon-typical bestiality. this show is a thing and a half]

-

something i think about a lot is that like.... i joke about how delightful it is for various reasons that they made pericles So Relentlessly Horny, and it's fucking hilarious to me to see in real-time the dawning horror of people watching the show for the first time and realizing he's sexy. (their reactions to the tentacle scene are comedy fucking gold every time.)

on a doylist level the creators are obviously paying homage to his voice actor, making him stand out from the other mascots, and trying to make him charismatic, memorable, and that much more uncomfortable to the audience. and it worked! pretty much everyone thinks he's one of the best scooby-doo villains out there, and they're right.

(i'm not biased, i swear.)

when you look at it in-character, though, it makes a lot of sense that he'd be that way, and that's important. he's doing it on purpose.

for one thing--again--he stands out among all the other talking animals we see, because he is the one who comes across most as a depiction (an intentional one, anyway 🙃) of an actual person who happens to be shaped like a bird. the others all are Some Kind of Uniquely Goofy in the way that they act, be it how they talk or their general mannerisms or the fact that none of them seem to really have an implied Age. pericles is the only one who doesn't have some kind of silly voice or speech impediment or catchphrase what-have-you, and he's also the only one who comes across as being in specific life stages you could map onto a human corresponding to how old he is. he's even the only time we ever hear mention of a talking animal being a child, or having been once. everyone but pericles is just Mascot-Aged.

(fwiw, my personal read is that scooby is about the same age as the gang or equivalent. also there is So Much to unpack here about all that re: the mascots in general but that's a post for another time)

and the one thing they all have in common except pericles is that they are NOT supposed to be sexy. if anything, the ones we actually see talking (in a fever dream, to be fair) except scooby and pericles are obviously meant to be borderline or outright really goddamn annoying. (reggie/dyno-mutt is adorable but he is also on thin ice with me on this one, sorry little guy.)

and like. all of this lines up with the fact that the talking animals very obviously represent disabled people. even moreso than they represent racial minorities, which they very much do! they're a lot further toward ableism on the sliding scale of xeno bigotry (which is a big reason i'm iffy about just calling it fantasy racism). the infantilization of disabled people is, you know, A Whole Ass Thing, and being aggressively desexualized is a major part of that. Disabled People and Disabled Mannerisms are a Bonerkill.

enter pericles, who does not truck with any of this shit.

i've already got a lot of posts planned going into this subject in general, because there is So Much. but in short, the thing to remember when you examine anything about pericles is that he lives in a world that draws zero distinction between people like him and animals.

practically everything he does is, on some level or another, him yelling FUCK YOU LOOK AT ME I AM A PERSON, LOOK. I'LL MAKE YOU IF I HAVE TO. and what's something animals don't do, whether actual animals or annunaki descendants (at least the latter ones he's probably been around most)? they don't flirt. they aren't sexy. they don't act like a brand of seductive, even skeevy, person you might feasibly meet irl, if maybe a theatrical larger-than-life one who runs in certain circles.

(gay ones, to be specific. super, super gay ones. more on that in a minute.)

and, what's more: they don't flirt with humans. we never see anyone really comment on the very obvious Thing he's always had going on with ricky; but that doesn't come across as them thinking it's normal or acceptable so much as not noticing that it's a thing at all. it is that aggressively unthinkable that it would be. and this is backed up even more by the fact that people hear scooby ask shaggy if he's cheating on him by having a girlfriend and think nothing of it, and it continues to be treated as Romance vs Platonic Friendship/Pet Ownership. Gal Pals, but Worse!

so yeah, we have no idea what society would think of anunnaki descendants having sexual/romantic relationships with humans that they couldn't ignore. presumably it would be Pretty Well Disapproved Of, but like. who the fuck knows.

what we DO know is that pericles is considered so utterly beneath personhood that no one would so much as blink at him fucking an honest right to god animal. if it were anyone other than, y'know, pericles, they might even think it was cute.

(AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.)

(moving on.)

so all things considered, as you can imagine holy SHIT would he have a reason or two to broadcast as hard as he can that not only that he is A Sexual Being, but one intended to appeal to human standards. it brings to mind queer people presenting in ways meant to be attractive to other queers, not straight people, except, well. instead of trying to get the attention of supportive people like you on the downlow, because you don't want the majority to know what kind of sexuality you're announcing, he's blaring I AM ONE OF YOU at that majority out of desperation and spite.

which, speaking of signaling queerness: pericles is a hundred percent gay-coded, as in the actual definition of 'as close to explicit as they could get away with, done on purpose.' there's the obvious--his relationship with ricky--but his VA, who he is to some extent modeled after, is an openly gay indie horror film icon, and given that and the time period he grew up in i don't think it's a coincidence that the one piece of clothing he chooses to wear is a purple scarf. (they even made him a sexual predator! yippee!)

so like, if anything it's pretty feasible that he might have actually observed that kind of thing as a phenomenon, especially with the demographic he'd actually be interested in, and pick it up accordingly. who knows if he ever managed to actually, y'know, Involve Himself with any human men--my interpretation is that he did and it went poorly 🥲--but it makes sense to me that he'd wear something like that; that he'd use his one opportunity to express himself with clothing to go HI HELLO I AM A PERSON DID I MENTION I LIKE MEN. WHO ARE PEOPLE. BECAUSE I DO

......and he STILL gets ignored no matter how hard he tries. i feel like that's one of the reasons he ended up being such a creep, honestly: operating on similar logic to the tag rant in this post, the conclusion he comes to is that well fuck you, you can't ignore me having a sexuality if i make it a problem for you. even if you try to pretend sexual violence and harassment aren't sexual, or don't recognize that it's happening at all, you are not going to walk away unaffected by it. if the only lasting evidence he's able to leave in the world that he's a person is causing damage that can't be shrugged off or undone, so be it.

(a real irony, isn't it, given how things turn out in the end.)

and like. this is one of the things that really bothers me about people trying to act like you shouldn't ship pericles or think he's attractive because Ew Gross Cringe That's an Animal (or transparently pretending it's because Problematic, not because cringe). either way do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, to be clear, but like... that's the point, man. that's the whole point. the writers are assholes who wanted you to miss it, and you did.

basically: just about everything pericles does is acting out in some way or another, and that's why we know what this man would sound like busting a nut. you're welcome.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

me rewatching parts of the show to mull over cassidy's dynamic with pericles, head in my hands: cassidy. i love you. be less racist

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i love sdmi very dearly and for a lot of reasons it is very important to me, but all the other 'good fucking god what year is this' stuff aside the worldbuilding re: the talking animals is so deeply fucked that it is genuinely really upsetting to me to think about that bit for long lmao

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

man i need to make a compilation post with links to other sdmi posts of mine that have been straight up eaten by tumblr's garbage blog search function lmao

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

talking about sdmi meta out of context is wild because it's just 'sir blorbo bingus betrayed spoingo gungle and left them with internalized self-loathing and survivor's guilt, and then manipulated their old flame into being complicit in their murder to silence them. sir bingus did this in search of a cursed artifact to free the ancient evil god they serve and become its vessel, which their species is implied to have been created for. also this is scooby-doo and sir bingus is a talking parrot'

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

so i've been writing up a lot of sdmi meta lately, sometimes pretty scathingly and sometimes with a lot of praise, and man it is a real whiplash to go from 'sdmi did a fantastic job showing how a marginalized person--a villain, even--being body-shamed even one time is Fucked, and a major signal that the person who does it is abusive and about to do him serious harm,' to

'so people in the show constantly make unnecessary, derogatory, degrading comments about the abuser's body. he is an extremely marginalized person who has been dehumanized from birth for having that body, up to and including being considered legal property; he has been tortured in a pressure cooker of abuse targeted at his minority status for a quarter of his life. this is Quirky and Witty and Whimsical, no one has a problem with it, and we are going to just skate right on by that without ever even acknowledging that he's oppressed. moving along now'

like, in pericky's case it's interesting to explore how ricky does say some genuinely extremely shitty, bigoted things to pericles that are presumably part of why he snaps and hits him, but he's doing that in the context of being abused, and pericles is reacting to it in the context of abusing him. ricky's not a great person and does not spend his time around great people, but he's trying to stand up for himself with the verbal and emotional vocabulary he has available. the person he's trying to draw on for the strength and the beliefs to do that with--the language to do that with--is his only real example of someone in pericles' life who has never, ever bowed to him.

......aaaaaaaand she's super fucking racist. and is the one who makes the bulk of the body-shaming comments about pericles in the show. so no wonder ricky turned around and incorporated that into trying to imitate her.

but see, she also has a reason to be racist/ableist to pericles: he preyed on and traumatized her and the people she loved, and ruined all their lives (and tbh, my personal read is that he was probably pretty emotionally abusive to her when she was a teenager). like, sure, that's a lot less of an immediate reason not to take someone to task over being shitty about their abuser than Currently Being Abused the way ricky is. cassidy's a grown adult who's had two decades of distance from him to heal, and has had plenty of opportunity in the meantime to unpack that hey! your abuser was one (1) shitty person from this extremely vulnerable demographic of people who have otherwise never done jack shit to you! maybe don't do things like call them 'it' and threaten to put them down because you're mad at that one guy! just a thought.

but still, she had a reason, right? right.

and when marcie uses the fact that he's much smaller and weaker than her to grab him and threaten to break his neck; tortures him in a way that can only be done to him because of the kind of body that he has; and intentionally calls him the wrong species to compare him to a nonsapient animal, with the connotation of preparing him to be cooked and eaten ('one wrong move and i pluck this ugly little chicken').... well shit, dude, you can't exactly hold that against her under the circumstances, can you? just, like, gestures at EVERYTHING that's happened, including the fact that he'd just spent god knows how long torturing her by keeping her trapped in a box, and she's a teenage girl who's doing this to hold the line with the knowledge that she's about to die violently. which she does. at pericles' orders. like, jesus, that's not exactly a situation to lecture someone about Problematic Language.

after all: she had a reason. right?

right.

this is something i see over and over, especially in sci-fi/fantasy settings where it's easy for the writers to make up their own social contexts, exaggerate Bad Things to the extreme, or both.

on the one side of this equation you have the hatebait: a minority character who's written to be Super Evil and Monstrous and Hateable, who says slurs and kicks babies into traffic and often as not is a sexual predator--the worst of the worst, and you'd never defend someone like that, would you? they deserve any bad thing that happens to them, don't they? anything they say they don't like about their situation (god forbid want to change) must just be an excuse, a sob story, maybe outright hypocritical given how they treat other people, right?

awesome, glad we've got that out of the way. now we can move on to the part where you cheer for brutal violence targeted at that minority, or at least go 'well, that's rough i guess, but they're a Really Bad Guy, so....'

(one of my least favorite examples of this ever is the trope where the villain in their True Form(tm) is physically small, weak, disabled, and/or Really Really Old, and when they're defeated they're stripped down to that state to hurt/humiliate/imprison/kill them. and/or watch horrific things happen to their body as a direct result of being removed from the source of their size/youth/power/basic fucking life support. it is DEEPLY distressing and i hate it so much.)

it is really fucking upsetting how well this works. i tend to get really invested in characters like this.

so we have our object of 'justified' bigotry, hatred, and violence. but then you have the other half of the equation:

the person who Always Has a Reason.

there's been a lot said about the appeal of bodice-ripper fantasies: they're popular in large part because in a sex-negative society women are shamed for their sexuality and for wanting sex, and there's catharsis for some people in stories about being Allowed to cut loose and enjoy it because you had no choice in the matter. nobody can blame you for that, right?

(in real life they can and will, because society is shit about survivors and hates us. but that's real life; this is the safety of your own fantasy to work things through, with no voices spouting bullshit at you except the ones you're allowing to talk for the express purpose of telling them to shut up.)

so there's that. and somewhere there is an excellent post about SPN, and similarly full-of-whump shows marketed to the same demographic of men, being maybe the same thing for those men in a different way: if Every Possible Terrible Gutwrenching Devastating Loss and Trauma and Torture happens to you, then surely it won't make you any less of a man if you cry and break down, show weakness and pain. nobody can blame you for that, right?

(i don't know where that post went. if anyone has the link to pass on i'll add it here, because it is a Really Good Post and worth reading.)

all well and good so far. understandable.

and then you get to the person who Always Has a Reason. and what they Always Have a Reason for is bigotry, hatred, and violence toward minorities. or representations of real-life minorities with a hasty oppression-swap fantasy AU slapped on.

they oppressed the character's people. they tortured them. they murdered their family. they genocided their planet. they're abusing them. they raped them. they ruined their life. maybe the character is a kid who's young and in over their head and going through enough shit already, and can't really be held up to the standards of an adult who's not currently experiencing War Crimes.

you wouldn't begrudge them defending themself, right? you wouldn't begrudge them hating their tormentors and lashing out at them when they get the chance, and savoring it when they land a blow (no matter how low)? you wouldn't expect them to be a hundred percent progressive and politically correct and careful of their language in the face of that?

nobody could blame them for that, right? right.

right.

(funnily enough: it doesn't go the other way. the minority hatebait is always a hundred percent responsible for any shitty thing they do in retaliation for what they're subjected to, or attempt they make to stop it. often as not, their actions mean that whatever injustice they were yammering about should be dismissed for everyone suffering under it, because this guy used it as an Excuse and that's why you can't have nice things (basic rights).)

anyway, yeah, this is. a Thing and i see it a Lot. and it does really chap me how extreme and totally unaddressed it is in sdmi, because if you don't let the framing get away with hatebait and Always Having a Reason, then pericles makes for a really really complex and compelling exploration of someone who's been dealt a shit hand and suffered terribly also happening to be the miserable, hateful old cunt who wrecked generations of your family because they desperately needed help and didn't get it.