#some people in the fandom are truly suffering for real | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

vivelegalite · 6 months ago

Text

dear dead boy detective (especially paynland) enjoyers: have you yet heard of the biggest gift bestowed upon the fandom so far, aka jayden's charles playlist? the one he mentioned in interviews? well, he dropped it on twitter at 19th of may. and man, do i have stuff to say about it.

there's a lot of 80's bangers, for sure, great to get into the mood and character, but some of the choices...

i'm gonna focus on a few of my favourites, songs that made me go insane when i saw them. honorable mentions: - category 1 (so devoted the lines blur): ain't no mountain high enough by marvin gaye and tammi terrell, there is a light that never goes out by the smiths, inkpot gods by the amazing devil - category 2 (family life): family line and summer child by conan gray, seventeen going under by sam fender, matilda by harry styles, father by the front bottoms - category 3 (being queer in the 80s): smalltown boy by bronski beat, boys don't cry by the cure - category 4 (there's no heterosexual explanation for this one): good luck, babe! by chappel roan, yellow by coldplay, fight or flight by conan gray (is this about monty? the cat king? i need answers!), the prophecy by taylor swift, arms tonite by mother mother, sweet by cigarettes after sex, head over heels by tears for fears

this list is by no means complete or comprehensive!

and now, the songs that made me go the craziest: (they're predominantly in charles' pov as it's his playlist)

found heaven by conan gray

the only reason this song made it into the list and not the honorable mentions instead of smalltown boy is that it makes almost the same point, just so much more explicitly. i don't think i have to say much about it, it's a story of a young person griping with their queerness, being forced to leave home, a common theme of the playlist. "you're in love, you found heaven" when he chose edwin over his own afterlife, heavily implied to be heaven, and built his heaven with him on the mortal plane? ouch! (and we see this same notion repeated in another bop from the playlist, heaven is a place on earth by belinda carlisle).

2. like real people do by hozier

"i miss kissing" charles rowland, 202X romantic meaning aside, the verses show a sort of a common understanding the boys have around the manner of their deaths and their lives before it. we already know from the show they don't really talk about it, with edwin not knowing about the severity of the abuse charles suffered. it feels like one of them saying "let the past be past, we're together now, yeah?". but also, jayden: can there ever be a platonic explanation for this? ghosts can't touch, can't feel, so they wish they could just kiss like "real" (alive?) people do?

3. flaws by bastille

not the most romantic song, but i absolutely love how well it fits their dynamic. despite his edwardian brand of repression, edwin truly is the one that's more open about his feelings (recognising of course that in this case, the bar is so low it's in hell. haha, get it). edwin has worn his flaws upon his sleeve, and charles has held them buried - eg. bottling up all of his anger and resentment towards his family and his own death. the song presents a very sweet outlook, in which their flaws are brought up to the surface (for example, charles' outburst against the night nurse in episode 4), but they learn to accept them as they are, an extension of themselves.

4. a pearl by mitski

you know it's gonna get intense if there's a mitski song in the mix.

the song is about a person who finds love in their partner, someone who treats them way better than they've ever been treated - and yet they cannot bring themselves to reciprocate the affection ("it's not that i don't want you, sorry i can't take your touch") despite reciprocating the feelings themselves because of the trauma. charles is known to bottle things up ("you're growing tired of me and all the things i don't talk about"). the person in the song recognises the love the other person holds for them ("you love me so hard and i still can't sleep"), which reminds me of charles' response to edwin's confession. not a "no", but a "maybe, as time passes".

5. fair by the amazing devil

this one made me genuinely gasp when i first delved into the lyrics. it's simply so sweet, such a genuine and domestic portrayal of love. at first i thought it was way too open about being a love song (normal text instead of the subtext i'd be used to) for jayden to choose it with edwin in mind, but... there's no one else it can really be about. it's far too domestic, too "established" to refer to crystal. refers to a relationship that's laster for a longer while.

the narrator in the first verse is a person deeply in love with the other person, someone who loves to make his lover laugh and simply drinks in their presence. the "he" in the song i believe is charles, while the "she" refers to edwin. edwin promises to fight off anyone - or any feelings pulling charles down (we can see this in the first episode: "you ever think... what if death did catch us? she'd force us to go to the afterlife and split up" "i will make sure this never happens."). charles feels left behind by the world (seeing as he clings to crystal at first, refering to her as "someone their age who's still alive") and believes edwin to be so much stronger than he's ever been. i'm not going to break down the song verse by verse, but if you read it yourself while subbing out "he" for charles and "she" for edwin you'll see just how sweet (and... strangely very in character?) the song is.

6. work song by hozier

if the previous song made me gasp when i saw the lyrics, this one made me go "NO WAY" out loud when i saw the title. the first one verse is just pure toothrotting sweetness, but the chorus is what i want to draw attention to:

when my time comes around lay me gently in the cold, dark earth no grave can hold my body down i'll crawl home to her

HELLO? charles, who keeps escaping death and afterlife to be able to stay with edwin? charles, as he literally takes his last breath with edwin right there, choosing to be by his side rather than move on? charles, who keeps choosing him despite night nurse's promises and threats? charles, who literally crawled through hell for him?

verse 2, to me, can be interpreted as referring to when charles died. edwin found him at his worst, and he "woke" up with his presence comforting him. he was shivering due to hypothermia and his injuries. edwin didn't ask him about what happened or pushed him, he simply listened. the lines "i didn't care much how long i lived, but I swear, i thought i dreamed her" are pretty self explanatory.

in verse 3 we still see the same attitude of "damn the afterlife, at least we have each other" as charles portrays througout the series. they're free, and heaven and hell are simply words to him.

7. orpheus by vincent lima

i literally have no words for this one. it fits too well. if you want commentary for this one, just... i don't know, rewatch the staircase scene.

8. francesca by hozier

(cracks knuckles) this is the big one. the album francesca is from, unreal unearth, is based on dante alighieri's divine comedy, a fourteenth century poem about a man venturing into hell, purgatory and eventually heaven. the eponymous francesca is one francesca di rimini, a woman who was politically married off to a man older than her, called giovanni malatesta. francesca didn't love him, and eventually fell deep in love with giovanni's younger brother, paolo. the two carried on with the affair for years, before being murdered by giovanni upon his finding out. francesca and paolo are mentioned in canto v of the first book, inferno, as two souls damned in the second circle of hell, lust. their punishment is to be permanently locked in a hurricane, swept away by the winds the moment they manage to get close enough to touch one another.

as opposed to their portrayal in the poem, the song is from the perspective of paolo, explaining that no matter the punishment, he wouldn't change anything about his life because he got to know, and love, francesca.

the first verse brings to mind the scenes in hell, especially on the staircase ("do you think I'd give up? that this might've shook the love from me? or that I was on the brink? how could you think, darlin', i'd scare so easily?" as an echo of charles' "sorry. no version of this where i didn't come get you"). "my life was a storm since i was born, how could i fear any hurricane?" could relate to charles' tumultuous family life, an assurance that nothing he has to deal with while by edwin's side will faze him given the things he's lived through. no, despite everything he's suffered through, charles wouldn't do anything differently - because his (admittedly shitty) life led him to edwin ("i'd tell them, put me back in"). we already know charles would choose him over heaven, willingly sacrificing his own afterlife to stay with a boy he's known for hours, someone kind enough to keep him company as he drew his final breath. all of it - his father's abuse, his schoolmates' bigotry, the pain of his own death, as well as everything he's gone through since - he'd do it all again, for edwin.

"for all that was said of where we'd end up at the end of it" could be taken as an allusion to the fate the boys would meet at "at the end of it", when they're finally caught by death and separated, or as more of a general "if you sin, you will go to hell when you die" (up to you to decide what the sin itself would be - an interpretation that would work with other songs on the playlist is that one such sin would be same sex attraction). then their hearts ceased, they never knew "peace", nor did they want to find it in death. their deaths were too soon, them being ripped away from life, but even though it would break his heart: charles would ask to do it all again.

the outro, i think, beautifully pulls it all together: heaven is not fit to house a love like theirs.

to wrap it all up:

jayden, what were you cooking in there? what do you know??

#please interact w me please please please i need dbd moots <3 #dbda #dead boy detectives #dead boy detective agency #paynland #payneland #painland #paineland #chedwin #charles rowland #edwin paine #edwin payne #dead boy detectives agency #dead boy detectives analysis #aough jayden your mind #my art #<- my umbrella trashcan tag

758 notes · View notes

ladybracknellssherry · 4 months ago

Text

I see so many posts since the dam broke about NG in which people are lamenting how horrible celebrities and people in power are and asking where we went wrong as a society to let this happen.

The fucked up thing though is that humans have always behaved like this. We just have the internet now.

And please don’t mistake this for resignation or apathy or anything other than disgust.

But I just keep coming back to the point that human beings are capable of truly terrifying, horrible things.

So I feel like we’ve got to remember that most people don’t do terrible things. But we’re all capable of them.

And I don’t fault anyone for being devastated to learn that someone they respected did indeed to terrible things. It would feel wild to call someone foolish or stupid or naïve because their first instinct was to believe that someone is decent. They’re not anything like that other than someone who was lied to.

I actually do think as a society we are in fact getting better about calls for justice in situations like this.

But people who behave like NG…people who do these things…their personalities are a cancer. And we can do what we can to try to prevent things like this from happening. But I don’t think we can stop it all from happening. It’s never going to disappear completely.

But we can continue to listen to victims. And we can continue to be vocal about demanding justice and accountability.

The court of public opinion and the legal system both fail terribly at times, especially in situations like this. Another flaw of human nature, I think.

The “I’ll wait for the legal system to decide” argument isn’t really helpful here. Because SA allegations / abuse are some of the hardest things to prove in a court of law. And there have been legitimate actual cases in which victims have come forward with allegations, there was no evidence to be found/the evidence wasn’t “good enough” and these victims were instead actually CHARGED with filing false reports. So putting all of the onus or faith in the law here just… again… isn’t helpful.

Sometimes the justice can be best served by demanding consequences that aren’t legal punishments. There are petitions to remove NG from his positions as a writer/showrunner in these shows we love.

Sometimes just making sure the word is spread is the push to topple the dominos.

As others have said and continue to say, you can do both terrible and great things. And they don’t cancel each other out. Doing great things doesn’t make the terrible ones any less terrible. Doing terrible things doesn’t make the great things any less great. Two truths can exist at once.

Sure, we can argue that continuing to consume NG’s work is continuing to put money in his pocket. Yeah. But once again, as far as my random internet user opinion.

I experienced some very similar things to what his victims said they experienced in these interviews. And they wrecked my life in no uncertain terms. I’ll never “come back from that” because we don’t. We just keep going forward having to carry that. It doesn’t go away.

But my abusers took so much from me. And the good things I got out of those relationships are made so much more important because of how much suffering they cost.

Sidebar, but that’s something that I see people using in their arguments for why the “abuse” allegations weren’t real or “that bad.” Because the victims went back. Or they continued to stay. Or continued to pursue. Listen. When you go through all of THAT, it is so common to scramble to keep what you perceive are the “good things” you get out of that dynamic/relationship. Or you convince yourself that it’s not as bad as all that. Because, god. “I went through all of that and they STILL LEFT.” “I gave them (they took) all of THAT and I still wasn’t good enough for them.” It’s this survival element where we have to convince ourselves all of that suffering we went through was WORTH IT. Or, the gaslighting gets imbedded and we believe it must have been our fault. “Yes, they treated me badly, but I must have done something to deserve it. They told me it was my fault. Everyone else loves them. I did something wrong.” Yeah. NO.

So if you can separate yourself from that abuser - get far enough away to have the clarity and perspective to finally say “no, that was fucking real what happened. That was abuse. They’re an abuser.” I say, anything “good” you got out of that - take it and fucking run.

NG is a predator at best. And we are all suffering for it. But we got our books and our shows and we found each other in these fandoms. I say take these good things and run. You didn’t cause this. Don’t let him take any more joy from you or anyone else.

#neil gaiman #tw: sa mention #tw: sa

481 notes · View notes

kcokaine · 18 days ago

Note

Hi sorry but people on twitter are saying you’re a nazi and I was just wondering if that was true??

Not only is this quite outrageous take on someone without like 0 actual proof. I can admit in the "proof"(the zionism thing which people mean as Nazism) people used against me was me at most being insensitive/ignorant which i already sincerely apologized for because i wasn't edjucated on the matter whatsoever. It was not right of me and I never repeated that after i found out about the truth of things.

But also this is ridiculous. I'm not american, I'm from a country that has been wartorn by nazis and communists. All my life I was taught about atrocities these two sides did to central europe and other countries. If you had a swastika tattooed on you here you would get literally arrested or killed on the street. But that isn't even an argument, that's just me stating how stupid and hypocritical it would be of anyone to support such things from the area i was raised in. I'm highly anti nazi, anti facist or anti anything that is even similar to that. I stand with civilians and innocent people that are being collateral damage to war and governments. Therefore I'm not a trump supporter, i was always left leaning i was always for rights. Hell I'm a bisexual woman, how could i ever support someone like Trump in my right mind?

I do not understand where this claim is absolutely coming from and i dont understand how people disregard the severity of saying this online with confidence. This is such a serious accusation that can ruin reputations unrightfully and just shows how people have no interest searching for more proof or anything before saying serious things because all they care about is drama and that the finger is not pointed at them in that moment. We as society got too comfortable about canceling and just saying anything, growing into complete parasocial relationship within each other. You are either no person to them, no human being or you are a glorified idea. Everyone is a person behind that screen and if they ever got over they pride and looked themselves in the core they would understand they also do mistakes and not everything is black and white.

I'm hurt by these accusations. This isn't anywhere close to calling someone names or weird for having odd preferences and stuff in fandoms. This is claiming that I support actual genocide, suffering of real people which is fucking awful. It makes me sad, deeply hurt. I'm not saying im better than anyone else, i dont need to be, I want this genocide to end same as anyone else would. I reflected, I took criticizm to heart and I'm now trying to truly do something with my following, i retweet donation links and donate to the charities with spare money i have.

The truth is, no matter what I say, it will never be enough for the people that just want to have moral highground, they act like they never made a mistake, like they were never ignorant in their life. I wonder how they would like it if someone took something terrible out of context and endlessly kept posting it on social media just to feel better without you having a proper chance to redeem yourself, always being seen as a "nazi" in some people's eyes because someone lied about you. It's sad and I'm sorry you keep seeing this lie about me. I think about it every day. And with this message I wanted to let you know what I truly feel and think. If you believe it is on you, but I'm finally putting my thoughts out there after months of thinking.

#iba asks

76 notes · View notes

evnseokz · 9 days ago

Text

I remember the day Seunghan was announced to be returning to Riize—honestly, it might’ve been one of the happiest days I’ve had in a long time. Since then, I haven't felt that same level of joy. While I may not have been a fan from the very start, or witnessed the entire situation unfold, I still remember hearing about what happened and it left me disgusted. What went down was absolutely vile, and I still can’t believe SM Entertainment let it happen. Even more frustrating, they allowed everyone to get their hopes up when Seunghan’s return was announced, only to side with a small group of the fandom and undo it all.

As a Briize, I’m now having to miss out on content from my favorite group because of a decision that never should’ve been made in the first place. It’s infuriating, and it’s heartbreaking for Seunghan, who had to endure all of that—practically on his own. SM just stood by and let it happen. They let hateful messages and funeral wreaths go unchecked, as if none of it mattered. Those responsible for that kind of behavior should be held accountable, legally even. No one should be allowed to get away with such cruelty.

And to be clear, Seunghan should never have to debut as a solo artist. He was meant to be with Riize, but he was essentially punished because of a pre-debut relationship. Let’s be real—every idol, unless they’re still 14 years old, has likely had a relationship before debut, whether it's a girlfriend or a boyfriend. The only reason people are so upset about it is because there’s actual proof in the form of pictures. It’s ridiculous that just because he had a girlfriend, he was made to suffer. He was just a normal teenage boy who didn’t deserve any of this.

What SM Entertainment is doing now, trying to fix things by debuting him as a solo artist, is not enough. Seunghan still hasn’t gotten the justice he deserves. I won’t stop boycotting because what happened to him was wrong, and he deserves to be with Riize. He should’ve never been put in this position in the first place.

I know I’m a bit late in speaking up, but I needed some time to really process my thoughts and feelings before posting. IDOLS ARE PEOPLE TOO. They are not just tools for your entertainment. If the idea of an idol being in a relationship truly upsets you, I think it’s time to take a long, hard look at yourself and your values. If that’s how you feel, maybe you should stay single forever, too. You don’t own these idols, and they’re not here to cater to your every whim. It’s exhausting to see so many people forget that they have feelings, too.

Lastly, I’ll say this: PLEASE BOYCOTT RIIZE.

SEUNGHAN DESERVES JUSTICE.

#hong seunghan #seunghan #justice for seunghan #riize is seven #riize is 7 #riize #boycott riize #boycott sm #evnseokz #✫ quinn yaps

138 notes · View notes

crimeronan · 3 months ago

Text

there's something well-meaning but also kind of insidious about the idea that you have to be Careful and Gentle with how you hurt female characters, lest you accidentally recreate misogynist violence in your work. particularly when this gets paired with "female characters shouldn't cry or break down too often because that's stereotypical feminine weakness" (this particular advice DOES seem to be going out of fashion these days, though. Thank God).

i'm thinking about how people have pointed out that women in popular fiction & fanwork are often comforting their tortured boyfriends about their sad abusive pasts, without receiving any of that same emotional support in turn -- effectively just becoming tools for said sad boyfriend's character growth. and how much rarer it is for that gender dynamic to be flipped, with the boy comforting the girl. and also how this trope is even More prevalent when it's a woman of color + her white boyfriend.

some of it is Men Ignoring Writing Women nonsense, some of it is fanwork of media that's built on Men Ignoring Writing Women nonsense, some of it is an unconscious recreation of a gender dynamic that often exists in real life relationships, etc.

but i Also think there's something to the fandom side with, like. people having hesitations around fictional women that they don't around men. like i HAVE to take some of these things in good faith, and the good faith reading is: writing about men recovering from abuse is a safe, easy exploration of hard topics. meanwhile writing about women the same way feels Strange and Wrong and Uncomfortable because of the Femaleness of it all.

i truly don't know what can be done to combat this beyond writing more suffering women myself.... because it's not all that helpful to yell "EVERYONE IS A MISOGYNIST" (especially because tbh more often i find it's, like. woman writers who just. Don't Want To Think About That Shit) & i also can't Force people to want to write about women suffering horribly.

so i suppose i will end this on a joke instead:

Pleaseeeee Start Beating The Everloving Shit Out Of Female Characters. For Meeee.... 🥺🤲👉👈🙏🙏🙏

#all i'm saying is it's REALLY EASY to write fic about luz being comforted by her tortured white boy if u care about her interiority at all.#luz is of course where i first gravitate these days but if u want a more unpleasant woman who suffers horribly in her canon #then may i offer cdth hennessy. wife forever #MAKE YOUR WOMEN SAD AND BEAT TO SHIT PLEASEEEE #the heterosexual romance book game is so fucking strong with this. truly makes the absence in queer fandom more apparent to me....#anyway. much 2 consider.

128 notes · View notes

lasnevadaslaborunion · 9 months ago

Text

I've been drifting away from both Tumblr and MCYT for a while now. This was the nail in the coffin.

I have another blog for art, and a third for other fandoms, but I doubt I will use either as often as I used LNLU. There's never been a community I've connected with quite so deeply as this one. Your creativity, passion, and kindness carried me through awful times far more than any individual creator could. It was not all rainbows and unicorns. It ripped open some old wounds, and left some new ones as well. But I want to carry forward the good things. I'm in touch with most of my friends on other platforms. If I've missed you, feel free to message and ask for my Discord.

A few final words, though.

We can never fully know what these creators are like when they're off-screen. What we see is a carefully curated picture of who they are, with flaws either scrubbed away or humorously exaggerated to the point of dismissal. Being aware of this does not mean assuming the worst. It means being realistic. When the people who truly know them become vulnerable by sharing the truth, believe them.

Be cautious of stereotypes. Anyone can be a victim or a perpetrator. If abusers could all be easily recognized at a cursory glance, if the signs were only a simple checklist of traits and deeds, if they were all so obviously monstrous that only a fool could have ever admired them - then far fewer of these people would get away with doing what they do.

They might be charming, attractive, thoughtful, intelligent, or funny.

They might only commit "minor" abuses, the kind that by themselves seem not to count but when taken together will wear you down.

They might blame you for what they do, claiming that you gave them no choice, or using your own symptoms and mistakes against you.

They might not realize that their behavior is abusive, or they might attribute it to other issues they may deal with.

They might apologize profusely and promise to be the sweetest person in the world for you, never to genuinely change.

They might degrade themselves, saying it's "just the type of person they are," and expect you - the one they hurt - to relieve them of their guilt.

They might be victims of something or someone else, too. They might truly be suffering.

But none of that makes your suffering acceptable.

If someone belittles, insults, pressures, screams at, willfully crosses boundaries, lies to, guilt-trips, or mentally, physically, or sexually harms you or someone you care about, there is never any obligation to accept that treatment. No matter what real or imagined position over you they might have, no matter what's going on in their life or in their brain, no one has the right to abuse their power like that. They are wrong.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong, too.

And to other survivors of abuse: it wasn't your fault, you deserve better, you are stronger than you know, your worth never depended on them, and you will heal with time.

Goodbye from LNLU. I love you all.

#tw abuse #important

202 notes · View notes

nanakah · 20 days ago

Text

hello hello, I took the alien stage pill. howdy fellow sufferers

Honestly, my first reaction to basically everything was "awww, they come in sets and are all without exception horribly doomed no matter their specs (loops cool music and vids)"

I'd seen some of VIVINOS' team works without realizing it was the same artist (my favorites being Beloved and Otomeroid) so it was rather shocking to learn of a "series" with a fandom as active/relatively large as Alien Stage without ever actually stumbling upon it before...

Anyways. I like the concept, and Hyuna+Luka in particular, a whole lot. In spite of all the jokes about only yuri and yaoi losing, my spider sense says they'll get their turn of crashing horribly soon and I wanna stay here to witness it burn beautifully, of course.

TL;DR OMG HYULUKA IS SO DELICIOUS

general yapping about all alien stage duos under the cut and some Hyuna/Luka considerations and theories

disclaimer: long, chaotic post ahead - i wrote most of it during revenge bedtime procrastination so I'm kinda just rambling/discussing my general impressions and vibes here instead of formatting it nicely or properly illustrating my points. good luck if you choose to stick around and make yourself comfy

alien stage impressions under read more - also SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

funny thing - I got into alien stage completely by chance after checking out some related vids to my Love and Deepspace twitter spree and avoiding my responsibilities. Ivan's Black Sorrow made a very strong impression and I loved his eyes, so I kept going deeper down the rabbit role and felt fascinated by the web of dynamics between the characters each time I took in a little more of the plot.

(His eyes are so cool and expressive.....I was already loving everything prior and was excited to continue, but Ivan was definitely the one to sell me on the concept more strongly and eat up the rest.)

It was interesting seeing "love" portrayed under such dire conditions and I kept wondering how come the aliens are so stupid they chose a 1vs1 PVP combat format with their beloved pets instead of the optimal formation of idol units and at least duos versus each other to utilize their feelings of love. Why would they do that?

That first innocent musing made me realize how clever the team behind ALNST is. The whole thing seems to be operating as a metaphor/commentary about how predatory the real idol industry is (the concept of anakt garden really sounds like the average idol trainee camp experience and the bonds they form with their group mates) and how heartless guardian (parental) figures can be in a society that is heavily utilitarian and barely gives agency to either their own children or sentient beings like animals that we keep as pets.

So in that world, the sacrifices of being an idol are literal and humans themselves are "pets" - with all the implications that come with "being dependent on a species that does not properly comprehend them". At times, the way they refer to the fandom of each character even seems to be tongue in cheek as to how "we" too are watching the story for entertainment and making fanbases for each character and reacting like some of the in-universe alien fans.

Therefore, it's no brainer that the answer to my initial question was: aliens/Segyein don't understand how to utilize human bonds and emotions to their maximum efficiency in the first place. They know interaction between humans seems to be important and produces more beautiful songs. However, they probably experience those feelings differently and most of them are likely unable to truly empathize with human pain, ethics or feelings. (And believe me, even some people have a hard time believing other species benifit from socialization, so aliens being that way is understandable). Perhaps the awful acts of the Segyein mutilating their pet human is no different from pulling a butterfly's wings to a human or injecting colored fluid into a flower. The glimpses of their buildings and tv show that they have the same sort of "do they have rights?" feelings and similar moral conflicts to what we have in the real world about species we don't understand fully.

I think it's really challenging to analyze a work attempting to guess future developments when you don't know the creator too well. In spite of looping OTOMEROID I wouldn't say I know VIVINOS and her team deeply as an admirer. But from the overall tone of the videos in her channel, I could pick up on a fascination with "extremes" of emotion and exploring the hypocrisy of society. Human/animal experimentation and materialism/religion/consumerism are topics that come up often. Love is also hardly ever portrayed as a simple or benevolent feeling alone - there's unrequited love, obsession, insanity, many facets of that feeling on the channel. Some works are more straightforward and focus on the visual presentation, others seem to have a deeper story behind it.

The technical quality of the Alien Stage MVs is extremely impressive, I had a blast looking at the patreon storyboards and feeling like "wow, a person actually made this". It seriously got me inspired to feel like drawing more to get out of my own artblock and to pick up on old OCs to show them some love. In the era of AI, this is a joy to get to feel. It all definitely feels like a well-put together labor of love. I'm super weak to things brimming with passion like this, it's contagious!!!!

Now that I've tried my best to make an eloquent opening and act like I'm not at all just a fangirl foaming at the mouth with this intense concept (I keep crying that I wanna see either Aka or Ohkawa try their hand at a death game scenario) and at the sight of a tragic toxic duo with a backstory of a deeply rooted mutual obsession/love and fall out (wiping drool out of the corner of my mouth as we speak), let's talk a little more about the story. In order to make sense out of my ramblings and projections, let me explain my thoughts on the other duos besides my bias first.

Mizi and Sua set the tone to their universe as well as serve as an explanation as to why "idols" work well to represent their conflict and struggle - I'm fresh out of Oshi no Ko here, so this feels equal parts like a comfort zone and everything but comfortable and hellish to go over again. But, to put it briefly, the adoration of someone as an entertainer that you want to support also overlaps with the word reserved for adoring "an image or representation of a god used as an object of worship" - idol.

Humans, stripped of their power and autonomy after arrogantly believing they were superior to everyone else and were the only beings in the vast universe, have been subjugated by other species. Because of the bleak, unforgiving circumstances they were faced with afterwards, the surviving ones were turned into luxury pets and stripped of their freedom. Free will made them children of God before, so people have forgotten all about the "God" who couldn't answer their prayers/save them. But, as Mizi says, the belief in God is innate to human nature. You are more likely live in this world successfuly if you have someone to look up to or a reason to survive.

When God seems so far away and so cruel...what they can do is look to each other as their "Gods". Because a belief in God is ultimately, a cry for salvation and acceptance...."The Bible makes it clear that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). He isn't just loving, but he is the very definition of love."Therefore, all characters are, in some way, looking for salvation and being constantly tested and brutally being forced to show off their humanity through the lens of how love affects them - and not at the privacy of their inner thoughts or anything. All of that in order to portray different aspects of "love", adoration and what it means to be human. To have a belief on the unseen - "what is essential is invisible to the eye".

IT'S ALIEN AMERICAN IDOL MEETS DANGANRONPA. WHOO.

(gOD I wish we could have gotten Luka vs Sua or vs Ivan in some way. That feels like it would be extremely close and entertaining to see. Am I losing my humanity? Why is my keyboard slimy? Am I becoming a Segyein ....?)

Of course, because I fell for all those deliciously doomed themes like the good CLAMP/Akasaka foolish nerd I am, I bought patreon access day one. Although some setting details were unexpected, I was pretty satisfied with my overall initial grasp on most of the characters. If you found me through the tags and didn't already follow me, my disclaimer here so you get to know me is that I easily gravitate to polarizing characters or doomed ships like a curse. There are also certain Themes that follow me like a plague and I could see some of my favorite characters' shadows on the doomed kids I liked right away. Like an itch to spot something more to what is being shown.

Therefore right away, Luka and Hyuna caught my eye big time. (literally, when I watched sweet dream I kept pausing and going - whOA WHO IS THE COOL GIRL WITH THE CIG. Wait wait wait show me more of the boy that looks dead inside overstimulated by the flashing lights!)

I don't really have any pretension to be quoted on anything here or say things verbatim (Patreon says it's fine to produce derivative content based on what's there, but as expected, it's enforced not to directly share it so I can't really go argument-evidence here by presenting it) and have only seen pictures of the artbook secondhand by a friend, so I'll have my fun here making commentary loosely based on extra content and sporadically showing off pretty MV captures.

Anyway.

We're introduced to this universe through the jarring cruelty of ROUND 1, contrasting a harmonic, beautiful, lullaby-like melody with a harsh outcome. Like Mizi, unless we got spoiled beforehand, we don't really know anything about what's about to horrifically transpire. And though she got education, it feels like the teachings about what death or the Alien Stage would be like were horribly sugar coated or distorted to her, as incentive to give their best performances - like sacrificing themselves was a good thing. The extra materials back this up with Mizi's first interview about "My Clematis" - it's like they're told they're simply going back to their "origins" entity (The Grand Ankt) and it's a pretty and peaceful thing. We're shown how bad humans have it in their society and simultaneously get a montage of a cute, healthy, heartwarming relationship between the two girls and a deep "pure" love, as well as feel the weight of Sua's sacrifice and how badly it hurts Mizi. You're told that Sua is her God, her Universe in a Godless world - only to have her ripped away and "God" basically slaughtered for cheap entertainment. Some of the extra materials put it as a certain "mutual love" between Sua and Mizi.

It's interesting how we're shown a stage and don't know what to expect at first - since the girls seem "calm" and happy to express their love, but there's an increasing sense of dread until the finality of Sua's death hits and the pretty, shining girl we see in the flashbacks becomes an empty husk. The MVs seem all to be roughly designed around creating a surprise at the end or recontextualizing something we have seen previously.

I won't discuss Till and Ivan at length at this time, because that would get too long and demands it's own post (I sure as hell rewatched Unknown, Black Sorrow and Cure many times though), but the key part for me here is - they similarly express "love", but through another facet - obsession of a one-sided love and the desire to reach salvation or a reason to endure the world because of that, too. To the point of choosing the chance of love over salvation, expressed by Till letting go of Ivan's hand when they had a chance to escape (not wanting to leave Mizi behind most likely) and Ivan's kiss and decision to strangle Till to give his own life in exchange for his/finally getting to express his "shallow emotions" he perceives as something that won't deeply scar Till (but it does, and it mattered, far more than he could ever have known). It's interesting that although Mizi calls Sua a God, they develop something closer to a balanced, mutual relationship, as much as their lack of understanding of "human relationship" allows - they connect deeply. Ivan, according to the comics, sees himself in Sua, but it's deeply frustrating how he couldn't build the same sort of connection with Till and felt like he could only maintain a bond through violence.

Mizi seems to be the only human who was raised in a "stable home" (her alien seems to actually love her closest to a mother), but that's not enough to protect her from pain - after all, the alien's reasoning was that if Mizi likes singing, she should join. Yolo! Your human baby's life is so short! Sounds like outdoor cat owners to me. Ugh. All other pet humans are going through some flavor of parental abuse, and it all reflects in how they express their emotions and what sort of decisions they tend to take.

Till, in contrast to all that, more closely resembles the definition of looking at Mizi like an oshi/idol as a comfort to run from the pains of his life - he always looks hurt or abused, but Mizi is like medicine that even watching from far away makes him feel "saved" due to nurturing that "first love" that is heavily idealized. It's interesting how his character that is first introduced as somewhat violent or wild because of the smashing guitar and "addict"/drug imagery turns out to be one of the most sensitive.

The cloaked figure of Mizi in Blink Gone seems to resemble a saint or Mary (mother) holding a child in her lap as he takes his last breaths. She rushed into the crowd in a desperate attempt to save or at least comfort him in his predicament. Till's final position even resembles that of being crucified.

All that, however, makes Till unable to see Ivan properly - who is constantly around him and yearning for his attention, protecting and loving him in desperate ways that he doesn't realize until the very last minute. He is also seemingly detaching himself from the "real" world as a very "pure" child (shown in the way he loves with full devotion and his artistic inclinations), which of course, makes Ivan painful to face - who is a grounding entity and a reminder of the real world. The one who touches his wounds, who is "there" and not unreachable like a flower at the top of a mountain. That love between Ivan and Till got expressed in a way that was painful to both, but a very human act of a clashing selfish and selfless-ness.

None of them are built for this. They're trying to survive.

So far, what I've got is...Mizi and Sua set a standard of what is closest to a mutual love that was growing together in a relatively equal and healthy way. Ivan and Till were reworked to avoid overlap with them and are chosen to portray the sense of an immature, obsessive love and clashing emotions. It's interesting to me how much the creators stress the "one-sided" and controlling nature of Ivan for behind the scenes, and I feel like this does not mean that Till couldn't possibly return his feelings - after all, the Actor AU does show great chemistry between them. It's more like, within their living conditions and because of the emotional immaturity of both of them, they literally could not see eye to eye - Till looking at an idol out of reach (Mizi), and Ivan choosing to seek out his attention through violent means that confused Till, thus he was unable to respond to the intensity of what he felt and grow into it.

NOW. TO THE MAIN COURSE THAT IS ROTTING MY BRAIN: HYULUKA.

If we've got all those bases covered so far...where does that leave Hyuna and Luka?

(This is the most Mello/Near-like I've ever seen another ship pull off. My inner 13 yo is screaming. They're both incredibly gorgeous. How is a hetero couple simultaneously so BL and yuri-like in DRAMA AND IMAGERY? CLAMP would be proud...)

You see, there's no official answer about the true nature of their bond yet.

But I have a lot of speculations. It clearly looks like a rotten, strangled-by-the-red-string-of-fate sort bond that is just up my alley. THE MOST FUN IS GETTING TO BABBLE BEFORE GETTING AN ASSERTIVE ANSWER. I'm all for making a fool of myself, so let's get down to it.

To put it simply - I believe Hyuna and Luka's role is expressing the extremes of the setting itself and what "to love" means within it, with a turn for the worse and the tragedy of "not understanding" even if there is love.

How do you conquer an oppressive world in which all odds are against you? Would you overtake it through rebellion or would you strike at it from within?

In a world in which God's teachings have become lost to time and difficult to believe, does love strengthen or weaken you? If it causes pain and destruction, can it still be called love?

I think Hyuna and Luka are standing at opposite sides of those beliefs, and cannot understand each other's mindset.

Seems simple enough to write Luka as a mere villain final boss since he seems to be enjoying himself at the evil death game and Hyuna as the nice rebel who wants to save everyone, right? But it's confirmed Hyuna wasn't really trying to rescue more people like she had an opportune moment to do for Mizi.

The artbook also says something incredibly interesting about what the "Luka Syndrome" mentioned in one of the MVs really means - Luka's prestige as a performer is raising the prestige of pet humans. He also believes "Hyuna would be safe with him" - Why is that?

I think they might actually have similar goals and a similar stubborness in which they believe themselves to be the correct one and the other to be pitiful and foolish. Hyuna is trying to overthrow a system that is well-established and has far more power or influence than them, therefore she needs to resort to drastic measures and flashy means to assert dominance over the alien society.

Luka on the other hand, feels like he is using the system against it and exercising his own humanity while at it. Rather than tackling the incredibly daunting task of being a rebel with guns blazing, Luka became a master of the stage in a way that makes humans gain influence and thus become more valuable.Even if I try to think of it as "he's just trying to survive", that doesn't feel enough - because whenever he is not on stage, Luka looks dead inside already.

Especially in the arts he looks like a younger child or teenager, except for the ones after he seems more consistently approached by Hyuna. It's hard for me to think what moves him is a survival instinct. He is also portrayed like the typical "golden kid" syndrome victim - someone so systematically beaten to satisfy their narcissist guardian figure and submitted to so much pain that they eventually absorb part of that mindset as a way to have agency and autonomy over themselves. It gives the illusion of being successful and thus that the abuse was "effective", but it's like a curse that is difficult to break from.

I think both of them are older for a thematic reason. It feels like it could represent what it feels like, as adults, to no longer be able to hold onto naive or idealistic things about the world or society due to ignorance and having to choose a path to express your ideas and reach your goals through your "work".

Hyuna is guns blazing and "adult pleasures" - singing to an underground stage, trying to scrub off the wounds of her past with alcohol, and it's interesting that her guardian alien is portrayed like an "absent" parent figure - they have an interest in humans, but doesn't care about watching Hyuna when she first was eligible for Alien Stage. I wonder if they even are the one looking for her at all - seems to me it's more of an alien police thing because of her "crimes". Under that seemingly "thick" skin though, it seems clear that Hyuna is deeply affected by Luka still, and the loss of her brother. She deals with her wounds by not really dealing with them at all and guess what - it's a weak point. Her song is uplifting and refreshing, but she clearly demonstrates that closing your eyes to trauma and purely moving forward doesn't make them go away. In that sense, Mizi is a way she is trying to "mentor" someone navigate through loss.

I love outcasts and mildly autistic-coded characters, so I gravitated to Sua, Ivan and Luka right away.

(Extroverted cutie and the doomest doomer of the bunch. As a side note, their character design alone and contrast is genius and gorgeous. I'd expect 90% of the time for Luka to be the designated BL character and hardly do I ever see his archetype paired with the sort of sharp, striking beauty that Hyuna has so I definitely got giddy with them right away. She reminds me a lot of Michiko Malando and Luka reminds me of Near, two characters I love a whole lot and funnily enough have the same mbti types the artbook describes them as - ESTP and INTJ. Ankt garden Luka looks somewhat closer to the AU versions of Luka, so gotta love both his origins and his twisted post-alnst/hyuun woo self)

I believe Hyuna bundles Luka with that trauma of grief and loss, and it's still unclear what their roles are in it and after the fact. While singing all in verses "We only get one life, so I'm living mine for me/'Cause I'm the one from your wildest dreams", Luka's face flashes through Hyuna's mind before even her brothers, like it's something that's always on the back of it and barely suppressed.

See...since VIVINOS loves the "more than meets the eye"/twist concept, something I'm expecting is for Hyuna's feelings not to be as black and white as blaming Luka and actually. It obviously was dysfunctional and isn't that....delicious???

I feel like a one-sided love or obsession wouldn't make sense to repeat as themes, and because of the heavy trauma associated in the backstory, it's not like a "healthy mutual love". To bridge the themes of MiziSua and IvanTill, I think Hyuna and Luka are being told in a way to express love as something that can also destroy instead of save, and their clashing ideologies come from a place of wanting to think "-I'M- right and want to be your god", instead of ever having been able to understand each other properly.

They have a similarly "corrupt" love that has a lot of guilt and regret built into it. Even with something awful as what happened to her brother, it's curious that Hyuna's mind first thinks of Luka in an "enamored" light - the scene looks pretty tender - but that's also attached to the weight of Hyun Woo's death.

I think It's likely that the twist is Hyuna having been the one who hurt her brother, even, considering the dynamic in these comics:

Luka and Hyun Woo compete for Hyuna's attention, and it's to be expected that none of them understand the boundaries and definitions of love too well. Hyuna and Hyun Woo seem to be naive and relatively raised in a decent way, submitted to superiority tests like the rest, but not directly abused. They seem to express their love for each other in a cheerful, healthy way, Hyuna probably because of her closeness to her brother (which is unusual for other pet humans to be able to do) is extremely physical in how she shows affection. She doesn't really reprimand Luka, and that creates an unhealthy dynamic in which Luka plays the victim - in spite of starting things - to enjoy Hyuna's attention. There is a cute comic that looks silly, but encapsulates it all:

Luka is a little shit that wants to be pampered. He knows he is physically weaker - if you come across a rabbit being hurt by a wolf, you wouldn't suspect the rabbit provoked it. So Hyuna constantly seems to take Luka's side regardless of what happened, wanting to have that protector role.

Luka on the other hand, has no reference of what it's like to be "loved". He is systematically abused and treated like an object - therefore, he perceives relationships in terms of "ownership". And I don't think Hyuna truly understands just what she is enabling when she encourages Luka to act the way he does or thinks his neediness is "cute".

Honestly, I think there's strong sexual abuse imagery in Luka's art and the presentation of his stage image as someone taking charge of their objectification. His clothing for stage always shows off his body one way or another and both Hyuna and him have this sensual imagery and approach to others, as if "reclaiming one's own body". The contrast of Luka's blank expression and the red collar indicating a mental breakdown in that artwork above featuring Heperu's shadow approaching him is truly chilling.

That boy has no reference of what a familial bond or love is like. And both his introspective nature and abuse seem to make it even worse for him to connect with his peers- in the artbook his only relationships listed are Hyuna and Mizi, in very negative ways. He is also said to have retreated deeper into his own world, because "no one can understand him". Again, checks out with the imagery of "gifted son" that is treated like a narcissistic parent's doll and that becomes desensitized to many things over time.

His alien guardian Heperu even looks vaguely phallic and Luka has body language of "trying to disappear" or soothing himself when not up the stage - hugging knees, looking smaller, sucking on sleeves, stimming with toys (rubik's cube). The scars on his chest seem related to the abuse of submitting him to pain to overcome fear and I theorize the scars on the side may have been for plastic surgery like abdominoplasty or even possibly removing ribs. Normally that would be done from the back, but hey - alien science, and he already had "tainted" scarred skin on the front, so it would make sense to try preserving his back. His waist is drawn really really thin. It's also mentioned that he had a strict diet even though he is a big eater - that is, Heperu is deeply violating his agency in accordance with Lookism.

Luka has all the makings of a really tragic character and reminds me of Kamiki Hikaru's construction in Oshi no Ko. A victim turned abuser in some ways, as a way to seek autonomy, self expression and living for their ideals and love, no matter how twisted it has become.

There's a comic that has a "flashback" of anakt garden and Hyuna being asked by Luka if she likes to sing. The POV of Hyuna's face looks as soft as Luka's does from hers. She tells him that they don't have freedom for anything else, but when she is up at the stage, it's like her life is "her own", so she likes it. The image of Luka singing as an adult suggests that even now, those are the words he pictures and that is the image of Hyuna that is alive in his mind.

In a way, both of them are deeply attached to the past, and while Hyuna wants to shut it down completely and regrets it having happened, Luka's feelings are twisted.

We don't know much about the kiss. Considering the "sucking on forehead" comics, I get the feeling Hyuna was startled by the sudden escalation from Luka acting as a passive, cute pet and jumping her with so much intensity, but may not necessarily have pushed him away. The following fight could either have happened because Hyuna became withdrawn as a result of suddenly becoming aware of the effect she was having on Luka and what their feelings for each other were (since previously, she might not have been able to tell the difference between being all over her brother and all over Luka) /or/ the scenario played out like the forehead sucking. She didn't dislike it, but Luka became insistent or they got caught in a way that Hyuun Woo had no context for, thus assuming Luka was forcing her.

And there is a third option too that now I think about it, seems the /most/ likely: the growing proximity to Hyuna made Luka's feelings of "wanting ownership and exclusivity" even deeper because of love and lust, as simply being assured he is "loved" doesn't seem to be enough for Luka. It could be that Hyuna in fact disliked his attempt of kissing her and became more distant to him. Thus, he orchestrated for Hyuna to take his side once again for validation in a reckless way - but the results were "better than he thought" when it resulted in Hyuun Woo's death. Because, that is a price so heavy that it feels like "wow, you actually chose me".

This scene is super interesting, I love Luka's expression. It's joyful in a "perverse" way. He was successful in trapping his beloved Hyuna. And it seems that the emotion is so intense, like he is finally free from the mask of pitiful wounded animal with no agency over himself that the sheer ecstasy might have caused a seizure or heart attack, hence his eyes looking glassy afterwards and his fingers finally turning the blue/purple hue we see on his older design.

Skimming through the patreon posts, I was pleasantly surprised to realize my gut feeling about Ivan and Luka having a similar core wasn't wrong. Sua in comparison is the scenario of someone who doesn't go off to the deep end as the two of them. It's often stressed that the team was worried about establishing Luka and Ivan as distinguishable - their personalities are similar, but their masks are different. Ivan presents himself as the "big bro", while actually being a boy struggling with properly expressing emotions that went as far as practicing smiles and expresions at the lake. Whereas Luka is like a porcelain doll and passive - austere, even...but what about his real self?

We're cleverly prevented from seeing an introductory MV for Luka, as round 4 doesn't happen. And for the subsequent videos, Luka shows himself partially by not disclosing his POV, but showing important sides of himself - the urge to control and the attempts to "become whatever is desired of him". A blank slate.

In a sense, that's implying to me Ivan and Luka's stage presence is an expression of their "inner selves", where their feelings and thoughts become bare. Ivan does so by casting aside his big bro warmth and stepping in as the image of a serious-faced, strongly devoted man that is coming apart at the seams with the weight of his immaturity, sadness, love and obsession.

Luka's stage presence is a distant cry from his image of passiveness and class behind the scenes. On stage, he is a seasoned performer and a calculating prince that enjoys pulling the strings to reach the ideal performance as seen in his inner world. He cunningly displays a different expression between the audience and his partners to achieve the ideal results. Luka acts like both a director and an actor while performing, in order to construct his vision - He's bold, confident and invades people's personal spaces.

(What a condescending little shit. I love him. His expression seems to be saying something like..."Done already? Hmph. I expected more of you. You need to do something for me to do my part and shine, too."

A point I theorize about Ruler of My Heart - Hyuna says in the artbook, I think, that Mizi reminds her of herself. Luka would be able to pick up on that also, especially since Mizi had just been broken by the loss of the one she loved most and formerly had that spark of "hope and dreaming high" in her eyes. Luka may have chosen the song specifically to have Mizi recreate the "role of Hyuna" envisioned for it - as in, he never expected her to be obedient at all. He was riling her up to feel what Hyuna might have responded like to this song. But the Hyuna in his idealization is probably "blazing, absolute and strong" - instead of shutting down and giving up singing. Mizi lets herself get intimidated by his provocation into silence, but when she loses it to punch him in the face with no regard for the consequences - like Hyuna surely would do - is when he finally smirks. It's also a mockery of letting emotions take her over, securing his win and further reinforcing he is "in the right". )

Another interesting tidbit is that Luka's personality isn't of the ethereal "pitiful-but-nice" character, but rather something that "fits VIVINOS taste". He is also compared frequently to Ivan in personality/mindset, who is described as a "bad boy" with a possessive/manipulative streak. If the sides of Ivan we get to see that related to Till are fairly tame and the team worries so much about contrast, that seems to imply that Luka embraces the more extreme parts left out of Ivan.

Even more interesting than that is the core of Luka's character inspiration - "the little prince", which I assume most people have read before. It's a children's book about an adult meeting a little prince from space and basically sharing life lessons.

If we look a little beyond the "cute blond kid"/moon motif...the most striking aspect about the Little Prince is probably the idea of the rose and the fox. The immature prince is taught the concept of love and responsibility by a wild fox - that to tame someone is to make them unique, and it's the time spent nurturing that love that makes it precious. The prince had been frustrated by a Rose he thought he loved, but grew annoyed by because he could not understand her. He also was confused upon realizing there were many roses in the universe, but his was too selfish and flawed. So is she not as unique as he thought? He starts missing the rose, and learns that there IS a difference - none of the roses are "his" or sound like "his" - because if they have tamed each other, going forward, he isn't just any little boy to his rose anymore - he is "the" boy, and she is "the" rose, unique in the universe.

This feels extremely relevant to a character presented as a "product" of gene editing and, basically, being created in a lab. The implication to me is that there may be many other "Luka"-like humans - the vast array of congenital diseases he manifests such as heart disease, Raynaud syndrome, asthma and chronic migraine all make him sound like their universe's equivalent of a white pug dog with dubious origins to boot.

What makes that test tube baby, raised by a ruthless alien that doesn't care about him as more than a way to vicariously live a life of success and luxury, unique in that case?

Love.

And my take is that, the fox and rose to his little prince are the siblings Hyun Woo and Hyuna.

(I'm suddenly reminded of the Vanitas no Carte Louis-Domi-Noé trio. Why do those never end well?)

IMO the rift created between Hyuna's brother and Luka wasn't necessarily there from the start. Before getting more strongly attached or opening up to Hyuna, Luka looks extremely detached. Hyuna's brother looked like the picture of excitement and youth, so it feels like he could have reached out to the quiet boy first and Hyuna tagged along. The settings mention something along the lines of Hyuna not quite being the origin of the "dreamer" outlook, but being inspired by her brother, and I can picture it.

Hyuna's MV All in and her relationship with Mizi painted to me the picture of a girl that is naturally attractive - her drive and sunny disposition are simply dazzling. But, underneath, there seems to be "something" doesn't it? I think Hyuna's charm comes from a mix of strength and vulnerability. She seems like the type of person to cope with humor and being flirty in order to lift people's moods and surprise them, but Hyuna herself can have quite heavy and serious feelings. The somber look suits her, and it's overall impressive that she didn't completely break because of her brother. It's like her innate talent for performing draws people to her, but at the same time she can sustain an illusion of "closeness", her true worries and wounds are kept deep inside and she doesn't let others truly see into her.

So.

What's shown in Blink Gone to me is that Luka's not merely surviving a death game, he is enjoying the show and trying to feel alive. To someone like him that probably already feels dead inside all the time and was "abandoned" by Hyuna, there is nothing much to look forward to. We don't know what happened between Hyuun Woo's death and their first alien stage run (quite a lot, since Hyuna even lost a leg) ot the timing of their relationship fall out. Given their memories and image of eachother, it does seem to be implied they were already going separate ways right after the incident.

It's likely that what connects Luka to Hyuna's memory the most is the feeling of performing itself - the one time he gets to be free. Luka acts like he is superior to the other pet humans for having "figured out" the system and feeding into it, and looks down on them for having no control over their emotions. But does he really have total control over his own?

In spite of all the abuse he embraced as his own will or believing he could truly get any power by playing the game according to its rules and "overcoming fear", someone as unpredictable and impulsive as Till is the natural enemy of someone like Luka. He had the upper hand as long as it stayed within his plan, but Till suddenly going as far as going back to the green light indicator was worrisome. Luka's Stamina is actually rather crappy, so if Till did decide to go all out, he might have been cooked.

I think, to Luka, it's probably about more than keeping himself alive. And Till flipping the game then would have made him waste his life on a performance that was supposed to be easy -and- it must be annoying that Till strayed off-script. My hypothesis is that he wants to reach out to Hyuna, still - either by increasing the influence of humans to shift the world closer to the one she envisioned, or by putting his life in the line at the stage as many times as possible to feel the "weight" of her presence as if she still were by his side or to grow so famous that she cannot ignore or escape him.

Deliciously hypocritical of him to look down on others so much, when Hyuna's unannounced presence shook him so badly he turned his back to the stage and stared at her with an expression we'd never seen before.

My take is that her walking in like this is seriously the worst scenario to him. Luka expresses in the artbook that he pities Hyuna and that her safety would have been guaranteed with him, so - because of his influence - I think he might actually have gone to the Alien Stage again to secure his power status AND request to keep Hyuna out of it. A condescending sort of domestication we know she would hate, but would keep her safe.

But see. Even if she wasn't under his care, being out there causing a ruckus is one thing - she's alive and kicking, not really in the slaughterhouse. He can live with that. So, he sings to his heart's content. And...

His sneering that people are suuuch rookies at controlling their emotions...

Sooo weak to let their emotions and regrets dominate them and make them lose sight of the stage, compared to his Super Competent self that can overcome fear and control his own heart rate...

All came back to bite him in the ass, like an idiot.

All other characters were pitted against their worst case nightmare scenario, and I doubt the Prince will be an exception. I really don't think his type of obsessive is wanting to be superior to or beat Hyuna at performing either, even if it's his guardian's mindset (it seems Heperu feels inferior to Hyuna's guardian and adopted Luka simply as a means of beating him - so seems very possible he will push for having the two face off and prove Luka's "superiority").

No matter what he does now, it's either Hyuna against Mizi at the risk of death or Hyuna against him. Hyuna's a wanted criminal - there is absolutely no talking a way out of that one. Not only that, Hyuna's bleeding from her wound already. Luka facing against Hyuna as the second time champion would mean being forced to choose - keep rulling the stage, or chose the one who was his guiding light in the first place?

The imagery from the sweet dream opening (as well as Luka having covered that song) is "release" - Luka dying at Hyuna's hand even if it's not something she can truly do with pleasure, no matter how much she copes with her past wounds by hating him. I wonder if it's a red herring or if it will play out, I particularly want whatever will allow to explore their character, feelings and motivation the deepest.

I don't think Hyuna wandered onto the stage for his sake - it seems like it's for Mizi, who is completely frozen. Hyuna probably has up until now coped with hating Luka because he represented everything she was rebelling against - the "system" itself. A nasty cog in the engine of the aliens who, even if not directly, ultimately were the cause of the entire context that stripped her away of her freedom and lead to her precious brother's death.

However...

My guess to what's happening here isn't "wow your outfit is so slutty" or "you've grown". It's more like...Luka suddenly looks too human.

He wasn't supposed to.

...Phew. That's all for now. The ADHD gets strong when I'm talking about something that tickles my brain, so I hope that wasn't too messy/unintelligible to follow with the back and forth jumping timelines or repeating points of interest I did.

Well! I really, really wish there was more for me to keep going, but for now I'll live with overthinking with what we have. I might do separate analysis/speculation for the MVs if I have a deadline I'm procrastinating on come up the time.

Bottom line is, I think all those characters are very interesting, but Hyuluka are the ones I'm rotating like a rotisserie chicken in my mind. Plz hurt me more VIVINOS team and thanks for the good fucking food

#longpost #alnst #all ships mentioned in a way or another #but i'm a #hyuluka #truther #meta #nana rambles #alien stage #the sign i'm getting into something new i'm hyperfixating is writing the messiest review possible #alnst spoilers #spoilers #hyunluka #turns out I felt like unpacking a lot of thoughts first #luka black sorrow cover when #IVAN BLINK GONE WHEN #alnst luka #alnst hyuna

64 notes · View notes

bibibbon · 3 months ago

Note

Todoroki Rei doesn't feel like an actual character.

Her children do, Shoto does, Dabi does, Natsuo and Fuyumi do.

However, Rei just doesn't. We learn about how Endeavor DROVE her insane with his abuse, caused what she believed was the death of one of her children, made her grievously injure another, and locked her away from all of her children for a decade.

She should HATE the guy.

Yet when Endeavor sends those stupid manipulative flowers - she sings his praises and defends him to Natsuo. Tell me how that makes sense.

People have suggested Stockholm syndrome or manipulative psychiatry as reasoning for her inane Endeavor simping despite everything. Yet if this is the case, it should be portrayed tragically, like Harley Quinn is - not portrayed "admirably" and like she is "so kind" like some members of the fandom have called her.

There's also everything to do with Dabi, and I thought surely this revelation should stir up Rei's hatred. Yet it doesn't.

She gives Endeavor a stern telling off with the rest of her children in tow (which we were all cheering at because this is the bare fucking minimum. ) The Touya backstory hits (in part from Endeavor's POV because he's so reliable as the abuser and the cause of this mess 😒. Why didn't you let Touya tell his own story, Hori!?) It scapegoats her and Touya largely to take a lot of the heat off of Endeavor. And then... she tells Shoto as the hero of the family to save Touya.

Umm...no. Just no.

Endeavor is the hero parent. This should be his responsibility - but it should never be on Shoto to save the brother who wants him dead.

Then, in the epilogue, we find her being Endeavor's carer, staring up at her dying son, Dabi.

Do we see her talk with her son, Dabi? Do we see her cry at his state here? - Nope, it is all focused on Endeavor and his guilt/ self pity.

All she is allowed to do is pose with a solemn expression behind Endeavor's wheelchair and smile cutely at her abuser when the story demands it.

The injustice at the abuse victim - incarcerated mental patient - carer of her abuser pipeline Rei's story has taken is so disgusting.

I am horrified and appalled under Hori, Rei will never be free of her abuser and neither will the rest of the Todofam (Endeavor paid for thier new house after all - he still has the power over it and them as an extension of that. Abusive bastard.)

All I can think of is how horrible it is to handle an abuse narrative in such a way - uncaring of what real people this hurts.

THIS 👆👆👆

Yes, Rei doesn't truly feel like a real character at all because of the way she is depicted.

Even though all of the todoroki backstories come from either shoto, Touya or enji we still can see and notice the horror of rei's abuse. Even with there being almost litte to no focus on rei we can still how she suffered and get a general view to how she was driven to insanity.

So just imagine if horikoshi actually allowed rei to have her own proper perspective and we see HER STORY FROM HER VIEW! @thr0wnawayy (puts some of it into deeper perspective) imagine how gut wrenching it would of been and tell me that she would somehow be okay with being enji's caretaker in the end like he isn't at fault for what happend to Touya (touya's death is literally stated to be her final straw and that she fully broke down after that). Imagine rei a young women who tried to do everything for her children and failed, she ended up hurting them even though she wanted and tried to do what she can to protect them.

Rei should ultimately despise enji completely heck there is no reason for her to like him or tolerate his existence at all. I wholeheartedly doubt that her relationship with enji can even be good in the slightest and her having Stockholm syndrome or manipulative psychiatry also to me doesn't make sense at all after the guy put her and her children through straight hell. Why is her opinion of enji somehow swayed after flowers? He doesn't do anything except send flowers (and I don't even think he has always done that) it's like she has no one. It's like the narrative is blatantly ignoring fuyumi and natsou who stay with their mother and keep her company. Heck fuyumi and natsou brought their mother clothes but somehow only enji's flowers hold any significance. What about shoto who after everything also started a relationship with his mum?!?!?

Why the actual hell does the narrative frame enji giving rei flowers as somehow more meaningful and symbolic than her children doing the exact same thing and more for her!!!!

How about we talk about how horrible rei's condition must of been if she and the doctor said that she shouldn't see enji even though she hasn't seen the man for a decade?!?!? How about we talk about how Rei literally said that she was scared of seeing enji even though its been 10 years?!?! Why does the narrative seem to ignore this moment and its exactly when this moment is ignored that her making an appearance face to face with enji holding the flowers he gave her in chapter 300 is such an underwhelming scene. I personally felt such mixed emotions with that scene.

This scene and what comes after it all feels weird to me and it fails on so many notes. Rei comes in holding the flowers enji has given her and we are supposed to interpret this as her finally overcoming her fear of enji and stepping up both as a character and parent but it falls apart because

We aren't that emotionally connected to rei (she should of had her individual arc that tied her to the family and allowed us to see her prespective)

We haven't seen the steps that led her to becoming like this

After she doesn't even properly beat or scold enji at all. It all ends up being a pathetic speech where the narrative seems to shun from putting almost majority of the blame on enji and instead she continually says its her fault (the narrative tries to paint it like it's all of her fault when It isn't she is part of the problem but enji never seems to get that much criticism)

All of these reasons are there to show that Rei doesn't feel like an actual character. She starts and ends the same and even when her son, Dabi ends up in the same position as she starts from she doesn't even speak to him in chapter 426. Actually she tries and all she says is that she has a lot to talk to him about but then enji hogs all the screentime and she stands back separated from the conversation.

Rei, unlike her family is also not written in a way to fit the families dynamic. Her character isn't logical in a way where she is supposed to hate enji after all he did. Rei also doesn't have role unlike the other members of the todoroki family.

We clearly see that fuyumi wanted a happy family and tried her best to keep up appearances.

Dabi absolutely despised his family after he learnt about his creation but ultimately even as he tried to run away he still has memories of playing with natsou and even when on the verge of death in the 2nd war arc he instinctively calls out to them.

Natsou is like dabi in hating enji and wanting to run away except he follows and accomplishes this in a different path.

Shoto is completely trapped and is supposed to be the saviour child whether that be for enji wanting him to be his masterpiece or for rei putting the title of family hero onto shoto (which she shouldn't of done at all)

Enji neglected dabi and he is the reason why dabi was made. Rei acknowledges this multiple times that what touya wanted was his father's love and attention and she even goes to blame herself saying that she should of tried harder into convincing enji to talk and spend time with his son (which she already did before but he flat out refused and ignored her)

After this rei also claims that shoto is the families hero and this puts pressure on shoto to save dabi, his brother who wanted to kill him for being enjis favourite ever though he never asked for it and actually ended up suffering for being enjis favourite.

Yes, shoto reaching out to rei was important for both shoto and her. It symbolised shoto starting to heal and reconnect with his mother whom he cared about so much and for rei it was a new hope for her and a new goal to be a good mum to reconnect with her child. However, shoto isn't the families hero. He doesn't need all of the families problems on him and he for sure doesn't need to solve them all especially when enji was the one to cause them specifically the ones to do with dabi.

Ultimately I stand by the choice that enji should of died in the first war arc giving more focus to shoto and the rest of the family members.

Enji would die in the line of duty so you would probably have a lot of people try and excuse his behaviour and this would be a good way to explore how this negatively effects the todoroki family and dabi who grows to have even more resentment and has to learn that shoto's life was full of suffering under being enji's favourite.

Rei should of had an arc that tied her into the jaku hospital arc where she learns about touya and stands up to enji at the same time while coming face to face with a lot of the new information and maybe even learning about genten himura her distant cousin. There is so much that could be done with rei and all we got in Canon was a horrible non existent arc where she is used to prop up her abuser!

In the end enji doesn't face consequences for his actions (being disabled isn't a consequence) and his whole dance in hell with dabi ain't even effective because enji hasn't experienced true hell (not to the extent of dabi). In the end enji still has people and he still has money his hell can be paradise for some people like the villains.

74 notes · View notes

suffersinfandom · 1 year ago

Text

Alright, I’m gonna talk about Ed and abuse.

“Why? Why are you spending your precious time on Earth typing about some dumb fandom stuff when you could be doing literally anything else?”

In short, seeing the “Ed is an abuser who’s inevitably going to hurt Stede” takes has been driving me absolutely bonkers since I first noticed them. They’re not going away, so I have to essay about it.

In less-short: it’s because abuse is a serious thing and, as someone who’s experienced it, I get riled when it becomes a topic of discourse in my silly pirate fandom. It’s because it’s upsetting to read meta after meta accusing an indigenous man of being an abuser when the text doesn't support that reading. It’s because a lot of the abuse discourse in the fandom fails to separate real-life abuse from violence in a show. It’s because the vast majority of the abuse talk only acknowledges physical abuse which, while terrible, is not the only kind that hurts people and utterly destroys their lives.

It’s because calling Ed abusive or insisting that he’s a future abuser can harm people who are like him -- people who have suffered abuse or get angry sometimes or have hurt people when they were hurt. Victims of abuse, especially those who dealt with it in childhood, often fear becoming abusers themselves. They bottle up their anger for fear of hurting someone. They hurt themselves in a misguided attempt to protect others. They don’t need to see meta that enforces their fears.

Before I get into it…

I may as well come clean and say that I’m on team Ed absolutely isn’t abusive.

Plenty has been typed in Ed’s defense by POC in the fandom, so I’m not going to go into how deeply unfortunate it would be to make an indigenous main character an abuser. I’m just going to say that, when you consider OFMD’s genre and attitude towards violence, it seems clear to me that you can’t call Ed abusive without calling out other characters unless you have some kind of bias against Ed. His actions are deplorable in the real world, a bit much in OFMD’s world, deeply unhealthy, not okay by any means, and shitty and traumatizing for his crew, but they aren’t abusive.

Remember: Our Flag Means Death is a comedy with tons of over-the-top violence. If your theory is unrelentingly grim or looks at violence and its consequences in a real-world light, consider stepping back and remembering what genre the events of the show are happening in.

And if you think that only the violence committed by the indigenous lead is abuse, look at the actions of the other characters and ask yourself why Ed doesn’t get the same grace you’ve granted the others.

What is abuse in the real world?

Abuse “includes [a pattern of] behaviors that physically harm, intimidate, manipulate, or control a partner or otherwise force them to behave in ways they don’t want to. This can happen through physical violence, threats, emotional abuse, or financial control.” (1)

“Emotional abuse includes non-physical behaviors that are meant to control, isolate, or frighten someone. These behaviors are often more subtle and hard to identify but are just as serious as other types of abuse.” (2)

It’s important to emphasize that not all purposeful harm to another person, physical or otherwise, is abuse. “What abuse really means is control. When a truly abusive situation exists, it’s because one party is seeking to control the other through abuse.” (2)

Abuse is a pattern of behavior that involves one person intentionally harming another. That harm is meant to control, and it can take on more forms than just physical.

In our world, all abuse is terrible. Vitally, our world is not a pirate rom-com.

Adding context: what is abuse in Our Flag Means Death?

Our Flag Means Death is a romantic comedy with one core romantic couple, Ed and Stede, whose story takes priority over everything else. It can be dark, it can be serious, but it is, at its core, a comedy, and not a subtle one at that. (3) Sometimes things are just funny and that’s it.

The show’s meanings aren’t hidden under layers of red herrings and subtext; if you’re compelled to bring out the conspiracy corkboard, you’re probably in too deep.

But this isn’t just a rom-com: it’s a pirate rom-com, and that comes with gratuitous violence. Here’s a short, fun list of examples of things that we can consider canon-typical pirate violence:

Tying hostages to the mast and letting them cook a bit

Wanton murder during a raid (“Note the gusto!”)

Threatening a crush at gunpoint until they stab you

Whippies and yardies

Cutting off toes and feeding them to people “for a laugh”

Literally any violence directed at a racist (this violence is, in fact, good and encouraged)

There’s also the pirate-typical killing of other pirates. Duels don’t seem entirely unusual, and Izzy outright tries to get Stede killed at several points in season one. When Chauncey Badminton and the English navy show up after being summoned by Izzy, Stede’s life isn’t the only one on the line: the rest of the crew is also put in potentially life-threatening danger.

In short, Our Flag Means Death has a lot of violence and peril, and very few instances of violence (looking at you, Hornigold) are treated as anything other than socially acceptable. But do you know what’s really important in the show?

Feelings.

The way characters feel as a result of something is given an immense amount of weight. The show’s subtleties are in the realms of the mental and the emotional, and that’s where the real pain is too.

Nigel Badminton’s death was bad because it was emotionally and mentally devastating for Stede. Ed’s father’s murder was bad because it hurt him and forced him to create a monstrous alter ego to cope. Both of those men -- Nigel and Father Teach -- are totally acceptable casualties. Their deaths would be net positives (in this universe where abusers are punished for their behavior) if they hadn’t had such strong impacts on our leads.

Feelings are everything in Our Flag Means Death, and the feelings of our leads are the heart of the show. That’s where the story is. That’s where the complexity and ambiguity is.

So what is abuse in this context? The casual treatment of physical violence and the seriousness of emotional distress tell us to adjust our own moral judgments accordingly. Physical violence is everyday, straightforward, and often comedic; emotional violence is devastating and complicated. Physical violence is cartoonish and, often, part of a punchline. Emotional violence is real and raw and not a joking matter. Planning to murder a guy and steal his identity can be shrugged off; ditching your boyfriend after experiencing a traumatic event is more complicated.

When we ask ourselves if something in OFMD is abuse, we have to consider the act in the context of a rom-com that’s all about the feelings of two guys, set against the violent backdrop of piracy, and absolutely packed with people getting maimed and murdered in casual, comedic ways.

So...

Is Ed abusive in the context of the show?

No.

Aaaand we’re done!

Joking, joking. Obviously I’m going to pick out the examples of “abuse” that people cite and discuss each one, but first: we need to talk about Ed, violence, and anger.

Ed is not a violent person. He’s not full of rage that’s threatening to erupt at all times, and he’s not some kind of sadist who revels in hurting people. The violence of Blackbeard is a fuckery: it's the theater of fear, an illusion of cruelty calculated to terrify others into surrendering and obeying without (much) bloodshed.

Ed has his whole thing with murder that's rooted in childhood trauma. Killing his abusive father to protect his mother scars him so badly that he distances himself from the situation -- he blames Father Teach’s death on the Kraken, an invented monster. As a pirate, he creates loopholes and rules that technically put one step between him and killing (in his mind). He orders murders and causes deaths and maims and maintains his image as the bloodthirsty Blackbeard, but Ed doesn’t do “the big job” himself until the end of season two. When Stede’s life is in the balance, Ed can kill to protect him.

Edward Teach kills only to protect.

But that’s killing, and we’re talking about general violence. It's true that Ed is casual about the day-to-day violence of piracy. He participates in it, incites it, and doesn’t feel bad about it. No one does; violence is part of the job.

That leaves us with the "anger problem." Ed is sometimes characterized as an angry person who lashes out when enraged, and canon doesn't at all support this interpretation. Ed gets mad, yes, but his anger is always at least understandable (and, in my opinion, he's one of our more restrained characters). It isn’t a constant, simmering thing that turns him into an abusive monster when he’s triggered. He doesn't always deal with his anger -- or any of his other feelings -- in a good and constructive way because both of our leads lack emotional maturity, but I think it's a grave mistake to characterize him as an angry person.

Hopefully I can elaborate on this idea -- the idea that Ed is only violent and angry in a normal and canon-appropriate way, and anger is by no means one of his defining characteristics -- by doing a run-down of all of the times Ed is accused of being abusive or showing signs of being an abuser-in-the-making.

---

Ed loses his shit on a falling snake during his nature adventure with Stede (S1E7). In this scene, he’s embarrassed about the treasure hunt, oblivious to Stede's intentions, and annoyed by the very existence of nature. He is not relaxed. When nature takes him by surprise, he stabs the crap out of it in a scene that is played for comedy. There’s the important part: this is comedy. Ed is grumpy and his childish tantrum is harmless and silly. It isn’t a red flag. Overreacting while irritated isn’t an indicator that someone will be abusive.

Ed punches Izzy after the English have taken the Revenge, captured Stede, and turned Ed over to Izzy (S1E9). Honestly, I think the fact that Ed lets Izzy talk before punching him demonstrates a great deal of restraint on his part. This is justified anger and fear for Stede’s life. This is not an indicator that Ed makes a habit of hitting Izzy.

In his post-pillow fort era, Ed is cleaning up his cabin when Izzy confronts him (S1E10). Izzy insults Ed, tells him that he’d be better off dead than as he currently is, and says that he serves only Blackbeard (Ed better watch his fucking step). Ed reacts by grabbing Izzy by the throat and telling him to choose his next words carefully. This is, in my opinion, a reasonable reaction and exactly the response Izzy was fishing for. The only pattern this scene indicates is one where Izzy goads Ed until he starts performing the violence expected of Blackbeard.

Which takes us to The Toe Scene.

In real life, it would be extremely fucked up for a boss to remove an employee’s toe and make him eat it. OFMD is not real life. One episode earlier, Ed was talking about the life he was glad to leave behind -- the life where The Toe Thing was done “for a laugh.” Not as punishment, but for fun. It’s set up as something that’s gross (“yuck”), not a grave punishment. When Ed feeds Izzy his toe, he gives Izzy what be asked for: he gives him a violent captain. He gives him Blackbeard. He gives him the guy who fed people toes for fun.

But what’s important here is that Ed is not having fun. He’s having a lot less fun than Izzy is, going by their expressions in the scene. This isn’t who he wants to be, but after having the possibility of a better life snatched away, Ed throws himself back into the sure thing. He becomes the Kraken -- the captain Izzy wants, the violent monster that Ed thinks he is and tries to distance himself from, and the only thing Ed thinks he can be. It’s sad. It’s desperation, not anger and abuse.

In the second season, Ed headbutts Stede after he’s revived from his coma-death (S2E4). In the next scene, Stede is holding a cold steak to his face and calling it an accident. Roach says “that’s what they all say” -- a line that alludes to domestic violence. The thing is? It’s not, and the crew has expectations of Ed that Stede doesn’t (as indicated by Stede's earlier assertion that Ed's a nice guy in response to Olu's concern that Ed will kill him).

Ed is freshly out of a coma (or newly alive). He’s nonverbal. His brain is, medically speaking, couscous. He still has one foot in the gravy basket. When he sees the man who left him hovering over him -- the man he loves, the man who just appeared to him as a mermaid -- he tries to say something. When that fails, he resorts to a headbutt. This is a single violent action perpetrated by a confused and hurt man who doesn’t know what to do with all of his feelings. He can't talk. He can't push Stede away.

Stede understands all of this, even if the other characters don’t. He sees the headbutt for what it is: a bit of a bitchy move. He isn’t afraid of Ed. He never is.

Stede also isn’t afraid of Ed when he acts out later that episode. When Ed learns that Stede went back to Mary, he excuses himself from the dinner table, smashes a chair against the wall, and knocks a vase to the ground. In this entire episode (this entire season), Ed is having intense feelings that he doesn’t know how to express or work through. The reveal that Stede returned to his wife is the final straw. He takes his tangled feelings out on an acceptable target (a chair, a vase) instead of Stede because he doesn’t want to hurt Stede.

This looks like displacement -- when “an unacceptable feeling or thought about a person, place or thing is redirected towards a safer target.” Displacement is an “intermediate level coping mechanism.” That is, it’s more sophisticated than the ways children deal with intense issues, but it’s still not entirely mature. In an adult, it indicates a level of emotional immaturity. (4) Ed is emotionally immature, not inherently violent. He gets overwhelmed by his feelings and lashes out -- not at a person, but at something that can’t get hurt.

Displacement is not an indicator that someone is an abuser. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s an attempt at emotional regulation. It’s not the best coping mechanism, but it’s not a sign that someone is going to go into a rage and assault people.

Stede cringes when Ed smashes the chair and sends the vase crashing to the ground, but he’s not afraid of Ed. He is never afraid of Ed because he knows that Ed isn’t a real threat to him. He cringes because sometimes that's what a person does when a loud thing happens. That's what people do when chair shrapnel starts flying. Also? It's kind of embarrassing behavior on Ed's part. They're guests enjoying a mediocre dinner! That's no way to act!

And this leaves us with the first two episodes of season two.

Ed is fully in his Kraken era. He has no hope that Stede will return, he no longer trusts the crew, and he feels trapped in a life he absolutely doesn’t want. He thinks that he has to perform Blackbeard until death sets him free. He sobs in his cabin when no one’s looking. Publicly, Ed fades into the role of remorseless and bloodthirsty pirate captain.

Needless to say, this makes for a shit work environment. Ed works the crew (and himself) too hard. He drinks and does drugs (note that his drug of choice is rhino horn -- visually coded as cocaine -- instead of alcohol, the drug associated with his father) and runs everyone ragged. He’s an absolutely terrible boss, but he isn’t abusive.

That isn’t to say that the crew left on the Revenge isn’t traumatized. They are! They’ve been thrown off balance by the sudden change for the worse in someone who was previously a pretty cool guy, and they’re traumatized by the neverending violence that the constant raids -- raids that are bloody and deadly, not the fuckeries of the past -- demand of them. They’re traumatized by that final night in the storm when Ed does everything in his power to goad them into killing him, almost murdering everyone in the process. They’re traumatized by their own attempt at murder and their own capacities for violence.

In S2E4, Blackbeard’s crew has flashbacks to the violence they perpetrated under the Kraken: Jim fighting Archie, Fang breaking a man over his knee. They’re haunted by guilt about what they did to Ed, as evidenced by their Lady Macbeth-style scrubbing. Their own violence is a significant part of their trauma.

No, that doesn’t absolve Ed. He drove the violence -- demanded it of both the crew and himself. He hurt other people because he was hurting, and that’s terrible.

Ed’s behavior in the first two episodes of season two is horrible, especially when his desperation reaches a fever pitch, but there's no attempt to control and no habitual mistreatment. Nothing he's doing is normal for him. He's spiraling and unraveling and pulling the world apart around him. Not all bad or violent behavior is abuse.

(We also have to ask ourselves just how bad Ed’s behavior really is. Archie, someone from the pirate world who has no idea what the Revenge was like pre-Kraken, tells Jim “that’s how these things usually go” at the height of Ed’s violence. She doesn’t act like she experienced anything out of the ordinary.)

But what about Izzy?

What about Izzy indeed. Let’s walk through the first two episodes.

One of the first things we see Ed do in season two is shoot a man. At first this seems like the show telling us that Ed is embracing the kind of violence he couldn’t manage before, but if we pay attention, we can see that he’s still following his “not a murderer on a technicality” logic. The man he shoots has a sword through his chest; he's as good as dead. He also falls offscreen before Ed shoots, making the action less impactful.

OFMD is not subtle and this is a quick way to communicate what’s going on with Ed. He’s not doing well and he’s more violent than he was last season, but he’s still himself under the Kraken’s makeup. He hasn’t done a moral one-eighty. If the show wanted us to think that Ed's a monster, they would have made him a hell of a lot more violent.

So. Izzy.

Immediately after Ed tells Izzy that he’s replaceable in S2E1, we reach the scene that some point to as proof of domestic violence. This is where Izzy breaks down because he has just been told in no uncertain terms that he’s not Blackbeard’s special little guy. That’s devastating to him, and he cries when the crew approaches him with kindness and sympathy.

Jim tells Izzy he’s in an unhealthy relationship with Blackbeard. Frenchie describes their relationship as “toxic.”

A toxic relationship is “any relationship [between people who] don’t support each other, where there’s conflict and one seeks to undermine the other, where there’s competition, where there’s disrespect and a lack of cohesiveness." (5) And you know what? Yes, Ed and Izzy definitely have a toxic relationship. And is their relationship unhealthy? It sure is -- for both of them. But the crew is, understandably, more sympathetic towards Izzy because they’ve never been present when Izzy was hurting Ed.

(Only tangentially related, but the crew must have really liked Ed pre-Kraken. As far as they know, the man went dark with no warning or cause. They deal with him for approximately three months (assuming one raid a day), and he has to go so far before they put an end to him. Remember when they were ready to toss Izzy overboard after, like, twelve hours under his command?)

Even though they only have one side of the Izzy and Ed story, the crew isn’t accusing Ed of domestic abuse. The term doesn’t apply to the mutually fucked-up thing that Izzy and Ed have and, beyond that, the scene is played for laughs. Jim and Frenchie use comically modern language. The whole thing feels like an intervention for a stressed-out middle manager with a shitty boss. It's funny. It's a comical thing in a comedy show.

Izzy returns to Ed and tells him that the crew won’t throw treasure overboard to make room for more treasure. Ed says, “And that’s another toe.” Losing a toe is the penalty for failing the kind of captain that Izzy said he will serve. It’s obviously not okay to punish an underling by taking toes, but we’ve already established that toe-removal isn’t a cruel and unusual pirate punishment.

(Specifically, toe-chopping is the cost of Izzy’s failure. Frenchie disobeys and lies to Ed in his short time as first mate and he doesn’t lose a single toe. Izzy bears the brunt of Ed’s cruelty because he’s the one who demanded it.)

This is not who Ed wants to be, but it’s who he thinks he has to be. It’s who Izzy told him to be.

Next, Izzy makes the mistake of invoking Stede and Ed storms above deck. He holds the crew at gunpoint, one by one, and asks them if they think that the vibes on the ship are poisonous. No one gives him a positive answer and Ed turns the gun on himself. He works himself up until Izzy interrupts and the following exchange happens:

IZZY: “The atmosphere on this ship is fucked. Everyone knows why.” ED: “Well, I don’t. Enlighten me.” IZZY: “Your feelings for Stede fucking Bo--”

[Ed shoots Izzy in the leg. Ed steps over him on his way back to his cabin.]

ED: “Throw this shit overboard and get suited up.”

The fucked up vibe is not because of Ed's feelings for Stede. Ed's feelings for Stede resulted in Ed having a nineties-rom-com-style breakdown and proposing a talent show. The Kraken and the ensuing fucked atmosphere were ushered in by Izzy.

Izzy is only shot after he proposes talking it through (something he attacked Ed for in S1E10) and publicly places all of the blame on Ed's feelings (feelings that he previously threatened Ed about -- Izzy owes his loyalty to Blackbeard, not a "namby pamby in a silk gown pining for his boyfriend" who would be better off dead). Whatever Izzy's intentions are, it's not irrational for Ed to interpret this as a further threat or an attempt to stir up a mutiny.

What’s important for this post is this: Ed's actions are not unusually cruel for a pirate captain who considers his first mate out of line. Shooting someone in the leg is the kind of thing that the idea of Blackbeard that Izzy worships does to maintain his reputation.

Fang cries when Ed shoots Izzy because he knows Blackbeard. He has been with Blackbeard longer than anyone else, and this isn’t Blackbeard. Blackbeard doesn’t work his crew this hard. Blackbeard doesn’t disregard the deaths of long-time crewmates like Ivan. Blackbeard doesn’t shoot his own crew. Fang is off-balance and distraught because his captain of twenty years is acting far, far more cruel than the one he knew.

This is not Ed as he usually is. Ed at his worst is breaking all of his past patterns. He’s behaving like a different person. His actions at this point in time are not typical of his past actions or predicative of his future actions.

When we reach S2E2, Ed is chipper. He’s cleaning up, he’s tying up loose ends, and he has decided that, no matter what, this is the day that he dies. He’s determined. First, he’ll give Izzy a go at killing him; next is the storm, the destruction of the steering wheel, and taking increasingly desperate actions to get the crew to stop him. He tells Jim and Archie to fight to the death. He goes to blow the mast away with a cannon and doesn’t react as nameless crew members are being washed overboard.

Ed is stopped only by Izzy’s reappearance and the violent mutiny that follows.

None of what Ed does here is abuse. This is desperate violence. This is an unwell man begging everyone around him to send him to doggy heaven.

And finally, we have the big murder party in the season finale. A surprising number of fans interpret Ed’s willingness to cut down naval officers as a sure sign that he’s gotten worse and he’s more violent than ever. This is, in my opinion, a take that completely ignores everything we know about Ed and his relationship to violence.

It bears repeating: Edward Teach kills only to protect. He murders his father to protect his mother. He kills as Blackbeard to protect himself (and no matter how he tries to distance himself from that violence, he still causes deaths). He mows down colonists for Stede. He kills for safety and for love, and by the end of season two, he has made some kind of peace with the Kraken and his own capacity for violence.

It’s sweet. It wouldn’t be sweet in the real world, but in this world? In a world where physical violence is funny more often than it’s serious? In a world full of pirate characters who all have hefty body counts? It’s growth. It’s Ed healing.

Ed is doing better. He’s not a threat to the man he loves, and now he’s not a threat to himself either.

Anyway.

No, Ed is not abusive. No, there’s no indication that Ed will become abusive in the future.

Dislike characters. Take issue with things. Feel whatever you want to feel, but remember that abuse survivors are not a monolith. Consider, just for a moment, that the abuse you think you see in the show is not textual. Ask yourself if Ed is truly worse than all of the other characters or if you have some bias warping your view of him.

Finally: please keep in mind that I’m not trying to present The One True Interpretation. I’m just rolling all of my arguments and thoughts into a ball and throwing it out into the wild. You don’t have to agree with me but, if you don’t, I hope you’ll at least consider what I'm saying.

Peace and love and goodbye.

#ofmd #ofmd meta #edward teach #long meta #like too fucking long #abuse #tw abuse #cw abuse #me typing things #fandom critical #kinda?

269 notes · View notes