#sparrow only reinforces this which is. not healthy and why i keep calling for a twin divorce

[kaseyskat]

hi it's nyx here once again to talk about lark vs henry and what that meant for sparrow because i swear every episode that shows even a Little bit of sparrow's actual personality is controversial.

"nyx what do you mean by this" well it's a very blatant fact that sparrow does not get much nuance in the fandom: this is especially prevalent when examining hero's conversation with normal where she explicitly calls out lark and rebecca alongside sparrow and yet sparrow is solely blamed. because of this, every time we do see sparrow be his genuine self in the show - from talking to scary and shielding her from violence to taking charge of grant and lark and wanting to help the teens to the most recent episode's case of him not believing in animal captivity - i've noticed people quickly jumping on him for being hypocritical but nobody asking why he would be hypocritical, or why he's made choices that clearly do not reflect his actual beliefs.

so let's talk about that, shall we?

i know i've talked about this before but it bears repeating: sparrow is complacent. he has consistently made decisions that go against his own beliefs, bottling up his actual thoughts on the matter in order to "keep the peace". we know this, this is a canon fact, he said as much about lark and rebecca's affair!

why does he do this? well to me, what makes the most logical sense is that this stems all the way to lark and henry's conflict. if the rogue card is only predicting anger and not enforcing it, that means there is more to lark's anger than just what happened with walter. part of that is his fear of being unable to protect the people he cares about, being helpless in situations where he could've done something, yes, but i do believe there's another root cause to his anger, one that would fuel him for decades: sparrow.

...well, more specifically, how henry changed sparrow.

we know that lark wasn't the happiest about the lovewolf split. after the lord of chaos arc, sparrow starts very slowly developing a separate personality, enough so that he and lark aren't necessarily the same kid, one unit, the same person twice. sparrow tried to teach lark his new philosophy, it was ultimately rejected. lark doesn't understand it! but he loves sparrow regardless. that disappointment, that resentment of how sparrow had changed... it goes back to henry, to henry giving sparrow that speech and reinforcing those beliefs!

we also know that originally, sparrow didn't want to pick a side. he wanted them both to get along! to reconcile! and we know that lark didn't tell him about what he saw on the throne, which has me believing that there were, perhaps, other things that lark didn't tell sparrow in crucial moments: such as his decision to release the doodler, since we really don't know if sparrow knew. sparrow would've been happy to reconcile the two, and it makes sense if this was something he didn't know but something that shakes his perspective: aka, what happens if lark doesn't confide in him. to get lark back on his side, he has to be on lark's side irrevocably, which means abandoning his peacekeeping and mediation to choose lark wholeheartedly.

so by the time the ep23 flashback happens... sparrow has lost that bit of personality he had started to form in s1. he's lark's other half again, helping him with plans, sharing his ideas. he has... you could say, lost his confidence in being a lovewolf, because despite his best efforts, it only brought more strife to his family and he doesn't want to lose lark. we know this! he doesn't want to lose lark!

and then, they find out the prophecy, that one of the twins will have a kid who will save the world. think about everything we know about lark, how stubbornly persistent he was on fixing things Himself since he puts the weight of the world on his shoulders alone. lark doesn't blame sparrow or henry, he only blames himself. would he jump at having a family to fix his mistakes? no.

but sparrow would.

so sparrow takes that burden from him. sparrow has hero when he is twenty, and lark gets to be the cool uncle who helps around the house and hero blames both twins equally so we know they did this together. sparrow doesn't want to lose lark again, he doesn't want to be himself, he adapts to rebecca's views because it's easier than admitting that maybe he shares some of the same- definitely makes him marrying a vegan centrist make sense, right? he can use rebecca as a scapegoat and it Works. his own personality gets shafted in favor of being the same man twice with lark, he bottles everything up, he disapproves but never says as much.

and he fucked up with hero. clearly, he knows that. hero has a regular life now at a private school with a job and an internship and she's a massive dweeb and i don't think any one of you could look me in the eye and say that lark approved that. it was sparrow's decision! and we know what lark thinks about sparrow's parenting: i need every one of yall who truly believes that lark would be a better father to normal to go and relisten to normal's introduction scene in ep1 and then to the end of ep24 again where lark explicitly tells normal that being the mascot is a waste of his time when he could be learning "actually useful" skills (like hunting and survival- and yall still think sparrow was the one having hero kill deer?) and that he's too soft-hearted and naive and that is sparrow's fault for being too nice. normal would not be the same kid if lark was raising him and that is NOT a good thing lmao

all of this to say. i am so tired of people understanding lark's nuance and understanding grant's nuance and understanding the s1 dads and their nuance and how their trauma fucked up their relationships with their kids and yet sparrow is the one yall bash every other week repeatedly without ever wondering like. huh. maybe it is strange that his actions now don't hold up against his actions in the past. maybe there's something else going on that is consistent with literally every other aspect of his character. it is so tiring to go into his tag and see the same things over and over and over again repeated on loop every time we see sparrow's actual personality slip out beyond him perpetuating the "same man twice" persona. he's nuanced! they're all nuanced! and that's a good thing!

sparrow's biggest issues are his complacency, the way he upholds decisions that might not really be the best decisions because it's easier. his love for lark and his desire to fix things clouds his judgement and yeah, that means he goes against his own morals frequently; or at least, he did. so far in the season though, with how he's treated normal being in the line of fire and getting into his mess, he's definitely already realized this and is putting in the work to ensure that normal doesn't go through what hero did- something that lark is not doing. sparrow's also been the best towards the other teens consistently, the most willing to listen and change his perspective (as demonstrated again in ep24- really i just think people need to relisten to ep24!) and he's definitely not the best dad but that can be said not just about all the kiddads but also about literally every dad in this podcast, because that's what this podcast is about. thank you for reading and i hope i don't have to make this post again in a few weeks <3