#this is what happens when there's unresolved character trauma

[vael-fire]

Weight of the World

Alonza, an Oath of the Ancients paladin, desperately wants to convince Halsin that he deserves all the love in the world. Aka Act 3 bonus romance scenes my brain invented to resolve outstanding character trauma weeee~ Named for BRMC's song "Weight of the World"... because Halsin.

Tags updated with new chapters.

Chapter 1: Let the Master Become the Student

“Did you wait to tell me that you wanted me… because you thought, somehow, you didn’t deserve to be happy while the shadow curse lingered?” -Alonza

"Every straight-laced, tight-assed paladin could benefit from a sweaty, semi-feral bear-man willing to help him unleash his inner freak." - Astarion

[norrisjpg]

scott street - ᴍᴠ¹

in which, the pressure of the 2024 formula 1 season becomes too much for the dutch driver, so instead of leaning on his best friend for support, he pushes her away.

contains: angst, swearing, crying, unresolved conflict, unhappy ending, shouting, mentions of childhood trauma, depression, jos verstappen mentioned (ew), a gilmore girls reference, not proof-read.

max verstappen x unnamed female character

...

...

she thought something was off, something wasn't right - and she was correct.

it was right after the belgian grand prix, after max had lost another win through no fault of his own, after mclaren had gained a few more points on his beloved oracle red bull racing.

she was there, she always had been, waiting for him after the race like she always did. although she had prepared herself, nothing could have prepared her for this.

he knew he needed her, but he was just so wound up, so tired of the shitty car, so done with the team that he couldn't even bring himself to look at her when he walked into his driver's room.

"hey, are you okay?" she asked softly, standing up with the dutchman entered the room, his usual sadness replaced with something else - he was fuming. "max?"

"i'm fine." he mumbled, discarding his helmet carelessly to the floor.

"do you want to talk about it?" her voice was somewhat comforting, but nowhere near enough to calm the pure rage bubbling in his chest.

"no." max sighed, refusing to turn around and look at his best friend.

she nodded, not that he could see her, but it was more of a nod to herself. okay, he doesn't want to talk, that's okay. but she also wondered if he knew it wasn't his fault, because he couldn't help a ten-place grid penalty brought on by his team, and he certainly couldn't help that the mercedes were exceptionally quick today and being held up by cars he was lapping wasn't helping him either - it just wasn't his fault.

of course, she knew he'd be annoyed about his race - but that wasn't the route of his emotions, his father was. max had obviously told her about the traumatic events of his childhood, long after they'd happened, although she was around when most of them took place.

however, she didn't bring it up.

"max?" she spoke quietly, her voice a little airy. "it's not your fault, you know that, yeah?"

"i know it's not my fucking fault." he spat back quickly.

"come on, max, please talk to me." she pried a little more. "it hurts to see you like this."

"oh, it hurts you?" he scoffed, finally turning around to look at her, anger ever-so-present in his pretty eyes. "how the fuck do you think it makes me feel? you always manage to make everything about you, don't you? just can't stand the attention being away from you for just one fucking second, can you?"

it took everything in her to not physically recoil at his words - he'd never ever been like this, and she wasn't going to lie, her heart shattered at his cold attitude toward her. she was only trying to help him and he was acting like this.

"nothing to say, huh?" he almost laughed, but there was nothing resembling a smile on his face. "you know what? just get out."

"sorry?" was all she could muster, an expression of hurt confusion on her face.

"you heard me, leave." he repeated it, squashing her hopes that he was just angry and didn't mean it, that he'd apologise and lay in her arms and just tell her how he really felt.

she got up, putting her phone back in her pocket, glancing over at him to see that he'd turned back to desk, fiddling with something on there.

hearing the door shut behind her was confirmation of what he'd just done - why the fuck did he do that?

head in his hands, he slumped down on the couch, already missing her presence. clearly, max hadn't meant any of that, but it was like word vomit. he felt as if he was floating outside of his body, watching him shove his best friend away, and he couldn't do anything about it.

outside, she stood there, motionless. what the fuck had just happened? gritting her teeth, delicate tears fell down her cheeks as she started to walk out of the red bull garage in aimless despair.

maybe if she hadn't said anything he wouldn't have lashed out of her? did she pry too much? why wouldn't he just talk to her?

"ah, good afternoon." a familiar voice came from behind her as she stood in the paddock, unsure of what to do with herself.

daniel ricciardo.

"oh, hi daniel." she thumbed away the salty tears and sniffled before she turned around - but it was no use, daniel caught on straight away.

"what's wrong?" he furrowed his eyebrows, putting a hand on her shoulder.

she knew there was no point in lying, daniel would get it out of her eventually. "max kinda... blew up at me? told me that i make everything about me and then told me to leave- don't say anything to him though."

"you know i can't promise that, but are you okay?" he shook his head, mentally noting to bring that up with max in the near future.

"i'm not sure."

...

a pretty afternoon in monaco had brought about a lunch between max verstappen and daniel ricciardo. a whole week had passed since the incident, and neither had spoken to each other - both absolutely terrified of what the other would say.

max was scared that she'd push him away, the same way he did. she was scared that max didn't want her back.

the reality was, max needed help - he needed her back. since his outburst, things had gone downhill. the car wasn't looking as good as he'd hoped in the factory, one of his cats was ill, and someone had rear-ended his car somehow - it was as if the universe was screaming at him to just apologise to her, get in his car and go to her apartment, tell her he didn't mean any of it and then finally tell her how he really felt - but max verstappen had fallen deaf, clearly.

luckily, daniel ricciardo hadn't.

"max, what is going on with you?" he asked as the two sat on the bench, slightly hot from the round of padel they'd just played.

"what?" he scrunched his nose at the australian, glancing at him briefly.

"you." daniel repeated. "you're drinking way more than usual, i'm the only person you've seen other than for work purposes, and then you pushed your best friend away - god, why did you push her away?"

"how the fuck do you know about that?" max snapped, quickly apologising with a look afterward. "sorry, how do you know about that, though?"

"she was crying in the paddock after the race." he nodded, pursing his lips. "told me what you said."

"i didn't mean to, okay? i miss her. i know i shouldn't have said what i said, but i can't undo it. i just... i'm scared- what if this is it? what if she won't take me back this time?"

"max." daniel said firmly. "i promise you, that girl will always take you back - you could kill someone and she'd still stand by your side."

"what have i done, daniel?"

...

she was more okay than she thought she was going to be. monday evenings were always reserved for max - dinners, movie nights, whatever they decided to do, it was together.

this monday night was different though.

there wasn't the familiar dutch laughter bouncing around her apartment. there wasn't the delicious smell of home-cooked food lingering in the corridor. there wasn't the colour of freshly bought tulips adding to her plain white kitchen (max always gave her pretty flowers when he came over.) and there certainly wasn't the comforting smell of max's aftershave stuck on her cushions anymore.

it had been three weeks and no word from him.

maybe it was time to move on. maybe he wasn't coming back this time.

she decided early on that it was his decision to return - he was the one who pushed her away so why should she make an effort? in no way was she saying it was for the better, but she was... relatively okay. yes, of course there were things she missed about him - no one wanted to do anything on a monday evening apparently.

so, she spent her monday evenings alone, drowning herself in blankets and fast food, watching some movie that she would never even the end of of - because she fell asleep every time, without fail.

so she did move on.

max on the other hand? he was moving backwards - rapidly.

he thought he was borderline depressed. rotting in his apartment with his cats, occasionally venturing out of the house to buy food or see daniel and lando - but that was it. it was as if all the life had been sucked out of his existence - all the colour, all the light.

so, when he turned up to her apartment on a rainy monday evening, it was a knife to the heart, to the head, to the gut.

he walked into the lobby, planning on going straight up to her and confessing every single feeling he'd had since that dreadful day in belgium.

but, he was met with an unexpected sight. there she was, smiling, with a man.

she was laughing, with him. they were walking towards her apartment, about to head into the elevator. if they were on normal terms, max would have waltzed right up to her and asked who he was - but he didn't have that privilege anymore, remember?

so, he turned around, shocked and almost reduced to tears, and he left.

if only he knew, she would have run to him in a heartbeat.

but, maybe it was for the better.

...

coming next... novacane, ʟɴ⁴ motion sickness, ᴍᴠ¹ (part two)

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

There's something in the differing emphasis that Brad and Hunter and Charles place on the phrase "good guy" that really affected me on my first watch and hit even harder on my second. I'm going to try and put it into words.

When Brad and Hunter say it, they say "we're good guys", as in, good at everything a guy "should" be good at - good at sports, popular with the ladies, on their way to a good university. But they turn out to be total shitheads. They don't care about being "good", they just care about their reputation, how they're perceived. It's status and power - they're good guys and they feel entitled to do whatever they want.

But when Charles, feeling betrayed by this reveal of their character, says he wanted them to be good guys, the emphasis is completely different. Charles wants to be a "good guy". He doesn't want to be a "bad guy".

The emphasis is on good, because that's really the crux of Charles' greatest fears, isn't it?

When Charles wants to be a good guy, he doesn't mean it the way Brad and Hunter do; that veneer of goodness that comes with popularity. He means that nothing he did was ever good enough for his dad. Doing the good thing and helping that kid his "friends" were beating up literally got him killed. Trying to stop Devlin only got him trapped in the loop, stuck until his friends freed him, only able to watch helplessly as a mother and her innocent children get slashed to death before his eyes.

And it's this helplessness that is the thing that truly sets him off at the end of episode 4.

It always struck me just how much of his breakdown there, for as much as he finally gives a voice to his own hurt at the injustice of his situation, was still about other people. Because he was secure-ish, at one point, when he was Edwin's partner and protector. He thought he did a good job at it anyways, but guess not, because something obviously happened with Edwin and he's not talking to him about it. And he likes to think he did good with solving cases, but Crystal is still hurting and haunted by a demon and nearly threw herself off a cliff earlier that day because she wants her parents so badly, and he's no closer to helping her solve that. And all of it, every single part of it, is a reflection of his own unresolved trauma; that he never "made it better" and he can't, so now he tries to be good enough for other people, but that isn't working anymore either, and now someone is threatening to take Edwin away, and even this final shocking act of anger and violence is still in service of protecting; of saving someone from the suffering he was never able to escape except by fucking dying.

His anger, really, stems from the injustice of it all, and the abuse of power by guys who can get away with it because they're guys, when they should've, could've, been good to others instead. It's a large part of why he projected so strongly onto Brad and Hunter - they did everything right, they were good guys who got screwed over, because even if everyone seems to love you, there's always that one person you can never please, right? Who will hurt you, no matter how good you are. When it's revealed that Brad and Hunter are far more like his bullies, like Devlin, like his dad, than he'd thought - controlling, intolerant, cruel to those who "step out of line" - Charles feels betrayed and horrified because he related to them... so what does that say about him?

But here's one major difference that Charles does not seem to recognize well. Charles has never had the power in these situations. He was the victim, and his being the victim is through no fault of his own, but the fault of those who decided to be cruel. It is certainly not contingent on how good he is. Being good in the eyes of people who want to hurt you will not stop them from hurting you.

When he lashes out at the Night Nurse, it's out of helplessness and rage. Once again, he's pitted against someone who holds more power than he does and is threatening harm, and he's just been bitterly, brutally reminded that a smile and a helping hand and a firm word never, ever worked to make it stop. There's only one other way he can think of to shift the balance of power, and he's finally livid enough to actually do it. This violence is a desperate attempt to finally overcome yet another force much greater than him, a transdimensional entity that has unjustly arrived to take his best friend to Hell. And Charles wins, he did it, he stopped her, at least for the moment. But at what cost, when he looks at his friends and can't tell whether they look more scared for him or of him? And can he blame them, when he's clearly scared of his own anger and how overwhelming it is now that it's been let out?

Because he tries so hard to be good and it's never good enough to stop the suffering. Because that anger rose to the surface so easily and maybe that means he's not good at all.

But of course, Charles once again misses something important here - there is a distinction in why that anger exists. His dad, Devlin, and Brad and Hunter get angry because their power over others makes them feel they have a right to punish when things don't go their way. Charles gets angry because he feels more helpless than he'd care to admit, and seeing cruelty inflicted onto others by those with power makes him want to cut them down to size.

And herein lies the second major difference. Charles... is a kind person, at heart. He's genuine. He really does likes helping out, he likes making people happy, he doesn't turn people away who need help, he's friendly and protective. The scene where Edwin pulls him out of his fear that he's somehow bad even though he really doesn't want to be, is outright one of my favourite scenes for what it brings to both of their characters. Edwin knows exactly what to say. While it's always good to check your behaviour, to apologize and take accountability - because no one can be good all the time, and even the most well-intentioned of us will mess up sometimes - Edwin is right.

"Bad guys do not worry about being bad guys."

[runabout-river]

Yuji's accumulated Trauma

After Choso's death, I've been thinking about Yuji's reaction to it. At first glance, it looks mature and composed and obviously Yuji doesn't have the time and privilege to grieve. More importantly, Gege didn't give Yuji any panel time to be distraught; his aniki's death scene was over pretty fast. The 3000 Shibuya deaths in conjunction with Nanami's and Nobara's deaths on the other hand had been given more time and more impact afterwards.

The difference in reaction between those two times makes sense in context but, in my opinion, not with Yuji being mature and composed about it.

Because Yuji never got over Nanami's and Nobara's death, he didn't heal from that, instead, he had a negative character arc where the trauma of their deaths affected his world view and mentality in significantly bad ways.

He started to think of himself as a cog in a machine and he also identified with Mahito, the curse who killed both his friend and his mentor figure, a villain and his personal antagonist. Yuji did not overcome Mahito in Shibuya, the story makes us forget that often times. He was marked and changed by Mahito and even though that curse ended up with an extremely pathetic death that didn't mean that he hadn't broken something inside Yuji.

The only time where Yuji constructively dealt with that trauma was in his fight against Higuruma but that was only about his guilt over letting Sukuna kill 3000 people with his body. And it didn't get resolved completely, at least not in a way that would've helped with dealing with Nobara's and Nanaimi's death too.

Yuji is taking that trauma from Shibuya, his feelings of weakness and guilt, and he puts them into believing himself to be a machine that has to follow a predetermined path. Before Sukuna took over Megumi, that meant being suicidal when the situation called for it. Yuji wanted his life to make sense again and dying so Angel would've her wish of seeing Sukuna dead to save Gojo perfectly fit into that.

After Sukuna possessed Megumi, his path and role stayed the same except killing himself directly was off the table but that tendency still exists inside of him. If he were to be presented a way to defeat Sukuna while saving Megumi at the same time where he would die as a result he would take that path immedietaly without hesitation.

Back to Choso's death. In my view, this unresolved trauma and his lack of will to live lead to an unhealthy coping mechanism: thinking of his friends and allies as already dead. We can see that when he asked Megumi if Nobara had survived Shibuya.

He knew that there was a slim chance she survived but it was so low that she was basically dead. When Megumi confirmed her fate, Yuji was prepared for it. Prepared to receive the bad news so instead of crying again he could function like the cog he was supposed to be.

And this Mahito-infused cog mentality still follows him until now. He has to function so his role can be fullfilled and when that means he has to think of his friends as having already been killed so he would never break again then that's what he's going to do.

He did not despair over Choso's death, he despaired because it looked like he was alone and on the verge of defeat against Sukuna. His role was breaking just like his reason to live and I think that this mentality, his negative character arc, will find it's conclusion at the end of the Sukuna fight.

This fight is not the end of the manga, we still have the merger to deal with, there is still a big arc with smaller ones in between coming at us. But for Yuji something big has to happen, probably something pretty bad that has him crushed... at first.

At the end of it, he will finally deal with all his loss and his trauma in a good and healthy way and leave his life as a cog and being a human Mahito behind. Then he might finally shed the tears that were missing in chapter 259.

[alexandraisyes]

What would happen if you were a writer for TSAMS?

I mean we'll never know unless we try, however-

God the temptation to make jokes about shipping ajfsdkg;ljfasd;l

In all seriousness I'm good at finding and fixing plot holes and writing consistent storylines. I've been writing solo for years, and recently I've been co-writing fics for this fandom. And stars I'll say it now, obviously I wouldn't drag fan ships into the canon lore, that would be stupid considering most of them just wouldn't work with canon.

If I had the chance to write for TSAMS I would definitely try to influence the way certain things (specifically things like mental disorders) are portrayed, because I understand being part of the audience and the frustration of only seeing part of the story and missing an entire important perspective. I personally find so much enjoyment in that because I get to tear everything apart, dissect it, and put it back together so the fandom can understand what the story is portraying, but the fact that someone is required to tear it apart to get what should have been an obvious message most of the time is an issue, in my opinion.

A consistent problem I've noticed with TSAMS is that it's overly omnipotent on some things while being too closed about others. This is a narrative problem that stems from not having enough time to figure out the best approach for new situations they want to incorporate. This is because the writers/VAs are so bogged down by personal projects, stream schedules, their servers, life, etc that they just don't have time to figure these things out. Especially when the company is pushing for more content/lore episodes and they're just a team of four. Four very very busy individuals that have to write AND voice act the entire cast of characters. I feel like having someone who is just a writer would help with a lot of the inconsistency and unresolved plot holes.

There's a lot of strong potential for things that would stem back as far as two years that would be so interesting to see incorporated, but they just don't have the time to work through those and it's easier to keep jumping on new boats and abandoning the ones they have to sink because of unresolved tears in the plot letting more inconsistencies trickle in like so much water. So I would absolutely work to correct those and clean up the holes and resolve unanswered questions.

I'd also push for more consistent characterization, or rather better worded, deeper characterization. Not that they don't have good characterization now, overall I think they do a decent job, but there are just some things that I wish they'd touch on more. Likes, dislikes, disorders, complications, relationships, etc. What really makes up these characters; I'd probably end up with a complicated character web for the main cast at the very least to help with consistent storytelling. I do this with my own AUs to keep characters consistent, including quirks (For example Solar Flare always refers to people by their full name in my writing). It would also be interesting to dig deeper into what makes the characters them. Their personalities, beliefs, interests, morality/standards (for those without morals), and what they did and didn't find traumatic (as well as what level of trauma).

God even just the thought of how I could potentially fix the dumpster fire (/affectionate /positive) of TSAMS and co is a little exciting because there's just so much potential lying around untampered with that I would happily dig my grubby little claws into.

[lurkingshan]

Love Sea Final Thoughts

I have been trying to wrap my head around my overall feelings about Love Sea, a show that is undeniably flawed but somehow charming anyway, that drops so many threads but does such a good job with a few of its core points that it's hard to be mad. I can't really say that this is a great drama, but I can say that I enjoyed it a lot and I think it's a good watch if you go in understanding some caveats.

Let's start with a few things I really loved about this show:

Mahasamut. A great character, he will be going on my shortlist of Thai bl favorites. He's smart, honest, patient, giving and forgiving but he also knows himself, his limits, and his worth. On top of all that, he actually looks like a normal person, with a healthy body weight and beautiful imperfect skin. So rare in dramas.

Smart class dynamics. I appreciated how much this show grounded Mut and Rak's relationship in their class disparity, how wealth and lack of same was a constant issue between them that was never forgotten, and how its effect on their power dynamic shifted over time as their relationship grew.

Very well-executed sex scenes. The sex in this show is tied to character development and relationship arcs, and every sex scene mattered to the story. We watched the shifting power dynamics between Mut and Rak play out via the sex they had together and by watching their intimacy we learned more about them.

Ridiculous chemistry. The main love story was supported by truly excellent emotional and sexual chemistry. I always believed in the attraction and the feelings between these two, and that helped a lot when the story didn't quite take me where it needed to.

Rak and Vie's friendship. I really loved that we spent time with these two as besties, and that they were genuinely so supportive of each other. Vie was a real MVP in kicking Rak's ass when he needed it.

Meena, the best child ever. What a delightful character who brought a lot of fun and lightness to the story. Her scenes with Mut were a true highlight.

And here are some things that didn't quite work for me:

Uneven focus for the main characters. Once we left the island to go to Bangkok, the entire show was about Rak, his backstory, his issues, his ongoing problems, and his needs, and Mut was kind of subsumed in his story instead of having one of his own. I was glad we got back to Mut's life at the end, but they really should have kept it present throughout so everything didn't feel so one-sided.

Shallow engagement with family trauma. And despite the fact that the story was so much about Rak's issues, the story never actually went deep on them. I still don't really understand a lot about his family dynamics. The show used his dad and cousin as villains and then his mom as an easy out to solve everything at the end, but we never dug into how all these people ended up this way in the first place. It was a real missed opportunity.

Rak's emotional journey. I was on board for much of it, but other parts felt a bit haphazard and all over the place. Sometimes it felt like he was suddenly progressing out of nowhere, and others it felt like he was backsliding just because the plot demanded it. I liked where the story took him a lot but the path to get there was pretty bumpy.

The side couple. WOOF. I have no idea what happened here, but that was a fail on just about every front. Mook was a hard character to love from the start, Vie felt like a completely different person with Mook than in all her other scenes, there was so much lying and manipulation for no good reason, and in the end they were left completely unresolved. If you are on the lookout for great gl pairings, you will not find that here.

So there you have it. This show is absolutely a mixed bag on its execution, so how much you end up liking it will probably depend on how strongly you connect with what it did well and where it dropped the ball. For me, it was a good experience and one I'll remember fondly. I'll definitely be watching the special when it's released and I hope to see this cast again.

[cnihachu]

niki and quackity both are characters who have felt extremely powerless and unseen. they have nothing, or their lives are controlled by outside sources- they are shells and pawns unwillingly used and mistreated in a game much larger than them. in manberg niki sees through quackity, and quackity sees through her. they both want escape and to feel stability again; but they don’t get that. it only gets worse until it all collapses in and they have a first row seat to see it, feeling alone and isolated.

quackity copes with this by building. he tries to claim back power in any way he can- resigning from the cabinet and eventually returning with a plan of betrayal, taking office after schlatt dies, attempting to break the laws of nature and death just in the name of taking political power. when things go wrong he turns to the rubble and tries to build it up how he thinks is best. He moves on, he starts over, time and time again. He doesn’t slow down to process. he doesn’t give himself time to think over what has happened to him. he craves and searchs for power and eventually builds up his own empire.

niki also copes with this by building. she isolates and tasks herself with building a place for people to be safe- something she never got to have, and something she wanted to provide for others. it’s a distraction, an attempt to do good while she avoids what’s happened to and arround her. the isolation takes its toll and backfires, her own mental struggle and the weight of what she’s witnessed settles on her. niki resolves herself to not knowing why she continues to live. she builds her own tomb, a city once made to shelter one that now constricts her slowly. niki festers in her feelings, in opposite to quackitys running from them. she’s an open wound that she doesn’t let heal over, she feels her loneliness, she feels her rage, she feels the despair. she sinks her feet in and builds the world around her to be as bleak and isolated as she feels.

they both shelter from their past. they isolate and shut others out, especially those they love. they lash out and hurt those they love as a result of their own closed off emotional state and unresolved trauma.. but they start to heal in the same way, too. they open up and let others in. they share the burden they’ve carried solely on their shoulders with someone else and after so long they let themselves take a step back and breathe.

they both get an ending that isn’t hopeless. they get a chance to be happy.

idk. something to think about. i’m insane

[littlerosetrove]

I'm sleepy as I type this out, but with one episode to go, um. I'm truly at a loss for what the point of Marisol was. I'm so serious.

There's one episode left and the only thing that should and can happen is Eddie breaking up with Marisol. Doesn't really matter if it's mutual, or if Marisol beats Eddie to it and breaks up with him first. It doesn't matter. Because the only "purpose" Marisol has served this entire season is to, apparently, be a babysitter to Chris offscreen, set off some kind of catholic guilt storyline for Eddie, which? Has that even been touched on again? Right now Eddie is just reckoning with unresolved trauma about Shannon. And the third thing Marisol has done is to I'd say passively be cheated on (like, Marisol is passive in all this if that makes sense). There's zero weight to her being cheated on because she's not a character, and we the audience do not care about Eddie and Marisol as a couple.

Like?????????????

Idk y'all. I mean I've seen some small bits of meta that both Marisol and Kim are examples of how they never held weight to/for Eddie. Like that's The Point. It was handled weirdly and not well, but it was to show how Eddie is 1) comparing these women to an idealized and fantastical version of Shannon, and thus they'll never match up, but still he persisted to try to recapture his and Shannon's "magic." And 2) Eddie was, honestly, trying to fit these women into roles, mold them almost into this skewed idea he has of what a relationship between a man and woman should look like.

And sure there's some merit to that, but idk. If the show wanted to showcase that Eddie is still stuck on Shannon, that he's stuck on an idealized version of Shannon and their relationship that didn't exist, then they could have gone a different route. Because as is, right now, we're still left with Marisol who, frankly, served no purpose. Not really. And we have soap opera levels of nonsense with doppelgängers that doesn't feel grounded in the reality that 911 often has (at least when it comes to the core 118 and their human stories).

And sure, all this stuff with Marisol and Kim is in my eyes further proof that Eddie is a very repressed gay man, but again. Find a different way to tell these important things.

I don't even care about Marisol (certainly not the actress), but this all goes into my dislike of how this season has overall handled Eddie as a character and his stories. To me, right now, a lot of it just comes across disrespectful to Eddie. They had a good start in episode one (though the focus was mostly on Chris...), but it quickly went downhill in my eyes.

[misc-obeyme]

It’s me I’m back with Lesson 34 spoilers below. (including the hard lesson)

I always try to write these posts shortly after finishing the lesson so that it’s like… my immediate and unfiltered thoughts lol. Sometimes I change my mind about stuff after I see other people’s interpretations of things. So if you were wondering why I’m taking the time to write this at 2 am, that’s why. I totally forgot about the lesson during the day due to the whole Thanksgiving thing.

ANYWAY.

I feel like we got SO MUCH BARB in this lesson?? He was barely in it. But we had other characters talking about him and that honestly makes me happy, too. Probably because I like when they give us some perspective into his character.

BUT FIRST.

Belphie. We were actually playing the role of Lilith in his little Celestial Realm dream sequence, right? And then at the end it’s all but we’re not siblings.

Listen. I just think that Belphie has a lot of unresolved trauma surrounding Lilith and I really don’t feel like having MC play hide-and-seek with him in a dream is going to be enough to help him move past it. Enough to make him want to help MC? Maybe. But I dunno.

However, I also think I probably shouldn’t expect anything more intense than that from an otome game. They were just trying to give us SOMETHING to explain why he was cool with making a pact.

WHICH WE FINALLY DID. With Beel, Belphie, AND Levi. I get Beel & Belphie doing theirs at the same time, but I’m still a little baffled about why Levi waited so long. There probably isn’t a reason, but who knows maybe they’ll surprise us with something lol.

Ah. Lucifer.

This was my favorite part:

I love Mammon, he always just says exactly what he’s thinking (unless it’s how much he loves MC lol).

But we all knew it wasn’t going to be that easy, right? We knew Lucifer would be last. We knew that Lucifer would be the most difficult one to make a pact with. Remember what happened with him last time? Of course he doesn’t want to make a pact with us now. We’re likely going to be going through some kind of long drawn out drama that will eventually lead to Lucifer giving in and making a pact with us.

However, I found both Solomon’s and Diavolo’s reactions to this absolutely hilarious:

Can the two of you take this seriously, please?? I know you both find Lucifer highly entertaining and yeah, I'm usually laughing at him most of the time, too, but I need that pact to get back to where I'm from, thanks.

But we’re only on Lesson 34. So I think we still have plenty of time to make a pact with Lucifer, learn the truth about Nightbringer, and return to our timeline (or have the timelines merge or whatever nonsense they’re gonna do).

I’m still hoping for all that to get resolved by the end of this season lol.

Now, I found this exchange from Belphie’s Celestial Realm shenanigans especially interesting:

Assuming this is accurate to what actually happened when Lucifer was still an angel, this means that the angels knew Barbatos. They know him by name, they clearly think he’s a big deal, and they’re surprised that he’s agreed to be Diavolo’s butler.

I was always under the impression that the demons and the angels didn’t really know much about each other. But now I’m wondering if maybe Barbatos had something to do with the end of the war that happened before the Celestial War. The one that was between the Celestial Realm and the Devildom. I have no reason for thinking this other than the fact that as angels, Lucifer & Simeon clearly know him. And what else would they know him from? Though I suppose anything could have happened lol.

And then there was all of this:

What does it MEAN?! (Obviously I chose the second option for MC's dialogue, which increased Barb's intimacy.)

Barbatos my true love. Why did you give MC a real piece of paper from your grimoire? He’s always been cautious, always keeping MC at arm’s length, and now all of a sudden it’s here’s a piece of my grimoire? There is NO WAY he doesn’t have all of the build up from the OG. I can’t believe that he would actually give MC a piece of his grimoire if he had only just met them at the beginning of Nightbringer. So I’m tacking this on as additional evidence that Barb knows all.

Also can we just appreciate Lucifer in 32-A? All his brothers are completely out of it and he single-handedly motivates every one of them back into action.

It sure worked, huh? Do you think the credit card is in the freezer yet?

You guys. THE HARD LESSON.

It was everything. I LOVE the Little Ds. I LOVE them hanging out with Diavolo. I LOVE that Barbatos couldn’t accompany MC because Diavolo requested some fancy human world dish. This entire hard lesson was *chef’s kiss*

GOD I love Barb's knowing look and Dia's little frown. I love them so much it's almost painful lol.

Okay that’s all I’ve got to say about this lesson. In general, I enjoyed it. They coulda played up Belphie’s yandere tendencies a bit more. I felt like his change of heart was rather rushed, but they really can’t put him through the therapy he needs. I don’t think the lessons are long enough for that.

[eatmangoesnekkid]

Heartbreak is a natural human response to being hurt in your heart by a person, a system, or an experience. In other words, being in the experience of heartbreak, whether conscious or unconscious, is not "wrong" or "bad." But what's interesting is that heartbreak is not discussed enough in traditional healing spaces yet it is one of the greatest blockages that inhibit the flow of love and moving beyond a survival state. Healing the unresolved heartbreak lingering in your aura/electromagnetic field can be achieved when you spend some quality time in celibacy loving on yourself and preparing your body for intimacy with a new lover (lots of slow baths, slowing down, time in nature, grounding, journaling, cooking your own food, and the like) so that you when you start to date again, you lead with more self-love and self-worth, and not with heartbreak, fear, insecurity, or repression. You must have compassionate time with yourself to dearmour your heart from living through a deep state of trauma which is what heartbreak is. We don't realize that heartbreak is a healthy trauma response to experiencing emotional, physical or spiritual pain but the trauma of it that has to be unwind and released or it can easily impact our breast tissues over time. The heart and the breasts sit closely together for many incredible nourishing reasons. However, what happens to the heart naturally has impact on the breasts. It is also important to note that heartbreak could have happened recently in this lifetime or past ones from your mother line where the unconscious heartbreak you emanate is a kind of karma to be dissolved and released. Lightheartedness then becomes one of your most dominant frequencies that can speed up "time" into a quantum leap. Most people have no idea the level of pyschic trauma, wounding, war, and fear (and love) I was born into and grew up in because I do not walk around in the world with an aura of heartbreak or in patterns of self-loathing, self-doubt, or self-hate. Healing the scar tissue of my heartbreak allowed me to see that my body and life held real value. We were always designed to be Gods, you see. To get our hearts broken and still live and thrive in our beautiful breasts and magical pussies. To fuck the dumb ass narcissist we should have never called back and allow that moment of bad sex to refine our character. To experience a smorgasbord of hardships and still come fully alive in our bodies and in this life. We are here to be Divine creators, you see. We get to make mistakes, take u-turns, and experience the magic, beauty, and harmony in figuring it all out. -India Ame'ye, Author

[anxious-witch]

Part four of the height/stance analysis and this time, we'll take a look at our favorite psychic, Crystal!

She was a very interesting study given she is a lot shorter than Charles and Edwin, which is why any time she is noticably taller/bigger is definitely relevant. But! Let's start from the beginning.

When we first meet Crystal, after David has been exorcised, she is lying on the floor, with both Charles and Edwin towering over her, even while crouched down. Which makes sense-she is at her lowest, without her memories, without any sort of purpose. This kind of shots continue throughout episode 1, when Crystal is sitting up in a bed in the agency, etc. Bc she is essentially at mercy of boys' kindness. Until she takes Becky Aspen's missing poster.

The first time we truly see her use her powers, and notice the immediate shift in camera angle. We, as the viewers are suddenly looking UP to her. Because in that instant, as she uses her powers and then argues with Edwin to help Becky Aspen, she finds her purpose, which will stretch throughout the rest of the season, which is helping other people, especially women.

Generally, Crystal's height seems very tied into her powers and her sense of self. We'll touch upon this more later, but for now, let's look at some of her dynamics with other characters.

First of all, is of course, Charles. I briefly touched upon this in his analysis, given he always makes himself smaller and tried to get on the eye level of the person he is interacting with. We definitely see a lot of that in any scenes where he and Crystal are in close proximity, but especially whenever it's alluded to their romantic feelings to each other.

Look at how close in height they are! For reference, Kassius is 158 cm, and Jayden Revri is 185 cm. That's a huge height difference and YET, it shows how close their characters are, emotionally.

Their dynamics as equals is relatively consistent, shifting a bit whenever the other one is emotionally vulnerable (ie Charles at Devlin's house and Crystal during the Lighthouse Leapers episode, where Charles quite literally catches her in his arms), but is much less turmoilous than say, Edwin's and thr Cat King's.

One scene I find fascinating between is when Crystal is leaving for London and she kisses Charles and when they part, they are, once again, on almost equal footing. And then this happens.

She quite literally lowers herself and looks at the floor before stepping away. I think that's partially because she accepts her feelings for him, which she has clearly been avoiding. She let herself be vulnerable in that moment, thinking it'll be thr last time she sees him. Which reminded me of this moment.

The only difference is that it's Crystal rejecting Charles feelings vs Crystal accepting her own feelings. Whenever you like them as a ship or not, they clearly care of one another a lot. But Crystal is aware she has a lot of unresolved trauma caused by David and that prolonging what they have will be painful for them both.

Speaking of David, let's look at his and Crystal's dynamic from the very beginning.

While it's easy to forget bc we meet him as a scary, abusive demons ex, there was a time he charmed Crystal. And look at that posture! I'd say it's eerily similar to how Charles positions himself around her. No wonder she was reminded of him so often. There used to be a time where David was like that!

Of course, by the time we meet him in the story, he is constantly trying to scare Crystal and the camera always pans him as the bigger one, usually looming over Crystal. I choose the above instance bc this is right before Crystal taked him down and they are on eye level before he chokes her and tries to push her down.

After constantly looming over her and keeping her scared, David cannot stand to look at her as his equal. So he tries to do what he did before-pushes her down. But instead, he is the one that gets not only pushed to the ground, but gets buried in her mind. And really, I think that bit is obvious. He is lower than she ever was, because Crystal realized her through power, while his only depended on her fear of him.

Now, let's look at Crystal's memories and powers some more.

In her flashbacks, Crystal we see is almost unrecognizable to the Crystal we got to know throughout the season. Not only because of her meanness, but because of her stance. She is constantly in a dominant position around people she is interacting with, save for her parents, her spine straight. She also seems to utilize her powers a lot more freely and deliberately to take control of the situation, like in the scene with a security guard. But that's not who Crystal IS anymore and it's promptly followed by this scene.

Where she is on the floorz back at her lowest, from simple knowledge of who she used to be. Which funnily enough, gets us circling back to that scene from Charles' analysis, when she is packing and is in a more dominant position than Charles. Because she feels so helpless knowing who she was, she briefly falls back into her old pattern of taking control back with pulling away. And that is another reason why she is hunched down after kissing Charles. She is admitting she changed, that she cares. Not quite yet realizing that care is what makes her powerful.

Which is why her scene with Lilith is so powerful. Crystal is at her largest when she is using her powers for good, for helping someone. Even if we compare this scene of her yelling at Lilith with past! Crystal, there is a clear difference in camera angle. In the memoey scene, Crystal is a dominant figure, yes, but in a scene with Lilith, we are looking up to her once again. And she is bugger than Esther. In fact, if I am not mistaken, she is, other than Lilith the only character that gets a dominant position in any sort of scene with Esther.

Which makes sense. Esther is an immortal, powerful witch. Who could be more powerful than her? And the answer is...Crystal. Specifically Crystal who is seeking justice for not only Niko, but all the little girls Esther murdered over the years.

Which is why I think it's after that moment that Crystal decides to stay with the boys. Because she realized where her true strenght lies. That she doesn't have to give up everything she gained to fix her past mistakes.

And that concludes Crystal Palace height and stance analysis. As always, if anyone has anything to add and/or disagrees with any point of my analysis, I love hearing about it

[onlyymirknows]

What are your headcanons for Reiner coping with Bertholdt’s death? Do you think he actually has the time to grieve during the timeskip or is it only post-Rumbling that he allows himself to fully embrace what happened?

Hello! Thanks for the ask, this is my first on this blog 💖

I think he theoretically has the time to grieve Bertholdt during the time skip but I don’t think he actually does. Reiner’s main methods of dealing with emotional stress are repression and distraction. He basically ignores his problems by occupying his mind with something else.

And Reiner is presented with a really compelling distraction when he returns to Marley:

Fighting for his life and reputation in a brand new war is the perfect distraction from what happened on Paradis. Not just the presumed deaths of Bertholdt and Annie but also his immense guilt over the things he did.

I think the fact that he resorts to suicide the moment he’s confronted with the idea of going back to Paradis is a good indication of how little he’s processed his emotions.

That said, he doesn’t react strongly when people mention Bertholdt which tells me that he’s accepted it factually. But in my head, Reiner hasn’t bothered to confront the emotional reality of the loss (among a ton of other things) because he’s got his finish line.

In addition to that, there’s nobody for him to talk to about Bertholdt in Marley. Everyone back home only knew 11 y/o Bert, not the 16 y/o he developed into. Reiner also can’t admit to the fact that the two experienced a big shift in their worldview together (eg- island devils don’t exist.)

So it wouldn’t be until after the Rumbling that he has to contend with a lot of his unresolved trauma, including the grief of losing his best friend. (And potentially his love interest/boyfriend depending on who you ask.)

Best case scenario is his friends/family proactively encourage his healing and don’t let him run away. Worst case scenario, he goes full distraction mode (my HC is workaholism) and won’t admit there’s a problem until he falls apart.

Some talk about my relevant long fic below the cut

My fic is gonna be about the worst case scenario because I want to dig into the emotional aspects of his character. Namely his unresolved grief, childhood emotional trauma, and queerness.

Plus I want to write about how trauma feels, having been on my own healing journey. It’s kind of a vent fic that spun out into a full narrative that I really need to write an outline for lol.

It’s gotten a bit complicated with multiple POV’s/plot threads so I’m taking my time. I watched a video recently talking about the pitfalls of serialized fiction. I’d like to avoid some of the bigger ones, namely putting in scenes/details with no narrative purpose.

Not everything needs to be Chekov’s gun but I’m sure you know how it is 🤭 so an outline is gonna help a lot. But I feel pretty good about the main story beats! I could talk about my fic a lot more but I’ll leave it here.

[13eyond13]

Something I think fiction does sometimes is make sex represent the end goal for relationships so often that if two characters sleep together it causes readers to automatically see them as truly in love / that it would solve all problems for the pair to be together forever, even when that isn't necessarily what the narrative is trying to say / depict otherwise.

I am thinking about this because of Guts and Casca... to me they sleep together initially almost as an act of friendship? A way of experimenting with each other and learning about sex, perhaps of distracting themselves from the person they're both more actually into, and of course also because they do care about each other and maybe are attracted to one another on some level, and want to see what it would be like to try to get even closer together. But I think the story also makes it pretty clear that Guts is more emotionally invested in his relationship with Griffith than with Casca, in what you might call a narratively romantic sense... and Casca is shown sort of seeing the futility of her feelings for Griffith and eventually growing apart from him that way pre-Eclipse, even though she still cares for him the most out of everyone she knows (though I don't think he ever feels nearly the same way about her). So getting with Griffith isn't end game for Casca (and she herself eventually realizes that), but I also don't read Casca as a character for whom getting with Guts is the end game character arc-wise, either. I'm not sure Miura even had a concrete end-game character arc in mind for her, to be honest. I feel as though unfortunately she was written mostly as something to be used between Griffith and Guts rather than to end up having her own fully realized narrative journey in the same way that Guts (and maybe also Griffith) will. I want to see her and Guts as friends and at peace more than I want to see them live happily ever after together as a couple, because I feel like that's actually more how they really feel for one another than anything else. Granted, there's a bit of an interesting ironic twist in the story that happens during the Eclipse, where Griffith (unintentionally?) drives Guts and Casca closer together than I think they might have been otherwise with the trauma that he causes them both (even though I think their relationship is probably something he'd be jealous of and read as more romantic than it actually might be and wish to destroy, simply due to his own insecurities and his own possessive feelings for Guts). But I also didn't really read Guts' reactions in the Eclipse scene as Guts being jealous and possessive over Casca in a sexual / romantic sense - I read it more as him feeling empathy for her pain and desire to protect her from harm / from the darker side of Griffith he maybe knew about a bit better than anybody else. I DO care about Guts and Casca's relationship a lot, and find it one of the most emotionally compelling things in the story. But I don't think shipping them together for a happily ever after is really what I'd want for them, nor something that the narrative was actually trying to work towards / suggest to be the best ending for anybody involved? I don't know if I think shipping Guts and Griffith necessarily is either, particularly because of how irredeemably awful Griffith behaved during the Eclipse... but I DO think the story intentionally hinges more around the Griffguts relationship and their emotional journeys / character developments than it does about any other pair/relationship in the series, and that both of them have intense unresolved feelings for each other that come off much more suggestive and stronger than ones of just simply wanting to be friends. And I think all of these characters are pretty explicitly aware of that themselves even in the story as well.

Haha I don't even know what I'm trying to even say here except to work out some of my own thoughts about the main 3 that I care about, I suppose!

[viburnt]

Is it because he would be so focus on his career and loses touch about his wife. He doesn’t know what he had until he lose it (divorce) related to your post about Izuku being terrible husband

Good job, Anon! A little star sticker for you and some headcanons for doing your homework!

CONTENT WARNING: EMOTIONAL NEGLIGENCE, DIVORCE/FAILING MARRIAGE

Out of all the pro-heroes from 1A's genwrarion, Izuku is by far the worst partner to choose because he is the most career-focused out of the group. "But Viburnt, what about Kacchan? What about Iida? What about-" I'll get there, let me explain.

We all know that, since he was a kid, Izuku's dream was to become exactly like All Might: a hero who could bring hope and safety to those who needed it. Compared to others, however, he didn't have it easy; he was born quirkless. The people around him tried to bring him down, he struggled with his new powers once he got them, and to make it all worse, he had to deal with the responsibilities of being All Might's successor.

Izuku sacrificed a lot (perhaps too much) to become pro-hero Deku, forgetting that sometimes life is more than his job. So when he marries you, his brain sort of assumes he can take you for granted because "you understand how important his duties are". Because, why wouldn't you understand that he had to save lives?

The first few years of marriage are like a fairytale, gotta give him that; he showers you in gifts and attention, buys you expensive jewelry, and takes you to his galas. You're Mrs. Midoriya, but you soon face the harsh reality of being tied to the number one hero of Japan. You soon understand that being Mrs. Midoriya implied more than a wedding ring.

The stress of being constantly under the scrutinous eye of the media takes a toll on the dynamic of your marriage. Mistakes can't happen, scandals or situations that can be taken out of context are strictly forbidden. You are trapped in a golden cage, and you can't complain because your husband is so good to you! What kind of person would dare to say a thing about the man that gives them all kind of luxury?

Izuku spends a lot of time patrolling or on missions to take care of you, often coming home late or forgetting important dates or promises. He tries to make up for his lack of attention by buying you even more stuff, but that doesn't quite sustain a marriage, you know?

Needless to say, if you want to form a family, you'll have to do it on your own. He is barely at home, and when he is he's just so worn out by the routine he straight up falls asleep. Supposing intimacy does happen and he gets you knocked up, you'd pretty much raise that baby by yourself.

And now, back to the first point. Why is Izuku the worst if there are other characters that are as career focused as him? The answer is fairly easy: environment. If you take a look at Bakugo (to exemplify), he was born and raised with both parents. He was taught how to do chores, how to be self sufficient and independent, and how to be responsible. Bakugo has his own flaws like being unable to communicate his feelings properly and being too stubborn for his own good (which can also make him a terrible husband if unresolved) but he doesn't have a trauma as big as Izuku's. He never had to fill someone else's shoes. Bakugo (in his own odd and stubborn way) grows out of that unreasonable competition with Izuku, and accepts he is a worthy hero.

Izuku doesn't change in that way whatsoever, he becomes worse. Even if he has a supportive environment, he still feels the need to throw his life under the bus for the sake of everyone else's safety. He may seem independent on the outside but he is not, he depends on Deku. Izuku needs Deku to feel useful, and Deku needs Izuku to keep going. Does that make sense?

Divorcing him is also a nightmare by the way, but I'll talk about it in another set of headcanons if you want <3

"Izuku, can we talk for a second?" You begged, trying to catch your husband's attention as he took his hero costume off. "Not now, sweetheart, I'm exhausted. Maybe in the morning." He mumbled, yawning with tired movements; he made his way to bed, crashing on the mattress and zoning out of reality the same way he'd done many nights before. A heavy weight crushed your chest, holding back the tears. "OK, sorry..."

[nail-art-no-jutsu]

Okay, I said I'd write a post on Naruto's dream of becoming Hokage, so here it is. This is very long, get yourself a tall glass of something.

Becoming Hokage was a lonely, unloved little boy's dream. Naruto doesn't remain like that for the rest of his life, but his goal doesn't evolve with him. If he still wants to be Hokage after acquiring what he used to think that this job could offer him, he should either let go of his goal the hard way (be careful what you wish for), or transform it.

Level 1: I want to be Hokage so people will acknowledge me. Level 2: I gained acknowledgement, now I want to be Hokage because I'd make a better Hokage than any other candidate and I know where the previous Hokage got it wrong.

For example, he could want to become Hokage because he grew up a lonely orphan and he wants to use his power and authority to make sure no more children ever grow up alone if something bad happens to their family. But for that Naruto would have to acknowledge that the way he was treated was awful, and he's not ready for that. And until he is, he won't actually stop projecting on others, trying to figure them out based on his own experience except he's not very in tune with it at all.

He's often so close when he talks to other characters about loneliness, but he doesn't acknowledge his own suffering for what it was and who exactly made that happen. Because if he did, his whole dream would blow up in smoke, and what kind of story is that - well, a better one if you ask me. His character needs that kind of crisis so badly and the story doesn't provide.

There is so much that Naruto could care about as someone who aspires to be Hokage, things he's gone through and things other people have gone through. But there comes a moment where it's like, wait, why does Naruto still want to be Hokage? Oh, because he always wanted it, because he's used to wanting it, he has no other plan, not that this is much of a plan either.

He could try to focus on how he'd prevent another clan massacre from happening, maybe he'd put one person from each clan on his personal council so everyone's interests are represented. He could focus on biju rights, they're not animals, they're not weapons, they have thoughts and feelings of their own. He did say he wants to ban the Hyuga from that horrible practice of theirs, but what ideas has he had since then, after he's seen and heard so much.

But really what Naruto should try to do, first and foremost, is to make sure no more children are forced to grow up alone like he did, to make sure that orphans are protected, because that's how his story begins, and it would be great for it to be revisited towards the end. He's the main character and his own trauma remains unresolved, let alone anyone else's.

I want to root for him as a reader, I want him to watch him struggle to achieve specific goals, and overcome obstacles, and after the Pain battle all he needs to do is survive and wait for the current Hokage to retire because that's the only thing standing in his way. I want to see him have ideas of what he'd do as Hokage that he has to fight for. Things that make people go "what's wrong with how things are done now" but they don't see it until he implements those changes and proves he was right.

The thing is, he's not the one who hears Hashirama's story directly from him. He's not the one who asks questions and learns the history of his village. He's the main character but so many things aren't shared with him at all or in a way that helps towards his goal. He doesn't acquire the skills that would make him a good Hokage, much less one who is aware of his predecessors' mistakes and is determined not to repeat them. The story doesn't give that to him.

If there's no vision, then all you want is to see your face on that mountain. If under his leadership nothing changes on a fundamental level, then he's just invalidating his own hardship that he went through as a child as well as everyone else's who was harmed by this system.

Naruto's dream of becoming Hokage is like wanting to be a famous rockstar, not because you even love music that much, but you want to be loved by "everyone", which is a way of getting compensation for the love you didn't have access to growing up, and maybe, just maybe, if millions of people love you, then you'll finally learn how to love yourself. And it's a very reasonable dream for a child! But it's the kind of thing that you need to outgrow, through healing. And you can't heal if you don't realize you went through things you need to heal from.

And not to mention how unsatisfying it is story-wise to see Naruto and Sasuke fight at the very end, after learning about how Hashirama and Madara didn't end up leading the village together, and yet the story doesn't end with Naruto and Sasuke finally managing to do what didn't work out for their ancestors. And after everything that was said about how you can't just do things alone.

Maybe Naruto isn't actually done seeking acknowledgement validation after all, maybe it's never enough until you appreciate yourself, like Itachi said, enough to no longer demand the impossible from yourself, to share the immense burden of decision making, of leadership.

But before he can do that, he needs to recognize his own trauma, and to see that asking Sasuke to stop is the same as asking him to insult his murdered clan, as well as himself, and every unfair thing he was put through. And he needs to see how much they could accomplish together.

Naruto is projecting, he doesn't feel comfortable facing his own issues, and he tries to influence the way others see theirs, it works with some people, but not with Sasuke. Sasuke's change of heart feels forced, artificial, out of character, it goes against everything he has stood for ever since we first met him.

And yeah - I'm not a fan of the shinobi system in general either but I would have been much happier with an ending where Sasuke and Naruto could try to create something better together. And heal and be happy in a way that's genuine and truer to their characters. Compared to what we got. I like Sasuke's idea of a revolution, but there's something kind of sad about him taking on that responsibility all by himself. Like, I want him to be happy, if that's even possible anymore.

In a way it kind of makes sense in a pessimistic sort of way that the story ended the way it did, because a lot of disappointing things happened along the way too, and the writing process was very rushed towards the end, but it is what it is, it's nice to have stuff to theorize about, lol.

I do like them both btw, though I do like Sasuke more, lol. Naruto is a fun guy to observe but he really just covers up so much suffering with the way he acts up, with a lot of things including his goal, and he doesn't even know he's doing it. Sasuke is less frustrating in that sense. Sasuke knows the value of what he lost, and Naruto underestimates the value of what he never had, as a way to cope. I still think he's great, I'm saying all of this with love, lol!

I have a lot to say about Sasuke too but... next time, pun not intended, lol.

[mdhwrites]

if you've seen Steven universe how would you compare it to TOH? I've seen many takes that TOH is Steven Universe 'done correctly' which drives me up a wall, especially since TOH has a lot of the same flaws as SU (pretty much everyone has to be tied to steven in some way- the same way everyone's gotta tie into Luz, White Diamond pisses me off for the same reason the collector does and dear god both finales are messes and the worldbuilding is also kind of messy) but pretty much everyone can agree that Steven Universe's themes of restorative justice are good, its themes surrounding interpersonal relationships and intergenerational trauma is good- I've seen people justify how TOH handles its villains 2 ways "its doing steven universe's restorative justice but like correctly" or "its about killing your oppressors, which steven should have done" which is dumb. Idk this fandom has a huge hate-boner for SU and Amphibia in general though. I also saw someone have the take the collector and belos where foils which... Is weird I can see where they come from but they never are put together in a way that highlights their similarities and differences. So what are some actual comparisons that can made between the shows outside of LGBT characters and surface level stuff?

Sadly I have not seen Steven Universe so I can't really comment on much of it. I've seen the first episode (both halves), decided the gems were insufferable to me and Steven was okay and went on with my life because at the time, I was a full time college student and a part time Walmart employee. I do like some of the songs that have reached me but I never got an in with the show, especially since my early experience with it was much like Gravity Falls where I heard a lot of high concept stuff about it but not much about why I would actually enjoy a given episode, what was enjoyable about the characters, etc. like that. Honestly, the only criticism I know of for it is that people hate the ending.

BUT.

I have seen one other thing. I have seen about twenty minutes of the Steven Universe movie. With that I can say one thing definitively even if it's not clearing a high bar: The Diamond's turn to good is better than the Collector's because they have literally ANY reason to listen to the person preaching at them. The Collector doesn't. In fact, he has no reason to reform and it is drastically out of character for him to care about... Anyone?

Let me start on the Diamond's side because I don't have a lot to say about this but it is something I'm surprised I haven't heard anyone talk about: They were clearly traumatized by the loss of Pink Diamond. Whether or not you think this is a good part of the plot isn't what matters, the point is that this is a literal fact to the story. This grief has gone unresolved for literal decades (just going by Steven's lifespan, someone in my Discord provided the context that they blamed themselves for her DEATH, not just disappearance, for CENTURIES which only bolsters the point I'm making) and has festered in them a desperation for their old comrade? Friend? I don't 100% know but you get the point. So when her son arrives and can't be kept by force, they're going to be pretty amenable to listen to whatever demands means keeping him around. Is that great? No, I wouldn't say it is as the question of what happens when Steven dies is there but it works for forcing them to consider the consequences of their actions and how they may need to change to have the life they desire. It is a compelling force for the first step of change. It's not amazing but it is at least functional from a narrative standpoint, an emotional standpoint and from a character standpoint. Not that it's great but that it is functional. You can string together how this works without having to just invent bullshit.

The Collector has none of these three because he's the literal fucking worst.

I've talked about this before but the Collector isn't the child the fandom treats him as. Even if we try to disconnect the second season version of the Collector, who very much so knows what death is and the consequences of his actions, S3 Collector does have a foil to Belos: He's an actual colonizing piece of shit. Not in that he is literally colonizing places but in mindset. Everything to him is something to be used for his entertainment or enrichment or it is to be stripped of all rights and brutally oppressed until it fits the role he desires. This is what happens when you become a LITERAL. FUCKING. DOLL. And he even has enforcers like the armies colonies would use that have wildly more powerful magic, i.e. technology, in order to make that oppression more seamless. Remember: Hexside is actively hiding from roaming stars that he just has going around the Isles that hoover up people, making at least those who resist into dolls immediately without question, and then bringing them to him to be new play toys in his game. That is explicitly what he has been doing to the entire Isles for MONTHS once S3 episode 2 happens.

People do not matter to him and this even extends to King. When King steps out of line, The Collector cracks the whip. He's even willing to KILL KING for having the gall of caring about anyone other than him. Those death games would be just as lethal to King as it would be to Eda and Luz after all. And if you actually do divorce S2's "PLAY AMONGST THE BONES!" line (which is fucking awful because you have to remove literally all of the first appearances of a character which is usually considered, you know... Bad) and believe that he doesn't know what death is... He knows what pain is. He knows what torture is. He knows the despair of being trapped in a space where you can't move or act or do anything except watch as an observer on a world that could destroy you at any moment because your prison is all of your being.

And then he makes people into dolls, with consciousness, without a second thought. He is willing to BREAK people in order to make them play along. His literal plan was to shatter the bodies of the Owl House trio over and over and over again until they were subservient to his desires. That is WORSE than just wanting to kill them. And he only stops to throw a tantrum because he fails to succeed and starts whining about it like any selfish asshole not getting his way. Not like a child: Like a selfish asshole.

So with ALL of this, what does the show do to try to make him consider the consequences of his actions? Well... Nothing. It claims it's trying to do something but the tour with the trio is much more a circle jerk about how amazing the show was and how much could have happened if not for the shortening ("That sounds like something that could have been its own spin off!" Or whatever King says to Eda talking about her and Raine's time at Hexside) than it is about talking to the Collector. There's a couple lines here and there, talking to him about what works for making friends but does it stick?

No, the Collector learns nothing and in mocking Steven Universe, they make that clear. The Collector is told that people are complex and you must show compassion. Rather than actually believing this, he uses it like a blunt hammer, just like all of his other solutions, to make a problem of his go away. That's why he hugs Belos and assumes it will work. He is not considering the complexity of humanity or the person he is applying this to. It is just to solve a problem so he'll get praised and go back to playing his games. Nothing. More.

And then he fucks off instead of fixing the damage he'd done because why would he stay? Why would he help? He hasn't learned anything and he doesn't want to help these people. He has NO motivation for why he helps save the Archive except otherwise he loses his sweet crash pad. So afterwards? He's gonna go somewhere where he can be himself and not be scolded for it because this toy is no longer fun.

Edit: He does stay to change everyone back from dolls. That much more falls into the "It's the ending, we have to have the problem only he can fix be fixed by him" despite the fact that he is responsible for so much more destruction that would theoretically be pretty easy for him to fix as well. He only does what is demanded of him for the sake of a happy ending, not because of character motivation, not from how I see it at least.

The most condemning part of this is that it's all around Luz. All around someone he doesn't like. He sees Luz as trying to take away his only friend after all and, you know, he is correct about that. They don't even try to hide that fact during the tour. They're still clearly upset with him and not even trying to be his friend, they're just lecturing him. It doesn't work from a character perspective, a narrative perspective or an emotional one. King MIGHT have with better writing, there's a reason I always wanted the Collector redeemed by one of his games forcing him to have to kill King by the rules he made before breaking it and having to face how that's unfair and cruel to others since they wouldn't get that leniency, but that's not how the show plays it. King is an unwilling servant for one episode and then VERY against the Collector in the next until after the death games. When he first shows up, King isn't trying to mediate, he is ready to fight just like the other two. He's not the Collector's friend and he never was so why would the Collector bother listening to him?

That is why me saying the Diamonds, even with my limited knowledge, works better than the Collector is almost literally the worst you can do when it comes to something like this. All the setup is wrong, the catalyst requires explicit retcons and don't work with the character and the payoff is... Nothing. Literally nothing. The only way to have done it worse is to have had everyone praise the Collector before he then stabbed Amity and no one acted like that was a problem. It can only function because we are TOLD he's redeemed even if he never shows it.

Andrias standing alone as a farmer, accepting the punishment for his actions and trying to make better on them, is such better payoff to a redemption arc than anything the Collector gets and his redemption was in character and setup by his past. So then let's get to one of your last points: Why is it that the TOH fandom rags on SU and Amphibia so much, especially for their endings, when theirs is such shit?

Well... Because that's the reputation of TOH. That it is the 'good' one. That it is better than almost all other media. The show itself, with moments like the Collector mocking the SU ending by hugging Belos, reinforces this. As such, for you to criticize TOH as failing in a department that other shows are not rapturously praised for is to fall out of sync with the show itself. As such, all other works must be placed beneath it, especially if those are widely believed to have a flaw in an element to then raise TOH up with. This is part of why so many people want to say the Amphibia ending is wrong because the Amphibia ending is brave and controversial and saying something while the TOH ending?

I mean... Do you really think the Collector's the only part of it objectively flawed like this? Because if a major redemption for your big bad is botched this badly, you can bet other problems exist. I've talked about them at length. But there are probably people out there who would call me the Lily Orchard of TOH if I was better known.

See you next tale.

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That last line isn't an endorsement of Lily Orchard btw, just that I have to imagine it's the label I would be given. What little exposure I've had to her works is... YIKES. Just fucking yikes. My Discord has really enjoyed every time I've live reacted to a video of hers they've posted there. sigh

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

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