#when you acknowledge your flaws but refuse to learn from them and do better

[chaewberry]

accepting your doomed narrative is much more cathartic than fighting against it. like tragedy will befall me but fuck it we ball <3

[mdhwrites]

Andrias vs. Collector: Who Was Redeemed Better?

Andrias hands down. Not only is it helped IMMENSELY by character consistency with him but it actually functions with what we know of him. Despite literally only ever getting half an episode dedicated to him (he doesn't actually get a lot more screentime than The Collector, especially while as a villain) we understand his motivations, the reasons for his cruelty, why Marcy made him cold and annoyed every time she was even mentioned post True Colors (he did not enjoy torturing Marcy. The literal only claim there is one line from True Colors where he blames her but otherwise, Marcy is fridged SPECIFICALLY to give someone for Andrias to show regret about) and then when shown how far he had fallen from the good man he was, he goes ahead and tries to fix that. First a final act of heroism but then not asking for forgiveness or the like. He is too guilty to need, or perhaps even want, such things and he instead can try to put things right on his own. In the end, we are left with the impression that Andrias WILL continue to tend to Amphibia now until the day he finally dies. It's actually done pretty well for the fact that it's given such little direct attention, especially by the time he's supposed to start being redeemed.

Meanwhile, the Collector's arc only works if you ignore large swaths of the show. His redemption mostly comes down to the idea that he needs to learn morality and that other people can be hurt by his actions but... He already did. In Watching and Dreaming, he yells at Belos controlled Raine specifically about how King will hate him for the nightmares, showing that he understands that his actions can upset people. In S2B, he talked about wanting to play with bones and criticized Belos for potentially murdering the Grimmwalkers, kind of opening up a moral conversation about the nature of Belos' treatment of them while showing his knowledge of death.

Even if we believe he didn't know these things and try to say he was manipulated, we can't. Belos' goal was extremely explicit and back when he was Philip, he had no reason to lie to the Collector. A spell to kill all witches in return for your freedom was the deal. That's pretty damn evil and the Collector could have always said no but instead he's EXCITED for them to be dead in Hollow Mind. All that matters to him then is his freedom, screw anyone else. Then when he is freed, he has neither the archivists or Belos to push him around and tell him what to do. As such: Why the fuck did he make the hunting stars? You know, the roaming stars that turn people automatically into puppets, rendering them to a fate worse than death as they are conscious and aware of what's going on, even as they are entirely incapable of doing anything about it. They are still around MONTHS later. Hexside literally keeps watch for them. If he is just a little guy, why the fuck did he make those in the first place and why are they still around?

None of this is ever addressed though. Instead, the show spends a quarter of its finale, and a decent chunk of the special before it, focusing on trying to redeem him and show him off as a good guy while not having him actually acknowledge the awful, terrible things he did. There's no taking of responsibility like with Andrias. There is no proper refusal of his morality or change in his thinking. Even his attempt to make peace with Belos is flawed because it's still the same all or nothing thinking that we've seen up until now for the Collector. "I do X, I get friend." It's not actually an acknowledgement that other people are complex and have their own free will, it's just a new form of trying to easily get what he wants. Then after her turns people back, which is good, he just leaves. He doesn't do anything to actually make up for what he did or allow him to face a world that he has irrevocably damaged. Instead, he abandons it all. All that responsibility and guilt can just be left behind instead of actually worked on. How is that a show of what he learned? Of him rejecting how he was before? Of him being REDEEMED?

It makes it much less an arc and more something we're told. At least when Andrias powers down to make Anne's final punch on him more effective, we have seen his regret. We have seen his motivations. We have seen as one is pushed into his face and the other torn down. Then we get to see him act on it, allow his conquest to fail, as a willful decision to back down from that evil rather than double down. Then we see follow through with him in the timeskip where he is still simply trying to make up for his sins, even if no one will ever tell him his work is done.

We don't get anything like that with the Collector and that's why he will always be easily worse to me.

======+++++======

Someone shared a Reddit post on this topic in my Discord and I almost posted 95% of this as a comment there. I... I know better than to do that on Reddit though so I decided to just let it be a blog over here.

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.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[harrington-love]

Steve and Nancy's story is complex and beautiful...and not everyone will understand it.

I pity the people who cannot, or refuse, to see the beauty in Steve and Nancy’s story. A story about how trauma impacts your relationships and the way in which you cope with traumatic events. A story about how in the beginning, these two teenagers were not compatible but attempted to make their relationship work, only for the shame, guilt, and blame to take over and rupture the relationship. A story about how it is crucial to acknowledge and understand your partner's pain, and be their support, their rock, their shoulder to cry on.

It is a story about a teenage boy’s fall from popularity, and finding his true self as a friend, a protector, a lover. A story about a teenage girl working to make something of herself, to establish an identity that is purely hers. A story about a teenage boy who works to rectify his past mistakes, and learns to give himself grace for being a human. A story about a girl being true to herself, trusting her gut, and believing in her capabilities without bending to everyone else's expectations of who she should be. A story about a boy who's love for a girl was so strong that it helped him change into a person she could trust and depend on. A story of a girl who sees this boy in a new light, and thinks maybe, just maybe, he can offer her a future of partnership, adventure, and love.

It is a story about how these two teenagers have worked to grow and heal (and how they will continue to grow and heal), and are in a better place now where they can be what the other needs in time. A story about a second chance at love, now that they are both in a better place to love the other. They're not perfect. They never were. Healing and growth are not linear. They will always have their faults, their flaws, and like everyone else, they'll hit rough patches along the way. The difference between Steve and Nancy then and Steve and Nancy now is how they handle the hard times, together. How they face them, together.

And the audience can see how Steve has changed, from a boy who was apprehensive of Nancy's drive to get justice for Barb, to a man who trusted her investigative instincts, offered to join her on her exploration, and told her to be careful. From a teenager who utilized avoidance as a coping mechanism, whose "go with the flow" attitude was a mask to hide his pain, to a man who confidently told Nancy that she is what he's always wanted. There was no avoidance. No shame. No fear. There was simply a boy, who has changed, telling the girl he loves that she is it for him.

And the audience can see how Nancy has changed, too, from a girl who pushed a boy away because his presence was a painful reminder of what, rather who she lost, to a woman who is slowly, slowly, learning that this boy is good, and he is safe. She welcomes him back into her life with ease. From a girl who held this boy at gunpoint because she did not want him involved, to a woman who includes him, and trusts him when he volunteers himself in the face of danger, and defends him because he is someone worth defending.

To truly understand Steve and Nancy's story, you have to be willing to see their growth. You have to be willing to acknowledge change and believe characters can and do change. You have to accept that they did change. And therein lies the problem. Many, many people are purposely choosing to ignore their growth, because it does not fit their version of what they want or think should happen. Many people do not trust or believe that these characters know what they want, or know what's best for them. You have to be able to see and accept who they are now, as opposed to who they once were. How their views have changed. Their morals. Their personalities. Their wants, needs, hopes, and dreams. If you're still holding onto who Steve and Nancy were in the earlier seasons, then you are closing yourself off to any potential understanding of who they are now. If you are intentionally misconstruing what these characters say to fit your own narrative, then you are choosing to believe you know these characters better than they know themselves. If you are perfectly content with misunderstanding their relationship and refusing to acknowledge their growth, then you will miss out on not only a delicate and beautiful relationship, but also a lesson: Second chances happen. And sometimes, people do find their way back to each other.

I don't know what season five will bring. I don’t know if we’ll get a happy ending to their story.

But I do know one thing. I pity the people who willfully choose to ignore a beautiful story about two people finding their way back to each other. That is real life. That is love. It's not always simple or easy. Second chances happen every single day. And how beautiful it is for us to witness the rekindling of two ex-lovers. That is Steve and Nancy's story.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Gus Fring

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Breaking Bad is known for its fantastic cast of characters, all of whom have some level of critical acclaim and iconic status. Seriously, go to Wikipedia and go to any character’s page from the show (basically every major character has one) and look at the “Reception” part, pretty much all of them are universally beloved. Chief among that crowd is the only villain in the show to give our rascally villain protagonist Walt a run for his money, the criminal mastermind that is Gustavo “Gus” Fring.

If you think I’m going to do anything other than add to those heaps of praise, you’re surely mistaken; I love Gus as much as anyone else who has seen the show. But where most are willing to overlook certain aspects of the character that don’t work so well because he is cool and gay, I acknowledge those flaws and love Gus anyway. We are not the same.

Motivation/Goals: Gus is a businessman, plain and simple. Be it Los Pollos Hermanos or his secret meth business, Gus wants perfection in every aspect of his professional life. That being said, he’s a pretty fair boss, and if you pull your weight you will be rewarded; he treats his employees at Los Pollos Hermanos so well that you know the show takes place in a fantasy world, because no boss is that nice. And he was way too lenient with Walt all throughout that man’s career working with him.

Of course, Gus is also driven by revenge. Don Eladio, Hector Salamanca, and the rest of the cartel are responsible for the death of his lover Max, and Gus refuses to rest until the entire operation has crumbled, with only him left standing tall and Hecor lefty broken and crippled to be finished off last as he’s the one who pulled the trigger. It’s a very classic villain motivation, and it helps give a little bit of sympathy to a character who is otherwise too cold and mysterious to really delve into the mind of. At any rate, it makes it very easy to root for Gus and cheer him on as he plays his supposed superiors for suckers and orchestrates their downfalls all while coming up with dozens of plans to cover his own ass.

Performance: Giancarlo Esposito has such an air of elegance and menace to him when he’s playing Gus. You can really see why he man ended up typecast after this, playing cunning antagonists, because he really kills it here. He does have one incredibly major flaw, though: He’s not a native Spanish speaker like Gus is. This leads to pretty much any point where Gus is required to speak the language falling flat, especially since most of the time he’s up against actors who are actually fluent and even if you’re not a native speaker you can pick up on how clunky he is in comparison to Michael Mando or Tony Dalton.

Final Fate: Gustavo Fring got outplayed by both Walter and Hector, and the result is perhaps one of the single greatest villain deaths of all time.

As many have pointed out, it is genuinely hilarious how Gus hated Hector so fucking much that he refused to die in the same room as him. And hey, maybe this isn’t very accurate to how a person would realistically look after taking an explosion directly to the face… But it’s one hell of a cool visual. Sometimes it’s better to check realism at the door for the sake of symbolism and cool prosthetic gore.

Best Scene: I think it is genuinely hard to top Gus’ awesome moments, even if he doesn’t ever really get an entire episode of focus. I think his crowning moment, the moment where we as an audience and Walt as a character learn that us is not even remotely fucking around, is his silent preparations before he comes up to his lackey Victor and violently slits his throat in “Box Cutter,” before equally silently getting dressed once more. Right before leaving, he simply says, “Get back to work” before leaving a stunned Walt, Mike, and Jesse behind.

There’s also Gus taking down Don Eladio and all his capos in “Salud.” It’s such wonderful, beautiful vengeance, and it’s all made better by the fact Gus poisoned himself, went to the bathroom, neatly placed a towel on the floor and knelt down on it, and then induced vomiting. This man would pick the fruitiest way imaginable to save his own life.

Finally, there is his scene in “Fun and Games,” the first and only time we see Gus just out enjoying himself. We get to see him pretty obviously flirting with a sommelier, but as soon as the man leaves for a moment Gus makes the decision to commit himself fully to his mission and rule out the possibility of love again after what happened to Max. This is the moment where we see Gus fully become the man we know him as in Breaking Bad, and it’s honestly pretty tragic. He could have been happy if he’d just let go some of his hate, and maybe he’d even still be alive.

Final Thoughts & Score: Gus is one of the best villains ever to grave television, and considering he’s in a show filled to the brim with some of the greatest villains ever devised, that’s really saying something.

Part of what makes him so genuinely great is just how utterly unknowable he is. Over the course of both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, he is almost like a god of the criminal underworld, untouchable and mysterious. What very little tidbits we get of his past paint a conflicting picture that could mean any number of things, and at every other point he manages to command respect and fear from all those around him, with those not wise enough to do so ending up dead by his masterful machinations. It ultimately makes the single scene where we see him not doing business, the one where he flirts with the man at the bar, so much more impactful. We see that Gus has rejected his humanity, his chance at ever being happy again, so that he can be consumed by his work and his vengeance. Gus is what he is by choice.

It’s why, even if it’s not really “good” that Walt won, it is so satisfying and cathartic. Gus spends his screentime pulling off superhuman schemes and feats of vengeance, orchestrating the deaths of the entire Salamanca family and his own cartel superiors, and yet he is done in by an absolute bumbling buffoon of a criminal like Walt. It’s a classic case of David and Goliath, with the untouchable adversary being taken down due to viewing his foe as so far beneath him that he didn’t realize he was screwed until it was too late. Gus was sadly too smart for his own good, never bothering to consider the erratic chemistry teacher could ever pull off anything big enough to defeat him.

With all that, Gus gets a 10/10. With how much I love Gus and how I consider him one of my favorite villains ever, you might be wondering why I didn’t bump him up to a 10.5 to denote him being a cut above the garden variety 10. Well, Gus has one issue with his character that I feels really hampers him in crucial moments: His inability to speak Spanish. Giancarlo Esposito, despite being an absolutely fantastic actor in every other regard, does not speak Spanish and needs his lines given to him phonetically. Native speakers have called his accent stilted and unnatural, and it has led to moments that should be epic and powerful such as his monologue to Lalo before killing him becoming nonsensical gibberish to trained ears. Considering that character is a native Spanish speaker, this is an absolutely unforgivable and glaring flaw. It certainly doesn’t ruin the character, but it does hold him back just a little bit.

But it really does speak volumes that as soon as Gus is taken out, the quality of the villains just plummets. The final season has Walt facing off against a bunch of Nazis and fucking Lydia, the annoying businesswoman. The final season is still peak, but boy are those villains living in Gus’ shadow. In spite of his flaws (or, well, his singular but rather major flaw), he’s still one of the greatest villains in television history, and is up there with Walt and Saul as the greatest villains in the series.

[qweei]

I've started to notice two types of shitty autism parenting and i wanna talk about it though it might be pretty generalizing

tw for overall shitty parents, emotional neglect.

type A: the denial parent

aka the "refuse to acknowledge that their perfect little child is in fact autistic". they will constantly go on and on about how "mild" and perfectly "normal" they are and "not like those autistics"

they completely see autism/disability as a bad thing and even the word itself is dirty to them, so they'll use every other term but those two like "special, superpower, aspie ("they have aspergers not autism!") etc etc. constantly whenever their child's autism is brought up around others, will feel the need to compensate for it, like bringing up their achievements and things they can do, whether that'd be how they have a job, got into a good school etc. as if autistic people can't do that. because they refuse to acknowledge any of the child's weaknesses or flaws, they will never actually do anything to help them, might even scold them for this.

no one needs to compensate for anything, nor feel any shame for just straight up being who they are, this goes for everyone but especially neurodivergent/disabled ppl. not to go psychoanalyze anyone but many autistic ppl i've meet with these kinds of parents/ or just in general share the same view points mentioned, just always end up having so much built of rage, self hatred and completely lack any self acceptance.

type b: hopeless/self-pity parent

usually the parent of a early diagnosed autistic child, whom almost immediately after being diagnosed just straight up gives up on them. "oh well, what can i do..." *proceeds to emotionally neglect and refuse to raise their child*

like type a, they see autism as a bad thing, something that will forever just be forced to deal with. despite acknowledging their child's diagnosis, it's not acceptance, not at all. often you'll hear them talk about how hard it is for them personally, basically searching for pity points despite never actually putting any effort into being their for their kid. even worse, if the parent has another children who are neurotypical, they will VERY clearly treat them a lot better than their neurodivergent one.

these kinds of parents never actually put any effort in growing close with their autistic kid, like they're needs, what they like doing etc, so when they do act out because of their needs never being met, instead of trying to understand or help them they just go "it's their autism"

parents like this often from the outside gain a lot of pity from other parents, because to them the child is just acting out for no other reason than them being autistic and that's just something their parent simply "can't" do anything about it! (news flash: they can!)

ofc you can't get rid of your child's autism, it's simply just a part of them, however that doesn't mean that child doesn't need to raised or giving support like idk every other child? big fucking surprise of but autism isn't the reason your child is violent or an asshole. you neglecting their emotional needs and rather spending all your time complaining does! i understand it can be hard to raise/take care of someone who's autistic, hell it's hard in general to raise any kid, but my sympathy falls flat when instead of trying help you just blame everything on their autism.

though just wanna say that, most parents i've met who fall under this catagory, i wouldn't consider emotionally neglect or abusive to that severe of an extent. i have however noticed a pattern of parents who despite their child being diagnosed, just never actually put any effort into learning about it or understanding their child? aka basically gives up. they usually only listen to what professionals / ppl who work with autistic ppl have to say about their child, which can be very harmful since those people (in my experience) 80% of the time have no clue what they are even talking about.

[daz4i]

okay trigger warning for this WHOLE ASK for depictions of abuse. physical and mental was thinking about ur post critiquing depictions of mori abusing dazai while i was doing my dishes and honestly i have to respectfully disagree with you, although only slightly. first off i'd like to establish that i think the popular depiction of mori's abuse, where he hurts dazai with no reason, pattern, or logic, is wrong. i'll agree with you there. but i do think there is some textual evidence for a more sinister manipulative form of abuse. i think it plays out when you observe dazai's relationship with akutagawa in the dark era. people tend to forget, i think, that almost all of dazai's career in the mafia was played out as he was a child. hell, when dazai leaves the mafia, he's barely legally of age in most countries. no matter how smart anyone is, a large portion of how you behave as a child is learned behavior. personally, i believe it makes sense that dazai's form of training and punishment for akutagawa would mirror how mori trained him. no, mori doesn't hit him for no reason, or torture him just for fun. But he would, say, put dazai in a seemingly impossible harmful situation and force him to escape with no help. He would hit dazai if he failed his mission, or gave an incorrect answer to a problem, or so on. If this isn't true, at least to some extent, then why would dazai use such methods on akutagawa? there are other options but i don't particularly like them. if dazai treats akutagawa the way he does because it's the objectively logical thing to do, then that feeds into asagiri's abuse apologism and i will be DAMNED if i let him have that. but if it's what dazai thinks is logical to do, independent of his situation, then that plays into the adultification of dazai during the mafia. HE WAS A KID! HE WOULD HAVE BEEN GOING TO SECONDARY SCHOOL IN JAPAN. HE PROBABLY WOULD HAVE STILL BEEN IN HIGH SCHOOL (sorry american moment). i don't like to believe in the "naturally cruel and evil dazai just wants to hurt people no matter what" because it refuses to acknowledge the tragedy of his life. plus! I think that's mori's whole goal! Is to adultify dazai! He never wants dazai to be viewed as he really is, a kid who's lost and mentally ill, because he'll lose one of his best assets. and like i guess you could pass his treatment of akutagawa off as his untold backstory but again he's being taught by mori for like a few years before he trains akutagawa. why wouldn't he adopt his training methods?? idk its just my personal thoughts.

hi! first of all thank you for being respectful :)

i do think you raise some great points! however, like you disagree with my take, i respectfully disagree with yours 🙏

when it comes to akutagawa, dazai could've learned this behavior from. well. literally anyone. it doesn't even have to be his own first hand experience that he inflicts on ryuu, it could be something he observed, either by someone else in the mafia, in his unmentioned backstory, or even like. in media really. i don't think he'd think this is the most logical conclusion, either, this is the part i agree with you the most - he was just a kid, he didn't know much better, even if he and mori thought he did

speaking of, the reason i don't think mori abused him, is because well. i don't think this would work on dazai? like. if he hates pain as much as he claims, i feel like if you physically punish him, he will simply leave. nothing really kept him in the mafia, as he told odasaku, so if things become too much for him, he would leave (we can also see that bc mori crossed a line - with odasaku - dazai severed all contact with him, burned his coat etc), and i think mori knows that

it's BECAUSE mori drives him to grow up so fast that i think he'd try to appeal to dazai's intelligence and logic (even when it's flawed due to how young he is) rather than basic instincts you'd use to train an animal.

mori in general doesn't strike me as a particularly (physically) violent individual. even when he kills, he does so with a clean cut to the throat. would he really use such methods, when he would have an easier time and better results if he used mind games? (also like, why would he physically hurt dazai? it'd just make him perform worse)

the thing i can maybe get behind is the "putting him in impossible situations" part, bc mental manipulation might've taken place there, tho i don't think he needed to do it often. yes dazai is a kid but his morals are askew enough to go along with mori's plans with no argument, so why would mori even NEED to abuse him, yknow?

that's how i see things at least. you don't have to agree ofc, we can both read the same story and come to wildly different conclusions, and that's great :)

i'm glad you have your own take on this and your own interpretation of mori and his relationship with dazai, so please don't take this as me correcting you or something, just sharing my own view 🙏

[fountainpenguin]

Got an error message when I tried to post this and I'd have been SO distraught to lose two posts in a row, but fortunately I saved it this time... Here we go. Let's try a post instead of an ask this time.

Hi Jen, I know you've deactivated your account since sending this but ^^; I'll answer it anyway for other people. Sorry for the long delay, I was on Tumblr / FOP hiatus last year.

I see Chloe as being completely blinded to the dark hearts the Anti-Fairies are said to have in canon; she usually sees the world in gray tones unless very specific conditions for annoyance and betrayal fall into place. She has a lot of tolerance for Anti-Fairies, probably because Foop doesn't really get her angry and he just kind of makes things mildly inconvenient. Some examples of angry Chloe that come to mind are:

-> Perhaps most obviously, Kevin's betrayal. Chloe gets right in his face, jabbing a finger at his chest, spitting that he's a "Despicable little piece of Crocker," which is already funny enough, but I think it's extra hilarious since in "Fairy Con," she prevents herself from swearing by saying "Crocker" instead. Probably not intentional on the writers' part but I still think it's funny. I like how as far as we know in canon, Kevin's reaction is to wordlessly turn away from her and leave through the window, these two are so… chaotic.

-- Chloe seems more guarded around Kevin in the episodes after he betrays her even though he did everything necessary to fix the original conflict… mainly because Kevin stood between her and the Hall Monitor position she wanted. When Crocker says that Kevin will be named the new Hall Monitor, Chloe first acts shocked that Kevin even deserves the title, then screams "THIS IS SO UNFAIR!" while she's still standing in the classroom in front of everyone and I think we should acknowledge that.

-> Another angry moment: Chloe straight-up cursing Timmy to lose the ability to speak because he made her late for school in "Tardy Sauce"- something she did deliberately to prevent him from using magic, which is kind of uncool considering he could have easily ended up in danger and been unable to wish his way out of it ngl. Also I did check and she literally refers to him as "the most selfish, horrible former friend in the known and unknown universe, including black holes." Like, girl holds no punches when she's tipped from seeing you as morally gray to morally black. The literal next thing she does after this is run into class and throw Timmy under the bus, shouting "It was all Timmy's fault!"

-- On a side note, I do find it telling that Timmy isn't really one for denying people a wish. I'm pretty sure with Chloe he gets a little annoyed, but generally points out her wish flaws so she can learn from them- even when other kids like Mikey and Tootie ended up with temporary wish abilities, I'm pretty sure he didn't constrain them, but just tried to advise them and let them learn. Didn't even interfere with Norm and Chester in the early stages when things were chill. Just a side note on their characterizations that I think is interesting because I think it says a lot about Chloe's paranoia and how she wants things to be exactly the way she planned them while Timmy is more adaptable.

-> Chloe loses her temper in "Dimmsdale Daze" to the point that she shouts at kids that they're "monster children with evil in their hearts" even though all they did at the time was ask for popcorn.

-> Even early in the series, Chloe is highly passive-aggressive (and then directly aggressive) towards Timmy on his birthday, so driven to insanity that she refused to go to sleep so she could be "better" than him. This happens at the start of the episode rather than after a long day of chaos and stress like "Daze," she is not and has never been okay.

-> I do seem to remember her having a lot of animosity towards Timmy's parents as well, and she definitely has gripes with Catman and is uneasy around Dark Laser, but I think we've covered all the obvious Chloe conflicts I wanted to hit (besides her parents, but that's not for this post, I think).

SO as for the question about Anti-Fairy relationships: Chloe obviously cares a lot for Foop. Although there are multiple times Foop tries to hurt or sabotage her in some way, she forgives him. I think she simply doesn't take him seriously because he's, like, 7 to 9 years old. I basically interpret Chloe as a character who tries not to make assumptions, but when someone strikes a nerve then she'll make assumptions anyway and react explosively until she cools down again.

Foop keeps trying but does not strike her nerves the way that Kevin and Timmy do. There is a difference between "Betrayed by someone I genuinely consider a friend" and "New girl showed up in class and started bullying me but I don't know anything about her so I am confused but not betrayed."

I also like to imagine Chloe would fall for the "classy bad-boy villain" vibes that Anti-Cosmo projects because it's funny to me. In my one-shot "This Is a Box," Chloe meets Anti-Cosmo for the first time and describes him as "the extremely good-looking British Anti-Fairy." When she's introduced to him properly, she greets him as, "Oh, you're Foop's dad." This irritates Anti-Cosmo considerably because he does not like playing second fiddle to his son, and she calls him "Mr. Foop's Dad" again later because that's just how she sees him. She met Foop first, Anti-Cosmo is Foop's Dad.

I think Chloe and Anti-Wanda might get along, but Anti-Wanda is minorly mischievous and relatively harmless, so the vibe would probably be Chloe asking how Foop is doing while Foop is standing there holding his mom's hand and being embarrassed. I also feel that Chloe is the type who would leap in to join the Anti-Fairies on the field during the Fairy World Games if she felt like they were the underdogs. It's what she does.

I do feel like Chloe would continually brush off the Anti-Fairies' "evil" side as drama and exaggeration because she wants to see the good in everyone, and I do feel like it would be hard for her to see anything truly evil about Foop because he's a little kid.

I was going to add something in here about how Chloe would appreciate the Anti-Fairies as people but wouldn't be lured into doing evil alongside them, but then I remembered a crucial piece of Chloe canon:

-> She totally broke into Timmy's house and stole a collector's item from his dad. That is actually a thing she did and the official canon is that this theft launched her into a life of crime as she joined a gang, stole from other kids, and started fooling around with deadly lasers. Cosmo, Wanda, and Timmy scared her straight and pulled her back, but when I think about it then yeah, Chloe absolutely would get swayed by the Anti-Fairies to do crimes.

tl;dr - I'll take any opportunity to discuss Chloe's darker side, she has so much coldness in her heart and we should always remember that without the support of Timmy and her godparents, canonically she'd have spiraled into a life of crime. Also she would definitely hang out with the Anti-Fairies, especially Foop because he is her baby.

[youremyheaven]

as a mercurial person, when I do have my bad moments, I can always rely on someone like my sister to call me tf out. she’s an Ashlesha girlie, and I think she’s amazing, despite her own flaws. we both believe being direct shows we care. calling out bullshit is our love language. we bicker a lot, which includes a lot of cussing. at first, it was hard accepting the truth because I get really defensive (that explains the stream of swear words lol). she gets more defensive, though—she reminds me of a cat hissing at others for intruding upon her space. I tease her about it cus I find it cute. despite our intense arguments, we still love each other immensely. we are each other’s biggest supporters! I am the oldest child, she’s the middle child. all her life, I’ve been very protective of her because she somehow is surrounded by negative energy. we grew up in a tense environment away from our community, so we also felt we didn’t fit in with our new surroundings growing up as we both experienced feelings of isolation. she has her Ashlesha placements in the 12th house, and I have my Jyeshta placements in the 12th house. I think our shared experience strengthened our bond as the years went on. she went through so much, same as I. when I read your post that mentioned Ashlesha Naks and their life struggles, it mirrored my sister’s origin and upbringing. I couldn’t fathom why the people she meets in every phase of her life would take advantage of her and/or project their misery onto her. that wasn’t until I learned about Ashlesha Naks, I fear. ig her relationship with our mom helps explain why, too… anyways, I may be protective of my sister but I also encourage her to go after her goals and fight for what she wants. and she knows this, too, and would encourage the same for me. she doesn’t hold back, and I don’t either. I know it’s good to have that kind of person in my life to rein me in AND to let loose with. however, I know I can’t rely only on her to save me from my flaws, of course. to my fellow mercury folks- let’s not deny that we are far from perfect. hell, I know I’m not perfect myself. I acknowledge that I have intense energy that’s similar to a repellent. life experience and being raised by a distrustful immigrant father assisted in helping me build this wall that surrounds my soul as a safety measure. I’ve been ostracized and bullied when I was a little girl. I was a sweet kid, but those experiences molded me into a person that feared the world, and as I grew up, I resented it for its restrictions. I was jealous of my peers and remained a recluse. it took me a long time to realize I was in control of the outcome of my own nature. I am in control of learning to outgrow my negative mindset and to be open to understanding. what started my growth was my spiritual inclinations that lead me to learning about astrology and such, and they unraveled the truth I’ve been blinded to for so long (besides my sister’s call-outs lmao). Vedic astrology helped me understand what it meant to be a Jyeshta Nak person. I’m not proud of my flaws, but they are there; I just have to learn how to remedy them and grow for the better. I will forever be on that journey. I just pray I don’t reverse the self evolution with self sabotage. I rather not be a wannabe Trump… no thank you 🙏 people are complex, so why paint ourselves as saints when we are not? what makes y’all think we’re the divine exception to the laws of nature? we are here to live this life and to learn from it. and if you make mistakes? own up to them. it’s easier said than done, but it’s much more rewarding to find ways to transform yourself into a more evolved human being. see your own shadow for what it is. you can’t suppress it because it will only shroud you with its darkness. once you start harming others, you are only digging a deeper hole for yourself. living in delusion and in denial is not healthy. and if you refuse to acknowledge that, then I wish you good luck in trying to crawl yourself out from your self made abyss of a grave 🫡

thanks for sharing your experiences 💛💛

[rosenlily-aka-choconut]

re your most recent post, i do really enjoy the bond between yeon and rang in 1938 but i do think yeon continues to be the most consistently poorly written character. in the first season, we see and acknowledge his shortcomings as the plot unfolds, but by the second season, we expect a little more from him considering what he went through. but he still hasn’t really learned his lessons and continues to inflict harm. he continues to not talk to the people he should (mooyeong in this season). he never really takes the lead in drawing the line for hongjoo (i need to rewatch it but i can’t remember any sincere conversation between them until like episode 11???) and helping her with her feelings. and of course he still lets rang feel neglected; yeohee need to be the one to pull him together. i know yeon is the glue that holds the show together but i consistently find every side character more compelling than him. and it’s not LDW’s fault; he acted really well in this season especially. i think the writers just didn’t know how to write an appropriately flawed hero that still did good by the people around him that he’s supposed to love and protect.

~kbcu anon (hi again!)

Hello again!

Yeah, season 1 Yeon was probably the worst written character in my opinion (Ji-ah comes a close second). And that was probably LDW’s worst acting. Coming into the show as a LDW stan, I was utterly disappointed to see his lacklustre performance. But then KB caught my attention, and the rest is history, as you can see in my blog.

And yeah, I wouldn’t blame LDW. They didn’t give him much to do except going on dates with Jiah and repeating multiple variants of “I’ll protect you” and “I won’t let you die.”

In season 2, he was so much better - both the acting and the character. I don’t actually blame him for the way he handled Hong-ju’s obsession with him. I mean, he repeatedly made it clear to her that he’s married, and that’s all he can do, right? IMO, every single time she tried to throw herself at him, he did draw a line and made sure he pushed her back to the friend zone.

Inspite of her unacceptable behaviour, he was kind to her. Despite her trying to take advantage of him when he was blind (I would call that sexual harassment), he continued to be nice to her. What more can he do if she refuses to accept his rejection and move on? Yeah, a heartfelt talk would’ve probably helped, but I still feel her inability to get over him is not really his responsibility.

What I didn’t get is his treatment of Mu-yeong. The dude tried to kill his brother and yet he tries to resurrect him?

I mean, if that fortune baby’s wish could bring someone back to life, why not go back to 2020 and resurrect Rang? There would be complications and repercussions but then it’s not as if everything in this show is logical.

[carronpatrick]

Y'all I just. I'm gonna post the chaos here cause why the fuck not, they can kiss my ass if they don't like it. 😘 But unlike FB and IG, I can blissfully put a read more! 😂

So basically, I've had one shit thing on top of the other and I'm literally dealing with my poor mom needing brain surgery and I just. I finally broke down to the lowest I can go before I'm in the ground and stayed there for weeks and something added on top today and uh, yeah, absolutely the fuck not.

----- This was the public post, lmao. Enjoy I guess? Idk. I have friends here who I don't have on other socials and y'all all deserve to know what's been happening... For my entire fucking life tbh. 💀 -----

❗Access to my presence is a privilege. I accept the apologies you'll never give for my own peace, even the ones that are falsely given and full of excuses and lies and blame shifting to make yourselves feel better, but your access is still denied. ✌🏼

Perhaps if me expressing my feelings feels like an attack, you should reflect on why you feel guilty and why you refuse to accept and take responsibility for your actions. Y'all always told me to grow up - maybe you should do the same.

If you have a problem with me, don't call my mother to make her cry. (Not just the one person who called today because I reacted to a crappy behavior which excuses given aren't technologically possible, this goes for all of y'all who have done that since I was a child.) You've placed family members my age and in my same relation to you on your peer level, you can do the same for me. Come to me. I'll see messages in my requests box and will gladly give my phone number.

But also don't expect the same little girl who would keep the truth hidden to keep the peace. My peace isn't worth any less than yours. The little girl who was yelled at at age 5, taken off the will, and told I was not wanted, but my half sister was so she should stay. The broken teenager who cried and cried and begged God, please, I'd do anything, take years off my life, please just to change me into someone who y'all would deem worthy of love and attention and basic human decency.

I won't air y'alls dirty laundry, and unlike you, I won't make up lies or talk behind backs in refusal of my errors and imperfections - I am a human, I am flawed. I have made plenty of mistakes and God willing, I will live to make many more! But I also accept responsibility for them and learn from them. I simply won't accept being treated like an unwanted bug anymore. And that's truly how all of you have made me feel, every day of my 30 years so far.

You took enough, you destroyed enough, you have hurt me enough. I deserve better. And the saddest thing is you don't even see that. People who I should NEVER have had to EARN LOVE FROM. People I gave ALL my love to, unconditionally, endlessly. People who I will still love until I die, and still cry and mourn the possible relationship I should have had with. I will cry when you die, but sadly only because of the missed opportunity to be a real family and the apologies I learned to forgive but never received.

I will continue to pray for all of you every night, in hopes one day you take a look in the mirror and realize how far off the path you've gotten. I truly hope you are able to fix the poisonous parts of yourselves before you have to face God. I hope in Heaven, you'll be better, and maybe we can finally have the relationship you so easily gave everyone else but refused me.

I am finished with people who refuse to even care enough to ask my side of the story. For 30 years, I've accepted that I was the ONE person who you all deemed unworthy and unwanted and not good enough and I was doing something wrong, maybe I really didn't deserve to be alive. People who would rather coddle the person who physically abused me and taught me how to sink a blade into my skin and told me to kill myself and never has nor ever will apologize or even acknowledge it happened. Maybe you all are just stupid and honestly believe it, I'm not sure. But as adults, you damn well should know better and behave better.

You almost took my life from me at 16, you have destroyed as much as you possibly could for the past 30 years - I refuse to allow you to take and destroy the rest.

I hope your lives will be as joyful and Godly and fulfilling and wonderful as mine will be, but at this point there is literally not a thing you could say to be allowed back in my life. And sadly the actions that would allow it will never be done because you guys don't have the balls to stand up and ask questions and make waves.

✌🏼

----- and then I sat here listening to Look What You Made Me Do by TSwift and wrote this 😂😂😂😂 -----

I'm finally just... not sitting here, forced (just to clarify, not by Mom, but by her shitty family and most of Dad's as well) to stay silent and let the horrible attacks build up internally until I go off grid for 3 weeks in a dissociation zombie state because I have to go numb to survive and I cry myself to sleep and cry when I wake up and question if they're right and I'm useless and have no talent or intelligence and shouldn't be alive.

Nah, fuck that, I absolutely do. I deserve to thrive, not just survive in fear of the next bad thing they will drop. I'm not useless. I have plenty of intelligence and I think at least a little bit of talent. Not as much as my friends and Mom think I have, but. 🤭 LOOK, I have plenty of my own demons tearing me down, I don't deserve to have them become new ones on top of the old traumas they caused.

Oh my God, I never realized how suffocating it was to be an adult with my own social media and be unable to say even 50% of what I think or how I feel for fear of 'family' causing drama and fights and fear of not being the better person. I'll be the better person tomorrow, I deserve to vent to the few people who DO give a fuck about me. (Or just vent to myself, which is also fine tbh.) I knew it was stifling and damaging but like. I guess I just pretended it wasn't as bad as it truly was.

Like, I have Tumblr - which has been the one safe place for me for the past, oh, 15 years at least - but shit, dude, I deserve to have peace all over. No more secret 'close friends' posts, I can just.... Post.... And anyone who doesn't like it can just.... Not like it or delete me or whatever... 🤷🏻‍♀️ I can sing again with the normal fears that people won't like it, not that my song choice will create a power point discussion on what I did wrong by posting it at their family vacations to the lake or whatever.

Won't cause an entire war (which, FYI, they do NOT want to wage a war with me because all my skeletons are at my table in plain view and I accept and learned from them and know I'm not less for being honest, but theirs are buried so deep it'd basically ruin their lives. Never underestimate the quiet ones you abused for years, honey. We learn to become wallflowers and we remember every dirty secret.)

But, yeah. I can just... Be myself... Don't have to defend myself or Mom (or Dad, yeah, the dead man who can't defend himself now? Yeah.) against anyone because I said 'fuck' (the HORROR! A FULLY GROWN ADULT! 30 YEAR OLD WOMAN! USING A NAUGHTY WORD! THE SHAME!), cause none of them will ever see my posts again. I can post my songs/lyrics because I don't have to worry about the bullshit guilt trip over being hurt when someone hurt me. I can post just, songs I hear and like and want to share! Funny memes! Cute animal videos! Or nothing at all! Even my silence won't be dissected!!?! 😱

I can feel my feelings and like, y'all can disagree but you won't tell me I'm wrong for feeling that? And tbh if you do, you'll be deleted cause you can disagree with my feelings or thoughts or whatever, but you have no place telling me how I involuntarily feel or think is wrong. ((Not like, I don't have all the information and have a bad take on something important like politics or something. I absolutely welcome y'all educating me, just not for my personal stuff. I'm sure the whole 2 people still reading understand what I'm saying, lmfao.))

How wild, bruh. 💀

Freedom from 'family' feels weird, lmfao. Very very good but I'm just still expecting someone to screenshot my posts and send them to the family group chat I've never been in and talk shit about me and call Mom to yell and make her upset just to injure me. I'm like a rabbit just scared to death of every twig snap still, but I'll hopefully get over it.

Nothing like righteous anger to create spite to knock you out of a depression breakdown, right? 😂

[mdhwrites]

Do you find it rather funny that some (not all) of the people who wanted Amphibia's third season to be filled with angst, panic attacks, tears, grief and parental drama, also wanted a perfectly happy ending to the story rather than the bittersweet one we got? Like, ironic much?

There's a reason why I frame fandom desires for angst to be about shipping and prestige. That they want the high emotions and the claims they can make because of those elements but not what actually comes from it. In other words: Fandoms want Yesterday's Lie's ending from The Owl House.

For those unfamiliar, this is EXACTLY at the half series mark for TOH. Luz's, the main character, mom has just found out that her daughter ran away for the Summer to a different world and when she had to choose between going home or staying there, she chose to stay there. She immediately starts blaming herself and pleading with her daughter that she'll do better but next time, she promises to return, please!

And, Luz, to her credit, is a good daughter and says yes. The sequence is powerful, real, human and tragic. A real acknowledgement of how awful Luz's original choice was while keeping Camila in character of being as caring as she is. A moment that will theoretically solidify the two's bond but to undo will take a LOT of work as Camila will now be forced to stew with this pain as in the moment of the promise, her daughter is ripped away from her again.

It was also a moment I knew COULDN'T matter.

The show simply didn't allow for it. This isn't Amphibia where the girls had to adapt to their surroundings and still had elements about the human realm they liked. Luz isn't surrounded by creatures who are entirely unlike her and thus will always have to deal with some slight element of isolation. The Boiling of Isles of TOH is Luz's home. The show CONSTANTLY reinforces that this is where she belongs. That this isn't just where she can be happy but potentially the ONLY place she can be happy. Her social anxiety vanishes. She can find like minded people. She can live out the fantasies that she always chooses over reality. By the time of Yesterday's Lie, she has not just a found family but also the first friends she's implied to have had in a long time and her first girlfriend. Her life is on the Isles.

So you have literally spent HALF of your runtime reinforcing this. That maybe Luz needs to learn some lessons but her life is with the weirdos. On the Isles. You can't just pivot from that thematically. Not without shifting the show HARD. You have to take a show where Luz's every action has either been shown as positive or able to be fixed and now acknowledge this very real act of monstrousness on her part and the lengths one has to go to fix such a break in trust, let alone when the very next episode wants to portray it as something that is actually really messing with Luz's head.

Of course... That episode also includes Luz lying. And not just that episode. In fact, she will CONSTANTLY lie and break the trust of her girlfriend, and her friends, for literally the rest of the series. This cardinal sin of Luz's, lying to her mother, suddenly becomes a defining trait of hers to an extent never present beforehand. And mind you, it's not universal. To Luz and Eda, she is willing to tell them literally ANYTHING. Her girlfriend though? Fuck her.

It does make the show darker to constantly have your main character be a fucking asshole who whines about the consequences of their actions more than they actually learn from them but does it make it better? Does it make it more mature? Does it make enjoyable? No. Because it's a thematic and tonal betrayal of EVERYTHING that came before. Not that Luz ever managed to really learn anything before but they weren't nearly so blatant about her REFUSING to learn. Worse yet, this isn't a character flaw thing. Lying is one of those things we can all agree is bad but there are NEVER consequences for it because, well, the show still commits to Luz not just being the protagonist but also the hero.

And so this big moment, Yesterday's Lie's ending, is eventually just dropped. Something I could have told you was going to happen the day after the episode came out. It couldn't fit what the show had said about its main character so far and NO ONE would be happy with an ending where she actually keeps to the promise. Undoing the promise also would have cheated the moment, which dropping it does too, not without truly proper build up and reasoning, something the show struggled with in general.

So like many a fanfic, it does this big, super angsty moment... And then never continues it. Those most affected never actually show growth or change from it. It's almost episodic levels of bad how much people just keep forgiving Luz's actions and seem to forget about these really important statements, or how Luz blatantly keeps ignoring everyone around her, and eventually her own words in S3, to keep angsting about this but not actually dealing with it.

And Amphibia, to finally loop back around, did this itself. It took Marcy out of the story in order to have its big break in tone but not have to really deal with the fact that that moment should have had a big impact... On Marcy. Yes, it's brutal for Anne and Sasha but for them, it's just a complicated friend getting potentially killed. For Marcy, it is a betrayal, near death AND she has been pushed away by her friends for her actions. She as a character just isn't compatible with the show, not without the tone of a finale or her being effectively high/drunk to keep her from actually properly acknowledging anything.

It is a narrative tightrope, let alone for kid's media, but Marcy IS a much more expendable character than your main character. Even then, S3 of Amphibia is genuinely about many of the things that the fandom wanted. Her parents are TERRIFIED about what might happen to Anne. Anne can barely keep it together for the first few episodes and makes mistakes she might know better about if not for how she is trying to make her life any less complicated and scary than it already is. The Plantars are really the only ones who don't follow this stuff but even then, episodes like Spider-Sprig still let us see that being outsiders here, when Anne is accepted back in their home, digs at their brains. They also help even out things and keep the tone consistent with the rest of the work, even while it does deal with some of the ramifications of its choices.

It's not perfect but it is what AMPHIBIA can do. Without a future series, it was never going to go as far as these fans wanted.

Though... If you are looking for an Amphibia that might even be tiptoeing up to the line of being for Adult Swim rather than a main kid's programming block, definitely more teen rated with the amount of damage it has, while keeping spot on with the tone of the original and genuinely trying to be mature with its storytelling, I recommend checking out Dr. Neque's Amphibia vol. 2. I jumped in once the trio got back to Amphibia and have been loving it so far.

Even that version of Amphibia knows that it can't be doom and gloom all the time though. That the charm of Amphibia is partially from how absurd and fun it is. How over the top it can be with its silliness and fun. We admittedly just had a fight that was... ROUGH but for similar reasons as to why True Colors was so brutal in its ending but in a state that I think is better narratively by not quite going so far. That's all I will spoil though.

All of this to say that fandom likes the emotions of angst but not its consequences or how it can damage a narrative overall. How you do need to actually be ready to tackle that properly if you want to tackle it at all or else a small trickle of angst can quickly spoil the pot, let alone an entire, rancid apple like what would happen if most fandoms even got a single episode of what they wanted.

After all, TOH fans got what they wanted from the end of Yesterday's Lie and that is the episode that turned my heart on the show. I am SO happy that there is no equivalent for Amphibia.

======+++++======

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.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[kukuandkookie]

The comments I left look out of order on mobile and idk if it’s the same on desktop, so I’ll just copy and paste them here, with a couple additional thoughts (sorry for probably bombarding your notifications OP) asjakfl:

Somehow found this in the donghua tag haha. And well I see a lot of people already expressing their thoughts, but I honestly think this is pretty subjective—as in, if you don’t like them, even when they get better, it may not be enough for you to like them. It’s all a matter of opinion and whether you vibe with this specific character/couple dynamic! For me, I love Bingqiu because of their contrast (the mighty and elegant, cool-as-a-cucumber (haha) Peak Lord is an actual meme-lord who’s constantly panic-yelling inside and pretending to be cool; the (originally) badass shounen/harem hero is now a clingy crybaby lover), but also because it’s a unique love story. Hualian has obsession in their dedication too, sure, but most readers view it as the healthier of MXTX’s couples and thus hold it on a higher pedestal. Bingqiu is like the skrunkly “low-class” pathetic meowmeow of MXTX’s main ships (that lower class, skrunkly feel is also sort of thanks to the fact SVSSS is, from the start, a parody and a comedy, even with the darker elements and implications), but I do think it’s fair to say that their romance gets better overall. Bingqiu’s main thing is learning to communicate but also healing: Shen Qingqiu’s presence in Luo Binghe’s life teaches him there’s still warmth and love in the world, and that he can still trust humanity. This renders our Luo Binghe, Bing-mei, completely different from his original counterpart, Bing-ge, who has gone the route of a successful xianxia hero and harem male lead, yet cannot trust anyone. Meanwhile, Luo Binghe’s feelings help open up Shen Qingqiu’s ability to confront and deal with emotions and also let people in (and to finally acknowledge that he’s come to see this book world’s characters as more than “just” characters) because that man sucks at addressing said emotions. Because of his preference for compartmentalizing all feelings, Shen Qingqiu is arguably an unreliable narrator and Luo Binghe is actually under a lot of mental duress from outside elements during the plot of the novel that makes him act much more out of control and volatile, which you’ll see more of eventually. I’ll also leave one of my old Twitter threads here that explains what is shippable and lovable about Bingqiu despite—or because of—their flaws. If you can’t view it because you don’t have Twitter or something, apparently it also got reposted on Tumblr. 😆 Oh, honestly I have a lot of threads on Bingqiu lol. Here’s another and another (this one is still one of my favourite things to mull over even now) and another. But basically, Bingqiu is about character growth haha. And they do become more romantic at the end (albeit with some HUGE missteps; for example, thanks to the influence of the sword Xin Mo), but if you still don’t like them at the end… Eh. Some of that “unhealthy” vibe is just kind of a classic BL/danmei couple dynamic—in terms of having an easily jealous and even possessive male lead—albeit with a goofier twist here. Also, I just really like Bunhe (little Binghe) KSGJHDFS. And I mean, if someone you loved and admired who was also once quite kind to you—albeit only after abusing you for a while, who even told you that demons can be good too, suddenly hypocritically shoved you into what is essentially hell without explanation after finding out you are a demon and only ever assumed the worst of you and ran away whenever you tried to talk to him after doing your best to crawl out of that hell to get back to him; and although you worked so hard to become a good hero and a strong protector for him, he continuously refuses to explain anything or even try to get to know the current you... Yeah, all that plus the demonic stuff negatively influencing Luo Binghe... It’s no wonder he kind of broke mkfsjfsjfs.

Ok SVSS fans help me out. I’m on book 2, almost finished it. And i’m really really not happy with how Luo Binghe’s character has been set up and i can’t sense any romantic chemistry between him and the MC. I know MXTX often drabbles in toxic/controlling/obsessive relationship tropes but this just feels way too off for me. I’m kinda close to stop reading cuz of how frustrated I am with how it’s been going so far.

My question is, does it get better after? Ngl im kinda exhausted with the main couple rn. Like Hualien have the obsessive trope too but their chemistry was impeccable and very con/dub con. But this just feels forced to me.

Help a girl out? :)

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

@lulubellule-kfp your oogway sucks tai lung and kai are flawed/hurt not pure evil rant has changed me spiritually, and honestly, I can’t even give Oogway credit for ‘intervening’ with Tigress.

Oogway is presented as the Wisest and Kindest and Best.

(btw this is very biased and emotional and hammered out in ten minutes and i do love the movies tbh some stories are surface level deep and that's cool)

Oogway is maybe better understood as Thinks He's Wise, Charming Rather Than Kind, and Flawed Like Everyone Else But He's Also The Most Powerful So He Gets To Decide What's Right And Wrong.

his biggest flaw (to me) is in imposing his own idea of the world on everyone else, no matter what the cost, and never self reflecting on how it might be serving him- Even as it hurts and destroys so many others

(grain of salt- we the audience are limited in what we 'know' by what we've been shown so far) (kai and tai lung did do bad things, they did choose to hurt people... and so did oogway. and not having that acknowledge is frustrating. not bad or wrong but, frustrating)

When does Oogway finally do something to help Tigress? Why, after one of Po’s randomly spilled menus happened to flutter into his hand.

Oogway, being dead set on his own philosophy of /there are no accidents/ he orders takeout and chuckles when it gives Shifu food poisoning. The valley is in danger from a rampaging violet dude who’s destroying everything and everyone one in his path but hee hee destiny.

Tigress puts HERSELF forward, willing to fight Boar in her master’s place- and Shifu cuts her off. If she can’t fight like him, then she can’t be ready to fight at all, apparently. So Shifu decides to send a scroll asking for help fighting Boar, and Oogway, deciding that it also wasn’t an accident that Tigress asked to fight Boar, tells Shifu to send Tigress with the scroll instead. Shifu agrees “DO NOT FAIL ME” and Tigress does her thing collecting the Cleaner, Comedian, and Dancer.

(Sidenote: The difference between Tigress instantly seeing how amazing each of them are even though none of them use moves like hers, verses Shifu refusing to accept that there is any other way of being good than HIS way until he literally sees it happening is hmmm yes well, good job mentoring him Oogway, that’s a perfectly healthy mentality to be clinging to, how the heck did Tigress end up more emotionally balanced than the guy raising her) (im gonna give credit to the people running Bao Gu orphanage or actually maybe just the fact that Tigress spent part of her childhood around so many people not like her but who learned to accept her as a friend)

When Shifu gets pissed at Tigress for ‘failing him’ (even while he fails to listen when she tries to tell him how amazing these four people are actually, Shifu would rather die than be wrong. Healthy!), Oogway does go talk to Tigress…… to fire her up for fighting Boar. Alone.

Which is, apparently according to him, the Thing The Universe Wants To Have Happen, and that’s why he’s going along with it. Because he sure as heck didn’t sTOP Shifu from raising Tigress under yet another painful crushing weight of expectation, like he already did with Tai Lung. Nooo, it took a random flyer flying into Oogway’s claws before he was like you know what, maybe Tigress completely giving up her sense of personal identity in a desperate bid to win the love of her father figure is wrong actually. Wow who'd have thought!

Or does he even care about that. Does he only care now because ‘the universe’ seems to be saying so? TIGRESS LOOKS BASICALLY GROWN UP IN THE SHORT HOW LONG HAS OOGWAY WATCHED SHIFU MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE WITH HER THAN HE DID TAI LUNG AND DONE NOTHING? TO HELP?

Oh yeah and then, when Tigress gets the tar beaten out of her by Boar because she’s still trying to use the forms Shifu insisted she should be using (even as it is literally getting HER killed), Oogway not only doesn’t do anything to help her, he makes Shifu stand there and watch as he almost loses ANOTHER student, ANOTHER (almost) ADPOTED CHILD.

And? AND???? Oogway could have healed Shifu whenever he wanted? Just like he could have TALKED TO TIGRESS whenever he wanted! For fucks sake if he’s so in tune with the universe and so wise, why didn’t he just wander around the nearby villages and FIND the other Five himself? TIGRESS FOUND VIPER AND MONKEY WITOUT ANY DIRECTIONS OTHER THAN AN OCCUPATION TITLE! THEY WERE RIGHT THERE!!! MONEKY’S BACKSTORY SAYS HE AND OOGWAY EVEN MET BEFORE!

'oogway knew shifu and trigress needed to go through all this in order to grow as people'

PAIN ISN'T THE ONLY WAY FOR PEOPLE TO GROW. SOMETIMES PAIN BREAKS PEOPLE! SOMETIMS CHALLENGES AREN'T WORTH THE SUFFERING IT TAKES TO SURVIVE THEM!

and SOMETIMES IT LEAVES PEOPLE WEAKER THAN BEFORE- SEE, SHIFU BEING UNABLE TO OPEN UP FULLY WITH TIGRESS AS A FATHER THE WAY HE DID WITH TAI LUNG, BECAUSE-- OH WOW, THAT ENDED BADLY AND SEEING THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN TAI LUNG AND TIGRESS HURTS AND SCARED SHIFU!!!!

it's almost as if all three of them could have used the guidance and support of a wise and kindly older friend.... instead of series of tests and trials to 'help them' become whatever they were 'meant to be'

Oh but oogway was saved by pandas and now theres a panda orphan being raised in the village nearby (am i really supposed to believe oogway wouldn't notice PANDA right next door to him) and if a flyer from his dad’s noodle shop leads to shifu getting food poisoning then everything must be part of the grand plan to someday make a panda oogway’s ‘true heir’ or whatever.

Hm? What’s that? Po’s only an orphan because a warlord killed his mom and destroyed his home? And all that happened ALSO because of a dumb prophecy and an obsession with destiny?

Oh wow that also must be the universe talking and totally not be a thing oogway maybe could have helped with or something.     

(i don't think oogway was trying to hurt people or be selfish. but intentions are only useful in so far as they might make you change course once you see the damage you are un-intentionally causing, and ooogway... seems to have failed that spot check. which, you know, fair, most of us do. he just happens to be causing a lot more damage than a normal person would be capable of)

Oogway's pacifism is both extreme and twisted.

He won't 'fix' mistakes or accidents because he believes it's all part of some future destiny... but inaction is also an action with consequences, and who is he to decide the destiny of others by even deciding they have one?

Well. He's the most powerful guy around. It's not like there's anyone around to challenge him or prove him wrong.

....Po, sweetie, now that you're enlightened an all, could you go to the spirit realm and kick oogway's butt a little? for me? thanks dude love u

On the other hand, Po and Tigress being the anti-Oogway and Shifu respectively gives me life.

like yes! always try to be better, always try to help! be accepting of others differences and pain and traumas and do everything you can think of to be there for them when they need it! Admit when you fail! Admit when you mess up! Make friends and reach out- Ask for help when you need it too!

You don't have to be perfect to be a friend!

It's better to know and accept that you won't ever be perfect, actually, and still decide that you are worthwhile. And that so is everyone else.

TLDR: oogway's ability to find inner peace and ascend off to retirement even while everything around him is going to heck is a very inward-facing thing, which says a lot about him. I think maybe he needs to re-do his spiritual enlightenment, i think he missed a spot. But if his only goal is to break away from earthy attachments and pain and people in general, well, gold star for that. He succeeded. I sure as hell wouldn't want to.

funny thing is, i only ended up watching kfp because my depressed nephew is into taoism and wanted someone to talk about the movies with. thats not destiny tho, oogway, that's just being a friend

[kindnessoverperfection]

Imagine someone struggling with a mental health symptom, like sensory processing disorder, for instance. Now, imagine someone comparing them to an abuser, because, "this abusive person definitely had sensory processing issues imo, because they'd blow up out of nowhere over the tiniest things."

That's what a lot of the stigma against npd feels like.

For one, I think a lot of people don't necessarily understand what a symptom actually is, like with the above example. For another, even if someone actually does have a symptom, it's a whole different issue if they choose to display it in an abusive way--and the same goes for any other symptom in any other disorder.

My grandiose sense of self doesn't mean that I'm going around yelling at retail workers or exploiting people to feed my ego or turning every minor conflict into an emotionally blackmailing pity party. It means I have incredibly high standards for myself that I don't hold anyone else to, and when I inevitably can't measure up to my perfect, flawless, godly self-image, I crash very hard and have to fight back intense urges to punish/hurt myself.

My arrogance doesn't mean that I'm criticizing, cutting down, and silencing others. It means that I feel like I'm the best at everything and am incredibly over-qualified and that I can do anything, which results in me struggling to actually do anything, because if I run into a road block my mind will go "this is boring and not worth my time right now, let's drop it" instead of acknowledging that I just haven't learned how to do it yet, and if I try to learn, my mind goes "no, you already inherently know this better than everyone, so their flawed teachings will only corrupt your natural talent". It means constantly changing goals and dropping hobbies and feeling directionless and passionless because I'm so high above everything that I can't reach anything, and if I try to reach, it inevitably means a long fall and hard crash.

My sensitivity to criticism doesn't mean I harm people who I felt slighted by, or that I refuse to acknowledge and improve on behaviors that may be harmful to others. It means I withdraw from people or groups easily, keeping everyone at arm's length and hiding any part of myself I view as a "flaw". It means I beat myself up over absolutely nothing, and that I deny any perceived weaknesses and let them fester and grow and disrupt my life because I can't bear to acknowledge they exist.

My low empathy doesn't mean that I ignore people if they say I'm doing something that's hurting them, or that I inflict pain on others for fun, or that I refuse to listen to and compromise with loved ones. It means that I grew up surrounded by emotional blackmail and severe second-hand trauma, and to survive, my brain numbed out that part of itself. It means I don't feel much when someone around me is extremely upset, and that I usually prefer that people don't vent to me because I mostly feel vaguely anxious in response, and my urge is to distract the person, not listen or sympathize.

My need for excessive admiration doesn't mean that I threaten or guilt people into giving it to me. It means that my motivation plummets without consistent praise, and that I'm driven to do whatever gets me positive attention, even if it's dangerous or self-destructive. It means I feel lost and hollow and depressed without positive reinforcement, and I struggle to find self-fulfillment in many of my passions.

I don't really know how to end this post, but... I do hope this can help some people understand misconceptions about narcissistic personality disorder.

Also here's a post I wrote about subjective and emotionally-charged wording in the DSM.

[into-daylight-hope]

Qui-Gon Jinn: Certified Hypocrite, Fascinating Failure, Mass of Contradictions

For starters, I am just going to let direct quotes from the man speak for itself.

Some excerpts from Master & Apprentice

Wise words.

Wait a minute...

😯😯 What the hell is happening here? All quotes are from the same man in one book.

Qui-Gon Jinn doesn't have an ounce of self-awareness and it is so hilariously terrible.

What is even better (or worse), this is perfectly in line with The Phantom Menace characterization .

I mean,

Remember when he said all this than spent the rest of the movie obsessing over prophecies, the chosen one and literally the future?

"He still has so much to learn of the living force." Qui-Gon Jinn about Obi-Wan in the council scene

After that scene

"The boy is dangerous. They all sense it why can't you?" Obi-Wan Kenobi about Anakin Skywalker to Qui-Gon Jinn

You see Obi-Wan, Master Jinn here has completely lost any sense of "here and now" between his crusade against darkness and divine mission to save the Galaxy.

This in turn, unsurprisingly blinds him to the fact Anakin is not suitable to become a Jedi. Or at least not ready to directly move on to becoming a padawan.

Anakin himself would suffer in a road that is not meant for him. But he is not planning for Anakin the child. He is thinking about The Glorious Chose One.

He is the chosen one. You all must, see it.

And yet from Qui-Gon's perspective it is Obi-Wan who doesn't understand the Living Force.

I have to say if he is truly a student of the living force as many fans claim he has been failing the class for at least 8 years.

Let's move on to another set of entertaining and horrifyingly oblivious quotes from M&A.

If you look upward you can observe Mr. Here and Now in his natural habitat.

He really acts like future is set in stone than thinks he is the right person to talk about about concentrating in the moment. Unbelievable.

Let's look at this dialogue again. In contrast with the excerpt from above.

He is all about the future when it suits him. But when Obi-Wan makes a remark on it he obviously should just focus on the moment. This is actually the third time in this post where he contradicts himself while specifically chastising or criticizing Obi-Wan for something Qui-Gon actually does.

Now I don't think Qui-Gon acts with malice. But it is important to point out his obliviousness has become a way of ensuring he is never in the wrong.

He suffers from an immense hubris. And a man obsessed with prophecies and chosen ones definitely has some kind of savior complex.

But notably Jinn doesn't actually want to put any effort into enacting real change with his limited yet existent capabilities.

He turns down a council seat in M&A because he thinks it would hold him down. From what? Dear God, the reason they offered him a seat was for different opinions. Qui-Gon can complain all he wants but one time he actually had a chance to make his opinions a reality he freaking bailed.

Why? He doesn't want to face his own limits. He can't bare to try and fail. It is much easier to sustain a superiority complex when you are complaining from the sidewalk.

So he fixates all this belief onto prophecies, visions that will magically cure the Galaxy. And of course his place to help fulfill them. To the point where it is the one thing that keeps him standing.

He has binded meaning of his life and belief for goodness dangerously close to his supposed importance in the Galaxy. (You can feel the influences of his former master)

His absolute refusal to engage with reality turns him into mass of contradictions. Cause he doesn't know what he will find or become if he is mistaken in his belief of himself.

He can't face reinvention on the event of defeat.

But this situation was different. It had to be, because the only thing Qui-Gon knew to be absolutely true was that his vision was real.

Oh by the way, it turned out he misunderstood the vision. But when does being wrong ever stopped Qui-Gon Jinn?

No words.

Only Qui-Gon could have come near declaring himself a prophet after making a mistake. Maybe stop and reflect man? Just stop and think about your actions.

Obi-Wan Kenobi: I have a bad feeling about this.

Qui-Gon Jinn: I don't sense anything.

Of course you don't.

Honestly he doesn't have much to speak for in the cosmic force department either.

(There is the whole force ghost thing I guess. But I have no idea if that is more connected with living or cosmic force. It seems to be more about spiritual enlightenment. Which is ridiculous when you consider Yoda had go through so many trials, face his darkside, learn to truly let go just for Force priestesses to deem him worthy enough to study immortality. Yes Qui-Gon never became a force ghost but he had started his training before he died. And much of Yoda's tests on TCW was about self-awareness. It is not just about being a good person. How did Force Priestesses approve Qui-Gon "I was meant to misinterpret this vision." Jinn? I would understand if he became wiser after death and faced his flaws and all but he never was on that level before he died. You might say even Anakin became a force ghost. But I would remind you, Anakin in the end broke out of denial, acknowledged the wrong of his ways and took that leap to the light side. Self-awareness seems such an important key to becoming a force ghost. Right there with selflessness. Personally it doesn't quite feel right for a character whose biggest flaws are their lack of introspection and hubris which we never see him rise above to be the one that discovers immortality again. It feels more like a rushed plot point to explain how we get from A to B.)

This post got out of control 😂. I honestly just wanted to point out lack of communication might be one of the reasons Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon have trouble understanding each other but it is sometimes even harder to understand Qui-Gon when he actually says something. Cause ration is not what drives him.

Qui-Gon is such a complex character. He is undeniably good especially compared to other SW characters. Yet for all fandom's deifying he might be the most flawed Jedi we see on the franchise. (The ones that fell to the dark side not included.)

It is a shame wider fandom completely write off his flaws to the degree I can't even recognize the character when they talk about Jinn. Cause that Qui-Gon is so hard to feel empathy for.

When people constantly make statements like "He is The Wisest sw character." his hypocrisy stops being amusing. It doesn't end on screen or page instead often used to bash other characters.

An unbelievable analysis from Wookiepedia:

When Jinn saved the Gungan exile Jar Jar Binks, who in turn swore a life-debt to him, his compassionate nature was such that Jinn took the hapless Gungan under his wing, much to Kenobi's dismay. His empathy toward all life forms, including the most pitiful and unfortunate, was Jinn's greatest strength. Additionally, he remained understanding and patient with Queen Padmé Amidala. During the short time they knew each other, he never asked for her to do more than she was willing to.

You know out of the two, Qui-Gon was the one who insulted Jar Jar to his face. And he didn't took Jar Jar under his wing. They forced him to take them to a city where Jar Jar could have been punished for entering. Now it was the pragmatic thing to do. For all three's survival not for their own gain. Understandable. But compassion is just pushing it.

Also he never asked Padme to do more than she was willing to do?

Padmé : Are you sure about this? Trusting our fate to a boy we hardly know? The Queen will not approve.

Qui-Gon Jinn : The Queen does not need to know.

Padmé : Well, I don't approve.

And he is aware she is the queen, herself. Padme was nearly tearing out her because of this man in TPM.

What is weird, Jinn in his bewildering hypocrisy probably thinks he is being admirably compassionate with Jar Jar, highly understanding and patient with Padme. We clearly see he is not.

Out of universe he has been a force ghost for decades now but fandom is nowhere near acknowledging his flaws than he is.

And honestly SW doesn't have that many major morally complex characters. People like Maul, Palpatine, Anakin,Ventress don't think they are serving a higher purpose or oblivious to the evils they commit.

Emotionally complicated, yes. Going through moral dilemmas, no.

Three major characters come to mind who make huge mistakes, condone or commit atrocities while thinking they are in the right/with good intentions/for a greater cause. With varying degrees of culpability.

Qui-Gon. Padme. Dooku.

In that order.

Let these characters be interesting instead of demonizing nearly inhumanly selfless Jedi characters. (They make mistakes too but funnily enough they are still way better beings than most people on our planet.)

By the way I found the epitaph "Fascinating Failure" from the article here. Especially the last paragraphs make some interesting points. ⬇️

👀

This post might seem harsh but that is expected since it focuses on Qui-Gon's flaws.

"People are more than their worst act,” Quote from Qui-Gon Jinn in Master & Apprentice

[essayofthoughts]

In contrast, how about Tiberius’s view on leading and royalty? He seems to highly value status and titles, in a weirdly similar way to Percy. But conversely, Tiberius seems to take his status as implicit power to do things (such as when he wrote his father asking for an army) and seems unaware of the prejudices he seems to hold, which we see often and Matt revealed the extent of later with the power structure in Draconia when VM were searching for Vorugal. How do his views and prejudice impact his relationship and dynamic in the group in your mind?

(Part 2)

The thing is I don't think Tiberius is aware of his prejudice at all. He has a WIS stat of four, people. He knows things, but he doesn't really... put them together very well - or at all, sometimes. I do think he's genuinely ignorant of his prejudices, such as with regards to Ravenites, and simply considers them... normal.

And... it's also not unlikely, given how stratified the pre-Vorugal Draconian society was (ha, Draconian) that... he was taught that it was all for sensical reasons in much the same way that racism and chattel slavery were justified throughout Europe and America.

Ravenites lack tails and so they are farther from Bahamut; it is the duty of true dragonborn to guide them towards Bahamut's teachings. Ravenites have a natural physical strength; they are suited to the ground and physical labour and not to the more academic learning open to true dragonborn. Ravenites are emotional and irrational; true dragonborn must show the enlightenment they've been gifted by Bahamut and not respond to their anger..

All of these have obvious counterpoints - are those tails removed or is it just a random mutation - and if a Ravenite was born with wings, would that change things? If a Ravenite gained wings - how would that upend this structure? Is that physical strength natural - or was it bred into them because the weaker ones weren't allowed to survive? Are Ravenites wrong to be angry at the perpetual injustice which shapes their lives? - but the point is, these are the kinds of ways racism and systemic injustice get justified to people and... I don't find it unlikely that Tiberius was indoctrinated in this from childhood. It likely never really occurred to him that it's strange or unjust or weird - as far as he's concerned, it's just how life is.

It's honestly one of the things that makes me a bit sad about Tiberius the character - he hunted artefacts and came from a messed up society. Can you imagine his joy at hunting the vestiges and the growth he could have gone through when VM encounter his Vorugal-struck homeland and see what his people have done to the Ravenites? You know that Vax wouldn't have stood for Tiberius being a racist shit, intentionally or not.

Whether Orion intended Tiberius to be unwittingly racist is unclear - certainly Tiberius responds to the tailless Tofor Brotorus in a way that indicates it's a planned part of his characterisation - and...

I've seen some people call that out as another reason he's Bad but my guys, having your character be flawed isn't a bad thing - it's a good thing, because it means they can grow and change. The problem is when one refuses to acknowledge those flaws as flaws, when one refuses to grow and change - which before his departure Orion seemed to be doing with both himself and Tiberius.

If we'd got to see more of Tiberius - if things had been better, perhaps - maybe we would have seen the group struggle with Tiberius' racism and seen Tiberius grow. As it is, Orion left before it could be more than a throwaway moment and Tiberius was killed before that growth could happen. We don't see Tiberius' racism have that much of an impact on his friendships or his dynamic with the group - but I would have loved to see it happen.