#whereas only villains have mental illnesses

[sk1fanfiction]

on dursley revisionism

Random people with wrong opinions: "Harry wasn't abused by the Dursleys" (bonus points for 'just neglected', which is a type of child abuse btw or 'that's all fanon')

Things that the Dursleys canonically did that are abuse just off the top of my head:

Swung a frying pan at his head (at the age of 12)

Grabbed him by the neck and basically tried to strangle him (even light pressure to the neck can cause internal damage)

Starved him

Verbally abused him

Locked him alone in a small cramped space as punishment (which can cause permanent psychological damage btw, and that's in adults. It is literally a type of torture.)

Made him sleep in that same small cramped unhealthy space when they had an extra bedroom

Encouraged their son to bully him and beat him up

Left him to be possibly attacked by a vicious dog

Bonus: Hid the evidence of his existence to outsiders and didn't speak about him to others (a typical thing for abusers to do)

And more. That boy is unrealistically well-adjusted.

I know the shitty guardian trope is so common in British children's lit (think Roald Dahl) that it became normalized, but it's not. It's abuse. I am worried for the children in your lives tbh.

[marsbotz]

slamming my fists against the floor like an animal thinkinh abt dadfario

[emiliosandozsequence]

what scifi media do you like?

OH ANON I HAVE SO MANY. i'm so glad you asked 💕💕💕 (tagging @gorydean too so she sees 💕💕💕)

gotta start first and foremost with the sparrow series by mary doria russell as my blog is basically just a shrine to it at this point. amazing book and definitely recommend it if you love found family, first contact, trauma, tragedy, and the abandonment of the faithful by g-d. huge massive trigger warning tho. everyone says the second book isn't as good as the first, but i completely disagree. i think they're bitg equally as good as each other; the second book just takes awhile to get to the most insanity inducing parts whereas the first one starts out strong with that and keeps going until the end of the story.

i would have more books to recommend, but i've only just started REALLY getting back into reading after several years of not reading as much due to a variety of reasons (mostly trauma and chronic and mental illness). that being said, i have an insane amount of films to give you to watch instead of books.

gotta recommend my all time fav film (or one of the two anyway), the fountain. most people...don't like this movie because they think it's hard to understand and doesn't make sense towards the end (i had to watch it several times to get it), but please please please watch it. it's a beautiful film both visually and plotwise as long as you give it a chance 💕

sound of my voice is softer in terms of scifi, but still definitely scifi. it's another film that lets you decide what to believe. it's also another film people tend not to like for whatever reason, but i think it's extremely well done and the ending is so 💕💕💕💕💕💕

cloud atlas. very much a story in the same vein as the fountain taking place over different timelines. another beautifully done story about how everything and everyone is connected throughout space and time. ofc my fav timelines are the ones with robert frobisher and sonmi-451. i do also recommend the book, but i liked the film better because of a few of the changes they made.

sunshine is one of my fav films ever and i've loved it since i was in high school and first saw it. it reminds me a lot of three body problem in the sense that antagonist (idk if i would exactly call him a villain even tbh) is using g-d as a reason for the things he's doing. there's a few deleted scenes i wish they'd kept in because it really emphasizes this, but even so, this film is gorgeous in so many ways.

i origins. if u can't tell already i'm a huge brit marling fan and i think this is one of her best stories. again: you get to choose what to believe and you really have to watch the whole film for the pay off, but it is so very much worth it. i think i've actually only ever watched this film once, tho idk why bc it's genuinely one of my favs.

looper is another film that idk why more people weren't into it. the setting is dystopian. i was trying to think of a way to explain it in a few short sentences like i have the rest of the films here, but it's one of those films also that i think going into it knowing nothing is better. the kid who plays the rainmaker is so fucking good too. he's not even 10, but he played that role perfectly.

elysium. EVERYONE KNOWS DISTRICT 9 BUT NO ONE KNOWS ELYSIUM. i stand by my opinion that this film would be infinitely better if diego luna were the main character instead of matt damon, but even so i really love this film. the score is gorgeous. also lmao we for real might be living in this universe soon if elon fixes up that space hotel he wants to do fucking rip

ender's game. the author is a homophobic and transphobic dickwad who actively gives his money to anti-lgbt organizations, so watch this for free if you can (and buy the books second hand), but i actually really enjoyed what they did with this film. a lot of people thought it was too rushed, but also like....ender's game is a very Dense book, so i understand why they did it the way they did it. also the score is amazing.

signs. another film involving g-d and religion seen through the lens of scifi and first contact. this film gets shit on a ton for reasons i do not know, but it's actually really well done. it scared the ever living shit out of me the first few times i saw it tho bc i did Not grow up watching horror.

knowing. another film involving g-d and religion seen through the lens of scifi and first contact (can you tell i have a type of film/media i like???). this film also scared the ever living shit out of me when i first saw it to the point i had to sleep with the lights on, but in all actuality it isn't scary at all (i was just 14 and had never seen a thriller before lol). i really love disaster films tbh, but this is one of my all time favs (next to greenland).

another earth i did not like when i first saw it. i thought the whole thing was kind of pointless and didn't make very much sense, but the more i've thought about it since then, the more i've understood it. funnily enough, i never watched it a second time, but it's brit marling, so i probably will eventually. again: definitely recommend.

lucy. listen i know this has scarlett johansson in it and none of us like her, but this film is good despite her. i thought it was going to be dumb as hell when i first saw it, but i actually ended up liking it so much that it's heavily inspired the next novel i'm planning on writing (a scifi space opera about a girl becoming g-d).

origami. okay this one is difficult to find and you WILL have to buy it if you want to watch it (trust me: i have searched FAR and wide for this film in any other place and vimeo is the ONLY place i found it; it's only $5 to rent on there tho), but it's so worth it. it's worth it. it's one of my fav films and i watched it purely because of francois arnaud and i'm glad i did. this literally is his best work imo.

ink is my all time hands down favorite film. idk if you would even call it scifi, but i love it so much i just wanted to talk about it. it very obviously had zero budget, but they used what little money they had VERY wisely and the result was this beautiful film. the story makes me sob every single time. actually it's quite similar to origami, so if you like one, you'll probably like the other.

tron: legacy is another film that people shit on and idk why. it has The Best religious imagery. like how are you going to top one of the programs falling to their knees in prayer as flynn passes by????? the whole thing seems to be a jesus/judas metaphor anyway and i'm crazy for that shit. gotta mention the score as always because daft punk knocked it out of the park (people shit on the score too and i really don't get why).

thelma. i watched this one a whim with a friend and i cannot recommend it enough. i feel like it was kind of popular on here when it first came out bc it's a sapphic film, but it's also just very good in general. i've seen people get super upset about it also bc their interpretation makes it lesbophobic (which is crazy to me but whatever.

melancholia. i did Not like this movie for the longest time, but then i watched it recently and finally Got it. i guess you really do have to be a certain level of depressed to understand this film, so if you're insanely suicidal and can barely function like me, then i recommend it. you will probably get some catharsis out of it like i did. it is a very Strange film tho.

the creator came out at the end of last year and it was so good. definitely my fav film to come out in the last few years and involves g-d, religion, and AI. the score also in this is great (everybody say thank you hans zimmer. again.). the ending makes me sob so much.

more that i love a lot, but not as much (apparently there's a character limit, so i can't explain why these are my favs too, but it's for similar reasons as above).

the matrix trilogy

the fifth element

snowpiercer

blade runner 2049

as for tv shows, i don't have as many, but i do have a few that i would highly recommend if you like any of the films above:

halo. again: everyone shits on this show, but the absolute TRAGEDY of it is the fanboys hate it bc they suck and are bigots and everyone else who would like it (LIKE MY MUTUALS) refuses to give it a chance because of its overall reputation, so i'm BEGGING YOU GUYS TO GIVE IT A CHANCE.

foundation. genuinely fucking good. so much of what the creators of this show have done to change the story has been for the better. i read the books and they were okay, but the show is so so good. idk when season 3 will be coming out, but hopefully soon (same for halo, which i actually like better than this show).

the oa. i will forever mourn what we could've had with this show. i can't even talk about it without getting choked up. this getting canceled really truly fucked me up.

castle rock season 1. technically a horror series, but this season is more scifi than horror, i think. everything really comes to a head in episode 9 iirc and that episode still makes me crazy when i think about it. i definitely need to do a rewatch.

firefly/serenity. you've probably heard this one recommended before, but there's a reason for that. it's really so good, but g-d and jesus hate me because it too was canceled before it could even finish ONE SEASON. thankfully there's a film that kind of ties everything together, but WE COULD'VE HAD SO MUCH MORE.

i tried to put in some movies that aren't talked about as much on here!! i also have several letterboxd lists dedicated purely to scifi, which you can find below.

holy holy holy (scifi (and other films) involving religious imagery or straight up just about theology

the sparrow cinematic universe (films that are either discussed in the sparrow or remind me of it or that i could see the main characters watching)

but it was my body. it was my blood. and it was my love. (films that i either genuinely believe could be based off of the sparrow or just remind me of it in some way)

per aspera ad astra (scifi films i have seen or heard of. this literally is every single scifi film i remember ever in existence so it's quite long)

also mainstream scifi that i recommend/am obsessed with

interstellar

dune series (wer'e talking about the books here; not whatever the fuck denis villenueve pulled with the films lmao)

district 9

annihilation/southern reach trilogy

ex machina

prometheus

pacific rim

arrival

event horizon

mad max: fury road

nope

mobile suit gundam series (mostly hathaway and g-witch tho)

star wars (mostly the prequel and sequel trilogies)

nausicaa of the valley of the wind

castle in the sky

inception

tenet

high life

aldnoah zero

hanna

real steel

86: eighty-six

this is so much longer than i meant it to be omg. anyway people do not call me the scifi queen for no reason.

[xxtha-blog]

I can't really understand Ace's psychology... In the comic he seems to me to be a funny dandy, a bit of a tease but not a bad guy, with a trauma that has led him to do stupid things for reasons who were moral. Given that the comic ended on a hopeful note thanks to Dream, we can only imagine that things will get better for him afterwards... Whereas in the Asks, the commentaries and all the information outside the comic, he comes across as much more cynical, tragic and negative... In fact, over and above what I'm sure is a lack of understanding of the comic, it's a difference in the aura of both that I feel that's confusing me... Perhaps you can enlighten me?

There's definitely a difference in how Ace acts outside of the comic vs how Ace acts inside the comics. A lot of it is the difference between Ace being essentially shackled by Joker vs afterwards.

He really doesn't break the fourth wall very much within the comic so you don't get much of his active disdain of us. It's a contained story-line, he can't interact with creators in real-time. Whereas, on a medium like tumblr or in an rp event, he's real-time talking with creators, and he loves to antagonize creators, hence, being pretty cynical.

His nature as a character is something that isn't resolved and 'things will get better' doesn't mean he's doesn't have like. Fifty different mental illnesses still. In fact, Ace in the comic recognizes this by not saying that things are better, but that they could be better, and in two parts of that, his goal is to 1. Enjoy himself. And 2. Get over what he lost, both of which he is doing in most of the post-AU stuff. When he references his tragedy he usually does so mockingly or ironically. When he talks to creators he's also doing the same. The ask blog isn't that great of an example for his post-Au character given it's intentionally a non-canon and actively antagonistic format, so he's just constantly not enjoying it. A better example would be RP events on discord, which most people never saw, or this really old one-shot I made when I was like 16, which you can read here (it's not the best written but still in character):

This is a pretty typical way he'd react. He's not really overly cynical or negative, mostly just chaotic and quick witted. If he thought you thought that about that, he would be offended, and then he'd act much more positive, just for you. He'd give people gifts and sing funny musical numbers, full orchestration. Do some dances, really bring the energy.

If people thought he was too upbeat and positive, he'd kill a rabbit with a playing card in front of them, electrocute someone, and threaten to burn their house down (whether serious or not is up to you).

His personality is always revolving around his weird way of speaking and general oddities, but he'll essentially do anything as long as an illusion is fuelling it because illusions allow him to do anything. Which includes acting in a very wide variety of ways.

The power of illusions just lets him make the world his playground.

He plays the hero, he plays the villain, he plays whatever role he thinks is something you haven't seen him play before, because he can do whatever he wants (except cliches, they'll kill him dead), and he's going to do whatever he wants, to keep you on your toes. If he's talking to creators he's almost always going to be sarcastic though, simply because he doesn't like them very much. He uses other characters as vectors for his silly hi-jinks, which he just fundamentally can't pull when talking to creators directly.

You can also find a more in depth overview of his personality here:

[shitpostingkats]

Yu-Gi-Oh Review Roundup: GX!

Favorite main character: Chazz Princeton

The Chazz. The yugioh rival who, barely five episodes into the first season, gets fed up with being in the show, sails away on a yacht, shipwrecks, is rescued by card game playing russians, gets adopted by said russians after beating all of them back to back in a 50 man gauntlet, and returns to the main plot triumphantly riding a submarine with an entire crowd of slavs chanting his name.

In, uh... *checks watch* episode 25.

Chazz is one of those yugioh characters who’s just always doing the most he possibly can, and you gotta love him for it. And unlike some prideful anime rivals, he actually has the skills to back it up. Skills you actually get to watch him build himself, from the ground up, after having his fall from grace/russian sabbatical. Which just makes it even more satisfying to see him tear into duels, because his archetype of choice, and his whole arc in general, is about using the most unintimidating, unwanted, and least powerful monsters. It’s like the pokemon trainers who threaten to beat you into next week, and then bring out. A magikarp.

Except he then absolutely trashes you with said magikarp. And clomps away in his big goth platforms, loudly proclaiming that magikarp are annoying, and stupid, and he definitely doesn’t like them. Nu-uh. Ignore the maxed out friendship stat.

Up until the heavier plot kicks in in season three, Chazz has hands down the best character arcs of GX. His fight to break free of his abusive brothers’ control, his crabby assimilation into the Slifer Squad, his brief stint and subsequent escape from a Literal Cult (yeah that happens in gx don’t worry about it). Chazz is such a charismatic and well developed character that, when he kinda vanishes for like a dozen episodes, only to reappear, having won an entire tournament offscreen, being heralded by banner-bearers, and carried on a freaking PALANQUIN

I stood up and CHEERED.

Favorite antagonist: The Dark King

The most stunning of trope subversions in a season chock-full of them. Yes, Yubel may be a more threatening and complex villain, but they have so much going on between the dub vs. sub battle, they may get the final save-the-world card game at the end of the season, but the Dark King is such an equally nuanced and menacing antagonist.

Because he’s the protagonist.

 The dark king is every concept I loved about the Yamis in DM, the idea that parts of ones soul aren’t wholly power of friendship goodness, the idea that you can still choose to be an anime protag even if there’s darkness living inside of you. Because being kind is hard. And the act of pursuing it hits so much harder when we see how much it costs to turn down the other path.

Again, I’m a sucker for any character arc even remotely analogous to mental illness. If you see a pattern in the way I review media, I wholeheartedly claim it. I am a simple creature.

But the Dark King also functions so fantastically as both a metaphor and a subversion because we’ve seen the trope of a Superpowered Evil Side before. The show is betting on that. The twist comes in that the Dark King is not some malevolent, foreign entity. That it’s Jaden. Just a scared kid, lashing out at the world and forced to deal with the consequences. And he’s not evil.

Whereas Marik shows with dealing in the part of yourself that wants to commit atrocities, Jaden takes it the next step, and has to accept that you can’t just get rid of it. You have to live with it. Rein it in. But be kind to it. Because it is you, and it just wants to keep you safe and it may be wrong and a base impulse but punishing your worst instincts is not only self harmful, it is impossible.

You may have instantly internalized any negative emotion out of shame, and yes, you may somedays even be controlled by it. But do not fear it. Learn to work in tandem with your rage. Do not let it possess you, but do not imprison it either.

The Dark King is one of those stories that I really think I needed to hear as a kid, but even now, consuming the series as an adult, doesn’t make that message any less impactful.

Favorite side character: Tyranno Hassleberry

Back in the early days of 2021, before the first season of yugioh dm was even a passing consideration of a thought in my mind, I decided to poll my online friends and determine what they thought the Best Worst Name in localized yugioh.

These were people that had never watched yugioh, never so much as glanced at the card game.

We started with 32 names.

After five rounds of voting, only one was left standing.

Tyranno Hassleberry beat Maximillion Pegasus, and thus was crowned the ultimate champion of Best Bad Yugioh Name.

Some might say this championship gave me a bit of a preemptive bias towards the funny dinosaur man.

They’d be right.

Imagine my delight, however, when this already-primed-for-stupidity name got a face, and we learn that big, dumb, real himbo of a yugioh name is attached to an equally big and dumb himbo of typical yugioh absurdity. I mean, truly, Tyranno Hassleberry is everything I love about yugioh worldbuilding, personified. In a series that takes an up close examination of the partnerships between man and monster, and the terrible psychological effects thereof, Hassleberry stands as the shining example of a character so full of love and stupidity that he is immune to the horrors.

While Jaden “What is attraction” Yuki is off getting ptsd from his partnership with a dragon demon that hyperfocuses on relationships so hard that it has put people into comas, Tyranno is also there. Just vibing. Hassleberry, do you have such a strong spiritual connection to your ace monster that you might be genuinely inhuman? Do you also have special anime eyes and mild superpowers? How’s that going? Good? Good!

The world of yugioh not only can provide rich, nuanced explorations on mental wellness and the very idea of identity, it can also provide a man who is half dinosaur and it is only ever lightly remarked upon. Apparently, the solution to surviving an ever expanding universe of unreality and cosmic horrors beyond your imagination is just. Be kind. Be happy. Talk about dinosaurs.

Favorite duel: Yubel vs. Zane

A masterclass on how non-plot-relevant duels can still contribute SO much to the show and its characters.

Zane is a funny little weirdo. The walking personification of Gifted Kid Burnout, this dude graduated valedictorian and then immediately proceeded to get kicked in the ribs by the realities of non-academic living, causing him to sink into a deep and self harmful depression spiral, obsessed with pulling others down to his level and proving to them that happy go lucky positivity is only a naive shield in the face of true adversity and cruelty.

*Laughs a bit too forcefully* What a funny dude!

Zane has basically been on a downward slide in mental wellbeing since season two, and at this point, seems to have reached a natural stopping point in his corruption arc. Tired, washed out, and pessimistic, but at least comfortable in his status quo of being An Absolute Mess. He’s teamed up with Aster as sort of the token chaotic neutrals of the party, the only ones edgy enough to do things like casual torture and murder, but he’s attempted to reach out to his brother, and has even begrudgingly been roped into protecting the gang as they make their final stand against Yubel. He seems to be operating under the belief that while he no longer has to try so hard to rid the highschoolers of their delusions that the power of love and friendship will save the day, he’s still a depressed snot rag wrapped in a black leather overcoat.

That fantastic bit of ex-villainous personality gets to go head to head against the current villainous personality, and it is a treat. Yubel and Zane carry entire scenes through sheer force of presence, and seeing them snark and attempt to out edgelord each other is a delight.

But it also is a very pivotal point for Zane’s character because, for once, he is not the most mentally unstable person in the room. That honor goes to Jaden, newly traumatized, and about to start rolling down the same hill. Zane recognizes those self destructive behaviors, even attempts to warn Jaden that refusing to acknowledge his actions will only lead to further harm, but before he can properly sit down and explain to Jaden that self harmful behaviors are bad actually, and that electrocuting yourself to feel any semblance of emotion is actually a massive holy shit red flag, Yubel interrupts them.

So now, Zane, Failure Big Brother Extraordinaire, has to come to some semblance of peace with his own emo demons, while battling Jaden’s for him (both literally and figuratively).

The sheer panache of two of the most wonderful anti-heros of yugioh, the emotional turmoil of Zane’s inner conflict, the realistic portrayal of how we process trauma, plus the absolute YUGIOH MOVE that is choosing to die of card game induced heart attack. Honestly, I could go on about this duel forever.

Favorite arc: Quest for the Rainbow Dragon

I mentioned previously that I started watching yugioh as something to have on in the background, usually while I sewed. The Quest for the Rainbow Dragon is the arc that made me put down my needle and actually devote my full attention to watching the show.

GX is a show full of subverting audience expectations. I have my own opinions on the prioritization of shock-bait over consistent plot writing, but I also can’t deny that when Adrian Gecko just shrugged off his shirt and engaged in freaking fisticuffs, I was speechless for a whole five minutes.

In between one blink and the next, GX went from a weird early 2000s merchandise advert that occasionally had character writing and the oh-so-rare taste of legitimately serious writing, to a full on survival horror anime. The surreal, empty desert environment of the spirit world, the main cast slowly whittled down and frequently split up, the eerie monologues of Yubel and their legitimately unnerving horror visuals; all contribute to this claustrophobic feeling of dread. The panic of the students feels real.

And QftRD, despite being the first entry in GX’s much darker and grander second half, makes wonderful use of smaller scale episode plots. Entire episodes are devoted to the struggle of moving from one room in the school to the next, or negotiating for enough food to survive just another day. Every main character gets to shine in aspects that we’ve only seen hints of in their lives of status quo card games: whether it’s Alexis’ natural leadership, Hassleberry and Axels’ military skills, Crowler’s actual want to protect the students’ well being, or Jaden and Jesse just finally getting to explore their connections with duel monster spirits. Heck, even the unnamed students get to shine, using their knowledge of the school to navigate through hidden passages.

It’s such a shock to the system, after two and a half seasons of decidedly not small scale apocalyptic survival. The transition from Saturday Morning Cartoon Weirdness to PTSD War Crime Hours is very jarring and unexpected, even if you know it’s going to happen. But the duel zombies arc goes a long way to make that pivot feel deserved, to give actual weight to the sacrifices and choices the characters are about to make.

Also, I somehow managed to write this entire thing without realizing this is my second time my favorite arc in a ygo show has been the one with the word ‘dragon’ in the title.

Greatest strengths of the series:

The slow burn from shonen cartoon to cosmic horror trope subversion.

Truly, I can only compare GX to a handful of other shows that have ever come within the same ballpark of a viewing experience. The closest I can get is maybe relating it to Red vs Blue: One of my favorite shows of all time. And one that it’s absolutely impossible to get into.

See, with both GX and RvB, they’re shows that start out silly, unconnected, and (don’t worry, I love both of these shows with almost my entire heart), bad. Now, an impatient viewer might be tempted to just skip to the point where the show takes off, where it quote unquote “gets good”. But the problem is, if you attempt to cut out all the chaff, you lose what fundamentally makes the sudden spike in writing quality so compelling: the unexpectedness of it.

GX grabbed my attention by the throat in Waking The Dragon, because, up until then, I’d been using it as chill background fodder. Jaden felt so real to me as a protagonist and a person, because I’d spent fourty hours watching him be a normal protagonist/teenager. The previous episodes might not have done much to advance in terms of the plot, but they delivered something equally important: A status quo.

And when that status quo is broken, it feels much more powerful to the audience because it feels so fundamentally wrong. Just like it’s insane to watch in real time as RvB goes from being a bunch of outdated loosely strung together skits to a military drama waxing poetic about morality, GX spins on a dime from “Saturday morning cartoon” to “Cosmic horror meta tropefest”, and every episode you want to look up from the screen and go “How. Wh- Who let them just... do this?” Who let them set out to write one kind of story, and then not bother to correct them when they started doing something completely different? And why is it so good?

That is a very rare feeling in media, I think. To be so truly and utterly thrown off guard by a change in story direction, yet having more fun than you possibly could with some so-called “good” stories. And I think it’s a feeling worth cherishing.

Weakest points:

The slow burn from shonen cartoon to cosmic horror trope subversion.

The other reason I compare GX to Red vs. Blue is the fact that they are both shows that I cannot in good conscience recommend to friends.

“Here’s this show I like,” I say.

“Oh, cool, I’ll check it out!”

They return, minutes to hours later.

“So, I started that show you like and uh. Are you aware it is? Bad?”

“Yeah, don’t worry, it gets better-”

“Oh, sweet, cause I was really worried-”

“-Just give it a couple seasons!”

“I, uh.” They tug at their collar. “Can I skip the bad parts?”

“No. :D”

Hours and hours of time sunk into a mediocrity on the off-chance it “gets good” is a tough pill to swallow for most people. It’s a tough pill to swallow for me, and I willingly aspire to watch every yugioh anime. Add on top of that poor production quality,  bloated plot bunnies, and some writing that has aged like milk, and you have. Well. A benign watching experience, at minimum.

And like I said, there’s good ingredients to the final storyline buried in all that early stuff! Just skipping directly to the middle in a hope to reach “the part everyone talks about” fundamentally waters down the experience, leaving you struggling to understand what has fans going bananas.

Why does the show hit you on the head 200 times with a hammer? Cause it feels so good when it stops!

Now, I’m not your parent, and you can watch tv shows however you want. If you only watched seasons 3 and 4 of GX, then by god, you watched GX, and you are welcome at the discussion table. Get in here, amigo. Your opinion matters just as much as mine.

GX is very difficult to review, in comparison to all its other sister shows, because the aspects some people praise are the very aspects others could never really get into the show because of. Its greatest strength as a story and its greatest weakness as a show are one in the same. It’s sort of this weird child of the family, unable to be talked about without a lot of contradiction and conversational backtracking. Is GX the best show of the three? Maybe. Is it my favorite? No, with an asterisk. Is it some people’s favorite? Absolutely.

If you changed it, made the plot tighter, the writing more concise, had a planned narrative from the beginning and slowly worked in elements of the larger endgame, would those same people still like it, in the same fervor?

I don’t think so.

Most yugioh moment:

YA SEE, A FEW YEARS BACK, ON A ROUTINE DIG FOR DINOSAUR FOSSILS, A LANDSLIDE BROKE OUT AND NEARLY BROKE MY LEG IN TWO. THEY HAD TO OPERATE QUICKLY, SO THEY USED THE DINOSAUR BONE I FOUND TO SAVE MY LEG. EVER SINCE, I'VE HAD WHAT THEY CALL DINO DNA. THE DOCTOR SAYS IT MAKES ME STRONGER THAN THE AVERAGE JOE.

[ranger-ribbons]

Not sure how to go about the headcanon things, but here's some for the comic timelines we both see and only got little hints at during Shattered Grid and Graphic One-Shots:

Eric Myers is not as big of an asshole as he was in the live action Time Force, or he never would have GIVEN Jen a hug.

Cam missed every single member of his team and his dad while stuck in Beyond the Grid, but was mostly worried that Drakkon got his slimy hands on his cousins when he saw a lot of the villains throughout the dimensions and timelines out on the battlefield.

Mia ACTUALLY learned to cook in the second month on Promethea when she lost her powers, because Tyler Navarro, Dana Mitchell, and T.J. Johnson were all there and all of them would have recognized something was not right when she didn't cook chicken and thought a Carolina Reaper made a great condiment.

Fun idea about the World of the Coinless: the Comic Relief or Secondary Characters are all badass and pretty much evolved like Pokemon when Drakkon took over. Fran got shipped to Pai Zhua with Casey when Skull finagled them out of the dungeons they were in for stealing bread and was given Orange, which made her perfect for dual combat in the field with RJ; Victor and Monty got found by Bulk trying to protect grade school children some sentries were bullying after curfew and turned out perfect to help out Trini and the first assault fighters in the field; Ben and Betty got split up during a bombing that killed their dad--with Ben getting picked up by the Coinless and taken under the wing of Rocky and Aisha, whereas Betty got caught by the sentries to be turned over to the Mastodon Division BUT got a final hour diversion into palace housekeeping because Adam is a big softie even if he can't stand up for himself. And so on~

Spike Skullovitch DOES NOT have a mother. Make of that whatever you want.

Animals still exist in the RPM universe, but are kept underground in a specialized, secondary location not terribly unlike the Son Doong Cave.

Cassidy and Devin are actually exceptionally competent when paired up with the Rangers in their high school to do literally anything; largely because the Morphin Grid sets up certain people to assist their Rangers from one team to another and these two were perfect. Though...for some reason they work 90% better with Trent than any of the Primary Rangers?

Orange is the rarest Grid Color and most of those who end up wearing it are female or have a lot of femme qualities and/or some form of mental illness.

When the Psycho Rangers were left to their own devices in the aftermath of the Psycho Path, Yellow never took up a different name and none of them ever went looking for the person that they used to be.

J.J. Oliver is a trans man and Anara is a trans woman and they're both pansexual. They go to Pride together every year and there is a MASSIVE betting pool on when they finally figure out they're basically dating.

Clare might be a massive klutz and Leelee might still be getting used to the whole being human thing, but both of them are the most responsible people in their circle of friends and family.

Sharing your headcanons is just sending me headcanons to enjoy/share with me, with I'm 100% down for. Asking me about mine is just asking me about headcanons surrounding specific teams or people. As a precaution, I haven't seen the comics at all.

I fucking love all of these!

Thank you!

@augment-techs

[yvtro]

struggling to phrase this concisely but do u have any thoughts on how stephanie and cassandra would relate or struggle to relate to jason given that his death was held over both of their heads and the timing of his return to gotham being RIGHT after steph’s death in war games… i just think it’s such an underutilized dynamic and there’s a lot of interesting stuff there bc i think cass would find jason infuriating whereas steph would find him unnervingly relatable and similar to her… add in the context of jason’s relationships to dick babs and tim (or lack thereof) and i just think there’s a lot of much more interesting storylines and conflicts than the half redeemed uncommitted to anything jason we have now where most of the batfam is like simultaneously disdainful of and indifferent to jason’s presence/choices

disclaimer: i'm moving blogs. still here to go through my askbox, but you will find me at @boyfridged from now on.

i’m sorry but I think this might be a mad disappointing answer… (which is why i’m very curious how you see it! maybe there’s some interesting angle that i am missing – please do tell!)

i think it all depends on what moment in the timeline we are thinking about for jason. utrh doesn't offer much space for anyone other than bruce and jay to interact, and i believe this (and lost days) is the only time when he is truly committed to any particular moral 'code' or a specific cause (like 'controlling crime'). even in comics in which jay is portrayed as a villain, he doesn't really... do anything other than displaying severe mental illness symptoms? no more crime empire, no more fixed agenda, just dogmatic murder and wandering around in some maladaptive state. but since you mentioned that in most scenarios he is “half-redeemed”, i will go with what i think is going on with jay post-utrh: he's not truly committed, but he's also not rehabilitated; nowhere near to it, even. 

now, the question that i always ask myself in terms of what dynamics can arise for characters is what both of them can get out of this relationship (on a meta level). 

which kinda leads me to perhaps a very underwhelming assumption that jay is just such a mess in that period that it's difficult to imagine scenarios where characters like steph or cass actually gain anything from sharing the narrative with him. it's a bit ironic in a sense that jay could get plenty out of it in terms of his storyline: cass' very presence poses a threat to his already very wobbly philosophy, and it would probably unnerve him because of how her personality reflects his own innate compassion. steph, on the other hand, is like a still frame of his worst time as robin, right before his death. (and by *the worst* I mean his emotional turmoil and issues in relationship with bruce rather than an assessment of his skills or even morals), which i think would also terrify him. as such, i reckon he would actually avoid both of them. in terms of cass, I don’t think she would necessarily want to interact with him either, mostly because while *ordinarily* she would fight anyone of his views, and she for sure wouldn't have much sympathy for him, she would be able to see that his philosophy is a result of immense trauma. we could conceive circumstances in which they are forced to work together, and as i once mentioned, if we put them in a box and shook hard enough, a conflict would definitely arise. but at the end of the day, does cass get anything out of it in terms of her own development? at this point she is (for the better part) way past the internal conflicts that jay experiences; she is simply more mature. 

as for steph, i could see steph seeking him out if the comparison to the ‘failed robin’ was fresh in her mind. but I think, to an extent, she would be disappointed – because while they do share a lot of characteristics and background, he is reckless only as much as he is suicidal. it’s definitely not his typical trait and as a child, he never had the same issues with bruce until the very end (starlin’s run). i'm not saying there's no room to still bond over certain things – but jay's self-isolating tendencies definitely would not help here at all. and i think if steph realised how big of a mistmatch there is between all of stories she was fed and his past + current attitude, she would maybe pity him.

so tldr it’s very difficult for me to imagine any particular dynamics nor stories for them within that timeframe. i don't think it's the case for *all* characters btw – i think people who knew him before (dick, donna, perhaps leslie or dana if we want to go in the direction of civilians), people who don't even know who he is and don't really care (kyle), or parental figures/older gen (talia or even some jl members) generally have a better set up to get involved with jay in meaningful ways (for both sides involved.)

but when it comes to characters around his age who only heard of him in a context of his death, it's simply... sad, especially that he *is* still a walking tragedy at this point.

now, on the other hand… the lost days? here, there is some grand potential for cass & jay or even jay & steph content. but that’s a topic for a whole another post.

[soapver4]

Gardening in a Stone Economy

Remake + ○●-Severance hybrid idea: A data science enthusiast is economically compelled to settle for a Go job in her alternate reality, where costs for higher-level computational processing like her original specialty are exorbitant due to resource depletion, AlphaGo and the like have not been invented and organizations resort to mind-control headsets that translate the logic in mundane onscreen work to gameplay logic. These headsets fortuitously use materials not yet in scarcity in that world. The closer the work meets end goals and procedural standards, the better the mentally displayed Go game progresses. The purpose of the translation is two-fold: 1) achieve watertight protection of commercial secrecy and 2) boost employee motivation in a compact, non-graphics-intensive manner.

But since even Go experts may falter on bad-hair days, work protocols limit employees to a small range of moves for each narrowly defined game scenario, which means office jobs still induce yawns regardless of one's fondness of Go. Worse, workers spend years in Go academies only to face potential skill attrition in autonomous analytical and strategic thinking and in solution creativity as they work round the clock in this manner until elderhood.

Intelligence and knowledge perish sooner than one's capacity for altruism, provided the will for the latter lasts. Faced with the same bleak circumstances, some strive to rise above their station in life in a self-determined sense by not only enduring the grind with increasing grit (as far as self-care permits) and rallying around their teams but also extending comradeship and empathy to everyone, whereas some help themselves Misaeng villain-style to what they see as substitute additional compensation: corporate moneys and female playthings.

The heroine stoically sticks to the former approach, Misaeng hero-style. Her spiritual counsel is a set of principles from her data science days:

Garbage in, Garbage out: How much do you trust ethical decision-making founded on empty stomachs, sleep-deprived brains and hatred-consumed memories? Don't ill-treat yourself yet expect to be unfailingly seen as a good grid conqueror. Don't ill-treat your co-workers yet expect unfailing support from them when you slip into a needy position. (But don't expect sympathy either if you cite your reception of ill treatment as justification for your ill treatment of someone. When people are struggling to escape your claws, they do not have the cognitive bandwidth to analyze your personal history.)

Actionable Insights: Endlessly regurgitating negative experiences you are powerless to redress through yourself or through others perpetuates the pain, although perpetual flashbacks are sometimes passive phenomena individuals are powerless to stop. Look out for facts you can act on. For example, do you feel more irritable as the night thickens? How about investing in a cozy LED lamp to boost your enemy-encircling efficiency after dusk? Does your brain come alive during the dull workday only during lunch? How about snacking on colorful berries as you move your stones?

Watch out for Outliers: See beyond immediate gratification and momentary bruises to the ego for the full picture. While do-no-gooders collect future lawsuits, festering grudges, and other ticking time-bombs, you plot your narrowing financial distance to your dreams for each day of hardship or plot your growing insights into multifaceted human nature for each negotiation on fair game allocation.

Mindful Annotation: A small act of kindness can be a quick glow-up and perk-me-up. A small thought for others can be respite from the prison of your own anxieties. In contrast, don't you ever wonder why various screen characters pursue evil as a vocation only to look perpetually stressed and on the guard? What begin as petty comparison and moderate insecurity in those series blow up into messy huge schemes and constant paranoia. Real-life victims may believe, too, that their thirst for justice outlasts perpetrators' feelings of dominion and thrill. Moreover, workplace guidelines and public discourse are increasing on honest stone laborers' side.

Self-care and self-improvement do not imply surrendering to an unhealthy work-life arrangement. The ending reminds us of this as the heroine runs along rooftops above congested streets to submit a labor reform petition on time. We see in parallel a sequence of her leaping between roofs and another of Misaeng's protagonist doing nearly the same, except that a wide anti-suicide net visibly hangs between her roofs. There is no shame in valuing her life.

[tokoro-ga-dokkoi]

Tokoroplasmosis: Ichijou Fans' Brainworms

(Disclaimer: This is just a long shitpost. Please don't take it seriously. As there are inappropriate jokes, no one under 18 can read it. Please do not read if you dislike self-deprecative and vulgar humour.)

Microscopic image of Tgd. gondii parasites infesting a human brain.

Tokoroplasmosis (to-ko-ro-plaz-MOE-sis) is a brain disease caused by the parasite Tokorogadokkoi-plasma gondii.

Just as Toxoplasmosis the cat parasite is common throughout the world's population, Tokoroplasmosis is common amongst Kaiji fans, with an estimated number of more than 60%.

If you suspect you have Tokoroplasmosis, please read on to find out your symptoms, and how you can escape this dark bog.

Do you think this sadistic villain is funny and cute?

"Tokoro ga dokkoi.... Yume ja arimasen....! Genjitsu desu....! Kore ga genjitsu..!" If you laugh and cheer during this scene, you are tokoroplamosis-infected. (LINE official colourised version of an infamous scene.)

How to contract it

Visual and audial exposure to the character Ichijou Seiya from Kaiji is the cause of Tokoroplasmosis, but only when combined with certain other factors. As such, some people are effected, whereas other people are naturally immune.

Let us take a look at the psychological profile of the individual predisposed to Tokoroplasmosis infection.

If you:

Enjoy certain moe attributes: yandere, tsundere, femboy, business suit, etc

Have a sadistic or masochistic tendency

Are used to the artstyle

A fan of Namikawa (I do wish he was voiced by Yuu Kobayashi though)

A cat lover (already toxo-infected)

then you are at high risk of tokoro-infection.

Symptoms

If you find yourself saying phrases such as:

"Ichijou did nothing wrong"

"Ichijou should have won"

"Ichijou will come back soon"

"Ichijou will team up with Kaiji to defeat the Chairman"

"Ichijou will get revenge and kill Kaiji"

"Ichijou is so cute"

etc

not as a joke, but sincerely feeling it in your heart, your kokoro is tokoro-infected.

Is it dangerous?

Masochistic and impulsive behaviours such as gambling may increase. Otherwise, not much is known.

Is there treatment?

Tokoroplasmosis has no known cure. You can never escape this bog. The only thing you can do is avoid Ichijou-related stimuli. Do not view NND dokkoi MADs, for example.

Are Toxoplasmosis patients more liable to become Tokoroplasmosis-infected?

Yes, it helps. In my experience, most Ichijou fans are 'cat people'. The groundwork is already paved. Ichijou looks and acts like a cat, his hair intakes resemble cat's ears, his large twinkling eyes are like those of a cat, he has catlike movements and gestures. He calls Kaiji a dog multiple times (like many characters in the series), just like how cat characters in cartoons hate dogs and act snobby towards them. If they're fighting like cats and dogs, it must mean that Ichijou is a cat; inherently attractive to the toxo-infected.

Is Tokoroplasmosis linked to mental instability?

In reality, Toxoplasmosis the cat parasite disease, is linked to development of various mental illnesses such as schizophrenia- this is no laughing matter. You can rest assured that "Tokoroplasmosis" is only linked to mild eccentricity and perversion.

Tokoroplasmosis and sexual perversion

Tokoroplasmosis, much like Toxoplasmosis (there are academic studies), is linked to development of dangerous abnormal fetishism. Mice are usually afraid of cats. Toxo-infected mice become sexually aroused by the scent of cat urine. The toxo-mice run excitedly towards the cat's litter box and waste materials, where the cat lures them in, devours and destroys them.

If you are excited by Ichijou omorashi, or any Ichijou doujins for that matter, you are severely tokoro-infected.

If this diagram makes you excited, and you do not play baseball, you are tokoro-infected.

On the contrary: it is so common that it may be considered normal, or even 'healthy'

Ichijou is one of the most popular Kaiji characters. He always gets in the top 5 or top 3 on Kaiji character popularity polls, in both East and West.

Just as cat lovers, albeit eccentric, can lead healthy lives even with Toxoplasmosis, the same is true for Ichijou's fans.

However, there are subtle changes in the behaviour and culture of these patients.

Who is the ultimate Tokoroplasmosis patient?

A bread-shaped man named Murakami Tamotsu. Murakami's Tokoroplasmosis is truly severe.

Another Tokoroplasmosis patient may be Kurosaki Yoshihiro. However, his case is more mild and subtle, a latent case.

Perhaps even Itou Kaiji himself is tokoro-infected: "ICHIJOU.. ICHIJOU.. ICHIJOU.. ICHIJOU.. ICHIJOU.. ICHIJOU.. ICHIJOU.. ICHIJOU.. ICHIJOU.. ICHIJOU.. ICHIJOU.. ICHIJOU.. " (seriously who could yell his name 12 times in a row w) "YOU BETTER COME BACK…!"

Does Ichijou himself have it?

Yes, in fact he is the definitive host. Just as T. gondii reproduces in cat intestinal tract, Tgd. gondii reproduces in his intestinal tract. This is part of why many people are attracted to him intimately. Tgd. gondii's modus operandi is to enter the 'winning hole' and reproduce in there.

How to tokoro-infect someone

You can show them this official article published in Kodansha Morning. It is a truly dangerous article written by a severely tokoro-infected person. It is expertly designed to transmit Tokoroplasmosis to anyone who reads it. When reading it, you can feel the writer's deep level of affection for Ichijou, and these feelings are transmitted to you.

Do you have Tokoroplasmosis?

Yes, and I will have it for as long as I live. Ichijou is so cute.

[blackholeofcreativity]

As a neurodivergent person i had a very similar experience with my sexuality but a very different one with my gender.

I was, admittedly, taught early on that being gay was taboo. However, as a teen i got really into social justice, and in 11th grade found myself in the queer friend group of the grade - both things which really helped unlearn all the internalized homophobia. Importantly, at this point i still identified as cishet. Come college, i meet this girl and fall head over heels for her. I’m in denial until she tells me she knows i’m straight but she finds me hella attractive. My brain short circuits, i ask to kiss her, and we spend a year together as girlfriends. It was just an “oh” kind of realization - like huh, i’m into at least one girl, guess i’m bi now. Time to tell my high school peeps that i’m not actually the token straight friend anymore! I was only truly worried about my parents, but mostly because i worried they’d judge me and treat me differently, not that i’d lose their love or support.

Gender, on the other hand, was something i struggled with since i was small. I always felt like i was not enough of a girl, i wasn’t as feminine as society told me i should be - at the time i didn’t know that gender was just a performance for most people. I thought i was just weird, alien, destined to be alone. In elementary school, i became friends with the tomboys in my class. I felt power in not being “what girls should be”. However i never *truly* fit in because there was still a lot about femininity that i saw in myself and genuinely enjoyed - but i tried to be a better tomboy.

Then, in middle school, i begun identifying as “not like other girls”. I didn’t fit in or have any friends, and that built resentment in me for the “other girls”, who seemed to so effortlessly fit in and find friends and boys who were interested in them. I was jealous, but i also had a twisted sense of superiority - i now recognized gender as a performance and thought all “other girls” were stuck conforming to a rigid presentation in order to fit in. They were suffering in their bonds of traditional femininity, whereas i was free to be true to myself - even though i was alone, i felt powerful, like i had gained some secret knowledge that none of them had the guts to face. I also found feminism (the toxic, terfy exclusionary kind) and thought of them as complicit in their own oppression, only by being like me could they be true feminists.

Then came high school. During the first two years, i was dealing with a newly presenting chronic illness - not much time or mental space to obsess over the intricacies of gender. I was still “not like other girls” but i was also thinking “maybe other girls… aren’t actually that bad? Maybe they’re not the villains in my story?” And i made more friends. I was still grappling with the fact that i wasn’t feminine enough, but i also wasn’t overly masculine when it came up.

Throughout all of this time, i wasn’t incredibly aware of the existence of trans people. Like rationally, i knew they existed by the time i finished middle school, but it was never something i thought of, and i never actually met anyone who was trans, so it was never something that factored into any of my gender analises. I was, however, increasingly aware of the gay community - and increasingly supportive of them.

Skip to the final years of high school. I found myself in a group of queers for the first time in my life, regularly interacting with people of different sexualities for the first time in my life. Queue me finding out that one of my friends identified as nonbinary. “Nonbinary,” i thought, “what the hell is that?”

“It’s when a person feels like they’re neither a boy nor a girl. They go by they/them pronouns, instead of either she/her or he/him.” My friend explained. That was news to me, i didn’t know that was possible. And pronouns? Weird, but i wanna be a good ally and i love that friend, so i tried to take it in stride. Unknowingly, i started absorbing the “requirements” of being trans and nonbinary. That friend was very androgynous, used they/them pronouns, was bisexual, the works. Nothing like me, at the time. It didn’t help that the entire group was “tumblr gays” - but i don’t judge because that’s all we had access to at the time.

Come college and i accidentally create a group solely consisting of queer folks. And finally, i find myself with access to a real queer community. I’ve started questioning my gender properly at this point, but felt that i couldn’t claim a trans identity because i didn’t want to change how i presented (i know, accidental transmedicalist take alert). I didn’t want to transition, so i thought that excluded me from being trans in any way. But with the continuous support of my community, i grew to accept that i have a wonky gender, and my feelings are all that matter. Claiming a label would take nothing from other trans folks, and they don’t have to be permanent.

Now, i am a proud nonbinary girl. I haven’t come out to most people in my life because i feel no need to. I feel comfortable being perceived as a woman, and only share my wonky gender with the people i trust. Nothing has changed externally, but internally, i am at peace with being not quite a girl - in peace with my gender for the first time in my life. I understand myself better, and that’s all i really needed.

Circling back to your point, OP, i can relate partially to your experiences. And i feel like it is so important to stop defining the queer experience via suffering, like you said. I think i would’ve accepted my trans identity at least a few years sooner had i not equated the trans experience with being at risk of experiencing transphobia, having body dysmorphia, etc. And if it would have changed my situation, i can only imagine that others would benefit incredibly from this shift too. Queer suffering is not the only queer experience, and we should try to emphasize that more when we can. And good god everyone deserves to find an irl queer community, because tumblr queerness can be so limiting it becomes suffocating.

so guys turns out that being raised by queer people alienates me from the queer experience. probably not a good thing

[thevisibilityarchives]

Westlake Soul (2012), Rio Youers

Disabled

Summary: Champion surfer Westlake Soul’s entire life is turned upside down after a surfing accident leaves him in a persistent vegetative state. As his family and friends struggle to maintain the hope that he will reawaken, Westlake himself persists in an ultimate battle for his livelihood with the newfound powers granted by the accident–powers that have the potential to bring him back for good.

Review Link: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5256249753?book_show_action=false

Full review: When we reflect upon our preconceptions about health and disability, we’re faced with the ways such biases color our perceptions of that world.

In the United States alone, 27% of people are disabled. The World Health Organization estimates this number is 1 in 6 individuals worldwide. We we think of disabilities, the preconceptions above that arise are often the associations of people with physical disabilities, or occasionally debilitating mental disabilities associated with trauma. 

As growing numbers of people are beginning to recognize, however, disabilities come in a variety of physical, mental, and emotional forms. They can be physical conditions such as blindness, invisible conditions like Diabetes, or mental illnesses like Schizophrenia. Additionally, they can come in varying states of permanency, like a broken leg that will heal, or deafness, which a person can be born with, or Multiple Sclerosis which a person can begin experiencing the effects of during adulthood. 

Westlake Soul is an adept exploration of acquired disability that soars over the tropes of disability narratives, interweaving a fantasy-laden psychedelic experience to take us into the mind of a character trapped in a persistent vegetative state following a catastrophic surfing accident.

A vegetative state is defined as “when the cerebrum (the part of the brain that controls thought and behavior) no longer functions, but the hypothalamus and brain stem (the parts of the brain that control vital functions…continue to function. Thus, people open their eyes and appear awake but otherwise do not respond to stimulation in any meaningful way.” (Maise, 2022)

In the ensuing years following the accident, the titular character’s family holds out hope that he will emerge from his fleshy tomb, unaware that within the confines of his mind, Westlake has undergone a transformation. 

He’s developed superpowers. 

For decades, there was a misguided, ableist, and now-outdated trope of granting disabled characters superpowers, often promoting them to the status of over-arching villains or occasionally, insufferable heroes in some attempt to “prove” their worthiness to society. 

Dr. Sami Schalk alludes to this stereotype as the “supercrip” a term that has dated back since the 1970s and analyzes the issues with its deployment in media. 

In an article examining the term in disability studies scholarship, Dr. Schalk defines the trope and its issues: 

“in Marvel comics in particular, superpowers “‘overcompensate’ for a perceived physical defect, difference, or outright disability. Often, the super-power will erase the disability, banishing it to the realm of the invisible, replacing it with raw power and heroic acts of derring-do in a hyper-masculine fashion” (307). While there are connections and even overlap between the two, I distinguish the superpowered supercrip narrative from the glorified supercrip narrative because the person in a glorified supercrip narrative is represented as achieving something extraordinary through (supposedly) only hard work and determination, whereas the person or character in a superpowered supercrip narrative becomes exceptional by dint of their extraordinary powers and abilities alone—powers and abilities which are not the result of effort, but merely accident or luck. These are the stories of characters like the blind detective with extraordinary hearing or the superhero who gains powers after a potentially disabling accident.”

In Westlake Soul, author Rio Youers subverts this trope by crafting the development of Westlake’s powers as something of an enigma. Indeed, Westlake’s gifts are powerful, yet limited. So limited that he can barely make use of them. He is hardly the second coming of Professor X. 

He can mentally flit in and out of his body to influence others and spends ample time communicating with the family dog. His attempts to telepathically commune with family and friends to inform them that he is in fact still conscious and has newfound powers can be described as discomforting at best, leaving him to abandon the practice. Mostly, he spends his time battling an impending specter that appears within his dream space by the name of Dr. Quietus whose presence perhaps indicates a threat more real than a simple nightmare. These battles leave Westlake exhausted when he awakens, and with too little energy to put more into attempting to achieve his goal: figuring out how to regain control of his cerebrum. 

This importance of achieving this goal becomes imperative when it becomes clear that after several years, Westlake’s family has begun to consider his quality of life. Whether he will ever reawaken or if he is even at all conscious is a matter of debate that cannot be answered by doctors around them, and without a living will having been prepared in advance by Westlake, there is no guidance on whether the life he is currently living is one he ever would have liked to live. All they can now debate is his right to live vs. his right to die with dignity. 

The right to die is a highly contested issue right now, with more healthcare systems internationally adapting to the demand for people’s demand to die with dignity as populations continue to exceed life expectancy, and face an increase in disease. An NPR Boston affiliate reports “In the past five years, states allowing access to life-ending medication for the terminally ill have more than tripled.” (Sutherland, Chakrabarti, and Skoog, 2023). 

Their decision is one mostly driven by empathy and care: no one wants to see their loved one suffer or exist in a state of what many of us would consider to be a low-quality life. And herein lies the horror Youers brings: we see into Westlake's mind. We know that, unlike the real world of comatose and vegetative people, Westlake is very much conscious. He is fighting to come back, and he is battling each and every eerie day. 

Westlake must find the means to battle his foe and unite with his body while taking us on a journey through his innermost thoughts, memories, and desires in a spectacular book that makes for fantastic graphic novel material. 

With care and consideration, Rio Youers crafts a portrait of disability and tragedy and centers on a devastating situation while making it flourish with love and light. There are many joyful moments to be found and a beautiful journey to coast among the many waves. 

Not to mention lots of conversations with the family dog. 

You can find Westlake Soul here at Youers’ website, attempt to find or order a copy through your local bookstore, or find it via your local library. 

Citations: 

[captain-azoren]

I don't think I've seen it mentioned much, but going off the post by @atla-recluse about the three female leaders, I think we can add Eska to the mix.

I think Eska was partially Bryke's reflection of the "crazy girl" that Azula became in the finale, but whereas Azula had a tragic breakdown, Eska was just a crazy, possessive yandere out to dominate Bolin and mad at Korra, mostly played for laughs.

Maybe this reflects on how Bryke didn't take Azula's breakdown or her mental illness seriously, and the mad woman trope is just something they like to have for some cheap drama.

It's just either funny or shocking, but not intended by them to make us feel sympathetic. We're not meant to feel bad that they're so upset they almost can't control themselves, they're villains after all, and them going crazy is their own fault. Them being upset is only supposed to heighten how threatening they are, not develop their character in any meaningful way.

Of course, I don't agree with that, and I think it's less interesting.

Eska is also a bit of a reflection of Mai, having the similar goth aesthetic and apathy.

In any case, I was disappointed with how Eska was handled. I had expected more substance from her and Desna. I still like them, but maybe moreso the potential they had. At least they still showed up in books 3 and 4, if briefly.

[writingquestionsanswered]

What are underrated tropes you would like to see more in books?

Personal Q&A: Underrated Tropes I'd Like to See More Often

1. Secret Identity - my favorite trope in the world is when a character is hiding their true identity from everyone around them. It's so much fun watching them interact with other characters who HAVE NO IDEA who they're really interacting with (a princess, a superhero, a celebrity, a supernatural being), and waiting for the big moment the secret finally comes out.

2. Hiding a Big Secret - for me, this is actually a subset of the Secret Identity trope, but it's a little different because whereas "secret identity" usually happens when a character is hiding their true identity from new people, "Hiding a Big Secret" is more about hiding something big from people they already know. One of my favorite examples is the TV show Alias with Jennifer Garner, or at least the early episodes. She's a regular girl who discovers she was secretly programmed to be a super spy, so she's off doing super spy stuff in disguise, beating up dangerous villains and risking her life, and then she goes and meets her BFF for coffee and he has no idea she was in Barcelona last night recovering stolen plans for the CIA. (I mean, that's not an exact example, but you get the point...)

3. Beauty and the Beast - I think this trope is underrated because although it's been done, it's rarely done well. Too often writers don't want to sacrifice a "hot" main character for the "beast" role, so they default to problematic behavior instead. And it's so unnecessary. You can put a character in the beast role without having them engage in problematic behavior. And you can even use physical aspects without doing something problematic in your portrayal. I'd love to see more of that.

4. Found Family - I think this one has taken off a lot, so it's maybe not that underrated anymore, but I love found families and would still love to see more. Especially really unusual, complex found families in unusual situations, who forge their family bond while making the best of a non-ideal situation. Strong friendships in general are great!

5. Siblings - I'm thoroughly disheartened to look at my shelf of completed novel first drafts and find that only 4/10 of my characters have siblings. And in one case, it's step siblings. Looking at my book shelves, the situation is much the same with my favorite books. Siblings are so often either missing entirely, or if they exist, they're just minor characters. But I LOVE stories where at least two of the main characters are siblings, or where the protagonist's sibling/s play more than a minor role in the story. Especially when the sibling is supportive of whatever the protagonist is doing and they have a healthy and realistic sibling relationship.

6. People Who Feel Things - I don't mind unemotional characters when it's a specific and thoughtful portrayal of a character living with a mental illness that suppresses emotion, but I'm really over writers who create unemotional characters because they think they're edgy, or because they want another character to "fix" them. I'm so much more taken with characters who are allowed to actually feel things, especially when they're people who put on a stoic outward appearance either because they have to or think they have to, like someone in a military position or position of authority. I love it when a character you'd describe as tough, gritty, hard-as-nails, no-nonsense, etc., can still be giddy over love, melt into a puddle over a cute animal, or scoop a friend into a hug when they're having a hard day.

7. Healthy Committed Relationships - It sometimes feels like the only healthy committed relationship in a story is the one that makes up the romantic story line, but somehow the couples around them are divorced, bickering, "on again off again," or otherwise "it's complicated..." I really love it when other characters in the story, besides the romantic pairings, have happy committed relationships.

Those are the ones off the top of my head! ♥

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[burningvelvet]

oddly enough i wonder if percy florence shelley only became a conservative to upkeep his status as a baronet or because of social pressure from extended family, etc.??? because he also ran a theatre and supported the arts (despite not being an artist himself), was a big fan of boating like percy, didn’t have biological children but adopted his daughter from someone he knew, did some stuff for charity, overall seemed like a nice functioning individual… the conservatism definitely seems more financially-oriented from what very little information i can find on his life…!! and i’m not saying fiscal conservatism is okay—all i’m saying is that these matters are very nuanced and i find it very interesting to consider how the child of radicals like william godwin, mary wollstonecraft, mary shelley, and percy shelley, could turn out to be a conservative politician. also, it may have been due to his mother (mary shelley’s) influence. later in life she actually became a bit more conservative but i don’t think this erases her legacy as a revolutionary. it’s understandable that after so many years of dealing with chronic mental and physical illness, moral, religious, and philosophical crises, struggling with bisexuality in a homophobic religious culture, being socially ostracized, shunned, and villainized for years, and having such a very complicated family life and social life… of course she probably felt some pressure to become more “normal” later on in life, and more moderate or even conservative views would have provided a bit of “social safety” to her world. england was also becoming more conservative on the whole, after the decadence of the georgian/regency era wherein she wrote frankenstein. everyone was bitter that the revolutionaries hadn’t succeeded and most (like shelley and keats) had died young and tragically, further disenchanting their followers. mary was especially depressed at the increasing conservatism of society, and probably felt helpless but to join in on it toward the end of her life, seeing how her radical loved ones were so ahead of their time, were unrecognized in their lifetimes, and failed to effect immediate social change. this is probably why her novel the last man, a fictionalized dystopian story about percy shelley and lord byron, is set in the late 2000s, to highlight how their radicalism might have been more appreciated in another era. but this is why i love studying history and biographies, because it’s a practice in compassion and patience—and it’s so important to recognize that most people in this world are very nuanced and complex. ESPECIALLY the thinkers of the revolutionary and post-revolutionary era, when all of the western world was shifting in views anyway. it’s important to ask questions like: what makes people more liberal or more conservative? how do people cope with their life circumstances, and how do those affect their views? how may a persons views change throughout their life? karl marx and his wife suggested that if percy had lived longer he would have become even more radical and helped to usher in communism sooner, whereas they thought if byron had lived longer he would have become a conservative due to his more aristocratic lean (maybe they forgot that byron consciously died while fighting in the greek revolution? but i do see their point, and i think he could have gone either way myself—while he was progressive and anti-royalist, he was also extremely sensitive to big changes in any capacity, and he was extremely contradictory, hesitant, and indecisive). it’s also interesting to analyze political psychology, aka how a person’s psychological leanings can inform their political and philosophical opinions. it’s generally found that people who rate higher in general fear, anxiety, and especially paranoia and safety consciousness, are often more prone to conservatism, even if only later in life. that description would indeed describe byron, who kept weapons on him even when he slept (which may also relate to his childhood molestation, which he thought had a profound effect on him).

it’s so funny to me that lord byron’s daughter was a badass who invented computer science and had a shit ton of affairs but percy and mary shelley’s son was a failed conservative politician who had a happy peaceful marriage. yin and yang

[linkspooky]

Who is it who really needs saving? 

is the question Dabi asked when Tokoyami came to rescue Hawks in the middle of the raid war arc. Dabi asks this question just after Hawks stabbed twice in the back with the justification that it would save people, despite the fact that Twice was also a victim too, and also someone in need of saving. Dabi’s question is especially poignant because it asks who is hero society invested in saving, a question that is repeated by Twice who believes Hero Society only saves the good victims, and Himiko as well who asks if Heroes save people, then was Twice not a person. 

I bring this up because chapter 299/300 end on another parallel between Dabi and Hawks. Both of them have their backs being shown, however, Hawks is already healing due to the nature of his quirk, whereas the permanent burns on Dabi’s skin has already gotten worse. Hawks and Dabi also have opposite goals at this point, Hawks to support Endeavor, and Dabi’s ultimate goal is to bring him down. However, Rei’s words over Endeavor’s panel add another layer of complication to this. “Those regrets and guilt, the rest of those have borne that burden much more than you have.” Endeavor is suffering, but he’s not the one most in need of saving. I believe next chapter rightly, Rei is going to point out that the ones most in need of saving are the ones who suffered the most because of Endeavor’s actions. Endeavor was never the one in need of saving, and in need of redemption in the first place, rather it was Dabi. 

1. Started From the Bottom Now We’re Even Lower

Hawks and Dabi are seeming opposites even from their origin points. Hawks was born in a poor household the son to a minor villain, Touya a rich household the son of the number two hero. Hawks family name basically means nothing to the point where the hero commission easily erased it, whereas Dabi’s family name has dominated his entire life. Touya from a young age was given everything he needed to become a hero and his father even encouraged him, while Hawks was on the run from the law and couldn’t even leave his small house without getting yelled at. 

At first, Hawks was born with a quirk that both of his parents disapproved of as they constantly asked him what his wings were even for, and seemed disgusted by his mutation. While at the same time, Touya was born with a quirk that his father was happy with, a fire quirk even stronger than his own which Enji thought gave him enough of a potential that he didn’t need to worry about finding an ideal hybrid quirk. He could pass all his techniques onto his firstborn son who seemed eager to learn. 

The only real similarity between both of them was that for both children, Endeavor was clearly their favorite hero. Touya was eager to please his father and train with him in order to inherit his hero techniques, and when Endeavor captured Hawks father, it convinced Hawks that heroes were real. 

However, both of them experienced a sudden reversal of fate. This is where circumstances for both of them flipped. Touya’s quirk was in fact revealed to be a very harmful hybridization of his parents two quirks, he inherited his father’s flames but even hotter, while at the same time inheriting Rei’s sensitivity to fire which made th overheating flaw even worse on him causing his quirk to deliberately harm his body. Hawks however, is an ideali hybridization of both of his parents quirks. His mother Tomie has a quirk that creates eyeballs and seems ideal for searching, watching and locating things, while his father’s feather quirks on his arms that could sharpen into blades turned into wings on his back that were both capable of searching and detection like his mother’s eyeballs and sharpening into blades like his father’s. 

At first it seems destined that Touya was ging to become a hero, while Hawks had no hope for him, but because of the nature of their quirks the opposite happened. When Hawks was young he was able to save a busload of people from crashing which got him recruited by the hero commission. While it’s implied that Touya kept trying to train on his own even after Endeavor stopped the training and abandoned him in favor of Shoto, and because of that Touya had his training accident at Sekoto peek and burned to death. 

Dabi and Hawks are seeming opposites, but they’re actually quite similar if you think about it. Both of them grew up in abusive households that are intentionally paralleled, they have controlling and physically violent fathers, and mothers who are coded as mentally ill, Tomie was unfit to take care of a child, and Rei was eventually pushed to a breaking point where she was unable to anymore and then forcibly separated and institutionalized by her husband. Both, also experienced a separation from their mother, Rei was hospitalized around the time Toya finally died, and the Hero Commission promised Tomie support if she cut all ties from him. Both of them also dreamed of becoming heroes, and tried their best to, even Touya after his father rejected him kept training on their own. 

The only difference between them is circumstances, Hawks was saved because he was born with a useful quirk, Touya despite his father being the number two hero was never saved. 

2. We’re the Heroes, Who Don’t Do Anything

In fact it’s implied that Enji intentionally looked away and forced himself to forget Touya’s suffering. For instance, the first time Touya trains with Enji he’s shown wearing a sleeveless shirt. Every time after that, Touya has long jacket sleeves on. When he’s crying to Natsuo, when he’s pulling out his hair, and the last memory from before his death, every time Touya is shown hiding his arms. We also know that Dabi, has burns that go all the way up his arms which is exactly where his flames emerge from. It’s also the place where Touya burns himself when Enji remembers training with him for the first time. 

It’s likely that Touya was walking around with burns up his arms from the training he was inflicting on himself, and Enji simply didn’t notice because his unreliable narrator status, he forgets everything he has done to other members of his family, or intentionally downplays the severity of it in order to avoid the guilt and consequences of his actions. Hence why he can say things like “I never meant to neglect you” to Natsuo, when we saw him call Natsuo and the others failures from Shoto’s perspective, because in Enji’s perspective he’s just a good father who went wrong somewhere along the line, whereas from Natsuo’s perspective he never really acted like a father towards him at all.

Enji only ever sees his own intentions, and not the impact his actions had on others. He only saw his heroic ambitions, and not the way he taught Touya that his only value was his quirk, and then completely tossed him aside as a failure and ignored all his suffering when Touya kept trying to get his attention. That he intentionally neglected Touya until either an accident or a suicide claimed his life. 

Either way it’s a running theme that Endeavor hesitates when it comes to saving his own sons. Despite seeing himself as both a hero and a father, he completely fails in both roles to them. 

He froze when it came time to save Natsuo from Ending, and the second time when Shoto was begging Endeavor for help against Dabi, Endeavor chose not to do a single thing. In fact the only thing that moved him was Deku’s pep talk that exclusively stoked his ego and called him a good mentor, which caused Endeavor to finally move into action. 

Endeavor is a hero in name who has no interest in directly saving others, because his number one priority has always been to stand at the number one spot and feel like he’s accomplished something. He didn’t notice Touya was most likely continuing the training on his own, and was spiraling that badly until after Touya had died, and even after that happened he still continued the training with Shoto like nothing happened, even mentioning that Touya was a small mistake. 

When the wounds from Touya’s death were still fresh, it seemed like barely anything more than an afterthought to him. There are some people who even theorize that Enji only believed Touya was always alive because he had never truly faced the guilt of Touya’s death and his role in it, that it was a comfort to him to believe his son was still secretly alive out there. 

The signs were obvious that Touya was spiraling, but he was neglected so much that Endeavor the number two hero who prides himself on most cases resolved didn’t notice what was going wrong with his son until he literally burned himself alive, and even then that wasn’t enough to stop him from mistreating his other son and forcing him into painful training. 

Touya’s neglect is as much abuse as Shoto’s favoritism and training, that’s the point of the golden child / scapegoat dynamic, they are both being abused. Enji was the only parent in the household, and if his kid was burning himself, and injuring himself all the time and it got to the point where the child literally died because of a lack of adult supervision, Enji could be prosecuted for manslaughter in a court of law. There are cases where adults just, do absolutely nothing for their kids, and those kids sometimes die of neglect, starvation, because of their parents completely failing to take care of them. It’s just as sinister a form of abuse as physical abuse. In both cases a child’s needs aren’t being provided for by their parents. 

Dabi is someone who could have been easily saved by his father paying attention to him, and should have been saved by the man who prides himself as the number two hero, but he was left to rot. This is a running theme with Endeavor, he’s a hero who continually fails to save his family. 

Dabi’s situation is also a metaphor for hero society at large. Who are the types of people that Hero Society prefers to save? Those who are useful to it like Hawks. It intentionally turns a blind eye to cases like Touya, Tenko  or Twice. If Touya did have burns on his arms from training but was able to cover them up just by wearing long sleeves, and Natsuo was the only one who knew then that goes even further to explain Dabi’s specific obsession with discrediting Endeavor.

If Dabi’s father had just acted like a hero, or acted like a father then he would have been saved. If Dabi’s father had noticed the person most in need of saving was right next to him, the incident where he burned to death never would have happened. Which is why Dabi’s grudge is specifically against heroes who do not act like heroes. Heroes who, cannot save anyone because they are too self involved to perform the duty of saving. He shares Stain’s obsession with ideologically pure heroes, that only heroes who put saving others selflessly over everything else should be allowed to exist and the rest are pretenders to the title.

Notice how Dabi pulls on the scars on his face when begging the people to think about this, about who should really be allowed to call themselves heroes. 

Dabi’s entire arc revolves around this question. Who are the real victims? Who are the ones that really need to be saved? Dabi is a character of mystery and subversion who is constantly hiding his real feelings. 

Dabi is commented on being heartless about Twice’s death, but his actions contradict his words. Dabi goes out of his way trying to avenge Twice even after it’s already too late to save him, even burning up his own body to do so. He tried so hard we see literally there are new scars growing on his back the next time we see him Post-War Arc. 

I’d also like to bring up that while Hawks accuses Dabi of feeling nothing about Twice’s death, Hawks is the one who killed him, and who after the fact shows no regret in his actions because he’s completely justified it to himself. He even remembers Twice like he’s some kind of old friend he took inspiration from, and not a person he manipulated into trusting him then killed. My point is it’s a reversal, Hawks is set up as the one who cares about Twice as a friend, but really was only using him. Dabi claims he was only using him, but he’s the one who showed an actual emotional reaction to Twice’s death and made an effort to save him. 

If I were to say this is one more point of foiling between Dabi and Hawks. They both don’t see themselves as victims and because of that they deny the victimhood of the other. 

Dabi accuses Hawks of becoming a murderer because his father was a murderer. Hawks when he learns the truth about Enji, takes Enji’s side over Dabi’s, believing Endeavor being the true victim in need of help in that situation. This is because Dabi and Hawks both deny their own victimhood, and they project that on each other. Dabi denies his victimhood and pretends to be the villain instead, he’s the villain who is going to take down Endeavor and therefore he’s not suffering. Hawks denies his own victimhood and his abusive past and pretends to be a hero, he’s helping Endeavor become a better hero, so therefore all the abuse Endeavor committed is in the past so therefore he doesn’t have to think about it. Both deny themselves and therefore deny any similarity in one another. 

They’re also two people fatally wrapped up in their own circumstances they turn a blind eye to the suffering of others. Dabi assumes that Shoto is “good” and therefore, must have been raised with love and had it better than him and was raised with love. Whereas Hawks assumes that Twice is “good”, and therefore worthy of saving because he helps other people. In both cases, neither Dabi nor Hawks really understand Shoto or Twice, they’re just judging them by their own projected standards. Dabi only understands his childhood as Touya desperately trying to work for Enji’s attention, so Shoto who had Enji’s attention must have had it good. Hawks was saved because of the bus accident where he saved people as a hero, so obviously it makes sense he reach out to try to save another good person who just had bad luck. 

Despite the fact that both of them are pretty much emotionally dead and in deep denial of their true feelings. 

Dabi has also made a show of how little he cares about Natsuo, while at the same time his most famous line from the pro hero arc is “overthought things and snapped...” 

Dabi is also the only one who notices it’s dangerous to bring Tokoyami onto a battlefield. This is when he asks the question, who is it who needs saving. 

We learn at around the same time, the hope from the Pro Hero arc was intentionally a set up by Dabi to bring Endeavor down, and show everyone eventually that Endeavor hadn’t truly changed. 

These are all small details yes, but keep in mind we’ve really only gotten crumbs of Dabi’s characterization so far because his perspective is one that has deliberately been kept from us. We see his past through almost everyone else’s eyes but his own - because so far the focus has been on Endeavor.

Just like Dabi set up Endeavor’s earlier success only to bring him down, this might also lead to a reversal in the narratives. In 299, Hawks believed Endeavor to be the one in need of help. We are also as an audience set up to believe that the narrative arc will focus around Endeavor’s redemption. This is before the series revealed the circumstances of his son. 

However, Endeavor and Dabi are literal opposites. They’re inversions of each other. Dabi pretends he doesn’t care any more for his family and will go out of his way to hurt them, that all he cares about is revenge, but at the same his ideals are heroic. In his actions and ideals he’s the one calling for a better society. Dabi is the most independent and distant from the league it’s true, and so far he’s denied their friendship, but at the same time it’s Dabi who is the most idealistic of the league. Shigaraki wants to destroy the current society, Himiko wants a society that’s easier on her, but it’s Dabi who has the ideals for a society he wants, one where heroes are held to standards and act like Heroes. It’s dabi better than anyone else who makes the standards for mass appeal. Because, deep down Dabi still has heroic aspirations and drive even if it comes from Stain of all people he’s inspired by. He has some sort of ideals, a world he’s trying to create.

Whereas, Endeavor doesn’t have any heroic ideals at all. His idea of being a hero has always centered around fame, status and the ranking of number one. He’s a hero unconcerned with saving people, only defeating villains to prove his strength. Endeavor presents himself outwardly as someone who is trying to do what’s best for his family, and working towards being the best hero he can be but his intentions are revealed to be selfish, at the same time as Enji’s narration is revealed as unreliable. It may have been set up for an inversion all along, with the setup being that Enji is the one who needed to redeem himself, when Dabi was pushed to the background. Around this time Rei also tried to reassure others, that he was trying to carry his regrets with him. 

However, as soon as Touya’s identity is revealed, Rei’s stance reverses. Now she properly calls out that, Enji hasn’t been carrying his regrets at al.. Instead, he’s been forcing his family to carry the burden of it while he gets to go play hero in front of the public. 

As soon as Touya is revealed to be alive, it’s not Enji who is the center and focus of conversation but rather Touya. In 299, Hawks believes that it’s Endeavor whose in need of saving, but we’re shown that Endeavor only really seems to pity himself in this situation. 

It’s Rei who shows up to remind us, who really is in need of saving in this situation. Not Endeavor but rather those who have been burned the most by Endeavor’s actions. 

Which may be the ultimate parallel between Hawks and Dabi as well, Hawks can’t see himself as a victim so he can’t realize who the victims who need his help the most is. Whereas, Dabi in the future may receive the change of heart he needs to reopen his heart again and accept others, and therefore learn to accept himself. Dabi is set up for a reconciliation between his two selves, Touya the victim and Dabi the villain. While ultimately, Hawks will intentionally turn his back on Keigo the victim, because he can only ever see himself as a hero.

 I’m not suggesting that Dabi is good or Hawks is bad, or the other way around, not something as simple as that but that Dabi is open to change, and this will lead to him eventually opening up to others. Whereas, Hawks who is given practically every opportunity to change, and even escapes killing Twice with no permanent consequences, (his wings are growing back, and he even is freed from the hero commission) chooses to support Endeavor once again. It’s Dabi who calls others to think and reevaluate, and is actively trying to create a change in the world, whereas Hawks only interest is protecting other heroes and not the victims that heroes themselves create. Because in his mind heroes are good and that fact will never change. 

Because Dabi is the one trying to create change, while Hawks continues to cling to Endeavor I believe we’ll eventually receive a reversal for both of them. Just as the narrative around Dabi has changed from irredeemable villain to person in need of saving, we may see exactly what was foreshadowed in this panel happening. Dabi walking towards the light, while Hawks falls further and further into the shadows - because it’s Dabi who is looking for that light, while Hawks chooses to remain in the dark. Hawks was saved once, and now he believes that everyone who is good gets saved, unless they are unlucky like Twice. It’s Dabi who knows the truth, that there are heroes who don’t save people, and it’s Dabi who is at least trying to confront that truth head on and change it rather than just ignoring it. 

In a way Hawks is someone who has gone blind from looking too closely at Endeavor’s light, whereas because Dabi was failed by Endeavor and fell into the shadows he at least knows the truth about what it’s like for those who don’t get saved, and unlike Hawks can’t keep deluding himself that this is a world where everyone who deserves it gets saved. 

[sylvanas-girlkisser]

I'm not into LoL but I've been watching Arcane and found your posts. Could you please explain why the cymbal monkey imagery from the “Get Jinxed” video is offensive? I'm interested to know how they managed to change that into something positive but don't have the necessary context... Thank you!

There's a reason I chose the phrasing "borderline" offensive; because I don't think its like a cut and dry: "oh wow that was super ableist" situation, but I can also understand why some people would react negatively to it.

Basically, in the Get Jinxed video, while Jinx is blowing up Piltover and fighting robots and whatever, the video keeps cutting to this image of a cymbal monkey toy with an evil face drawn on it. You used to see these things a lot in cartoons and such to imply a lack of intelligence, e.g. in the simpsons they would sometimes do a look inside homer's brain to show him being too busy imagining one of these things and giggling to pay attention to his surroundings.

The notion was essentially that it's a very simple toy, it just looks funny and makes noises, and therefore would appeal to the "simple minded" (yikes).

Circling back to Jinx, the implication with the monkey, taken in context with her very flat characterization at the time; is then that wanton destruction is her version of a cymbal monkey. She's not capable of recognizing the damage and trauma she is inflicting other, she's an overgrown child entertained by loud noises and funny sights. (Again big yikes.)

Original Jinx was very clearly designed to appeal to a very specific type of men, the kind who didn't understand who the villain in Lolita was. Original Jinx acted and looked simultaneously childlike and overly sexualized; with a teeny tiny bra drawing attention to her lack of boobs (not small boobs like in Arcane, absolutely flat as a board). She also had a clear, and often emphasized need for paternal affection, and suffered from unspecified mental illnesses that would make it hard for her to function in everyday society without a caretaker.

Basically, she was all but encouraging the presumed straight male player to groom her.

It's also very clear to me that with Arcane, Riot and Fortiche were very mindful of wanting to change that previous image of her. Hence why they changed her design to give her boobs (showing that she had gone through puberty), but also put her in a crop top that actively de-emphasizes them. And why they made her grow up with Silco, who despite his faults as a father, clearly loved Jinx deeply, in an entirely platonic way. (And would probably have Sevika carve your face off for even implying otherwise.)

The cymbal monkey gets a similar, but more explicit treatment for Arcane. Whereas before in League it was just kinda meant to signify "look at her she's craaaazy, here's a creepy noisy monkey toy". In Arcane, the cymbal monkey was the first device Jinx got working, but it's also the moment to Jinx where Powder died, and she became Jinx. It recalls both the trauma of losing her family, and her empowerment through becoming Silco's hitman.

Meaning that retroactively, it changes the meaning of a lot of things in "Get Jinxed". The cymbal monkey doesn't imply some vague "insanity" it references her inner struggle between the innocent girl she was, and the monster the world made her.

And the line "Let's burn this city to ashes, and see what papa thinks." No longer means "She has daddy issues and like blowing things up", it means she's thinking about Silco, and wondering if she's making him proud.

EDIT: I have been informed the line is actually “let’s see what pow-pow thinks” (i.e. her minigun). Still I maintain that the double entendre was deliberate, it’s literally the only time in the song she references anything League related, and the singer (possibly Agnete Kjølsrud?) barely pronounces the W.