#* character analysis

[foreverfallingstars]

I get a little ill when I think about Theo, who was so dead set on keeping himself alive, sacrificing himself for Liam.

He was so willing to throw himself aside to try and save Liam knowing damn well he might not actually come back. He could have thrown Liam to the Ghost Hunters like he claimed he would to get a head start and potentially save himself, but he didn't. S5 Theo "my survival is all that matters" Raeken turned into someone who was ready to risk EVERYTHING for the chance that Liam would live.

Pretty much every time Liam is in danger during S6, Theo shows up and is ready to save his ass no matter the risk it poses to himself. THAT IS SO INSANE TO ME

🏷️ @glimmeringasteria

[adamantmaimai]

I can't say all of Mizi's actions are justified, but I also can't say I don't understand her.

Living in a cruel world, with fictional walls as a home and violence everywhere. That feeling of emptiness, you're lacking something that makes you human, even if you are not considered one anymore.

That's what most (if not all) of the ALNST participants and human pets feel: the need, the yearn for "love" and "devotion." Warm affection and smiling aren't common. Innocence is a luxury there since you're corrupted the moment you're born. But these emotions mean something: their 'love', what they considered 'love', was reserved for their beloved. Until the very end, until the last sacrifice.

Ivan with Till, him with Mizi, and her with Sua, her god & universe.

Hyuluka's case, in my point of view, is different. Luka begged for love to feel that sensation he makes others feel with his songs and innocent/sweet appearance. That "fire" was given to him on a silver platter by Hyuna. Because as much as she hated him, resented him for what he did, she knew his love would keep him close to her. Their relationship was an on-and-off, and now, with Hyuna gone, Luka's love has withered because she, his fire, is no longer there. And he has to live without it.

That's why I love how Vivinos portrays love. I should say that I don't have any close experience with it (hopeless romantic core), much less can I understand all the religious references and symbolism in all their videos... 😔 But I can say that their work is impeccable, and I could spend hours and hours talking about the chemistry of their characters and how complex they are.

Especially Mizi being the center of EVERYTHING along with Sua and her character & purpose. Even Ivan (bc wtf he's beyond complex) I would write more essays than Hamilton if I have to talk about his whole chemistry with Till, his love, and way of seeing life. Don't make me yap about Hyuna/Hyunwoo/Luka bc I won't shut up.

I don't know if ALNST has already ended with KARMA, and if it did, I have to stand up and applaud for hours bc I've been able to see this masterpiece since 2022. I enjoyed it, I got angry, I cried hours on the songs lyrics and heartbreaking edits on tiktok, but the best (or worst?) of all is that I was able to connect with them, with their music, and with the hard & gorgeous work that the team has done.

[pesky--dust]

I would like to speak about Abigail’s age.

On the Hannibal Wikia we may see that she is nineteen years old, but this isn’t ever stated in the show, is it? Let me explain the way I see it.

We know that G.J. Hobbs was killing university students for eight months. When Will saw the field kabuki left by Hannibal, he realised that the killer has a daughter who would be leaving home soon.

Moreover, Marissa in Potage says about people at school talking which means that she and Abigail are still in high school. In Oeuf Hannibal asks Abigail, if she thought about going to the university and Abigail states that her father was killing girls from the universities she wanted to attend.

So... all of that would probably mean that she is supposed to graduate for the high school soon enough.

However, Hannibal and Will somewhat become her legal guardians. I guess it may be so because she was running away from the facility she was in, but! Given she and Marissa were still being high schoolers makes me think that Abigail could have been younger than nineteen years old?

I'm kind of basing it on my own experience which is pretty common in my country. Namely, they scare us with the finals and the choice of the university as soon as we start high school, and so we go with our teachers and classmates, but also with families to the universities that are close in order to check out whether we would like to study there. It starts on the first year of the high school.

I doubt that Abigail would be in the first year of high school but as far as I know, in the United States you typically finish high school, when you are eighteen years old. Since we know that she and Marissa were still supposed to be in the high school, I would say that Abigail didn’t turn eighteen years old yet.

My guess is that she had her birthday while she was supposed to be dead, after Savoureux and before Mizumono.

[reallytiredperson]

i love my beautiful husband gaz and i love you for this tysm

are you good at character analysis? I wanna know what your analysis would be for Gaz, I’m trying to figure out his story since he’s my favorite out of TF 141

KYLE GAZ GARRICK

BASIC OVERVIEW — BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Kyle “Gaz” Garrick is a British Black man who enlisted into the British Army around 2008 or 2014 (unfortunately, the developers have inconsistencies). His operator biography states 2008 while the official activision website in a blog post about MW2019 states 2014, however it does make sense for him to enlist in 2008. He would have been at least sixteen years old which is the minimum age requirement to enlist. I would like to quickly throw in that Gaz is indeed older than Soap, as this is a misconception that I surprisingly see a lot! Gaz’s blood type is B- and he currently ranks as sergeant (which according to the official British Army website, it typically takes at least twelve years in the service, however it implies it also depends on the person’s abilities).

Gaz spent four years in the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment. During these four years going through a multitude of tests and challenges before passing selection for Special Air Service (SAS). The activision blog says during MW2019, it’s his sixth year serving as a sergeant. However, as Gaz had been selected for TF141, I believe their ranks have paused in time. Gaz has mostly spent his time in anti-terrorism in his military career. He’s an expert in demolitions, VIP escorting, weapons tactics, covert surveillance, and target elimination. He’s been awarded multiple medals, and earned his Parachute Wings whilst spending time at Camp Lejeune in the U.S. whilst collaborating with Navy SEALs. Kyle is a master of evasion and deception, being the only candidate in his entire class to escape capture from the facility and evade detection during resistance training. 

When Gaz first meets Cpt. Price, Gaz is currently assigned to an SAS specific counter-terrorism program in the UK who collaborate with the police, which is another misconception that Gaz was a police sergeant at one point (he was not! I believe some people think this because at E3, Gaz was wearing a police baseball cap).

CHARACTER OVERVIEW

Like true to the original Gaz, he is Price’s protege, being his student. Gaz is overall a serious and hardworking man, loyal and unbreaking. He knows when to joke and he knows when to reload. However, Gaz is not perfect and he does lose his cool (we see subtle development with this later down the road). While being loyal, Gaz does not hesitate to question Price’s choices and actions. We see this multiple times during the series, the most prime example being in MW2019 when Price and Gaz are interrogating The Butcher with Yegor. The Butcher taunts Gaz, causing Gaz to lunge and Price to send him off to fetch.. “The package”. The package being, The Butcher’s family. The reboot games, you have choices, so I’ll give the very basic run down. 

You have the option to opt into the interrogation or to opt out of it. If you opt out, Price bursts out of the room with the information (if you go near the door, you hear The Butcher’s family sobbing). If you opt in, you have so many options. At the end of the day, Gaz is mostly silent and follows orders from Price. In the police cruiser scene, Gaz questions Price in the car—he did not expect to be using women and children as bargaining chips and he makes that clear, and this is a big teaching moment between Gaz and Price. We have to remember that Gaz is young and considering everything, inexperienced to an extent. Price makes up for that inexperience, teaching him along the way. During the interrogation scene, Price makes a remark: “We’ve taken the gloves off.” This is because Gaz lashed out. Later in the car, Price says “When you take the gloves off, you get blood on your hands, Kyle. That’s how it works.” after Gaz questions him.

CONCLUSION

Overall, Gaz is a very complex character and I enjoyed watching his development during these games. I’ve seen people claim Gaz is boring or plain, but I genuinely do not believe that to be the case. Gaz, in my opinion, is also the most relatable character. He’s young, ambitious, and determined. He’s charismatic and efficient. I don’t believe a character has to be extremely traumatized, or look very very unique to be a well-crafted character and Gaz is a great example for this. 

Gaz is just a man who enlisted; someone who is smart and well-rounded (as much as an SAS member can be), he’s quick on his feet and he molds into group work fantastically. He’s extremely versatile and is a quick learner—and wants to learn. He has his flaws that make him human. Gaz develops great self control, is level-minded and is able to think for himself. A great student questions their mentor in everything and you see this with Gaz. 

You see Gaz struggle with morality in the series in a sea of characters who kill and do things without a second thought. We see him question things, we see his emotions and his extreme reluctance. We definitely see some development down the road as Gaz becomes more ruthless, but he never quite forgets his humanity in a way, compared to Price where he can easily disconnect humanity (ex. Calling The Butcher’s wife and son “the package/leverage”). 

Along with this, we see him struggle with the rules in place. I also think this is why Gaz and Price’s dynamic is great. There are rules for a reason, and both Price and Gaz know when to break them—but Gaz learns that breaking some rules doesn’t always happen for the most heroic of actions (again, Price’s quote about bloodying your hands after taking the gloves off). Gaz wants to save people and keep the peace, we see this in Piccadilly during the terrorist attacks and the aftermath scene with Price where Gaz lets the Captain know that he and his unit had actionable intel on the terrorist cell who committed the act. Of course, we see later down the road that taking the gloves off removes all limits, not just some of them. We also see a glimpse of Gaz’s conflicting feelings when 141, Farah & Alex, as well as Laswell learn about Hadir and his plans, as well as when Farah’s forces are deemed a terrorist organization.

I think I rambled on a lot about him, hopefully this is understandable! 

Sources: price & gaz activision blog intros (2019), inconsistency in enlistment date, cod fandom wiki, gaz scenes mwi & mwii, official british army website.

[inkyrainstorms]

Thinking about this scene again

mainly, Jaspers word choice here sticks out to me, because out of everyone he could’ve chosen, he chose Rachel and Lanyon as examples of people that he’s been “cowering behind” in a city as dangerous as this one. Rachel makes sense, we’ve seen examples of Rachel showing him around London and helping him adjust, but…

As far as I can remember, Lanyon and Jasper haven’t had a meaningful interaction in the comic thus far. Certainly not enough to warrant his inclusion here.

But you know who has been formative in Jaspers introduction into London, and who would definitely make the list Jasper was laying out here? Someone Jasper has looked up to since day one, despite his many flaws?

Henry Jekyll.

I think Jasper was going to include Jekyll in this conversation, but skirted around him and said Lanyon instead because Rachel’s crisis was in large part, not intentionally but definitely still, Jekyll and Hyde’s fault

conclusion: Jasper is a sweetheart who knows when and how to broach delicate topics send tweet

[propheticclown]

CLASSPECTING DELTARUNE CHARACTERS GRAHHHHHHH

WARNING: OBVIOUS SPOILERS FOR DELTARUNE AHEAD!!! Note: This post will only cover the Main Trio and some Lightners. Let me know if you want this to be a multipart series for Darkners as well!

Susie: While it is a BIT controversial to say she's anything but a Rage Player, I don't think that she is. A lot of people Classpect her as a Knight of Rage but forget a fundamental part of Knight as a Class, which is that they act like they don't care about their Aspect. Dave as a Knight of Time seems like a cool, mellow dude who just wants to be chill and pass the time with relaxing, when in reality, he's the most organized, punctual Beta Kid who is constantly worried about how he spends his time. Karkat as a Knight of Blood acts like he doesn't care about his friends and just wants to be a big bad scary leader when in reality, he cries over literally minor inconvenience about his friends. A Knight becomes fully realized once they embrace that side of them that they seem to not care about. Susie is very open about her anger and shame, which is not what a Knight of Rage would do. Y'know what she is hesitant about? Being a hero. Being anything OTHER than a angry teen. Her development in Chapter 4 where she finally starts to embrace the prophecy and the ideals it lays before her are when we see her at her healthiest (before it comes crashing down because of the final piece of the prophecy but we can ignore that). For that reason, I truly believe that she WOULD be a knight. But a KNIGHT OF HOPE! Not a Knight of Rage. Ralsei: I feel like this is pretty obvious. Everyone agrees that he's a Void player of some kind. Prince of Darkness. Makes sense. Obviously he is not a Prince of Void though. In my opinion, I think he's a SYLPH OF VOID, just for basic kinda reasons. Sylph is a healer class that blabs about their aspect, Ralsei is a healer who constantly blabs about the roles Darkners are supposed to play. Void is all about obscuring information and hierarchies, Ralsei constantly obscures information from Kris and Susie while deeming himself to be lower than them because he's a Darkner. Pretty cut and dry for me, although I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. THE PLAYER (NORMAL ROUTE): To me, the player seems like a SEER OF BLOOD simply because they can see all possible options laid before them whilst also actively benefiting the relationships of people Kris is close to. Also being connected to Kris and well, Blood is all about connections. And because everyone on tumblr has played Deltarune and name me ONE person on this website who doesn't do the "holier than thou" shit that Kankri does.

THE PLAYER (WEIRD ROUTE): Now, on the other hand, the player on the weird route is actively destroying all of Kris' relationships for the sake of cultivating their relationship with Noelle in a sick and fucked up way. As such, weird route player is a PRINCE OF BLOOD instead, not to mention that Prince of Blood not only destroys connections but destroys WITH connections and I mean, we did force Noelle to destroy Berdly.

(Not me though because I've never played the Weird Route so haha) Noelle Holiday: Speaking of Noelle, I wanted to talk about her development as a character as her whole character arc revolves around her cowardice and being able to become brave enough to stand up to people, whether that be in the Normal or Weird route, so her classpect doesn't change like the player's. This is gonna sound a bit odd but I think Noelle would be an HEIR OF RAGE. Heir's start off not having their aspect and then gaining it through means of progression of the story. Noelle is a character who is constantly oppressed by the people around her, never being able to speak her own mind. It's only at the end of Chapter 2 that Noelle is finally able to stand up for herself and challenge the ideals of Queen, which is something a Rage Player would do. Not to mention that her during the Weird Route is all about giving up her control, which is what an unrealized Rage Player would do in the first place. On top of that, her and another Rage Player, REALLY love strangling.

Erm... Burghley???: Jokes aside, Berdly is probably the easiest character in Deltarune to Classpect. He's a pompous jackass who uses his intelligence to garner validation and relevance. That man is the most LIGHTEST of LIGHT players. But what class would he be? Hmm? Oh so difficult, I imagine you saying to yourself. Easy. He's a Mage. Mages are described as someone who benefits themselves with knowledge pertaining to their aspect. And oh boy does that bird love to use his knowledge of ...knowledge to benefit himself. Not to mention that Mages also only half have their aspect and aren't able to fully acquire it in the beginning of their arc (Ex. Sollux continually "half-dying" never actually meeting his DOOM, Meulin constantly using escapism and entering a toxic relationship with Horuss to avoid accepting what her HEART actually wants), which would not only explain his lack of friends (aka relevancy and attention) in the normal route, as well as him being cast aside entirely in the weird route. Also it ties into his arc in Chapter 2 about embracing ignorance, which would technically make him go Grimdark within the Homestuck world. So yeah, Berdly is a MAGE OF LIGHT! Kris Dreemurr: Now, I know what you are all expecting me to say. "They're a Prince of Heart, bye bye have a great time". Hot take incoming: I don't think Kris is a Prince of Heart at all. Not because they don't have care about their self expression and identity, not at all. That's a very prominent part of Kris' character, but because... a Prince of Heart's whole thing is destroying Heart or destroying through Heart. Kris' actively helps people gain their motivation to do what they're destined to do, whilst also destroying the motivation of enemies to fight in the first place through non-violent methods. Hmm, so we're looking for a Classpect that harbors an overabundance of shame and isolation from society, internally angry but doesn't express it unless it REALLY annoys them, builds up the motivation of their allies whilst also destroying the motivation of others through ACTing/making them giving up on their motivation through FIGHTing, ON TOP OF KEEPING SECRETS FROM THE WATCHER AND WORKING WITH THE MAIN ANTAGONIST!!!. Man, if only there was a Classpect like that. Oh wait there is- THEY'RE A PRINCE OF RAGE! Kris is a PRINCE OF RAGE! I know. I know. Extremely odd take but look at them! I just stated all things that make a Prince of Rage and Kris fits every box as opposed to Prince of Heart, which I'm only convinced people classpect them as because they dislike us as the player controlling their body and we just so happen to be in the shape of a heart. But even then, severing connections is not a Prince of Heart thing. That's a Prince of Blood thing, and considering that Kris actively is attempting to keep their friends incredibly close to them and is attempting to reunite their entire family to be like how it was in the past, I don't think Prince of Blood fits the bill. But hey, you know what an extremely unhealthy attachment to the people they love, which they cultivate by either doing extremely life threatening things or manipulation of the people they love DOES fit the bill for? That's RIGHT! Prince of Rage! Because that is EXACTLY what Kurloz does with Meulin. IN FACT! A LOT OF PARALLELS EXIST WITH KRIS AND KURLOZ!!! ESPECIALLY WITH THE RELEASES OF CHAPTER 3 AND 4, which makes sense when you consider that Toby Fox helped with the creation of the Alpha Trolls, INCLUDING KURLOZ! This is a hill I am 110% willing to die on and I will be the most pretentious, conceited asshat about it because I KNOW THAT I'M RIGHT! AND BEFORE ANYONE SAYS IT! PRINCES DO NOT LACK THEIR ASPECT! THAT IS BARD! PRINCES SUFFER FROM AN OVERABUNDANCE OF THEIR ASPECT!!!

So anyway, thank you so much for reading. Let me know if you'd like to see another post like this with other characters, as well as asking me about other characters you want me to classpect just in general. I hope you all have an absolutely wonderful day! :o)

[actuallyjustabiscuit]

This is something I can see happening if Pomni were to let it happen

Jax is terrible with boundaries

And so far Pomni hasn’t been speaking up about how uncomfortable she gets when he deliberately goes out of his way to get into her personal space

Here’s an interesting question that nobody seems to be asking: If Ribbit was such good friends with Jax, why did he abstract in the first place?

Now this is entirely speculative on my part, but I’ve been theorizing that what ultimately leads to someone abstracting isn’t the loss of sanity, but the surrender to hopelessness

It happened to Kaufmo when he realized he was never going to reach the mysteriously reappearing and disappearing exit door that taunted him for days

It almost happened to Gangle when she was stuck closing for an exhausting shift in a job she grew to hate because she knew this was her dead end as a a graphic design major dropout, until Pomni snapped her out of it by offering her a way to leave

And you’d think having a best buddy around would keep you from giving up on yourself. Someone to keep the endless days from feeling like torture

But what if your friend is the torture

I don’t think it’s fair to assume that Jax was consciously awful to him though. But considering that he saw Gangle taking his treatment with no push back as her “liking” it, it’s definitely feeling like he may have pushed his one friend a little too hard.

We don’t know what their dynamic was, we don’t know how different Jax was back then, we just know that Jax doesn’t like talking about it (which is reasonable, it’s a very sore subject)

But I sincerely don’t think Jax understands what healthy relationships look like anymore than Ragatha does

And what’s even more interesting is how different his philosophy is to Kinger’s

He core beliefs is practically the antithesis to the show’s themes

The boy has issues. Unexplored, deep seated, possibly ingrained as a survival instinct issues

And I don’t think having a friend who goes along with everything he wants is gonna help that

And I don’t think Pomni would

And I’m not sure if Jax will like that

[thinkblotted]

Building a Better Star (aka, the Star Essay)

I like Star. I’m getting that shit out of the way right here at the beginning, just in case. I like Star, I like what she is, I think she deserves better writing. 

Also - these are my takes. These takes may not be your takes. We can have different takes.

Okay? Okay. Let’s go. 

For the purposes of this analysis and suggestion, I’m only going to be going off of movie canon Star, rather than book canon Star, because while they’re basically the same, there are a few background elements in the book that expand  on Star’s internal thoughts and relationships with the boys that you could only get from exposition in the book, and that’s not as available a source as the movie, so. 

Since I’m either posting this on tumblr for the four people who will read it, or filming myself talking about this like a normal person with normal hobbies, I won’t explain who canonically she is because that’s unnecessary for this audience of me and a discord server, but rather who she is as a character as presented.

The thing about The Lost Boys is that it exists as a double edged sword of characterization for all its characters. They’re all incredibly simple, and in that white space that’s left behind where deeper characterization would be put in other movies, here there’s just a void, leaving the audience to fill in the gaps however they see fit with whatever they can glean from the surrounding world. 

The vampires are the prime example of this - of all the characters, they get the least amount of dialogue and have the most void to fill in who they are as characters. Star is the runner up, having more character, but the same amount of void in her backstory. 

So who is Star? 

Star is The Girl of the group, a trope wherein you have a group of characters who make up the core of your main cast and usually they’re all male, with one or occasionally two exceptions being girls - if it’s two, one will be the ‘nerdy’ or otherwise ‘not strictly desirable by main male cast’ role, and the other will be The Girl, who is almost always the love interest of the main male, who, even though she’s more of a main character then the secondary girl, typically does less than them. As presented, Star fits this trope easily, as well as filling out the subtropes that it consists of. 

She’s soft-spoken, pretty, demure, stays out of most of the fights in the story, offers the protagonist advice but never tells him directly how to face the conflict of the story, offers support but never directly physically supports the protagonist. She’s an inciting incident all to herself, but never actually drives the plot forward except to be a shining prize on the mountaintop of the narrative that the protagonist must climb in order to claim. 

After being in the Lost Boys fandom for about two and a half-ish years now, there are some take-aways specific to Star that the fandom tends to play on the most. 

And I want to add in here, I do not have a problem with these traits being assigned to her. Star, like the rest of the cast, is a very malleable character. The void around her is just as vast as the other vampires, and this is fandom - we play with blorbos from our media like dolls. This entire thing is purely based on what I personally would like to see Star become, and since I’m a freak, I don’t just write fanfic, I also do this. Apparently. So take everything I’m saying with a giant grain of salt.

The traits that I most see attributed to Star are:

-She’s a shrinking violet, either unwilling or unable to interact directly with the conflict of the story

-She’s being held against her will to the point that leaving in any capacity is not only not an option, but would lead to physical harm/possibly death if she tried (ie, she’s an abused captive) 

-She cannot be held responsible for any bad decisions she’s made in the past or makes in the current story, or any bad turns the plot takes 

The first assertion is held up pretty well by the canon of the movie, and most of the fandom also agrees that it would have been nice if the movie actually did make Star a little less soft. There have been several outcries for Star to ‘vamp out’ like the Boys did, to at the very least give her a scary vampire face! Her tiny confrontation with Max at the end of the movie would have been a perfect space for that, but unfortunately, the movie has 80s-itis and being the female love interest and a victim in the plot, Star isn’t allowed to be aggressive in such a blatant manner. 

Star also hangs back whenever the Boys have presence on the screen. She’s never in the forefront, sharing the space, she’s in the background, watching them, only observing. The one time she directly contradicts them, ‘Leave him alone’ she’s told straight up to ‘chill out, girl’, and she doesn’t continue the conflict. When she does decide to try and be more forward with Michael, directly affecting things, she waits until there is no other persons of consequence around in order to do so. 

The second assertion of her being held against her will is a little trickier to pin down as a trait, but evidence of this is implied with how she contributes to the narrative - mainly, in asking Michael directly to save Laddie and her from the Boys, or at the very least, the situation she’s in. Though, it should be noted, that Star never makes a direct statement of what that situation is. She hedges that it’s being being driven to kill to sate the vampiric nature, but when taking scenes like David simply saying her name to get her to come to him, being told indirectly to back off when the Boys are hazing Michael, and backing away in a fearful manner when Michael is drinking the blood wine into consideration, there’s the darker notion that she’s being abused in other ways. 

Because the movie is meant to be a lighter flick, full of scary-yet-alluring vampire punk boys and over the top monster-hunting gore, billing it as a ‘horror-comedy’ excludes any deeper exploration or more explicit on-screen showing of verbal, emotional, or physical harm that Star may be experiencing. Doing so would take away from the fantastical and darkly whimsical nature of the story, grounding it too much, and making the Boys, though they be villains, into villains we wouldn’t love to hate.

Thus, the darker implications of what Star might be facing behind the scenes, when Michael isn’t around and before he came along, is left to the audience’s interpretation, as well as any ability Star has to struggle against them. The fandom frequently interprets as none, thanks to the plot of the movie being what it is. 

The third major assertion that the fandom tends to adopt is that Star is largely if not completely irresponsible for the missteps of other characters and for her own predicament. 

This given trait is the most difficult to back up with evidence directly from the canon as it relies heavily on filling in the blank spaces of Star and the other character’s backstories. Star is not responsible for Michael spotting her in the crowd at the concert or deciding to follow after her. Star technically didn’t tell Michael to accept David’s goading to race. Star told Michael she both didn’t know how to help him, and couldn’t explain it. Star is not responsible for Michael’s induction into the Boy’s gang because, well, she told him what he was drinking was blood. Star never directly acts to drive the plot forward until the beginning of the third act when she does admit to Michael that she needs his help, thus, cannot be held responsible even in part to Michael’s involvement. 

Lack or acceptance of Star’s responsibility for her own inability to leave the Boys is even harder to pin down, as we have no movie canon for what her life was like before meeting the Boys. The implication from the world around them is that Star is a runaway kid like many of the people seen in the opening sweep of Santa Carla, likely from a crappy home and was taken in by the Boys but soon got in over her head, but this is never directly confirmed. 

The idea that Star made a bad choice, and was not just manipulated and coerced after the ‘honeymoon’ period with the Boys is somewhat controversial as it paints Star in a less favorable light. She isn’t an innocent victim, but rather someone who made a bad call and refuses to acknowledge her own agency in that decision, instead placing any and all blame on the Boys. 

‘But what if she’s tried that already?’ Unfortunately, that lies entirely in the realm of off-screen possibilities that are not support by any canon. Star in the movie is never shown or implied to have tried escaping before, and in the book she merely has internal monologues about wanting to leave, not that she’s ever attempted it. 

Giving Star any one of these traits on their own isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Star is very much helpless in this situation - she’s in a den of immortal man-eating monsters while only being barely half of one herself, and refusing to take the option that would grant her more physical power to assert control in the situation, because the act required would be a shattering of her moral compass. Regardless of her involvement in how she got here, she deserves to be able to leave and make better choices. 

But giving Star all of these traits at once with nothing else to her flattens her completely. It does her, in my opinion, an incredible amount of injustice to absolve her of any kind of responsibility in her own problems and then rob her of any bravery to take a risk and change it herself.

And that’s not a good character. 

In order to build a better Star, we need to first accept a truth that might be a slightly hard pill to swallow: 

A good Star is not necessarily a protagonist. 

At least, not in the same way that Michael or Sam can be. Michael and Sam are protagonists in that they’re the heroes of the story. They face the main conflict head on and drive the plot forward with their actions, and are who we’re rooting for to win. We see them and their actions as ‘good’. They are absolved by the framing of blame in what is done to them. (Michael in getting in over his head with the Boys by ignoring the reservations and loose warnings of others, and Sam of murder with the fact that the Boys are man-eating monsters bent on getting back at them when one of their own is killed.)

If you make Star a protagonist in the same way, with her needing to be framed as ‘good’ in the story, but only keeping the character traits previously listed, then she’s a boring character. She becomes only nebulously ‘good’ just by virtue of not technically having done anything that could be considered ‘bad.’ Being counted as a heroine only by default. 

And that sucks. That puts her simultaneously on a pedestal where she can do no wrong, but is an empty shell that’s there to smile or cry and do nothing else. 

Often, when talking about female protagonists, antagonists, anti-heros and characters with grey morality or amorality, the added layer of them being women forces ten times the scrutiny on not just how they’re built as a character, but on their creators and why they’re choosing to build the character in the way they are. Any mistakes plot-pushing decisions made by the character aren’t as likely to be accepted as just the character acting in the story, but get traced back to the author. The audience constantly asks the question, ‘if it was a male character, would there be consequences for this act, or are you treating this character special because they’re a woman?’ 

In this case, it’s ‘Michael also fucks up, and yet is treated as a victim, deserving of sympathy and being saved by his brother rather than having to fight all on his own. Their situations are the same. Why not Star? The only difference between them is gender.’ 

This essay is not about whether or not Star is deserving of being saved, nor is it saying that she deserves being trapped in the situation that she’s in. But much like how Star reminds Michael that she did indeed tell him that it was blood in the bottle and he scoffed at her, Star deserves not to be a lifeless doll being acted upon, and a good female character deserves to not be a pretty, perfect Barbie doll that does no wrong and always looks pretty. 

So with the knowledge that a better Star cannot be purely a protagonist, how do we lower her from the boring pedestal? 

My suggestion: by inverting her three main traits

The first: If she’s billed as meek and demure and soft, then make her more aggressive and vulgar 

The second: If she seems to be kept at silent gunpoint, then give her more freedom to act

The third: Make her at least partly responsible for her own situation, regardless of whether or not she thinks she is 

The first revised trait is the most important in my opinion to building a better Star, as it will help direct and reinforce the second two. 

A large part of Star’s lack of presence in the movie is quite literally, a lack of physical presence. Star seems to hate even being near the vampires, and depending on what kind of story you wish to show her in, it could make sense. But chances are, if she’s given the shrinking violet trait, she’s been given the other two as well, and that makes a bad Star. She must be allowed to speak, and more than that - she must be allowed to show emotion. 

Let Star be angry. Let her be hurt in a way that’s not beautiful and languorous, a wilting agony of suffering in silence. And I’ll say it: Let Star say the Fuck word. As silly and simple as it may seem, such a small detail can transform a character. Star deserves to be as rough-edged and imperfect in her words and attitude as any of the rest of the Boys, possibly more if she’s in a situation that she hates! If she had the bravery to run away from home, then she should be afforded the bravery to be more than a pretty, silent, pure woman who doesn’t know what a cigarette is. 

The second revised trait is going to be the most fluid in interpretation because it relies the most on the author or artist or fan’s personal interpretation of what the relationship between Star and the Boys is really like. 

In the movie, Star seems to move with the Boys. She’s usually near them enough that they can keep an eye on her, as we see with David watching Star talking to Michael before the beach race. The only times we see Star distance herself physically is right after the bonfire, where she comes to the Emerson cabin to convince Michael to save her, or when she and Michael have sex. The first time, she seems desperate, like she may not have much time, and the second, she’s been left there on her own while the Boys go out and cavort, likely with the implication that she should stay where they can find her when they get back. 

Again, this is the trait that can be toyed with the most, but a good way to combat the feeling that she’s being held against her will is to give the notion that there are parts of being around the vampires that she likes. There are tiny hints of this in the movie, and the book expands on this. In the movie, there’s a moment during the race where Star seems to be enjoying herself while riding with David - at the very least, she’s enjoying the speed and thrill, if not the person she’s with. In the book, Star and Paul have the best relationship of any of the boys, with Paul trying to cheer her up and promising a ‘happily ever after’. To keep it from feeling like a full captive situation, give Star a reason to feel a bit conflicted over the pack. She’s there in the first place, after all. 

The third revised trait is going to be the most controversial, as it’s a hard thing to admit when people in real life do it. 

Admitting that sometimes, the problems we find ourselves dealing with, are our own fault. We make a bad call, we make a poorly informed decision or decide in the heat of the moment. Sometimes, we are lied to, but the lie is flimsy and we chose to swallow it because it’s what we wanted to hear at the time. I like to ask authors writing villains this - what’s worse and more compelling; a villain who lies, or a villain who tells the protagonist a truth they don’t want to hear? 

And, as backwards as it sounds, making Star partially responsible for her situation is giving her more agency in her story. It gives her a reasonable character flaw that she has to confront and defeat. 

Here is where I’m going to throw in an interesting observation about a specific scene that I think helps lend itself to this particular revised trait: the scene where she asks Michael for help directly. In canon, the scene goes about like this - Star comes to the cabin, Michael tells her that he knows about the vampires, and when he expresses that he thinks it’s basically done for him, Star tells him that it’s not, he’s not fully gone, and that she needs his help to save all three of them. Now, there’s something really, really interesting to me about this scene: Star is NOT a reliable narrator during it. At all. 

To say that she’s lying outright about everything would be untrue, but when you examine it, you realize that she’s being untruthful all the same. When Michael gets upset, accusing her of not caring about him because in his eyes she let this happen, she says that she DOES care about him, using physical touch to reinforce this. When she’s soundly rejected, by Michel slapping her hand away and demanding to know why she REALLY came, she very reluctantly tells him that she was hoping he’d help them. It’s her last answer, the last thing she wanted to say. Obviously hoping that the emotions would be enough to persuade him, rather than just saying that she needed help outright, which would be easier to say no to. 

Secondly, the WHY. Star states that Michael was ‘supposed to be her first, because it’s what David wanted’. When watching the scene, the delivery, the body language, and given the full context of the plot and how we’ve seen Star behave? We can only come to the conclusion that Star. Doesn’t. Know. That. 

Max’s ultimate goal is to get Lucy, and to get Lucy, he needs Michael and Sam to be on board, or at least BE vampires. Killing one of her children would hardly serve that goal. Given the ending fight, Max doesn’t give a dead rat’s ass about Star. And Star? She doesn’t even know Max exists. David telling Star to kill Michael to turn her into a vampire is not only pointless, but going expressly against Max’s wishes. We don’t know how much of Max’s plan David and the Boys know about, or given their personalities and implied relationship with him, even care about, but defying him in this instance doesn’t seem like the smartest thing to do. 

Not to mention - Star does like Michael. She hugs him at the end, she does give him a warning about the blood, albeit a weak one. She does attempt to fight Max in the end, even if she fails. As for her thoughts on David, those are more complicated. Whether the relationship is real, coerced, that she’s simply a pawn being used to tug Michael around or whether she and David did like each other at one time, is unknown, but it is clear that Star knows that David is interested in Michael, and doesn’t like it. So it would then be logical to assume, given this, that Star would assume, based on what she knows and has been able to observe, that she’d pain David in a worse light. Insinuating that it’s HIM who’s pulling the string, assuming what he wants and what his intentions are, even if she DOESN’T. KNOW. 

All this to conclude: Star is an unreliable narrator taking actions based on her own flawed assumptions. Which means she’s going to make mistakes, and miscalculate her position. She’s going to cast herself in a certain light, and like anyone, maybe not want to admit when that light is suddenly not a reflection of her best. 

So, how do I conclude this. 

Star is an interesting character, and I do enjoy her. If you managed to sit through this to get to here, and if there’s anything to take away from this, it’s that I enjoy Star and I want her to be a better…her. She deserves to cuss and spit, she deserves to be angry and sad at her predicament, she deserves to be loved as a whole person and not some untouchable angel. Let her fight. Let her bite. Let her bleed for her freedom and personhood.

Most importantly, if you allow the Boys room to be more than they are presented as on screen, then you can afford to give that to Star. 

Thank you for reading, if you did. 

@misslavenderlady (I almost forgot!)

[thealpacaavenger]

Jax is an Asshole: That’s Why I Love Him.

With all the new information about Jax from episode 5, I feel the need to remind myself (and possibly others) why I love Jax.

I actually originally felt pretty meh about Jax. I liked him, sure, but I wasn’t anywhere near as enthusiastic as I am now. However, once episode two came out, I witnessed Jax’s delightfully reprehensible behavior in full force. That was what truly made me love the character.

As time passed, my excitement for seeing him grew more and more with each episode. When it came to episode 4, I saw the potential for true character complexities. And I was ecstatic! Huzzah! My favorite asshole twink gets some tragedy!

However, the tragic result of this was people forgetting why Jax was amazing in the first place! He’s delightfully complex and horrifically horrible! Don’t forget who he is. He’s a jerk, he’s a bully, and he’s perfect.

Don’t get me wrong though! My love for Jax has extended beyond his assholeish-ness. After episode 5, I am *beyond* excited to see him grow as a person and get closer to Pomni (I hope things don’t go horribly in that part).

And guess what? Ragatha was *not* in the wrong for yelling at him. What she said about his friend was not purposeful (don’t get me wrong, it still sounded pretty darn horrible. Especially if his terrible behavior and thus lack of friends is in part a result of ribbit’s abstraction). She still has flaws of course. Her people pleasing, her toxic positivity, her fakeness, and more. But that does not mean she is a bad person for calling out Jax.

I love a jerk, I love Jax, and I love a tragic twink. Frankly, I would hate him in real life. But here we are.

[yjhbignaturals]

ok, so this pissed me off, right

to recap: this was around reading again arc, where there was a hit out on dokja's head coming straight from olympus saying that whoever permakills him is the one he loves the most.

this was a pretty painful part of the novel for me for more than just personal reasons bc before this part of the story, arcs and arcs ago, whenever we went anywhere near dokja's traumatic past, it would always lead back to his mom.

and when we finally meet sookyung in person, dokja describes her as looking nothing like him. you get about 3 exchanged lines of dialogue before you realize that dokja's every interaction with his mother involves him misconstruing her intentions and emotions, projecting his own insecurities. and sookyung cannot clear things up because dokja keeps closing the door on her.

so, looping back to reading again, you get to the scene of sookyung reaffirming her love for him as a mother.

this scene reeks of tension.

dokja constantly denying her love for him, enjoying the pained looks on her face, refusing to forgive her for the slight of sicc'ing the media at him and sending his life careening off the deep end as the public was reminded over and over again that he was a murderer's son, of never coming back to him when she was released so he could finally say he endured it all just for her.

because he loved her.

even though he fully believes her story. even though it's mired in bitterness. his heart aches when she reaffirms her love for him.

sookyung in this scene is genuine, repentant, so desperate to save her son that she killed him to try and keep him from permanently dying. she does it to say, "I love you," her heart bleeding on the slab. "Perhaps even more than myself." because she remembers what he did for her, and she's hoping to any listening god that he's still here, her little reader, the one who loved her so much.

maybe this will save him.

maybe this will reunite them. it's a foolish hope but she's so, so desperate.

so how does the manhwa depict it?

so yeah. im pretty pissed abt it

[sovvannight]

chara

jatp characters x my favorite classic literature Carrie as Emma Woodhouse (Emma, Jane Austen)

[random-dragon-exe]

Ok so I have a headcannon I'd like to share.

I like to think that Jorgen has a secret soft spot for both Cosmo and Peri but doesn't want to admit it. Ever.

Sure back in Cosmo Rules he hated the idea of being related to Cosmo and there's no doubt about that. But I like to think that over time (which is who knows how many years) he's warmed up to him, mostly because Cosmo has a way of getting into people's hearts with his good nature (despite being dumb).

I like to imagine that he's not really used to hugs, so Cosmo giving him one really shocked him and he kinda liked it. But he definitely hides it behind his toughness.

Also in FOP ANW, in the "Haunting of Wells House" episode Cosmo says he contacted Jorgen to get rid of the fairy ghost.

Sure it could be played off as they needed someone else to help and he was being kinda dumb by calling someone from Fairy World, but the fact that the show runners let him explicitly state it gets my mind thinking.

Then there's the relationship with Peri. I absolutely think he likes Peri a lot more, considering he's such a stickler to the rules (not to mention smarter).

Which kinda makes this moment here a bit more sweet.

I also like to think that his caring side to Peri will show up a sometimes but only in private. Which would explain why he calls him Peri-Weri here when it's only his parents, Dev, and Hazel in the room. He for sure wouldn't do that in public.

So yeah sure, he's the toughest and strongest fairy, but he cares about his job and his family. It's just that he hides it under all his toughness. He's gotta keep his persona because it's important to him, both in and outside of his job.

[atwas-gaming]

Ok, look, I know this sounds crazy, and completely out of character for the highly competitive blue blur. But he lost on purpose.

Eggface was so miserable.

And the dance-off was Sonic's idea.

And did you catch what he said just before he crashed out?

He knew what he was about to do and wasn't particularly happy about it, but did it, anyway.

Sonic is an awesome dancer, especially break dancing. No way that was an accident, he did it ON PURPOSE.

In many universes, Sonic's saved Eggman as often as he's defeated him, and worked with him numerous times for numerous reasons. And in Boom, where Sonic is more egotistical than any other universe, he still cares about his friends. And Eggman, despite- or really, because of- their crazy rivalry, is one of Sonic's friends.

Plus, since nobody saw it, and since Eggman's so vain he'll never realize Sonic lost on purpose, Sonic doesn't have to worry that anyone will ever call him out on it. So he's the only one who knows Eggman still didn't really win. But he ain't tellin' nobody that. Let Eggman have this one. It's probably all he ever will have.

[moonglide]

Carol and Susie elemental analysis (chapter 3/4 spoilers)

To preface this, I only thought about this because of Persistant Variables over on AO3. It is an INCREDIBLE fic (it’s also finished!! So go read it!!) that cooked in a lot of aspects, but what I’m focusing on right now is that BewareTheDragon (the author), made the Ice/Order and Fire/Rude elemental pairs. (They also completed the trio with Dust/Chaos, but that’s not really relevant to this post). And I think that they were already good pairs, but in light of the new chapters, they work especially well. (Actual analysis under the cut).

Carol, of course, really, REALLY, embodies Ice/Order. There’s the obvious factors that she’s a reindeer, her whole family is Christmas/Winter themed, and that her color scheme is what it is. But there’s also how she always keeps her AC on full blast. Her hand on Kris’s shoulder is described as “icy.” She’s a very cold person in general, and so far hasn’t shown much emotion at all outside of “calm fury,” if that makes sense. And order is a big facet of her character. Everything under her control HAS to be frozen and in its proper place. In her house, Dess’s room is still. Unchanging. Exactly as she left it when she disappeared. Noelle’s show of care (the paper mache snowflakes) were bronzed and hung up to never be touched by the outside world. The grand piano just sits in the room adjacent to the kitchen, and hasn’t been touched in years.

But her house isn’t the only thing under control-she’s the mayor. She’s pretty much ALWAYS been the mayor. She always will be the mayor because she runs unopposed. Any and all crime is swiftly eliminated to protect her perfect town. Hometown is pretty static and unchanging. (Also, she’s supporting Asgore’s “you-know-what”-likely his attempts at courting Toriel-to get things back the way they were. And this isn’t technically confirmed yet, but she’s TOTALLY trying to bring Dess back. Like, 100%.)

And then there’s Susie. Fire/Rude embodies her perfectly. I mean, for starters, Rude Buster is the only Rude-elemental attack in the game, iirc. In Persistent Variables, Ralsei describes the Rude element as a “defiance against existence”-and while I wouldn’t go that far, I think it’s definitely a defiance against stasis, and the status quo. It’s not Chaos, which tears apart Order at the seams, but it’s still rebellion. It’s constant change, even against the order within herself. Susie pretty much facilitates ALL of the major character growth in Deltarune. It’s because of her that Kris is no longer an outcast loner. It’s because of her that Ralsei hopes that the prophecy can be changed, and that he thinks of himself as a less worthless than he initially thought. It’s because of her that Noelle, at least in the dark world, gains the courage to stand up to an analogue of her controlling mother. It’s because of her that Berdly (dark world only, again, but he thought it was a dream) is more receptive to accepting help from others (and not being so goddamn high and mighty (which is part of HIS own Holy/Electric elemental pair but that’s another can of worms)).

When Ralsei tries to teach her Heal Prayer (probably a holy/electric spell) she instead learns Ultimate Heal, which unlike Heal Prayer, gets better and better with each successive use. And sure, Gerson is the one to encourage her to use her healing, but she was the one to reach out to Ralsei and try to learn in the first place.

When it comes to fire, the connection’s a little less strong, but it’s still there. She’s a dragon, and Gerson says that she’s THE dragon in Dragon Blazers, which is based off the prophecy. He also says, “I see a future lit up in your eyes. Burnin’ bright. Burnin’ black. Burnin’ up everything”. And while the whole “garden is charred in an inferno of jealousy” thing probably refers to Asgore’s fire powers, chapter five will take place during the festival. Which. You know. Is a very easy place for jealousy to arise. Also, iirc, there was an interview where Toby said he originally wanted to give a character a fire spell, but ultimately decided against it. Which totally could be Susie.

And these things quickly put Susie and Carol at odds. Susie is a new girl in Carol’s perfect town that’s changing things. You can SEE when Susie sits down at the foot of Dess’s bed, Noelle is shocked. Carol has raised her to think of the past as unchanging and untouchable. But you can also see when that effect melts away and Noelle decides to sit down too. Same with the guitar. Nobody’s used the red (orange. It’s orange. But whatever.) guitar in ages, and it stayed that way until Susie grabbed hold of it. Noelle, again, is shocked-but then she thinks for a moment, and relents, and decides that Susie should play it. To breathe new life into the past. And when Carol gets home, and sees that Susie is holding the guitar, she’s affronted, because Susie is, from her perspective, defiling Carol’s attempt at preserving the past.

All this to say, especially with the other protagonist traits that Susie has, I’m convinced that if Deltarune weren’t a video game where we were forced to play as Kris, and instead literally any other form of media, Susie would totally be the main character. Especially in a non-dark world AU where it’s just small-town drama.

Idk. I probably missed something. But tell me what you guys think.

Edit: I completely forgot to talk about the prophecy!! Susie rebels against the prophecy and that’s another connection to the rude element. Ok bye.

TL;DR: Carol’s associated with Ice/Order because her whole deal is perfectly preserving the past, and Susie’s associated with Fire/Rude because her whole deal is rebellion, facilitating change, and melting the ice that Carol is making. Also, go read Persistent Variables over on AO3.

[glasskey]

As a rule I don't reblog....I just don't. But I'm making an exception because yep......all of this. I just want to highlight this passage:

"Nick was the show’s most realistic character. He was an ordinary man swept up by the rise of Gilead — lured into the Sons of Jacob not out of malice or ideology, but because of the brutal socio-economic conditions that preceded Gilead’s rise." Above all else, I will never forgive the writers choice to villainize the lowest socio-economic character.

The Betrayal of Nick Blaine: How The Handmaid’s Tale Undermined Its Own Storytelling

As a university professor with a PhD in literature, I’ve dedicated my career to analyzing narrative structure, character arcs, and thematic coherence. And I can say this with full confidence: what the writers did to Nick Blaine in Season 6 of The Handmaid’s Tale was not bold, subversive, or daring — it was a narrative betrayal.

And just to be clear: I’m not a shipper. I didn’t love Nick because of his romance with June. I appreciated him as a deeply layered character — one whose quiet resistance stood in stark contrast to the more performative defiance of others. Not every act of heroism is loud. Nick’s resistance began long before June entered his life, and for several seasons, the writers honored that. Until they didn’t.

Nick represented something rare on television: a portrayal of a man caught inside a brutal system, not loud or showy, but quietly working to survive while retaining his humanity and fighting back in the ways available to him. His arc was thoughtful, subtle, and realistic — and it offered a necessary counterpoint to the broader, more visible forms of rebellion in the series. That narrative was coherent, moving, and consistent — until Season 6 shattered it for the sake of shock value.

A HISTORY OF RESISTANCE — CAREFULLY BUILT

Nick’s arc was never centered on power. In fact, he resisted it. He smuggled contraband to Jezebels, joined the Eyes in order to report predatory Commanders (after Waterford’s first Handmaid died by suicide), and helped take down Commander Guthrie, one of the architects of the Handmaid system. These weren’t incidental moments — they were intentional signs of internal rebellion that the show carefully planted over multiple seasons.

After meeting June, Nick continued to act strategically. He was the one who secretly smuggled the Jezebels letters out of Gilead and delivered them to Luke in Canada — an act that directly led to Canada refusing to sign a diplomatic agreement with Gilead. And crucially, Nick did this without June asking him to or even knowing about it. At the time, June was in a terrible mental state, so desperate that she tried to burn the letters in the sink. Nick hid the Jezebels letters in his apartment before Eden moved in — making it all the more risky once she arrived and began snooping through his things.

His promotions weren’t rewards but consequences. Serena arranged his marriage to Eden out of jealousy. His rise to Commander wasn’t a reward for loyalty — it was a consequence of his decision to pull a gun on Fred to help June and Nicole escape, as even Joseph Fiennes has confirmed in interviews. Even his marriage to Rose served a clear purpose: to get closer to Hannah’s captors, the Mackenzies, and position himself in a place where he could act.

Importantly, the Marthas in Season 4 speak to Nick like an equal, not like someone they fear. One even asks him, “Is this business as usual?” — a small but significant clue that Nick had been working with the Martha network for a long time. This wasn’t a sudden shift. His ties to the resistance were consistent and deliberate. Even other Commanders call him a “boy scout” in Season 6 — a nickname that reflects his perceived moral rigidity and difference from the men around him.

THE HINTS THE WRITERS LEFT — THEN ABANDONED

Throughout the first five seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale, the writers laid down clear and deliberate hints that Nick was meant to function as a quiet resistor embedded within Gilead’s system. His actions were not accidental or incidental — they were purposeful choices, woven into the narrative to build a coherent, morally complex character.

Another major hint came in a cut scene from Season 3 — one that never made it to the screen but is preserved in the official scripts. In that scene, Nick is shown at the front during Gilead’s military campaigns, standing alongside Commander Mackenzie. This wasn’t designed to show him as complicit — quite the opposite. It placed him close to Hannah’s captors, setting up his position to act as an inside link, a person who might eventually help June find and rescue her daughter. This scene reinforced what the show had been quietly building all along: Nick was where he needed to be, playing the long game.

His abrupt marriage to Rose further aligned with this arc. It wasn’t a romantic choice or a reward — it was another calculated move to get close to the Mackenzie family. The fact that we saw him and Rose at dinners with them in Season 5 wasn’t coincidence — it was strategy. Nick was positioning himself exactly where he could observe, influence, and perhaps, one day, act.

And here’s something telling: in his apartment above the garage, we see Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. That’s not just a random prop. It’s a novel about enduring love and resistance in the face of cruelty and loss. The writers deliberately placed that book in his apartment. It was a clear, intentional signal: Nick was written as someone with inner depth, quiet resistance, and a poetic soul. Bruce Miller says in The Art and Making of The Handmaid’s Tale:

“We were very careful about what books he reads, what books he has, and where we got them.” (p. 34)

And yet, all of these threads were dropped in Season 6. The Mackenzies vanished from the story. The careful groundwork that had been laid for Nick’s internal resistance arc was erased, discarded in favor of a last-minute, illogical narrative pivot that portrayed him as complicit without reckoning with everything the show had previously told us about him.

What’s worse, both the show’s own deleted material and the actual scenes up until Season 6 make it clear that Nick was never meant to be the villain they later tried to paint him as.The official scripts and cut scenes show him as a man horrified by the violence of Gilead’s rise, caught in it but never fully part of it. These clues weren’t just abandoned — they were actively contradicted in a way that undermined both the character and the larger themes of the series.

WHAT THE CREATORS & ACTOR SAY

Before Season 6, both the creators of The Handmaid’s Tale and actor Max Minghella consistently described Nick as a fundamentally decent man — a character carefully constructed to be morally complex, but not complicit in Gilead’s ideology.

Max Minghella, who portrayed Nick, made his view of the character clear as early as 2018:

“I trust Nick. I stand by him … at the root of Nick, he’s a good person. Whether he always does the right thing is a different question.” (Glamour, 2018)

Minghella recognized Nick as morally conflicted but ultimately decent — a man navigating impossible choices in an impossible world. His performance was built on the understanding that Nick was not a villain, but a man trapped by circumstances beyond his control, revealing himself through small gestures and quiet decisions.

In 2022, at the end of Season 5, showrunner Bruce Miller reinforced this characterization:

“I know what we’re setting up for Nick, which is exactly what you think it is. He’s the guy who we think he is. And even if he tries not to be the guy he thinks he is, it’s either going to be very uncomfortable for him like he is with Rose, or it’s going to fail and he’s going to end up not being able to stop himself from punching Lawrence. I think the nice thing is he follows his heart, and the scary thing is he follows his heart.” (Deadline, June 2022)

This statement from Miller is especially revealing in light of what ultimately unfolded in Season 6. His words confirm that as of the end of Season 5, Nick was intended to remain exactly as the audience understood him: a man driven by emotion, not ideology; someone uncomfortable when forced to conform; someone who couldn’t suppress his decency even when doing so put him at risk.

However, after Season 6, Miller’s commentary took on a different tone, attempting to reframe Nick’s arc:

“Nick isn’t choosing Gilead as a sudden endorsement of its beliefs and practices, but rather a belief that there’s no beating this regime; it’s better to protect yourself by moving with it rather than against it.” “Nick was trying to stay out of trouble … thinking about how to keep himself safe for his family.” (TV Insider, 2025)

These post-finale remarks sought to justify Nick’s sudden portrayal as complicit in Gilead’s horrors, but they stand in stark contrast to Miller’s earlier statements. What happened in Season 6 was not the culmination of a long-planned character journey; it was a last-minute pivot that abandoned Nick’s carefully built arc. His proximity to Gilead’s power structures had always been framed as about survival, not ideology — a distinction that Season 6 discarded.

Even Minghella was surprised by the shift in Nick’s moral framing, as he revealed in an interview with ELLE in 2025:

“Transparently, I was surprised … I thought it was a really bold and interesting choice to bring that story into this more nihilistic viewpoint.” “Maybe I hadn’t been playing this character correctly the whole time … there was probably a darker side to him that I didn’t realize was there.”

When even the actor playing Nick for six seasons no longer recognizes the character he’s portraying, it highlights how drastic and jarring the shift in writing was. Nick’s final arc wasn’t the result of a gradual, coherent evolution — it was a sudden, dissonant rewrite that undermined everything the audience, and even the show’s own team, had come to understand about him.

Where once the creators framed Nick as a survivor and quiet resistor, they later attempted to retroactively paint him as complicit. This contradiction is not just a failure of internal consistency — it’s a betrayal of the character they themselves had worked so carefully to build.

A SHIFT BEHIND THE SCENES — AND ONSCREEN

The betrayal of Nick’s arc didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was the result of major shifts behind the scenes that dramatically altered the show’s direction and tone, particularly in Season 6.

After Season 4, there were significant changes in the writers’ room, and after Season 5, Bruce Miller — who had been the showrunner and primary architect of the series’ complex moral landscape — stepped down as showrunner to focus on developing The Testaments adaptation. What followed was a tonal and narrative shift that was most starkly reflected in the treatment of Nick’s character.

In Season 5, the writers appeared to be setting up Commander Lawrence as the morally compromised figure whose choices would catch up with him. Lawrence, after all, had designed Gilead. He was one of its architects — a man who wielded enormous power and made decisions that cost thousands of lives, including the bombing of Chicago and the systemic torture of women. He was unwilling to help June find Hannah, even when she begged him, and he stood by as Gilead shot down American planes attempting to raid Hannah’s school. He didn’t intervene to stop this act of brutality, just as he never truly opposed the suggestions of other Commanders to have June killed when she became too much of a threat. But reportedly, Bradley Whitford — who plays Lawrence — pushed back against having his character face the full consequences of those choices.

So what did the writers do instead? They redirected that arc onto Nick. Rather than grappling with the moral failings of Gilead’s true architects, the show chose to scapegoat the one male character who had consistently resisted, quietly and at great personal risk, from the inside.

The result was a jarring pivot in Season 6, where Nick was denied the nuance and complexity afforded to characters like Serena, Lydia, Lawrence, and even Naomi Putnam. Naomi, a character who had benefitted enormously from Gilead’s brutal hierarchy and who had always relished her privileged position, was suddenly handed a redemption arc without narrative justification. Her decision to give Charlotte to Janine came out of nowhere, contradicting everything we had seen of her character before.

Meanwhile, Nick — who had quietly resisted for years, who had risked his life for June, Nicole, and the resistance — was given no such grace. His entire arc was collapsed into a simplistic and inconsistent portrayal of complicity, as if all his sacrifices and small acts of rebellion had never happened.

The complexity that had once made The Handmaid’s Tale so compelling was flattened in favor of a reductive, black-and-white view of its characters — one that betrayed both Nick and the show’s own core themes.

THE GASLIGHTING OF FANS

To make matters worse, in the wake of justified fan backlash over the abrupt and illogical rewriting of Nick’s character, the public statements from the show’s creators, writers, directors, and even lead actor felt like gaslighting. Rather than acknowledging the inconsistency or taking responsibility for the narrative pivot, they shifted blame onto the audience — particularly the female fans who had thoughtfully engaged with Nick’s arc for years.

The writers claimed that viewers misunderstood Nick because “we don’t see 95% of the things Nick does in Gilead.” This was offered as an explanation for why fans were supposedly confused — suggesting that any contradictions in Nick’s character came not from inconsistent storytelling, but from unseen off-screen actions. The writers also implied that fans had misjudged Nick because they saw him primarily through June’s eyes, and that her love for him clouded both her perception and, by extension, that of the audience. This framing felt deeply patronizing. It reduced thoughtful, critical engagement with the character to the idea that fans (especially women) were simply too emotionally attached to see the truth. The creative team further argued that Nick had plenty of chances to leave Gilead but chose not to, reinforcing their revisionist narrative. What makes this claim especially disingenuous is that the show itself repeatedly demonstrated how difficult, if not impossible, it was to leave Gilead. Even Lawrence — a man with immense power — tried to leave in Season 3 and couldn’t. To suggest that Nick could have simply walked away contradicts the very world-building the writers established.

And then Eric Tuchman went on to claim:

“Even though Nick is a wonderful savior and protector for June and Max Minghella is an incredibly charismatic actor with wonderful chemistry with Elisabeth Moss, Nick has a life beyond June in Gilead. We’ve known since Season 1 he was an Eye, as well as a driver. The Swiss didn’t want to talk to Nick because he was a war criminal and couldn’t be trusted. Serena told June, ‘Didn’t Nick tell you what he did? To help create Gilead?’ — and it was something ominous. June chose not to ask any further questions. We know that he bombed Chicago and a lot of innocent people were killed — June and Janine were there. Yes, he was following orders, but Nick has always been a fully willing participant in Gilead. He’s always embraced Gilead. The only times he ever helped the resistance were because of his connection to June. She has been his beacon to do the right thing. Nick’s betrayal was proof he wasn’t really part of the resistance.” (Cast Q&A, @handmaidsonhulu on Threads, 2025)

But these statements are deeply misleading. They ignore what the actual canon of the show established and contradict the very material the writers originally produced. The Swiss refused to talk to Nick not because of war crimes, but because of optics and politics — as shown in official deleted scenes and the scripts archived at the Writers Guild. In those cut scenes, Nick is portrayed during the rise of Gilead not as a war criminal, but as a minor guard, visibly horrified, described as “looking sick” at the violence unfolding around him. When a comrade is killed, Nick fires back “out of instinct” — hardly the mark of a man shaping or embracing the regime.

Another scene — one that did air — shows Nick returning a salute from Gilead troops. In the official script, this moment is described with a crucial note: Nick is “hating all the choices that led him here.” His internal conflict is explicitly spelled out, revealing that even in this small gesture of outward compliance, he is burdened by regret and trapped by circumstances. This wasn’t a man embracing Gilead’s ideology. It was a man caught in a web he couldn’t easily escape, trying to survive while carrying the weight of every decision that brought him to that point.

Bruce Miller himself confirmed that Serena’s ominous comment to June about Nick’s role in creating Gilead was a lie, meant to hurt her emotionally. And we know from canon that Nick objected to bombing Chicago, but didn’t have the power to stop it.

Director Daina Reid added fuel to the fire, directly targeting women in the fandom. In her Eyes on Gilead podcast interview, she said she “doesn’t understand these women who still defend Nick.” She went even further, claiming that viewers “invent scenes” to justify Nick’s actions — as if fans who had paid close attention to his arc were simply imagining things to excuse him. In doing so, she dismissed female fans specifically — implying that their continued support for Nick was irrational or misguided, and reducing thoughtful engagement with the character to naive emotionalism. This wasn’t just dismissive; it was a troubling attack on a loyal, thoughtful fanbase that had engaged deeply with the show’s themes of resistance, complicity, and survival.

Even Elisabeth Moss, who plays June, contributed to this gaslighting. In interviews, she misremembered key parts of the story — for instance, forgetting that Eden suspected Nick’s lack of sexual interest in her and feared he might be a gender traitor. This was a significant part of Eden’s arc, yet Moss appeared unaware of it, undermining her credibility when discussing Nick and June’s relationship. Moss also insisted in interviews that June “absolutely did not want Nick to die,” while simultaneously suggesting that June could never forgive Nick for his so-called betrayal — despite the fact that if Nick hadn’t made that difficult choice in the moment, he would have died on the spot. The logic simply doesn’t hold: how can June not want him dead but also not forgive him for the very act that saved his life?

If we’re now expected to view Nick as a villain based on things we never saw, it’s not the audience inventing scenes — it’s the creators retroactively rewriting them. That’s not a failure of interpretation on the part of the fans; it’s a failure of storytelling on the part of the writers.

Adding to the irony, Elisabeth Moss recently explained in interviews that in respecting the book, they wanted to preserve a sense of open-endedness — to “keep a lot of loose ends” as the novel itself ends on a cliffhanger. Yet in doing so, they chose to alter one of the most crucial threads from the book: Nick’s arc. Adding to this contradiction, Bruce Miller himself asserted:

“I think the series has been good in large part because I chose to follow the story and tonal spirit of the novel as much as possible.” (Deadline, 2025)

If preserving the spirit of the book was truly the goal, they would have honored Nick’s role as Atwood envisioned it: a symbol of survival, moral conflict, and quiet rebellion.

What’s most telling is how drastically the messaging from the creative team has shifted. The Nick who was once described by Bruce Miller as a man of survival instincts, not ideology — a man navigating impossible circumstances while trying to protect his family — was suddenly reframed post-Season 6 as a willing and eager participant in Gilead’s horrors. This contradiction not only betrayed Nick’s character but also undermined the integrity of the show’s moral universe.

ATWOOD’S VISION, THE BOOKS, AND THE DANGER OF THIS REWRITE

Resistance from within is a hallmark of dystopian literature. From 1984 to The Hunger Games, these narratives often explore how individuals embedded in oppressive systems work quietly, strategically, and at great personal risk to undermine them. These characters are complex, morally ambiguous, and realistic — because real-world resistance is rarely loud or simple. The Handmaid’s Tale, as originally written by Margaret Atwood, understood this nuance, and Nick Blaine was designed to embody it.

Atwood herself envisioned Nick as a figure of internal dissent — a man trapped by circumstances, but capable of moral clarity and quiet rebellion. In The Testaments, set fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale, Nick is still alive, still inside Gilead, and still working as part of the underground resistance. We see him reunite with Nicole, the daughter he risked everything to save, and we see that his arc was meant to reflect the endurance of hope and the power of resistance that survives even in the darkest places.

The show, for five seasons, respected this vision. Nick stayed in Gilead because that was his purpose — to help destroy it from within. His positioning near Hannah’s captors reinforced his role as an inside man. The writers kept him in Gilead because he was meant to be there, playing the long game. Until Tuchman and Chang decided they knew better than Atwood and discarded this crucial thread.

Atwood has been outspoken in her view that dystopian systems like Gilead harm everyone — men and women alike. As she has said:

“Patriarchy hurts men too. Totalitarianism hurts everyone — men and women alike.” (CBC, 2017)

And on feminism:

“Feminism is not about demonizing men. It’s about working with men so that everyone has the same rights.” (New York Times, 2018)

The show’s final season abandoned this fundamental ethos. Instead of portraying the complexities of complicity and resistance across genders, it simplified its moral world: all Commanders were framed as irredeemable, while even characters like Naomi Putnam — who had thrived under Gilead’s brutality — were suddenly offered redemption with no coherent justification. This flattening of moral nuance betrayed the depth and realism that had defined the show’s earlier seasons.

By erasing Nick’s internal resistance arc, the show not only disrespected Atwood’s source material but also weakened its own critique of authoritarianism. The danger of this rewrite isn’t just that it harmed a character — it’s that it undermined the very lessons dystopian literature is meant to teach us. It replaced complex truths about power, survival, and quiet resistance with simplistic, black-and-white moral judgments that serve neither feminism nor thoughtful storytelling.

Nick’s character was supposed to remind us that even those caught inside the machinery of oppression can still fight back in their own way. Erasing that lesson robbed the audience of hope — the most vital tool dystopian fiction can offer.

NICK’S ATTRACTIVENESS AND THE MISOGYNY BEHIND THE CRITICISM

One of the most troubling aspects of the backlash against Nick’s character — and against the fans who continue to care for him — is the way his physical attractiveness has been weaponized as a reason to dismiss thoughtful engagement with his arc. Critics, including members of the show’s creative team, have implied that fans (especially women) only care about Nick because of his looks — as if audiences are too shallow or simple to appreciate deeper qualities.

Disturbingly, this attitude wasn’t just reflected in off-screen commentary. It became embedded in the writing of the final season itself. After five seasons in which no character ever explicitly commented on Nick’s appearance, Season 6 abruptly shifted focus, framing his physical attractiveness as the defining reason June loved him. For the first time, June says that she would have noticed Nick even if he were bagging groceries or driving for Uber because he was very handsome. Moira joins in, comparing Nick’s looks to Rihanna’s and rating his hotness as if she were judging a celebrity. Even Lawrence remarks that June was “swept away” by Nick’s “smothering looks.”

This was no accident. The writers deliberately chose to center Nick’s attractiveness in a way they had never done before — as if to validate their own revisionist narrative that June’s love for Nick was shallow, and that fans’ attachment to him was based only on surface-level traits. In doing so, they reduced what had been a deeply layered, emotionally rich relationship to a matter of lust and superficiality — diminishing not only Nick’s character, but June’s as well.

As brilliantly articulated in the Above the Garage podcast’s cathartic essay on Nick:

“Nick’s physical attractiveness has nothing to do with the reason we love his character. Women are not as simple and shallow as you’re making them out to be. No matter how someone may try to shame you, it is not antifeminist to believe in, and care about, romantic love. Our protagonist herself has said, many times, that it is for love that she lives. Love is empowering, and we thought that was a message the show understood.”

What Nick represents is not some idealized, flawless hero. No one who values Nick as a character denies his flaws or excuses his moments of complicity. What Nick offers is a vision of the human capacity for joy, tenderness, and compassion in the bleakest circumstances. His quiet support of June, his ability to love and be loved amid horror, reflects the reality that even in war, oppression, and captivity, people have found ways to fall in love, to marry, to create art, to dream of a better world. Nick’s story was an opportunity to show how resistance can be sustained not just through defiance, but through humanity and connection.

The suggestion that shipping Nick and June, or simply caring about Nick as a character, is somehow naive or antifeminist, fundamentally misunderstands the complexity of these relationships. As the essay points out, the show could have leaned into Nick and June’s profound connection — a connection that empowered June, supported her agency, and could have stood as one of television’s greatest romances, without undermining the power of her friendships or her other relationships. Life is not either/or. Women can value deep friendships and romantic love. The audience can appreciate both without one diminishing the other.

Finally, it’s important to call out the hypocrisy in how romantic love is treated. As the essay puts it: “You know who else thought romantic love was naive and silly? Our old friend, Fred Waterford. May he rest in peace.”

Dismissing viewers who value love and connection as naive is not progressive — it echoes the mindset of the very villains the story sought to critique. It is not antifeminist to care about love, or to see beauty and strength in a character who represents its survival under tyranny. And it is certainly not a weakness or character flaw to find meaning in these narratives.

THE DANGEROUS MISLABELING: NICK AS A “NAZI”

One of the most disturbing narrative choices in Season 6 was the decision to have multiple characters — including June’s mother, Holly, and Luke — refer to Nick as a “Nazi.” This label was not used in earlier seasons, despite Nick’s long-standing position within Gilead’s structures. It was introduced only in Season 6, coinciding with the writers’ abrupt pivot toward framing Nick as complicit and irredeemable.

The comparison is not only morally and historically inaccurate — it is dangerous. Nick is not portrayed as an architect of genocide, nor as a willing enforcer of Gilead’s ideology. As the show itself spent five seasons establishing, Nick is a survivor — a man who joined the Eyes not to impose tyranny, but to report on and take down predatory Commanders after witnessing the suicide of Waterford’s first Handmaid. He smuggled contraband, helped the resistance, facilitated June’s and Nicole’s escape, and positioned himself near Hannah’s captors in hopes of aiding in her rescue. These are not the actions of a true believer in the system; they are the actions of a man trapped within it, trying to undermine it where he can.

Calling Nick a Nazi collapses the moral complexity that The Handmaid’s Tale once prided itself on. It flattens the nuances of complicity, survival, and resistance into simplistic, black-and-white thinking that does a disservice not only to Nick’s character but to the audience’s understanding of history. Gilead is a fictional regime meant to reflect elements of real-world authoritarianism, but equating every man in a uniform with a Nazi trivializes both the horrors of the Holocaust and the lived realities of people trapped within oppressive systems who did not have the power to change them, but found small, courageous ways to resist.

It’s also worth noting that the writers making these choices surely have not lived under totalitarian regimes themselves — which cannot be said about many of the show’s viewers. For those who have experienced or have family histories marked by real-world authoritarian rule, these labels are not just inaccurate; they are deeply offensive and reflect a dangerous misunderstanding of what life under such regimes actually entails.

June’s mother’s use of the term might be explained by her extremism and ideological rigidity — but when Luke adopts the same language, it becomes clear that the writers themselves wanted to frame Nick through this lens, erasing the character they had spent five seasons building. This lazy labeling serves neither history, feminism, nor good storytelling. It reduces complex questions about survival, complicity, and moral ambiguity to cheap, inflammatory rhetoric — the opposite of what dystopian fiction is meant to encourage us to grapple with

WHY THIS MATTERS

Nick didn’t need a heroic ending. But he deserved a consistent one. His arc represented a type of resistance that is rarely shown on screen: strategic, quiet, and deeply human. Nick’s story gave voice to the reality that not all acts of rebellion are loud, and not all heroes stand on podiums. His form of dissent — subtle, calculated, often invisible — was no less important than June’s louder, more visible defiance. In fact, it reflected the kind of resistance that most people caught inside authoritarian regimes actually engage in: the quiet, careful acts that chip away at power without drawing lethal attention.

More than that, Nick was the show’s most realistic character. He was an ordinary man swept up by the rise of Gilead — lured into the Sons of Jacob not out of malice or ideology, but because of the brutal socio-economic conditions that preceded Gilead’s rise. Like many who find themselves caught in the machinery of authoritarian systems, Nick became increasingly trapped as the years passed. But crucially, Nick almost immediately saw Gilead for what it was. He recognized the horror. And despite the danger, he chose to resist in the ways available to him — quietly, strategically, and at great personal cost.

We needed that Nick. His arc was supposed to remind us that even those inside the system, even those who have made mistakes, can choose to act with compassion, courage, and moral clarity. His story offered a rare and vital kind of hope: that decency can survive in the darkest of places, and that ordinary people can make extraordinary choices even when the odds are against them.

In the difficult times we live in, as extremism and authoritarianism rise in the real world, Nick’s story could have served as a reminder of the importance of quiet resistance — of the fact that the fight against oppression doesn’t always look like a revolution, but can begin with small, courageous acts.

By collapsing his arc into a simplistic tale of complicity, the writers not only betrayed Nick as a character but stripped the audience of that hope. What happened to him wasn’t just a sad ending. It was bad writing. And it was a missed opportunity — a failure to honor both the character they had built and the powerful tradition of resistance that dystopian fiction exists to celebrate.