humanoiderror

[humanoiderror]

matthias helvar was not a nazi, he was a boy built like a weapon and left to die trying to be human

i am so unbelievably tired of people calling matthias a nazi or white supremacist (????) like they skimmed six of crows with one eye and a twitter filter and decided to cosplay moral literacy.

you want to understand drüskelle? look at vikings. look at central asian nomads. look at mongol military doctrine. not fucking gestapo. fjerdan language is literally scandinavian rooted, the culture is a cold, norse coded polytheistic pantheon, a divine warrior class, and sacred wolves, tribal theocracy. they literally do not give a single fuck about being superior and think that others are subhuman for being different. all they talk about is grisha are dangerous but not because they’re lesser but because they’re threat.

matthias was not raised on supremacy. he was raised on vengeance. his family got murdered, he was conscripted as a child. not brainwashed like it’s a class he could skip; groomed, militarized, stripped of softness, molded into a holy weapon by a state that demanded obedience and called it righteousness.

you think this is a redemption arc? it’s not. it’s a ghost story.

he doesn't know how to be a human. nina tells him -literally textually, not subtextually- he doesn’t know the difference between a good man and a good soldier. he gives her the same oath he gave fjerda. that’s not romance. that’s structural damage. this boy has no idea how to want something for himself without filtering it through violence, duty, or sacrifice.

he doesn’t even have a personality. not really. not until right before he dies

when he, jesper, and kuwei escape from the dime lions, and for the first time in his entire life, he thinks "i’ll find nina. we’ll change the world."

that’s the first moment he thinks like a person. not a soldier. not a legacy. a person.

and what does he do?

he tries to help a boy.

and he dies.

not because he “paid the price for his past.”

he dies because he was a half-built soul making a full-hearted decision with no idea how to survive it.

he still thinks like a twelve year old boy who accepted losing blood for trassel

“i won’t hurt you even if you hurt me.” // “you don’t want to hurt me. i was like you once.”

he still acts like “doing good” means dying for it. because that’s the only model he’s ever had.

this isn’t justice. it’s unfinished. it’s unfair. it’s textually written to be a scream cut short.

and you reduce that to “nazi boy dies lol”?

be fucking for real

matthias didn’t get a redemption arc, he was learning how to be a human and we were going to read his redemption if he didn't fucking die.

matthias helvar was not evil.

he was barely even alive before he met nina/crows

and he dies the moment he starts to imagine he could be more.

ps. also, no, he didn’t get shot by his "past self." matthias never would’ve shot a man who was unarmed and willing to cooperate. joran was 14 when he killed matthias. matthias was 12 when he risked losing his arm to save trassel. he didn’t even scream when his bone was about to break.

he was the same 12 year old boy who thought he could gain the trust of the aggressive opponent by being kind. that’s why he died. because he never got to grow up fully.

[humanoiderror]

Wait what happened with Nina's arc in KoS? I don’t mind spoilers

Obviously spoilers for the entire King of Scars duology!

Here's a quick recap: Nina poses as a widowed Fjerdan named Mila and goes to Fjerda to bury Matthias, lugging his corpse with her and wallowing in despair for months. There, she meets Hanne Brum, Jarl Brum's child who is secretly a heartrender and the two become friends. Nina moves in with the Brums in the Ice Court, where she falls for Hanne. Hanne accidently kills the Fjerdan prince, gets disguised to take his place, and Nina becomes the future queen of Fjerda.

Here's what bugs me about this: Hanne is basically Matthias 2.0 without the misogyny (and Nina keeps remarking upon it as well so it's not just me pulling comparisons out of malice or anything). But while Matthias was a memorable character because of his intense, polarizing journey and my own hate-to-love progression, Hanne is just......... boring in comparison. Hanne has good potential with an arc based on breaking through oppressive dichotomy of Fjerdan society in multiple ways, but if I had to choose only one to play the Main Brooding Fjerdan With Jarl Brum As Their Parent Trying to Fix Their Country, Matthias wins. And their romance is so so so weird because it happens in a heartbeat alongside Nina's struggle to find peace with his death. For example, she finds Matthias' killer, gets pissed off and it seems like we will have a character moment about it, but then 5 pages later she totally forgets about it because Hanne needs to be made out with right then. And that ending????????? Like??????????? When Nina promised Matthias to keep his dream of a just Fjerda alive, I didn't imagine a lazy speedrun like "her lover she met 6 months ago hands her the role of the monarch". She will spend the rest of her life as Not-Nina with a Not-Matthias at her side and I am super duper uninterested in considering it canon

[humanoiderror]

i know nothing about king of scars but i have been spoiled, and i just did not like how nina found new love so quickly. like, am i happy for her? ofc. but i'm just.... matthias tho...

YEAH THAT’S ME!! Ofc I want her to be happy again!!!! Ofc I don’t want her to spend her life mourning a guy she loved for a year!!!!!! But just putting Matthias in the ground and skipping away to have a new romantic story only months after his horrible unjust death??? ESPECIALLY since I despise the decision to end his arc that way???????? Nope nope nope

[humanoiderror]

So I finished reading six of crows. Goooood book good book

Accept my offering dear SoC tumblr fandom

Based on this meme!!

[humanoiderror]

oh my god I forgot how stupid the Drüskelle diet is

Matthias has sugar for the first time in like ten years and spends the next two hours bouncing off the wall, alternating between aggressively being affectionate to a very amused Nina, and telling the Crows about just anything he can think of

and then he crashes hard

[humanoiderror]

show no fear matthias!!!

[humanoiderror]

The fandom focuses so much on Matthias’s character development in terms of how he views Nina and yeah that’s fair, but pretty much NOBODY ever touches Matthias’s views on the other crows in soc vs ck so i will cuz my guy’s relationship with Kaz goes from demjin (accusatory) to demjin (affectionate), he goes from glaring at Wylan in every interaction to thinking of Wylan as brilliant and an equal, he goes from trying to knock Inej into the water to telling her she is the reason he is still alive and being determined to save her from van eck, he goes from ignoring Jesper to all but clocking Jesper’s entire personality, and in this essay i will

[humanoiderror]

dagger & knife earrings by Regal Rose

[humanoiderror]

my favorite ship dynamic is good old-fashioned lover boy x killer queen.

[humanoiderror]

we’ve hit five years of moving day :)

[humanoiderror]

[humanoiderror]

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cr29kOzILuq/

[humanoiderror]

The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (detail) by Paul Delaroche, 1833.

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[humanoiderror]

[humanoiderror]

[humanoiderror]

Nan Goldin // Lynette and Donna at Marion’s Restaurant, NYC 1991

[humanoiderror]

Nadja Auermann by Helmut Newton