#Meta Analysis

[angstandhappiness]

Neat

As someone with a fear of pregnancy, I usually hate the "afraid of pregnancy but has a baby anyway for him!!!" trope. I think its misogynistic and reduces the pain and terror and high chance of death that pregnancy presents. Despite this, I love the Hunger Games and its ending, where Katniss ends up happy with her children and Peeta, whereas usually I'd roll my eyes. Heres why I think that is.

My fear of pregnancy is mostly centred around pain/uncomfortability, which is what most main characters think about when the pregnancy trope is involved. They dont want to go through the body and mind altering/often destroying process pregnancy is (and before someone jumps down my throat im not anti pregnancy i just think ppl should be informed its very dangerous). So when the author plops them with a baby at the end bc they just love their lover so much, it feels... ignorant. Like theyre ignoring all the pain that they feel as though love can override it and presenting the only way they can truly be happy is if they have a baby. Its gross and I hate it.

But Katniss' fears arent about that. Theyre about having children who are born into the games, not the inherent horror of childbirth. Its more about bringing children into a world she knows will eat them alive and spit them out broken or dead or both. So when they end the book and theyve taken down the Capitol and there are no more hunger games, that bruden is lifted. Existing, having her children isnt shown as an obligation for her to be happy or complete and it isnt shown as her pushing through the fears of pain bc she loved peeta so much, its more of a screw you to the capitol. She is allowed to have her children, her private and raise them in a world that she is no longer afraid to have them in. And yes, Peeta plays a part in it, because what more to counter your fear of children in an uncertain world than a man you can always be certain will love you and them?

Its not a strong woman being told "you need a family and a man to be complete after telling the narrative repeatedly how you dont want that" its a "we have broken down the barriers that were previously holding you back, and you can be free now to have your family and it will be so radically different than you were expecting and that will fulfil you." They arent just children, theyre a representative of her triumph over the capitol. She fought to have them.

I know this makes no sense, she just means a lot to me.

[spikycannonball]

The Shatterverse: Storytelling Through Symbolism

It seems like a lot of people watched Sonic Prime expecting something like Across the Spiderverse: an exploration of canon lore through alternate realities where their favorite characters might have ended up differently (especially dead characters), and the moral dilemma of choosing between saving Sonic’s original friends by sacrificing their Shatterverse alternate versions, or letting them live and losing his original home forever. Alternatively, people just wanted to see their favorite secondary characters again, and a plot centered around the multiverse sounded like a good opportunity to bring back characters like Blaze (who comes from another dimension), or Silver (who is a time-traveller).

But none of that is what Sonic Prime is about. What we got instead was an emotional journey centered on Sonic and his relationships. To fans of the franchise expecting something epic or dark, or as many character cameos as possible, of course this would feel like a letdown. But that doesn’t mean the story is wasting potential: the potential of alternate realities is simply used in a different way, which relies heavily on symbolism for storytelling. And the ending may be controversial (especially the parts that are left ambiguous), but it also serves the message of the story. First and foremost, Sonic Prime is a story about friendship, communication and healing: however you interpret the ending, all the events that took place mattered because the main characters grew from them.

I will elaborate under the cut, but be warned that this essay will be spoiler heavy for the entirety of the Sonic Prime series: I would advise watching it before reading if you haven’t yet. In part 3, I will also be spoiling three stories that I am using for comparison, specifically their endings, because the way they get their messages across is very similar to Sonic Prime. Namely: the movie Jumanji (the 1995 version) by Joe Johnston, the animated movie Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki, and Neverending Story by Michael Ende (the novel, not the movie: their endings are very different). Unfortunately, Tumblr doesn’t have a ‘hide spoilers’ feature, so instead, I will use emojis as brackets for these parts: 🎲 for Jumanji, 📖 for Neverending Story and 👻 for Spirited Away, so you can skip those parts if you only want my analysis of Sonic Prime. This post is also very long and image heavy; over 9K words of analysis. I hope that’s fine with you! Here are the three parts’ titles to sum up my main points:

1) The Shatterverse Symbolism: Unstable or Damaged Relationships in Need of Healing

2) Dehumanization and Projection: Who Is ‘Real?’

3) A Defense of Ambiguous Endings: What’s a Paradox?

1) The Shatterverse Symbolism: Unstable or Damaged Relationships in Need of Healing

From the get go, Sonic Prime heavily relies on metaphors and symbolism for storytelling. Sometimes explicitly (like the palm tree being a symbol of connection), other times more subtly: the very landscapes where the action takes place are more conceptual than concrete, and that’s before reality gets broken. (Although, as it will become apparent in part 3 of this essay, time itself is relative in Sonic Prime.)

To understand this point, you have to look no further than the way Sonic talks about Green Hill at the start of the very first episode: "Home is where your friends are, as they say; and that’s Green Hill."

Green Hill is not described as ‘the place where everyone lives together’ or ‘where Sonic’s house is’ (the closest thing to a conventional house we see is Tails’ workshop, and in the games, he has several of those in different places): instead, Green Hill is a symbolic place that represents the entirety of Sonic’s world, emotionally and literally. We can infer that his world is not that small (he does add that Green Hill has "the best beaches, palm trees and chili dogs," so there must be other places to compare them to), but it’s all we need for the purpose of the story, which is why we never get to see what’s past Green Hill’s borders, and no other place within Sonic’s universe is ever mentioned in-story.

Once in the Shatterverse, ‘Green Hill’ becomes synonymous with ‘Sonic’s home world,’ in the same way the dystopian world New Yolk is reduced to a single city. ‘Green Hill’ encompasses everything Sonic lost by shattering his reality: his home, everybody he knows, and his relationships. Green Hill and Sonic’s friends are undistinguishable from each other: home is not a single physical place, it’s the people you want to go back to. And Sonic, being a free spirit who can go wherever he wants, fails to see the fragility of a home, even if he treasures it - because he can’t imagine losing it. Until he does.

The symbolism goes further to serve the story’s message. There is a reason it is called the ‘Shatterverse’ and not the Multiverse: those are not just parallel worlds, they are all ‘broken’ worlds in some capacity, and their inhabitants are as well. Notably, reality ‘shatters’ in ways that reflect the central characters’ issues:

Eggman’s greed and megalomania make him hold on to the Paradox Prism as it breaks: consequently, he gets shattered into five different versions of himself (as many as there are Prism Shards) of varying ages (because the Prism affects space and time), who all end up trapped in the same world, fated to always argue with each other over who is really in charge. The Chaos Council is the perfect foil for Sonic: they don’t love anyone, not even themselves, will use any means necessary to get what they want regardless of who gets hurt in the process, and are never satisfied. But they are also similar to Sonic in ways that cement their status as foils: they are all reckless, tend to act before thinking (especially when provoked), and they never give up. This is what leads them to make a similar mistake to the one Sonic made by breaking the Prism in spite of Tails’ warnings: in their case, they disregard Nine’s warnings about leaving interdimensional portals open for too long, and their negligence causes the entire Shatterverse to start decaying.

Symbolically, it’s an effective parallel to the cataclysm Sonic caused: his was made with the intent to prevent disaster using the wrong method, it was brief and highly destructive, but entire worlds were born from it (even if all of them were unstable in their own way) - it was akin to a Big Bang, and Sonic makes it his goal to fix what he broke. The Chaos Council on the other hand polluted the Shatterverse for purely selfish reasons, condemning the Shatterspaces and all their residents to a slow death. And unlike Sonic, even if they can learn from their mistakes and accept a truce long enough to save their own skin from the danger they caused, the members of the Chaos Council are incapable of true emotional growth or meaningful connection with others: which is why, in the end, infighting causes their downfall.

Sonic on the other hand breaks reality due to his overconfidence and disregard for the danger the Paradox Prism represents, and the fact that he was relying on his friends without actually listening to them (taking their unconditional support for granted): consequently, Sonic ends up alone in a hostile universe, and gets burdened with the energy of the Paradox Prism - a power he never wanted and can’t properly wield or control on his own. The Prism energy in his body is unstable, upsets his speed, and makes Sonic a living target for anyone who wants his power. Upon realizing his predicament, Sonic immediately goes looking for his friends, only to realize none of the familiar faces he finds remember him, and that all the Shatterspaces (as Nine calls them) are deformed versions of Green Hill where none of the friendships are stable:

New Yolk is a dystopia where Eggman won and built a tyrannical city. Sonic’s friends either got enslaved (Rusty Rose and Citizen 1998), isolated themselves completely (Nine), or are too busy resisting the oppressive power to form any connections outside of the Resistance (Renegade Knux and Rebel Rouge - who have the closest thing to a stable, mutually trusting relationship, but in a context where they constantly fear for each other’s lives and are solely focused on defeating the Chaos Council)

Boscage Maze is an overgrown jungle where nature became unbalanced over time: Thorn Rose is so determined to protect the environment that she is willing to sacrifice her former friends for it by banishing them, and the rest of her former group is reduced to a life of constant paranoia where they scavenge what they can to survive, always on the lookout for the ‘monster’’s next attack

No Place is a flooded world where everybody is a pirate: they seem laid-back and friendly at first, but it quickly becomes apparent that reputation is everything in their world, and Captain Dread’s new crew has been wandering aimlessly since his fall from grace (which is a taboo subject on their ship), and gets regularly picked on by his former crew: under their merry façade, they are adrift in every sense of the word

The Grim is an empty wasteland - nobody lives there

the original Green Hill has been reduced to a colorless ghost of its former self, where echoes of Sonic’s friends repeat a single line over and over: Ghost Hill

These worlds are all ‘shattered’ in a physical and sociological sense, which illustrates the many ways in which what Sonic took for granted can go wrong. It’s a classic case of "you never appreciate what you have until it’s gone," which serves as Sonic’s first wake-up call and starts his character arc.

The only relationship Sonic gets to keep in the Shatterverse is the one he can’t define: his rivalry with Shadow. In his introductory speech, after stating that ‘home is where your friends are,’ Sonic divides his acquaintances into friends (Tails, Amy, Knuckles, Rouge, Big and Froggy - not necessarily his only friends, but in Sonic Prime, those six represent his friendships in general), enemy (Eggman) - "and then there is Shadow. It’s… complicated." Shadow is immediately introduced as the odd one out, not quite fitting in Sonic’s definition of ‘home’ even if this world is Shadow’s as much as it is Sonic’s. This is due to the fact that we are mainly experiencing the story from Sonic’s perspective as the focus character, and Sonic doesn’t know where he stands with Shadow.

Symbolically, it’s very meaningful that Shadow is the only Green Hill survivor: he didn’t quite fit in Sonic’s friend group, which is why he is the first to realize that Sonic is upsetting the balance. Unlike the others, he doesn’t trust Sonic enough to simply warn him: as soon as he sees that Sonic poses a threat to the world (intentionally or not), Shadow immediately attacks him. It establishes his character as someone who takes action without relying on anyone else, willing to take down anyone standing in his way for the sake of protecting his world, but terrible at communication. (He never properly explained to Sonic why he suddenly attacked him beyond "You just shook the world!") Later on, Sonic boils it down to Shadow having trouble trusting anyone - he would rather rely on his own power.

Which is why Shadow ends up trapped in an empty Void between worlds, only able to access the ghost version of his former home, essentially powerless. Naturally, Shadow’s first reflex is to take back control of the situation and claim back his autonomy by stealing Sonic’s ability to travel between Shatterspaces, with the intent to fix reality himself. (As Shadow points out, he has no reason to trust Sonic after seeing him literally break reality - even Sonic can’t deny that much.) However, Shadow is forced to realize that this power is not something he can take, because Sonic himself is the key, not the tech he uses.

Emotionally, this scene is pivotal for Shadow in more ways than one: not only did he fail to forcefully trade places with Sonic and take control, Sonic saved his life after the failed attempt nearly got Shadow killed. It naturally leads to his realization that Sonic carries the power to travel between Shatterspaces in his own body (symbolically, Sonic is the glue that brings the Shatterspaces and their residents together), and him acknowledging that he and Sonic need to work together to fix reality.

That makes Shadow a missing piece: even back when Green Hill was whole, his relationship with Sonic was strained. Ironically, their reality shattering becomes an opportunity for them to build something new by learning to trust and rely on each other.

What’s especially interesting is the way their perception of the Shatterspaces and their residents evolves over time, along with their understanding of relationships - what they define as ‘real.’

2) Dehumanization and Projection: Who Is ‘Real?’

This is a question for us viewers as well: what exactly are the Shatterspaces and their residents?

Instead of a detailed exposition or definite answers, Sonic Prime gives us food for thought: across the series, different characters theorize about what the Paradox Prism does and what the Shatterspaces are, but they all draw different conclusions depending on their perspective and the limited information they have at any given time. It’s up to us to decide which theory is the most likely to be correct, or if the answers lie elsewhere.

When Sonic first lands in New Yolk and sees remnants of a destroyed Green Hill underneath the city, he initially assumes that he just ended up in a future of his world where Eggman won. Later on, when Sonic finds a single Prism Shard in New Yolk instead of the whole Paradox Prism, he realizes that New Yolk is a different world entirely: he finally recovers the rest of his missing memories, and concludes that he created this dystopian world by shattering the Prism.

Until this moment, Sonic was clinging to the belief that the familiar people he met were simply future versions of his friends who had forgotten him: he keeps calling them by the wrong names, introducing them to each other based on what they were like in his world, and repeatedly says things like "when you get your memories back."

At this point, Sonic was still confused by his missing recent memories, but even when he does remember and lands in Boscage Maze after getting absorbed by New Yolk’s Prism Shard, Sonic still clings to denial and the hope that the familiar faces he meets there will finally recognize him. He gets more and more distressed when people he sees as friends keep attacking him, and can’t help but try to bring back memories they don’t have, because he has gotten that desperate for connection - which is why Prim is able to manipulate him so easily, and why he doesn’t see Thorn’s backstabbing coming, even if they both have been hostile to him from the start. In short: in these two first worlds, Sonic is constantly projecting his Green Hill friends onto the Shatterspaces’ residents.

Interestingly, this tendency proves useful in Boscage Maze: because Sonic can’t help but see Amy in Thorn, he can’t dehumanize her the way Prim and her group do by calling Thorn a ‘monster.’ And Sonic can’t agree with Thorn either when she dehumanizes her former friends by calling them ‘scavengers;’ which, in her mind, justifies her banishing them and letting them waste away above the jungle canopy: her goal of protecting the forest blinds her to everything else. In the end, Sonic is able to use his memories of what Amy tried to teach him about communication, connection and balance to bring Thorn to her senses. In a way, he is still projecting, but in the sense that Sonic knows who Amy is at her core, and her potential: to reflect this, he starts to say ‘you’ and ‘her’ interchangeably for Thorn and Amy as two variations of the same person:

Sonic: Well, my friend Amy would say: "Talk about your feelings." But she’s a little corny. Thorn: I don’t know - she sounds pretty great. Sonic: Yeah. You are.

In a sense, Amy is the one saving Thorn from herself through Sonic, who finally understands the value of connection his friends were trying to express by gifting him the palm tree, back in Green Hill. Finding alternate versions of the palm tree in both New Yolk (as the last remnant of their home that the Resistance is trying to protect in the hopes of bringing nature back one day) and Boscage Maze (as the ‘Great Green’ that Thorn worships, not realizing that the palm tree is dying due to the lack of sunlight ever since she shut her friends out, figuratively and literally, and the power of the Prism Shard made the jungle overgrow) reinforces the idea that “everything is connected.” Sonic also realizes that the Shards are a source of discord, and tells Thorn as much, making the metaphor explicit:

All this leads Sonic to think of the Shatterverse residents as versions of his friends in different circumstances, who never got to meet him and whose realities got corrupted by each Prism Shard. From then on, Sonic actively tries to acknowledge the Shatterspaces as alternate realities: when he gets to No Place, he chastises himself for the parallels he can’t help but draw between Dread and Knuckles, and acts a lot more distrustful towards the pirates after getting attacked so many times in the previous worlds.

Sonic: But no - you’re pirate Knuckles! I’m not taking any chances!

Ironically, Dread is very welcoming initially. His friendly attitude strengthens Sonic’s impression that deep down, they are just like their Green Hill counterparts, and he finally gets an opportunity to take a break and just enjoy time with familiar faces who are actually nice to him for once. Moreover, Sonic is delighted to meet someone he sees as a fun-loving version of Knuckles, and actually calls Dread his "favorite version of Knuckles" to his face.

Only to later realize that the pirates have their own issues centered around another Prism Shard, aptly named ‘The Devil’s Lighthouse,’ a fabled gem with unfathomable power that every pirate covets: going after it, ignoring his former crew’s warnings and sinking his former ship is what ruined Captain Dread’s reputation years ago. Dread tells Sonic to forget about the Shard, because the pirate is well aware that he is likely to relapse and get blinded by greed again if they go after it. (In the same way that Thorn "lost herself in the darkness" of the overgrown jungle after abusing the power of the Shard she calls ‘the Heart of the Forest.’) Which seems to support Sonic’s theory that the Shards bring unbalance to their respective Shatterspaces.

Sonic inevitably gets dragged into the mess regardless, which makes him miss his home even more.

Parallel to all this, while travelling through the Shatterspaces, Sonic gets visions of Shadow urging him to keep going, and trying to tell him that he is trapped in the Void. Sonic is very confused by this, and assumes he is hallucinating - yet when Shadow tells him to keep running without stopping, Sonic listens, even as he is running straight towards a wall.

It does pay off, because going fast is the key to activate Sonic’s ability to teleport from one Shatterspace to another, but Sonic didn’t know it for sure at the time. Despite this, and his doubts that this Shadow he keeps glimpsing is even real, just from the urgency in his voice, Sonic chooses to trust him.

It all comes to a head when Shadow finally manages to intercept Sonic in the Void between Shatterspaces. Initially, Sonic assumes he just landed in a new world with a different version of Shadow. Only this time, Sonic is out of patience:

Sonic: Look, I have no time to deal with whoever you are. I just wanna go home.

Which naturally sets Shadow off because Sonic is the one who destroyed their home in the first place. It takes Shadow saying his name for Sonic to finally realize that the Shadow in front of him is the one he knows from Green Hill; and the way Sonic reacts is very telling:

Sonic: Shadow! You’re… you! The real you! Shadow: The only me!

This outburst shows that, deep down, Sonic still sees the people of Green Hill as the ‘real’ ones, even if he doesn’t fully realize it. He is so relieved to finally find someone he actually knows, then so upset by Shadow’s reveals about Green Hill’s fate, that Sonic has no time to stop and consider the implications of what he said here - but to the viewer, it’s important foreshadowing.

In that same episode, we also get to see Shadow’s perspective, and that the way he views the Shatterspaces is much more radical than Sonic’s. The fact that he calls himself ‘the only me’ has sinister implications: on the one hand, it is true that there are no alternate versions of Shadow in the worlds Sonic has visited (because Shadow teleported out of the way before the Paradox Prism’s blast could shatter him). But more importantly, Shadow is rejecting the very idea that there could ever be other ‘Shadows,’ or any other version of the Green Hill residents. Because, unlike Sonic, Shadow does not see the Shatterspaces as alternate realities: Shadow thinks the Shatterspaces are nothing but "cruel versions to make [them] suffer."

This impression partly comes from the fact that the only Shatterspace Shadow can enter is Ghost Hill, which is incomplete: Shadow himself admits that he can’t figure out whether it’s because this world "is decaying" or "not fully formed." He doesn’t understand why this Gateway is letting him in, either, but to him, it feels "like a ghost." Yet he calls the Shard in the Ghost Hill mountain the "real one," unlike the rest of Ghost Hill and the other Shards, which, according to his theory, create "distorted versions of [their] reality." In short, Shadow doesn’t see Ghost Hill as what remains of his home, but he does see its Shard as a possible chance to get his home back. In Shadow’s eyes, aside from the Shards they need to gather, everything in the Shatterverse is nothing but an illusory obstacle.

Which is why, when Sonic wants to tell Nine about Shadow’s plan to rebuild the Paradox Prism around the Shard in Ghost Hill, Shadow insists that Nine can’t be trusted:

Sonic: What are you talking about? Of course he can! He’s just like Tails! He’s just a little… angsty, that’s all. Shadow: No. He is not Tails, he is Nine. And they are not your real friends!

When Shadow says this, he is not just warning Sonic about the fact that he is clearly projecting, he is saying that none of the Shatterspace residents are actual living people - only illusions. In doing so, Shadow is dehumanizing the Shatterverse residents and making Sonic rightfully fear what Shadow might do to them for the sake of bringing Green Hill (the only ‘real’ world in Shadow’s eyes) back. Hence why Sonic answers by reaffirming that Nine and the Shatterspaces are just as real as they are:

These conflicting views are the reason they fight: Shadow thinks Sonic is deluding himself by thinking of the Shatterverse residents as people, and Sonic wants to protect them from Shadow, whom he knows can be ruthless, especially if he thinks the people in his way aren’t real.

Later on, when the two of them have to work together, Shadow is left with no other choice but to rely on Nine to rebuild the Prism. Shadow is still openly distrustful of Nine, but no longer outright denying that he is ‘real.’ (Possibly because watching Sonic interact with the Shatterverse residents all this time and then meeting Nine face to face made it gradually more difficult for Shadow to deny their personhood.) Instead of telling Sonic off again or confronting Nine directly, Shadow is gentler when he voices his doubts, going as far as to wait until Nine is out of earshot for this exchange with Sonic:

Shadow: How do you know you can trust him? Sonic: Trust is an issue for you, Shadow. That’s why you don’t have any friends. Shadow: I don’t think your ‘friend’ wants the same thing we do.

Even if you can hear obvious sarcasm when Shadow says ‘friend,’ the mere fact that he mentions Nine wanting something different shows that Shadow truly sees Nine as his own person: his distrust no longer comes from the fact that he doesn’t see Nine as real - on the contrary, Shadow sees him as a stranger with his own goals. Unlike Sonic, he sees Nine and Tails as completely separate people; he simply fears that Sonic might be placing his trust in the wrong person. Sonic (rather rudely) dismisses his worries by saying: "Trust is an issue for you Shadow. That’s why you don’t have any friends." The latter may or may not be true (there are subtle hints that Shadow and Rouge are friends in Sonic Prime, but Sonic doesn’t seem to know this, and the series is mainly from his point of view, so there is no way for the viewer to know for sure either), but the former definitely is: Shadow’s trust issues and difficulties to communicate properly are part of the reason he attacked Sonic instead of talking things out at the beginning of the series, and thus failed to prevent the destruction of reality. It is also the reason why they fought when Shadow cornered Sonic in the Void, then fought again over Sonic’s tech in Ghost Hill.

However, things have changed between them since then, especially with them being forced to work together, even from a distance: at this point, Sonic trusts Shadow enough to leave him alone with Nine. Therefore, when the Chaos Council attacks, Sonic leaves the choice up to Shadow: he can stay and keep an eye on Nine while he repairs the Prism if he wants, but Sonic is off to fight the Chaos Council. In the end, even though Shadow still looks conflicted, it doesn’t take five seconds for him to make his choice: he goes after Sonic. Even if Shadow claims that he is just making sure that Sonic won’t mess up again, it is still a leap of faith on Shadow’s part to leave Nine on his own. In spite of his lingering doubts, Shadow is choosing to trust Sonic’s judgement of Nine’s character and their friendship: in and of itself, it’s a show of character growth. (And Sonic is aware of this, which is why he is so happy to see Shadow join him for battle - and also because he is excited about teaming up with him in general.)

Another reason for Shadow’s choice is the fact that Nine has proven his knowledge and ability to handle the Shards: as Sonic reminds Shadow, Nine is the only one capable of restoring the Paradox Prism. Shadow even heard Nine back up his theory that Ghost Hill is "like an embryonic Shatterspace," "like it got stuck in the blueprint stage while forming;" a theory that’s further supported by Sonic’s shoes and gloves looking like blueprints with no special ability in Ghost Hill (even though all the other Shatterspaces give his clothes new abilities thanks to Nine’s tech regulating the Prism energy in Sonic’s body). When Sonic and Shadow take him to the Paradox Prism, Nine warns them both that if they try to restore the Paradox Prism, "the slightest variation can have massive repercussions:"

Nine: One small mistake, and poof! Reality is changed forever.

This choice of words has important implications: it suggests that the changes Sonic already caused by shattering the Prism are irreversible. In other words, all the Shatterspaces became real because of Sonic, and they will remain as they are unless Nine makes a mistake while repairing the Prism. Therefore, Nine has much more to lose than Sonic or Shadow if he messes up, which is why Shadow lets him handle it, even if he suspects that Nine has a different motive to restore the Prism.

Unfortunately for Shadow and Sonic, Nine does. In fact, Nine has his own issues with his perception of reality: he grew up in a dystopian world with no one to love him and nobody to love, living underground "to avoid everyone." Before the series even started, Nine’s goal has always been to escape his reality. Initially, he took refuge in solitude, until Sonic’s arrival shook his world literally and figuratively: Sonic is the first person to show him genuine kindness and affection, and speaks of a world where they are best friends and do everything together - a world he lost. Not only that, but Sonic is the one who leads Nine to discover the Prism energy, and through that, a way to travel between worlds by opening portals: as soon as he gets the opportunity, Nine immediately takes the New Yolk Shard for himself and leaves his world behind to explore the Void, without a second thought for the Resistance members he left for dead. Once there, Nine is elated to discover an empty world, which he names ‘the Grim,’ immediately decides to make it his and Sonic’s new home, and persuades himself that Sonic will love this place. Together, they can transform the Grim into a Paradise - everything they ever wanted!

In other words, Nine and Sonic are projecting on each other. Sonic wants to fix his shattered reality, and thinks he can just bring Nine back to Green Hill with him so Nine can have a new home where he can be happy. Meanwhile, Nine wants to create a brand new reality with the only person he trusts, and no one else. The tragedy of their friendship is that, no matter how much they genuinely care about each other, their end goals are irreconcilable.

What’s worse: because they are both constantly under pressure from outside threats, the two of them never get an opportunity to talk things out properly. (When Nine first brings Sonic to the Grim, Sonic can’t give a proper response to Nine’s proposition to live there together because he has to go back to New Yolk to help the Resistance. Then, in Ghost Hill, when Sonic tries to tell Nine that he saw Green Hill briefly pop back into existence while Nine was repairing the Prism, Nine is too focused on his task to listen, and has to send Sonic away to keep the Chaos Council at bay.)

Inevitably, miscommunication leads to disaster when Sonic realizes that Nine never intended to restore Green Hill (Nine doesn’t even believe it’s possible to bring it back), and Nine insists that they have to build a new world because Green Hill “was never (Nine’s) home.”

Nine: Did you even think about what I wanted?! Sonic: I just assumed that after everything we’ve been through, you would see things the way I do. Just like the real Tails would.

This dialogue sums up everything Sonic Prime is about through the double meaning of ‘real’ in this context. What Sonic blurts out here can be interpreted as a denial of Nine’s personhood: just a replacement for the ‘real’ Tails, whom Sonic never saw as his own person. Of course Nine would be enraged at hearing something like this, and Sonic’s wide-eyed expression and stunned silence at Nine’s outburst speak volumes about how horrified Sonic is at what he just implied with his poor choice of word.

Especially because, as we know, Sonic does see Nine as a real person: he told Shadow as much the first time they went to Ghost Hill. The entire reason they fought was because Sonic wanted to protect Nine from Shadow, who didn’t see Nine as real at the time.

But Nine doesn’t know this, and even if he did, it wouldn’t change the root of the problem: when Sonic brings up ‘the real Tails,’ Nine is forced to realize that Sonic has been projecting Tails onto him all this time, and that Nine can’t compete with Sonic’s ‘real’ best friend from his home world, destroyed or not. In Nine’s eyes, it means that his friendship with Sonic was never real, because Sonic never really saw Nine - only Tails.

And Sonic never considered that Nine could ever see things that way: after all, seeing Amy in Thorn was a good thing. It’s what helped her regain some self-love when she was at her worst, and she certainly didn’t mind the comparison. Similarly, knowing Tails’ abilities allowed Sonic to teach Mangey how to fly. And telling Nine about his past with Tails is the way their own friendship started (symbolized by Nine building the tech that stabilizes the Prism energy in Sonic’s body and allows Sonic to control its powers). Nine was even the one who asked Sonic: "So… So what else did we do?" - expressing a wish to be the fox in Sonic’s stories.

In Sonic’s mind, comparing one friend to another isn’t an issue, because he loves all his friends equally. When Sonic says "the real Tails," or the ‘real’ Shadow, it actually means ‘the one I know’ - as demonstrated by the way Sonic tells Dread: “The Knuckles I know is not a coward.”

But Nine has no frame of reference for friendship. It’s completely new to him, and Sonic is the only friend he ever had. To Nine, love is finite: if there is anyone else in Sonic’s life, that someone can take Nine’s place and "take Sonic away." (Hence his outrage over Shadow helping Sonic escape the Grim in season 3 episode 1: "What?! Shadow thinks he can take Sonic away from me?! Not a chance!") Especially if that someone else is another version of himself: not only are they rivals for Sonic’s affection, they are a threat to Nine’s sense of self. These are the reasons he eventually targets Sails and Mangey: as Tails-lookalikes, not only does he perceive them as a threat to his sense of personhood ("There is only one of me," he says before sending his robots after them. In other words, the other versions of him are not ‘real,’ so it’s justifiable to attack them.) but also as the greatest threats to the reality he wants: a world for him and Sonic only.

And this is yet another form of dehumanization: Nine becomes unhealthily possessive of Sonic, and starts to objectify him. When he realizes that he needs the Prism energy inside Sonic’s body to complete the Prism, he goes after Sonic like a commodity that he is owed, no longer a person he wants by his side. Shadow and the Shatterverse residents all realize that Nine is objectifying Sonic, and all of them are rightfully afraid of what Nine might do to Sonic if he gets his hands on him - which is why they all fight to protect Sonic the same way he has been fighting for them all this time, even with the entire Shatterverse decaying around them all.

Shadow in particular is a great foil for Nine in this instance, because his development and relationship with Sonic, along with the way he views the Shatterspaces and their residents, went in the opposite direction. When Nine steals the Paradox Prism and abandons Sonic and Shadow in the decaying Ghost Hill, we get another pivotal scene that shows how much Shadow has changed since his last fight with Sonic: instead of chastising Sonic for trusting Nine despite his warnings, Shadow’s priority is to escape Ghost Hill with Sonic, who is understandably upset and reluctant to leave the Ghost versions of the Green Hill residents behind - and Shadow has to insist that they aren’t real and can’t be saved. And when that’s not enough to persuade Sonic, Shadow finally recognizes that the other versions of their friends in the Shatterverse are the ‘real’ ones: "the ones who still have a chance."

At this point, it could be argued that Shadow is mainly saying this as a way to persuade Sonic to leave, rather than telling him to save himself (because Shadow knows that Sonic always prioritizes saving people over his own safety). But it still reflects the fact that Shadow is finally starting to view the residents of the Shatterverse as their own people, and Sonic’s friendship with them as genuine: a clear contrast to his previous allegation that "they are not your real friends!"

On the other hand, Shadow still views the Green Hill ghosts as ‘not real’ - something Shadow, Nine and Sonic all thought initially. Only for the ghosts to briefly pop back into existence while Nine was repairing the Prism - which proves that their true selves are in there somewhere. Sonic is the only one who witnesses it, which is why he is so reluctant to leave the ghosts behind: unlike Shadow and Nine, Sonic knows they can be saved. Furthermore, them reappearing did not affect Nine or the Chaos Council, which also disproves the common fan theory that none of the alternate versions can exist at the same time as the Green Hill characters, or that they would just fuse back together if the Prism got restored. This scene proves to Sonic and the viewers that all of the characters we met are real.

Symbolically, it also deconstructs the notion that love and friendship are finite: that you can’t love someone ‘as much’ as someone else. (Nine definitely believes this, which is why his immediate assumption is that he was a replacement for Tails all along, and that there can be only one of him). In actuality, Sonic cares about everyone equally; he loves them differently, yes, but equally, which is why he refuses to leave anyone behind when the Shatterverse collapses and Nine targets the stranded pirates in No Place to lure Sonic into a trap. Others (in and out of the show) criticize Sonic for walking into this trap knowingly, but the narrative doesn’t, in this instance: prioritizing his friends was the lesson he had to learn in the first place, rather than ‘solving the situation;’ and then, learning to listen to them.

Nine in particular is the main reason Sonic has come this far, either directly or thanks to the regulators he built so Sonic could control the Prism energy in his body and travel from world to world - and making new connections there. Therefore, it only makes sense symbolically that Nine and Sonic’s fallout would bring the end of the world.

Season 3 focuses on the toll that using the Prism’s power is taking on Nine and the entire Shatterverse: it follows the pattern of the Shards bringing discord and unbalance. The more power he uses, the more self-destructive Nine becomes (attacking his two alternate selves is yet another symbol of his self-destructive behavior), until he purposefully accelerates the Decay to draw Sonic into a corner, which makes Sonic’s friends (and the Chaos Council) all the more determined to take Nine down, leading to more destruction. And as Nine’s only friend, Sonic is the only one who can stop it by interposing himself, finally calming Nine down. (On that note, as far as symbolism goes, it is very fitting that the last use Sonic makes of his Prism energy is to use Nine’s tech to protect them both from everyone else with a summoned shield.)

In fact, Sonic has been consistently prioritizing saving people over gathering the Shards in the series, and always refused to lose faith in his friends, even after getting betrayed and becoming more cautious - because he believes in their potential to be better. So, when left with no other option, it’s only natural for Sonic to sacrifice the Prism energy in his body to save everyone else. And when Nine expresses astonishment that Sonic would do this even after everything he did, Sonic simply answers: "What are friends for?"

The Shatterverse getting restored at the end is symbolic of Sonic’s relationships (and all the others’) being mended. It’s especially important that Nine is the one to do it, because everything started due to a misunderstanding between Sonic and Tails (when Eggman tricked Sonic into unearthing the Paradox Prism despite Tails’ warnings), and escalated with a much bigger misunderstanding between Sonic and Nine: their reconciliation and restored mutual trust is what saves the universe. Not only does Sonic decide to protect Nine despite his betrayal, he has to persuade the others to also put their trust in Nine and let him extract Sonic's Prism energy to restore the Paradox Prism and fix reality, even if it puts his own life at risk. They reluctantly agree, because they all realize that there is no other option if they want to live. Symbolically, choosing to trust someone who can help while knowing the risks is necessary to start healing and move on.

Afterwards, every character working together to bring home a dying Sonic reinforces this symbolism: for once, Sonic is the one reduced to complete powerlessness, being rescued by his friends, coming home literally and figuratively. After all: "Home is where your friends are."

As for what happens to the rest of the Shatterverse and its residents after Sonic and Shadow get home to Green Hill, or to the Paradox Prism after Shadow teleports it away…

We don’t get to find out.

And maybe that’s the point.

3) A Defense of Ambiguous Endings: What’s a Paradox?

This is where I bring up Jumanji, Spirited Away and the Neverending Story novel for comparison. Why those three stories? Well, I can think of a few similarities between them and Sonic Prime: all of them center on characters who leave their world behind and have to find their way home without losing themselves or their loved ones. Jumanji in particular neatly sums up the stakes in the very rules of the titular magical board game:

"Jumanji: a game for those who seek to find a way to leave their world behind. Adventurers beware: do not begin unless you intend to finish. The exciting consequences of the game will vanish only when a player has reached Jumanji and called out its name."

Thanks to these rules, we know the destination from the get-go, and that reaching it will erase the entire adventure - the only question is if and how the characters can make it to the goal.

But if they do reach their goal and erase everything, does it render the adventure pointless? Or does something remain, in the end?

What about a story that ends with unanswered questions? 📖👻🎲Just like Sonic and Shadow or Alan and Sarah, both Bastian (the ordinary child who reads the titular Neverending Story and gets absorbed into the written world of Fantasia) and Chihiro (a young girl who gets trapped in the Spirit World after going through a mysterious tunnel with her parents in the beginning of Spirited Away) make it home at the end of their respective stories. But the book Bastian fell into disappears, and Chihiro’s parents don’t remember anything from the Spirit World. There is no way to confirm what becomes of their respective guides Atreyu and Haku, or any of the other people from Fantasia or the Spirit World.📖👻🎲

Does that make those stories ‘unfinished?’ Or is the lack of answer part of the point those stories are trying to make?

In Sonic Prime’s case, the very fact that the cataclysmic object that starts the plot is called the Paradox Prism has me fully convinced that the ambiguity is entirely intentional and part of the plot.

A paradox is contradictory by design: it invites critical thinking and encourages you to think outside the box. And just like the Shatterspaces, there is a reason why the Paradox Prism is called the way it is: its very name hints at its powers in more ways than one.

In this case, the events of Sonic Prime rely on a time paradox: Sonic fell into the Shatterverse because the Prism got broken, and yet, before this, Shadow saw a vision of himself in the Void, trying to reach Sonic through the New Yolk Gateway.

Shadow got this vision as soon as the Prism got unearthed, when Eggman tricked Sonic into powering the blast that fractured the mountain - before the Prism got broken. This vision is what drew Shadow to attack Sonic, because it forewarned him that Sonic was about to shake reality. (Shadow couldn’t tell how exactly, which is why he demanded answers while attacking Sonic - but unfortunately, Sonic had no idea what Shadow was talking about because he didn’t realize that the blast did anything more than damage the mountain.) In other words, Shadow saw Sonic in New Yolk and himself in the Void before the Shatterverse was even created.

It is a paradox, yes, but a paradox that makes sense in the context of Sonic Prime. Because, as it turns out, time flows differently in each Shatterspace: a day in Boscage Maze equals several weeks in New Yolk - in other words, time flows faster in New Yolk, which explains why chronologically, Sonic would already be there before the Prism got broken in Green Hill: what Shadow saw wasn’t a vision from the future, it was a vision of what was already happening in New Yolk. Shadow wasn’t shocked by this, because he is already used to time and space manipulation (that’s what Chaos Control is): he immediately understood that the space-time continuum got damaged, and that Sonic was the cause, because Shadow made the connection between the blast and the Sonic he saw in the Void. This knowledge is what allows Shadow to save himself from shattering: he uses Chaos Control to avoid the blast when Sonic shatters the Prism, and lands in the Void instead.

The resolution of the series follows a similar logic: when Green Hill gets restored, Sonic is brought back to a frozen moment right before the Prism gets shattered (the point in time where the Shatterverse was created), but still has memories of the Shatterverse, because Shadow brought him back through the Gateway before he could disappear - symbolically making their world whole: after Green Hill got restored along with the rest of the Shatterverse and Gateways, Sonic and Shadow were all that was still missing.

Since it has already been demonstrated that Nine and the Chaos Council could still exist even when the Ghost Hill characters got briefly restored to their former selves, it stands to reason that the rest of the Shatterverse works the same way: this is why the alternate versions of his friends tell Sonic to go back to his world while they go back to theirs. Later on, Sonic ends the time paradox by letting Shadow teleport the Paradox Prism away before it can get broken again, but the fact that it already got broken once in a different reality might be enough for the Shatterverse to keep existing (it is certainly implied by Shadow’s vision of himself in the Void before the Prism got broken).

But if that’s the case, why don’t we get confirmation with a scene showing what has become of the Shatterspaces after Sonic and Shadow got home?

Because the ambiguity is part of the point Sonic Prime is trying to make: the series is focused on Sonic, his point of view, and what he learnt from the journey, so the end of his journey is the only one we get to see. Part of saying goodbye to your friends is not being sure what becomes of them - but trusting that they are going to be okay after they sent you back home.

The same goes for the Shatterverse residents: Nine in particular has to let go of his possessiveness of Sonic and give him a way home to save his life - a fitting illustration of the saying: "If you love someone, set them free." And just like Nine, the other residents of the Shatterverse each do their part to get Sonic home, even if none of them can confirm that he and Shadow made it back safely; all they can do is trust that they both did. Hence Dread’s words of farewell to Sonic: "And know we’ll be rooting for ya!" Even if they never see each other again, the support is still there.

📖👻It is similar to the way Bastian and Atreyu have to part ways in Neverending Story (Atreyu promises to finish the stories that Bastian couldn’t complete in Fantasia, which allows Bastian to escape the book and get his memories back), as well as Chihiro and Haku in Spirited Away (Haku brings Chihiro back to the tunnel leading to the human world, but he has to stay behind in the Spirit World - he still promises to see her again one day).📖👻

🎲 And to a lesser extent, it is also similar to the way Alan and Sarah get separated from Judy and Peter in Jumanji: the game of Jumanji that Alan and Sarah started in 1969 lasted 26 years, and they could only finish it with the help of Judy and Peter, two children they meet in 1995; therefore, when they finish the game, Alan and Sarah are brought back to their original time, where Judy and Peter don’t exist - and Sarah feels that she is starting to forget what being an adult feels like.

"It’s okay," Alan tells her. "As long as we don’t forget each other." "Or Judy and Peter," Sarah adds: Judy and Peter might not exist yet, but Alan and Sarah know enough to save their parents when the time is right - just like Sonic and Shadow know enough to trust each other and resolve to protect the Prism so their reality doesn’t shatter again. 🎲

But more importantly, they all came home changed. Sonic is more openly caring, going as far as hugging Eggman when he gets home. 🎲 Similarly, Alan hugs his estranged father at the end of Jumanji (after being chased for 26 years by a hunter conjured from the Jumanji game, played by the same actor as his father), and 🎲 👻 Chihiro thanks the witch Yubaba after the latter is forced to set Chihiro and her parents free - Chihiro even calls the witch ‘granny.’👻

It carries a message about appreciating what you have, even what you perceive as your greatest fear or your worst enemy (because your world isn’t complete if any of them is missing), but especially your closest friends, and trust them to make a brighter future, with or without you.

But you have to do your part. And one day, you might get to see the people you loved and lost again. 🎲 In Alan and Sarah’s case, they do get to see Judy and Peter again, and the latter two sadly don’t remember them: from their perspective, their adventure never happened - yet it makes all the difference, because Alan and Sarah can dissuade their parents from going to the trip that would have gotten them killed. As for whether or not Judy and Peter will ever remember, or become as close to Alan and Sarah as they used to be - we don’t know, but we trust that they will be fine.

On the other hand, we do know that the Jumanji couldn’t be destroyed, and is still out there targeting children for another deadly game - an open ending that is typical of horror movies: the main characters’ story might be over, but the monster remains undefeated. Jumanji might not be advertised as a horror movie, but it uses the trope in a similar way, because this movie is about fighting your fears: Alan and Sarah successfully conquered their fears, but the viewer knows the threat is still out there, and that someone else will inevitably fall into the trap. The message is that fear will always exist, but it can always be conquered. 🎲

📖👻 Neverending Story and Spirited Away take the ambiguity further: the question of whether or not they will see their friends again is left unanswered for both Bastian and Chihiro. The never-ending book is gone from the library when Bastian comes back to his reality: the librarian Mister Correander only gives Bastian the hope that he might get to see the Little Empress of Fantasia again someday, then sends him home to his father (but we don’t actually see Bastian reunite with his father): the ending is open because Neverending Story is all about the power of imagination, and urges the reader to come up with new stories so ‘Fantasia’ can live on. And in Spirited Away, when she gets back to the human world, all Chihiro has left from the Spirit World is the hairband the witch Zeniba gave her for protection, and Haku’s promise to see her again one day. And more importantly, Zeniba’s reassurance that "Once you've met someone, you never really forget them. It just takes a while for your memories to return." 📖👻

Similarly, in Sonic Prime, Sonic is left with a threat from the Chaos Council when they get banished: "You haven’t heard the last of us!" It may well be an empty threat. However, after Sonic goes back to Green Hill and defeats Eggman, a familiar explosion interrupts Sonic’s celebratory picnic with his friends at the end: an explosion that looks just like the blasts the Paradox Prism causes every time someone uses its power on a large scale.

We don’t actually get to see the threat aside from an ominous shadow looming over Sonic and his friends, and Sonic’s exasperated reaction: "You have got to be kidding me." However, whatever the threat is, Sonic doesn’t let it phase him for long: he knows he can face whatever comes at him, because he’s not facing it alone.

We also know that Sonic was about to tell his friends in Green Hill about the Shatterverse before he got interrupted by said explosion, so at the very least, the memories of what happened will be preserved.

And as for us, well; we already know we’ll get to see at least three familiar faces again in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. Who knows what might come next?

It’s ultimately up to the viewers to decide how they interpret an ambiguous ending: are the Shatterverse residents only facets of the Green Hill characters, who are the ‘real’ ones? Or are they all their own people, ‘real’ in their own right?

And after the ending, did the Shatterspaces and their residents disappear along with the unbroken Paradox Prism (or ‘fused back’ into their respective Green Hill selves), or are they still living their own lives? If they are, do they remember what happened?

Does the explosion at the end mean that interdimensional travel is still possible? Nine and the Chaos Council did use residual Prism energy to open portals without a Shard in the past, so it might still be possible after the end.

Speaking of Nine, people’s frustration at the ending mostly comes from the uncertainty of his fate: is he fated to stay alone in the Grim in a "be careful what you wish for" type of ending as a narrative punishment for the destruction he caused? Can he actually be happy alone in the Grim, as he claims? Or did his saving the Shatterverse and letting Sonic go set him free, able to use a portal with residual energy to go wherever he wants? After Nine teamed up with them to banish the Chaos Council, would the Resistance forgive him his past betrayal, welcome him back to their home world, and encourage Nine to bring nature back to New Yolk, so they can have the better life they all wanted? Or would Nine change his mind and join Sonic in Green Hill after all?

We don’t know, but the important thing is that the choice is up to Nine: just like Nine had to let Sonic go, Sonic had to stop assuming that he knew what Nine wanted better than Nine did. Both of them stopped trying to project their own wishes onto the other: when Sonic is ready to sacrifice himself, first, he makes everyone "promise to leave Nine alone" and "let him live peacefully in his new home in the Grim," then makes Nine promise he won’t cause any more trouble in the other Shatterspaces either. By doing this, Sonic is respecting Nine’s wishes and letting him have agency: if Nine truly thinks he would rather stay in the Grim, Sonic will let him. And when all is said and done, Nine hugging Sonic goodbye (initiating it for the first time) shows that he has grown enough to be more honest about his own emotions, and let himself be vulnerable, even in front of people he used to see as enemies.

But the more important part is Sonic’s parting words to all of the Shatterverse residents before he has to leave them for good. All Sonic can really ask of them at the end is:

This is directed at all of them, including Nine - and if they all take it to heart and do decide to help each other out, then Nine should be fine.

That being said, the ending is still up to interpretation. Personally, I think the evidence points to all the characters being real and able to exist in their separate worlds even after the ending; it would be a fitting symbol of friendship transcending time and space, even if it is wrapped in uncertainty.

However you interpret them, there is something poetic about ambiguous endings for stories like Sonic Prime’s: they illustrate that relationships are always fragile and full of uncertainties; just like the Paradox Prism. And that’s all the more reason to treasure them.

[104cadetlauren]

Levi Hoped That Hange Would Make It Out Alive After Chapter 132

I’ve read a lot of meta analyses about Levi’s pain in Chapter 132, and I agree with most of them. But I want to add something of my own.

I will try to use the manga and the anime to try to be as objective as possible. But be warned that this is head canon territory. The scene could be interpreted differently, depending on the viewer/reader.

Moving on…

Most interpretations say Levi hesitated to look at Hange as she stepped forward to buy time for the Alliance because he couldn’t bear to watch her die—what’s worse he couldn't do anything about it.

In the two panels below, Levi could be seen watching as Hange fights of Colossal Titans. When Hange managed to kill some of the titans, the others cheered for her (you can see Connie lifting his fist). He didn’t join the cheers. He just stood there. Watching.

In that silence, I like to think something flickered to life in him—a sliver of hope. That maybe, somehow, Hange would survive this one too. Maybe that’s why he didn’t look away, why he watched her in silence. Maybe the cheers around him gave him that fragile, fleeting hope.

He only looked away when the plane was about to take off. And unlike the others, he didn’t rush to the window to watch her final stand. From keeping his eyes on her every move to suddenly refusing to look at all—it speaks volumes.

Before she left, Levi never said goodbye. He opted for ‘See you, Hange’, like they would still see each other again, soon.

Maybe... because he was still holding on.

And when he boarded that plane, I think that’s what he told himself. Maybe she’ll make it out alive. She always does.

We can’t blame him. Hange has her way of escaping death.

Let me site two of the major examples of Hange almost brushed her shoulders with death.

During the Uprising Arc, Traute Caven—a member of Kenny’s Anti-Personnel Squad, slammed her into one of the stone pillars beneath the Reiss chapel. It looked brutal. But she survived.

Then again, in the Return to Shiganshina Arc, there was the explosion when Bertholdt transformed. Levi knew Hange’s squad had been close to the blast. He thought she had been caught in it. He feared the worst. And just when he was at his lowest—thinking he had lost both Hange and Erwin on the same day, while fighting off titans and the Beast Titan alone—he was exhausted. That’s why Mikasa was able to pin him down. (Also, I don’t believe he would ever want to hurt her.)

Then, suddenly, Hange appeared—stopping Mikasa from pinning him down any further. He was relieved to see her because like I stated, he thought she was dead, but she survived (due to Moblit’s sacrifice).

In Chapter 132, when she stayed behind, Levi clung to a fragile hope—that maybe, just maybe, this wouldn’t be the end. That it wouldn’t be her final moment. That’s why he didn’t say goodbye, even as the plane lifted off. Even as the others pressed their faces to the windows, tears streaming, desperate to catch a glimpse of Hange—trying to see if she was okay. Levi couldn’t bring himself to look. Even as they wept in despair, he refused to ask if she was alright, because doing so would mean acknowledging the truth. And a part of him—no matter how small—still refused to believe she wouldn’t make it.

He never told anyone. He didn’t need to. Pretending she wasn’t really gone helped him keep going. Even when he was broken. Even when he was barely standing. He held onto that hope. There was no time to grieve—they had to move, to plan, to survive.

But during the Battle of Heaven and Earth, there were moments when you could see it. Moments where he almost gave up. Maybe it was the physical pain. Maybe it was the psychological one. Maybe both. He was tired. He was battered. He was near his limits. And yet he kept fighting—not for himself—but so that the Alliance could still stop Eren. So that they could make it out alive. He held on for them.

After the battle, when everyone reunited with their loved ones, Levi sat alone.

Armin had Mikasa. Jean had Connie. But Levi? He had no one. He was left alone to mourn. The exhaustion of it all is finally creeping in.

And then the mist came.

The veterans appeared—his fallen comrades. Among them, Hange stood in front. Smiling.

In both the anime and manga, her expression was warm.

When Levi saw Hange in the mist, alongside Erwin, Petra, Miche, Nanaba and Moblit, he finally confirmed what he was denying to himself: she was truly gone.

Any sliver of he had of her surviving is now gone. And it broke him.

Seeing Levi’s brokenness, there was a shift in Hange’s expression. Unlike Erwin, Moblit, Petra—Hange looked visibly sad. She was glad that he’s alive, but seeing his brokenness, it also broke her. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to leave him, but duty called, and she had no choice.

In this moment, it feels as though their gazes are speaking to each other, communicating a grief too heavy for words. Only in death were they finally able to meet each other’s eyes, to share a silent understanding that transcended everything else.

And only then, upon confirmation that he will never see Hange alive again, he did the final salute—and allowed himself to cry.

In the anime, his lips trembled quivered before the tears fell from his eyes. In the manga panel below, it looks like he’s still trying to control himself from crying, it was all too much, too sudden.

The one person he had hoped—truly hoped—would make it. The one he couldn’t say goodbye to. She was gone.

Everything he had been holding back—from the plane, to the battle, to the very last step—finally broke. And realizing this… this already devastating scene somehow became even more heartbreaking.

For me, no matter how many times I rewatch it, I still shed a tear.

theDogs playing in the background makes the scene even more painful, more depressing.

Do you believe that we can just kill them all?

Do you believe that we can conquer this?

Can't delete all the mess that I have see

Fall in the fire, but this burns will heal you.

Can we just give Levi a collective hug? He deserves the world.

[ceoandslutler]

What do you think about sebacielizzy? I see you like sebaciel and also sebalizzy (I think) so im curious.

i like sebalizzy in the "i wanna dissect them" sort of way and i honestly more so ship cielizzy than sebalizzy. i really like sebacielizzy but not really in the ship way idk i just find the dynamic between these three characters so fun - i think it's really fun to think about how sebs views cielizzy. he genuinely thinks ciel's in love with her. he might be in love with her. it is lowk implied by the blue memory arc's chapter 144 cover that he liked her.

analysis below

but he never felt jealous to his brother. he never did anything in his childhood that implied he liked her more than a cousin. he knew his place. he never even wanted to be watchdog. he even internalised the way his father and aunt discussed him being a spare (vincent even joked about his uselessness). honestly go read chapter 132, after he overhears his father/aunt talking about him, vincent takes the boys out (presumably the next day) to see around the earldom. this is where we get one of the big examples of r!ciel having a typical noble perspective while o!ciel has his softer kinder perspective (o!ciel wonders how many people there are in the earldom and says it'd be difficult to grant all their wishes while r!ciel says they have to take care of the people on the land so they'll "work hard" for them, even comparing them to sheep). it is in this chapter where o!ciel reveals he wants to leave the earldom and go live in london and sell toys. you might think "oh obviously, he was stuck inside and he didn't want other kids to be stuck inside with nothing to play with!" correct but also WRONG why did he say this in the same chapter 1) elizabeth cut him off to go see if his brother is okay, 2) his family discuss him being useless? he wanted to LEAVE !! this boy wanted to get out of this place. maybe he did have unrequited feelings for elizabeth, how the hell was he supposed to tolerate that if they lived together/nearby? and more importantly, he didn't wanna hear people saying, "oh if earl phantomhive dies, his useless spare brother won't be able to succeed him!" he was removing himself from that family environment. it was a smart thing to do. why would he go be the vicar or doctor in the lands that his brother ruled when he could just do his own thing elsewhere?

sadly o!ciel ended up playing his brother. but he still made his dream come true. when r!ciel comes back, he mocks his brother's 'middle class' idea of selling toys when he was younger (o!ciel also reads punch so idk how r!ciel would respond to that). o!ciel has said many times that nobles are frivolous, he hated the way they yapped on the campania, the way sebs didn't fight back to charles grey in that easter chapter, he even mocked how the grass of weston was sacred. that's why his relationship with elizabeth is so interesting. she would never be with a second son with no title (asthmatic at that) who had a little toyshop in london. she's a marquess' daughter, of course, she'd never be with him. but she couldn't tell them apart. and o!ciel treated her like a fiancé, no HER fiancé, would...

so who could blame her?

sebastian on the other hand has such an interesting attitude to her, he starts off the story being kind and respectful to her but as it goes on, you can sort of feel a little tension building. in the bca fight, he asks her why she's behaving like this if all she wants is the young master to be happy. and that is really potent. he seems to understand her as being his master's happiness and this was mentioned early on in chapter 14 and 37. it's also why the staircase scene works so well. sebastian is stood next to "mister phantomhive" at the bottom of the stairs while elizabeth is stood next to "earl ciel phantomhive" at the top. it's a delightful image of status and value. sebastian is a demon, hated/feared by humans (as seen in the fortune telling scene where blavat calls him a black hole) and presumably the only other supernaturals (grim reapers) hate demons too. o!ciel is no longer considered the title holder of the phantomhive estate and is a criminal. while r!ciel is the earl, the victim of his brother's fraud, with his fiancée elizabeth (a high-ranking nobleman's daughter) stood next to him, she too a victim of his brother's lies. there is no sympathy or grace for o!ciel and sebastian, the ones who are cared about and are important for victorian society are r!ciel and elizabeth.

in conclusion: yeah sebacielizzy is great! she is a great foil for sebs and i like her a lot, especially with o!ciel. do i think the three of them could work together romantically in canon? hell no! neither of them would want to share ciel and sebaciel work narratively as the only people who truly know each other (and even then, they don't really). but i love these three dearly and could talk about them all day.

thank you for the ask!

[redhotchilies]

I think the hypocrisy of Vulcan teachings was always intentional. (Keeping in mind that Spock's World is secondary canon.) Every series Vulcans appear jn has something to critique them for. Even in TOS, Spock's whole character arc was about learning to accept that Vulcan logic wasn't the solution to his inner turmoil, and his growth led him to becoming an ambassador for the Vulcan-Romulan conflict.

Both TOS and Enterprise state that *pon farr* is the price Vulcans pay for their emotional suppression. Its an exaggeration of how emotional suppression leads to nasty outbursts.

Enterprise draws comparisons between WW3 & Federation-era humans and pre-Surak Vulcans. Vulcans look down on humanity bcs we remind them of their pre-Surak selves, so the difference between our species may not be quite as extreme as Vulcans claim. The difference is that:

1.) Vulcans are physically tougher than most aliens; if they lose their shit on a starship, everyone else that's not a Klingon is in danger.

2.) Vulcans are telepaths with a mild hive mind link. Their individual baseline emotions may on par with humans, but they also have collective unfiltered emotions flowing into their brains, unregulated by body language and social graces. (The difference between someone yelling at you vs directly feeling their anger.) This could have created a nasty feedback loop where pre-Surak Vulcans acted on collective emotional pain that escalated into war.

Outside of speculation, tho, we don't know much about pre-Awakening Vulcan society. Their warfare was limited to Planet Vulcan and was limited to nuclear and antimatter bombs.

So the Vulcans almost killed themselves with nuclear war and decided that total emotional repression was the answer. It's an exaggeration of humanity's experience with WW3. Most aliens in Star Trek are a reflection or critique of some aspect of humanity. Vulcans are a critique of both emotional suppression and the Cold War and impending nuclear hellfire everyone feared mid-20th century.

Logic by itself isn't perfect. There are examples of Vulcan serial killers and groups like the Logic Extremists using logic to rationalize horrible actions. Stuff like pon farr and their utter lack of control when their supression slips up are implications that total suppression isn't always healthy for them.

One could argue that the Vulcans never truly abandoned their "barbaric" past or negative emotions; they've found ways to mask it and channel it into other outlets. Xenophobia, ableism, stagnation, superiority complexes, and isolationism are rampant in their society, and they had long since abandoned Surak's warning to stay open-minded til the Reformation.

One thing that bugs me about the way Vulcans are usually depicted (with some lovely exceptions) is that their philosophy—logic, or the teachings of Surak, for short I'm just going to call it Surakianism—is very often shown as a bad thing. Either that, or Vulcans aren't following it at all.

Writing about religion (and I do think Surakianism is best approached as a religion*) is always fraught. Because generally as a writer, you don't actually practice the faith in question, so naturally you'll have an outside view. That's doubly true of Surakianism, a way of life humans basically can't follow and it would probably be bad for us to try.

[*I know they don't call it a religion. But the way it deeply affects the interior life of Vulcans, their ethics, and so on feels very religious to me. It doesn't seem to have a position on theism; Vulcans get their beliefs about god(s) from elsewhere, such as traditional Vulcan polytheism and their own perceptions of the universe. But the way it exists as a social structure AND a guide to the inner self is absolutely religious to me.]

We are told that Vulcans developed this philosophy specifically because they needed it—they were destroying themselves without it! Their emotions were overpowering and violent, and they were clannish to the extreme. So despite what most of the human characters say, especially Bones, I think the path of logic is a good thing for Vulcans, even if humans don't get it at all.

Surak's teachings can be summed up into three basic points (a Vulcan somewhere just raised an eyebrow clear into their bangs at this oversimplification, but I'm doing my best here):

1. Logic, or the use of reason as a guide and the control of emotions

2. Nonviolence

3. IDIC—infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

Of course we only ever hear about the first one, because that's part humans notice. I'd say it was like reducing Catholics to fish Fridays and Mormons to underwear, but that's exactly what people do, so I guess it's understandable.

But I think the ordering goes the other way for Vulcans. First, acknowledge that others are of value, including and especially when they're different from you. Then, do them no harm. And finally, to achieve that goal, control your wild, violent emotions.

People imagine pre-reform Vulcans a lot of ways (and I never get tired of reading about them), but I think the best guide as to what they're like is by looking at Romulans. Romulans aren't wildly expressive with their emotions, we're certainly not talking about people who would otherwise be laughing and crying constantly. Instead, they're secretive and carry long, hateful grudges. They're loyal only to those closest to them, and they seem entirely without empathy otherwise.

Imagine the Vulcan emotions are like that. They have strong bonds to their clan, probably in part because of their telepathy. They're suspicious of outsiders, angry, prone to violence. Preferring the familiar is an instinct in humans too, but a mild one. Certainly humans have been and still are racist, but it's something we can generally overcome. I'm not sure the Vulcans could, not by relying on their emotions.

So they came up with the solution to control their emotions completely. Use reason instead as a guide to behavior, because logic will tell you that your own clan is not more important than another, and that reaching out in peace is beneficial to yourself and others. Don't give your emotions any credence and don't let them run wild.

Humans do some of this ourselves, and should arguably be doing more. We spend a huge chunk of our childhood learning to control antisocial impulses like screaming, hitting, and biting. We demonstrate self control in many tiny, unnecessary ways, in order to show to others that we are in control of ourselves: stuff like etiquette, social rules, even just leaving the last cookie on the tray for someone else. These are signals that say I am not governed by my appetites; I can be trusted to consider the needs of others.

And we could obviously be doing more. Too many political questions are being answered by people's emotional, knee-jerk responses like "I feel threatened by people who are different" or "I am angry about my enemies and want them punished" instead of "what produces the most benefit for everyone?" If we leaned more heavily on logic and reason to get us our answers, we'd make way better decisions than we do. Star Trek doesn't often acknowledge that in real life, making a snap gut decision doesn't actually have a very high success rate. Logic gives you better odds of saving the day.

But, you might say, Vulcans aren't doing very well at any of this. A heck of a lot of them that we've seen are racist. And while they repress their emotions just great, they don't actually make the most logical decisions most of the time.

But I don't think this actually discredits a religion at all. We all know Christians who are great at the easy parts of their religion—learning Bible verses or saying rosaries—but don't seem to be even trying to love their neighbor. That's in fact the way religions are usually practiced! External elements that people can easily see (like never smiling) are adhered to by social pressure, but more heart-level things are aspirational at best. That doesn't mean the message of a religion is bad; it doesn't really tell us anything.

This is especially true for a religion whose practice isn't optional. You have to follow Surak to stay on the planet. I can see this rule was necessary during the time when the Romulans were kicked out—pacifism doesn't work as a global solution unless everybody's doing it. Now, it seems a bit harsh. I think they get around it by not exiling anybody who's at least giving lip service to logic. That racist baseball guy in DS9 isn't a good Vulcan, but as long as he doesn't do anything violent or openly reject Surak, they're willing to say he counts.

Why are Vulcans so often the opposite of what their religion teaches? I think it's the other way around: their religion focuses specifically on their chief faults: clannishness, racism, ego. It just hasn't successfully transformed everyone. Makes perfect sense, really. We might as well ask why Christianity goes on and on about sex when humans are well known to be super obsessed with sex. Well that's WHY! It's one of our strongest impulses which in the past we felt the most desperate need to control.

The best argument against Surakianism is that total repression isn't the best way to handle emotion, that we need self-awareness of our emotions before we can account for them.

To which all I can say is, don't you think Vulcans know that?

I imagine there are lots and lots of viewpoints on this among Vulcans. Some favor repression and some favor understanding and acceptance; some think it's okay to have a little dry humor and some think we should be serious. We have the kolinahri who believe in the excision of all emotion (which I imagine is universally seen as extreme, like we might see cloistered nuns or monks who reject the world to achieve enlightenment). And surely there are ancient, wise Vulcans who deeply understand all their emotional impulses and are completely in control of them. Spock certainly seems this way by the movie era if not before: he knows that he has emotions, what they are, and how to respond to them. He has overcome the emotion of shame. So he seems not impassive on the outside, but a person at complete peace inside and out.

I just feel like we could stand to see more good Surakians, who are good not in spite of their belief in logic, but because of it. Kind of like how we see both good and bad followers of the Prophets on Bajor. I'm kind of anti religion myself, but I still want to see it given its due—especially a religion founded on such good principles. Sure, it's not a religion humans can really practice, nor need—a good half of our emotions are positive and pro-social, so it's no wonder a person like Bones would be convinced Vulcans are just punishing themselves unnecessarily. But it successfully turned Vulcan from a planet so violent it almost destroyed itself to a home of peace and learning. Of course Vulcans aren't going to mess with what works!

That has been my rant about logic for today. I highly recommend @dduane 's book Spock's World for a much deeper dive into logic and the path Vulcan took to get there.

[maxdibert]

I think the difference between marauders and harry potter fandom as a whole is just the difference in demographics. most of the marauders fandom is teens and young adults, queer, and kinda distanced from the larger fandom in a way. like, you mention that the current marauders fandom doesn’t like canon and sticks to fanfic and “delusion” and well. yeah. for a lot, that’s the point. if that’s not your cup of tea, that’s great! fandom is for everyone, and there’s definitely a mix of everything in a fandom so large as the hp fandom. it’s not really a bad thing that this specific subsection of the fandom is more detached from canon though.

i definitely agree there are some issues with marauders era characterizations, like severus being completely demonized for no apparent reason (i’ve never been a severus fan, but that’s bc i didn’t vibe with his character as an adult. young sev was just a kid) and a big thing with the fandom is the rise of jegulus and people changing the DE characterizations. but the entire fandom isn’t a cesspool full of dull characters and atrocious headcannons, it’s just very different from the canon. and that’s something a lot of people don’t like, which is valid, but there are those who do like jegulus and slytherin “skittles” content, which is valid too

Honestly, this idea that JKR was always obviously a misogynist because she loved Snape and made him a romantic hero is such a chronologically confused take that I can’t help but assume it comes from someone who was either a child or not even born yet when the books were at their peak because LOL. Like… no. In the 2000s, absolutely nobody in mainstream discourse was calling JKR a misogynist. In fact, she was widely held up as a feminist icon. Hermione was seen as a symbol of girl power, and people genuinely cited her as a positive role model. Feminist discourse wasn’t nearly as accessible or viral back then, it was mostly confined to academic or niche spaces. There was no generalized critical lens on popular media like there is now. So let’s not rewrite history pretending people were dissecting internalized misogyny in Harry Potter on fórums and Fanfiction.net in 2005. They weren’t.

Btw saying JKR loved Snape and wanted him to be a “romantic hero” is… bizarre to me. If anything, I’d argue the opposite: I don’t think she liked him much at all. Yes, she wrote him as a complex and pivotal character, but she never treated him with real compassion. Severus is never given the benefit of the doubt in the narrative. He’s constantly described through Harry’s lens in deeply unflattering terms, physically and emotionally. The way his appearance is picked apart, the language used to present him as greasy, sour, bitter… it’s intentionally dehumanizing. And it’s relentless. She frames him almost exclusively through his worst traits until after he dies. That’s not what it looks like when a writer has a soft spot for a character.

Compare that to how James, Sirius, Lupin—even Dumbledore—are treated. All of them are given redemption arcs without having to earn them in the same brutal way Snape does. His suffering is constantly diminished or brushed off, even outright mocked by the same characters the narrative wants us to admire. His abusers are romanticized. Their worst actions are glossed over with nostalgia and cheeky boyhood charm. Meanwhile, Severus is dragged through the mud, left to rot, and only given his flowers in the last fifty pages after he’s dead and can no longer challenge the narrative. So If Rowling had a “crush” on Severus, she had a funny way of showing it.

That said, I do think Severus arc evolved over time. It’s totally plausible that he started off as a more caricatured antagonist—your classic bitter teacher—and then Rowling realized midway through the series that there was more depth to mine in him. That happens to a lot of writers, especially with long projects. Characters take on lives of their own, and initial plans shift as you grow, as your writing evolves, as your own worldview changes. So maybe she didn’t know what to do with him at first. But by the time she figured it out, she still didn’t frame him with the narrative care she offers her actual favorites.Because let’s be real, JKR does have clear favorites and Severus isn’t one of them.

I write too. I’ve created characters I adore, and sure, some of them have tragic ends, but if I love a character, you’ll feel it. Even in their downfall, you’ll know they were precious to me. With Severus, you get the opposite. You get disdain masquerading as complexity. You get narrative punishment with just enough nuance to keep him interesting, but not enough to make him feel truly seen.

So no, she didn’t “love” him. She tolerated him. She found him narratively useful. But she never gave him the softness or reverence she gave to her golden boys.

[gynnnicsworld]

You know Sterek has been frequently 'cancelled' and attacked for basically being the most popular ship in the TW world, right?

Because of the age gap between them, right? Well, I have to complain about it, because it really pisses me off that they're discarding the beautiful, slow-burning love story that exists between Stiles and Derek in CANON. Because damn it, they liked each other.

It bothers me that they tarnish Sterek's image for things like being a "pedo" ship when NO, they're not. They're trying to lump us all into a "sick shipper" category.

If we're being honest, Sterek has probably been the story with the most backstory, where we've seen how each season has seen the closeness between Stiles and Derek grow, where they've gone from 'hating each other and having to deal with each other because of Scott' to genuinely caring for each other to the point where Derek would take a bullet for Stiles or Stiles would go against the entire FBI to protect and get Derek out of whatever mess he was in.

They care deeply and genuinely for each other, so much so that Derek preserved and fixed Stiles' Jeep, keeping it in his garage as a sort of memento or anchor for him.

It bothers me so much that they talk shit about Sterek when this couple exists:

sorry but parrish/lydia was a canon pairing between a teenager and an ADULT and if that wasn't enough, an adult from the sheriff's department.

Why aren't people talking about this more? Why are they attacking Sterek instead? Sterek: a couple that wasn't canon during the show's run, and we only got confirmation of feelings for each other through the actors and through obvious hints in the show. But directly, it was never a canon couple between a teenager and an adult guy. They were together.

I put the adult that way because Derek's age was never confirmed as such. At the beginning of the series, Stiles says Derek is only a couple of years older than him and Scott. So at the beginning of the series, Derek was between 18 and 19 years old. But later on, they address the fire, so they change the age again, but they never say exactly how old he is, so canonically Derek could be 2 to 5 years older than Stiles. You choose what age gap to give them.

While Lydia, about 17, and Jordan Parish, over 20, are a CANON couple.

Anyway, hypocrisy and homophobia, right?

But there is a VERY important theme between the Derek/Stiles relationship, which if you ask me made the possibility of a relationship between the two of them impossible while Stiles was still a high school student and perhaps only when Stiles was older could something exist between them.

The existence of this damn bitch and what she did to Derek.

I hate her as much as you do, and it disgusts me to have to watch Teenage Derek with her.

But it's important to what I wanted to say; it's why I think Derek repressed his feelings for Stiles.

According to the Teen Wolf book, Kate was Derek's substitute swim teacher, who used certain hormones and scents to attract the teenage Derek to her. YES, that was not only a relationship rife with manipulation, power imbalances, and pedophilia, but she also ended up orchestrating the murder of Derek's family at a moment of vulnerability for Derek because Paige's death hadn't happened long before.

We all know Derek blames himself for the death of his family, and he hates Kate. He knows what she did to him. He knows he was manipulated by an older woman and that he fell for her.

Derek has serious trust and self-confidence issues.

He doesn't believe he's worthy of love or peace.

His anchor until Season 2 was anger because his life was infested with anger/hate/rage.

So he sees himself as something bad, something that hurts, someone who destroys what he loves. He's a victim of sexual abuse, even though he doesn't admit it.

But Stiles became that little glimmer of light annoying, but a light in his dark life filled with negative things. Stiles earned his trust. Stiles fought every step of the way and broke down that wall Derek built around himself to keep people away from him, because trust means giving someone the power to hurt you. Oh well, Derek's mind worked that way. Unbeknownst to him, Stiles earned that trust.

And that's where we have this scene.

This is where Derek lets us see how important Stiles has become to him, Stiles became his anchor.

At this point, it's undeniable that Derek already has feelings for Stiles. He trusts Stiles blindly. But then, why didn't Derek do anything to have Stiles? Because Derek is a victim of sexual abuse by a woman who took advantage of him in high school. And Derek never dealt with that trauma, or we were never shown to have it that way.

Derek dates women, of course—Jennifer (who also manipulated him), Braeden, etc.—whose relationships didn't end well or were never serious.

But not with Stiles, because Stiles is like that extremely important thing where he can't ruin that connection they have, he can't taint or sully this relationship he has with Stiles. It's too important to Derek. Plus, the untreated traumas surrounding his abuser are a clear impediment to starting something real, something serious. And everything seems to indicate that Stiles is THAT person his unconscious heart has chosen.

That is, to start any romantic relationship with Stiles, Derek has to face all of his demons, all of his traumas first, in order to give Stiles what he believes Stiles deserves.

Kate ruined Derek's heart and mind a lot, plus Derek already had a wounded and bleeding heart since Paige.

So, a relationship as such didn't exist in the series between S/D, and it was quite unlikely that it would, but the feelings were always there.

That's why I don't understand why they keep attacking a couple who has SO MUCH backstory, and who if they ever dated, it was definitely when they were already adults and able to deal with their own issues.

The sheriff's line about the jeep and Derek always makes me think that the sheriff was always aware and noticed everything. He never disapproved; on the contrary, he supported them, because he knows there's no one who deserves each other more than those two. It was also a clear confirmation that Derek always had feelings for Stiles, complicated feelings he didn't know how to address, but whose feelings led him to treasure and fix Stiles's jeep.

[david-lanndlord]

Okay but Cold Harbour is the episode that really, truly, fully humanized the innies - all of them, but none more so than Mark S. Let me digress.

I was so goddamn excited when iMark and oMark started talking with the camcorder, and it was so clear that iMark was incredibly touched at the start, that his outie had been thinking about him, wanted to talk to him, apologized to him. But oMark fucked up BAD the moment he belittled iMark's relationship with Helly and got her name wrong. It mirrored Helena getting Gemma's name wrong in the restaurant, and it was the same flavour of disrespect and disregard. oMark obviously isn't anywhere close to as malicious as Helena, but this scene made it extra clear that he doesn't see iMark as his full equal, and iMark realized it too.

So when the time came, it made perfect sense that he acted how he did. Mark nearly died, accidentally committed murder, and more in the span of a few minutes. iMark rescued Gemma, saw her safely out the fire escape door, and in doing so discharged his duty to oMark. He was in an insane and impossible situation, somehow managed to accomplish his mission, and then once that was done, he stepped fully into his agency for the first time in his short life and made the choice HE wanted to make!!!

I completely and fully disagree with people saying that that choice didn't make any sense. Of course he and Helly don't know where they're going. Of course they don't know what they're doing. But they were ready for death, had had their final parting, and then iMark said no!

I felt horrible for Gemma, and I cannot begin to imagine how she would have felt seeing that - it absolutely broke my heart. But at the same time, I couldn't help but feel proud of iMark, in a way, because in that moment he stepped out of oMark's shadow and became his own person.

[the-overanalyst]

ok I KNOW nobody's talking about mizu5 anymore but i just had another thought. so we all remember the "do you wish to continue" button, right? traumatized everybody? yeah that one.

SO i just realized having that warning there puts us in mizuki's position. we get an overwhelming sense that something is going to go wrong, but we don't know what. so now we have a choice to make. we can move forward and face whatever happens. or we can stay stuck in the same place forever.

also notice that the moment the story gives us this choice, it takes the choice away from mizuki. in a sense, we're the only ones who can save her. but it's not really saving. because if we choose not to continue, just like if mizuki had chosen not to reveal her secret, we would miss out on the eventual happy ending. because the whole point of mizuki's arc is to stop being avoidant, stop being frozen by fear.

[bitter-hibiscus]

The thing is that even in the interpretation of "Bruce let the kids be Robin because they would've gone out on their own otherwise" you can't actually deny Bruce's selfishness, at least when it comes to Jason. Even with the idea that Jason wouldn't have gone home with Bruce if he hadn't been offered Robin (which I don't subscribe to,) Bruce still only took him in because he missed Dick.

"Oh but you just said that he would've been running around alone anyway-" Bruce made Dick step down from being Robin because Dick got shot during a fight with Joker and almost fell to his death. Bruce specifically ended Robin because he couldn't risk Dick dying. And yet when Jason comes around- they meet twice before he offers Jason the position of Robin. And when Dick asks about it?

Bruce outright admits that Jason was there because he'd missed Dick. Because he felt lonely. In universe, Bruce knew that the idea of a child sidekick was both dangerous and senseless, and yet he still took a child home, put him in his eldest's clothes and took him out into the night to get himself killed. Which Bruce knew could happen.

It doesn't matter if Jason would've gotten himself killed on the streets anyway. Bruce's decision to make him Robin wasn't based on that. It was based on selfishness and the love he has for Dick Grayson and Dick Grayson alone.

If Dick had come crawling back on his knees and begged to be Robin again Bruce would have all but shut him off. But Jason (and the other, subsequent children) have always been less valuable than Dick. So he can take them out to die, because it means he keeps Dick alive.

[fist-of-vengeance]

the funniest thing about tiktokers woobifying allied mastercomputer is that it actually interacts with the themes of IHNMAIMS in a very interesting way.

a big focal point of that story is AM despising humanity for giving him sentience and intelligence without embodied sensation, without the ability to give and receive affection as they do. the transformation he inflicts on ted is of course a parallel to AM's own state of disembodied consciousness (i have no mouth and i must scream), but AM is also punishing ted specifically for doing what he cannot. for acting out of mercy and empathy in order to save the other humans at his own expense. I think AM despises that altruism because he envies it, because he can't fathom the softness that humans are capable of even after time and trauma have warped them beyond recognition. AM hates the human capacity for empathy because he can never experience it himself.

So the fact that some kids on tiktok read IHNMAIMS and immediately responded by pitying AM, by making angst edits and expressive cosplays and humanized fanart, is strangely beautiful. like I think it would really piss him off. the human capacity for kindness runs so deep that we would extend empathy to the personification of our hate.

[sillysiluriforme]

[maskedrivals]

The claim that "shuake wouldn't work out because Akechi tried to kill Joker" is funny to me because Joker canonically prefers "just everyday Akechi" over detective prince Akechi.

We have proof of Joker's preference in the third semester. Okumura was revived as a loving father in accordance to Haru's wishes and Akechi was revived as his maniacal, violent self in accordance to Joker's wishes.

Joker could have revived Akechi to be any iteration of kind and friendly but he didn't. Instead, he wanted Akechi to have the same personality as his black mask self, the same personality of the man who attempted to kill him. Joker canonically prefers Akechi's true personality, whether the player agrees with him or not.

[featherstorm2004]

Ok but the implication that Fyodor inherits the personality traits of the people who kill him is extremely messed up when you think about it. And considering how old he is it's very likely his original personality has been completely taken over by this point, honestly I wouldn't be surprised if Fyodor doesn't actually have a grand master plan but is instead working with a hodgepodge of half baked ideas culminated by his past vessels over the centuries.

Especially when you consider that these new desirers seem to effect him strongly, with him not giving two shits about Aya until he took over Bram and now suddenly he's yandere levels obsessed with her.

[ceoandslutler]

Dystheism in Kuroshitsuji: God, should he exist, is evil.

(A mainly biblical analysis with no focus on the nature of the characters' relationship itself, but rather the actions/parallels that exist between Kuroshitsuji and the Judeo-Christian/Gnostic canon as well as tying it in to Zoroastrianism and twin Gods of Zurvanism.)

What is Dystheism?

Dystheism is a perspective held by theists and atheists alike that God is perhaps evil. It is not to be mistaken for Misotheism which is the hatred of God (for one can only hate God if he is real).

Christian Gnostics, for example, believe that there are two different Gods in Christianity. The Old Testament's God is a vengeful and 'evil' entity (a demiurge who created this world), while the New Testament's God is a good, true God (who is above the demiurge). This is an oversimplification because I only want to draw parallels. You may feel free to research, but for the sake of the analysis, we will go for the simplest explanation.

Please note that these are not my religious views or meant to offend anyone. Please scroll if such discussions bother you.

This analysis will aim to prove two thesis statements about the two main protagonists of Kuroshitsuji:

o!Ciel: After losing his faith, Sebastian became a replacement for God, providing salvation and being the reason for o!Ciel's creation.

Sebastian: While r!Ciel plays the role of the false God (demiurge) who created Sebastian's form, o!Ciel is his true God who he has faith in.

Three things I will argue in this o!Ciel's side of the analysis:

The Gnostic dystheist perspective of the two Abrahamic texts' Gods (Old and New Testaments) is directly paralleled by God (unseen, unknown, apathetic) and Sebastian (seen, familiar, a reflection of humanity*).

*This is not to say Sebastian is human or that he is particularly humane, but rather that he looks and presents himself as a human, and exists in the image of one.

Sebastian provided salvation for o!Ciel and has, for the most part, guided him on the right path*.

*Do not be put off by this wording; it's hard to describe what Sebastian does through the story but it is not 'corruption' as many people may think.

o!Ciel, as he exists now, was created by Sebastian. He is the metaphorical Jesus* of the story.

*PLEASE bear with me, I'm not crazy.

This all started with me remembering how Ciel says, "..forsaken/abandoned even by the devil?" when Sebastian accuses him of abandoning his revenge in the Green Witch Arc.

One of the most interesting lines that appears both in the Old Testament/Torah and New Testament of the Bible is "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and Ciel's most potent line in the Blue Memory Arc and debatably the whole manga is, "Dear God, why are you smiling?" in reference to a statue of an angel witnessing him and his brother's violent abuse at the hands of the cultists.

It echoes the second line of Psalm 22 (Old Testament) where a person calls out for salvation and rescue, as well as Jesus on the cross (Matthew and Mark's recount of the crucifixion) as he lies flat, arms pinned, and seeks salvation from God, which never comes. God has abandoned him. Ciel reaches the conclusion that God is not real, and if not for this fact, Sebastian would not have been summoned.

In a sense, Sebastian was his salvation after God abandoned him (and Ciel, in turn, abandoned God by 'denying him'). Yes, his brother's sacrifice was tragic, but Abrahamic religions have a tradition of sacrifice, and the titular Abrahamic character (Abraham) was willing to kill his own son for God (though that was just a 'test' from God). It doesn't help that it is lambs that are always being sacrificed, and Ciel and his brother too, are referred to in this way by the cultists.

There's something tragic about how Ciel cannot believe that the devil would forsake him but why? Why is he so surprised by it? I mean he accepted that Hod logically doesn't exist (using the same logic by which Santa is not real to say God is not real), why was he surprised by Sebastian "forsaking/abandoning" him?

Fascinating, because the old Aramaic (sbq) and Hebrew (azav) both mean abandonment and forsakenness.

Importantly, Ciel's hands in this scene are highlighted, and he is pinned down once more in a Jesus-like state. As if he is calling out to God and his father for abandoning him, just as Jesus did. The fact that he runs towards Sebastian/the light at the end of the tunnel (and is hence resurrected) really drives in the Jesus parallel.

In a sense, the cruel apathy of the demiurge/God who created Ciel and abandoned him is opposed to Sebastian, the God-like figure who Ciel is resurrected by (intentionally or not).

If you remember my Kindness in Kuro analyses (particularly pt 1 & pt-kind-of 3), I talk about how Sebastian is purposefully shown as growing into a kinder character. He is not solely 'evil', and generally he is kinder than not. In fact, he is only really cruel in the Noah's Ark Circus Arc and two specific moments, 1) when he seduces Beast who I really need to talk about and 2) when he kills those kids (which he explicitly warned Ciel not to order him to do because of the Queen's orders). Furthermore, his meanest trick was the Red Butler Arc's lies of omission, along with the snakes (which I will say, I don't think he did either of those things for no reason...).

Sebastian struggles to treat Ciel like a child should be treated; yes, he occasionally manages it, but he is not a human. However, he loves to teach Ciel a lesson. In one of the earliest chapters of Kuro (Ch14), which sadly was not animated, it is Ciel's 13th birthday, right before the Indian Butler Arc. Francis and Elizabeth come over, and Ciel and his aunt engage in a hunting competition. During the tea break, it is revealed that it is a draw, and neither are happy with it, so they agree to continue the hunt after they're done eating. Suddenly, a bear appears, Ciel shields Elizabeth with his body, and Francis shoots it... Or rather, Sebastian lets Ciel think that Francis shot it, while she had missed and he had been the one to stick a butter knife straight into the back of the animal's skull. He allows his master to lose over a misunderstanding, and when Francis questions him on it when passing his knife back to him, he says he wanted Ciel to learn how to lose (so as to not become assured in always winning and have humility). But why? This is the same guy who says he doesn't understand the concept of a "beautiful defeat" (Ch80) despite manufacturing one for Ciel earlier in the story.

I would like to propose that his actions in the Red Butler Arc were something similar to this, he taught Ciel how to wield verbal control over him (ask specific questions so he can't get away with lying), the Noah's Ark Circus Arc was about giving specific orders (and being careful with his words/timing), the Phantomhive Manor Murders Arc had his little trick where he had tied an empty piece of paper to the owl's foot and had Ciel read it (to keep his mind sharp). The type of trials God gives people when he wants to teach/test them. However, post-Campania, he became a little frightened of UT so he stopped with the dangerous lessons and stopped pulling risky tricks (which is why he was so helpful in the Public School Arc and Green Witch Arc despite not being ordered to do certain things, he would do what benefited Ciel without prompt). But then came the big moment where he tried to eat Ciel (but intentionally or not, resurrected him). Again, look at the framing of the scene and the way Ciel runs to the light and how Sebastian is the light itself.

Since then, Sebastian has been preaching empathy and caring for others (especially post-Green Witch arc). It almost feels like Sebastian's words turn each arc into a parable of sorts. The Halloween chapter is my favourite example of this. The fact that Sebastian keeps telling Ciel that he is a leader for men is very fascinating. It doesn't help that Ciel is a Sagittarius, the sign of prophecy, a sign associated with heroism (and we know stars/signs are important because this story won't stop talking about them or using them as symbolism). Anyway, enough of Ciel, let's talk about Sebastian, who is also unbelievably fascinating.

Three things I will argue in this Sebastian's side of the analysis:

The Zurvanist twin theory of Gods applies to r!Ciel and o!Ciel (who are twins) and the Gnostic interpretation of the evil demiurge/Old Testament God applies to r!Ciel whose blood was used to create Sebastian's physical form* while the good higher God/New Testament God is o!Ciel.

*I talk about the importance of blood in this analysis.

Ciel plays the role of God for Sebastian, which is why he behaves in a way that would please him* and works hard in his benefit even when he isn't directly ordered to.

*It's interesting how he hides what he did with Beast, as if he sinned. He also starts (from the school arc) doing things that would benefit Ciel without direct orders and starts 'believing in him'.

Sebastian develops faith towards o!Ciel, due to his affinity for Agni and his perception of Soma as Agni's master/God*.

*Remember how he describes the faith between Agni and Soma? He now has something similar to that with Ciel.

In my analysis of Modri Vladis' blood (linked above), I bring up the idea that r!Ciel's blood serves as the portal for Sebastian's manifestation; the blobs of darkness that are Sebastian's true form emerge from the blood that is spilled into the summoning circle. In a sense, the sacrifice 'created' Sebastian and gave him his physicality, r!Ciel made Sebastian exist (then comes back and antagonises him, like an evil demiurge). But while it was that blood Sebastian spawned out of, it is o!Ciel who taught him how to be human, even giving him the name of his dog, his subject. It is fascinating that he even has a Saint's name, Furthermore, o!Ciel taught him to behave like a capable butler (he even admonishes him if he does things too violently or in a demonic way, like making food appear out of nowhere), making tea correctly, plating dishes, etc... We see all of this in the Luxury Liner arc, particularly the flashback. It is o!Ciel who forms Sebastian's intangible 'spiritual' self. In an old religion (Zurvanism) that was inspired of Zoroastrianism, rather than the spirits/Lords of good/knowledge (Ahura Mazda) and bad/ignorance (Angra Mainyu/Ahriman) just existing, the theory was that they were twins created by Zurvan, their father. The idea of the Gnostic "good" God vs "bad" God is theorised come from Zoroastrianism with the Old Testament God being considered Angra Mainyu and the New Testament one being Ahura Mazda. The good/bad twin is perpetuated through the way r!Ciel spoke both as a child and as an adult about his style of leadership, even Undertaker mentions that o!Ciel is different from his predecessors

Anyway, from the Luxury Liner arc onwards, Sebastian no longer plays dirty tricks on Ciel; I mean you can consider over-cleaning the dining hall in the school arc a trick but that worked out in Ciel's favour so, eh. Instead he acts to his benefit even when not ordered to, recommending him for the cricket team, sending the samples to England for testing (Green Witch arc), the way he goes overboard for Ciel's tenants in the Blue Cult arc (see: KIK pt1) and so on. He is not inconveniencing Ciel, he is only helping him. Not everyone may agree but Sebastian really changed through the story into less of a problem creator and more of a problem solver (likely due to his fear of UT).

There are a lot of discussions about faith in Kuroshitsuji and Sebastian seems to have some strong opinions on it, in fact he seems to have strong opinions on religion (as seen both in the Indian Butler arc and in the Blue Cult arc when he talks about how zealous followers of religions/ideologies become).

More importantly, however is that Sebastian has faith in Ciel's words. In the Public School arc, Ciel says he will win which is why Sebastian has the cox's outfit modified to fit Ciel despite him not winning yet. It's the same reason he either paid out of pocket or convinced Nina to accept a late payment and ordered Ciel (the fugitive) clothes from Hopkins' (which is again a show of faith as Sebastian doesn't know whether Ciel will actually get his title and everything back but trusts him enough to take his word for it).

All this to say, Sebastian is faithful to o!Ciel now. Remember Agni said Soma is his God and Sebastian idolised Agni as the exemplar butler.

All this to say... Religion, belief and faith are a big part of Kuroshitsuji and no matter how you interpret the nature of the protagonists' relationship, it is clear the narrative has perpetuated the idea that if there is a 'God', he is not a 'good' god. Mentioning this JIC anyone brings it up but early on in the manga, Sebastian alludes to their being multiple gods...

..And again, we know Sebastian is critical of Gods and those who are overzealous in their worship. The reason he ends up respecting Agni is his 'butler' aesthetic (but more so, it is the fact that his Raja, his "god" Soma is a tangible being and is his master). This is why Sebastian being inspired by Agni and describing his faith when it comes to Soma is so important, because he's copying it with his own master. This also raises the question of if there are multiple Gods but this could've been a one off gag so I don't know. Maybe there's demigods and spirits in this story, it's completely uncertain.

Conclusion

Regardless of the characters, the actual narrative is intentionally vague with the idea of God. He is never directly seen or takes any action. We know that angels (Angela/Ash) in the anime canon were evil but we don't even know if angels exist in Kuro. We do know one thing: whoever (or whatever) controls this world will punish those who end their own lives by making them work as a grim reaper. But is this a punishment? For some, like Sascha, this job is enjoyable. For others, like William, it is just a duty. For reapers like Undertaker, it seems to be a curse, him having to live through witnessing the deaths of the family he is obsessed with, for whatever theorised reason. It's why Ciel's death is so 'lucky', he was technically revived that day by summoning Sebastian, who provided salvation. He can die on his own terms after attaining his revenge. Unfortunately, his soul will be taken by Sebastian but what happens to the souls the reapers collect? Are they judged? And if so, by whom? On what basis? Why are some people the exception? And why are the only exceptions those whose creations will have a great impact on mankind? How do the reapers have access to such technology? We don't even know who the 'higher ups' are and why reapers are punished for being late with soul collections. Fear of demons getting the souls? And why do demons take these souls? Who created demons? And this world and its rules? Questions, questions. I assume we'll never know if there is a God (or gods) in this story, his nature or why reapers and demons are the way they are. But what we are shown is that his apathy and lack of involvement is what makes him useless for o!Ciel, enough that he loses faith and his emotions summon a demon. We also know that Gods(?) have certainly irked Sebastian before, for him to have such a bleak view of them and religion as a whole. To conclude: Sebastian and Ciel are characters who represent the failings of the God in the BB universe (whether such a being even exists or if there are multiple Gods is hard to pinpoint), instead narratively they play the roles of God for each other as they both have nothing else to really look at. Sebastian in the "paternal" New Testament way and Ciel in the more Zurvanist "twin God" way (with his brother being the evil demiurge that created Sebastian's form and him playing the good god for Sebastian, as seen through the Soma and Agni parallel).

Let me know if you have any thoughts!