#and collector!!! yay! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kindestegg · 2 years

Text

In my previous posts, I have spoken about Collector's good side quite a lot, their eagerness to learn from their environment, their ability to grow when around good influences, the growth they have shown around King, their love for titans and their compelling backstory... and have as well touched upon their flaws and their darker side.

But I feel like I am lacking in an exploration of their darker side in its own dedicated post like I have done for their growth and good side. And I feel like such a post is way overdue because recently I have seen a pretty concerning uptick in the sentiment that Collector "never meant to hurt anyone", that they don't know what killing is and that they were overall an unwitting pawn in Belos' plan. And that is... simply not the truth? There are several instances in canon that contradict this and I would like to dive into them in this post.

Let's start with a pretty controversial scene: the capturing of the Owl Beast. Now, there's a lot of people who have associated the fact that there are multiple collectors and that the collector in the Owl Beast's dream sequence appears bigger and has a different outfit to indicate that the collector that captured the Owl Beast is a different one.

Now, while I admit that that is a possibility, I would like to at the very least make some arguments for the fact that this could still be our Collector, and why that matters.

Let's start by the most glaring issue: the voice. The collector that captured the Owl Beast has the exact same voice actress, exactly the same voice as our Collector, and is in the credits as "the Collector". It is very hard to argue with that: even if we go with the theory that then all collectors must sound the same, that is an incredibly big stretch that has no real backing in canon aside from an assumption to try and explain away this clash.

Another argument often seen is that the collector seen here "sounds different" from our Collector as in their line delivery is different, as if the sadism in their voice and laughter would be enough to imply being a completely different person and uhhh...

Do you guys... also think that about the Collector in the Hollow Mind scene that properly introduced them? Because they sounded... kind of like that. But I'll touch on that soon. Back to the Owl Beast dream for now.

Another argument I have seen is that this collectors outfit is different and they are too tall/big to be our Collector... which once again I need to remind you of this?

This is a scene in which our Collector undoubtedly shows he can change sizes (becoming big enough to nearly fill up the entire room he is in, towering above everything) and the cape he's in is clearly different from his usual outfit.

And the ability that collectors have to change size is backed by the paintings in the archive halls: when in space they can be bigger than whole planets, even our Collector who is younger being nearly the same size as the planet, but when they actually go to the planet they adjust their size to the creatures on it, such as the trappers or in Collector's case, the titan babies.

There is also the matter of the Owl Beast clearly remembering the Collector and having a reaction even during the DOU to just the disc itself cracking, and later becoming frenzied when seeing him face to face. Sure, the Owl Beast could just felt threatened by any Collector, but... doesn't it make more narrative sense and have more significance that it's this Collector that it specifically has problems with? That was a REALLY strong reaction to just be a generalization.

Anyway, I briefly mentioned how Collector talks in Hollow Mind, and I feel like it really bears to examine it again and remind ourselves of it, not let it be forgotten just because he's recently been nice. As I said before, Collector is canonically someone who can be pretty sadistic and find something funny about suffering.

But... even this is something that the fandom has been trying to smooth away the edges of. I've encountered some people who, despite I'm sure just being well meaning fans of the character who want to offer a new perspective, inevitably attempt to defang him and imply that he did not know the draining spell would hurt or kill people, that the screams he imitated were something he wasn't aware was bad, and even that this extends to how Collector interpreted Belos and the grimwalkers. Essentially, through a lot of stretching and attempting to re-interpret the Hollow Mind scenes, Collector's being slowly made into a naive child who was being led around by Belos to commit crimes while somehow never learning anything from context clues.

This is essentially problematic because I feel like it misses the point of Collector's character and metanarrative purpose and turns them into something they are not. But I'll be getting to that around the end of this post. For now, rather than just going "you're wrong and that's it" (which would be rude to do!) I will try to, as kindly as possible, explain my reasoning as to why these interpretations feel like they are misreading the material.

Examining then, their behavior in Hollow Mind. Here is why I believe that they are aware of what the Draining Spell does:

First off, they mention that they and Belos will have revenge when reciting the second half of their poem. Why would they consider the Day of Unity a kind of revenge for both of them if they didn't know it would hurt people?

Similarly, the imagery they portray when talking about what the spell does definitely implies that they know the draining spell would at least affect people negatively, as they portray them blowing away into dust as well as having the sigils affect their bodies and similarly make them turn to nothing.

I know this happens rather in King's Tide, but it's something I want to use to reinforce my point: In King's Tide, Collector makes a point to say they gave Belos the draining spell, they taught him magic stronger than anybody's. I highly doubt Collector would teach Belos a spell that he didn't know the consequences of, specially considering his freedom was riding on this spell working, and Belos made sure to remind him of that every time.

Also to drive home the point he knows screams mean something bad, before Collector imitates Belos screaming and presumably lashing out at Hunter, he says that Belos was mad. So at the very least he knows that you can scream in anger.

I feel like people tend to get caught up in the fact Collector says it's like the world is singing when talking about his happiness and King snarkily responds that he wouldn't call people screaming singing. I can see how that could be interpreted as if Collector doesn't know screams are bad... but with the previous knowledge we have of this character, that makes hard to justify, and I'd like to call attention to the fact Collector never states he was talking about the people, King just uses the opportunity to point out people are screaming, and then lead onto how he should stop "freaking everyone out".

So, yes, Collector knew about the Draining Spell and all that it would entail, he likely even tailored it for Belos, and he also knows what Grimwalkers are in a sense and what is being done to them.

At the very least... he knows grimwalkers can be made, what they are called, and also insinuates they are to be played with, but is intrigued by the fact Belos keeps making them and then destroying them. We can clearly see that one of Collector's biggest flaws is his problem with rationalizing the environment around him, since he views things by what is most fun to do, he imagines putting all this effort into building something and tearing it down must be fun... ignoring that these are real people Belos is building, abusing and then killing.

In general, though, this ties to the running theme of Collector viewing anyone they haven't gotten to know and befriended with extreme disinterest. While they would prefer not to kill or hurt anyone, if the situation really calls for it as a means to an end, they will do so. There is no incentive for them to care for the grimwalkers and view them as people... so they do not. Their current only friend acts as if it's natural, so they act accordingly. King tells them they need lots of players for a game of pretend? That's easy then, just make everyone into puppets, and you don't have to worry about them as people. Dehumanization is perhaps the key word here, which ties into their themes also of bulldozing the environment and culture of the Isles, as well as their harmful escapism, refusing to see things for what they are and trying to only focus on having fun and feeling good.

I feel like it is important to establish and argue for this because many people forget that Collector's character isn't just meant to be a fully sadistic selfish villain or a genuine and kind naive child. What makes the Collector so great and interesting is that he is both those things, those parts of him mix up and dance around to create a character that fits in the narrative as a foil and parallel to multiple characters, as well as provoke interesting ethical questions to us, such as:

If a child is given the opportunity to hurt animals and people and does so, playing roughly with them and traumatizing them, what is the course of action to follow from there? Imprison them? Hurt them? Punish them in some other way? Where is the root of this child's destructive and harmful behavior? Why are they acting this way? What do they have to say about their actions?

And we do know the root: For the Future makes it a point to let us know of their backstory, that they were raised into a society that believed coming in and taking whatever they wanted was natural and anything in their way deserved their wrath. And that even if he did reject this notion in part, he cannot shake off entirely the influence this has had on him, causing him to find extreme acts of violence as a means to an end natural as well as to not consider how his altering of the landscape and culture of the Isles enacts cultural violence upon them.

The true tragedy of Collector is that they are a child that wants to learn and do good, and ultimately wants nothing more than to be free, to play, and to have friends, but because of the circumstances around them, what they were taught to believe in and the psychological torture they were subjected to inside the prison, and the fact Belos was the one person they had contact for the last four hundred years or so... they inevitably became also incredibly accustomed to violence, to taking what they want by force, to justifying as many corpses piling up as necessary to get what they want. They're terrifying, they're horrible, they're sad, they're tragic, they're genuine, they're willing to learn, they have so much potential, they are multifaceted and that is what makes them an interesting character, bad things and good things alike.

#the owl house #toh analysis #toh theory #the collector #toh collector #commander's orders #blinks cutely. hiiii. i finally wrote this. yay! the other poll winner is done!

173 notes · View notes