I am actually. I am so emotional over the Salazar parents and I need to share this to tumblr too.
A lot of stories where the MC is adopted I feel. Either dismiss the biological parents and the impact they have on the kid's life, or makes them evil and abusive, framing the loss of the bio parents as a good thing, or at least something we shouldn't think about just look at this new family.
But Genrex doesn't do that. From the start, Rex wanted to find out more about his parents - it's one of his primary character motivations, next to helping people. He loves them, even though he doesn't know them.
And the more he finds out about them, the more he realizes they loved him. Rylander is consumed by guilt but as Rex's first connection to his pre-Event life, the first thing he does is hug him. And when he tells Rex about his parents, the two things Rex knows is that 1) they were scientists, and 2) that when he was in danger, they were desperate enough to use their secret, experimental technology to save him. Technology built from their desire to help the world, to save countless lives and end countless suffering.
And then. When he finds out that they were dead, he doesn't stop caring. It'd be so easy, too, to tie it up there - his parents were good people, he got his answer about them, the end. But they don't. He doesn't. Because the show is saying once again that they are his parents. He still calls them mom and dad, even as the show makes it clear Holiday and Six adopted Rex as their son. Even as the show even parallels Six and One with Rex and Six (and I will talk about that more later if I don't forget, trust me), to really drive home how much they're family. Rex even says he considers the two of them family, and later that he considers Noah, Claire and Annie family.
He has new family, the show tells us, but his old family still matters to him. He's upset that he never has the chance to meet his parents, that everything he hears about them, about his time with them, is secondhand knowledge. It tells us clearly that not only does Rex still love them, but that he still wants to know them. And everything we find out about them reinforces the love that they had for each other.
We see Abuela and the family in Mexico, who connect him to his birth family and tell him that he was so loved back then, and still is now. We see their office in Abysus through Rex's eyes. The picture of him and his dad on his desk. The drawing Rex drew, proudly pinned to the wall.
We see it in the familiarity of the drawing. That that robot, that build, was what Rex created when he was lost and scared and alone - that it was made to keep him safe. That it first appeared in his mind in a place he felt safe.
The show says, tenderly and softly, that the love is still there. That the fact these people died was nothing but a tragedy, that their love is a big part of what made Rex who he is today - that every molecule in his body is filled with their final gift to him. That every time he cures someone, every time he uses a build, every time he makes a machine - we see the love that they had for him.
And the way he quietly absorbs his father's face. The way he freezes and whispers "Mamá?" when he finds out Zag-Rs has their mother's voice. The fact that she even has her voice as a testament to Caesar's love, too - that it was meant to bring comfort and safety. The way Rex yells at Caesar when he finds out they have a family property, a connection to their past, the way he fights to protect it.
And, none of this takes away still from Six and Holiday being Rex's family too. None of this removes the work either set of parents did for him, the love either set has - the show says that it was unfair that the Salazar parents were lost. That Six and Holiday are not replacements, that they still love him as parents but play different roles in his life. They can not, and have no desire to, replace the Salazars. But Rex needs parents, he needs protectors, and so they will do what they can for him - at first out of necessity, to keep this kid they barely know safe, but then out of love. They aren't replacing what was lost, but are doing their best to do what Rex's bio parents would do. And they do mess up in it - they mess up in ways Rex's bio parents might not have. Six is clearly bad with showing affection, affection we saw the Salazars give Rex so easily, and Holiday is overworked and stressed constantly, sometimes breaking under the pressure and snapping at Rex and Six, things we never saw the Salazars do.
It's just. It's about how sometimes things will not be the same. They will be different. That doesn't mean the people you lost aren't still with you.
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i think part of what makes so many people just flock to dungeon meshi as well is that it's also a story involving an autistic main character, who actually IS the main character
Because many stories will have an autistic character in them and then the story is more about how all the neurotypical people AROUND the autistic character deal with the characters autism, and the autistic character ends up as a side-character in a story that's supposed to be ABOUT them.
But in dungeon meshi, Laios especially is so much the main character!
And i know he's not the only one, and not the only autistic character obv, and i know the story isn't about just him alone OR his autism...
But we get Laios' perspective. On just about everything.
The story is, in the roughest terms, about the party venturing into the dungeon in order to save Falin, who got eaten by the red dragon. They're on a time constraint and have no money or equipment except what they literally have on their backs. That's the story.
Another author, a worse author, probably wouldn't have made Laios the party leader. A worse author would've relegated Laios to the "weird, awkward newbie who's excited about monsters but doesn't have the slightest clue or experience with them" who's job would've been to cite fun facts about whatever monster they encounter from some book he carries around, and the main interactions between him and the party would've been them yelling at him or calling him weird, to the point where you're wondering what this characters purpose even is in the story beyond comic relief.
And I'm so glad we didn't get this.
Instead of a story that emphasizes how "weird and unlikable" this weird character is, we get Laios being the partys leader, who, yes, is weird, but also competent and knowledgable and skilled and also is still a full character, with thoughts and feelings of his own, who actually speaks his mind and interacts with others on equal footing, who defends himself when he KNOWS he isn't in the wrong.
Laios and Shuros confrontation is both shocking, and also a huge breath of fresh air.
(Also, i know that "Shuro" isn't his real name but i can't remember his real name and I can't be bothered to look it up rn)
Shuro tells Laios to learn to read the room. A worse author would've had Laios apologize to Shuro for his own incompetence, but instead of meekly accepting that accusation, Laios throws it back in Shuros own face. That Shuro should've just been direct and honest with Laios when he KNEW that Laios wasn't getting it, instead of just playing along and letting that resentment fester.
And Laios is not only shouting it out, speaking his mind, and refusing to be treated as lesser than anyone else just because he can't "read the room", but he's also portrayed as RIGHT!
Shuro would've have had to put up with Laios, whom he didn't like, but whom he let believe that they were friends, if he had just TOLD Laios he didn't like him DIRECTLY.
and look, i know that there's some hints or pages or whatever you wanna call them, that Shuro is also autistic, but comes with a different background, which basically just makes him and Laios incompatible in a certain sense.
But even with all that, Shuro still had no right to fault Laios for his shortcomings, when his own shortcomings played just as much of a role in their eventual confrontation.
And the difference? Shuro KNEW how he himself AND Laios felt, but Laios only knew how he himself felt. Shuro was at an advantage in their situation, and he still faulted Laios and made him out to be this villain, who was purposely trying to make Shuro miserable, when Shuro himself NEVER opened his mouth to correct Laios!
And the thing is, Shuro isn't in the wrong for not liking Laios. Shuro is in the wrong for blowing up at Laios without EVER even giving him the chance to correct his behaviour!
And Laios KNOWS this, and he REFUSES to just apologize for something that wasn't even his fault! How could he possibly have known Shuro didn't like him, when Shuro never gave him any kind of indication of that fact?
And that's just it, isn't it?
Because I know I've experienced this kind of situation, even if exact memories don't come to mind, and I know other autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people have experienced this kind of thing. Of someone whom they were just having a normal conversation with or whom they considered a friend, just randomly blowing up at them for no conceivable reason.
From our perspective, the other person just randomly decided they didn't like us anymore, didn't care about us anymore and wanted to be rid of us, or decided we were suddenly just evil, and they got mad at us, yelled at us, called us names, and then just left.
And we're left confused and sad and, having no other information to go off of, because none was given to us, are bound to come to the conclusion that there's something wrong with us. We're just not likeable and any kindness from other people coming our way is just them being too polite to say anything until they've decided they had enough of us and abandon us. Because they never liked us. They were just too polite to say anything until they couldn't take us anymore.
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I was thinking the other day that man, kokuto neji is such a character and I haven't liked a writer character like this since... shang qinghua?
which naturally led me to this thought: jj fic with svsss-style au where neji transmigrates/gets isekai'd into the world of havenna. as domina, of course.
it's extra fucked up imo because at least when sqh transmigrated in his book, he made up all of those characters and they mostly stayed in the realm of fantasy. like, sure, lbh was kinda based on himself in some ways and mbj was his ideal fantasy, but they still mostly stayed fictional, you know? sqq (sy) had to fix his plots because the characters sqh wrote strayed too far from their original plotlines
but theater makes a fictional world a bit too real and personal, especially when you use real people as inspirations for your writing. with neji, he'd be looking at rukiora and see three different people (mitsuki acting as rukiora; rukiora who was written based on a younger version of neji; rukiora who is her own person in this weirdly real world of havenna). neji would see fugio and to him that is both sou acting as fugio and the fugio who grew up with poison flowers. miguel is both fumi and the guy who ran away from his neshiromi fields. the only constant would probably be chicchi. she is too much like kisa in that... well. neji didn't really have a backstory for chicchi. chicchi is a blank canvas just like kisa is as an actor.
anyway. yeah, very sv-style character arc where neji, much like shen yuan in sv, is forced to humanize the villain. except this villain was his creation and is also tied to a bunch of personal issues for neji that he Doesn't Want To Think About and also he doesn't? really understand the character he wrote tbh?
isn't art supposed to process your emotions for you!! why must he process these himself!!
can you imagine neji, who always casts himself as a seer of some sort (fortune teller, ushinoko) or someone who generally has some control over his future or his "creation" (who is mary if not just another side of neji anyway; she's takihime redux, and takihime is also. neji). imagine this dude being transported inside the play he wrote but he doesn't understand it and he has no control over it and everyone's acting both in character and out of character. he both knows and doesn't know these people. they're fictional but also... real? does he treat them as real people? is domina real? he wanted his actors to imbue parts of themselves into his characters. are these people really just characters from a script? are they his quartz classmates? is he allowed to even hope that that's the case?
it's both THE improv exercise of his dreams and also. a nightmare
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